The desire to slit Joshua’s throat and leave him to bleed out quietly grew every minute spent with him.
Helping a rat like him, on my behalf, was a big, stupid mistake, and for now, I was stuck with it.
Joshua was fat, lazy, and spoiled. In the forest, he struggled to keep up. He slipped and fell constantly. Every noise made him pause to check if we’d been discovered. Then he’d have a drink from his precious silver flask to settle his nerves. At this rate, by the time we’d reach the first marker and start heading towards the small, abandoned town of Lindsay and Gilmore by the River, we’d be fighting off the first light of dawn.
A knot of anxiety tied itself tightly around my stomach.
Still, a turncoat thought entered my mind; it wondered if this might not be such a bad thing. The idea whispered to a childish want; ‘At least we’d get to see the sun! Just think, for the first time in your life, you’ll be able to feel heat from something other than a fire.’
Right now, as the cold crept into my bones, a fire would be a wonderful thing!
I hadn’t realised how cold the small smattering of snow would make the air and ground. It was reckless of me not to have traded a few more items for a proper outside jacket. The old, worn hoodie I’d borrowed was warm underground and, because of that, hardly used. But outside, the late autumn chill cut through it like a hot knife to lard and constantly stabbed my skin.
Unfortunately, I found out my discomfort and its resulting angry glares at Joshua didn’t get me what I wanted. It didn’t make him suck his gut in and move. It made him nervous; it made him rush, slip and fall, and then it made him apologise – out loud!
Idiot!
The knife under my ankle wraps itched.
And now, as we slowly made our way along an old, overgrown lime path called ‘Ramblers Track’, I could hear him breathe heavily with every step. It was triggering to say the least. If I could hear it, the dark folk would hear it a mile away. I’d picked the easiest path possible. Not the safest, just the easiest and still we’d have no alternative but to stop and rest.
Not on this pathway, though, we needed what Dad used to call a bolt hole. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for a place to bunker down and hide. Don’t be fussy. If you don’t rest, you’ll make mistakes. It’s all new up there an’ you’re literally a fish out of water, so don’t push it.’
Taking a turn to the right, I led Joshua carefully off the trail made and used by people long dead. People who, unlike me, had free time and the safety to enjoy the beauty of the world.
I desperately wanted to ensure we didn’t leave any footprints. The Elves travelled this way too; it was easy to see their horses’ hoof marks in the soft mud on either side. Most looked dry and worn, so I felt we were safe enough. But just for a precaution, we stuck to walking on wet leaves and green grass in the hopes of masking our presence. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.
Under a cluster of fallen branches near a large log, with leaf matter and moss forming a roof, a small, dark hollow created a hidden safe space big enough for the two of us to hide in and rest.
Whilst I checked he hadn’t left any whopping great big footprints pointing to our hidey hole, Joshua smiled gratefully as he climbed in first. Honestly, I just wanted him to hurry up and wedge his fat arse into the no small space and leave a bit of room for me. I was cold, so finally, once he was settled, it was really comforting to sit out of the wind’s way.
Joshua spread his midnight cloak over both of us, which surprisingly reflected the little body heat I had back to me. It probably helped that Joshua was red-cheeked and overheated, too.
Maybe I’d been a little harsh on him. Caleb sure as hell wouldn’t have shared jack shit with me. Smiling a thin, uncomfortable grin seemed to be the only thanks Joshua required, so I left it at that.
Mind you, by the way he was drinking his water and eating his rations, this big boy would starve first or dehydrate before we got to L’n’Gee by the River. Not a problem for me, though! His big, lovely, warm midnight cloak would be mine, along with anything else I could rip off his corpse in a hurry.
A soft rustle caught both our attentions.
Like two little long-eared baby hares readying for bed, we slowly slid our legs under the wide midnight cloak and pulled its dark, shadowed hem to our chins, ever so careful not to make a sound or breathe too hard.
There it was again!
Before I could quite pinpoint where the crunching sound was coming from, a shadow cast itself over our hiding spot.
Midnight-bound leggings with Runner’s shoes stood right at the doorway of our hide, the heels so close to me I wouldn’t even have to stretch to reach out and touch them.
As we both froze in place, Jacob’s warm brown eyes widened. Maybe they needed help? Do I let them know we’re here?
“Are you sure Muck and Pig went this way?”
We both looked at each other, knowing exactly who the quiet voice referred to. I began fingering my leg bindings apart so I could pull out my hidden knife.
