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In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the western spurs of the Wandering Hills, an elf stood one winter night
watching and listening, as though he waited for some beast of the darkness to come within range of his vision, and,
later, of his dragonbone longbow. But the game for whose presence he kept so keen an outlook was none that figured
in the Huntsmans' Almanac as lawful and proper for the chase; Vourdalak of Anderfels patrolled the dark forest in
quest of an elven enemy.
 
The forest lands of Anderfels were of wide extent and well stocked with game; the narrow strip of precipitous
woodland that lay on its outskirt was not remarkable for the game it harboured or for the archery practice it
afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of all its owner's territorial possessions. A famous trial, in the
days of his great-grandfather, had wrested it from the illegal possession of a neighbouring family of petty
landowners; the dispossessed party had never acquiesced in the judgement of the local Arl, and a long series of
poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the relationships between the families for four generations.
The neighbourly feud had grown into a personal one since Vourdalak had come to the head of his family; if there was
an elf in all of Thedas whom he detested and wished ill to more than any other it was Devoran Tarnwater, the
inheritor of the quarrel and the tireless game-snatcher and raider of the disputed border-forest. The feud might,
perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the personal ill-will of the two elves had not stood in the way; as
younglings they had thirsted for one another's blood, as adults each prayed that some misfortune might fall on the
other, and this wind-scourged winter night Vourdalak had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest,
not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to keep a lookout for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being afoot
from across the land boundary. The halla, which usually kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were
running like driven things tonight, and there was movement and unrest among the creatures that preferred to sleep
through the dark hours. Assuredly there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Vourdalak could guess the
quarter from whence it came.
 
He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of a hill, and wandered far
down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree-trunks and listening through
the whistling and skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight or sound of the
marauders. If only on this wild night, in this dark, lonely spot, he might come across Devoran Tarnwater, elf to
elf, with none to witness - that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts. And as he stepped round the trunk
of a huge oak he came face to face with the elf he sought.
 
The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a bow in his hands, each had hate
in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a liftime.
But an elf who has been brought up under the strict code of a restraining civilisation cannot easily bring himself
to shoot down his neighbour in cold blood and without word spoken, except for an offence against his hearth or
honour. And before the moment of hesitation had given way to action, a deed of nature's own violence overwhelmed
them both. A fierce shriek of the storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads, and before either
of them could leap aside a mass of falling oak tree had thundered down upon them. Vourdalak of Anderfels found
himself stretched on the ground, one arm numbly beneath him and the other held almost as helplessly in a tight
tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned beneath the fallen mass. His heavy leather hunting boots had
saved his feet from being crushed to pieces, but if his fractures were not as serious as they might have been, at
least it was evident that he could not move from his present position until someone came to release him. The
descending twigs had slashed the skin of his face, and he had to wink away some drops of blood from his eyelashes
before he could take in a general view of the disaster. At his side, so near that under ordinary circumstances he
could almost have touched him, lay Devoran Tarnwater, alive and struggling, but obviously as helplessly pinioned as
himself. All around them lay a thickly strewn wreckage of splintered branches and broken twigs.
 
Relief at being alive and his exasperation at his captive plight brought a strange medley of thankful prayers and
sharp curses to Vourdalak's lips. Devoran, who was nearly blinded by the blood which trickled across his angry
eyes, stopped his struggling for a moment to listen, and then gave a short, snarling laugh.
 
"So you're not killed, as you ought to be, but you're caught, anyway," he cried; "caught fast. Ho ho, what a fine
jest, Vourdalak of Anderfels snared in his stolen forest. There's real justice for you!"
 
And he laughed again, mockingly and savagely.
 
"I am caught in my own bloody forest land," retorted Vourdalak. "When my foresters come to release us you will
wish, perhaps, that you were in a better plight than caught poaching on a neighbour's land. Shame on you!"
 
Devoran was silent for a moment; then he answered quietly: "Are you sure that your foresters will find all that
much to release? I have my companions too, in the forest tonight, close behind me, and they will be here first and
do the releasing. When they drag me out from under these damned branches it won't need much clumsiness on their
part to roll this mass of trunk right over on the top of you. Your friends will find you dead under a fallen oak
tree. For form's sake I shall send my condolences to your family."
 
