by Nunn, PL
He followed the girl’s direction and found the small shack where he thought the women were held.
He could see the sheltered fires of the ogres and hear a few voices. Most of the invaders were silent, asleep for the night. Yhalen began sawing at the twine that interlaced the planks. Soon a small, whispered voice reached him from within.
“Yhalen. Is it you?”
“Shhh,” he cautioned her. “They have sharp ears.”
Silence from within. He loosened one board and went to work on the next. Three loosened, and it was enough for them to slip through, the four children first. Six altogether, with one of them injured and fevered. Meliah and the other one that had come to make Bloodraven’s dinner emerged last. They were all that were left.
“Quickly. Can you carry Johan?” Meliah took charge, putting the injured child into Yhalen’s arms.
She herded the others ahead of her and into the thicket. There was woodland beyond that this forest raised village girl might know well. Goddess knew Yhalen was disoriented enough to stumble over his own feet. He followed her lead, trusting in her instincts when his own were so skewed.
But he was free. For the first time in many days, he was free of them. His heart sang with joy from it and his feet began to find a nimbler path and his senses sharpened to the secrets of the wood.
It gave him the advantage over them and therefore, he was the first to hear the barking of the dogs.
CHAPTER FIVE
The children were too terrified to cry. They ran as fast as their small legs could carry them, stumbling now and then and tripping over roots hidden by the dark. The women helped as much as they could, whispering encouragement even as they staggered themselves, exhausted and every bit as frightened as the young ones. The small body Yhalen carried shivered, but he thought it was more from fever than fear. The life energy felt dim—he was no healer, yet even he could sense the weakening. This child would die soon, if something were not done.
They all would, if the pursuit he heard latched upon their trail. The barking had waned a handful of breaths past—and his spirits lifted, hoping against all hope that the beasts had lost the scent—or been distracted by a night foraging wild pig or a startled deer.
“Meliah?” Yhalen gasped her name and she turned wide, white-rimmed eyes towards him. “Do you know of a safe place? Have we a destination?”
The determination she’d evidenced earlier had fled, replaced by uncertainty. “Our lord’s castle is east of the village.”
“How far?”
“A day’s walk, from dawn to dusk,” she whispered.
So far. He might be able to make it himself in half that time, for he was no stranger to grueling hikes, but none of these children,—nor even the women, though the girl looked sturdy enough—could keep such a pace. They were lagging even now, almost to their limits. They might hide from ogre pursuit—but Bloodraven’s dogs—there would be no escaping the notice of the dogs should they pick up the scent once more.
“You’ll need to rest—and soon,” he said.
“We can’t!” snapped Meliah, even as she stumbled and she clutched at Yhalen’s arm to save herself a fall.
“You’ve little choice,” he murmured, pausing as they all did, the children hanging listlessly onto the skirts of the older women and the younger one leaning hard against Yhalen’s side.
“I hate them,” she said, wetness escaping her lashes to trail down her cheeks. “I hate this.”
Oh, he shared her sentiment wholeheartedly and vehemently.
“We’ll keep moving for a little while, but slower. I don’t hear the dogs now.”
“Dogs?”
They stared at him, aghast, as if they’d never heard the barking.
He nodded bleakly, feeling the girl’s nails bite into the bare flesh of his arm. They had seen Bloodraven’s beasts, he wagered, at sometime during their captivity within the village and like any sane beings, they had been properly horrified at the size and ferocity of the things. They weren’t of the Ydregi—he didn’t expect them to have the affinity for animals that he did.
“They were on our trail,” he said softly and gently pried the girl’s fingers from his arm. He expected blood from her grip, but only found nail-shaped crescents in his skin. “But I haven’t heard them for a while now. They were drawn off, perhaps, by some other game.”
“The ogres,” the girl asked. “Are they skillful trackers?”
Yhalen honestly didn’t know. He thought it was more luck than skill that had thrown him into their hands—that and his own blind panic. “If we can elude them till morning, perhaps it won’t matter, for we’ll be within a reasonable distance of your lord’s estate. He’ll have men patrolling the perimeters of his private lands, won’t he, that might find us before we even reach him.”
“Perhaps.” She stifled a sob, forcing her weakness away.
They moved on again, until the children could walk no more and Yhalen found a nook in the lee of an old tree’s twisted root system that provided some bit of shelter. They settled there and he went to track down fresh water. He could smell it, even though no sound of a brook broke the predawn silence of the wood. He tugged absently at the collar as he searched, embarrassed at the thought of presenting himself to some lordling, half naked and wearing the obvious mark of slavery. The girl said it was no shame of his—what had been perpetrated upon him against his will—but she was being kind, or was naive beyond belief. The shame was there and always would be and he quelled at the notion of his own people discovering what had happened, much less enduring the cold speculation of strangers.
He found the spring. A tiny trickle of water issuing forth from the side of mulch covered gully. He cupped his hands beneath the trickle of clear water, let them fill and lapped it down. Again and again, until some of his thirst was quenched. He had nothing to carry water in, but it wasn’t far from where he’d left the women and children and he could bring them here—those that hadn’t fallen into sleep already—and let them sate their own needs.
