I am going to try something different with the blog for a while, since I haven’t been doing a whole lot with it. I have been working on my sword and sorcery fantasy trilogy for the past four years and many of the ideas have been knocking around in my head even longer. I’ve got the basics of books 1 and 2 pretty much in place, though I don’t like the flow and will need to adjust the timeline. I have a good outline and a rough draft started where I might take book 3, but I know they still need a lot of work.

I did a LOT of work on the books last summer and then ran out of gas in the fall. Now it is time to get back to figuring out how and where Fenrar’s Journey will take him.

Over the years I have seen other fledgling writers use their blogs to share their writing publicly and as much as showing this side of my writing, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed something that would help me refocus on overcoming as Steven Pressfield would probably say, without hesitation, that the Resistance is strong in this one. I would have to agree.

My plan will be to publish the story as I go through the editing process to make both books stronger and will make retelling Fenrar’s story more interesting and make more sense. More than likely a section or two at a time. What you are reading will be second draft quality, before any others have read it to give feedback or ideas to improve/tighten the story.

Wild Heart of the Whisperwinds

The tales of Fenrar Greenleaf – Book 1

By Harold L. Shaw, Jr.

Fenrar as looked while training

Image created by Gemini AI – 2025 (If I ever get around to actually attempting to publish these stories, I plan to use a real artist, this is simply to give us an idea of what Fenrar might look like)

Prologue: The Echo of a Father’s Scream

I was six the night I truly saw my father break for the first time and remembered it.

It is strange, the things that anchor themselves in memory: a flicker of candlelight, the scent of rain in the air, the rough sound of a voice I love, twisted by fear. I still I remember the shape of that night as clearly as the curve of my own bow.

The night terrors happened on nights when the full moon rose high above the trees, casting its pale light across our hidden world. I would lie there, eyes wide open, the silver glow leaking through the cracks in the shutters, and wait for the sound I dreaded.

That night was a blood moon and even the sprites and fairies that came to our home, their glowing forms flickering with worry as they hovered close, trying to calm him with soft songs and gentle hands. I had forgotten those visits entirely until I began telling my story to the scribes. I forgotten their quiet bravery, their compassion, their determination to help one who had befriended them during their time of need.

Suddenly, there was sound that I will never forget! Not a shout, not a startled cry, but a raw, tearing sound like something sacred was being pulled from him and it was killing him while doing so.

I scrambled from my cot, blanket tangled around my legs, heart hammering. My mother was already moving, her face pale with concern. She did not say a word. She just gave me that look: stay back, but close. It was a look she had worn too often in those years after the war.

My father, Elros, lay in his bed, thrashing like he was drowning. Sheets quickly soaked with sweat. His face, that calm, unshakable face I always trusted, was twisted with horror. His lips moved. Words came out like broken glass: Names. Orders. “STOP! WHY!”

Though I never truly knew his pain or what the dreams held for him, until he told me, years later.

I do now.

Whatever he dreamt that night had me believing I had lost my father.

He was reliving a time of pure anguish in his life.

Father was reliving that horrible day yet again.

The air had been heavy that day, not just with the weight of the enemy horde pressing at the edges of Blackfang Pass, but with the iron tang of something far more volatile: pride, ambition, and fury.

Dust and stale blood taste. The creak of leather straps as soldiers shifted their weight. The shrill, familiar voice rose again from the past, impossible to silence even after all these years: the voice of the King’s youngest son, Lianal.

The canyon pass had been critical, a bottleneck that slowed the orc host to a crawl, they couldn’t go through without taking terrible losses and we hoped that their General would stop before attacking my regiment, We held the other end of the killing field before us primarily with Elven archers. Five to Six hundred paces of open rock with cliffs on either side. I had been ordered to buy time for our defeated army to retreat and reach the eastern ridge. 

My regiment’s position was meant to hold back, not to attempt to win the day, but to delay the enemy. There were too many for us to attack them. My orders were to bleed the enemy, to give the main army a chance to escape from the horrible nightmare of a battle many had not survived. To save as many of my regiment as possible, but to give the army time, the King knew that I would lose troops, perhaps even be routed, but the rest of the army was in disarray in their retreat. He needed to save as much of it as possible, to keep fighting another day.

