El-Vador's Travels

by J. R. Karlsson

  'He says they spotted us in the tree line and they ask us not to flee.' said Cusband. He took a step out from forest and spoke in a strange mixture of grunts that El-Vador was baffled to hear. Where had his father learned how to speak the Orcish tongue? Furthermore, why would he need to?

  'This Orcish dog claims that we are now the slaves of their Chief, an Orc called Sarvacts. He says that the Elven lands belong to the Orcs by right of conquest and that his Chief will be merciful if we come peacefully.'

  El-Vador was surprised to see his father giving genuine consideration to the words of an Orc, as if a green-skinned monster like that could be trusted to leave any of their people alive.

  That this thing had the audacity to declare El-Vador's entire race a conquered people boiled his blood, he stifled the urge to charge out of the woods and attack the entire force head-on.

  Cusband continued to translate. 'They say that they will set up forts in every settlement they find and require taxes and food from us in exchange for peace.' Cusband gritted his teeth. 'If any should oppose this they will torch the entire settlement.'

  El-Vador's grip tightened on the pommel of his sword, his father spotted it and stilled his hand.

  'Listen to me my son, we have no choice in this matter. If are to decide between slavery or death I would rather be a slave with hope than a dead man with none.'

  His words did not placate El-Vador, who bristled at the thought of being a captive to such monsters. He stared out at them from the line of trees and tried desperately to fight back his murderous urges.

  The Commander met El-Vador's expression through narrowed eyes, he clearly knew that look. He raised his hand as if about to give some order. El-Vador tensed, ready to hurl himself against the invaders should they open fire upon him. Instead he lowered his hand and spoke a single sentence, his eyes not leaving El-Vador's.

  'He asks if you plan to charge him.' Cusband murmured to his son, wondering the same thing and knowing he was powerless to prevent it.

  Reluctantly, El-Vador released the tension in his sword arm and let it rest at his side once more. Although he gave every outward impression that he was submitting to these beasts, he could never do so on the inside. That undying will to be free reflected outward from his eyes at the Orcish Commander who studied him with mild interest.

  The Orc spoke to Cusband again, in response the forester set his hand on El-Vador's shoulder, seemingly as much to hold him back as to support him.

  Cusband answered in Orcish, then spoke to El-Vador. 'He asked if you were my son. I said that it was so.'

  'Feel free to tell him that I will gut him before they can stick me full of arrows.' replied El-Vador, his gaze not wavering from the Commander. The words didn't need translated for the Orc to understand.

  'El-Vador, should you lay a single hand upon him he will torch our entire settlement when he finds it. You know as well as I where that path leads, he will find it.'

  Another stream of words meaningless to El-Vador came from the Orcish officer. 'That was a warning,' said Cusband. 'He claims that while he has been lenient with your attitude, Chief Sarvacts will not treat your arrogant display so mercifully.'

  The Orcish officer spoke once more. 'He says his people have come here to stay, and we had better get used to it,' said Cusband.

  Liar! El-Vador did not shout the word, but he wanted to. They would stay for a time perhaps, maybe even take comfort in their new surroundings and domination over the Elves. So long as there was still breath in him, he would find a way to free his people.

  Gurgash and Harg stood guard with a Goblin sentry outside the makeshift garrison that had been constructed by the first Elven settlement they had encountered on their travels. Night was beginning to fall and the Elves were retiring to their homes yet the Orcs were under strict orders to guard the garrison constantly. This made for cranky shifts and poor sleeping conditions but ultimately it was better than a slit throat should their foes feel empowered by the lack of supervision.

  'The Commander doesn't trust these Elves,' the archer said, he had a knack for speaking the obvious.

  Harg offered him a non-committal grunt in the hopes that he wouldn't continue speaking for the duration of their shift.

  'He has no reason to trust them.' Gurgash said, ignoring Harg's sigh. 'Did you not see the boy we encountered on the road? He was ready to charge and gut the lot of us.'

  'He wouldn't have got far.' said the Goblin. 'Still, I wouldn't like to see a whole settlement up in arms like that, wouldn't make for a pretty slaughter as they'd more than likely carve some of us up.'

  'We're lucky that the rest of the Elves aren't like that boy then.' Harg said, hoping to shut the conversation down. 'No point in worrying about what won't happen.'

  'Still, it wouldn't take too many with his attitude to make life very difficult for us.' Gurgash replied, refusing to let the topic go. He couldn't help but notice a distinct lack of Orcish champions around the base, they all knew that but for their counter attack they would have been killed in the previous battle.

  The Goblin archer pointed. The boy they had just been speaking of had appeared out of the woods with a large boar slung over his back.

  Gurgash stared at him, jaw dropping in astonishment. 'Did you see the size of that thing?'

  'We saw it cousin, try not to look so surprised.' replied Harg in a tired voice.

  Gurgash wasn't the only one amazed though, the Goblin sentry had fallen very quiet and had aimed a distrustful look at the boy.

  'Anyone who can take down a boar by himself is more than capable of besting one of us.' he said.

  'A Goblin perhaps.' said Harg dismissively. 'He'd struggle against more experienced and larger opposition I think.'