“Of course I’m bloody sure.” Caleb’s arrogant whisper carried on the night’s air. “Kept an eye on ‘em when they snuck out the bolt hole like a couple of pathetic cowards.”
His legs didn’t move, and neither did we.
“Could they have made it to L’n Gee River already?”
“Don’t be stupid, Pig’d need to stop and eat every five minutes. Come on, we’ll head to Stone Bridge, then raid L ‘nd Gee for medicine. It’ll be easy enough to ambush them there as any other.”
Cold laughter shared between the two of them floated around the trees.
How two people could hold so much stupidity in their small brains was beyond me.
If there were any Elves around or any of their spies, Caleb and his friend were as good as dead. You’d have to use a bloody hot iron to make me say out loud where we were going, and then I’d probably lie.
Joshua must have been thinking the same thing as he met my look of astonishment by raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips.
It was hard to sit still for another half hour, but I wanted to make sure Caleb and his crony weren’t bluffing us in the hopes we’d jump out of our hiding spot straight away. I also wanted to make sure we wouldn’t run into any Elves or spies who were hunting them.
From under the warm midnight cloak, Joshua produced a small piece of slate and a little stubby pencil of pink chalk; he wrote quickly. ‘Can you read?’
The middle finger was flipped at him.
The first question was rubbed out and replaced with, ‘Good. Do we still go to where we were told to go?’
I shook my head negatively as I thought, ‘Going to L ’n Gee for medical supplies would be dumb. We could visit the old garden centre to see if any packeted seeds still survived or perhaps raid a few houses for clothes and leftover medicine. But this meant going deeper into the old town than most dared to.’
I took his slate and held the chalk pencil awkwardly while I wrote, ‘We go first marker. Then my Dad’s safe store. Sleep there.’
He read my badly spelled sentence and nodded as I quickly rubbed out the words.
Joshua wrote one more sentence. ‘Caleb. Dangerous?’
Nodding slowly in deep agreement was the only reply I felt was needed. Caleb was stupid, rich and a bully. A very dangerous combination!
Finally, when the cold earth began to eat into my hipbones, I reluctantly began to move the midnight cloak from my now warmed body. As quietly as we both could, we crept out of our hidden hollow and remained crouching as we listened for danger.
Nothing sounded alarming, no bird screeched, no twigs snapped. It wasn’t too quiet to indicate all the animals were hiding, so I guessed it was safe enough.
Slow and low was how we chose to move, from shadow to shadow, breath to breath. We snuck under every low-hanging Willow Tree we came across, planted over the past twenty years by other runners as a haven for humans to hide. And every time we did, both of us scanned the forest and pathway for… our dangerous friends!
Finally, we came to the end of ‘Ramblers’ and skirted the edges of an old black tarmac car park. So many cars from before were left, abandoned by their owners. Some were very rusty, others not so much, but winter would win out eventually. I wondered as I looked at each car what had happened to the people who drove them. Stupid, I know, because the answer is - they died! One way or another, they all just died.
I tried not to look too closely at one car that had two skulls nailed to the headrests of the front seats with arrows through their eye sockets. It would have been comforting to say they were twenty-year-old skeletons, there from the time of the ‘Great Sleep of Death’, which managed in two months to wipe out two-thirds of everyone. But no, another arrow with midnight bandages wrapped around it was stabbed into the hood of the car.
This was a warning to Runners from the Elves. It said very loudly, ‘You're next!’
From the car park, we walked hunched over, skirting the overgrowth until we made it to just in sight of the last willow. Thankfully, the ‘First Marker’, a stone wall in the distance, could be clearly seen, which meant I hadn’t gotten us lost. Now we could start making our way to Dad’s safe storage.
I didn’t have a map.
That would be beyond stupid!
If we were captured, anything written down would be quickly found by the elves and used to our disadvantage… or death.
Dad had made sure it was all in my head.
All the directions to safe locations, pathways, safe houses, caves, forests, mines and the abandoned towns had been repeated over and over again for years until I had them perfectly memorised.
Now that I walked in the above, I was so glad he’d made me do that. Hopefully, the three years between his death and my coming outside would have had too big an impact on his information.
We ran as hard as we could whilst hunching down to the last willow. Its long branches swept the ground, making a protective skirt for us to hide under. And hide we did. As soon as both our backs were against the willow’s trunk, Joshua threw his cloak over us. The little baby hares were back in bed. Blissfully, the warmth began flowing back into my chilled flesh.