Prince Lianal had bristled from the moment we stopped, furious that we held our position instead of counterattacking immediately. Still young, still raw, he wore his station as a Prince of the Realm like an unsheathed blade; gleaming, dangerous, and begging for an excuse to be used. There had been a conversation earlier that morning with him, even the other Lieutenants telling him why we were positioned as we were and that his idea to counter-attack would only cause the death of all within the regiment. 

Calm voices explained the plan again and again. Even the General came and took him aside and explained the situation. Simple. Strategic. Words like: “The Orc General will wait. That is what we want. And we wait too, until the King calls us to rejoin the main host.”

But there was no waiting in Lianal. No patience. Only fire.

He mocked the caution that was needed in the moment. He spat it out like poison. He called me a coward, then a traitor to him and his father, despite my following his father’s orders. His voice rose with every accusation, until the whole regiment could hear him. When no one responded, when I gave him the order to shut up and return to his post. Humiliation had set its claws deep.

I knew trouble was but a heartbeat away. Still, I had hoped my relationship with the young Prince, someone I had known since his birth, would be enough. I hoped his training would hold, that the discipline his father had tried so hard to instill would keep him from breaking. We would have words after we rejoined the main army, and those words would be in front of the father.

He stormed away, muttering vengeance. Prince Lianal swore he would redeem his name by blood. What could anyone do? He was the King’s son. He did as he was ordered, returning contemptuously to his waiting sycophant friends who made up his platoon. They did nothing to calm the Prince, instead adding their own serpent’s whispers to his ears.

The morning crawled by. The sun climbed. The horde waited, just beyond the rocks. Just as we had hoped. As the bright sun began to fade later in the day, the young fool finally acted.

His horse charged forward to the center of our ranks. He raised his sword and screamed it, not a command, but a tantrum given steel: “Charge them! Charge them! We will rout them! Follow me NOW!” He charged toward the enemy line at a gallop.

It was madness. The horde outnumbered us ten to one, and that was only the portion visible within the pass. The pass held only because the enemy remained cautious, hesitant to waste troops in the killing field between us. There was no victory to be had for either side in this canyon, only death. Leaders on both sides knew this.

The voice that answered him, hard, sharp, cracking like thunder over stone, was mine. “My Prince,” I bellowed, “return to your post. That is an order. The rest of you, stay in formation, do not move!”

He continued his charge, I called the bugler to sound the recall. The Prince ignored it.

A handful, perhaps twenty or so, followed him, only those from his own personal platoon. The sons and daughters of lesser houses who had attached themselves to his rising star in the royal court. Sycophants dressed in polished armor, more used to tournament fields and whispered court intrigue than the stench of blood and iron.

Many of them cheered their prince, waving their swords and lances. Perhaps believing in his imagined glory, or perhaps too afraid of royal wrath to defy him. Perhaps he and them believed once they began their charge the Regiment would follow, we did not.

I watched as several looked back to see if we followed. When they saw no one else had left their posts, they slowed, but it was too late. They had followed him across the killing field.

The sound of hooves and their shouting rose in a confused crescendo, then broke like a wave against a jagged rock. The horde simply waited, crouched low behind bristling shields and crude pikes. The moment the charge came within reach, they surged, to open up a space to allow the charge through into the elite troops behind the first lines. Then I watched as they closed back around them, encircling and catching the prince’s charge mid-stride.

The screams that followed were not like the battle cries of warriors; they were shrill, panicked. The screams of young men and women dying. The charge stopped. A few managed to turn in time before the trap shut, but the Orcs sent a cloud of arrows after them. They were all dead within a minute.

They all died with Prince Lianal.

Soon their heads were back on the pikes.

The horde’s General wasted no soldiers on returning their heads. They used the spectacle to make a point and stopped right at the edge of our arrow range. The Prince’s head was speared highest, his gilded helmet still perched mockingly atop it, now crimson and dented. Around him, the heads of the noble-born sycophants, lips still twisted in the last expressions of disbelief or pain. The elite Orc troops lifted the trophies high, howling in triumph, then planted the poles in the ground with the defiled heads before our lines.

