by Nunn, PL
“No!” The sharp cry brought their attention back to Yhalen as he protested, “They captured me—near Nakhanor. A small band of them—but there are more—forty or so.” He thought there might have been that many. Surely no less.
“Less now, the gods be willing,” one of the armored men said angrily. “They overestimate themselves, the brutes—thinking well-trained warriors as easy a prey as hapless women and children.”
Yhalen looked at that man with sudden hope. “Are you from the castle to the east?” He couldn’t recall the name of the village for the life of him. “Did a girl come with a woman and children to warn your lord of the ogres?”
They exchanged glances among themselves. The knight on the ground grunted finally and beckoned a man on horseback closer.
“Take him up behind you, Fritz, we’ve no time to dally here.”
They gave him little choice, hustling him towards a horse and an armored man who held out an armored hand for Yhalen to grasp. But it was succor, of a sort, that they offered. Protection, too, so he grasped the hand and pulled himself up onto the broad backside of a sturdy war-horse. Yhalen grasped the belt of the man before him and the troop started off down the trail.
They came soon enough to a scene of great disarray. Of bodies strewn across the shadow-kissed forest floor, of the smell of blood and the aura of death. There were men’s bodies and horses—and surprisingly enough the hulking forms of ogres as well, though the number of men and horse was greater.
There were still more men milling about the area, guarding the bodies of their dead and wounded comrades. They snapped to attention when the company Yhalen rode with, trotted in.
“My lord,” they cried, and the knight who’d struck Yhalen demanded a report of them.
“Captain Therry’s and Captain Gumley’s troops both went after the beasts, milord, when they took to the woods. They weren’t expecting us and we routed them good, the bastards.”
Yhalen doubted that, rather thinking it some clever deception of Bloodraven’s and hating being here in the open when some dire ambush might soon be sprung. No ambush came, however, and the party split, with half staying to guard the aftermath of the battle and the other half taking off through the wood towards a well-traveled path. He did ask where they were going, thankful at the moment to be forgotten as anything other than baggage.
It gave him time to gather his wits. The impact of the mark on his back had staggered him. He longed to twist about and see it—though he thought that it most probably resembled the ones marking Bloodraven’s dogs. It was bitter gall that, though he’d done a blasphemous thing in perpetuating his healing, the dark magic had not banished the mark along with the rest of his ills. They would ask about that mark again, he was sure. They would demand to know how a well-healed brand might come to be on the back of a man who claimed to be a recent captive.
And what would he tell them? That he was Ydregi and an untrained healer of some dubious talent?
They might believe it, his grandfather being recently at Nakhanor village to parlay with the local lords.
His grandfather would have spread word of his disappearance—along with word of his companion’s deaths.
But there was also the stigma of his sins—oh, he couldn’t forget that. He’d stolen life from another to benefit himself, and even though that other had been an enemy about to kill him, it was still unpardonable by the standards of his people. They might begrudgingly take the life of an enemy by physical means if the cause was great enough, but never, never would the Ydregi countenance the misuse of that magic that the Goddess had graced them with. He’d be condemned, he was certain. And it would by necessity be a condemnation from the mouths of his mother and his grandfather, who were chief among the healers and shamans of his people. He couldn’t face that. He wouldn’t inflict such pain upon those he loved best of all.
So he needed to find another excuse, another plausible explanation that would sit well with this human lord.
CHAPTER EIGHT
There were too many of them, these humans, and they were well armed and well prepared. There was only slight gratification to be taken, having his own words proved true, having the braggarts that followed Deathclaw see firsthand that all humans were not helpless victims, to be slaughtered and captured. Not enough to make this night anything more than a disaster, though. Not enough to save what was left of his reputation as a war leader once word got back that so much ogre blood had been shed, with so little to show for it. And without it—without the favor of Dagfari Wartooth—then Bloodraven lost what leverage he had in the northern tribes They would be reminded of just what he was—no true ogre, but the half-breed get of some long dead human slave. No matter how skilled he might be with a sword, or how much more agile his mind compared to the majority of full-blooded ogres—he stood no chance against the united bad opinion of the tribes.
