They say step right up and introduce yerself so that is what Im doing. Im A V Wedhorn author of new fantasy series called A Kings Quest vol 1 of The Kingdom Chronicles. I thought I might offer up a taste for all to enjoy so I hope you do
The Beginning
The setting sun glinted brightly off of the rapidly spinning dagger�s blade as it flew through the air, towards the face of the dark haired young man standing by himself at the edge of the wood line. Mere inches before actually hitting him, the dagger struck an invisible magical wall and bounced off harmlessly into the underbrush surrounding the young mans feet.
Damien Daverge a newly robed and newly graduated battlemage, fresh out of the academe for mages in Westlake, allowed a slightly nervous smile to play across his lips. He was glad that the shield spell he had cast about himself before actually revealing his presence to his attackers had worked outside of the academe�s classrooms and out here in the wilds even if it was against a not so formidable enemy.
Of course he was a fully trained battlemage, having spent the past six years of his life at the mages academe in Westlake, in a highly disciplined and rigorous environment. Under excruciatingly difficult conditions, he had learned the arts and skills of his chosen craft and acquired his black and gold robes.
Now things were for real and he was facing off by himself against eight orcs armed with rusty swords and battered clubs, with the idea of his blood in their eyes. Understandably this at first caused him to be a little nervous and he had felt a few pangs of anxiety.
The actual dagger thrower was only one member of a band of eight orcs gathered around their campfire dividing up loot from a farmhouse that they had raided earlier in the day.
Damien and his traveling companions had discovered the remains of the farmer�s family tortured and mutilated in their fields and had set off after the group seeking vengeance.
Orcs are sly, cunning and somewhat intelligent humanoid like creatures, large, with grayish green skin standing about six feet tall usually with yellow piggish eyes snout-like noses and boar like tusks that protrude up out of their lower lips. Orcs are cowardly when encountered alone, particularly when outnumbered. In confrontation, they tend to shirk away, but will attack on the sly whenever able. At times when they are found in large groups, like this one sitting here in the clearing around the fire and t he numbers are on their side, they tend towards courage. Especially, when they see only one lone young man in the wilds, step out of the woods near their camp, far from civilization, or any other means of help, with no type of visible weapon showing other than what appeared to be a simple walking staff.
Grabbing their weapons and brandishing them high over their heads, three of the orcs charged towards the battlemage in a headlong rush.
A lot more confident in himself and in his abilities now, Damien allowed a slightly larger smile to cross his lips. This was going to be easy, almost too easy. Then he remembered the farmhouse that these vile creatures had raided earlier in the day and about the family that they had slaughtered and the smile slid off of his face like water off of oil treated leather. As his dark blue eyes hardened into hard cobalt chips, Damien unleashed the second of the spells that he had prepared for this confrontation.
An explosion of bright light erupted from his outstretched hand and a bolt of silver lightening streaked out across the field in a vicious tendril of twisting electrical energy. A sizzling, crackling hiss filled the air. The speeding bolt smashed into the leading orcs chest, the magical force of the lightning�s energy driving straight through its body, leaving a gaping cauterized hole in its wake where the orc�s chest had been. The silver bolt continued on to engulf the other two charging orcs behind the first, in its sizzling crackling fury.
Screams of pain echoed briefly throughout the clearing before the bolt finished consuming them with its energy. It left nothing but sizzling husks and charred leather lying in the grass surrounded by crackling tendrils of electrical energy that writhed around the smoking remains like little silver snakes.
The remaining five orcs stopped short in their charging and started whispering amongst themselves in a huddle for a moment.
Damien could tell that they hadn�t expected the lightening bolt by the way that they kept throwing furtive and frantic glances in his direction and then over to the charred remains through their narrowed yellow pig like eyes.
After a moment the orcs all moved again. This time they fanned out in an arms length line and started to advance a lot more cautiously towards him.
Two very loud, warlike ferocious screams erupted from the tall grass behind the orcs, catching them completely unaware. Jumping in startled surprise, the remaining five orcs spun around to face this new threat that was now attacking them.
