The mother pushed her son away, wiped her wrinkled face, and said, “Now. What shall you propose? Those elves inside might help us. And the dwarves. And what you think up. You’re clever when you don’t mope. What shall we try?”
Sunbright sighed, scratched his head, fiddled with the thongs of his horsetail. “Well …” he said. “I had the germ of an idea, but it’s probably stupid and won’t work. Drigor’s blather about a homeland planted a seed in my brain. And those hostlers we met, with the horses, made me wonder.…
“But come inside, Mother. It’s chilly.”
He steered the old woman into the cave. “You know, to claim you’ve outlived your usefulness is foolish talk,” he told her. “Almost as foolish as mine …”
* * * * *
Icy wind howled on the prairie. It bit through Sunbright’s bearskin vest, stung his face so hard that ice particles drew blood, numbed his huge hands, and made his eyes water so he couldn’t see. Dead grass crunched underfoot, frozen solid. Behind him trudged Knucklebones, huddled in her lion skin. She’d insisted on coming, but shivered continuously.
In the long winter night, Sunbright worried they’d miss the barbarian camp, but then he whiffed smoke. Rounding a ridge no higher than his shoulder, he spotted crude sod houses. Only half a dozen, for the tribe had scattered over miles to hug behind ridges, pitiful shelter from man-killing wind.
Sunbright staggered to the biggest sod hut, perhaps twenty feet across and knee-high, put his mouth to the smoke hole, and shouted, “Meet me outside!”
His small party shivered while sods were unpacked from a hole in the hut’s side. Finally, hunched and dirty as moles, a few barbarians crept out with bronze swords in blue fists. They were so filthy, with hair grown in and thick beards on men, it took Sunbright a moment to recognize Forestvictory, no longer fat, and Strongsea, who resembled his long-dead father, Farmyouth.
At sight of the shaman, Strongsea hefted his sword. Sunbright stepped aside to reveal his companions. Three elves in black capes and armor, pale as vampires, not shivering. Two dwarves bundled in bearskin and horsehide.
The shaman warned, “Don’t!”
“What do you want?” asked Forestvictory. The former trail chief’s eyes were pouchy.
“You’re invited to council!” Sunbright had to shout above the wind. “With the elves and dwarves and me. Don’t protest, just shut up and listen. We can hammer out our differences, and get you off this benighted plain, if you’ll listen. Tell the others, the whole tribe, to come to the vale where we camped. You’ll be unharmed if you keep swords in sheathes, and there’ll be food. The elves and dwarves will feed you while we council. Bring the children, if only for that. Tell the rest. Tomorrow!”
“It could be a trap!” Strongsea wheezed.
Forestvictory stared as if her brain were frozen. “What if we refuse?” she asked.
“Then keep your pride and die! It’s nothing to me!” Sunbright lied. “I’m no longer Rengarth. Tell the others. Tomorrow.”
Without waiting for an answer, he let the wind push him and his guards back toward the forest and the mountains.
* * * * *
“They killed Darkname! And Lightrobin! Shall we take blood money, and stain our name?”
“How do we know they won’t kill us in our sleep? Lure us with kind words, and a knife behind their backs!”
“Aye, or poison the food?”
“I’d take ores over these soulless monsters! An enemy you know is better than an unknown!”
“Elves eat babies! And suck the goodness out of food so there’s nothing left to sustain a body!”
“I say we turn back for Scourge! We were happy there!”
Wrangling rang round the amphitheater. The barbarians had come, of course, lured by food. Sunbright and his protective elves and dwarves met them on the ill-fated camp between the sheltering highlands, then led the straggling band into the dark forest for nearly three miles. Here the barbarians found a natural amphitheater sunk into the ground below trees and wind. Ancient stones covered with moss ringed the circle, and at the bottom, a blazing bonfire consumed entire trees. Shivering, starved, dirty barbarians crept into the bowl so close to the fire their eyebrows singed. Set on stones were elven winter rations and fresh game: oat cakes with salt and maple syrup, dried herring, hunks of deer and bear and bison, even barrels of ale and a trough of spring water. The hungry barbarians fell on the meat barehanded and ate it raw.
