the begginings of my first book, well, third i've started simply called Ban for now.
Ban runs through the forest, his legs ache from exhaustion and his lungs fill like to burst. But he can’t stop, not yet. The men are still chasing him and the hounds follow the trail of his scent that he leaves behind. The trees pass by him in a green and brown blur as he weaves his way through them, keeping a sharp look out for obstacles in the path before him. Roots to trip him or low branches to knock him over driving the wind out of him.
He stops next to a tall pine and bends over to catch his breath, only a few seconds, they won’t catch him in a few seconds, he hopes. Ban takes deep breaths calming his heart and slowing the blood pounding through his veins. The muscles in his legs feel leaden from his headlong rush through the trees. He looks up the pine he has stopped at following the rough brown bark and thin branches to the top of the tree and to the sky. The gray green branches seem to be reaching up towards the dark clouds that loom overhead. “Rain,” he whispers towards the clouds. “Please rain, cover my scent from those cursed hounds.”
From the direction of the village he had needed to run from, Ban hears a snapping of branches and the howls and barking of hounds. Shaking a fist at the stubborn storm overhead he runs. The ground is hard and uneven where he runs, a pair of wheel ruts run down the middle where the farmers in the outlying farmsteads run their wagons to market every year. Not only does he have to watch for rocks covered in moss but the deep marks where the wagons have passed for countless years threaten to trip him as well.
He would leave the road that’s little more then a wide track through the dense wood, but the surrounding trees are to thickly tangled with underbrush for him to escape it. He’d been searching for a hole since the King’s Guard had first started chasing him. It just wasn’t fair that he is hunted so, other men had done far worse things and were not hunted as strongly as himself. He had been traveling with some and they had never seen so many Guards chasing them till Ban had joined them, lying about his name and lineage. Now they were dead, all of them, killed for keeping my company. Ban was of an ancient house, once great and revered by all for the deeds of his Ancestors, but now they were hated and feared for the crime of being of the Old Lands, a land once so great but fallen through treachery and foulest dark magick's.
Ban had been borne to the last surviving son of the Lord Valorn, one time ruling family of the great island Kingdom of Atlantis, one of the first to land in that hallowed country and the last to leave it as it was ripped apart by Wild Magick. Few of those that escaped their home survived the trip to this land, Britannia, the Valorn’s the last of all to reach its green shores, with strange magick’s and even stranger in habitants. But with nowhere else to go and no way to get there so the survivors did what they had to too live. They had brought with them great wisdom, and knowledge, and shared it with the tribes they found living there already. The Tribes and Clans rose them up on high and learned much, the Valorn’s tried to bring all the Tribes together in peace to further the land and try and rebuild what was lost, but it proved impossible, the ancient hatred that clans had for each other was to difficult for even the greatest of the Wise to over come, and they were lost.
Now all those born to the Valorn family were outlawed by birth and are constantly hunted. The other families great and small joined each to a Clan that befit them and out of the chaos that followed, the bloody wars fought with the knowledge the Families brought to them arose the King. He did through force of arms what the Valorn could not through wisdom, joined the Clans into one uneasy kingdom, but at peace. It is his Guard that chases those that would appose him, the ones that others within the tribes would rather see as the King. Or so he fears. In truth the tribes would rather see those of their own Clan and blood on the thrown, so each had a want to claim it but none have the strength alone. The King need not fear this because each will not join to the others to de-thrown him, so his men chase the only one of the Ancient lands families that could appose him, the Valorn’s.
So now Ban finds himself running, again, from the King’s Justice, as they call it. His father was killed long before, his brother died shortly after trying to avenge him, and his sister had been rapped and murdered by some savage group of the Guard. He had found her after ward, lying in some dark alley, broken and bleeding, dying but alive. Her Hair was crushed beneath her, its auburn curls soaked with blood. More blood leaked from the corner of her luxuriant lips. The curves of her once pale face broken by the welts and bruises from the guards fists. Her lips parted in a crooked smile as she saw him. “Ban, I…glad I could see you again…before…” She coughed up blood and her deep emerald eyes gazed sorrowfully at his dark blue. “..you must run now…brother, go.” Her body was racked with deeper coughing and then she laid still her life’s breath escaping in a last pained release. Ban had taken her soft broken body into his arms and kissed her lightly on the brow, tears falling un-noticed down his face. He lifted her up in his arms and began to walk to the wild forest. There he found a clearing he thought she would have liked and buried her, buried her deep in an unmarked grave.
