Hafhorn - A Forger Elf

Wake up, boy! It’s 4 AM, time for work. My head thumping with a headache as he keeps shouting. I shouldn’t have stayed up and read all night about tales of magic and miracles. And then you wonder why I’d want to leave this hell. He starts laughing. This is heaven, my boy. You wake up erry mornin’ to work and that’s how it always been for us elves. Be it dark, blood, fairy or human elf, we all work wherever we are. That’s how they respect us. We are immortal beings that can do more than anyone. Unlike dwarves that sit on the top of their mountains smoking pipe and making laws, we have to do what is needed for this world to be the way it is. I sigh as his morning routine as he likes to remind me of our ways for forever. All I hear is that you don’t know better, which makes this hell. As I put my pants on he comes grabs me by the silk shirt and pull me to his eye level. We live forever. We’re old as the dirt we step on. We know everything that ever was and we make everything that will ever be. It is a privilege no one else has. Not the goblins, not the sapiens, or any other race on this face or under it that can do what we do. He gently lets me back down. Be grateful. You could be dying fighting stupid wars or dying of old age and achieving nothing. You’re the smartest elf I met, and I can’t believe you’re also my son. So quit your yappin’ and let’s get working. We got a big one today…

Manorn, Hafhorn, y’all are late. Why do they all love screaming so much? The goblin nobility sent us a letter with a request, he says as hands it to me. Hafhorn, read it. What do they want? I sigh as my eyes gloss over the paper. They want us to make for them farming equipment. 100 plows and 100 cultivators, whatever that means. If we want the job, we need to send back word with however much gold we want for the job. They say here that if we accept, they’ll send half the gold we ask for with some nomad sapiens. Father starts laughing as he yanks the letter from my hands. Botin, what do you think? Two hundred complex machines for the goblin royalty and their settlement. How much work and gold we gonna need for this? Botin scratches his head. We’ll have to check whatever iron ore, coal and rest of the stuff we have. We might need to order some from one of the fairies and their mines. So, I’ll go check on that. Hafhorn, better be prepared to write that letter back, he says as he leaves laughing. I hate you for giving me this name. Father starts laughing. Why couldn’t you give me another name? Like Walkorn, Writhorn, Workorn, why Hafhorn? He continues to laugh. Because you’re no a Fulhorn like your grandpa used to be, and you’re not manly enough to be like your father. You’re Hafhorn, your own wonderful being. Now let’s go… We have work to do. The forges don’t light themselves up on their own.

There’s only a handful of us, fully literate elves and they call us engineers. Which means that the rest are what the dwarves call functionally illiterate. And that makes me wish I was somewhere else doing something else. Whether it would be learning magic of any kind, philosophy with the dwarves on top a mountain or roaming the earth with the sapiens, living as a nomadic species. It all feels so wasteful when you are immortal to do the same thing over and over again without an end in sight. Just as that thought flies through my brain one of the forges explodes. The screams of terrified elves echo through the forests as I rush through the trees from one for to the one that went up in flames. Under molten steel, burnt elves now died after millennia of living. Were lucky enough to escape the steel only to be cut in twain by pieces of metal flung from the furnace. They let the pressure build up too much and I had warned them about this. Botin, what happened? He looks at me. Hafhorn, you are here? Then that means your father… I look across the facility, on a wall pinned by a piece of metal through his head. Father! Botin holds me back. There’s nothing you can do! You can’t bring him back. There’s no potion that heals anything like that. I push him off. No! But there’s magic! Necromancy. I’mma learn it and I’mma bring him and those you can salvage back to life! So, don’t burry ‘em! I hate being right…

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The Falling Tower: The Bloody Anthologies of London - The Pilot Program 2020

Welcome to The Pilot Program 2020 for the month of May.

If you don’t know how The Pilot Program Works, it’s quite simple. You read, like, comment and share the short story you like and thus casting your vote on which short story you want me to turn into a 52 long short story series for the next year. And this month we have a retelling of The Falling Tower from last year, but of course, better written and more interesting. Enjoy.

