Visitations

Misty and chill the morning dawned. Reia shivered when she woke. Summer was passing, soon to be replaced by the harvest time. If the humans insisted on coming still, well, that would be trouble for them. As the autumn marched into winter and Lataleh, Goddess of Seed, laid to rest the earth would lie cold and bare, and the elven lands would be impossible to enter. Let them try. Winter would claim them and the nameless god would take them into its fold.

 In due time.

Rahnn had already risen, the pallet and furs beside her were already cool. She dressed and left the shelter, stepping into the quiet bustle of the village. Some of the elves uttered greetings to her. Most remained intent on their work. Children ran about, chasing after terrified, whirring birds or play-fighting with sticks. A boy still too young to have horns almost ran straight into Reia. “Careful, Tamar,” she said. Tamar ran off without acknowledging her. Reia snorted.

Old Irah was on cooking duty that morning, so she lined up at the cookfires and took a bowl of grain porridge from him. “You alright this morning, Reia?” he asked. He sat on a stool made of woven branches, his one foot resting on the ground. His right leg ended in a stump above where the knee had been. The remainder of the leg was wrapped in cloth and propped on the stool, next to his cane. It looked ugly, a short little lump of thigh-shaped flesh sticking out of him. Useless. Reia could still remember the explosion of blood as the bullet struck Irah's leg, the way his face went slack as he collapsed to the ground, the ruin of his leg twisted out sideways. The healers thought he'd die, from blood loss or infection or worse. But the nameless god did not see it fit to carry Irah away then. Though wasn't it crueler to let him linger like this?

“Fine,” she said, and thanked him for the porridge. She ate alone, trying not to look over at Irah and his stump. It made her leg ache.

It took her almost an hour to find Rahnn. She finally found him at the village's edge outside a small tent. There were no other shelters and no cleared spaces. Just the trees and brush of the elfland forest. “Rahnn? Rahnn, what are you doing here?”

He indicated the lonely tent. “The prisoner. I've been trying to learn what I can from him. He's been isolated for a week now eating nothing but water and bread. Hasn't heard a single elf or man speak to him. I think he'll be ready to talk now.”

“About what?”

“Mordania. What they have planned. Where they're going. What they're doing here. Anything I can find out.”

“And you think he'll talk. To you.”

“I think he'll talk to anyone at this point.” He moved to pull aside the tent flap and walk in. Reia grabbed his wrist. “Reia...”

“Let me help.”

He looked amused, the edge of his smile making his dark eyes crinkle. “How are you going to help? You don't know enough of the man-tongue.”

“I can rip out his man tongue,” she said. “If he tries anything...”

Rahnn chuckled and kissed her on the forehead. “Alright. Threaten him if you need to. But I don't think you'll have to.” He held the flap open and gestured for her to go in. Reia ducked under the leather flap and entered. It took her but a second to adjust to the dim light inside. The tent was small and smelled like damp earth, unwashed man and waste. Reia wrinkled her nose. The prisoner sat huddled in the back, ankles bound together and tied to the tent poles. Crumbs were scattered around him. He was hunched over himself, hugging himself and rocking back and forth very slightly, muttering to himself now and then in his harsh language. When Rahnn squeezed himself in next to Reia the three of them filled up the tent almost entirely.

Rahnn nodded to Reia, and she prodded the prisoner with the handle of her knife. He jerked his head upwards, staring at Reia with unfocused eyes. His cheeks were covered with a scraggly beard, his hair limp. He muttered something, and Reia thought she heard him say 'elf'.

“Shut up,” she hissed, and bared her knife at him.

Rahnn touched her on the shoulder and bent down to the prisoner's eye level. He spoke softly in the man's own tongue, a short sentence. From what little Reia knew of the Mordanian language he was asking a question. To his questions, the man said, “No.” So Rahnn asked another question, and received another, “No.”

Reia slapped him. “Answer him!” she snarled. It was in elven, but she knew her intentions were clear.

