The Last War was fought with Weapons Unimaginable.
Knighthood
This one will be fought with sticks and stones.
Forword :
This one has been a long time in coming, I have to admit. This novel has been kicking around my hard drive for a while now and it was time to finish it up and put it out there. This pretty much clears out my backlog and all my older works (aside from one cheesy Anne Rice type Vampire novel that is better left lost) have now been made available.
Knighthood actually ties into some of my other novels in that it exists as part of the backstory of their universe. I’m sure that the names within will tip off readers to at least two of those books, and the nature of the world should reveal the third with only a very small amount of thought. If you have troubles working it out… well, stay tuned. More will be coming in this larger universe, whether connected directly or otherwise.
About the Author : Evan Currie is a Canadian author of science fiction and fantasy novels whose work has been translated into multiple languages and sold around the world. Best known for his military science fiction series’ Odyssey One and On Silver Wings, Evan has also dabbled in far flung Space Fantasy like Heirs of Empire and steampunk-ish alt-history among other worlds.
Sign up to Evan’s mailing list (and get a free short novella based in the Silver Wings universe) here, or alternatively you can also follow him here :
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The name is Nimue.
I’ve been alive, for want of a better word, for the better part of eternity. I existed when Eden was still the domain of God, and when the fires of creation were young and blazed with power unmatched before or since. I am neither God, nor angel, nor goddess. I was created by the Blessed, before they forsook and were forsaken.
One could consider me to be a librarian, of sorts. The holder of the sacred texts, the keeper of histories…the really great bard with all the cool stories. I have other functions, but this is the one I identify with, the one that defines who I am.
So, let’s go with that for the moment, shall we?
In all of creation, some stories rise above the others. They become the fodder for a thousand retellings, changing every time, until the details are unrecognizable from the original. The details, however, rarely matter, as such things go. The intent of the story endures.
In times of great horror and immense despair…heroes are born.
It is always darkest…just before the dawn.
Chapter 1
The countryside was a smoking ruin as far as anyone could travel, but of course that wasn’t more than a few days in any given direction in those times. It was a desert by any name, with more dust than sand, but very little in the way of life to be found.
Yet even in the most inhospitable of places, you may find the least likely of things.
“Ela!” A woman’s concerned yell echoed around the barren fields and rocky outcroppings that surrounded the small shack. “Where are you, child!?”
“I’m here, Momma!” A small girl rose from the rocks, grinning as she played with the small carved doll that she carried everywhere she went.
Her mother glared up at the small child’s dirty face and dirt-covered blonde hair. “Ela! How many times have I told you not to play where I can’t see you!?”
“I’m sorry, Momma...” The child shrugged as she nimbly hopped up and over the rock she was standing behind, then slid to the ground and ran to her mother. “I just wanted to play in the rocks...”
The mother picked her little girl up and swung her around, causing the child to giggle gleefully as her feet were swept out behind her. “Ah, Ela, child...you know how much I worry... The monsters could be by this way again... What would I do if I lost you, child? What would I do?”
The girl hugged her mother tightly around the neck, holding as if to a lifeline. “I’m sorry, Momma... Don’t let the monsters get me!”
The older woman smiled sadly. “I’ll never let that happen, child...but you have to help me too... You have to do what I say, so that I can protect you. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay, Momma.”
The mother put the girl down and took her tiny hand, turning back to the old shack that was a short distance off. She glanced down to the little girl by her side and pursed her lips in an amused, yet annoyed, look as her voice snapped with a crisp sternness, “Come on, Elanthielle Bosca Timone, let’s go home.”
The two walked along, the little girl occasionally skipping as the mother held her back from running.
*****
Life is a funny thing, one of the most pervasive of creations in all the realities. It extends from the lowest forms to some of the highest, always growing, never reaching that point of balance that the rest of the universe strives to achieve.
And always, always changing just when one least expects.
So it was night, two days after that mundane incident, when young Elan was woken by a crash from below. She got up slowly, creeping to the doorway, where she could see some light shining from the large room that made up the majority of the small home. Through the ramshackle old door she could hear voices.
The first was a man’s voice, thick with relief but laden with a background fatigue that Elan didn’t recognize. She had no experience to know the sound, a deep bass voice filled with a weary fatigue that hinted at more than it told.
“Marra...I’m so glad that you’re well,” the voice said. “Is she...?”
“Ela’s fine, Damasc.” Elan recognized that voice as her mother’s. “She’s asleep.”
“Thank the Creator of All,” the male voice said, some of the fatigue replaced with genuine relief.
Elan crept closer, trying to get a peek. She’d hadn’t seen a man since she was five. She could barely remember that they existed, even though her mother often spoke of days when there had been a man living here, in this very house. Someone called Father, her pappa. She tilted her head as she peered into the room, her eyes wide as she listened to the voices.
“I had thought you dead, Damasc...Dama...” her mother said in a voice that Elan recognized from when, over three moons back, she had hidden out in the fields and pretended to be gone.
She’d thought it would be a good joke, something funny to do. That was the first time she had ever seen her mother cry, so Ela had immediately shown herself and tried to comfort her mother. When her mother had seen her, she had cried even harder, falling to her knees and crumpling into a ball.
Elan had almost run away then for real, thinking that her mother cried because she had come back. Her mother had seen the look on her face though, and the tears that spilled from her eyes, and had stopped her before she could bolt. Elan would never forget the feeling when her mother held her so tightly, crying and saying her name over and over again.