Ban feels dampness on his face and thinks that it is unshed tears for the sister he had loved but when he feels another wet drop on his face and sees more landing around him turning the path into mud he almost cries out in joy. The rain was coming. Sure it would make it easier for the men to track his steps but it would confuse his scent and the dogs would grow confused unable to track him. At the same moment he sees an opening in the hedge on the side of the path and darts into it.
Into the darkness of the forest, the sound of the rain on the leaves and needles around him comforts him as he hears the hounds start to howl and bay in frustration as the rain-washes away his scent. A smile spreads over his lips as he gains his bearings in the dark forest and heads north, towards a clearing he knows, feeling a sudden urge to visit his sisters final resting place, the secret grave he had placed her in.
The darkened gloom of the forest comforts Ban as he takes hold of his long sword to keep it from tangling in the brush or tripping him up and starts to run in a smooth canter, the rain water falling from the densely packed branches chills him as he jogs. There is no more need to really run, but they would see where he had run from the path and follow him into the trees so caution was still paramount. He sticks mostly to the harder ground not yet touched by the dampness of the rain so his feet would leave no marks for them to follow. He avoided the branches and brush as much as possible, the hounds may not be able to follow his scent in the rain but the men still had eyes to see with.
The darkness of the clouds and branches above him are his best friends as the darkened greenish black gloom would help to hide any marks he does leave behind. Ban smiles like a fool and would cry out in joy of freedom so close, but he stops himself from yelling out, because he still had a long ways before he would really be safe from this group.
Suddenly he leaves the shelter the forest bursting through a gap in the brush and into the full force of the storm. The rain lashes down from the sky in great sheets, the wind blowing it into his face and whipping out his cloak, exposing the leather sheath for the Long Sword his father had given him just before his death, and his father before him and his before him as far back as Ban’s family could remember, back to the days of the Landing. Some magick of the elves is said to have been worked into the metal of the blade as it was forged, but what powers it held none knew. The secrets of its quickening long forgotten, now it is an heirloom of his family and if he lived long enough he would pass it to his son after him. His lithe legs flex as he sets his muscles to hold him against the fury of the wind.
A bright bolt of lighting shoots out of the sky in an ark and strikes a stone in the middle of the clearing; the force of the blow from the Heavens knocks Ban off his feet and dazzles his vision blinding him for a few moments. The booming sound of the breaking air deafens him to all else. He sits in the moist grass and dead needles that carpet the floor of the forest and blinks his eyes to clear his vision. Slowly his sight returns to him and the ringing in his ears lessens. Once his vision clears again he looks into the center of the clearing and sees the rock the lightning had struck, glowing a deep red from the awesome energy and heat it had produced. Standing atop the rock was a maiden in flowing white robes, to his surprise Ban sees that her feet are bare upon the rock yet are un-burned, her robe flowing gently in the savage wind does not even smolder as it comes in contact with the heated stone.
Wonder fills him as he gazes upon her beauty standing atop the stone rain hissing as it hits the ground around her. His eyes move up along the curves of her body made strikingly apparent by the rain and wind whipping around her. Her lithe legs lead to well defined hips and a smooth naval exposed to the wet air. His eyes rush past the mounds of her breasts barley noting the fact that her nipples are hardened in the coldness of the rain dripping down her pale skin. Her neck is smooth and curved slightly to the side, as she looks at him her sensuous lips curved in an amused smile. Her face is as smoothly curved as the rest of her in an ovulated shape Her light brown hair whips about her face in the wind in long curls. Her oval shaped eyes shine with a slight green fire as they meet his own. Quickly Ban glances to the side of her head and sees the point of a leaf-shaped ear sticking out slightly from the hair flying about her.