And if he stood no chance, then those weaker than him—those that he’d made vows to protect—had no chance either.
Damn these humans and their bad timing. Bloodraven blocked the thrust of a heavy spear with the back of his arm and slashed at the belly of the horse upon which the man who wielded it, sat. An armored form smaller than his own crashed down and he finished him, then circled warily, looking for more. There were ogre bodies on the ground, but more human ones. Quite a few horses, as well. He recognized the tattooed back of Ironbone the smithy, with a broken lance protruding from his neck above the protection of leather and mail.
He heard the sounds of conflict to the east and bolted that way, breathing hard from too long of a night battling humans in the forest. He found a small gathering of his force not long after, Icehand and Bloodaxe among them, with perhaps a dozen others. They showed the signs of bloody combat and more than a few carried grisly trophies of their individual battles.
“Bloodraven,” Icehand growled at him, a little blood running from a slice on the side of his face, but the stout sword in his large hand dripping more.
“How many dead?” Bloodraven demanded, eyes scanning the faces as he took account of who was there. More of Deathclaw’s cronies than his. He’d seen perhaps eight or ten of his own dead. The humans had outnumbered them five times over.
“I don’t know,” Icehand admitted gruffly, his yellow eyes wary, as if he expected an army of humans to spring forth. Bloodraven could see he was shaken, his faith in the insurmountable prowess of ogre kind threatened. “Many. It was as if they knew we were there and attacked when we slept.”
“Who sat guard, to let them sneak upon us so?” Bloodraven asked.
“That is not all,” Icehand said, uneasy. “It was perhaps more than luck. Perhaps magic.”
Bloodraven lifted a brow in question and Icehand moved aside, revealing the form of an injured ogre, around which crouched a few wary observers. No. Not injured. Not in any conventional way. But shriveled and shrunken, flesh and muscle gone flaccid and dry. Skin wrinkled like a corpse buried too long in the snow. For a moment, Bloodraven thought it was an elder and stood baffled as to how an old one had come to be here—then recognition sat in. The armor, the piercings—familiar traces of features of a face he knew only too well.
“Deathclaw?” he asked uncertainly, a great unease coming over him. Strange things were most definitely afoot. And like all his brethren, Bloodraven had a healthy respect for arcane matters.
“You!” The shriveled figure that had very recently been a robust ogre wheezed like a dying thing.
“You set your shaman on me—you did this. You had him curse us—how else could the humans cause so much damage?”
“My…shaman?”
“Your pale-skinned little bed-warmer,” Deathclaw spat, and the whole of his form trembled, the loose flesh over his frame twitching like he was an ogre so old he could no longer control the steadiness of his limbs. It was horrifying. A vile thing to be perpetrated upon a mighty ogre warrior, even if that ogre was an enemy. Bloodraven stood there, fingers gripping the hilt of his sword so hard
his knuckles cracked, absorbing the accusation and the realization of what it meant.
His human had done this? His human capable of dark magicks, when for days and days he’d shown no sign of such things? It was incomprehensible and yet, why would Deathclaw lie? Then again, what strange fate had allowed Deathclaw to capture such a creature and then generously let him bestow him upon Bloodraven? Deathclaw held no love for him. Deathclaw would see him dead as likely as not—and what better way, perhaps, than slipping some dark, cursed thing into his bed.
“This human betrayed no cursed powers to me,” Bloodraven said carefully, aware that even his supporters were wary and suspicious. “And I gave him ample cause—but not, perhaps as ample a cause as you, eh, Deathclaw? If there’s magic afoot, then it was not I that brought it into this company.”
Icehand nodded slowly, latching onto that bit of logic, seeming relieved that Bloodraven had come up with a plausible exoneration of fault for himself.
“This is truth, Deathclaw. You brought this human to us. You gifted him to Bloodraven. How could he be more aware than you of any insidious magicks this slave was hiding?”
