by Nunn, PL
“That wasn’t an answer to my question,” Dunval hissed. “That was a lesson in the primitive politics of your brethren.”
Tangery lifted a hand thoughtfully, contemplating words that Dunval dismissed as useless. Yhalen thought it was more of an answer than the hawk-faced lord understood. If it was true, the candor of it was alarming, to speak in the presence of an enemy.
“Is it then only the work of one clan that has had the southern lands of my people raided so many times this season?” Tangery asked.
Bloodraven’s mouth twitched in a faint, rueful grin that only Yhalen perceived, draped as he was in the same shadows as the half ogre.
“No. Not one clan’s work. Though they don’t work in unity, the need that all in the northern highlands perceive, drives individual chieftains to seek relief. With each passing year, the mountains grow colder, the snows deeper, and the ice thicker. Game is scarcer and the crops tended by slaves thinner and thinner. Our slaves are dying out, as well—yet all the things that dwindle in the north are plentiful in your southern lands. Meat, crops…slaves. Necessity often breeds unity even in the most quarrelsome environment, does it not? And with great resistance, rivals will eventually see the benefit of combining forces.”
He trailed off after this last dire prediction, letting his human audience make what they would of it, his big body calm and still and letting no hint of the unease he had to feel, betray him. How he’d developed such reserve while growing up in the company of full ogres, Yhalen had no notion, for, from what he’d observed of Bloodraven’s company, conversations—much less arguments between rivals—were not held with such aplomb.
Yhalen shrank closer against the wall of his corner, willing the shadows and Bloodraven’s bulk to make him invisible, wishing very much that he were not here and not privy to this conversation.
Seething with indignation inside that they had come down here fully expecting to find him murdered. It was only Bloodraven’s curiosity that saw him alive, certainly not the generosity of these men. Little wonder that his own people had seen fit to separate themselves from the lands of ‘civilized’ men many generations ago, if this was the way they treated their allies. If he ever returned home in anything other than abject shame, he’d make his thoughts on the subject of the southern lords and their practices very clear.
“If this happened,” Tangery asked slowly, “this combining of forces among the clans, how bold would it make them in their forays into the south?”
Bloodraven didn’t answer directly, tilting his head back against the wall as if in contemplation.
Yhalen thought it was simply a display of power, making them await his pleasure. Dunval didn’t take the wait well, his face reddening and his knuckles whitening with stress on the arms of his field chair.
But Tangery motioned him to silence when he’d have voiced complaint, and Dunval snapped his mouth shut, giving Yhalen some small bit of satisfaction at the man’s frustration.
“It would make them very bold,” Bloodraven finally said. “As will the oncoming winter.”
“How many?” Dunval could keep quiet no longer. “How many warriors combined in these clans?”
“Enough, I think, to make your lives very difficult—if not short.”
Dunval rose, growling. “Your life will be shorter still, if you don’t answer my questions, beast.”
Bloodraven stared levelly at Dunval, unflinching. “And what gain to you then?”
“What gain? Your spilled blood will be gain enough.”
Dunval beckoned for the guard standing against the back wall to come forward, perhaps with the intent of sending them into the cell to work mischief upon their chained captive, but Tangery again stalled reckless action with a motion of his hand.
“Sit down, Lord Dunval,” he commanded and there was little Dunval could do but follow the order of the brother of his king.
“What gain to you, master Bloodraven?” Tangery leaned forward, eyes bright with contemplation. It was a fair enough question and one that Yhalen himself wondered at, considering all that he’d seen and heard among the ogres. Despite Bloodraven’s rivalry with Deathclaw, he doubted the halfling would so easily betray his fellows.
“Not all those who live in the north think the same way as the war chieftains,” Bloodraven said, his voice a quiet rumble. “There are those that don’t necessarily look upon humankind as victims to be slaughtered or slaves to be collared.”
“The halflings,” Tangery guessed, stroking his beard. “Like yourself?”