  'You mean you think you can take him?' asked the Goblin, clearly not believing a word of it.

  'It matters not who is stronger in battle.' answered Harg. 'It's all about what you do and what you know and perhaps a bit of luck to best your opponent. That child has not seen war, he might have passion and youth on his side but he wouldn't fare well against a drilled soldier.'

  Gurgash nodded, though he remained far from convinced.

  The Goblin was even less so. 'Killing boar every day for survival could toughen a boy much like battle. Even our best hunters don't chase after that kind of prey regularly.'

  'Well I hope he comes after us then.' said Harg. 'That way we can torch him and his settlement and be done with this damned sentry duty.'

  'No sentry duty?' Gurgash replied. 'That's something I'd be willing to kill for.'

  The Goblin shrugged. 'Perhaps it would be like that for a while, then before you know it we'd be moving even higher up the mountain and out to the next sodding settlement. Nah, better to stay here where the air is good and the people are conquered.'

  Gurgash still watched the boy as he walked back to the settlement. 'That boy doesn't look conquered to me, I'm thinking he'll try to off someone before we've been here a week.'

  They looked at one another then, even Harg. They were all thinking the same thing in the back of their minds. What if it was one of them that the boy went after?

  El-Vador sat silently as he watched the others cut up the carcass of the boar. His mother had died in her sleep shortly after he had left the settlement to search for his father. It had been a quiet funeral and they couldn't afford much ceremony. Now it was just the two of them alone together, one in a state of deteriorating grief and sickness and he in a state of pure vengeance.

  No matter how often his father urged him not to fight against the Orcs and to grow accustomed to their presence he refused. Though he did not raise a weapon against his occupiers he fought them in his own way, planning in his mind what he must do to be rid of them forever. What he must do to exact revenge for their enslavement of his now-docile people.

  He began learning Orcish. A long and painful process aided in part by his father, he needed to understand his enemy in order to overcome them. Everything he did now was obse
ssively bent to that end.

  'We have to do something.' he said to his father one day as the man lay in bed, as feverish as his mother had once been. 'If we don't, this occupation may become permanent.'

  'We?' asked Cusband. 'Boy, I am wasting away. I feel my strength being leached from this old wound. I urge caution first and will offer you my mind if nothing else. We must take time to mourn the loss of your mother and recover what we can of ourselves as life goes on. There will come an opportunity eventually, son. When exactly it shall present itself I do not know, it will come and you must be ready.'

  It was getting increasingly difficult to wait for that time to arrive. The days ground in as if attempting to irritate him, at those times he would venture out into the forest and take out his frustrations on whatever was living in there. So long as he brought back more game the Orcs did not care where he ventured.

  Cusband seemed to understand where he had gone, in spite of his illness he was still a proud man and felt he didn't need his son's help to recover. He knew that the boy needed to venture out into the world beyond that of Orcish control lest the same temperament he possessed snap and spell disaster for the entire settlement. When El-Vador returned, Cusband would query him about his hunting and correct him on specifics, offering insight about how to strike and when. He knew that it wasn't game that his son was thinking of hunting and prepared him accordingly.

  Time marched on a pace and El-Vador continued to hunt, his hatred for the Orcs unabated by its passage.

  Silent as the beasts he stalked, the young Elf slipped through the woods. When he came to the edge of a clearing he went rigid as a statue, his eyes scanning the area before he ventured out into the opening. He was like so much emptiness, at one with the forest and gliding through it without disturbing a branch.

  Something was speaking to him, but not in any way he had known before. It was as if it echoed through his head endlessly, drawing him onward in bedazzled fascination. He shook his head but it would not relent, the sensation was one that he could do without. Like most things in these woods he vowed to hunt it down and put an end to it.

  His father had urged him to go by this path for reasons unknown, it had been a strange conversation, though the man's illness was making him less lucid these days. A wariness stole over him, he knew every inhabitant of this forest but he had not been in this part of the woods before. Caution was a hunter's ally, he embraced it without letting it control him utterly.

  The silence that followed was not one of concentration that he was accustomed to. He was not mentally blocking out the external sounds in order to track a single prey, this was different. As if his senses and the surrounding forest noises had been smothered in pelts and rendered dead and useless to him. It seemed unnatural to him, that not a single creature would stir in this place that he had been sent to.

  El-Vador clucked his tongue experimentally. In the stillness it seemed oddly loud and out of place, as if carried by some unseen force.

  He readied an arrow before continuing down the trail, having a weapon there and ready to use filled him with reassurance.

  Without abandoning caution entirely, he continued at a slightly quicker pace. There was something unsettling about how much the surroundings seemed to have changed without doing so at all. The trees were much like any other yet somehow they felt different to him.

  He scratched his head, wondering why and how such a feeling had gripped him.

  The eerie silence ate away at him in a way that nothing else could, his mind was left naked with nothing but his grief to face. He had buried himself so deeply into hunting and his hatred of the Orcs that he had refused to come to terms with the loss of his mother. Now the suffocating stillness surrounding him brought the memories of her dead form to the surface. If the Orcs had not attacked when they did he would have been there for her final words. Now they were lost to him forever and his oppressors were to blame.

