Tamarla enters my chambers in the early hours of the morning. Our relationship is unofficial, but hardly a secret. She slips out of her clothes and into my bed.

  ‘Nervous?’ she asks with a smile.

  ‘Only a fool wouldn’t be.’

  ‘Do you have an inkling of what you’ll get?’

  ‘None of us know what the tree gives us before the ceremony.’

  ‘Come on, you must have a guess. Your inheritance is supposed to be a reflection of who you are.’

  ‘It’s considered inappropriate to speculate,’ I say.

  She throws me a look to say she doesn’t believe me for a moment. She’s right, of course. I have thought of little else for the last few months and it has rarely been far from my thoughts since I was a child. My father inherited the power to control the elements. He can knock the enemy out of the sky with a lightening bolt. My uncle can commune with the dead. The favourite wager in the hostelries of the town is that I will be a great warrior, able to dispense with armies of the enemy single-handed. I confess, I share this desire.

  Please, my ancestors, do not give me something bookish like a gift for languages or to read another’s thoughts.

  ‘We’ll know soon enough,’ I tell Tamarla. ‘In just a few hours.’

  ‘Then we have a little time,’ she says, taking my hand and tugging me towards my bedroom.

  Tamarla and I have been bedfellows since we were teenagers, but we have never been betrothed. I have spilled my seed with as many girls as she has had lads, but we always return to one another. There is always talk that we will marry. This would hardly be an ordeal, but we will never be in love. She’s skilled in the bedroom. She has tricks that lead me to the brink and others that keep me there, at least until she has satisfied herself.

  She sits astride me, naked. After guiding my cock into her, she pleases herself with her fingers. She likes eye contact in bed, particularly when she takes me in her mouth, but at the end, when she is focussed on her own pleasure, she closes her eyes and forgets me, lost in whatever thoughts and fantasies are required to take her where she needs to go. I don’t begrudge her this. To be honest, I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to watch her unobserved. How her long, black hair falls around her shoulders. How she frowns in concentration as she gets close. I caress her small, brown breasts. Enjoy the feel of her narrow, boyish hips. The contrast of my pale skin against hers. She screws up her face as she climaxes. I feel her body shudder and then relax around me. She collapses on top of me and kisses me, grinning. ‘You want me to finish you off?’

  Suspecting satisfaction will elude me, I tell her that we can celebrate properly tonight. Gently lifting her off me, I pad naked to my private bathroom. She follows, unabashed by her nakedness.

  The shower spurts rudely before resolving into a steady spray. I wait for the warm water to find its way down from the boilers on the roof. The new copper pipes are incongruous against the ancient house. They clank and shudder, straining against the screws that have created tiny fractures in the elegantly painted tiles.

  Tamarla joins me when the water warms. She soaps me, play acting a wife of old. ‘My mother is telling everyone who’ll listen that you will be a greater warrior than your father.’

  ‘At least it’ll stop her speculating on our impending engagement.’

  ‘Would it be so bad?’

  It occurs to me that perhaps Tamarla’s mother has sent her daughter to my apartments to wheedle a marriage proposal from me. Or perhaps Tamarla has come of her own volition with the same objective. My father would be pleased by the union. Her family are already connected to ours through marriage. Her cousin and one of mine produced a daughter who glimpses the future in her dreams. She sits on the war council, advising my mother on strategy. And whilst both Tamarla and her parents were born here in the citadel, they are related to the ruling family in northern Alkebu-lan. Our marriage would only strengthen a trading alliance that is vital for the war.

  ‘Are you proposing to me?’ I ask, with smile.

  ‘Would you say yes if I did?’

  I grin, but do not answer. Instead, I put my head under the shower and wash the soap from my hair.

  After she leaves, I pull on some training fatigues, slip from my apartment and down through the house which is still quiet at this early hour. My extended family, secretive and eccentric by nature, keep their own hours, but few rise before the sun. I descend the servants’ staircases, through the kitchens, which are bustling with life. A lifetime’s military training has taught me to move silently. The morning staff rarely notice me, when they do, they pause, head bowed respectfully and wait for me to pass.

  There is little left of the original grounds of the house. The gardens have been replaced by a huddle of a town, whose population shelter behind the great walls built in the first years of the war. The house, a coy name for what is a mansion, has become a citadel, having been rebuilt and extended out of military necessity, with little concession for aesthetics. The spires of the towers - one for each wing - look down upon the utilitarian brick extensions. I leave the shadow of the house and run through the market square, empty at this hour. The stalls just skeletal frames, awaiting the vendors and their produce. The Commoners’ Gate looms above me. The Night Watch have yet to be relieved. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Gate Captain assign two guardsmen who have stood sentry all night to accompany me on my run. They fall in a few yards behind me without complaint, clanking in their metal armour and boots. Their breath becomes more laboured as we cross the ashen plain outside the walls, and slip under the canopy of the dead forest. The dry earth softens until it dissolves into grey sand, all the life long since drawn out of it. The barren trunks of the trees are black, fallen branches disintegrate under my leather soled boots. The forest is evidence and legacy of my ancestors’ power.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Today I will join their ranks and inherit that power myself.

  I accelerate away from the night guard panting behind me, ducking under thick branches and through smaller ones that offer no resistance but explode silently into dust. The heavy footfalls of the night guard recede and I relax into a blissful solitude. For a few minutes there is only the forest, the sand grinding beneath my feet, the rhythm of my breath. I increase my speed, tearing through the insubstantial forest, breaking low branches on my chest, only dodging the gnarled dead trunks.