Bloodraven shrugged. “My father was a human slave. I never knew him, dead before my mother pushed me from her womb. Because of his blood, though, it was a struggle to live past my first decade. As it’s a struggle for all those with human blood in their veins. Many don’t survive, killed by their larger brethren. Others are…treated little better than slaves themselves. It is the way, that the strongest survive and the weak perish.”
“Why should we care if you beasts kill off your own number?” Dunval snorted in contempt.
Bloodraven fixed the man with a silent, narrow stare until Lord Dunval blanched, unnerved by either the halfling’s golden eyes or his calmness, and turned his own eyes away.
It was victory enough that Bloodraven shrugged and answered, “Who among your company could kill an ogre of full blood? What five among them?”
Dunval opened his mouth to reply, no doubt some empty boast trembling on his lips, but Tangery lifted his hand yet again, a look of intrigue in his eyes.
“That is a very valid point, master ogre,” Tangery said. “I’m told that your own capture cost many a human life.”
“Many,” Dunval spat, latching onto that offense like a dog to a bone. “And he should have been dead long since for the crime—as any thief come sneaking into our houses in the dead of night to slaughter our people would be. If I had my way, his filthy head would be on a pike upon the walls and his corpse split open and nailed to the walls for the carrion birds to feed upon.”
Bloodraven shrugged, unmoved, no doubt used to worse atrocities living among the ruthless clans of the north. “It’s only just,” he agreed and Yhalen shuddered, wondering if the fever and infection had caused the halfling to take leave of his senses.
“Yes,” Tangery mused, fingers stilling in their movement upon the bristly hair of his beard. His eyes flickered past Bloodraven to the shadows where Yhalen sat. “But justice has been in short supply of late, has it not? I think you and I shall have more to speak of, eh, master ogre? But not now, for there are things afoot that need the voice of powers higher than me. I have a brother, I think, who will take an interest in what you have to offer.”
“What has he offered, but deceitful words and arrogance, my lord?” Dunval hissed, his face red and indignant. “You would intrude upon our king’s peace because some beast throws a few lies at us?”
“Very few beasts are arrogant or deceitful,” Tangery said shortly, before rising and striding down the narrow corridor towards the stairs upwards. The guard scrambled to follow, the scribe blowing on the last of his inked words and gathering his supplies before scurrying after, which left only Dunval and his own personal guard outside the cell. He glared balefully at Bloodraven, fists clenched and white knuckled in his frustration.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to make him take heed of your words, ogre, what northern magic you’ve spelled him with—but it won’t work.”
Bloodraven laughed. “I’m not the shaman, fool.”
Dunval drew a hissing breath and stalked to the bars, grasping them as though he might attempt to pull them wide to make a path to the object of his loathing. As if his puny human muscles could.
“You’ll regret—” Dunval started to say, then drew a breath, forcing calm upon himself. His eyes grew narrow and sly. “You could be dead at a word from me, without ever having to set foot within this cell. A few crossbow bolts would be all it would take.” He gestured at the two remaining guards who each held crossbows.
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br /> “You could,” Bloodraven agreed, but there was a look on his face that told very clearly that he knew that such a thing wouldn’t happen. Not while he held Lord Tangery’s curiosity.
“Or….” Dunval had his composure back now and his thin mouth quirked in a hateful smile. “I could just have them shoot him.”
“You could do that as well.” Bloodraven’s voice lowered to a soft growl. “And I could snap your neck like a twig before your puny bolts took me down.”
Dunval stared. Bloodraven stared back. Yhalen felt small and miserable and helpless, fearing very much that Lord Dunval might do just what he boasted if his ego were bruised too badly by Bloodraven’s words. Bad enough that he feared Bloodraven, but to fear this hawk-faced lord and his retaliation against insult was shameful and womanly, and Yhalen cursed himself for it. Had such cowardice always lurked within him or had his mistreatment at the hands of his various captors made it take seed and bud?
He would not be reduced to such. He would not shame his family more than he had. Not with blatant cowardice atop everything else. He took a breath and sneered in the face of his fear, rising suddenly and stepping around Bloodraven, between the lord and the ogr’ron’s heated stare, and into the open space of the cell floor. Bloodraven didn’t move to stop him. Dunval’s face twisted in contempt, taking in unkempt hair and the broken lacings of his trousers, assuming things that had not happened. At least not here, in this cage.