  He needed to see this out, to keep moving forward in the hope that the quiet would abate and his mind would have something else to preoccupy itself with.

  He pressed on ahead into this strange forest, passing the growing gloom of the trees and continuing to wonder why his father had sent him out here.

  To his right he spotted a large cave, they were not uncommon in his ventures but much like this part of the forest there was also something off about this particular formation. It called to him in ways he couldn't understand in an even stronger voice than the forest had prior to the start of his wanderings.

  The rays of sunlight that pierced through the rest of the woods fell short of the darkness of this cave, as if they were loathed to get too close to it for fear of their brief illumination being extinguished.

  He slowly made his way toward the entrance, the hair on the nape of his neck rising in fierce opposition to the counterpoint feeling of dizzy beckoning. As he drew closer he realised that this cave was not a natural formation but had been carved out of the surrounding land for some unknown purpose. Was it a shelter of some kind that guided travellers in these parts to safety? Why was his father so reticent to speak of this and what purpose would he have for sending him here?

  He waited for a time, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness before venturing any further. As soon as he set forth into the deeper parts of the darkness he was greeted with a low humming sound unlike any he had heard before.

  He did not know if it was a constant single tone from a musical instrument or the throat of some endless choir. All he knew was the fear and trepidation that had clashed so vigorously with this strange enticement had risen by a magnitude.

  The sloping walls of the cave guided him deeper into the darkness, in turn the goading feeling that demanded further exploration intensified to meet his previous concerns.

  In this darkness El-Vador would have considered the cave a natural formation had he not already seen the entrance. Any thoughts that it wasn't entirely constructed were dispelled when the roof vanished and he entered a well-lit courtyard.

  The illumination came from a strange marble shrine in the centre of the cave floor, it almost seemed to pulse with light as El-Vador surveyed it. The enticement seemed to double in strength as he set his eyes upon it.

  The shrine seemed both pristine and vague in its form, as if it was shifting in shape yet retaining an immaculate smoothness in doing so. The irrational fear that El-Vador had suffered before grew in equal measure to the coercive drawing of the cave. He distrusted a thing that could have such great influence over his feelings. Objects that held men in their sway were few and far between in this world and he had yet to hear a tale of one which spoke anything but ill.

  A booming laughter bounced off the cave walls, its source unknown.

  The sound sent him springing back. What manner of beast possessed such a tone and why did it dwell in the depths of this strange cave? As if to answer his question a large winged creature swept down from the darkness above and settled upon the shining altar, its eyes wandering over him in amused curiosity. El-Vador's own eyes went wide with dread. He had seen many creatures in the land but none such as this, it radiated danger and struck fear into him in a manner that dwarfed both the cave and altar.

  It had to be eight feet in height, its leathery wing span at least double that, and it was neither light nor spindly but seemed to possess a great muscled bulk. When it opened its mouth as if to speak, a black substance dripped from its fangs and settled with a hiss upon the surface of the altar.

  Its terrible eyes remained fixed on El-Vador. It worked a blackened tongue around its lips as if feeling out its mouth.

  El-Vador's body was paralysed, his brain screamed at him to raise his bow and take aim at this loathsome beast yet his arms would not comply.

  'Why have you come here, mortal?' A deep rumble sounded in his head. El-Vador stared at the beast, its mouth had not moved to utter the words, some form of sorcery had planted them in his head.

  Finding his voice now loosened, El-Vador stared the
beast straight in the eye. 'Die.'

  The laughter came again, this time entirely in his head. He watched helplessly as his body was drawn closer to the altar, his legs dragging over the stone floor as if yanked forward by some length of invisible rope.

  'I will not ask you again, why have you entered my domain and awoken me from my long slumber?'

  Feeling his throat unlock once more and realising that his stubbornness could cost him his life, El-Vador chose to answer the beast.

  'My father, Cusband sent me to this place for reasons known only to him.'

  The creature nodded at him, a strange motion on its body. 'I have sensed his life force waning, has he finally sent a sacrifice to appease his lord?'

  El-Vador had no idea what the creature was talking about, he was more concerned by the inference that his father had consorted with demons such as this.

  'I am no sacrifice.' he said, his voice sounding high and reedy in his ears. 'Should you think to make me one I will fight you until my last breath.'

  His defiance seemed to amuse the creature more than anything else, he felt the constriction around his muscles lessening in response to the mirth.

  'If you are willing to fight me then do so.' A clawed hand beckoned him on mockingly.

  With a cry of abhorrence for this unnatural thing, El-Vador aimed an arrow directly at its maw and let fly. His shaft struck home with the lethal accuracy of a practised game hunter, yet bounced away as if it had struck the cave wall instead. The thing laughed and stretched out to its full towering height, as if in preparation to launch out and crush the life from this intruder that had presumed to attack it.

  Faster than anything he had witnessed, the creature leapt off the altar and soared toward him.

  El-Vador dove out of the way at the last second, feeling the claws of the beast hiss just over his head. Fitting another arrow to his bow, he loosed again. This one was batted away by the creature's arm as if the attempt insulted it.