  I’m moving so quickly that I have tripped over the enemy before I am aware of it. The top of my foot connects with something hard and I sprawl face first in the earth. My mouth is full of the warm ashes of a recent fire. I am on my feet in a second, but so is the creature I tripped over. And its two companions.

  Elves.

  There are three of them. Juveniles by the look of them. They are all taller than me. Their pale green skin is the only colour in the forest. Their bodies are sinewy and slender. Their faces uniformly beautiful, only disfigured by their long tapered ears. They wear tightly woven fabric stained in the uneven colours of a forest. Thick belts gather at their narrow waists, heavy leather boots on their feet. Two leap to their feet but do not immediately adopt fighting stances - fast, but inexperienced. Dare I hope untrained? The third, the one I tripped over, is on its hands and knees, winded. Not trained then.

  This gives me reason to hope, but not much. Any one of them could rip my arm out of its socket. They are already drawing their weapons. I reach for my sword and remember it’s still on the table in my apartments. I am unarmed and outnumbered.

  Strategy will be key here, if I hope to survive.

  My training kicks in. My breath steadies. My senses focus. Time slows. I become aware of everything around me and within me. The bitter sand of the forest in my mouth, grinding between my teeth, aggravating a small cut from a burnt crust at the feast last night. The narrow face of the enemy in front of me, almond shaped eyes full of hatred, narrow lips curled in a snarl. Its companion, closer to me, is already bringing its weapon to bear. The weapons are long with a dull metal shaft, like a crossbow, but there is neither bolt nor bow. Their fingers tighten on triggers. I know these weapons. They are unmatched by anything we have. The enemy’s power is in their armoury, not in themselves. And that power is lethal. But because it is not within them, it can be taken from them and used against them.

  I have seconds to act.

  I dive on the enemy nearest to me before it can aim its weapon. Like its comrades, it is wearing a sleeveless jerkin of olive green, a few shades darker than its skin. I grab it by the collar, the unfamiliar material is tightly woven and strong. Using its weight against it, I twist its body, so that it falls in front of me at the exact moment its comrade fires.

  The air is filled with a deafening roar. I have to fight the urge to cover my ears. My hands are still on the creature’s jerkin. I stagger back as the invisible projectiles slam into its back. For a moment, our faces are pressed up against one another. I see its surprise at its own death. It is young, its skin luminous. I can almost smell the lush woods of its homeland. Awareness fades from its eyes. For all the songs sung at feasts of the glory of war, there is no satisfaction for me.

  ‘Clisteoeska!’ Its companion yells, voice scratchy with emotion, barely able to conceive that it has just shot its friend

  They are scarcely more than children.

  The corpse in my arms becomes gravity’s plaything, falling on me like a spent lover. As we drop, I slide my hand down its arm, until I find the long finger still caught in the trigger guard of its weapon. I close my hand around it as we slam into the ground. Its dead weight knocks the breath out of me. My life depends on the sentimentality of its comrade. A trained soldier would fire through his dead companion to finish me. But these are not trained soldiers, they are religious zealots manipulated by ideologies of fraternity and nationalism. Let us hope it loved its brother.

  ‘Clisteoeska?’ it calls again, as it enters my line of sight. Looking down on me, its weapon loose in its young hands, still in denial of the consequences of its own actions. Still hoping that its friend breathes.

  I raise the weapon in dead Clisteoska’s arm, feel the sprung tension of the trigger and squeeze.

  Clisteoska’s weapon explodes into life. I do not see the projectiles which spray like hail through the air, but their consequence is devastating. They rip through the face of the enemy standing over me, flaying skin from bone. Its cheek and eye are gone, exposing clenched teeth and white jawbone. Then it is falling backwards to the ground. The monochrome forest now adds blood red to the pale, green palate of their skin. The force of the weapon slams my arm to the ground. The stench of oil and carbon assaults my nostrils. These weapons are an abomination.

  There is one enemy left. Better odds. But my position is undeniably weak. I try to heave the dead elf off my chest. Its sinewy shoulders are dense muscle, its narrow frame deceptively heavy. I can’t achieve sufficient momentum and it rolls back on top of me, pinning me to the petrified forest floor.

  Failure may have cost me my life.

  I try again, but having lost the advantage, I am an easy target. I roll the corpse off me, leap to my feet, expecting the last enemy to pick me off. I am surprised to be alive as I bring the stolen weapon to bear on the enemy, only then do I realise why it has not fired.

  It is praying. A mumbled dialect unknown to me. There is sweat on its brow, fear in its eyes, but not of me. It’s frightened of what it is about to do. Like its comrades, it is dressed for battle. Boots and forest fatigues. But unlike them it wears a vest weighted with a dozen small cylinders, thin cables lead to a small device it grips in its trembling hand. Its pale green thumb depressing a scarlet protrusion on the device’s surface. I’ve never seen one of these weapons, those who do rarely live to tell the tale, but I know what will happen if the elf releases its thumb. The walls of our citadels are scarred with their devastation. Our market places cluttered with amputees begging for morsels because of them. Our public celebrations tainted by the unease that an elf with such a device could be in our midst.

  I could launch myself at it, but there is a body’s length between us. More than enough time for it to relax its thumb. How far are the night guard behind me? When those tired, lumbering oafs come crashing through the trees, I won’t have to worry about the ceremony today.

  The ceremony! That’s why it’s here. How could I have been so stupid? The ceremony is the perfect target. My entire family will be there. The Warlock King and his heir. I am its target. Does it recognise me standing in front of it in sweaty training fatigues? Does it know me without my finery? Its voice quickens, the prayer building to its close. Its young face creases in fear as it contemplates what it must do.