He did just that, carrying the smallest child to the water himself, then handing him over to the girl and letting her dampen the warm forehead with cool water and dribble some of the same between the child’s lips. She chose to carry the little boy back, for the water had roused him somewhat and he clung to her neck, eyes wide and dazed, his small hands wrapped in her hair.
Yhalen sat above them, on the high side of the nook, with his back to the tree, keeping watch. He ran his fingers through the tangles of his hair, rebraiding it to keep himself awake and occupied while the others rested fitfully below him. He shivered, recalling all too vividly Bloodraven’s fascination with it, Bloodraven’s hands in it, testing its texture and its weight, wrapping it around long fingers and using it as a leash of sorts to hold Yhalen down, or draw him back— Yhalen’s fingers tightened on the end of the braid as he realized his thoughts. Chagrined, he was tempted almost to take the small knife in his belt and hack the length of it off to rid himself of the reminder. But then he’d have to start carving away at his flesh, for ogre hands had been more often upon that. He leaned his forehead upon his knees and wondered how he’d ever face his father.
After only too brief a time, he roused them, urging them to their feet, even though the children whimpered and cried softly. The women hushed them, though they were ashen-faced and disoriented themselves, the onset of shock coming upon them.
“I—I don’t know which way is east anymore,” Meliah admitted in a small, whispery voice.
“It’s this way,” Yhalen said, moving her forward with a hand on her shoulder. “Shall I take him?”
He offered to bear the weight of the child, but the girl shook her head.
“No. I fear that…that he may not make it to our lord’s estate and if not—he knows me. It would be better if….”
She couldn’t say the words, that if the child died in her arms instead of a stranger’s, it would be a blessing. Yhalen nodded, shaken. Even after all the death
he’d seen these last days—still it was inconceivable, the thought of it taking one so young. He’d never heard even wives’ tales of Ydregi children dying and yet Ydregi were not so different as the people of the east—not really, save a sensitivity to the grace of the Goddess and a marginally longer lifespan. Yet the people of the east had graveyards filled with bodies, both young and old. Every city, every town, every small hamlet—no one of them did not intimately know death, and yet they treated it so lightly. As a thing to accept and expect.
Sometimes Yhalen could commiserate with those of the Ydregi who advocated never leaving the great forest and mingling with the folk of the east. He wished he’d never left this last time, for perhaps some more accomplished hunter might have sniffed out the ogres before they’d scented him and warned his fellows of the menace instead of falling so shamefully to it.
He heard it over the rustling of leaves under the women’s feet. The distant barking of dogs. He shut his eyes, lamenting the fate that had allowed the beasts to find their trail again.
“Meliah,” he said softly. “The dogs have our scent again. You must lead them as quickly as you can towards your lord’s estates. If you pass a brook, wade down it as long as they’re able, and it’ll confuse them. If you hear their barking very close by, don’t run—they’ll only run you to ground. Find a tree you can climb get them all up in it—”
“But where will you be?” Her voice trembled and he saw the whites around her eyes and the utter terror on the face of the other woman as the faint barking became audible to even them.
“I’ll draw them off your trail for as long as I can,” he promised. “Don’t argue and don’t tarry. They’ll be on you for certain if they’re not distracted. Now run.”
They did, with a last mournful look at him. Yhalen cast it from his mind, darting off in the opposite direction, making as much noise as possible as he ran.
“Stubborn beasts,” he hissed, pausing and listening to the sound of their pursuit, of their hesitation when they reached the point where he and the women had separated. “Follow me. Follow me.”
He willed it, searching out their fierce essences, tweaking the single-minded focus and drawing it towards the more familiar scent that was his. It was more a trick a hunter used to draw game when game was scarce than to summon predators. A true hunter didn’t need it, preferring to take his game on more equal footing, but it was a simple enough trick that most Ydregi were accomplished at, and the minds of simple animals were weak against it. An urge here, an impulse there—not enough to keep a deer from fleeing at the first sign of human presence or a predator from attacking—but enough to get them where a man wanted them, if a man were lucky.
They both veered off the women’s path and pelted through the wood on Yhalen’s trail. He let out a breath and resumed his flight. He thought, if the fates were smiling just a little, he could draw them far enough off that they’d lose the others’ trail completely. He thought he could outwit them if given the time and the cooperation of this wood. It wasn’t the great wood, not as old and not as full of secret places to hide—but it was a forest and Ydregi were nothing if not adept at forest craft.
He leapt across a gully, and scampered across the bole of a dead tree, then up a muddy incline, using roots to ease the way—anything to hamper the dogs’ pursuit. Once, when he’d temporarily outdistanced them, he paused to rest against a bent tree and use the same trick he’d played on the dogs to search out something slower of wit and more sedate of nature. Eyes closed and fingers pressed into the bark of the tree, he found the gentle essence of what he thought might have been a deer and persuaded it towards the path he’d taken. Its scent, stronger than his own, might prove a beneficial distraction—should they latch onto its trail, it would lead them a longer and merrier chase than Yhalen could.