Deathclaw’s eyes narrowed, angry and frustrated. If he’d had been fit he might have perpetrated violence. As it was, he growled and coughed as he struggled to his feet with the help of his fellows.
“I’m not a half-human dog, to sense the malignancy of my brethren.”
That was an insult not to be brooked in the presence of so many others. Bloodraven lashed out, a backhanded blow that caught the taller, but very weakened ogre, across the side of the face. Deathclaw staggered and blood welled at his mouth. The look of hatred didn’t decrease, but only grew more putrid and foul. Still, had it not been for the two ogres holding his arms, he’d have fallen. From the looks of him, Bloodraven didn’t think he’d last a hard march.
That prospect was in no wise displeasing. When he had the leisure, he would question at length the ogres that had accompanied Deathclaw on the scouting mission that had procured Yhalen. It would be worthwhile to know just what had happened to inspire Deathclaw to make a gift of the human to his bitter rival. Without the threat of Deathclaw’s wrath, he had no doubt his own powers of persuasion would be adequate.
“Don’t try my patience more than you already have. You’ve gotten no more than you deserve for your treachery.” He turned with an angry growl to Icehand. There was little choice—damned little choice now—but to retreat in shame, or risk losing the rest of his party. “Lead them north. Be quiet about it or you’ll have the human hordes down your throats.”
“And you?” Icehand looked at him gaugingly, always a touch more perceptive than the average ogre warrior.
“If there was a snake in my bed that brought down this curse of ill luck upon us, I’ll find it and separate its head from its body. I’ll catch up with you after. Now go. Too many of us litter the forest floor as it is.”
He left them without a backwards glance, trusting Icehand to take the reasonable path instead of the reckless one. That, it seemed, was his fate this day—plunging alone back into a wood infested with troops of armed humans that had proved, with their numbers and their honed weapons, to be a match for a small band of ogres. It was embarrassing. He’d likely never recover the lost honor because of it.
The hard-won trust placed in him would be shattered. Envious ogres like Deathclaw, who despised a halfling’s rise to power, would no longer have the retribution of the tribal councils to make them hesitate in their challenges.
It would be convenient to place the blame on some curse of ill luck, but he doubted the truth of that.
He didn’t doubt that Deathclaw had gifted him with Yhalen in the hopes of a demise similar to the one Deathclaw himself faced. Most likely, he’d witnessed some magic upon Yhalen’s capture and had hoped for the worst. That Yhalen had hidden it from Bloodraven, biding his time, was curious, but still unpardonable. That a human shaman—or witch, or whatever they called themselves here in the south—had dared to use his dark powers against one under Bloodraven’s protection demanded a reckoning. Even if it was an ogre he’d have liked to kill himself.
The first filtered rays of dawn dappled the forest floor and Bloodraven lamented the loss of concealing shadow. He stopped once, sword in hand, back pressed to the bole of an old tree wide enough to shelter his bulk, while the jangle of men on horses passed close by. A great many men. More than he wished to challenge when he had other objectives in mind. When they had passed, he moved on, careful and quiet in his passage. He whistled now and then for the dogs, listening for the sound of distant barking—but they didn’t respond and he saw no sign of them save once, when he found the ravaged corpse of a horse and rider that his beasts had taken down.
He returned to the place where his party had made camp, wary of human scouts. The smell of blood was strong here, and the corpses many. They had been surprised while they slept and many of his men had gone into battle unarmored, which accounted a great deal for the number of ogre casualties. There were a handful of human guards, sifting through the contents of one of the carts. The looting didn’t bother him so much as the collection of ogre jewelry he saw gathered in their possession. Earrings gained by prowess and given with honor, ripped from dead ears.
He growled, low in his throat and left his cover, stalking out into the open, picking up his pace as they turned and saw him, crying out in alarm and reaching for their weapons as he bore down upon them. The first he sliced through and through before the man could fully draw his sword. The next tried to block his blow and was smashed back by the impact, into the side of a cart, to crumple insensible on the ground. The last two gave him marginally more trouble, having had the time to gather wits and prepare themselves. One was a decent swordsman, but not decent enough to overcome Bloodraven’s reach, nor his strength. They both bled their life into the ground when he’d finished.
