The Autumn War.
Chapter One: Planting Roots
Ocade placed his foot upon the human’s shoulder and shoved. The man, or rather the empty shell that remained of him, slid off the half-breed’s featherwood blade and tumbled down the embankment. It slid into the gurgling waters of the brook known as the Fondled Romance, a cloud of crimson swirling downstream as the currents slowly dragged the corpse onward.
The human had been one of four who had the misfortune of being present when the elves of the Copper Autumn had arrived at their destination, driving a wagon full of wood and supplies through a freshly carved path in the forest. They had been alert, even fearful, as they passed through the woods. Not alert enough. Khannesh and Vadonea had put nearly half a dozen arrows into the staff wielding guard before he even knew they were there. One man tried to take refuge under the wagon, only to find himself set upon by Flintess and Feana, who swiftly battered him into submission. The other two, clearly not knowing who was attacking them, fled into the forest instead of hurrying their animals onward. One had barely made it beyond the wagon before Fre sprung from hiding. The hunter had seemed to experiment with seeing exactly how many arrows he could put into the man before he died.
The last human, to his credit, actually made it as far as the brook before Ocade had run him down and then run him through. Ocade watched the corpse go, bobbing up and down in the water like a discolored log.
“What’s the matter? Never seen one before?” Fre asked him from near by, crouched by the waters edge to wash the blood from the tips of his arrows. He was smiling a small and happy smile, staring not at Ocade but at his own distorted reflection in the water.
“I have seen humans before, but not the ones ve are to be making var upon,” Ocade answered, turning “They are more pale that I vould have thought. They remind me of northern elves like you.”
“Go talk to Vadonea. The two of you seem to share very similar thoughts,” Fre said, the smile wavering as he scrubbed the blood away with his finger tips. Ocade merely grunted and walked away, scarlet still dripping from the tip of his blade. No point in cleaning it when he’d just been dirtying it again in a moment.
Over by the human’s wagon, Avetho stared across the Forest of Skirts and shivered, pulling the rope-reed shawl she wore tighter across her shoulders. Her great cats had abandoned her for the moment, drifting off to sniff and explore the new environment. Flintess wondered if they remembered this place. They were supposed to have come from here, after all.
She was supposed to be standing guard over the prisoner with Feana, but the human had seemed little inclined to insurrection after she had cut off his hand, so she moved off to step up behind the druid. “Cold? It’s warmer here than down south. Not as wet either! That’ll be nice, not getting rained on so much I mean. Do you think it snows here at all? I’ve always wanted to see snow up close.”
“It’s... dead,” the druid answered her softly. Avetho’s golden eyes were distant and Flintess hovered at her side, peering intently in the same direction to try and see what she was looking at. For all she stared, the only things she saw were the trees, Ocade, the brook, and then more trees.
“What is?” Flintess asked at last.
“The forest.”
“Really? It looks pretty alive to me,” Flintess said, leaning down and running her hand through the soft wet grass that grew like a carpet lawn on the forest floor. It was green. That tickled her. She didn’t know it came in that color. All the grasses back south had been black, thick clumps of long stalks growing where the moss did not.
Avetho shook her head, at least pulling her gaze away from the distance to look down at the elf maid. “No. It’s only skin deep. The Force isn’t here. There is no presence. No energy. These trees are like corpses. Just empty shells. Corpses, like the humans we killed.”
“Oh...” Flintess said, chewing her bottom lip as she considered that, and then adding. “Does that mean we’re gonna eat the trees?”
Avetho gave her a puzzled look, then the corners of her mouth began to turn up. She started to give an answer when the half-breed passed them by, his dark gaze intent upon the human-creature huddled and terrified in the shadow of the wagon. His intent was clear, even to Flintess. Avetho turned and raised her hand. “Wait, Ocade.”
“Vhy?” Ocade turned back, giving the druid a befuddled glare. “Ve here to kill humans. This thing human. Ve kill it. Vhat else ve supposed to do vith?”
“Eat him alive?” Flintess volunteered, causing the man to flinch and try to bury himself further under the wagon. Without mercy, Feana grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him back out, fixing him with her spear so that he would not try again. Flintess giggled.
“No,” Avetho admonished sternly, taking the suggestion as a serious one rather than half-serious as Flintess had meant it. “I told you all, we’ll not eat the flesh of men or any other race while we’re here.”
“You take all the fun out of a war, you know that Avetho?” came the voice of Fre as the hunter returned from the river, a dripping clutch of smooth white arrows between his fingers. “What are we supposed to do with the bodies when their souls are gone, hm? Just leave them in the field to rot? It’s disrespectful.”