With an arrow, I somehow dropped the human holding the Prince’s head, but an Orc picked it up and stood there holding it in front of the others. Daring us to come get it.

Mocking us.

I ordered the lines to remain steady, though most of us had tears streaming down our faces. I looked at Lieutenant Valkahn, he just shook his head. I rode up and down before our lines to steady the troops to ensure that nobody did anything foolish that would start something that would cause the annihilation of the Regiment.

Even so, I knew the damage was done. Not to the regiment, but to the realm.

A Prince of the High Forest had died, a son of the King and Queen, my godson. Others, too, sons and daughters of dukes, barons, voices with power in the court. The Horde had not breached the canyon, but the walls of politics and power in the capital were already collapsing around me.

And I knew. Even as I sat there, my bow in hand on my horse, my mind had already turned toward the aftermath. There would need to be a reckoning. A scapegoat. Someone to answer for the stupidity and arrogance that had stained Blackfang Pass with noble blood.

And someone would have to live in disgrace to preserve that lie. It would not be the King’s son, who now was dead. Nor would his memory be stained by what he had done. Instead, they would say he was brave, that he had attempted to seize an opportunity, leading a surprise counter-attack to overwhelm the horde. They would claim he had led from the front, dying with honor. They would declare that I had ordered the troops not to follow Prince Lianal’s order out of cowardice, that I was afraid to follow my Prince.

I could feel it, like the first scent of smoke on the wind. I knew without a doubt it would be me. I would be their scapegoat.

The King was too new to his seat, I was too favored by him, too blunt in my manners. Others wanted me gone to get closer to him and his Queen.

I knew I would be sacrificed for the greater good.

That night, after the King sent word for us to retreat ourselves. Then when the Horde poured through the pass, their General saw what awaited him if he chose to attack. He turned and left to prepare for a more favorable battle, one that he could win. Even he knew if he attacked where the King’s army had retreated that his Horde would break.

Then under a full moon that hung like a judge’s eye in the sky, I was summoned to the King’s tent. We had been friends before today. As boys, sparring with wooden swords beneath the boughs of The Greenwood, as best man at each of our weddings. The tent was silent save for the crackle of the brazier and the soft shift of silk.

The King spoke no greeting. Only this:

“Tell me why my son died.”

“He died because I failed him.”

Again. And again. And again.

Screams filled the canyon as my prince died.

The prince’s retinue of noble sons and daughters died.

The world burned, again and again, in the endless dark theater of my dreams.

He thrashed in the bed, caught in the storm. I remember clinging to my mother, watching her kneel beside him, whispering softly, her hand gentle on his shoulder and one hand to comfort me. But he was not with us. Not yet. Not until the moment broke.

His eyes flew open, wild and searching. For a second, I do not think he saw us at all. Then slowly, painfully, the world returned to him. His breathing slowed. His fists unclenched. He looked at me, but did not truly see me.

But I learned the truth eventually: about the canyon, the charge, the bodies, and the blood. I learned how the Prince’s madness almost cost an entire regiment their lives, and about the choice my father made to live with it. He never spoke of it in detail, not then, not for decades, until we were walking one day in the forest, and I asked him about his night terrors.

That night left a scar on us all.

That night I closed my eyes, the night sounds of the forest filtering through the walls of our home, a familiar lullaby. But the usual peace was tinged with a new layer of understanding, a sense that there were shadows in the world. Secrets kept in the darkness that even I, in my innocence, could sense but not yet comprehend.

Sleep eventually claimed me, but in my dreams, the muffled screams echoed faintly, a lingering echo of a hidden pain that might someday consume my father. I stirred restlessly, a silent question I was too young to voice, but one that would linger in my heart until I was old enough to understand.

And now, as I begin this tale, his tale as well in many ways, I remember that cry. That storm. That night. It was the first time I knew that we do not walk untouched through our stories. We carry every step of them, even in our sleep.

It was a look I have seen only in broken veterans of terrible battles, where horrific deeds were done and they bore witness. It was the same look some have seen in my eyes in the mirror over past centuries when I awake from screaming with my own night terrors.

I now understand his pain, but then, it only scared me.

Thank you for taking the time to read this section, if you have any ideas or thoughts that will constructively help me improve it, please do so in the comments below.