During this orgy of warmth and food, Sunbright sat with his personal bodyguard: Knucklebones and Monkberry, three elven archers named Gladejoy, Deerspirit, and Lionmoon, and the two dwarves, Cappi and Pullor. They occupied a stone midway between the barbarians, the chief elven negotiators, and Drigor’s band in shaggy winter hides.
The elven contingent was a vision from a dream. Thirty of them were led by a tall elven woman with cascading white hair. They were mostly dressed alike, in soft green shirts and fine boots and armor, with some differences in rank. The leader, Pleasantwalk, wore no boiled breastplate, instead a pair of black epaulets on a harness, gem-studded black gloves, and a black helmet adorned with black leaves. She sat on a throne of blond wood ornately carved with birds and animals, worn smooth by ages of monarchs. The throne had been toted through the forest on the shoulders of courtiers, who were armed with curved black bows and sheaves of slim, black arrows. Sunbright had not spoken to this elven queen (if such she was), but only to Tamechild, her chancellor, who conveyed the shaman’s messages to the queen only twelve feet away.
For the first time in a long time, Sunbright wore no sword. Harvester’s baldric and scabbard hung from a peg on a tree above the amphitheater. The barbarians had also left all weapons at the upper rim, while protesting they were being rounded up for slaughter. But the elves’ calm poise, and the lure of heat and meat had finally spilled them over the edge like lemmings.
Now, with hunger and thirst and cold sated, the Rengarth Barbarians counseled—for Sunbright had added prayers and offerings to the elves’ bonfire. As barbarian bodies warmed, so did tempers and grudges. Some humans hurled accusations and threats, hinted darkly of treachery and collusion between Sunbright and the Shadow Walkers. But most barbarians recognized that the elves were their hosts, had fed and warmed them, and so held their tongues. Sunbright was proud of them, but his heart was stricken as he counted their numbers. Just under three hundred arrived, while they’d enter the ancestral grasslands with over four hundred thirty. Still, Tamechild murmured, it showed the barbarians’ toughness to survive this long on winter prairie.
Finally, after the stupid and stubborn aired their empty heads, Sunbright dusted his seat and walked to a small dais that each ring of the theater sported. He raised both hands and waited for silence, which meant from the barbarians, for the elves were quiet as graveyard ghouls.
“Rengarth!” Sunbright called. “You know who I am. Sunbright Steelshanks, son of Sevenhaunt and Monkberry of the Raven Clan.”—Someone booed, yelled, “Not any more!” but was slapped quiet—“Know that I did not invite you! ’Twas our gracious hosts, the Moon Elves of the Far Forest, cousins to the High Elves of Cormanthyr in the west. They wished to council, not I. I am merely the mouthpiece between you.”
The barbarians stirred, watched the silent elves with new interest, and listened.
“I don’t need to tell you,” Sunbright went on, “how harsh the world has grown. All lands suffer, their magic drained by forces unknown. Thin crops and scarcer game drive many peoples to move, including ourselves. In addition, the One King again leads armies to ravage both cities and hinterlands. So it proves here, for ores and other vermin flow over the Barren Mountains like rats fleeing a fire. The elves doubled and tripled their efforts to keep the ores out, and then we, the Rengarth, arrived. Since we invaded their forest, they worked to keep us out too.”
Over shouts, he continued, “Now, I could talk all night, and we shall, but I’ll lay out a simple plan to consider. Simply this. That Moon Elves, the Sons of B
altar, and the Rengarth Barbarians forget grudges, and declare peace! That the dwarves fortify the Barren Mountains. That the Moon Elves guard the Far Forest. And the Rengarth guard the prairie—”
A howl of protest went up, that the tribe would die, that they couldn’t last the winter, that—
Sunbright plowed on, “Yes, yes, yes! True! And since the prairie can’t support so many, the Moon Elves generously offer us the fringe of the forest for a depth of two leagues. From the grasslands, into the forest for six miles, to a river called the Delimbiyr. An escort will show you this boundary. A six-mile band, free, to use as we wish. In return, you must promise to guard the prairie from outside attack, and keep faith with elves and dwarves, and work together for the good of all. So elves may call on barbarians if needed, and humans might retreat to the dwarven mountains in an attack, or into the elven forest.
