Chapter 7

If I had been somewhat bored with nothing much to do before that Troll attack - or Jotunn, or Ugly People, attack, depending on who was talking - suddenly I was in a situation where I barely had any free time at all. The change from feared or disregarded oddball to a common hero was, in a way, a very nice one. Except, the fact that most of the younger women didn’t really know how to throw themselves at me. While Human girls followed the examples of their older girls, these girls here had no one to follow. It might have been fun for me if I hadn’t been the target of their attention. However, the older women did have fun - lots of it.

I managed to tolerate them - with the help of Bellcauniel and Fainauriel - and because of the fact that I was really busy. In fact, that wasn’t even that bad. What was bad were the nightmares.

They didn’t start immediately, but gradually. During the nights I lived again each and every one of them - the kills I made. It seemed that I had been able to see them in much more detail than I had believed, or that it was my own mind that filled in the details. Very precisely. Those nightmares didn’t come every night, but they came often enough once they had started. Without the help of the women sleeping with me, I would not have been sleeping very much.

There was another, more disturbing, thing that I learned during those nights. While talking with the older Elves they had been most fascinated with my ability to cloak, or mask, myself, since that was something unheard of. Finally, they just assumed that it was some rare combination of skills and they admitted that they didn’t know everything about magic or how it had been used in their old, home world, Elonia. That was the first time I heard the name - and probably also would be the last. The pain of loss associated with that name was still too much for them. It was like a synonym of something that was lost forever and for good. But yes, they assumed that my rare skill was just something secret, something that they hadn’t heard about.

I knew better. Unfortunately.

The first time I dreamed about the strange world and hunting there, I thought that it was just a strange dream. A very detailed dream that contained some odd-looking plants and huge insects. I believed that up to the moment I tasted the blood of the game in my mouth. That was just too real.

In a way, that wasn’t even a bad dream, just a very odd one. More like a memory. Except that I couldn’t have that kind of memory. Like the cloaking skill, it wasn’t familiar to the people here who knew magic. In the morning, I had to check that my hands were normal hands and not something with claws.

My dreams alternated with the kind of memories that couldn’t really be my memories and nightmares during which I relived all the kills I had done. Not killing the game but killing the Trolls - and the odd creature from some other world. In those dreams, it wasn’t just doing those things again but also learning how I could have done them better! How I could have been even more efficient. One morning I felt so badly that I almost threw up. For a while, things got worse and worse - until they started to get better. Slowly and gradually. Without some help from Fainauriel and Bellcauniel I might have lost my mind at some point. I had told them about my ‘normal’ nightmares and, together with those two women, I managed to convince myself that feeling bad about reliving those killings should just prove that I was a good person inside.

Maybe. Then, why did I have a feeling that it could have also been mental training that would make sure that I’ll do even better when the next time comes?

Another consequence of the things that happened was the sharpening of my magical skills. I just wasn’t sure if better skills were worth all that torture. The most stupid thing that helped me was watching Tariel. My cat had adopted several other willing servants, but every now and then she made sure to visit us and especially my lap. Looking at the cat purring in my lap, it was hard to think of her as the beast she was when she was hunting. In a way, I felt envious of her, since I was quite sure that Tariel didn’t have any nightmares because of the rats and mice she had killed.

Most importantly, I did get better with time.

“There are some people approaching the village, coming from the west.”

I had been on one of my missions checking the surroundings when I noticed that group. I was almost certain that there were five people heading towards the village and staying hidden in the forest. Mylaela nodded at me.

“Took them long enough. I expected them a bit sooner, but those heavy rains on the coastal side must have slowed them down a bit. Those high passes are difficult enough in good weather. At least they were wise enough to wait.”

I could only nod at her. There was a nice, deep lake that collected all the rain water in this valley and a stream that delivered the water through the eastern mountains into another river and finally to the ocean. Following the stream might seem like a nice way to this valley. Only, it wasn’t passable. Unlike the sides of the stream leading away from the next valley - the one the Ugly People inhabited. From both valleys there were some narrow paths leading though some high passes through the higher, western mountains, but those weren’t suitable for bigger groups and they weren’t safe if the weather was bad.

I looked at the mountains to the west. We had just passed the autumn equinox without any big festivities, since the growing season wasn’t over here, yet. You could sense that the summer was over but it wasn’t that bad. I knew that it was quite different on the other side of the mountain ridge. Even if it wasn’t too cold, the rain would make life miserable. Getting through that high pass while walking inside the clouds wasn’t for everybody. Not even something for every Guardian.

“Far from it. I’d suggest we send a group of twenty, all fully armed and very cautious.”

“Would you go with them?”

“Maybe, but I’d stay out of sight - just close by making sure that nobody gets lost.”

Things worked out just as planned. The group that had entered the valley were indeed Guardians and they were very talented when it came to moving in the forest without getting noticed. That just didn’t help them in this case, and the group of five was soon surrounded and disarmed. It was almost too easy.

It was too easy, indeed. As soon as the escorted group started moving towards the southern pass I did some more sensing and was alerted by another group coming through the pass. I stayed behind and waited until I was sure. I sighed mentally and moved to my next agreed position where I would meet some warriors from the escorting group. We had agreed that twice a day I’d meet someone from the escorting group during their breaks. Someone would stay behind and I’d contact her. Today it was a younger woman called Eruraina.