“I’d prefer we put them somewhere more discreet, but if we have to let them rot then we do,” Avetho said, looking at those gathered. Khannesh and Vadonea were out scouting the area, making certain there were no other humans lurking in the woods. “The younger races do not comprehend the reason for the act and we can little afford to make war with everyone. We’ve made enough enemies already...”
No one spoke for a moment, feeling again the shadow of the wolf who had hunted them since leaving Dafoequa. The past months of travel had been difficult, though none so much as the first two weeks. Hounded by open pursuit the first week, then restless in wondering the second, they had marched for days without stopping to take rest. The Bud of Death had seemed to give up the chase by the time the elves of the Copper Autumn met up with the Frostling caravan. They had joined the goblin-kin hunters for a time, as they followed the migrating herds of elk and caribou northward with the changing seasons. It had been an unusual and fragile alliance, but one that served both groups well. Avetho and Fre had been the only ones to socialize in any fashion with the frostlings and it was during her talks with them that she seemed to pick up the idea not to eat the meat of other races.
At last, Ocade broke the silence with a grunt of disgust and walked off to find some shade to sit in. The half-breed did not either sentiment, but nor did he press the issue.
“Alright, so what do we do with him?” Fre asked, pulling their attention back to the more immediate issue of the human on the ground near by, pinned and struggling under Fenea’s spear point.
Avetho looked the human’s way a moment, then turned back to Fre. She drifted to him, her hands reaching down for his belt.
“A little public for intimacy, don’t you think?” he asked quietly, grinning. “Or are we going to win the human over with a demonstration on elven love making?”
Mirthless, Avetho yanked the wooden dagger from his belt sheath and turned away, ignoring the disappointed click of the tongue that followed her. All eyes were upon her as moved, though none with more focus and terror than the human. He seemed to realize what was about to happen before the other elves did and redoubled his struggles to escape. At a look from Fenea, Flintess ran over quickly and stomped a boot down on the man’s still-intact hand, pinning it to the ground. He was babbling desperately in the human’s clumsy language and even, to Flintess’ surprise, threw out a few words of elvish.
None of which stopped Avetho as she knelt by his side and, with the gentleness of a mother to a new born babe, eased the edge of the knife across his throat. Fenea winced and turned her face away, but held her grasp tight as the man tried to flail one last time. Flintess though found herself watching, fascinated, as the blood bubbled up and the light began to fade from his eyes. Part of her was still just shocked and enchanted by the fact that human’s bled red, just like she did.
“Blood for what hungers,” Avetho said softly, setting aside the knife and curling her fingers into the stained earth.
“Well, that will keep him from escaping,” Fre said, watching the ritual from a distance in uncertainty. The act had even roused Ocade to look up from where he sat, the eyes gleaming out from under his hood displaying little of the thoughts that took place behind them.
Avetho rose clutching handfuls of bloody earth. Flintess looked up in awe. For the first time since leaving Dafoequa, Avetho was radiant with the power of druidic magic. Even her untrained senses could feel the life-force wafting from the druid and even if they could not, the faint light that glimmered around Avetho gave it away. “The Force is dead here. The human’s have spared the forest, while yet somehow destroying it’s soul. We will regrow it. We will plant the souls of these destroyers like seeds into the ground and water them with their own blood, until the Force again will flourish in the Forest of Skirts.”
“And the dead meat that remains when blood and soul are gone?” Fre asked, his gaze as fascinated as Flintess’ as he stared at the druid in her glory. Though, Flintess could not help but notice that it was a different sort of fascination.
Avetho looked at him and did not smile. “You need more arrows, don’t you?”
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From the Journal of Vadonea Noquemesthe
1st of Granite, 291
I suppose you could say that the war is off to a good start, at least if you’re only counting corpses.
Our arrival happened to coincide with a lumber harvest and we stumbled over one of the wagons, dispatching laborers and guards. While everyone else was cleaning up, Khannesh and I went further to field. We found the rest of the foresters more than ten miles away, carrying out a gristly slaughter, scything down trees with their butchers blades. They were piling the corpses onto wagons and even desecrating the roots by putting them to torch. Tempting as sniping at them from the woods as, the axe-wielding workers alone out numbered us by a terrifying amount and they had dozens of guards among them as well. We’d have run out of arrows before we ran out of targets, so instead we were forced to skulk about like stinking kobolds and spied from the shadows. We came close enough to them that I could make out the pox marks on one humans hairy face and smell the boozy stink of their labored breathing.
In the end, we didn’t learn much for it. Only that half the humans committing this atrocity were from Amiyaayiti (hearing that name emerge from their mouths was like having them spit poison at me) and the rest seemed to come from a city near by, though we never learned it’s name. The city guards were certainly better equipped. They swaggered about in plate and mail as if invincible. I’d have liked to put an arrow through the eye of one of their helmets just to prove them wrong.