Another kindness was shown. Josh handed me a nutrient bar.
It was shocking that this one bar represented a month of my work credits… and he’d just given it to me, with no trade required. I didn’t know whether I should feel grateful or resentful. Mostly I felt hungry, so I ate the rich chewy bar quickly and felt the rush of nourishment quell my knotted stomach.
Josh grabbed my arm and silently pointed toward an oak tree, about a hundred metres from the marker, which was at least ten meters from the tree’s trunk.
Seeing your first Elf in the flesh should fill you with terror, but instead, I was fascinated. There, sitting on a horse, which I thought was an absolutely enormous beast, was a blond man dressed in green trimmed leather and dark fur. Apart from his clothes and lack of fear at being outside, the only other feature that revealed him as an elf was his long, pointed ears.
To me, the horse seemed more dangerous than its rider. But then again, no horse had ever tied a screaming child to a tree and gutted it for fun. That settled it; Joshua and I would stay hidden under this willow for as long as it took. We both hunkered down against the tree’s wide base and its obscuring darkness, watching the Elf through the slowly swaying willow branches.
I almost swore out loud when the Elf turned his horse and commenced galloping at full pelt towards us. I grabbed and held Josh still, whispering threateningly. “Don’t move!”
There was no way an Elf would come under a Willow. Their kind believed the tree to be sacred, and touching it was an invitation to die. We were safe. Dad whispered over and over in my ear. ‘A Willow has saved my arse more times than I care to remember.’ That’s why so many had been planted by Runners over the years.
And yet, to my absolute horror, the rider still came at us.
“Sam, look, Runners!”
Caleb and his mate were running up from a hollow fifty meters or so before the ‘First Marker’ and our tree. The single bow his friend swung wildly as he ran wouldn’t help them, even if they’d been brave enough to stop and try.
Why they’d bother to lug that stupid thing around, I didn’t understand. We’d never had enough room underground to practice shooting an arrow at a stationary target, let alone a bloodthirsty elf on a war horse.
And then I looked at the Elf. His smile was cold, calculating and full of glee for the hunt. Blood lust washed over all his fine features, making him look like the demented demon he truly was.
In comparison, Caleb and his friend clearly looked terrified; fear washed over every feature as they ran for their lives.
Then, terror struck me, they were running for this tree! If they made it to us…
I needn’t have worried. Caleb’s mate was the first to fall, an arrow stuck out of his eye and felled him to the ground.
“Oh, my god!”
A stuttering ‘Sh,’ was the only sound that I could manage to produce.
Caleb kept running as hard as he could.
My gut wanted to shout, ‘Run, don’t look back.’ But my will to survive shoved my hand over my mouth instead.
It looked as if the Elf was playing some sick twisted game with Caleb, just like cats do with their mice! The Elf could have easily felled the frantic Runner straight after his friend hit the ground, but… he wanted Caleb to think he had a chance of reaching the Willow. He wanted to make the fleeing human a player, willing or not. All so the Elf could play his cat-and-mouse games, he allowed Caleb to hope he might survive.
He wouldn’t; it was only a matter of time.
Just five meters from the first low-hanging willow branch, the Elf’s arrow flew free from its longbow and felled Caleb, sending him flying to within reach of the tree. The arrow stuck through his thigh. Caleb’s blond hair flailed about as he thrashed in agony on the cold ground, screaming like a beaten dog.
He was a dead man, but to his credit, Caleb’s human instinct to survive kicked in. He began to desperately try to drag himself under the tree by using clawed handfuls of dirt to pull himself to the nearest willow branch, which he then used as a rope to pull himself upright.
Caleb stopped and barely drew a breath. It was as if time had come to a grinding halt. He saw Joshua and me looking back at him, cowering under the trees’ canopied skirt, our eyes like those of terrified owls in its shadows.
His terrified blue eyes darted between our faces before he slowly let the branch slip through his fingers. As Caleb turned to face the oncoming Elf, my heartbeat so loud a ringing in my ears drowned out all the other sounds of the world.
Our once tormentor and enemy staggered away from our hiding place towards the oncoming Elf, screaming out in agony as the arrow inflicted its price.
“Kill me! Kill me and get it over and done with, ‘cause I’ll see ya on the other side!”
My body rocked back and forth with every heartbeat.
The boy, who’d thought me nothing more than dirt, fell to his knees, screaming out at his oncoming death.
Caleb was saving us.