A tall lean man carrying a long sword in one hand and a formidable looking deadly spiked mace in the other was the first to reach them. Right behind him was a squat muscular, dark reddish brown bearded, barrel-chested dwarf with a slightly off-center long strip of white hair in his beard that ran its entire length from an old scar on his chin. He was armed with a very large axe hammer, an evil looking weapon that was both a hammer on one side and a wickedly notched single bladed axe on the other.
Both had been hiding in the tall grass behind the orcs and were now charging them with their weapons in hand. The first man to reach them was Damien�s adopted father�s blademaster, Travis Longblade. His head was as bald as an egg and traced with numerous scars. His face looked like it had been carved from mountain stone, with deep-set eyes and a crooked nose, which had been broken in more than a few different places. This face may have once been a handsome one, but through the course of time and life, it had become toughened and hard edged. A hard look from the deadly blademasters dark eyes could usually set lesser men to scurrying, but it wasn�t the look on his face that caused men to feel wary around Travis Longblade. Instead it was the way that the dangerous man moved and carried himself that set him apart from the others.
Slightly over forty years old, Travis Longblade moved with a predator�s grace, quick to strike and even quicker to kill if he deemed it necessary. It was this that caused other men to be fearful. No one really knew all that much about him. His past was sort of an enigma around Castlekeep and Damien had always suspected that there was a lot more to Travis� simple story than what he or his adoptive father was telling. All that he knew for certain about the blademaster was that Travis had fought in the pits as an arena slave for many years and had even more scars covering his body than what was currently showing on his head.
That was until his adopted father, Lord Richard Daverge, had seen him in the slave pits and had at once without question bought him from his owner, freed him from his bonds and had hired him as his blademaster and as a tutor in weapons and combat for him and his sons. That was about ten years ago, now Travis was in charge of all of Castlekeep�s military forces and served his adopted father without question. At this moment, he was serving as an escort to bring Damien safely home from Westlake. Which Damien suspected was something the blademaster didn�t want to be doing. It seemed to him that Travis was in an ungodly hurry to get back as if there was something going on back home that he felt that he needed to be involved in.
Without even thinking, Travis used both of the weapons in his hands like living extensions of his own body. He whirled into the orcs like a dervish on a mad rampage. Damien watched from across the field as the blademaster deftly ducked under the swing of one rusty sword that had been aimed at his head and brought his own sword in his left hand across his body and across the orc�s stomach. In one swift motion the keen edge of the blademasters sword cut through the creature�s abdomen, easily disemboweling it. A bloody spray filled the air accompanying the long swords stroke and the orcs entrails fell out onto the ground where it stood, viscera looping about its feet until it collapsed dead.
Following the momentum of his first strike, Travis kept spinning to the left. As he straightened back up out of his ducking crouch, he brought the mace in his right hand around at head level in an arc that carried the sharpened spikes into the neck of another orc. The deadly spiked mace tore completely through the second orcs unprotected throat ripping it out, effectively killing it. All of this happened so fast that the second orcs body didn�t even realize that it was dead and it just stood there for a few moments spurting blood out of its throat all over the green grass in a bright red rainfall, before it also collapsed.
Damien�s other companion was a little less tactful than the skilled blademaster, not quite being either the swordsman or showman with his two weapons. Nevertheless, he was still deadly and made quite an impression, literally.
Abandoning reason, Kendle Stonebreaker charged headfirst into the battle, his short thick legs and arms churning like windmills in a storm. Dropping his head low, he drove his shiny steel skullpiece directly into another surprised orc�s midsection with a thunderous crash that was accompanied by the sound of its cracking breastbone and the shattering of its ribcage. The heavy bodied dwarf drove straight through the first orc with his own powerful body, knocking it over with his weight and driving it backwards onto the ground. Still using the momentum that he had built up during the charge across the clearing, Kendle continued his forward motion. Rolling into and out of a somersault across the top of the fallen orcs body, he brought his axe hammer up into a two handed overhead smash and with one mighty swinging motion, dropped the flat head of the powerful weapon down onto a second orc�s skull. The heavy magical weapon crushed it like an eggshell sending bits of blood and brains flying everywhere in a gory red mist.