“Eruraina, I need two of you. There’s another group of three coming behind these five. Somehow I believe that these are even less normal Guardians than those five were. Maybe you should send someone to the village, too.”

The group of five had indeed been Guardians, in Guardian uniforms of some sort - even if they clearly were a special group. However, I had been told that they behaved well and accepted that they were caught, even if they didn’t like it. I wondered what they might think if they heard that they just might have been used as a decoy.

When I got the first glimpse of the second group of three men later that day, it was clear that they weren’t normal Guardians. First, they didn’t wear any kind of uniforms, rather, some specially made clothes of green and brown patches. A bit more worrying was that they were moving quickly and consistently towards the village avoiding all paths and open areas. Without my special skill, finding them would have been almost impossible. The most worrying thing was the number of weapons they carried. Crossbows, a sword and at least two knives each. Maybe they weren’t sent to assassinate somebody. They just looked like a group that would be able to do it quickly and efficiently.

The following day I knew that I needed to make a decision, since my two companions had serious issues keeping up with those three men, even with my help. We were closing the village now and there was no way that I could let those men get any nearer the village that was also my home. Unfortunately they didn’t look like people that could be persuaded to surrender, not when asked by two women - and there was no way we could get any more warriors to help us. Not without being noticed. I was sure that they were way too close already. No, I knew that I had to make a decision that would probably cause me more nightmares afterwards.

The Trolls had been ferocious fighters but the tactics they had used had relied purely on surprise and speed. Besides that, most of the attackers had been of the younger generation. These men were in probably their thirties, barely talking while moving and they moved in such a way that you usually were able to see only one or at most two of them at the same time. Besides that, they moved like shadows. When I shot the first of them I did it without any warning. Shit, I was sure that they were much better warriors than I was.

Without my extra skills I would not have had any chance against the remaining two of them. Even if I was able to cloak myself, it didn’t help me when I moved. There was always some noise and I couldn’t fully prevent the foliage or the twigs from moving. When I released my second arrow, the remaining man was able to estimate my position from the incoming arrow. He didn’t quite hit me, but it was way too close. We played cat and mouse for some time until I finally decided to cheat. I created a magic wire and attached it to a small tree on my left. When the branches moved he released his arrow. I released mine when he moved. I felt terrible after that last shot.

Mylaela and Immianthe looked somber when we showed them the special clothes and the armament those three men had been carrying. In their backpacks there had been ropes, masks and a gag. It was as though they had been on a mission to capture someone. We undressed the bodies and then dumped them into the stream. It would be very unlikely that somebody would ever find them. Personally, I hadn’t really been able to process the fact that I had just killed three fellow Humans. Not those Ugly People, but Humans.

“There was nothing more with them?”

Immianthe looked me when she asked that question. I shook my head.

“Nothing else. But they were good, really good. Without my special skills they would have caught me for sure.”

Mylaela went through the ropes, mask and the gag.

“I just wonder. During the years a few of us had just gotten lost, without a trace ... I guess now we have one more reason to be grateful to you Stian, even if the facts behind it just make us more worried.”

The major thing that changed after that was that obligatory training started. That included crossbow, sword and knife training - and I learned that I had really mastered only the crossbow. I could do something with my sword, but that was due more to the superiority of my sword than to my skills. When it came to knives, there were several women who were better than me. But my real humiliation came from the fighting without weapons. And I had been teaching that to the Guardians!

Sabariel was definitely pregnant - and yet, she was able to put me on the ground and on my ass if she wanted to. She had a younger assistant who could and wanted to do all the same things and even more. Since she didn’t need to avoid contact she could make me fly. Literally - and sometimes painfully. I was told that I first needed to learn how to fall so that I wouldn’t hurt myself. Of course, they told me that after I was bruised all over and moving like an old man. What a way to treat a hero! And I was really grateful that they did it like that, since the nightmares had started again - and this time I was sure that both Mylaela and Immianthe also knew about it. That was confirmed one morning when Immianthe came to talk to me after another bad night.

“You know Stian, I’d be more worried about you if you’d be okay with all that killing.”

“Maybe. I’d still be happier myself without those nightmares.”

The small woman surprised me with the tight, almost fierce hug she gave me.

“You poor young man, is there something we old women can do to you in order to make you feel better?”

I managed to mutter that I’d probably start feeling better with time before I really embarrassed myself, since Immianthe didn’t really feel that old to me. I was sure that she felt it, too. Right now, I just didn’t want to make my life any more complicated than it already was. Luckily, I really started getting better.

It was one lunar month before the winter solstice when there finally was an official request delivered to the Elders to accept the visit of some official visitors. A courtesy visit, as it was called. A group would be coming in some ten days’ time. There hadn’t been any other attempts to disturb the peace in the valley, but neither had the Elves sent any groups outside the valley as they had done before. There hadn’t been any accidents or disappearances lately, but there had been a few some years back. A few women had disappeared from this very valley - and the last group of three invaders had made the Elders think that not all the former disappearances had been accidents - if any.

Just a day before the group was supposed to come to meet the Elders, Mylaela came to see me.