Free The War of Odds by Linell Jeppsen Page B

was just Chloe again, sweating and giggling helplessly as the elves cheered.
    Dwarves from the mountain known as, Frost Beard were training Nate. They were gold miners and renown throughout the land as being both physically and magically the strongest of the dwarven tribes. They often worked side by side with human miners, without the later even being aware of their existence. The dwarves would shore up a crumbling pillar, or fix a stream of water that threatened to undercut a gold vein, thus making the deep, underground gold mines a safer place to work and harvest the yellow ore.
    Nate discovered, to his dismay, that the dwarves were unbelievable quick, painfully strong and quite unfriendly. He was given a small tent in the dwarf encampment, just outside of Sylvan’s village. The first day of training started with being physically snatched out of his pallet by four sturdy young dwarves, hauled out to the fire pit and dumped unceremoniously on the ground.
    Two sticks were tossed in his direction and the fierce little general known as Fang growled, “Your training begins now…”
     
    What followed was the worst beating Nate ever received. He had used the sticks as well as he could under the onslaught, but he was no match for the dwarves, who took those same sticks and beat him black and blue. The fact that the dwarven soldiers were not even half his size, made the young man feel both ashamed and furious.
    The murder of his dog Mike, however, kept Nate focused. He was determined to do whatever it took to stop evil like that from spreading. He took his beating with a smile, and so much courage that the dwarves couldn’t help but be impressed. Three weeks had passed since that first horrible night of testing by the fire-pit, and now Nate was holding his own in the training field.
    He learned to hold his sticks high and to stab downward when attacked, rather than swing wildly and miss his target more often than not. Whenever he did manage to deliver a blow to one of his attackers, cheers and hoots of praise filled the encampment, even as jeers of scorn rained down on his victim.
    Sara sometimes spied on Nate and his trainers, when she was granted the rare rest period between physical and mental training. To her eyes, Nate looked like a young prince from a book of fairy tales. His long, dark brown hair fell in sweaty ringlets past his shoulders, and his young body, although covered in scrapes and bruises was lithe and beautiful. His skin was turning dark brown from the sun and his teeth gleamed brightly in either a smile of joy or a grimace of pain.
    She was surprised to hear that the dwarves had set upon Nate the second night of his training and removed his braces, claiming that the metal in the boy’s mouth was not only negating their magic, but sapping Nate’s growth as well. Over time, the dwarves had grown fond of the boy, and were determined to bolster his defenses and his ability to win in close battle, even if it killed him.
    Well, Sara sighed softly, it certainly isn’t killing him. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Muriel step outside and look around for her missing pupil. Sara sighed again, this time in dread. There were two aspects of her training, the physical and the mental. Of the two methods, the mental was far more painful and emotionally draining.
     
    There were a thousand things to learn about the fae, and a thousand different types of faeries to memorize. She learned about Slyphs (water faeries of all kinds) and pixies, Pookas and gnomes, Kelpies (evil water horses) and the Djin, (belligerent faeries of fire) and much, much more. If she was unable to describe each and every one of her assignments to Muriel’s satisfaction, she would be severely reprimanded. If that wasn’t hard enough, there was her own, personal, training to contend with.
    Muriel was teaching her how to be a healer. The nymph showed her how to concentrate her psychic energy and build it up, like water in a dam, before letting it flow