K
onowa Swift Dragon didn't trust trees, not since he'd fallen out of one when he was a child of six years. His relationship with them had only gotten worse since then. He spun around quickly to face behind him, alert for any sign of movement. The game path he followed was bare, the trees to either side big, brown, green, and motionless. Good. Something buzzed by his ear and he slapped a hand against his neck then held it out in front of his face to examine the kill. He grunted with satisfaction; at least one black fly would no longer torment him.
"That'll teach you," he said, wiping his hand on the bark of a nearby tree. He grabbed the canteen slung across his shoulder and took a drink, looking around at this strange, sweltering forest that was now his home.
A miasma of sounds and smells assaulted him at every turn. Bugs, birds, and furred-beasts twittered, chittered, spewed, cawed, oozed, growled, yelped, and bit all day and most aggravatingly, all night. The trees secreted bucketfuls of cloying sap, the smell every bit as vile as a formal palace ball he'd once attended at the height of summer years ago in the Calahrian capital.
Between the stink and the racket there was enough to make him despise the forest, but fate, it seemed, wasn't satisfied with that. On top of everything else, Konowa was certain the trees were watching him. Worse, he had the growing suspicion that they were trying to tell him something. He walked up to one, even reaching out a hand to pat it, but it looked and acted just like a tree, being absolutely inscrutable as it stood there.
It's just the heat, he decided, wiping the sweat from his brow. Elfkyna was suffocatingly hot in the summer, humid in the snowless winter, and miserable the rest of the year.
He was, as he had been for the past year, alone in a forest.
It brought to mind the angry words he'd shouted all
those years ago as he clutched his broken arm and kicked the trunk of the tree
that had let him fall: "
I hate the forest and I don't want to be an elf anymore!
"
Decades later, that sentiment remained.
Sighing, Konowa dropped the canteen to his side and held his hands out before him, palms up, wondering if he would ever hold his own fate again. He looked closer at his hands. His natural tanned color was deepening to a hue close to the reddish-brown bark of the trees around him.
Great
, he thought,
I'm turning into a bloody tree
. He ran his hands through the tangled thatch of long black hair on his head, half expecting to feel leaves sprouting there. Instead, his fingers brushed against the tops of his ears, feeling the point on the right, and ragged scar tissue on the left where the point used to be. The mutilation hadn't been by choice, but he wasn't overly upset with the results. He had never been comfortable with his heritage.
Konowa closed his eyes and let the forest talk to him. Nothing. He opened one to see if anything had changed. A large, brightly colored snake wound its way up the trunk of an old, bent teak, using the tree's flaking pale-gray bark for grip. The snake paused, turning to look at him. Its tongue darted in and out of its mouth testing the air. Konowa closed his eyes again and focused his thoughts on the snake, but all he sensed was how foolish he was for trying. He gave up and sought out the trees themselves.
They were nothing like the lean, straight pines and firs or thick and limb-heavy oaks he had known as a child. Here, everything curved, from the trunks of the trees to the creatures and vines that crawled over them. Even the leaves were different, some wide and flat, others garishly green and bitter to the taste.
He tried a new approach.
You're an elf
, he reminded himself,
born of the natural world; you're supposed to be able to do this
. He slowed his breathing and willed his body to relax, trying to let the forest infuse him with its essence. Infuse? Essence? He shook his head. This was pointless. Everything teemed with life and all had voices, yet he heard only noise, felt only chaos.
It had been the same the day he walked into the birthing meadow to become an elf of the Long Watch. He remembered the mix of excitement and fear as he entered the most sacred realm of the
Hhar Vir
, the Deep Forest, seeking a sapling cub among the tender green shoots to become his
ryk faur
, his bond brother.
"
Let your spirit walk among them, and one shall call to you,
" he was told, so he stayed in the meadow for five straight days without food or water, waiting, hoping. When the elves finally carried him out because he was too weak to walk, no sapling cub had yet called to him. The Wolf Oaks, the very embodiment of the natural world, had measured him, found him wanting, and rejected him. The thought still rankled. Even the elf-witch the elders told stories about to scare wayward children had found a sapling cub with which to bond.