The last remaining orc having seen four more of its companions killed in the time it took to draw two breaths, dropped its own weapon and fled across the clearing, running towards the cover of the woods.
�Should I stop him?� yelled Damien from the other side of the clearing, as he pointed a glowing finger in the direction of the fleeing orc.
�No!� ordered Travis in a commanding voice. �Let it go!�
�What!� roared the reddish brown bearded dwarf angrily, bringing his axehammer down from throwing position, he spun back to face the tall blademaster. �Why?� he demanded, the heat of the battle still sounding thick in his voice. �So that it can go out and slaughter another family of innocent farmers?�
Even Damien was a little stunned at the announcement and fixed the blademaster with his own questioning cool look.
Like all of his dwarven kind, Kendle hated orcs with a passion bordering on fanatical. Damien knew Travis was not very far behind the fierce dwarf in his own feelings for the vile creatures and between the two of them, the blademaster and the dwarf had taken the act of simply killing the creatures and refined it into an art form, with each always striving their hardest to out do the other with deadly flamboyant gestures.
�No,� said Travis again in a manner that allowed no disagreement, his dark eyes locking with Kendle�s own reddish brown ones, �We let it go,� the blademaster said firmly, �so that it can warn others of its kind about what happened here today and hopefully that will scare them off from attempting another raid on Gaderian soil and killing more innocent farmers.�
Kendle shook his head in annoyance, not liking the idea of letting any orc live, then rather begrudgingly, he nodded, mumbling, �Maybe you�re right Travis, but I still think we should have killed it.�
Turning away from Travis, the dwarf rounded on Damien smiling, the momentary burst of anger already quickly fading away from his face and voice. �So what do you have the score at now?� he demanded cheerfully, �Who wins this round?� and he waved a thickly calloused hand in the general direction of the orcs dead bodies laying about the clearing.
�I�m not really sure,� said Damien rubbing his chin thoughtfully, looking at both of them. �Travis definitely gets credit for the disemboweling of the first orc and for tearing the throat out of the second with his mace was quite a nice touch, but,� Damien said eyeing the blademaster a bit dubiously when he saw a gleam start to glow in the other mans dark eyes, �it was against orcs,� an almost criticizing tone filled his voice, �and almost anyone with a little bit of skill could do that. Now Kendle on the other hand,� the young battlemage said and threw a smile at the dwarf, �turned himself into a dwarven battering ram, which was unique, followed it up with a somersault and the crushing of another orcs skull after rolling out of the somersault, I would say that yes Travis, you do get points for class and style, but Kendle, he gets credit for ingenuity and creativity,� Damien now smiled at the blademaster, who now was giving him a dubious look in return, �And since at the end,� the young battlemage continued as he shook his head at Travis, �you did let one go, I think I�ll give this round to Kendle.�
�Ha!� blurted out the dwarf in a victorious manner as he gave the blademaster a wide triumphant smile. �I told you that he would make a good game judge.�
Travis waved his hand at the dwarf as if he was shooing off an annoying fly and almost smiled something the stoic blademaster rarely ever did. Looking over at Damien, he rolled his eyes adding. �Yes but we all know how blood thirsty and battle hungry you mountain dwarves are, anyway.�
�Hmmph!� snorted Kendle through his nose causing his long reddish brown mustaches to flair outwards for a moment, �I�m not a mountain dwarf, I�m a hill dwarf.�
Actually Damien thought to himself, Kendle was both, but that was a different story for another time.
The dark reddish-brown haired dwarf with the long white stripe in his beard knelt down next to one of the dead orc�s bodies and began cleaning the blood and brains off of his axehammer, using the orcs filthy tunic as a rag. �You�re just a sore loser Travis,� Kendle stated matter of fact manner towards the blademaster.
