War of the Races - The Verdant Realm

Chapter 14- The Shadows In The Mist

Dark, thick swirling mist settled over the Dragon’s Spine in the early hours of the morning. Like a cold wet blanket, it tempered the mood of the men with wariness, so unlike the spirited camaraderie just the night previous. Aalyn was not particularly religious or superstitious, but she had to admit, the mist made her nervous as well. If some of her more superstitious soldiers were to be believed, the mist was a twilight where the realms of the dead and the living converged and overlapped. Where shades of the dead and banshees roamed the mist and carried off the living to either keep as companions to quell the boredom of their ethereal existence or to drag off and feed upon or torture and kill out of spite. She was surprised by the wide-eyed fear she saw in her men as they performed their duties, even though surrounded by an army of well-trained soldiers. She could see why the mist gave rise to such fears of the unknown, of the unseen, and how it inspired the imagination to fear what could possibly snatch someone away to disappear into those churning gray depths.

Coincidentally, today she stationed herself exactly in the center of the marching line and kept a steady pace with her sisters beside her. This way she was able to receive messages and react quickly should there be an attack at the front or from the rear. All morning they marched in the stagnant silence of the forest that made the click-clack of armor and weapons jostling with every step sound like cymbals crashing in her ears.

Among the soldiers, no one spoke above a whisper, and when there was that one man or woman that talked or laughed too loud, either because they didn’t sense the danger, or because of their nervousness, they were quickly shushed so that the voices of the living would not draw the attention of the dead as the march continued in a suffocating silence only diminished by the jarring sounds of tac that seemed to be swallowed up by the mist and the forest around them.

They reached the next ridge overlooking the next valley to be traversed and came to a stop for lunch. Everyone huddled together in small clusters and ate cheese and bread, jerked meat, and drank water or mead as they hunched in on themselves and looked about furtively. The mist didn’t burn off as the sun rose, but instead, the soft white disc directly above at its zenith struggled to penetrate a fog that seemed to have only grown thicker, making everything more than a few yards away nothing but murky shadows. Looking around for Thurdain, Aalyn found her sister talking quietly with one of her priestesses, and as she approached, her sister glanced at her and then sent the girl off at a run before she arrived.

“Is there a problem?” Aalyn asked suspiciously.

One could never be too suspicious of another Svartalf, especially priestesses. Even if she was a sister, and maybe even more so because of it. One of many ways to climb in rank within a family was the assassination of an older sibling by the younger.

“No,” Thurdain answered with a mild note of uncertainty in her voice, “At least I don’t think so, not yet at least.”

“What has happened?” She asked, her voice low in case anyone was actively trying to eavesdrop.

“One of my Initiates is missing,” Thurdain whispered as she looked around the surrounding woods, anything to keep from making eye contact with Aalyn as she continued, “It could be nothing. She may have just wandered off into the fog and gotten lost, or she may have snuck off with one of the soldiers or craftsmen. It’s too soon to tell.”

Aalyn nodded that she understood, then motioned for Rweble Faline to come to her. When he joined them, she started giving quiet commands, “Rweble, go and let Hayden and Grunngrul know that we have at least one missing priestess, and possibly more. Tell them to postpone pulling away for an hour. Each of you takes a count of the men under your commands and makes sure we haven’t lost anyone else. Thurdain, find Illglan and both of you take a count of the priestesses, and then all of you make a quiet search of the entire camp for our lost Initiate and any others that may be missing.”

Once they left to start their tasks, she looked around carefully to see who was watching. When she saw that no one was paying attention, she stepped behind a tree and disappeared into the mist. She walked for only a few minutes before she found what she was looking for: a hollow stump that would serve perfectly as a commode. It took several minutes to take her armor off before she was able to pull her britches down and sit on the tree stump. It was right in the middle of her relief, as she was hunched over and contemplating the mist and the sounds of the forest, that there was a slight rustle of pine nettles. With a hiss, she sat up to look around and see what made the noise. Just as she sat back, the tip of a dagger nicked her throat as a cloaked shadow slashed at her. Out of nowhere, a second shadow appeared and collided with the first, and they both went rolling through the underbrush.

