The Ranger King: Book Three of the Exciting New Coming of Age Epic Fantasy Series, The Crafter Chronicles by Matthew B. Berg

Author:Matthew B. Berg [Berg, Matthew B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Woodfall Press
Published: 2023-08-09T22:00:00+00:00

The elf queen stood and moved over to touch Legorel’s shoulder. He was seated in a chair with no armrests, playing his lute. He paused when they heard another scream, but with his wife’s touch, the tension left his body. And he began to play his lute again.

Kestrel, Aelric, and Rhonwen had split up and were now defending Aoilfhionn from among the branches of its legendary trees. It was so much safer than what they’d been doing earlier in the day that it almost seemed like a game: locating a cache of arrows, shooting them down at the enemy until they ran out, and then moving on to the next cache. Kestrel wasn’t sure if the enemy didn’t care to take the risk or if they had been explicitly ordered not to, but very few of them made it up into the trees.

The problem with this game was that they would inevitably run out of arrows before the enemy ran out of soldiers who were prepared to sacrifice their lives. They just kept coming. In wave after wave, they moved through the forest north of Aoilfhionn. For every ten or more of these steadfast soldiers who fell, it was true that perhaps only a single elf defender lost their life. Even so, the elves were being pushed back toward the center of Aoilfhionn.

A scream sounded nearby. But Kestrel was somewhat turned around from his running from cache to cache. It took him a moment to realize that he was close to the elven council chamber. He guessed that was where the scream had come from, and he raced over to help.

He mounted the platform where the council gathered, to discover that he was too late. The enemy had already moved on. And four dead elders lay at his feet. Three silver-haired women and one man.

Fools!

He and Rhonwen had tried to convince them to leave, tried to get them to accept that the enemy would show no mercy and that fighting back was their only recourse. But they had been so stubborn.

As the word stubborn rose to his mind, Kestrel wondered how his father was doing back home. Was he still alive? He was stubborn too. But at least he was Kestrel’s kind of stubborn. A man who would not sell his life cheaply but who would sacrifice himself to save even a single member of his extended clan or country.

He hoped his father was well. The man had always seemed as implacable as a boulder rolling downhill, but this enemy was like nothing they had ever faced before. This army was of a nature and scale to strike fear in Kestrel’s heart. He could admit that to himself, even if he would never tell it to another soul.

Another scream sounded nearby. And it had a familiar tone.

The queen? Her bower was not far away.

Kestrel raced along the sturdy vines that made up one of the major walkways of the elven city, and he burst into the queen’s chamber.

And he drew up short.

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