“Reia...”

She seized the man by the collar of his soldier's uniform and held the knife against his throat. “I kill,” she spat, using the few words of man-tongue she knew. “Kill.” The man's eyes fluttered back into his head and his mouth moved around silent words. He made a sound like, “Pleese.”

Rahnn touched Reia on the hand and she pulled her knife back with a jerk, and bared her teeth at the man. He swallowed, the lump in his throat bobbing up then down, and looked at Rahnn. How much easier it must be to trust him, she thought as she settled back on her haunches and Rahnn began to talk. He was a leader. A natural one. When he spoke, elves listened. He could lead a pack into battle or to the hunt. He understood people. He'd be chief one day, she knew, and maybe she'd be at his side as his mate.

More to the point, it was easier to trust someone when they weren't the one holding a knife to your neck.

It looked like the prisoner was cooperating now. He was certainly nodding a lot more. Reia recognized a few words, mostly 'Mordania' and 'men'.

“What's he saying?” Reia whispered close to Rahnn's left ear.

“He was part of a scouting unit,” Rahnn said back in elven. “He says more were coming.”

“He was the last one left of the scouts. The rest of them have no way of knowing what happened.”

“He said, in that case, that the larger units would delay their exploration.”

“You mean invasion.”

“It will be another three days, perhaps, before more arrive.”

Reia stood as best she could in the cramped confines of the tent. “Then why are we sitting around here? We need to set up defenses, send out scouts. We have the advantage over them!”

Rahnn nodded, then said something to the man, and stood to leave.

The man shouted something, and both of them turned to him. He stared at Rahnn with wide, pleading eyes. He made the “Pleese,” sound again, and then something else.

“He wants to see the outside,” Rahnn said. “To see the sun and the village. He wants to see people again.”

“No,” said Reia. “He does not belong near the village. Let him rot here and be grateful for it.”

“He can do no harm,” Rahnn said to her in a quiet voice. “I will keep him bound. Keep your knife to him if you want, but I will not deny him the simple pleasure of the sun.”

Reia looked at him, scrutinizing and wary. I cannot trust the man. But prove me wrong, Rahnn. You always have before. “If he tries anything,” she said, “I will kill him.”

Rahnn nodded. “Very well. It shall not come to that. I will be certain.” He spent a moment exchanging words with the man before untying his ankles from the tent pole and binding his hands in a length of rope. He pulled the man to his feet, forcibly, and pushed him towards the tent flap. “After you,” he said to Reia. She ducked out.

When the prisoner stepped into the sunlight he gasped, blinked, and shielded his eyes with his hands. Rahnn stood behind him, one hand gripping the man's shoulder. Reia kept her hand round her knife handle. Eventually the man pulled his hands away and looked around him. A tear rolled down his unshaven cheek.

Reia felt jumpy, on alert, as if she were hunting in the woods. She held her ears erect, eyes sweeping back and forth but focused on the prisoner as Rahnn guided him forward. She realized she was walking lightly on the tips of her hooves as if to remain silent in the presence of prey. But this man was no prey. He was weak and pathetic, a coward who had given himself up to the enemy and spilled secrets for fear of his life. He was a man. Reia had lost count of how many men had died at her hands. Try as they might they would never take the elflands. They never had. Still, she kept her grip on her knife. “Hurry him along,” she hissed to Rahnn. “I do not like this.”

All the while the man muttered to himself, or to Rahnn, though Rahnn never responded. The prisoner would pause between his inane man-tongue ramblings and then speak again, fast and feverish. “Is he mad?” Reia asked.

“I cannot hear what he's saying,” Rahnn said. “I do not think it matters.”

They reached the village's edge. Some of the elves wandering about stopped what they were doing to get a look at the prisoner. A few of the children came close to him, staring. “Stay back,” Reia said. “Stay away from him.” To the prisoner, she showed her knife and held up one finger. “Tell him he has one minute. Then back to his tent.”

