Elfborn: The Quest

Chapter 1: From a Cold Sea

Only then could it be seen that the standing figure was a man, lean yet muscular in a wiry sense of the word. The man tilted his head back, eyes closed as cold seawater slowly trickled down his chest and over his belly, dripping liberally from the bottom of his tattered breech legs. His shirt, or what was left of it, was plastered to his shoulders and back with the water and his medium length red hair was nearly black with water. Water dripped from his hair onto the gravel at his feet, which were bare.

Slowly the pale skin, tinted blue from the cold, shed its watery cover. And just as slowly the man's chest expanded then contracted, life-giving air being pulled into his exhausted body with each breath. He stood as if unaffected by either his submersion in the frigid water, or the cold wind that was lashing the beach with icy fingers. He was a statue in flesh-tone marble, almost unmoving.

Abruptly his eyes flickered open, pale blue, the color of the sky, when he heard something heavy and metal grind against the rounded stones of the beach. He remained perfectly still as he let his hearing, extraordinarily sharp, seek out the source of the sound. There. A good twenty metres down the beach to the south. But rapidly approaching.

The lean young man brought his head down to focus on the approaching figures, at least two dozen men on horseback, looking oddly bulky in their perches on top of the heavy chargers. Further study told him their bodies must be encased in armor of some sort to give them that kind of appearance. It was a conclusion supported by flashes of silver visible beneath heavy cloaks and thick surcoats as the winds of passage moved them, as well as the cylindrical helms they wore on their heads.

Upon catching sight of them, anger suddenly surged through the man, hot and vicious, burning away any trace of exhaustion and the cold. Fear was forever gone, leached away by the chill waters of the Hybernus.

Then, the muscles of his jaw rippling with the effort, he crushed the anger and forced himself to be calm. If the need arose, he would attack. But only if he was attacked first or these men made an attempt to capture them. He wouldn't rush blindly forward again and sacrifice himself needlessly. Nor, by the hot ash that gave birth to him, would he ever be captured and held prisoner again! The cold of the Strait had forced him to make that vow and now he intended to keep it, even if it meant his own death.

So he mutely waited for the men to reach him, their heavy armor gleaming dully in the light that managed to penetrate the thick clouds overhead to splash weakly against the land below. He didn't have to wait long. The first man reached him in a manner of heartbeats, his horse, a powerful, thick-chested roan charger, kicking up gravel as it came to an abrupt stop.

Throwing the young man a hard, suspicious look through the visor of his large, cylindrical helmet as he climbed down off his mount, the man in full armor in a surcoat of black and red with an unfamiliar crest on his chest drew the arming sword at his waist with a practiced pull and brought it to the ready. He then said something in a hard, angular-sounding language.

When the young man failed to respond to that, he switched to something that was less harsh, almost like the Ibisian the jebusin would use between each other. When that too failed to elicit any reaction, the man shook his head in frustration before:

"Who are you?" he demanded in heavily accented Anglo. "What are you doing here?"

Other than a slight narrowing of the man's eyes, he still didn't respond. That, in turn, earned him a more aggressive approach from the armored man.

"Are you deaf, fool?" he shouted, staying with Anglo since he saw the young man's eyes narrow in reaction to it. As he shouted, he dropped into a combat crouch.