An Elf, she’s an Elf, the First Born, one of the forces his ancestors had been running from when they first set sail for a land not yet known to them, except by his ancestor, Raven Valorn he had seen it in a dream before they set sail and knew that the Gods would lead them to the land where they would be able to live in peace. Fear grips him as he looks up at the Elven maid, her people were supposed to have left this plane a long time ago, hundreds of years ago when they saw they were losing to the humans who reproduced at greater rates then the elves. Human children grew to maturity in a mere 12-13 years, it takes an elf a hundred to reach maturity and ready to wed. They could no longer bear the death of their children and the destruction of the forests they loved so they left unable to fight the greater numbers the humans could conjure up. Ban looks up to the beautiful face of the Elf and grips the hilt of his sword if any others should appear to attack him. Her smile but broadens and another bolt of lightning strikes from the sky right next to his foot. The blast and sound is not as strong this time and Ban manages to keep his feet. Once he can hear again her voice seems to drift to him carried by the rain falling around them. “I can command earth and sky, half blood, what makes you think that little sword would be of any threat to me?”
Ban looked up at her shocked by her knowledge of his lineage, he had hidden it well with the glamour spells his father had taught him, the secret of his true blood was one he kept well hidden from the others in the world. At one time when the world was still young the elves and humans had been great friends, the love between them held them together despite the vast differences between them and held them safe from the darker forces in the world. Allied the humans and elves grew to be mighty forces in the world holding back the orcs and trolls that lusted after the world as much as they hated the sun. Dragons bred to evil and other beasts were kept in check by the great families of the elves and humans. From this love between them came marriages of elf and human, from these couplings were born half bloods, born with both of the races, creating a third to rise in the world.
Then after a thousand years of friendship they fell upon each other. An elf from a noble house lusted after a fair maid of a human house and she him. Their parents forbade it fore they were already promised to another. The couple defied their parents and ran off together. When they were caught in each other’s arms the humans blamed the elf noble for seducing and kidnapping her, the elves blamed the girl. A war broke out between the two races and many were slaughtered, the great love between them turned into a hot burning hatred. Which was then turned on the offspring of their love, the half bloods. United only in this the two races hunted down the Half Elves and killed them, man woman or babe in arms, it did not matter, they were a reminder of the love once held between the races and deemed abominations.
This hatred is what caused the first of the blood to flee, Raven so called because of his black hair and eyes, as dark as a stormy night sky joined the scattered and frightened survivors of the first slaughter and led them across the ocean to a land where they could live and prosper away from prosecution. After hundreds of years of peace they were forced to leave the safe haven they had found and were tossed upon the winds once more. How this elf maiden knew of his decent and how she came to be here burned in his mind.
Still holding the hilt of his families sword in his hand Ban looks up to her mocking smile and pulls the blade free, its bright steel gleaming in the distant flashes of lightning on the horizon. “I am Ban of the House Valorn, this is the blade of my fore fathers and endowed with the power of the elves, why should I fear your power?”
Shock fills her eyes as the mocking grin leaves her face, the stone beneath her is no longer heated from the lightning strike she had called upon it, her eyes stare into his and he lets the glamour fall away from his feature and amazement is added to the shock. Her voice is a mere whisper as it floats across the clearing. “Yes, I see it now. You have the Raven’s look about you, your eyes are almost as dark as his were.” Her eyes drop to the swords gleaming blade and fear fills her face. “You truly could strike me down despite all the powers I hold with that blade, it was made for such a purpose, yet not against my blood but our own worst nightmares, the Dark Elves.” Her eyes return his and he seems to fall into their green depths, so like his own sweet sisters. His sword arm slowly descends down to his side. Her eyes move around his face but always come back to meet his eyes. After some time she blinks her eyes and Ban seems to snap out of some spell. “No, I see that you would not strike me without good cause, and I will not be giving it to you, I have come through the storm returning from the other planes to help you. To see if we might return to this world and live in peace once more.”
Ban looked at her in confusion, his father had taught him the elves had left to live in peace somewhere else, in another world beyond this one, if they had not found it there then why stay there for so long? He looks to her face once more and notices the pain and fear that is etched into the lines of her face. She had seen a great deal of pain and sorrow in her life, maybe as much or more then himself.
“Your father named you well, Ban.” Her voice intrudes on his thoughts and he blinks his dark eyes. “A good strong name, and a hero of your mixed race is he not? Was Ban not the name of the elf that helped your ancestors flee the persecution of the elves and humans alike? Your kind had no friends and no safe havens until Ban found them and helped them to cross the great waters to find their promised land. And I surmise they found it considering your existence here.”
