Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,53

become quarry was innate after nearly five hundred years.

Uneasily, Jareth scanned the horizon. A feeling of alarm he couldn’t define set his nerves jangling, too. Turning, some instinct drawing him, he looked behind them, downwind, and something deep in his belly went cold.

Smoke rose and billowed behind them.

“Elon,” he said. “The fields behind us are on fire.”

With no lightning to set it ablaze there could only be one cause.

Men.

They all knew what it meant and what it was.

Jareth let out a breath.

Looking back, Elon’s mouth tightened.

It was a tactic of men from days gone by. Not surprisingly it was one of the few things men still remembered and held from the past, to be used specifically against Elves. For a people who lived in and among the trees there could be no other more elemental enemy, no more intrinsic and atavistic fear but fire. The fire behind them was meant to cut off their retreat.

Which meant the enemy was before them and probably surrounding them. Again, the same tactics used in the past.

No single man could best an Elf sword to sword as Elves were far stronger, had more endurance and were trained with sword and bow from childhood.

Not all men sought peace, for reasons of their own, and some few of those fought it violently, if not always openly.

In an effort to stop the Agreement assassins had been sent after Elon many times during the years he had spent negotiating the truce between men, Elves and Dwarves, or when he worked on Daran’s behalf as envoy to the lesser Kings.

Daran High King was no diplomat. Elon was.

He was called eloquent, persuasive - and he was that, too. His integrity was legendary, his honor unquestioned.

To stop him men resorted to these old tactics, the old strategies from the days when men and Elves had been at war. They were taking no chances. This was one of their last chances to stop him. Few things could defeat an armed and prepared Elf. One was overwhelming numbers. Another was fire.

Surrounded, with fire at their back to cut off their retreat and no recourse, there was no choice left except to fight their way out, if they were to survive.

For a moment despair and shame threatened to overwhelm Jareth.

His people had done this. His.

At least the Dwarves talked, negotiated. Not his own folk. They could hate without reason, just because someone was different, or for greed, for what another had that they didn’t. Others for fear, not knowing what change might bring, believing the rumors, the stories and the lies, the fear-mongering that spread like the wildfire behind them - burning good grain, needed grain, destroying, not building.

Despair wouldn’t help them though, and so Jareth refused to give in to it. Not everyone felt that way. Some truly did want peace. He was one of them.

If they pushed him to it he would fight for it, too.

He reached for power even as Colath reached for his bow.

A bowstring twanged and an arrow shot toward Colath from out of the wheat.

With a flick of his fingers, Jareth sent a flash of mage fire to intercept it even as Colath got his bow strung and fired an arrow toward the thatch from where the arrow had emerged.

“Wizard,” someone shouted, “this isn’t your fight!”

“It is now,” Jareth called back. “You just made it mine.”

A dust cloud - riders - approached from the road ahead as dozens of men burst from cover in the fields around them, some bearing bows and firing as the rest ran toward them, waving their swords and shouting.

Elon reached for his bow even as Colath did and sensed Jareth raising power. The bow wasn’t his best weapon, Colath bested him there but he was still better than any of these. Sheer numbers though would do for them, though.

Obedient to the commands of their riders’ knees, the three horses spun on their heels to face outward, putting them back to back.

A flash of mage fire torched an arrow in flight with a precision Elon had to admire.

Jareth’s oath as a wizard prevented him from using magic against a man without it. Even the thought of turning mage fire on a man - having him roast alive - was enough to make his gorge rise. But there wasn’t anything in his oath that prevented him from using it against their weapons.

Meanwhile, Elon and Colath targeted the archers with the lethal accuracy for which Elves were known as the swordsmen closed on them.

Even so, arrows