He prayed to the Goddess that the women and children were well on their way, and that any ogre pursuit would stay firmly on the trail of the dogs. Perhaps they would even give up, the recapture of a handful of frightened slaves not worth the effort. It was almost dawn now, and Yhalen thought he’d been moving for hours.
He dared not stop, but he did slow to a walk as he listened to the sounds of oncoming morning. The trill of first birdsong, the last chirping serenade of crickets and nighttime insects—the quiet rustle here and there of animals venturing out of their dens to begin the day’s foraging. And then utter silence.
Yhalen froze, one hand a finger’s breadth from the trunk of a tree, foot poised over soft mulch. The forest had caught its breath, hesitant and wary of something more menacing than him that stalked its environs.
There. The crack of a brittle branch. The rustle of leaves as something larger than a burrow mouse shifted through them. And again the whispery stirring of bramble from another direction. If it were his hunters, they’d grown shrewd after hours of fruitless chase. No great surprise, wolves hunted in much the same manner. He started walking again, calmly, casually, flinging out his senses to discover the nature of whatever was out there.
He found a familiar sense even as the first of the beasts broke through the cover of foliage and lunged towards him. Yhalen broke into a run, veering sharply to the side as the other dog came out of the shadows at him. Find a tree, he thought, and follow the advice he’d given Meliah. But they were so close on his trail, and so tall, that they’d likely have him before he could scamper high enough to be safe from them.
Stupid to think he’d shaken them. Stupid to slow his pace and give them the time to recover his trail. They were no simple hounds, easily distracted by something so mundane as a deer in their path—they were dogs of war and no doubt trained to hunt two-legged prey.
And they were faster than he was by far. He felt the heat on his back, heard the rasping breath and the low voiced growls. They would have him in a heartbeat if he kept running, so he simply stopped and fell forward lengthwise so abruptly that one dog bounded over and past him. Rolling, he flung an armful of leaves and dirt into the face of the other while scrambling backwards to get his back to a tree.
As he did, he snatched the small paring knife from the belt of his loincloth, swiping out once, then twice and catching the closest of the beasts across the nose as it came at him. The pain of the cut meant nothing to it, and its huge jaws snapped shut a hairsbreadth from his hand.
“Back off! Back off!” he yelled at them, hoping for some small bit of the respect they’d shown him along the trail. But they were having none of it, too caught up in the hunt to care whether he was friend or foe.
The second one, the smaller and quicker of the two, darted in, and great jaws closed in upon Yhalen’s calf. It jerked him off his feet, his back impacting upon the ground a more painful thing at the moment than the teeth breaking the barrier of his flesh. One shake of its head and it probably would have broken his leg, but it never got the chance. A shape larger than the two beasts loomed up and a fist slammed down onto the flat head of the dog. The blow was accompanied by a shouted command that echoed incomprehensibly in Yhalen’s ears.
A big body waded in amongst the dogs, and they turned, snarling and snapping even as they were caught by the thick studded collars around their necks and hauled backwards. There was the sound of another blow, and another, before the pain finally got through. The dogs slunk back, tails tentatively wagging, teeth still bared and eyes still white around the rims.
“Goddess—“ Yhalen almost placed a curse behind her name, but hadn’t the breath for it as his arm was grasped and he himself yanked up and off his feet, then slammed back into the tree he’d had at his back. Bloodraven’s angry face loomed close to his own. Bloodraven’s lips pulled back in a snarl not that different than that of his dogs.
“Little fool! Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”
Yhalen winced at the sheer anger of the question, at the grip of Bloodraven’s fingers. It took him a moment to realize that he actually understood the words. But by then, his body was already reacting, twisting and struggling for fre
edom, as he brought the hand with the knife up and plunged the blade into his captor’s side. There was no armor there to stop it. Nothing but linen and flesh and muscle for it to slide through. The ogr’ron hissed, dropping him and staggering one step to the side even as Yhalen darted past his reach.
He had no clear destination in mind other than escape, but the dogs were waiting to prevent even that. The larger one was on him before he got three yards and he went down under the weight, only barely getting an arm up in time to save his throat as the jaws snapped down. With a savage wrench the bone snapped—Yhalen heard it before he felt it. Another jerk and skin tore—that, he felt immediately, and screamed in pain. With the knife gone, he had no leverage to get the beast off him, much less pry its jaws from about his arm. From the corner of his swimming vision, he saw the other one coming at him. They’d tear him apart, between the two of them, like he was a rabbit they’d chased down.
But the smaller beast was intercepted with a kick to its belly that made it yelp and skulk off, circling the melee. Then Bloodraven’s fist came down once and twice against the side of the larger dog’s skull, which did nothing but make it clamp its jaws tighter around Yhalen’s forearm. Which made the world slide out of focus and inky blackness wash over his sight.
A fresh bout of pain chased it away. Bloodraven had his fingers around the thick snout and was prying the mouth open. He got it finally and Yhalen’s arm dropped strengthless to his chest. The pain blossomed again in time with his beating heart—in time with Bloodraven’s voice threatening the dogs to stay back. In time with flashes of them circling, still wild-eyed and feral, even towards their master.