Khannesh and I spoke little on the way back, beyond sharing expressions of surprise that the humans had left the forest untouched for so long. There was only half a mile of dead and ruined landscape – every inch of it was terrible to behold, but the forest was still mostly intact. There must be some recent troubles that are driving them to harvest the lumber only now, when their usual practice from centuries of observation has been to consume the forests like termites and leave nothing behind. Khannesh suspects a regime change, I’m hoping urgently that it is war.
By the time we returned, the last human had been dispatched and Avetho had begun to grow a shelter for us, though it’s little more than a sapling now. It was my suggestion that she do so and it took some time to convince everyone but Ocade that it was necessary. I hate the thought of hiding our faces from the sky, but it’s too dangerous to sleep out in the open. The landscape is flat and the forest cold and uninviting. Flintess and Feana don’t seem to notice, nor does Ocade, but I can see the looks of disquiet in everyone else’s eyes. This was not what we hoped to find.
We all want to talk about it, but everyone was too tired too tired from the journey to talk about it tonight. I’d be bedding down myself if Fre would ever shut up. He’s supposed to be on guard duty with Feana, but I can hear him flirting with her no matter where I go. If he tries anything with that poor little creature, I swear I’ll be making arrows from his bones.
2rd of Granite, 291
I spent most of my day helping Flintess (druid’s crazy wisdom, of all the people to put in charge of such a task, you pick the girl who cannot match a mayfly in attention spans?) take stock of the supplies the humans had on their wagon, getting them in order before we pull the monstrosity apart. A few barrels of alcohol, seed bags for assorted crops, and over two hundred freshly killed feather trees. My hands are still coated in sap. At least Avetho says there is still life enough to them to merge them into the shelter and help it grow fast. Not fast enough for me though, this place already looks like a graveyard.
We saw a herd of pegasus taking wing in the distance earlier today, but they did not respond to our calls. Avetho says it is because the Force is as dead in the animals as it is the plants around us. Fre seems to feel that means they are fair game to hunt and butcher for their bones and hides. Idiot. What beasts will dwell in the forests when we reclaim them if we’ve slaughtered them all to make arrows and hats?
3rd of Slate, 291
It's finished! Admittedly, it's more of a stump than a tree, but it'll serve. Avetho did a fine job, even shaping the walls into shallow bowls for us to rest in. Khannesh and I risked going close to the human work camps to gather up pine needles for the beds. We didn't get close enough to see the human's this time, which is probably for the best. It seems a silly thing to say, but I'm growing restless. It's been two hundred years since Amiyaayiti fell, almost one hundred since Nelo started talking war. Even if we've barely been here a month, my patience is growing thin.
Khannesh is keeping me in line though, blast him. Every time I feel like staking out to that camp and putting an arrow to one of those creatures, he's there with a word or a mangled song. I should hate him for manipulating me so easy, but I can't. He's the only one around here I seem to be able to talk to anymore. Maybe it is because he's older than the rest. Why did we have to send children and outcastes and idiots to start a war?
And speaking of the latter, Fre is at it again...
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3rd of Slate, 291
“We need them.”
“Like we need a visit from a dragon!”
Fre sighed and shook his head, pulling the hat from it to run his hand through his hair. Since their arrival a month ago, he’d been forbidden to hunt. Perhaps with good reason, as the only creatures they’d seen were unicorns and pegasus, sacred incarnations of the Force and perhaps the only sign that it might exist in some form “This isn’t a retreat, Vadonea. Avetho was strained enough as it is just getting that shelter of yours put up. She can’t bend nature to make the plants grow whenever we want. I can.”
“By churning up the earth and jamming seeds into it, yes,” the elf matron said, her tone as accusing as if he were talking of murdering someone.
Fre shrugged. “Would you rather starve?”
“I have to side with Vadonea here Fre,” Khannesh interjected, the leather-clad glade runner standing, as he always seemed to be lately, at Vadonea’s side.
Fre felt a slight pang of jealousy, though he buried it deep. Not so much that he had designs on the matron huntress, but for one hundred years of trying to win her good graces and failing, Khannesh had done it in less than one. If Fre were a more naive man, he’d call it unfair, particularly given what Khannesh had done in Dafoequa.
“This is supposed to be a war camp, not a community,” the glade runner went on evenly and gestured with the neck of his mandolin to Vadonea. “She and I have been to war with humans in the past, as in fighting them on their own lands. We know how easily their farms and live stock can be decimated. Too much reliance on field-grown crops might leave us weakened if someone were to destroy the crops.”
“And so we’re supposed to just harvest food off the forest floor?” Fre asked, feeling a tick of annoyance but letting it pass through him. “What happens when we’ve plucked all the plants near by? How much further out do we want to send Vadonea and Avetho? How much danger do we want to expose them to?"