“Do it, then,” Yhalen said calmly, spreading his arms. “It would be no great crime against me. Hardly worse than what has already been tendered. Perhaps Lord Tangery will be kind enough to send my body back to the Ydregi with explanation.”
Dunval stared at him, off his guard, most certainly not having expected opposition from his corner.
Bloodraven sat, very quiet, very still.
Dunval spat out a curse finally and spun on his heels, stomping away from the cell in a swirl of black velvet cloak.
Yhalen dropped his arms, trembling just a little in the wake of his bout of rashness. He heard the soft rumble of Bloodraven’s laughter. The halfling was amused. It angered Yhalen.
“There’s nothing of humor about this,” he hissed.
“For such a thin-boned thing, your spirit never ceases to astound me.”
Yhalen frowned and paced, working the stiffness from his own limbs, staying well out of Bloodraven’s reach. The halfling made no demand on his closeness, but sat with eyes half closed, dozing perhaps or merely biding his time.
Soon enough there were the sound of footsteps again coming down the hall from the stairs. The jangle of armor, the breathing of men laboring under the weight of armor and the journey of a very arduous flight of steps. If Dunval’s people were any sort of jailers, he supposed it ought to be breakfast or at the very least fresh water, but it ended up being no such thing, the guards that entered the space outside the cell proceeding not servants with victuals, but a lady with fine swirling skirts and a calculating look in her dark eyes.
The lady Duvera walked towards the bars of the cell fearlessly, even though her guard shifted with unease at her presumption, their hands tightening on weapons and their eyes fixed on Bloodraven’s supine form.
“Well,” she said, tilting her head and peering into the shadows where Yhalen stood against the wall.
“I’m relieved to see you still alive and well, Yhalen of the Ydregi. I’d feared that…dire things…might have happened to you during the night. I hope that you won’t hold the machinations of men against me?”
The lady’s face didn’t hold motherly concern well. In fact there was a glimmer of supposition in her eyes that belied her words. But she held up a set of brass keys in her narrow hand which made her seem all the more benevolent in Yhalen’s eyes. He stepped forward eagerly, thinking she’d come to release him from this wrongful captivity.
“They’re for his chains,” she said, when he’d reached the bars and stood face to face with her.
Yhalen stopped frozen in his tracks, wide-eyed and baffled. She extended the keys and he stared. She jingled them, urging him to accept them and he numbly held out his hand, palm up for her to drop them into.
“Our great and wise prince Tangery has decreed that our halfling guest is not to rot in the lowest of the keep dungeons. You’ve impressed him enough, master Bloodraven, that he’s ordered you better quarters. I trust you’ll behave accordingly to our generosity.”
Bloodraven said nothing, a silent, dark bulk in his corner. The lady shrugged and waggled her fingers at Yhalen. “Go. Go. Relieve him of his chains so we might be about it, then.”
Yhalen took a breath, cast a wary look at the semicircle of archers that lined the back wall, the lot of them either holding fear or anger in their eyes and fingers twitching on the catches of their cross bows.
He moved towards Bloodraven, kneeling to fit the key into the locks of the manacles around his limbs, leaning in to remove the rusted collar from about his thick neck, and all the while the halfling sat still and silent while he was freed. Perhaps he’d succumbed to the infection and fever and wasn’t even conscious. But when the lady fitted a large key into the door of the cell and her personal guard swung it open, the golden eyes slitted open and with a soft grunt of effort, Bloodraven unfolded his legs and pushed himself to his feet. He swayed just a little and his mouth tightened in what was certain displeasure at the betrayal of weakness.
The guards fanned out around him, some preceding backwards down the hall with crossbows aimed, others waiting for Bloodraven to begin moving before warily trailing after, weapons at his back.