Travis rolled his eyes again at Damien who just smiled back. Then the blademaster also began to clean his sword and mace with another orc�s tunic.
Since he hadn�t used any sort of weapon other than his magical abilities he had no weapon to clean so Damien started checking the other orcs bodies for anything worth any sort of value. If he found something, he would turn it over to the blademaster, who would in turn make sure that it made its way back to any other surviving relatives of the massacred farmers.
�So,� Damien asked after he had finished rummaging through the dead orcs pockets and not finding anything at all. �Are we going to continue on towards the city for a while, or do you think we should just take over their fire and stay here for the night?�
Travis looked up into the sky and studied the slowly setting sun for a moment before he answered. �No, we�ll continue on for a while longer, who knows what type of predators the smell of all this blood and cooked meat might draw out of the woods and I�d rather not spend the whole night fighting and chasing off wild animals, when we could be sleeping.�
Damien saw the wisdom in the other mans words and nodded. Then three went back into the woods, retrieved their mounts from where they had hidden them out of view from the orcs and started off again.
Two hours later as the sun was starting to sink below the wood line Travis held up his hand in a small clearing next to a river and announced, �Here would be a good place to spend the night.�
All three dismounted and in following the same daily ritual that they had been using for the past week, Damien and Kendle headed off into the woods to gather firewood while Travis went about unpacking their gear, checking out the horses and setting up the camp.
�How long Kendle,� Damien asked once they were in the woods and well away from Travis, �do you think it will take us tomorrow, before we reach the city?�
�If we leave early enough in the morning and keep at it we should be able to make it by midday,� the dwarf answered as he bent over and picked a dead branch up off of the ground and stuck it with the others he had gathered.
�Should be just in time then for the beginning of the harvest festival?�
�Yes and it should be a good one with you returning from your long absence,� Kendle answered, �I�m sure your father prepared some special events to mark your homecoming. Why are you asking, did you have any other plans? I would have thought,� said the dwarf eyeing him questioningly, �that you would be entering in some of the competitions. Maybe like the staff or something, eager to try out your new battlemage skills against some adults, rather than just children?�
Before he had left for Westlake, he had been one of the cities finest children with his staff and had won several competitions using it during the festival times.
�I don�t know� maybe,� answered Damien, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly, trying to appear disinterested. It wasn�t time yet to let Kendle or Travis know about his real plans for the festival. As disinterested as he was trying to appear, he was very much awaiting the tournaments but not just in the staff. He had other plans for competing, unknown to both the dwarf and Travis and also hopefully his father.
Kendle, knowing him, eyed him, this time a slightly suspicious look crossed his round ruddy bearded face, �I�ve never known you to shy away from any chance Damien at showing how good you are at something. I mean you look like you could hold your own and you have always been exceptionally good with your staff. As a child you were better than many adults I know with the exception of maybe Abraim, your father�s chamberlain.�
Kendle was right of course. Damien knew the dwarf was aware of how rigorous the training was for battlemages and he could indeed hold his own. He intended on showing everybody that in the tournament of cities championships. He was officially representing Westlake as their city champion, but he hoped no one in his family would find out. They were concerned of the possibility of severe injury or that he might be accidentally killed.
Killings in the tournaments were actually few and far between, but accidents did occur sometimes and before the clerics on duty at the tournaments could heal the unlucky contestant, they died. Damien had no intention of letting anyone stop him from competing this year. He should have competed in the past three events but he wasn�t allowed while enrolled in the academe. This year he wasn�t enrolled in the academe any longer and it was being held in his home city. Unbeknownst to anyone in Castlekeep, he was favored to win it all. There was no way he wasn�t going to compete.
Turning away from Kendle so that the dwarf couldn�t see his face, he said. �Come on, we have to get this firewood back to Travis before he misses us.� then he set off, back in the direction of their camp with the dwarf trailing along behind him wondering what it was that Damien wasn�t telling him.
