My new book is out, and can be found below!
In honor of the release, I wanted to share a short story set in the world of The Kingdom’s Disdain. Sometimes a person just wants to write a nice story about elves. So here you are, my good friends, have an elf.
Rinbah Oatberry
Rinbah Oatberry slowly drew a black shafted arrow from her quiver. Her’s would be the first strike to land, if that was what she wanted. She was distant, thirty five claw from the target at least. Her kin might have measured the shot in qet instead of claw, Rinbah mused, this was just one of many ways she was unlike them. Rinbah Oatberry was a forest elf by blood, pureblood. Built slender with dark eyes and skin the color of oak bark, smooth and beautiful like the shell of an acorn. Her hair was dark, though many of her kin had hair the color of autumn leaves, of sunbeams or winter snow. She could bend like a willow, and she was bent over in a hunter’s crouch. Her moves were distinctly those of a forest elf, but she measured in claw, like a mortal.
The forest elves have always been here. While mortals, dwarves and even the sky elves came from other places to the land, we simply emerged. The trees needed watchers, and for that reason, our ancient ancestors were made flesh.
She couldn’t help thinking about the old myth when she was pressed between two ancient looking wiltoak trees like this.
Their bark is like shell. These must be at least six-hundred years old. Eight circles.
She’d caught herself measuring time in mortal years again rather than circles. A familiarity with tradespeech made things much easier in this part of the world. Most forest elves could easily convert between a year and a circle. Most mortals could not. It shortened the process if you spoke in their language. The inherent unfairness of it was not lost on Rinbah, but that didn’t make it any less true.
The forest quivered. The beast was near. Rinbah surveyed the trees for her fellow hunters. Serell Wintermoss was leading his group from the branches above the valley, five strong, all forest elves like herself. Wintermoss was tall for an elf, stoic, broad shouldered. His hair was a fiery auburn, and his eyebrow was pierced with three rings. His body was all sinewy muscle, and he went into battle boldly, wearing little beyond a cowl of beach-leather. His weapon of choice was the arc-bow, a recurve made from twisted wood that spanned his whole height.
In the lower valley was Memuenta. He was mortal, but in stark contrast to Wintermoss, he was shorter and had softer features. His skin was a paler shade of the regular island tan and his long tail of black hair was like so many raven feathers. He wore a kind of robe that obscured him in the fauna, dark like wiltoak leaves in the night, and he had his famous spear, Stone-Piercer, at the ready, its dark shaft faded like shadow. He was rounded by three more of his group, two human men and one woman. All of them were part of the same gang, Drathe’s followers. They all answered to Drathe, Memuenta’s gregarious lover. All of them were loud and boisterous. There were forest elves like herself among their collective. Rinbah sometimes walked among them, and at one point even considered herself one of them, but she could not follow the way they did. Their ways were mortal ways, and she could not see the forest as a thing to be pillaged. Mortals faced the forest as though it were an enemy, and that was not her people’s way, nor her way.
Maybe I’m a pillager too.
Tending the forest and protecting smaller creatures from an overabundance of predators was a high calling, but she had joined this particular hunt for simpler reasons; she wanted four garshuk fangs so she could make a new bracelet. It had been a boring day. It had been a boring week. She needed a project.
Drathe is a bad influence. She got me into fashion accessories. It may be shallow, but it is a way to pass the time.
Time was something Rinbah had no shortage of. She wasn’t even in her two-hundredth year, and she was already a masterful hunter.
The forest moved again, and this time it showed its fangs; the Split Garshunk, a large, twin headed serpent covered in insectoid plates. It rattled as it emerged, falling for the lure placed by Memuenta and his gang, a slaughtered hornbeast set in a clamp. The design had been to draw the garshunk to the blood and catch one of its giant heads in the teeth of the clamp, but the forest was learning the ways of the mortals, and the beast had approached with unusual caution.
Rinbah fixed a thin arrow in the string of her bow and pulled back. Now was not the time to shoot, but it would soon be time.
The garshunk’s wild eyes each rolled independently in its head, trying to pick out any threats. Collectively, it could hone in on four of them at once. One of the eyes saw Memuenta’s comrade, a girl in green feathers with two broadswords. No one saw Rinbah.