Ban looks down at the sodden ground as he speaks. “Yes they found it, and long after your people had left this world they left it again, but only to seek out the other lands and grow more in their knowledge and wisdom. It proved to be our down fall, with the rest of the world we found the Darkness as strong as ever and through those dark magick’s and our own pride it was taken from us. A few barely escaped with their lives and now we are here again, with nowhere to run to if the persecution were to be renewed.” Ban whips around at a sound in the forest; he tilts his head and listens, trying to separate the sounds of the falling rain from others. A branch snaps in the woods and he suddenly remembers the men that had been hunting him. He turns to the elf and starts to run. He grabs her hand as he goes by and drags her into the darkness of the forest beyond the clearing mere moments before ten men in chain mail with swords bared charge into the clearing. One of them shouts at the sight of her dress flapping behind her and they give chase, blundering through the bushes and branches that Ban easily avoids.
Ban still holds the long sword in his hand and considers re-sheathing it, but thinks better of it when he hears the men charging through the forest. The maid’s hand is warm in his other hand as she runs after him, her dress catching on thorns and bare branches, before they have gone far it is ripped and torn in a hundred places. Ban wants to stop to help her tie it up, the dragging was slowing them down and leaving a clearer path for the pursuit to follow. Seeing the danger in the situation and the fear in his face the girl does her best to fetch up the dress in her free hand around her knees, loose enough that she can still run but no longer catching on any stray branch in there path.
After what seemed like hours of running Ban starts to notice landmarks and other places he remembers, at the sight of a tall, bitterly twisted pine he suddenly turns to the right, pulling the maid along with him. She follows without even trying to question him and they duck into the entrance of a cave, its gray walls surrounding them and protecting them from the lightening rain. Ban lets go of her hand and she falls against one wall breathing deeply. Ban leans up against the wall opposite taking deep even breaths to calm his rushing blood. He watches the mouth of the cave, listening for any sound of pursuit, they were sure to find them here; he hadn’t had time to even attempt to cover their tracks. It looked like they had sent the hounds back though, that was a blessing. A few minutes later when they hadn’t appeared yet and he could not hear any sign of them he contemplated going back to confuse the tracks when the elf’s voice intruded on his thoughts. “Who were those men and why did you run from them?”
Ban looked over to her, she was standing erect now and she wasn’t really all that tall, the top of her rain-drenched hair would barely reach his shoulder. Rainwater ran down her face in little streams, ruining some of the perfection of her face, but she looked all the more beautiful to him. “Those were soldiers of the Kings Guard, his standing army, I’m sorry milady but you seem to have fallen in with a wanted man. A man with a death sentence on his head.” She looked shocked at the brisk way that he answered her and doubt began to creep into her features. “My crime is that of being born into the wrong family at the wrong time. The king has no love for the line that had once almost joined the realm in a peaceful kingdom with no man above another. His soldiers have hunted my family through three generations and now I am the last of our once noble house.” He looked down at her sorrow draining the energy from him. “When I die my family will disappear into the dust of time. Our very names stricken from all records and our history forbidden to be taught to the following generations. It will be as if we had never existed.”
The doubt was replaced by pity and she reaches out to him with one slender pale hand. “I’m so sorry Ban, the things that Man do are sometimes unforgivable, but I have come in hopes that my people may be able to return and bring some peace and beauty back to the world.” She rests her hand atop the hand holding his sword. “With our help we may be able to end the persecution of your family, you can help to bring peace to the world and have children of your own to carry on your proud name.”
Ban rips his hand away in pained fury. “AFTER WHAT YOUR PEOPLE DID TO US. DROVE US FROM OUR HOMES, MOTHERS AND FATHERS WERE KILLED FOR LOVING EACH OTHER, THEIR CHILDREN TORN FROM THE BREAST AND SLAUGHTERED. YES I KNOW VERY WELL WHAT KIND OF PEACE YOUR PEOPLE WILL BRING TO US.” She fell back pain blossoming in her face. “Tell me, why should I help you bring back a people that hunted mine down like animals, just like the king?”
She looked like he had slapped her in the face, and then her anger flared up and her eyes glowed with it. “Are you so small minded as to blame me and my people for the crimes of our ancestors? Do you think the half bloods the only ones to suffer? To be hated and hunted? We watched the humans as they grew and grew, breeding more and more of them everyday it seemed. We would blink and there would be a hundred more squealing children. They chopped down the woods we loved, burned and tilled the land we had given them; they came with sword and axe to take more land from us when their own grew too overcrowded by their brats. We fled in fear of them because we were to few to fight them. Our numbers were already diminished from the other wars fought, so we fled to a world where we thought we’d be safe.”