Knowing it was fruitless but trying anyway, he now raised his arms high into the air and called again to the trees around him. His only answer was a swarm of gnats that flew into his mouth. Exasperated and spitting bugs, Konowa lowered his arms and squirmed inside the tattered and patched remnants of his uniform. The Calahrian Imperial Army green had faded to dirty white, and the knees and elbows sported ill-sewn patches of black leather from his knapsack. His musket, however, was in perfect condition. He let his left hand brush against the stock and smiled at the cold and lifeless feel of wood and steel entwined. The weapon would work if he kept his powder dry and the moving parts oiled, not if he
"felt" in tune with it, as the oath weapons the Wolf Oaks bestowed on their
ryk faur
elves required.
A rumbling growl made Konowa turn. Jir, his companion of the last year, and probably the sole reason Konowa had not gone stark, raving mad out here, stood a foot away, having sneaked up on Konowa without the elf hearing a thing.
"You're better at this than me," he said, lightly rapping the bengar between the eyes with his knuckles. Jir snorted and shook his woolly head, staring up at him with big black eyes. Jir was larger than a dyre wolf, larger even than a tiger, sporting a coat of short, midnight-black fur streaked through with dull red stripes. His head featured a stubby, well-whiskered muzzle and a furry mantle of thick hair that ran halfway down his back. At the moment, he was marking his territory, forcing Konowa to jump back a pace. A swarm of black flies rose up from Jir's back as his long tail swished menacingly around his hindquarters. When he was done, Jir padded over on four big paws, rubbing against him and purring a deep, contented sound that made Konowa's body vibrate.
They were quite a pair, Konowa mused, scratching the bengar behind the ears. The feel of Jir's coarse fur reminded him of bark and he looked again at the forest that had become his home. Cathedral light fell like shafts of gold between the trunks as the sun dipped below the tops of the trees. It was the kind of moment his father had urged him to commune with, to find his center and become one with the forest. Konowa snorted. It was the kind of moment when he wanted a tankard of beer and a grilled sausage.
A light breeze sighed between the branches, evaporating the sweat from his forehead. After the heat of the past two weeks, it was a welcome change that would be even better once he and Jir were back in the hut with the door firmly in place. It was not wise to be out in the open when the moon climbed the sky.
Jir growled and shook his woolly head, indicating he'd had enough. Konowa lifted his hand and moved off. Lifting the stock of his musket out of the way, he squatted with some difficulty, his left knee twinging in protest, a souvenir from an orc lancer many years before. He grabbed a handful of dirt and sifted it through his hands, mimicking the actions of the Hynta-elves he'd watched all through his childhood years. His hand tingled with the power of the natural order, but he had no idea what to do with it. Konowa shivered in spite of the heat, dropping the dirt as if stung.
"Let's go home," he said.
Jir stared at him with apparent disdain. Konowa wasn't sure he didn't deserve it.
They walked for several minutes before he found a tree that he'd notched earlier that day with his small hunting hatchet. Cutting a tree was as much an act of defiance as an aid to navigation. The elves of his tribe would have been appalled to see him deface a tree with a steel ax, but they weren't here to guide him.
Feeling smug, Konowa lengthened his stride. He took one complete step and pitched forward into an unseen hollow.
"
Yirka umno!
" Konowa swore as he fell. He landed with a thud. As he lay there catching his breath, he realized with some surprise that he'd used a tribal curse, invoking summer lightning, the forest's most feared natural predator.
I'm going native
, he thought, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. He froze halfway up, coming face to rear with the hindquarters of one severely agitated skunk dragon.
"
Yirka
!" Konowa shouted, scrambling backward as the awful-smelling fire burst forth. He began to roll and beat at the flames, all the while gagging on the stench. Jir growled and wagged his tail furiously at the little black dragon and was no help at all. Konowa rolled and beat out the last of the foul-smelling flames, cursing all the while. He staggered to his feet, wielding his musket like a club, ready to dash the animal's brains onto the forest floor, but the dragon had already scampered off. Finally running out of breath, he leaned his musket against a tree, unstoppered his canteen, and poured the contents over his head.