The prisoner looked around him, eyes wide, back and forth, and back and forth. And he spoke, so soft that Reia almost did not hear him. He said one of the words that Reia knew: “Kill.”

The sound of men's guns filled the air, the sharp crack-boom. Screams. Shouts. The stench of burnt gunpowder. Reia grabbed the man by the hair and shoved the tip of her knife under his chin. “What have you done?” she yelled. “Was this you, you fucker?” But he couldn't understand elven, so he only twisted his head away from her.

Mind mage, she realized then. He'd let himself get captured so he could tell the other soldiers how to find the village. He hadn't been mad, but speaking to soldiers over great distances. “Fucker!” The mage glanced at her, head still twisted away, and his eyes met hers. Reia dragged her knife across his throat, savoring the feel of hot blood running down onto her hands. She snarled and pushed his body to the ground. “Get the warriors together!” she shouted to Rahnn. He was already running through the village, shouting for everyone to arm themselves. “Arm for battle!”

Tamar ran towards Reia, shouting to her. “Reia, Reia! What's going to happen?”

She knelt down to his level. “We are going to kill the humans. You are going to help get everyone to safety. The children and elderly, anyone who can't fight off the men.”

“I want to fight!” Tamar puffed out his chest and fixed Reia with a severe expression. On the face of an eleven-year old elf without his horns it looked comical.

“Can you handle a bow?” Reia asked him.

“No, but-”

“Can you use a blade?”

“I did once before, but-”

“Could you kill a man without a second thought?”

“Yes!”

Reia shook her head. “They have guns, and they can kill you as easily as thinking. One day you'll help defend our home from the invaders. But not today. There will be plenty of time later to kill them.” Tamar scowled, but he didn't say anything and his shoulders slumped in a gesture of defeat. “Go.” He ran, thin legs flying over the ground.

The trees outside the village were swarming with men when Reia arrived, bow in hand. She whispered a prayer to the god of the hunt and let an arrow fly. It thrummed as it flew through the air and over the head of her target. Reia swore, then ducked low into the tangle of roots near the ground. Bark and dirt showered over her as a bullet struck the tree behind her. She winced. By a quick count she guessed at thirty men, and those were just the ones she could see from here. There would be more. She could hear them.

Reia scrambled behind the tree as another bullet struck the ground near her. The burnt stench of gunpowder filled her nose, so thick that it drowned out everything else. When this was done, she thought, the village would have to be moved, far away so the men wouldn't find them again, and far away from the metal smell of battle.

Up the tree she climbed, fingers grasping onto branches, hoof points digging into the soft wood. She nestled herself amongst the branches, watching the men below her advance. One arrow, and one man collapsed to the ground, a shaft sticking out of his belly. Before he'd hit the ground she had another arrow pulled back in her bow, her sights on another man. She found her mark just below his throat.

Through the shroud of brown and green in the forest, she saw a flash of orange and smelled something harsh and chemical. She looked to the rear of the advancing men. There she saw one with a long, heavy-looking gun venting steam. And when he held it up, it spat fire. “Kill the fire gun!” Reia screamed, and shot at him. Her arrow was lost in the tangle of low-hanging branches between the two of them. He was too far away, too well-protected. She heard her packmates shouting amongst each other.

Reia climbed back down the tree, slunk to the ground and circled wide around the advancing soldiers. She crouched low, almost flat to the ground; waiting, breathing hard, and when a soldier walked past her, not six feet away, she put an arrow through his leg. He fell screaming to the ground, and she dashed out and slit his throat before anyone noticed. Then she slipped back into the trees and moved on. Another arrow here, then there. Far off she could see others doing the same. They'd take the men from the rear and kill them before they realized what was happening.

And then she'd go back to the village make sure that Rahnn never hear the end of this.

She readied another arrow. She could see the man with the fire gun now, close enough that she could hear the steady hiss of the flames. The forest around him burned. Ferns, moss and leaf became delicate black skeletons and crumbled into nothing. Flames licked against trees, the bark sloughing off and sap bubbling like angry water. The ground under his heavy boots was black, grey, and dead.

