I just sat there and remained quiet, knowing I couldn’t say no. Of course I couldn’t. Everyone grinned as they looked at me, some even cracked jokes about being surprised I hadn’t volunteered already.

  But they weren’t really jokes, because they actually were surprised. Because of my fucking reputation.

  “We’ll need a potent warrior of course, and Grynkori are extremely adept at long-distance traversal, so I propose we send Gruin. I shall accompany the expedition too, and I wish for my other apprentice to follow. That gives us a company of four so far, with six to eight other slots. Who has suggestions?” Morlo was prattling on like he wasn’t threatening to ruin my life all over.

  “I have one, something of a rising star among the army. A young officer, a captain now, by the name of Devyne Gethriq.”

  I started coughing, having been trying to calm myself with a glass of water and accidentally inhaled some of it upon hearing that idiot’s name mentioned again. Everyone watched me splutter for a few seconds before the King spoke.

  “You know him?”

  “...Yes,” I said at last, “we’ve…met. Fought alongside one another. He’s…” I didn’t want to be honest, because that would mean shit-talking an aristocrat. Not great for my own prospects given present company. On the other hand if I talked Devyne up I might have to actually fight alongside the idiot, which wasn’t good for my future life.

  “He’s a skilled fencer,” I said at last, which was true enough, “though…inexperienced in command and tactics, when I last saw him.”

  “Nonsense,” one of the nobles grinned, “I heard he led the right flank’s crushing charge on the orcs, fought like a monster. The men loved him!”

  Even I noticed that none of that quite contradicted what I’d said. I would know, as someone who’d also managed to trick the world into thinking I was competent just through size, good looks and being skilled at killing individual people.

  “You’ve worked together before, then?” Hengrys asked me. “That’s something. Hm. Gethriq…” I saw his eyes cloud over at that. What happened next is something I worked out mostly in retrospect, so stay with me here while I explain it, and know that my young self hadn’t the foggiest what was going on.

  King Hengrys was always eager to balance the power between nobility, merchants and, recently, the rising scholar-class of Arvharest. Between the three of them he found nobility most easily handled of course, thanks to his periodic blood-tied alliances through marriage and common ancestry. That meant Anglyn tended to favour the noble blood, at least for now.

  In that regard, Hengrys wanted another rising star among the nobility to offset what he doubtless saw as a rising influence in the scholars. He probably hoped that Devyne would make a big enough name for himself, and be grateful enough for this ‘opportunity’ that he would earn himself a strong ally ten or twenty years down the line.

  So, predictably, I was pretty much fucked. The choice to bring Devyne in on our ‘fellowship’ was made almost unanimously, and I could do nothing but watch and despair as I had one of the biggest morons I’ve ever met inflicted onto me all over again.

  The other new joins were varied and partly surprising, partly not. No less than three of them were among the group who’d been unfortunate enough to receive my training just prior to the siege. Another was from Arvharest itself, some gun expert as I heard it, while the tenth was most surprising of all.

  An Aelf, apparently, was to accompany us. That was interesting to me, more interesting than anything else. Aelfs were a mysterious people as rare as diamonds, and I’d already heard about a thousand contradicting tales about them even in that early stage of my life. I had no idea which to believe.

  I defaulted to fear, naturally. A great many of those stories spoke of the terrible dangers aelfs posed to good, honest humans. Their power and innate evil, like cats toying with mice. For me it was just another reason among hundreds more to be worried about this upcoming venture, but then it’d been a long time since I’d not had reasons to worry about what was waiting for me in the future.

  When the meeting was finally over, I felt as though I’d spent the hour or so it lasted having my guts used as a punching bag. All the recuperation I’d managed to do had vanished instantly, and my life was all problems again. Somehow, it felt oddly soothing. Not a good sign right there, let me tell you.

  I had a day while affairs were put in order and preparations for the journey made, with my main task, while Morlo took care of Morlo things, being to break the news to Vara and Gruin about what was happening. I did so tentatively, heading back to the rooms and letting them both know in as fast and up-front way as I could. Gruin appreciated that, while Vara, like me, was less than pleased to be getting marched back into the pit of hell for essentially no reason.

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  “Undead,” Gruin smiled, “I like those. Fighting them is always good fun, the way they burst open.”

  “Well there’s a fucking surprise,” Vara snapped. She didn’t like Gruin much, I didn’t know why at the time but have since learned enough about Grynkori culture to work it out.

  ++”Grynkori culture, such as ‘people with low upper body strength are worthless’, I assume.”++

  “Lanks wouldn’t understand,” Gruin growled, “none of you can swing a hammer to save your lives. Just let me know when we’re setting off. Or better yet, head off while I’m asleep. Catching up to a few hours’ head start will stop me from getting bored waiting for you all to trudge on after me.”