He stood like that for several seconds, his face dripping, his chest heaving, and his eyes darting wildly from side to side like an elf possessed. When the roar of blood in his ears quieted enough for him to hear the perpetual hum of the forest, he flung the canteen away. No sooner had he thrown it away and watched it disappear among the trees than he realized he'd need it.
Konowa took stock of his situation. Aside from what felt like a bad case of sunburn, he was uninjured. His uniform, however, was absolutely ruined. He stripped off his cartridge pouch, shirt, boots and trousers, leaving only his loincloth on as he gingerly hopped from foot to foot on the carpet of nettles from the bushlike tree he found himself under.
After a few moments of that, Konowa decided it was time to try something new. Thoughts of the clean, cool water by the hut spurred him to action. Shooting a withering glance at Jir, he put his boots back on after carefully brushing any clinging nettles off his bare feet. Flies, gnats, and a dozen other bugs he couldn't identify were now buzzing about his head, but none dared land; the stench of the skunk dragon acting as the first effective remedy he'd found to keep them at bay. Picking up his musket, he hung his soiled clothes and pouches from the muzzle and rested the weapon on his shoulder.
"What else can go wrong?" he muttered, and started to walk for home with Jir padding alongside at a discreet distance.
The unmistakable sound of a tree falling carried in the twilight, and for the briefest of moments, Konowa sensed pain. It was gone so fast he wasn't sure it had happened, but when he looked over at Jir he knew something wasn't right. The bengar stood stiff-legged, his ears straight up, muzzle sniffing the air.
"It's nothing," Konowa lied, and kept walking, anxious to outpace the smell that clung to him. The light was fading quickly now, and he wanted to get back to the hut before it was completely dark. The sound of the forest changed at night, a subtle, gradual shift that crept up on the unsuspecting…along with things that made no sound at all.
Konowa turned to scold Jir to get a move on. The bengar was gone.
"Jir," he called softly. Jir had excellent hearing, but that wasn't why Konowa kept his voice lowthe forest had gone silent. The constant hum of life that surged through the trees was absent, the forest was preternaturally still, as if time itself had ceased to exist.
"Not good," Konowa whispered to himself as he tipped the clothes from his musket and began to load the weapon, just to be safe.
Cradling the musket in front of his body, Konowa checked that the flint was still secure, then half-cocked the hammer as his old regiment's collect sounded in his ears.
Heavenly spirits, who watch over us…
He fished out a cartridge from his pouch with his right hand, bringing the waxed paper tube up to his mouth in one practiced motion and biting the end off.
…guide us into battle and make sure our hand…
The gunpowder mixed with his saliva and he grimaced at its familiar salty, bitter taste.
…that we might slay our enemy…
The weight of the small lead bullet pressed against his tongue, and he heard again the whip-crack of regimental pennants unfurled in a gusting wind, the creaking timber of gun carriages, the whinnying of horses, the pounding of their hooves, and the echoing barks of sergeants relaying their officers' commands.
…destroy them as those that went before us…
A tremor of anticipation coursed through Konowa's body.
…and keep our honored place as your faithful servants, your harbingers of death. We are the warriors of the Hynta. We fear nothing, for we are the Iron Elves!
"Amen," Konowa said out loud, no longer alone.
He prepared the musket for firing to the cadence of a sergeant long ago dead, killed by a swarm of battle-crazed orcs in a land even more foreign than this. Something cold and black touched Konowa then, and he felt the presence of the lost souls of his old regiment. He trickled a little gunpowder into the pan of the musket before closing the hammer. Keeping time with the past, he set the musket butt down in front of him and poured the remaining charge down the barrel before stuffing the lead ball and finally the paper cartridge after it. Without pause, he pulled out the ramrod slung beneath the barrel from the four brass pipes that held it in place and tamped down the wadding and bullet, all the while scanning the forest. He replaced the ramrod and brought the musket up to his hip, imagining the bristling line of soldiers to his left and right and drawing comfort from their stoic silence.