In a house in the parish of Saint Michael there’s a dead man, the sheriff, the coroner, the jury and I. ‘Twas Wednesday morning ‘ere after Lady Day, when I got caught in front of the house Walter of Moden, which he had leased from Geoffrey de Warde, by a man that introduced himself as John Cotton, saying he’s the sheriff. He had asked me if I knew who lived there. Without a thought I nodded. He then said to me to join him inside. There, he introduced me to Benet of Fulham, the coroner who helped ‘im investigate the matter at hand. He then asked me if I know where Walter be at. I told him that I couldn’t tell ‘im since I don’t know which he was referring to. And ‘cause all I knew, was everything that had happened that Sunday. The sheriff looked at me up and down, from close and from afar. He then turned to the coroner and told ‘im to tell me everything he knew. After telling me about how the man had died, what Benedict de Warde, Geoffrey the Brewer and Robert of Moden had said to ‘im. The sheriff told Benet to take out his bible and have me swear in front of the jury on God. And so I did…

“I swear to God, I’m ‘ere to do justice. ‘Cause I ‘member it clearly, the previous Sunday, ‘cause I, Walter de Ardene, an’ ma wife carried ‘im to the St. Michael’s lane, there we sat him down, stood all night with ‘im. These here folk need to know what Walter of Benington and his posse did. You all did not come ‘ere from three neighboring wards just fo’ a walk. ‘Twas them there at the alehouse of Gilbert of Morden, where they’d come to drink four gallons of beer. Him and seventeen other men. They’d come with stones, knives, swords and other weapons, wanting to kidnap poor Emma. That girl already lost ‘er father, Robert Pourte, not too long ago. Then Gilbert, a simple, honest stockfish-monger, took ‘er under his arm to protectect ‘er. Knowin’ that such worms would crawl out of these ‘ere earth to come and pray on the young lady. And right he was. These folk wanted to kidnap and rape ‘er, from what ma wife, Christina, told me after. Mabel, Gilbert’s wife, and Geoffrey, ‘is brewer, after they figured out what they wanted, they had asked ‘em to leave. But they told ‘em that’d remain to spend they money however they like, welcome or unwelcome, ‘tis a public space. Now, this is where the trouble started…

From what I understand. Then Mabel took Emma upstairs, then Walter of Benington and his friends started getting frustrated and angry from waitin’ to see if she came back down. Before long they started creating commotion, assaulting the people living in that ‘ere house and Robert and Geoffrey too. ‘Twas a mess, you can only imagine what eighteen of ‘em armed people can do to a place like that on a Sunday, where everyone just sitting in piece drinking after church. I mean. on the Lord’s day to do that there? Shame. Shame, I tell you. Somehow, they struck Robert on his head with stones in all that commotion. Here’s where we came in, ‘cause Robert fled into High Street raisin’ the hue, crying, screaming with Walter racin’ after ‘im with a knife and a stiletto in his hands, tryin’ to kill the poor bastard. Benedict de Warde and some other neighbors got there first, tryin’ to calm ‘em down, but you already know that this ain’t the end. Cause the men started fightin’ in mid street and Walter chased after Benedict tryin’ to kill ‘im too, the mad lad lost it at that point. So, you know, Benedict was bare handed… He had to find something to defend himself with. So he took some ballstave thing from a stranger in the street. And Walter threw himself at Benedict, tryin’ to stab ‘im and shouting. A crowd drew itself at ‘em windows and doors to see what was happening. ‘Twas then we got ‘ere, and just as we did, Benedict raised his hands and he laid one onto Walter so hard, that the bastard fell down to the ground at the entrance of the lane. Once the mad lad was down, ‘twas quite easy to get the rest of ‘em to calm down. Ma wife then came too, and until they left, she told me the whole story. And after they all had left, me and my wife carried Walter into the lane, by the fountain, where we stood on the pavement with ‘im ‘till morning. The next day after he laid by St. Michael’s lane, we took ‘im to Geoffrey’s house. ‘Twas there he died instantly. Now, here’s the thing, I don’t know how he died there, ‘cause I went out to wash my hands of blood and left with Christina by ma hand. And ‘twas the last day we saw both Benedict de Warde and Walter of Moden too. But, at least I can say that at least no one was raped, abducted or killed, I mean, besides Walter here. But then again, he started it.”

And all ‘twas ereyesterday, but they didn’t want to let me go, saying that I should’ve had come and told them ‘bout what had happened. I told ‘em that all I did was what anyone with a decent heart would do and help a wounded man. Luckily the sheriff believed in me, after I told them everything that had happened that Sunday. So then after, the jury had given the sentence and the sheriff told ‘em to arrest Benedict when they find him in their bailiwick. But from what I heard, the jurors, the day after, said that he had absconded, whatever that means. And they can’t find ‘im, ‘cause he had no goods or chattels, so ‘em people now tryin’ to find if someone is hidin’ ‘im. And all this happened in the past seven days. Can you imagine what happens ‘ere in London every single day? And ‘em say that we civilized now in the year of our lord 1325.

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