“May the faceless one take you to an eternity of torment,” she whispered, and drew her arrow back, fletching to cheek. She straightened her fingers.

The moment the arrow flew from her fingers the soldier turned. For a second Reia saw herself reflected in the fiery lenses of the soldier's goggles. The liquid flames jetting out of his gun trailed behind him as he turned, tracing his movements. The air hung still, warm and heavy. And then everything was washed in white heat, so hot that she couldn't feel anything anymore. There was only the flames. She opened her mouth to scream (to scream, that's what she should do), but there were no sounds, just heat and ash. She couldn't see the soldier, the faceless soldier with his goggles and the red eagle of Mordania on his sleeves. Just the fire...

“Reia?”

She jerked her eyes open. She wasn't aware that they'd been closed. She was on her back, staring up at the starless sky. But where were the trees? Where were the signs of the battle that had just been fought? “Is anyone there?” she called out. “Anyone?”

She heard the whisper-quiet sound of fabric over grass, even though she couldn't feel any grass under her. From the still darkness behind her emerged a tall, slender elf. It was dressed in long grey robes, but its face was devoid of any features. “No.” She crawled backwards away from the god, but her limbs were stone and they wouldn't move. “No!” she yelled. Her heart hammered against her chest, but for how much longer? The god's eyeless face turned to her, but it kept walking, on through the darkened place and on and on until it was part of the black horizon.

“Reia?”

She opened her eyes. She was on the ground in a darkened shelter, a blanket wrapped around her. Smoke-stained timbers over hear head. Not trees and not blackened sky. Elves stood around her, including the village elder. “You are awake,” the elder said. In the half-light Reia could see that he looked drawn and weak.

Reia pushed herself onto her elbows. “What – aaaah.” The rest of her thought ended as pain lanced through her body. She collapsed back onto the pad beneath her.

“Don't move,” Loram the healer said. “You've been burned.”

Reia flung back the blanket, ignoring the protests of the others. What she saw made her hiss in pain, or shock. Her right side, leg and torso both, were wrapped in cloth bandage. Now she could smell it too, the heady stink of poultice, blood and char. The smell of her failure. “What happened?” she asked. “The battle...”

“Two days have passed,” the elder said. “All is at an end.”

She groaned. The memory of the nameless one was fresh in her mind, and she half-expected it to slip into the shelter, bending its tall frame under the entrance and watching everything without comment, waiting and waiting...

“What happened?” she asked again.

It took a moment for the elder to respond. “The warriors could not keep the men from entering our village. In the end we managed to kill them all. We, and one very angry wurm disturbed by the sounds of guns.”

“Casualties?”

“Many.” The elder inclined his head.

“The faceless one lingered here for a long time,” Loram said. “Over forty elves we have lost, and more than just the warriors.”

“The rebuilding will take some time. Crops to be replanted, shelters repaired. Dead to be buried. I fear that we may not be safe here any longer. We may have to move deeper into the forest. Our brethren settlements throughout the land may not be safe either.”

Reia licked her dry lips. “Where is Rahnn?”

A flurry of glances passed amongst the other elves. The elder bent down and touched her hand gently. “Reia. He is not with us any longer. He-”

Reia pulled her hand back from the elder's dry touch. “Don't tell me that he died valiantly. Don't tell me he died. Don't tell me!” Not Rahnn, not Rahnn. Never him. He'd never lost a battle. Mordanian men died before him. He could not have been killed by one of them. He was going to be the chief one day.

The faceless god turned to her and moved on through the darkness. Not my time, but someone else's...

“Get out,” she managed to say. “Get out. All of you.” She told herself that she would not cry, because there was nothing to cry over, because Rahnn wasn't dead. He wasn't he wasn't he wasn't.

The humans would die for this.

She bit her lip and shut her eyes.