Memuenta screamed a ravenous battle cry from deep in his lungs, and his squad fell into attack positions, two shielders thrusting their bladed bucklers into the serpent’s elevated body while the woman with two blades scurried around for a flank.
“Go for the heart!” Memuenta bellowed out, his voice filled with calm rage. He lowered the sharp tip of his Stone Piercer and advanced, slowly but steadily. This was when the bowman were supposed to start firing, but they did not.
I looked to Wintermoss. He and his elves all had their bows strung and pulled back beyond their pointed ears, but none were firing.
The evening sunlight caught the exo-shell of the garshunk just right and gleamed off its black chiton with a rainbow aura. The clatter of the mortal battle between Mem’s fighters and the dark serpent was drowned out by the deafening silence of the forest beside me.
Wintermoss did not loose his bow, even as Memuenta and his blader dealt the first wounds, flesh wounds, not fatal, only causing the serpent to become more manic and dangerous.
He’s going to let them die. Rinbah thought. It was commonly understood that the hunter who dealt the killing blow to a beast would get to divy up the spoils. This was not a rule, but it was an understanding, and understandings could be like law when everyone involved was in competition.
Rinbah turned to Wintermoss, and he was looking at her too. His bright eyes were clear and his expression firm. Let the mortals take the brunt.
Rinbah knew she couldn’t. She didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment. She fixed her gaze on the right head and let loose.
Rinbah fired. She fired because she wanted to. This was when she wanted to fire.
The arrow flew with a twang, carried instantly to the eye of the beast. The shaft looked like it was shooting out of the head like a retractable quill, and the beast hissed in pain, spurting blood.
Memuenta followed her attack, seizing its moment of pain and confusion, he pulled back and then thrust with unmatchable speed and precision, his famous Lighting Bolt technique. The first head was impaled.
“Zethsta!” Wintermoss swore loudly in elvish and loosed. The twang of his bow was like the sound of a hammer on an anvil, and it was followed by a full volley, a rain of sharpness, arrows finding spaces between armor plates and making those spaces their home. The beast thrashed in unspeakable agony.
Do not cry, great lord of the forest. We shall send you to your rest soon.
Rinbah prepared another arrow and quickly launched it off, striking in the monster’s gut.
Then, there was another anvil strike, and another lightning bolt, and suddenly the beast was dead.
Memuenta was standing under it, his spear pointed upward through its chest, it’s heart. Beside his head was the tail of Wintermoss’ arrow, yellow tail feather still vibrating from impact.
They both landed the final strike.
She watched as the other elves all leapt and climbed down from their trees and approached the mortals, gathering around the body of the beast.
“My arrow clearly landed first.” said Wintermoss as he approached the body. Memuenta and his warriors did not move to sheathe their weapons.
“I don’t think it was all that clear.” The woman in green with the two blades said. Mem was soft-spoken and not prone to conflict. “I have excellent hearing. The hisses ceased just as my friend’s tip entered the chest.”
“Your mortal senses are dull.” Wintermoss insisted, “All of our elvish eyes saw the truth. We will leave plenty for you. We simply wish to take our pick of the plates.”
“So that you can take the thickest ones and leave the weak plates for us?” The woman in green was not backing down, and Mem did not move.
She climbed down my tree and approached. They continued to argue.
“You would not even know of this creature if my trackers hadn’t found it.”
“That doesn’t matter. That’s never mattered. Memuenta struck faster. You tried to let us be killed.”
She walked toward the body and drew my hunting knife. Wintermoss gave her a passing glance, but did not speak to her. She was an elf.
She ducked past Memuenta, who didn’t even spare her a glance, but did not impede her. The fighting continued. She knelt by the body and held her breath, not wishing to consume any toxic fumes. She began my work.
“You would put arrows in our backs if you felt you could get away with it!”
“If we wanted to put arrows in you, you would already be pierced!”
Four fangs. Nothing more, nothing less. She took her loot and walked past Memuenta, then Wintermoss.
They would argue for a long time, but it would probably not come to blows.
It would be a long journey back to the Hunter’s Barrak, and she would make that journey on her own.
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