The introduction to a story that I started. The long shadows cast by the tightly packed trees in the forest were beginning to fade as the sun handed over its dominance of the sky to darkness in its daily ritual and the dusk started to seep away into the ground leaving the night. Four pairs of heavily booted feet made their way among these shadows towards the edge of the forest to where the trees began to thin out revealing the landscape in front of them. The boots stopped moving as the four men that wore them carefully knelt on the soft bed of pine needles and the decaying red,browns and golds of fallen leaves,provided by the forest. A dull click was accompanied by a low electronic whine as the leader of the four men thumbed a switch that powered up a small black cylinder that he held up to his eye. Through an eerie green static the cylinder turned the night back into day and showed a large patch of well worked farmland that rolled gently away from where they knelt. The farmland was circled by more of the coniferous woods that were so prolific in this area with a pitted dirt track just capable of permitting a car to drive along it running in from the west leading to the reason the men had come here. Two squat buildings, one larger and one smaller, made from roughly hewn stone sat at the end of the track. Ageing mossy grey slate adorned the roofs of the buildings, constructed many years before by people long since forgotten. The larger of the two buildings sported a chimney breast at one of its gable ends from which a steady stream of light grey smoke casually drifted into the air.In the middle of each building was a stout wooden door held in place by thick iron hinges.Several small multi panelled glass windows were placed randomly in the walls. Evidence of recent activity littered the ground outside the two buildings. Hand tools left here and there after the working day had finished,a coat left hanging limply from a brush that had been propped up against a wall and small piles of freshly chopped wood ready to be turned into more of the grey smoke. The switch went off on the cylinder allowing the darkness to return. The leader raised his hand and the four men moved off again just inside the tree line out of view and towards the farm to join with a second team that had been inserted into the area some days before. The four became eight and in near silence despite the weight of equipment carried by the men in blackened pouches about their waists and heavy bergans on their backs they moved into their pre planned positions barely five meters from the nearest of the two buildings. Another hand signal from the leader of the group caused high powered assault rifles to be brought to bear in the direction of the stone houses and the sharp eyes perched watching them from a tree above to pay them closer attention. The eyes watched two men stand on either side of each door. The men were more visible now as the loose fitting black and green camouflage worn by them stood out starkly against the cold grey of the stone walls. By the large building one of the men pressed something that looked like clay onto the door. After a pause a blinding flash of white announced their presence to any occupants within along with a deafening roar that caused a nearby roosting flock of starlings to leap frenziedly into the sky as the sturdy wooden doors shattered into splinters that were still flying through the air as the first two black figures rushed into the smouldering hole that was left. An eyebrow was raised in the branch overhead as two more figures tore into the hole where the door had moments ago stood. The glass in the small square windows of the building now illuminated softly with a flickering glow.Rather than coming from some homely and comforting coals however this was being given off by the automatic weapons being discharged by the men and hinted at the carnage taking place inside. It was the same sight inside the other building. The sharp eyes turned away from all of this and picked out a spot on the ground several meters below. From his viewpoint in the trees he gracefully dropped down unnoticed, landing softly on the forest floor. With a final glance in the direction of the buildings a curse escaped his thin drawn lips. " Damned humans" he spat and having seen enough the Elf vanished into the night. t