Chapter Four

I finished proofreading and correcting chapter four today. It deals with Beleghír an aredhel noble. The aredhel are the eastern hill elves whose queen rules over all the so called mornedhel or as they call themselves theninedhel. Beleghír is leading a host of elves (aredhel and talathedhel), orcs, goblins and wargs south of the former enedhel (or nyrnedhel) forest.

At the start of the chapter he recalls his failure to take a city (Gwybodae's hometown) by storm early in the campaign and how that might reflect on his reputation. Then a goblin scout is brought to his tent and reports discovering a human army a few days to the south.

That evening, Beleghír holds council and decides to attack the humans despite their numerical superiority. Next comes the battle in dense forest, somewhat inspired from the battle at Teutoburg Forest. Though in this case, the aredhel field a well organised force as well as wild charging troops similar to the ancient Cheruskan warriors of Arminius. The humans on the other hand are a pretty mixed force of knights (12th century technology etc.), huscarls and levies. I went into some debt to describe the aredhel formations, followed by wild melee and finally a tour of the battle field after the elves' almost complete victory.

Following are two drawings of elven swords as used by the aredhel. You might recognise these as kopis or falcattas. The pommels are supposed to represent elven steeds (unicorns) the traditional mounts of elf queens.


After the battle, I show Beleghír arguing with one of his subordinates...

Finally, there is a brief siege of a medium human city (Erikskisket, where fiery Eirik's corpse (the legendary Nórdsk king) rested for serveral days before it was taken back to his homelands . The following is a sketch of castle Beleghír will order to be erected near this city. Note it's a variant of the motte and bailey type.


In a later chapter, Estiell (the protagonist) will arrive at this castle, which will still be under construction, and meet with Beleghír in the hopes of finding a settlement to end the ongoing war. Maybe I will use this location again in other chapters.

I also started preliminary work on chapter five today. Mostly I wrote a rough outline. This will most likely be a short chapter and I might even cut it at a later time as I'm not entirely certain the POV character will be needed.