The Elf pulled his horse up short, flicking mud over Caleb’s whole body. From his highly polished saddle, the blond elf lowered himself slowly, smiling, savouring every rage and agony-filled cry that broke from Caleb's mouth.
The devil was going to have a sweet ending to his game when his hands were covered in blood.
Caleb didn’t even pose a threat, so easily and brashly was the Elf’s decision to saunter behind his victim, grab his loose hair and pull his head back; he didn’t even bother to look into the depths of the willow’s shaded interior. Instead, the Elf laughed happily, almost melodically and then said with the most hate-filled voice I’ve ever heard, “Feumaidh mi ceann ùr airson mantel an t-simileir teine agam.”
A knife just like my own, as dark as ink, was raised up high in the Elf's hand, leading him to shout out his victory over the screams of the now petrified Caleb.
This moment seemed to last too long, as if each second were dragged out to be hours. And then in a rush of time as my own black knife sliced through his windpipe, the Elf’s victory was cut short.
The moment was burned into the very cells of my brain and will never be forgotten. The look in his eyes as he slumped sideways to the cold, wet ground, turning at the last to stare into my own.
Now I understood my father when he had said, ‘You’ll never forget the face of your first death.’
Leaning down to the Elf’s wide-eyed face, I whispered quietly, “I’ll never forget you, but you’re a piece of shit who deserved it, so don’t wait for me ‘cause I don’t intend on going to hell.”
And with that, I watched, up close and personal, the light leave him.
“Are you insane?”
“Jacob, help me pull the elf under the willow. Caleb, here, hold the horses’ reins as best you can.
“I said, are you fucking insane?”
Josh, holding the elf’s shoulders, stopped and waited for me to reply.
“Sorry, Caleb, next time I’ll let them slice and dice you.”
“They come after us. They’ll hunt us down. They’ll find out where our families are and wipe them out. You should have just let it kill me.” Caleb began sobbing, “You should have just let it kill me.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sam, come on, let’s get him out of sight.” It was Josh who mostly lugged the dead weight under the tree and wrapped it around the trunk. I stood there with Caleb’s words running through my head.
“Go through his pockets and pull out anything that looks like it’s worth something. I’ll take his boots and knife and put them up in the tree. We can collect it on the way back.” Josh began rifling through the elf’s pockets. “Take his jewellery as well, it will be worth a lot for you.” Josh pulled a gold ring and a scrolled silver headband from the corpse and dropped them in his empty boots.
“What have I done?” Tears and fear were threatening to burst forth as I looked for salvation from the boy who I’d misjudged so badly.
The twin of my own black knife was carefully handed to me, and as I held its familiar weight in my hand, Josh spoke slowly and calmly. “I think you’re not the first one to have gotten the better of an elf, and hopefully you won’t be the last. My father says it’s time we started fighting back.”
He was right. I wasn’t the first to kill an elf. I knew someone who had already done it and had survived long enough to give me his knife.
“Come on, Sam, it’s cold enough that he won’t stink for a day or two, but we’ve gotta get going.”
We both wiped our hands in the long grass under the tree, then stepped out from its shelter and began dealing with tying a tourniquet on Caleb’s leg and getting him onto the back of the horse.
“I’ll climb up and haul Caleb up whilst you push. My father owns a team of mine ponies so I can ride.”
Nodding, I now realised why Josh’s family were so rich, “I’ll run, we’ve got a hell of a lot of ground to cover before the sun comes up.”
“Lead the way.” Josh held the now very pale Caleb in between his arms.
As we passed Caleb’s dead friend, I pulled off the dead boy’s midnight cloak and jumper, and then put them both on over my own thin shirt and hoodie. Looking up at both of them, I wound myself up to tell them where they could stick their attitudes.
Caleb remained quiet as Josh spoke softly, “Waste not, want not. Can you get Kennedy’s bandages and shoes off quickly?”
I paused for a second, and then, as reality took over, I ripped his shoes and bandages off, then reached for a small silver necklace around his neck.
“Here, Caleb, you can give this to his parents and explain what happened.” The shoes and bandages were shoved into the horse’s saddle bag.
There was no need to walk any more, I would run and lead the others to exactly where we needed to go. Speed was of the essence.
Maybe if we were lucky, we’d find the medicine and tools needed to get that arrow out of Caleb and stop any infection from ending him.
Either that or leave his dead body to rot.
Thank you for reading! Please like, subscribe or follow!
Awesome. Thrilling. Vivid.