  I bit back a few choice comments regarding leg length and sprinting speed, choosing instead a more productive response.

  “Either way, you should also know that we’ll be travelling with an…aelf.” I almost winced as I said it, then did wince as I saw Gruin’s reaction. It seemed as if every scrap of meat in his face had been knotted all together at once, a wave of fury the likes of which was normally reserved for the sight of mass graves and decapitated children.

  Nobody holds a grudge like the Grynkori.

  “An aelf, here?” he snarled, “where is it?”

  It. That told me just about everything I needed to know regarding the likelihood of peaceful cooperation.

  “We can’t kill them,” I told the Grynkori. Gruin didn’t even seem to hear me, just headed for the door and burst out. I followed, panicking now. “Gruin, wait,” but he didn’t wait. Just jogged off, bounding away at speeds equal to…a slightly exerted walk. I kept up with him without needing to exert my own, a combination of long legs and my growing levels of preternatural strength.

  “Would you rather kill one aelf, or one thousand shamblers?” I asked him.

  “One aelf!” he spat. “Greedy, sneaky, lying bastard rat things!”

  I had no idea what to do next, and the hour that followed was mostly consumed by some variations of the same core idea—reasoning with Gruin. I failed for the most part, but eventually time seemed to do what logic could not and cooled the roaring bonfire of his temper.

  Cooled it into hot embers, mind, but that was still better than the murderous flames we’d started with.

  By the time I finally got to meet that aelf, I was fortunately no longer with Gruin. Even as he was in his calmer state I feared he’d have escalated things into a fight on the spot. When I was called to assemble with our new companions, though, I can hardly say my reaction was more sophisticated than his would’ve been.

  If you’ve never seen an aelf before, I’m afraid to say that I won’t be able to do them justice. The sight of them has probably inspired more embarrassing poetry than teenaged romance, and a single glance will tell you why. The one I met then was female. She was tall, her hair frizzy and billowing out atop her head in an almost hemispherical shape like a black mushroom grew from her scalp. What struck me first, though, was her skin.

  This was a bit more common in my youth than it is in our modern age of growing trade and shipborne capital, but I’d never actually seen a black person back then. Hadn’t even known they were called black, or that they called us pink. Hadn’t known a lot of things. The world was bigger back then, or at least slower to get around. I’ve rarely felt that fact as much as I do when looking back at that first meeting with an aelf.

  She moved after a second of my staring slack-jawed at her, and that movement sent a shiver down my spine as I realised how little she’d been moving before then. The grace of her motion seemed uncanny, like every limb was being controlled by a different surgeon, every ounce of strength used perfectly and no more applied than was needed. When she spoke, it was all the same as that, save verbal.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, “my name is Il’vanja, I will be accompanying you on your exploration of the danger to the east. Your name is Kyvaine I gather?”

  I was briefly unable to speak. Too many novelties at once, all packed into the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. Aelfs tend to do that to a man, believe me.

  “I think so,” I replied, because I was, in the end and despite all I’d seen, a teenaged boy looking at an incredibly attractive woman. If she noticed my infatuation—well, to be clear, she certainly did—she didn’t consider it worth remarking on, just nodded at my words and politely ignored the drooling.

  “I look forwards to associating with you then,” she continued, “I have heard good things about your competence and mental fortitude.” Another shiver ran down my spine. Something about the way the aelfs speak just does that to you, like they’re quietly untethered from everything happening around them.

  Creepy as I found it all, it was, if nothing else, a far more positive interaction than most of my first experiences with the non-human species, which had generally consisted of a lot more screaming, violence or threats of violence. That didn’t mean I liked the frigid ice, but it was better than blistering fire.

  The rest of our gathering was faster than this, mostly just consisting of everyone tying up loose ends and making sure nothing would go disastrously wrong too fast once we set out. There was a level of jumpiness, and I will admit that I felt it as much as anyone else did. Days spent desperately defending a keep and walls tends to leave the idea of setting out into open plains feeling somewhat…dangerous.

  Gruin alone seemed happy with it all, to some extent. It’s hard to describe. There was a sort of positivity to how he swung his hammer at that aelf that bled through the blazing violence of it all, though I had a hard time seeing that at the time of course. I also had a hard time seeing the aelf. The way she moved, or rather the way she didn’t seem to, was just one possibility after another, strung together in a great chain of physical defiance. Gruin was certainly appreciating it just as I was, though he seemed somewhat less than enthusiastic.

  “Stay still you fucker!” Gruin roared, his temper fraying to an extent I’d never seen before. His hammer was whipping around like a whirlwind of cold iron, swung with such violence that several missed blows tore great chunks out of the dirt under his feet and sent soil flying out in all directions as if cannon balls were landing.

  But the aelf was unscathed. And the fighting only intensified from there.

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