“In short,” Sunbright droned to a mesmerized audience, “you will swear—by blood oath—to harm neither elf nor dwarf, but aid all to keep out the ores and other villains. In short, we build an alliance of people secure on their own turf—prairie, forest, and mountain—with secure borders. A mighty triangle that can withstand any force, from any direction!”
Sunbright let his words die in the air, then shouted, “Children of the Rengarth, do you agree?”
Barbarians muttered, questioned, buzzed, and argued. Over the babble Forestvictory called, “We can cut trees to build huts? Shoot game and set snares? And we only need keep out raiders?”
Sunbright smiled. For the question gave the answer.
Chapter 18
Deep in the Barren Mountains.…
With oil lamps and pickaxes, Oredola and Hachne explored a tall cave from which rust water trickled. Rust meant iron. But not far in they gagged on a gut-wrenching stink. A hashed coyote carcass writhed with maggots on the cave floor. The skull had been crushed as if by a stone, then gnawed by strong, dull teeth. Without a word, the dwarves pulled back.
Too late.
From the dark rustled something twice as tall as the dwarves, mottled green and scabrous black in the lamplight. Empty eye sockets drilled into their souls.
“Trolls!”
The dwarves whirled and ran on stumpy legs.
But the trolls were quick as spiders. Crud-caked claws tore at the dwarves’ backpacks, ripping stiff ox hide like paper. The dwarves shucked their packs and ran faster, breath sobbing in their lungs, hobnailed boots ringing on stone and splashing in rusty water. As they reached the dim sheen of twilight, they screeched, “Help! Trolls! Help!”
Oredola felt a claw tick the back of her neck and draw blood. Without turning, she whipped her pickaxe behind, heard it thud on stony flesh, gained a second’s respite, then charged into flat winter light that was overcast but blinding after the dark cave. Hachne stampeded down the narrow canyon, shouting for help.
With a screech, the trolls erupted from the cave behind. Scaly feet skittered on rock while a curious kitten’s mewling whined in their throats—a sound of hunger and rage. Then Oredola heard a gasp like a death rattle at her ear. Covering the back of her neck, she threw herself flat on rough stone.
And help arrived.
Slim black arrows zipped from the sky like ospreys after fish. The shafts slammed into trolls’ empty eye sockets, stabbed deep into dim brains, and hurled them backward to crash like dead men cut from the gallows.
The hideous creatures didn’t die, only thrashed and pulled at the wood jammed in their skulls. Their undying thrashing was the most hideous sight of all.
Oredola rolled to her feet, grabbed up a rock hammer, and pounded the nearest troll. She knew that any limbs that she might hack off the thing would only regrow, but the dwarf hoped that breaking limbs would slow the monsters down. Having heard the zip of arrows, Hachne returned to smash his pickaxe again and again into a troll, crunching joints and mauling the thing’s throat.
Soon, an elf in green and black, with long, wild black hair and a pale face joined them. Darting from her high guardpost, she’d fetched an armful of sticks and branches and feathers and fluff: an old condor’s nest. Flinging the mess over the trolls, she called, “Only fire will kill them! Spill your oil!”
Swiftly the dwarves smashed lanterns atop the pyre. Ancient dried wood and downy fluff caught immediately. The trolls gasped and sobbed horribly as the flames curled around them. Dwarves and the elf retreated down the canyon to avoid the stink.
“Well!” Oredola said as she mopped her brow with a shaking hand, slurped water from a canteen, then offered some to the elf, who took it. “I guess we’ll mark that cave as ‘occupied!’ ”
“Not any more!” Hachne laughed at the weak jest. The elf smiled.
They congratulated themselves on their cooperation and the success of the elven/dwarven/barbarian alliance. Here the dwarves explored the mountains and flushed out monsters while keen-eyed elves guarded the work details from on high.
Flames crackled down the canyon and the pyre quit heaving. The elf said, “I shall return to my post.”
“Yes,” Oredola said. “And we thank you.” She held out her craggy paw, as did Hachne. Bemused, the elf stared, then, for the first time in her life, shook hands.