“s**t! f**k! f*****g s**t! I’m going to f*****g murder you,” She snarled the new curses Sinaan taught her as she put a hand to her throat and checked herself for injuries, then she quickly cleaned herself up and tried to shimmy her britches back on, but left them unbuttoned. She didn’t bother with armor, and instead grabbed the hilt of her sword and pulled it free of its scabbard before taking up a mid-sized kite shield painted with the emblems of her House, and turning back to the fight that was now a few yards away.

Running over, she tried to find an opening as the two shadows tousled and rolled across the ground. They struggled like fighting snakes for some time as each tried to put a dagger in the other's ribs while also grabbing at wrists to parry and disarm the other. They grunted and groaned, hissed and cursed, and then finally broke apart momentarily as they both rolled agilely to their feet. The assassin pulled new daggers from beneath the cloak while her rogue retrieved the one he had lost. With a hiss, the assassin launched into a new onslaught of attacks that was met with the equal skill of the rogue. They danced from fighting stance to stance as steel rang out against steel, and quick strikes as blade against blade sent flashes and sparks as enchantments struck enchantments, only to be followed up with opportunistic kicks to ankles, knees, or hips. It was a mad gambol to break the other's rhythm and balance, and whoever succeeded would win.

The assassin was the larger of the two fighters, and the cloak that was worn made Aalyn’s eyes want to cross and look away. However, despite the enchantment of the cloak that masked her identity, she was still certain that the way the assassin moved was with a feminine grace as her daggers slashed and stabbed, probing for openings and weaknesses. With weapons and arms moving in a blur that Aalyn had a hard time following as they parried and dodged, they moved so erratically that she couldn’t find an opening, and so, moved around for a better vantage point. As she stepped around a tree, the assassin saw her target and twisted, dancing around the black-garbed rogue’s daggers, and lunged at Aalyn.

She braced herself to meet her assassin head-on, but with a quick roll and a kick, the rogue took the assassin’s feet out from under her so that she fell hard to the ground in front of Aalyn. The rogue took the opportunity to jump on the attacker's back and plunged his daggers in until she stopped moving. With the fight concluded, silence quickly swept over the forest once again as Aalyn walked over, her sword and shield out in front of her protectively, and as she drew close to the would-be assassin, Sinaan looked up and swept a built-in cowl from his head as he gave her a devastating smile that didn’t hide the fact that he was breathing hard.

“This assassin may be the best fighter I’ve ever fought,” He huffed as he stood up, then put his boot in Aalyn’s assailant’s back and pulled his daggers out before wiping the blood off onto the cloak, “I’m glad I was here. As good as you are, Aalyn, I don’t think you would have come out on top of that fight with your britches around your ankles.”

“Mmm, yes, well, if you want to live to see your next birthday, never speak of this, ever again,” She retorted firmly, leaving no room for doubt that she would kill him if he ever told anyone that she was almost assassinated while relieving herself, “But it was a good idea for you to start shadowing me. You have become quite good at the art of stealth.”

“In my previous life, the only characters I ever played were rogues,” Sinaan offered with a sly grin, “and I always went by the name Blade, for a good reason; I was the best at what I did.”

“Mmm, so you’ve told me. When we return home, I may yet award you with that title officially,” She chuckled as she poked at the corpse on the ground, “but if you ever speak of what happened here, the only title you’ll receive will be ‘Sinaan the Rusty Spoon’ on your tombstone.”

He couldn’t help but guffaw before replying, “I promise, sister, on my life and on my reputation, that I will never speak of the details of what happened here.”

He had paused for a moment there, and she knew why. He was going to say “by his love for her,” but she had forbidden him long ago from doing that. He could not love her. As the heiress of House Abendroth, she must maintain certain impressions and remain unwed in case a fortuitous alliance should become available. Still, Sinaan was only eighteen; he was young and naive, even if he had shared with her that he was much older than he looked.

That revelation had spawned an interesting dialogue once she had him tied to a wrack one night, and a cane had worked wonders for loosening his tongue so that she found out all about the Yellow Realm, Midgard, full of humans and technology. He had educated her on their history, and who he was as a man before he found himself being reborn from their mother's womb as a Svartalf. He had been a programmer, whatever that was, and had been alpha-testing a game, for adults of all people, just before his transference. He admitted to being forty-seven years old, which, with him now being eighteen, made his mental and emotional age sixty-five. Almost as old as herself by seven years. She had to admit it was nice to have a more experienced lover trapped in a young man's body so that she reaped the benefits of both experience and youth.