My attempt at Fantasy

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The title was going to be - "My first, and probably last, attempt at writing Fantasy" but i shortened it for layouts sake.

Ok i started this and though i liked how i started it, and i had the end worked out before the beginning, but i had nothing good for the middle. I might finish it one day but i doubt it.


The arrow thunked into the bulls-eye of the target. The archer smiled, it was his third bulls-eye in as many arrows. He reached down and drew another arrow from the leather quiver he’d rested against a bundle of hay. Notching the arrow to the string of his majestic bow, nearly a metre in length. The muscles along his forearm convulsed as he drew back the string and brought the bow up, resting the arrow by his cheek. Sighting down the tip of the arrow he concentrated on the centre of the target. He slowed his breathing till the arrow tip stayed perfectly still. He let the string go and the arrow flew as straight as, well as straight as an arrow because that’s what it was. The arrow smacked into the target, giving this archer his fourth perfect bull in a row.

As the archer drew another arrow from his quiver and began to notch it a voice called out to him, “Yose!”
Yose slid the arrow back into his quiver before looking to see who had called him. He turned round and saw his friend, Tom, leaning against a freshly made hay-stack about ten yards away. Yose gathered up his quiver and his bow as he walked towards his friend,
“Tom! Though it’s good to see you I wish you could have waited a few minutes more, I was on a roll”
“Yes, I know” said Tom smirking, “that’s precisely why I interrupted you”.
“Ah” growled Yose, “Well despite your twisted sense of humour it is good to see you, my friend. I thought you and your dad weren’t due back for another month or so I heard. How goes the travelling and trading with your dad?”
“It’s still good though something seems to be on pa’s mind, though I don’t know what. You heard right though, we weren’t due back for nearly another month but whatever it is that’s on pa’s mind, it made him turn us right ‘round and come back to merry ol’ Rion. Though it is good to be home again, it’s a right shame that we turned round when we did there were three villages, and Thaarnay, we were due to pass through and we always profit highly in all. Well it’s good to see you again anyway. Still the best archer in Rion?”
“Aye” replied Yose with a proud grin on his face, “Though there’s a couple new fellers who look to be getting pretty good. But I’ll still win the tournament this year, same as the last three years. Well at-least I will if I’m allowed to practice my skill without interruptions from smug rascals like you” said Yose jokingly.
Tom laughed, “Rascal? Me? Never!” he said, faking indignation, “Anyway I’m not the one all the mothers tell their daughters to stay away from”.
Yose looked embarrassed, “I still don’t know how all the rumour about me started, though I do have an idea” he looked sternly at Tom as he said these last words.
Tom averted his grinning face, thought for a second, turned back with a plain face across his face and said “Well it’s not my fault that you’ve got a good bow”.
Yose and Tom stared at each other for a few seconds before both laughing and clapping each other on the back.
“You don’t ever change!” said Yose.
“Neither do you” replied Tom.

As the two friends stood there laughing and clapping each other on the back they would have made a curious sight. Yose was tall, thickly built, with his longbow and quiver over his broad shoulders. He had long dark hair that was closer to a mane round his neck than to hair. Tom on the other hand wasn’t short or particularly skinny by normal standards but next to Yose he seemed like a scarecrow standing beside a giant. Tom had fair hair that didn’t even reach his neck. Seen next to each other a casual onlooker would have thought Yose to be by far the elder, whereas in fact it was the other way round; though only by a matter of a month or two.

“So anything interesting happened in Rion while I’ve been gone?” Tom asked, “not that anything interesting happens here” he added as an afterthought.
Yose, slightly offended, replied “Well I suppose to one so travelled as you, events in Rion must seem dull. So I won’t tell you about Lylia”
Tom’s eyes lit up at the mention of Lylia’s name. He tried to sound casual but couldn’t keep the embarrassment from his voice, “What about Lylia?”
“Oh nothing interesting, since nothing interesting happens in Rion, or so you said” retorted Yose.
“Ah come on Yose! You know what she means to me, even if she doesn’t. So please tell me whatever it is about her that you know” Tom burst out.