* * * * *
In the Far Forest.…
Blackblossom and Kindbloom knelt at a small stream off the merry Delimbiyr River. Behind them, in the six mile stripe allotted to the barbarians, axes rang and chinked. The two warriors pulled axes from the stream and wiped them dry. They’d soaked the hafts overnight so the wood would swell and make a tighter, safer fit. The new broad-axes were dwarven-made, for Drigor had built a forge near an iron deposit at the foot of Sanguine Mountain.
They’d shouldered the axes when Kindbloom suddenly grabbed Blackblossom’s arm.
“Listen! What’s that?”
Blackblossom tossed back her horsetail, and cupped her ear. “It’s—coyotes yapping,” she said. “From across the river.”
“Too deep for coyotes,” Kindbloom whispered. “Something bigger.”
Blackblossom, tall and willowy and decisive, hefted her axe and yanked the sash of her sheepskin coat. “We better go see,” she said.
“We’re not supposed to cross the river,” stated Kindbloom, who was surly and quick to cite rules.
The barbarian warrior didn’t answer, only tripped across a new log bridge and into the winter forest. Rather than miss a fight, Kindbloom followed.
Leafless brush was still thick and tangled along the riverbank, forcing them to take the path, though they went warily, with axes foremost. Undergrowth gave way to open forest where wide-spaced white oaks allowed easy walking. Only sunlit glades sported brush. They turned north off the trail toward the yapping. Gradually they made out a familiar sound. Ores. But happy and raucous. What could it mean?
Silent in moosehide boots, the two women skirted a glade, spotted flickering movement, and picked from trunk to trunk. Five ores gamboled around a tree, hooting and laughing like dogs barking, hurling rocks and sticks into the branches. In the tree something like a big kingfisher, painted black and green, ducked and dodged.
“They’ve treed an elf!” breathed Blackblossom.
“Good enough,” snapped Kindbloom. “One of the bastards shot Darkname. Let ’em suffer!”
“Go left,” Blackblossom whispered, ignoring the snipe. “I’ll go right opposite. When I shout, charge in, screaming your head off. They’ll probably run.”
Kindbloom stared, whispered, “I won’t risk my life for a vampire.”
“Risk it for mine then,” Blackblossom said. “I swore by blood to uphold the alliance.”
Blackblossom slid off right to circle another glade. A minute later, the clan cry “Be-lu-ga!” split the woods. Bashing through brush, swinging a shining pole axe, a tall, thin barbarian woman flew screaming from the forest. Seconds later, from the opposite side, another woman roared, “Snow cats!” and exploded among the ores.
The villains dropped their swords and shields to
scatter. One ore stood its ground, but its upraised war club was battered aside, then a heavy axe head crushed its breast. A fleeing ore was tripped to crash in loam and leaves, had its head smashed by an axe.
The other ores were long gone. The two women scanned the woods, panting, axes poised, but there was no counterattack.
An elf dropped from the wide limbs of the oak, and picked up his fallen knife and hat. He was tall, but looked Blackblossom in the eye. “I thank you,” the elf said. “I am Starvalley.”
Deliberately withholding their names, Kindbloom instead sniped, “How were you taken, elf?”
The elf’s pale face colored.
“I was drinking at the river while thinking of a poem. Not paying attention. I got separated from my bow and had to run.”
Kindbloom sniffed, “You were quick enough to shoot our people in the back when hiding in the forest!”
The elf drew up straight and said, “Such was I obligated by duty. Whether I liked to kill or not wasn’t asked of me.”
“And anyway,” Blackblossom breezed, “that’s in the past. We’re allies now. Come, comrade.” With a short nod and hint of a smile, she sashayed off.
“Wait!” called the poet. “What are your names?”
Kindbloom marched on, but Blackblossom turned back, teased, “Oh no, Sir Elf. We’ve heard that if an elf learns your name, he gains power over your soul. You’ll just have to guess our names—Starvalley!”
Back at the log bridge, Kindbloom groused, “Consorting with elves, bah! Darkname and Firstfortune and Lightrobin must writhe in their graves!”
Blackblossom only mused, “Starvalley … And he favors poetry. These elven men are not uncomely, you know. Not big and sturdy like our breed, but spry like willows. Even … tingly.”
“Tingly?” Kindbloom almost fell off the bridge as she said, “And comely? Are you mad?”
Blackblossom only whistled as they crossed the bridge.
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