“Danger from what, Fre?” Vadonea snorted. “No one knows we’re here and we haven’t seen a single predatory creature since arriving. What is going to attack us? A herd of unicorns?”
“Assassins, maybe?” Fre said and, despite himself, looked straight at Khannesh as he spoke. He saw, feeling a touch of bitter satisfaction, the glade runners face fall. Yet, it was Vadonea who responded to the barb.
“Oh you little-“
“STOP!” Flintess squeaked suddenly, surprising them all into silence with the sheer volume of her outburst. Sitting on the ground at Feana’s side, the two had been playing a game of Skip Stones and listening in silence as the argument progressed, as they had done for nearly every argument since their party had fled the south. Suddenly though, the dark haired elf maid was rising up to her unimposing height and glaring them all. “All three of you, stop! It’s annoying and it’s boring and it’s stupid!”
“Tess...” Fre tried to sooth, but she had none of it.
“Quiet, I’m talking now! Look,” she paused a moment, turning up a face that was doubtless intended to be stern, yet was more pouting and angry. After giving them all a once over, she settled on Vadonea and Khannesh. “Fre is right, okay? It makes more sense to have some place where we can just grow all the food. We’re supposed to feed an army, eventually! We’re supposed to be an army! You’re great at finding plants Vadonea, but you can’t feed that many people just picking over bushes and like Fre said, Avetho can’t just grow the stuff.”
Vadonea, silenced as much by the source of the argument than the argument itself, shook her head to clear it and glared down at the younger elf. “Child, you will not take that tone wi-”
“I’m two hundred years old, Vadonea,” Flintess cut her off and planted her feet sternly, hands upon her hips. “I am not a child and you’re not right just because you’re older! You’re being stupid about this! We can protect the food,” she waved at herself and Feana, who, put on the spot suddenly, stood up in support of her friend. Flintess’ challenge went on. “And if you’re so worried about the forest, why keep ripping up the forest and hurting it when Fre can just make all the food come from one place anyway?”
“You have no idea what you are talking about,” Vadonea said, though it seemed to Fre her conviction was somewhat shaken on that fact. “
“Vadonea,” Khannesh interrupted. “Leave it.”
“But she-“
“Let it go, Vadonea,” Khannesh said softly, laying a gentle hand on her arm. His body eased closer, till he was all but whispering in her ear. “Let it go. I won’t say I agree with them, but they’re not entirely wrong and it’s not worth fighting over.”
“I’ll keep the plots small, if it’s any consolation,” Fre offered, but only got a withering glare from Vadonea in response. She turned on her heel and almost stomped away, seeking solace in the woods. Khannesh lingered.
“She’ll be upset for a few days, but I think she’ll get over it. I’d keep your distance if I were you though, Fre.”
“You really think she’d assault me?” Fre asked, throwing a worried look to Vadonea’s retreating back.
Khannesh stared, watching the direction of his eyes, and smiled thinly. “No, but I might. I don’t like to see her upset and you seem to bring out all the worst instincts in her. You just keep your distance and play in your dirt and we’ll all be happy.”
It would have been a shame to spoil such an exit line, so Fre held his tongue in check as Khannesh turned and ambled unhurriedly after Vadonea, thoughtfully strumming his mandolin. When they had left, Fre turned to Flintass and smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. “Well, I’m impressed. I’ve never seen anyone turn Vadonea out that way.”
“I’m not a kid and I’m not stupid, you know,” Flintess said, trying still to be gruff but melting under the warmth of his grin into a puddle of blushes and barely restrained giggles.
“No,” Fre said, respectful and honest as he leaned forward and bowed. “You most certainly are not.”
“I-I think you’re right too, Fre,” Feana added quietly, as if afraid of imposing her presence and yet afraid of being forgotten. Fre made certain to bow to her as well, making her blush in a pleased fashion behind the curtain of hair.
“Well, I’m glad at least that two people in this camp take me seriously. Now come, it’s too late to get started on the fields, why don’t we all play Skip Stones together?”
Flintess gave him a doubtful look. Older elves rarely played. "Do you even know how?"
"Mhm. Someone showed me once," Fre said and smiled, sad and gentle, at the little circle of rocks on the ground. "A long time ago."
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Druid’s crazy wisdom indeed. Somehow FLINTESS, of all people, wound up as the expedition leader. Still trying to wrap my head around that one, but she’s going to have to ‘grow’ into the role as things progress.
Couldn’t play much today or at all yesterday, thanks to other obligations, so not much as happened yet. I opted to make up for that by being extra wordy, apparently. Also, please forgive the pretentiousness of dubbing it 'Chapter One.'
Edit: Somehow a line got cut from the bottom when I copy/pasted from word. Fixed.
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Topic: The Autumn War (Community Forest): CHARACTERS WELCOME (Read 3304 times)