He scooped up the pilfered rings, some of them still sporting bits of bloody flesh where they’d been torn from ears, and stood undecided. Finally he flung them into the deepest thatch of brush, figuring that the dead ogres here would receive no decent funeral fire to add the rings to. Such things would be better off scattered where no casual observer would find and claim them.
He found the tree under which he’d made his pallet and the remnants of the chain he had used to tether Yhalen. The links were shattered, and a great chunk taken out of the tree trunk. The mark of an axe. Deathclaw carried an axe. Deathclaw had come back here after Bloodraven had left to battle the human attackers and used it upon Yhalen, only he’d missed, severing the chain instead, allowing Yhalen to flee. It would have been impossible to track him, even had Bloodraven possessed that great a woodcraft. The ground had been too badly trampled from the fight.
He ground his teeth, his wrath dispersed among a number of deserving recipients. He moved on, single-minded in his purpose and not allowing himself to pause. Not considering whys and wherefores or—gods help him—the possibility of being swayed by what very well might have been a magicked attraction for his little human slave. Yhalen was no different than a weapon he claimed for his own use.
Appreciated for the craftsmanship in which it had been rendered, used without mercy in the field and discarded when it broke or served him ill. He’d kill Yhalen when he found him and bring his head back to the surviving members of his war party. It would be a small enough balm for his lost dignity.
There was the faint jangle of gear. Bloodraven paused, cocking his head, listening for another telltale sign of direction. Silence. Not even the forest creatures dared to make a noise, but then they’d been frightened into their dens and nests and hidey holes before dawn ever fully descended upon the wood.
He kept moving, wary of attack. And there, through the vertical striping of tall pines, he saw the movement of men on horseback. He growled, low and soft, wanting very much to drench his sword in yet more human blood. There was honor in spilling the blood of warriors.
There was the fai
ntest whistling of air before an impact struck his sword arm, just above the elbow.
Bloodraven hissed in surprise, staring down at the thick stump of a crossbow bolt. It was too short to quickly grasp and wrench out, so he left it, cursing the weakness that spread through his arm and whirling to search out the archer. His ears rang with the sudden war cries of more humans than a clever ogre would wish to deal with alone, and with the disadvantage of a bolt through his arm.
The heavy horse charged down on him. Five or six of them, with men on foot beyond. He took the long hilt of his sword in both hands, and ignoring the hurt in the one arm, he slashed through the lance that came at his chest. The armored breast of the horse hit his shoulder and flung him off balance. He staggered, but regained his balance and came around swinging, taking down a man at arms foolhardy enough to get within his range. Another impact, and his left leg lost strength. The hidden archer had sent a second wretched bolt through the leather of his trousers and into the flesh of his leg above the knee. A horse rammed into him as he stumbled, sending him the rest of the way down. A damned big horse encased in armor of its own, with more than enough body weight to shove an ogr’ron off his balance.
He’d taken down four of them and crippled one of the heavy horse, but with his mobility gone and his sword arm weakening, they would cut him down soon enough. He bellowed in outrage over that, casting blame where it belonged—on the shoulders of his damned, deceitful human slave in whose pursuit he’d been drawn out here. A sword slipped past the buckles of the armor on his shoulder, driving through flesh and muscle from behind. He spun, lashing out with his blade, cutting a deep gash through armor and flesh in the man who’d scored a blow upon him. Not long after that, Bloodraven went to both knees, vision blackening around the edges from the blow of a longsword to the head.
At the very least, he thought, tasting blood on his lips, he’d died well, taking many of the enemy with him. The mountain gods would surely find honor in that. Even for a half-breed, killed by weak humans. Weak? And wasn’t that the crux of the problem, that had gotten half his party killed and drawn him to his death? Even though they were small and weak when compared to full blooded ogres, they had venomous bites and cunning minds. He’d tried to tell that to the tribal councils—but ogres would be ogres….