Tom had first met Lylia six years ago, when he’d been fourteen. However what with travelling and trading with his dad he didn’t see her nearly as often as he wished, and it was for this reason that only Yose knew how his friend felt for Lylia. Tom had tried to tell her two winters ago, when the snow had been too bad for his dad and him to travel, but had got embarrassed and ran out into the snow. He almost ended up dead had it not been for Yose out hunting with his bow and arrow. Yose had found his friend almost frozen into the side of tree he’d wept against. He’d carried Tom back to his house and sat him by the fire till he warmed and thawed out. It was later that night that Tom had told Yose how he felt about Lylia.

Yose had known Tom for most of his life, and had been good friends with him since they were both eight, nearly twelve years ago. While Yose had spent his whole life in the small village of Rion, Tom had spent most of his life travelling with his father, they sold everything from small needles for the woman to sew with up to mining and farming equipment for the villagers who lived within the near area of Rion. They normally set out in the middle spring, near the beginning of March most years and travelled north to the mining villages of Curak and Furnor that mined the mountains of Curak and Furnora, respectively. That journey took most of March, in good weather, and after trading in the two villages Tom and his father, Samuel Smithsun, rode their little trading caravan – bearing the sign “Smithsun and Son, General Traders” along one side – west many long miles passing through the small hamlets, along the way, till they reached the bustling border village of Staray. Staray was the largest village in the area between the mountain ranges of Curak and Furnora, in the north, and the river of Thaarnay, many miles to the south. Staray was the nearest village, almost big enough to be a town in fact, to the Star-eyes forest (from which it got it name) which was the main seperation point between the relative safe land that Rion, Curak, Furnor, and Staray, along with all the other closeknit hamlets and villages, the land called by some Haelamono – though no-one, living, remembers where the name come from.

According to the folklore the Haelamonoians (or, since they often found this a mouthful to say, simply Haelamons) told in their snug villages the lands to the west, past Staray and the Star-eyes forest, were filled with war, blood and death and that great armies of foul demons and beasts fought each other across the many leagues of tortured stone and ash. How much of this was true no Haelamon really knew, since none ever ventured to the west, save some of the mercenaries that sometimes came across the river of Thaarnay from various lands to the south in search of gold and glory in the west. The western lands had many names associated with it, all evil and generally linked to one of the many stories told about it, one of the most commonly used being Skrix, or Skrax.

Though Tom and his father had been to Staray many times they had never seen any signs of the rumoured foul inhabitants of Skraz that were, supposedly, just on the other side of the Star-eyes forest. Yose’s great-granddad had in fact been born and grew up in Staray but had moved to Rion in his middle years along with his son, Yose’s granddad. Yose’s grandfather, who Yose had stayed with for many years after his father died when he was younger, had never mentioned seeing or hearing anyone see of any of the Skraz dwellers in the forest, and certainly not in Staray. Staray was always good for a profit whenever “Smithsun and Son” came to call. After trading in Staray, and after Tom’s father often picked up some news that almost inevitably turned to olds by the time they returned to Rion, they would travel directly south from Staray, passing through any settlings along the way, and would get back near Rion near the beginning of summer. It was at this point that Sam Smithsun had to decide whether to return to Rion and stay there for the summer and winter, or to continue on to the river town of Thaarnay, both the river and the town shared the same name. Usually they continued straight onto Thaarnay and spent the summer, and often the winter as well, lodged in Thaarnay before returning to Rion in the late winter – though there had been a few years where “Smithsun and Son” had simply skipped Rion and gone straight on trading again for another year. These years always saddened Tom who, much as he liked travelling and trading, knew that his heart would always lay in Rion. This year Sam Smithsun had gone in almost a straight line from Staray back to Rion, having originally intended to make a brief stay in Thaarnay, and the nearest villages, before returning to Rion before winter set in. Tom had been surprised that whatever it was that his father had heard or found out in Staray could have been so great to abandon the excellent profit that they made in the villages down by the Thaarnay river.


