Like ‘The Green Monkeys‘ and the recently published ‘A Choice of Kings‘ this is set in the same fictional world as my novel ‘Exile‘. In this instance though the time period is about a generation earlier.

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The Iron Hills

Out beyond the palisades, and the ridge of ancient earthen ramparts cut into the hillside, the flat southern fields lay furrowed but unsown. They had been kept fallow through winter, until the Airu moon had risen anew. Then the ploughmen had harnessed up their oxen and set their ploughshares to gouge long wounds into the dirt.

At night, when they returned to the taverns, or to the fire in the market square, they were welcomed and admired. A good ploughman kept his furrows straight and close so that the yield from each man’s strip would be the greater. The ploughmen would sit together and complain each night that the soil was still too hard or, if there had been rains, that it was too soft. They cursed the rocks that hid underground and dulled their ploughs. They would blame the Other Folk, the faeries and gremlins and the mischievous sprites of the fields, for all manner of misfortunes, and then, when the ale had taken its effect, they would laugh and tell tales until the sun was gone from the sky and their sleeping pallets beckoned.

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This is an unpublished Fantasy Short Story complete ate 7,000 words.