She turns to the wall with tears on her face. “But we weren’t, when we got there we found the Dark Elves waiting for us. Our own people turned to darkness and evil enslaved our shaken people and put us to work as miners and whores and any other vile thing they could think of. They sacrificed our children to their dark gods and used them for dark spells to empower themselves.” Ban began to feel sorry for the young woman and places a hand on her shoulder. “After hundreds of years of being enslaved they finally grew lax in their vigilance. And I was sent to see if maybe there is a place here that we can return to, to live free of the Dark Elves savagery.” Her shoulders begin to shake with the tears falling like rain from her face. “And now I’m here, with you, the only one that might possibly be able to help me make a place for us and you scorn me for things I wasn’t alive to do.”
Ban places his other hand on her other shoulder and, keeping one ear open to sounds beyond the cave, he tries to turn her around. “Please don’t cry I’m exhausted these men have been chasing me all day. Please.” With a sob she turns to him and buries her face in his chest her tears soaking into his already soaked jerkin. He hears a snapping branch and the call of a male voice. “Damn, I should have gone back to cover our trail.” He looks down to her damp face. “We should get moving again.”
She looks around the cave and back up to his face confused. “Where to? If we go back out there they will just see us and give chase again. Why not face them here and make and end to it?”
Ban smiles slyly and leads her towards the back of the cave. “I know this cave, I’ve come through here many times and there’s a cleft in the back that is invisible to the eye unless you know where it is. We can disappear down it before they reach here and they’ll never be the wiser.” His smile widens as he finds the rough edge marking the entrance to the cleft. It turns in on its self a few feet in disguising it nicely from a casual inspection. When the men see the cave empty and no way out but the way in they will think they had run farther into the woods and give chase without searching the cave. “I hope you can see in the dark milady, cause I don’t have a torch and wouldn’t use one if I did.” After saying that he pulls her into the darkness of the cleft that passes through the mountain into a hidden valley with a clearing, one that is very dear to him.
. . .
As they pass into the cleft and disappear into its darkness a tall man in a full suit of armor walks cautiously into the cave with sword drawn expecting an attack. Once his eyes adjust to the darkness and he is not attacked he looks around the small cave and quietly curses. The rest of his men walk in behind him and they curse as well when the emptiness meets their eyes. “Gods be damned where did they go off to?” His lieutenant mutters loudly behind him.
He turns to face his men sheathing his bastard sword. “Esmond, you didn’t lose their tracks did you? They led to this cave I could see that my self, but they did not leave again, did they!?” He demanded of the tracker.
Esmond cowers before his commander’s wrath. “No milord, I saw no tracks leaving this cave, they should be here.” The man has a small weasely voice to go with his looks and he doesn’t like the man one bit. A new recruit sent on this hunt because of his esteem as a tracker, he liked to boast that he had never lost a trail once found.
“Then where are they?” The commander demanded becoming angry. “They couldn’t have climbed the mountain in that rain, they didn’t leave or so you claim and as you can see there is no other way out of this thrice cursed cave. Where. Are. They?” The little man cowers farther down his shoulders hunched up as if expecting a blow.
“Maybe they did just that milord.” One of his men spoke up in a weak voice.
He turns to the man, staring him down. “Did just what?”
“Climbed the mountain. Or maybe the other that seemed to appear with him spirited them away with some kind of dark spell?” The commander stared the man down into the ground, the fury burning in his eyes. Almost he pulls his sword to end the man’s miserable life.
He takes a deep breath to calm himself “Do you take me for a fool? I know they could not have climbed that mountain in this storm, and there is no magic, never was, just tricks played on the minds of simpletons like yourself.” He turns back to the empty cave his rage building even higher. Suddenly he turns back to his men and yells at them. “Out. Now. You will find their tracks and we will chase them down, I will bring the head of the last Valorn to the King.” They scatter out of the cave and start searching the forest floor for any trace of the damned rebel. He looks at the empty gray walls and curses again slamming a gauntleted fist against the cave wall. Cursing the darkness once more he strides back into the wind swept forest.
is that to much at once?