Comments? please?

BTW there is a start of a second chapter but it really isn't very good. I will post it perhaps if someone actually asks, though what i've posted already is terrible.

 

Well, this is in no way terrible, and a bit interesting. But I will nitpick on one or two things. First, please try to put spaces between each paragraph. Not major paragraphs or big ones, but every five lines or so. This, IMHO, makes it a lot easier for readers to focus on the text and remember what you're typing. Also, grammar could be improved, but I would like to see the rest of the story; do continue!

 

Here is the rest of the story. There will never be anymore however as i have found that although i can read fantasy and enjoy it, after about a page of writing this it was like pulling teeth.

Chapter 2
“War? Don’t be silly Sam, there’s no wars in Haelamon. There’s no armies for a start so how could there possibly be a war?”.

The speaker had an authoritative tone in his voice, and with good reason. He was the leader, though not by such a title, of Rion and it was his job to keep the peace in Rion. It wasn’t a hard job, Haelamon is one of the most peaceful places ever discovered, and Rion was a pleasant village with nothing that any would-be troublemakers desired. His formal title was nothing so grand as leader, mayor, or even chief, he was simply referred to as Serar, for it was his name. He had gotten the job of ‘keeping the peace’ by nothing more than his birth. Serar de Glodar was the last son of a long line of nobles that had lived in Rion for centuries; some said that it had been a Glodar that had built Rion, but some say that the sky will fall on the unwary so what does this tell us? As the only remaining Glodar he lived in the largest house in Rion and acted as a sort of diplomat and ambassador rolled into one. Although having descended from nobility in recent years the Glodar family were simply landowners and Serar worked on his own little farm along with a few others that he employed.

“Have you ever been to Staray?” This voice belonged to Sam Smithsun, Tom’s father. Sam had always travelled and, as those who traveller generally do, picked up news while he saw to his business and when he returned to Rion he brought back this news, and a tidy profit as well. While his news was generally inconsequential, such as there having been a cave-in in one of the mines delving into Furnor a few years back or that down in Thaarnay a new drinking house had been built and they had ale so strong that “You’ll be in the gutter for days” or some other gleaned information. All this information which was seemingly inconsequent to everyday villagers was gold-dust to the merchants and traders coming from the south. These merchants who were looking for the best ale, the most reliable mines, the strongest timber, they all needed to know something and Smithsun and Son supplied them all; there profit came as much from information as it did from trading goods.

“What are you on about now? I’ve never gone more than a few score miles from Rion, and Staray is much further than that, you know that”. Serar scratched his thick black beard with pudgy fingers as he puzzled over Sam’s question that seemed so very out of place compared to his talk of war and armies that he’d been telling him about for the past half hour.

“So you have not been to Staray? But you know that the Star-eyes forest is one of the gaps between Haelamon and the Skrix?”
Serar nodded his knowledge of this fact and opened his mouth to speak, “B-“ but was interrupted.

“And do you know how many southern mercenaries and soldiers pass through Staray and the forest into the Skrix every year?”
“Well I don’t know but I’d say”, Serar paused to consider, “A hundred?”
“More” said Sam, shaking his head.
“Two, three?” hazarded Serar.
Sam shook his head.
“Five?”
Sam nodded.
“Five hundred? That’s a lot more than I’d have thought” Serar said.
“No, not five hundred. Five thousand. Five thousand mercenaries and soldiers from the south, across the Thaarnay river and beyond. That is how many pass into the Skrix every year, and that is how many it takes to hold back the hellish armies of the Skrix.” Sam emphasised the enormity of what no-one in Rion, or anywhere else in Haelamon, save Staray, would ever have imagined.

 

Great, simply great! Keep posting stories.