"It is a useful hint," said Vourdalak fiercely. "My foresters had orders to follow in ten minutes' time, seven of
which must have passed by already, and when they get me out - I will remember the hint. Only, as you have met your
death poaching on my lands, I don't think I can decently send any message of condolence to your family."
"Good," snarled Devoran, "good. We fight this quarrel out to the death, you and I and our foresters, with no cursed
interlopers to come between us. Death and damnation to you, Vourdalak of Anderfels."
"The same to you, Devoran Tarnwater, forest-thief, game-snatcher."
Both elves spoke with the bitterness of possible defeat before them, for each knew that it might be long before his
friends would seek him out or find him; it was a bare matter of chance which party would arrive first on the scene.
Both had now given up the useless struggle to free themselves from the mass of wood that had them pinned down.
Vourdalak limited his endeavours to an effort to bring his one partially free arm near enough to his waist to draw
his spirit-flask from his belt. Even when he had accomplished that operation it was long before he could manage the
unscrewing of the stopper or get any of the liquid down his throat. But what a Goddess-sent draught it seemed! It
was an open winter, and little snow had fallen as yet, hence the captives suffered less from the cold than might
have been the case at that season of the year; nevertheless, the spirit was warming and reviving to the wounded
elf, and he looked across with something like a throb of pity to where his enemy lay, just managing to keep the
groans of pain and weariness from crossing his lips.
"Could you reach this flask if I threw it over to you?" asked Vourdalak suddenly; "there is good brandy in it, and
we may as well be as comfortable as we can. Let us drink, even if tonight one of us is to die."
"No, I can scarcely see anything; there is so much blood caked round my eyes," said Devoran, "and in any case I
don't drink with an enemy."
Vourdalak was silent for a few minutes, and lay listening to the weary screeching of the wind. An idea was slowly
forming and growing in his brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked across at his fellow elf
who was fighting so grimly against pain and exhaustion. In the pain and langour that Vourdalak himself was feeling
the old fierce hatred seemed to be dying down.
"Neighbour," he said presently, "do as you please if your troops come first. It was a fair compact. But as for me,
I've changed my mind. If my foresters are the first to come you shall be the first to be helped, as though you were
my guest. We have quarelled like demons all our lives over this stupid strip of forest, where the trees can't even
stand upright in a breath of wind. Lying here tonight, thinking, I've come to believe we've been rather fools;
there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute. Neighbour, if you will help me to
bury the old quarrel I... I will ask you to be my friend."
Devoran Tarnwater was silent for so long that Vourdalak thought, perhaps, he had fainted with the pain of his
injuries. Then he spoke slowly and in gasps.
"How the whole region would stare and gabble if we rode into the market square together. No one living can remember
seeing a member of my family and a member of your family talking to one another in friendship. And what peace there
would be among the forest folk if we ended our feud tonight. And if we choose to make peace among our people there
is none other to interfere, no interlopers from outside... You would come and spend Valpurgh Night beneath my roof,
and I would come and feast on some high day at your castle... I would never loose an arrow on your land, save when
you invited me as a guest; and you should come and hunt with me down in the marshes where the wildfowl are. In all
the countryside there are none that could hinder if we willed to make peace. I never thought to have wanted to do
other than hate you all my life, but I think I have changed my mind about things too, this last half-hour. And you
offered me your brandy flask... Vourdalak of Anderfels, I will be your friend."
For a space both elves were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic
reconciliation would bring about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful gusts through the
naked branches and whistling round the tree trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring release
and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private prayer that his foresters might be the first to arrive, so
that he might be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had become a friend.
Presently, as the wind dropped for a moment, Vourdalak broke the silence.
"Let's shout for help," he said; "in this lull our voices may carry a little way."
"They won't carry far through the trees and undergrowth," said Devoran, "but we can try. Together, then."
The two stricken elves raised their voices in a prolonged hunting call. "Together again," said Vourdalak a few
minutes later, after listening in vain for an answering halloo.
"I heard something that time, I think," said Vourdalak.
"I heard nothing but the pestilential wind," said Devoran hoarsely.
There was silence again for some minutes, and then Vourdalak gave a joyful cry.
"I can see figures coming through the wood. They are following in the way I came down the hillside."
Both elves raised their voices in as loud a shout as they could muster.
"They hear us! They've stopped. Now they see us. They're running down the hill towards us," cried Vourdalak.
"How many of them are there?" asked Devoran.
"I can't see distinctly," said Vourdalak; "nine or ten."
"Then they are yours," said Devoran; "I had only seven out with me."
"They are making all the speed they can, brave lads," said Vourdalak gladly.
"Are they your friends?" asked Devoran. "Are they your friends?" he repeated impatiently as Vourdalak did not
answer.
"No," said Vourdalak with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of someone unstrung with hideous fear.
"Who are they?" asked Devoran quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen.
"Darkspawn."