The lady Duvera walked ahead, her hand not quite at Yhalen’s elbow as if he needed some assistance from her to climb the stairs towards freedom. She was lucky he didn’t bound ahead in his eagerness to escape the bulk of rock and stone that separated him from the endless expanse of sky. Only the pair of guards ahead of them on the stair prevented it.
Yhalen glanced back once, down the narrow curve of the stair, past the heads of the wary guards to Bloodraven, who was forced to slouch considerably in his climb, else his head would brush the stone ceiling. His steps were laborious and slow, as if his strength were finally failing on this climb to better circumstances.
They came to a second landing, one of the castle basements where storage rooms lined the corridor, no doubt filled with the things that needed the cool and the dark of underground to keep well. They didn’t proceed to the stairs at the end of the hall. Instead, the lady stopped before the opened door of a room that spilled light out from within. A trio of serving women scampered out, eyes white rimmed with fear, arms full of burlap bags and buckets of filthy wash water.
“Are you done?” the lady asked and the last one cast a terrified glance down the corridor to the approaching group of guards and the shadowy dark form that stood a head and shoulders above them.
“Yes’m. Just finished now. The lads have fortified the door and put on the locks, just like his lordship asked, as well.”
Lady Duvera inclined her head, releasing the woman to flee down the hall and up the far set of steps.
Yhalen stared warily into a hastily cleared and cleaned storage room. A large pallet had been dragged in and placed in one corner, along with a stack of folded blankets. A sturdy table had been dragged down and served as a catch all for the various other items they had seen fit to leave within the room. Two brightly burning oil lamps hung from hooks on the wall and someone had seen fit to throw an old threadbare rug across the stone floor to help insulate from the chill.
The lady stepped away from the door as Bloodraven and his guard approached. She held out a hand to indicate the room, and the guards emphasized the suggestion with a jerking motion of their crossbows. Bloodraven hardly hesitated, ducking his head lower still to pass the doorway and proceeding to the center of the storage room. It was a fair sized chamber, larger than the cell by some small bit, but taller of ceiling than the hallway outside. The halfling could straighten his back, and only
the very tips of his tapered ears brushed the stone ceiling. The lady urged Yhalen to follow him into the room, she herself stopping behind him in the doorway, despite the frowns of her guard.
“It’s not much, master Bloodraven,” she smiled. “But we could hardly keep you within sight of the people who’ve flooded this stronghold in fear of your kind. I’ll see that perhaps a few more amenities are brought down. There’s already warm water and medical supplies. I trust you can treat a wound, Yhalen of the Ydregi?”
Yhalen turned, blinking at her owlishly as his heart beginning to thump wildly with the certain knowledge that he wasn’t going to see the light of day as soon as he’d hoped.
“I have to remain…in here? With him?”
There was a whine in his tone which he had no control to stop, and the lady laughed, no pity at all in her dark eyes.
“Taking you from him would renege on our bargain and we’re not ready to do that…for now. And you’ve suffered no harm, it seems, so I trust our overlarge guest will handle his dealings with you with care. Besides, none of mine would be willing to attend him.”
She cast a meaningful glance at Bloodraven, whose hooded stare held no opinion whatsoever.
Yhalen suddenly hated her smile. There was malice behind it of a different nature than the bold hatred that her brother so openly displayed. She hid her intentions behind a false face and though she spoke with civility, there was something darker lurking in her heart.
“Well then, I shall take my leave.”
She inclined her head, smoothing her hands across the front of her skirt in a matronly fashion that seemed out of place with her. Her stare lingered with strange contemplation on Bloodraven, before she turned, walking back into the protective company of her guard. The thick door was shut firmly behind her, the sound of a heavy bar thumping down drowning for a moment the sound of steps.
Goddess. Trapped again. A tide of desolation welled up around him and Yhalen slumped back against the door, staring morosely at the freshly swept floor. There were obvious spots where something heavy had sat for a long time, spots cleaner by far that the rest of the space. The walls were still of cold stone, but the light of twin lanterns made them more palatable, and they didn’t hold the moist cold that the deeper walls where the dungeon sat had. There wasn’t quite as much stone over his head, he assured himself. Half as much, at the very least.