Bloodraven

by Nunn, PL

  Bloodraven inclined his head in a gesture of respect. He’d always had a fondness for the elders, always listened with great interest to the twisting pathways they wove with their words.

  “I’ve had reports of the number of innocent folk murdered by the hands of your fellows on this latest foray into my lands. It grieves me,” the king said without preamble, his shrewd eyes sharp on Bloodraven’s face.

  “There will be more,” Bloodraven said bluntly and Tangery’s face hardened, seeing that statement as a threat, though the king’s remained impassive.

  “Will there?” the king finally asked, as if they were speaking of the weather instead of invasion from the northern reaches.

  “Winter comes,” Bloodraven said, “and with it, hunger and desperation that my folk didn’t feel so keenly only a dozen winters past. The winters grow colder, the game grows scarce. We have our own enemies dwelling deep within the mountains who venture forth now more frequently than they did years past. South is relief of a sort, and the clans don’t know how to ask politely for aid. They only know to take it. There’s no reasoning with them.”

  “You’d have me believe there’s reasoning with you, though?”

  Bloodraven shrugged, betraying nothing of the curling in his gut at the importance of this baited conversation. “I’m not what they are, the majority of my people. You wouldn’t get such dialogue from the war chief of my clan.”

  “No. I don’t suppose I would.”

  The king sat back, steepling his fingers. He nodded minutely and a guard dragged a sturdy field chair from against the wall, positioning it in front of the desk. It was large enough to support Bloodraven’s weight, though it groaned when he settled upon it.

  “We know little enough of the ogre clans of the North, our ancestors having learned hard lessons about your people’s unwillingness to peacefully trade or parlay,” said the king.

  “Parlay is not a concept most ogres understand,” Bloodraven admitted slowly. “For an ogre to bend to negotiation would seem a weakness. Even our wise ones wouldn’t consider it, fearing scorn. It’s rare enough that the clans even band together for a common goal, which is why your lands haven’t experienced a concerted invasion in many, many years. It’s not that the war chieftains don’t wish it, it’s simply because they cannot agree to the specifics among themselves. They’re fast coming to that end though, with the winters worsening as they are.”

  “We’ve fought off incursions before,” Tangery said. “‘Tis only a matter of reinforcing the border garrisons and vigilance.”

  Bloodraven shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Tangery frowned, a bold man, but not one who would delude himself of harsh reality. The borders between human lands and the territories of the northern reaches were too vast by far to patrol with force enough to repel incursion.

  “Tell me what I’d gain from an alliance with you and the half-bloods you claim to speak for?”

  Bloodraven canted his head, and held up a hand conspicuously larger than the hands of the human men in this room.

  “Most full-blooded ogres outweigh me twice over. Their reach is half again as long. They stand two heads taller. How many of your men, on horse or off, could stand alone against such a foe? No single one, unless catastrophe weighed heavily on his side. No three or four common men, even well armed. I’m able. I have, otherwise I wouldn’t have survived to lead war parties of my own. I offer you a people desperate to flee the condemnation of our full-blooded brethren. I offer you fighters that can stand against a foe that no group of your own kind could topple. I offer you fighters like me, who would gladly pledge to your service for the simple exchange of life beyond the reach of the northern clans.”

  “If they were all like you, then why do you seek the aid of weak human men?” the king asked coldly, perhaps offended by Bloodraven’s assessment of his kinsmen’s fighting ability. Bloodraven would have been, had it been posed in such a manner to him. It was a perspicacious question regardless. A delicate one. There was hardly room for mistruths, if any bargain were to be struck.

  “They’re not,” he conceded. “They’re for the most part condemned to lives little better than the human slaves that fathered them. My people—my mother’s people—have little tolerance for weakness, and a child born half the size of its brethren…most don’t survive the first few years. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t take up arms and fiercely fight for their chance at freedom. There’s simply no chance, if there isn’t a haven for them to flee too.”

  “A haven isn’t a simple thing to give,” Lord Tangery said. “Not without outcry.”

  His brother nodded, agreeing with that point. “You’ve shed human blood and recently. Why should any trust be placed in you? Why should I let the wolves across my border freely?”

  “My father was a human man,” Bloodraven said simply, then added, “I followed the orders of my clan chieftain. Would you expect a man of yours to obey your command in such a thing or not?”

  “And did those orders include treating with me?”

  Bloodraven shrugged. “Opportunity comes when it will. It’s not to be ignored.”

  The king sat back, thinking. Tangery paced to the wall and back, his face a mask of deliberation.

  The guards remained motionless, even Alasdair who stood silent guard at Bloodraven’s shoulder.

  “How many are there, your half-blood brethren?” the King finally asked.

  A small quiver of tension eased out of Bloodraven at the question. There was in this human king’s eyes, a speculation, a gauging of things that could be beneficial to him.

  “Many hundreds, spread throughout the clans. I could gather them, but there would be eventual pursuit when it was realized what was afoot. There are young among them who wouldn’t fare so well against concerted onslaught.”

  “Many hundred half-blooded ogres wouldn’t be welcome in most parts of my kingdoms, human folk having long memories where the slaughter of their family and friends is concerned,” the king said.

  “We’d have to take them some place well shy of established settlements, yet defended against easy access from the north and retaliation,” Lord Tangery surmised.

  “There is a place, within my lands…yet disputed. Where no villages or settlements lay.” The king canted his head, glancing up at his brother, who furrowed his brows.

  “Gods,” Tangery whispered. “Treating with him is more dubious than with a half ogre who’s just finished ravaging our lands.”

  The king shrugged, and looked back to Bloodraven.

  “There’s a valley northeast of here, overseen by the most reclusive of my…subjects. Lord Elvardo. Very few venture there, as his lands are shrouded in…shall we say, superstition. It’s a vale rich in soil and teaming with game. A prime place for a large group of people to settle.”

  “The dark lord,” Bloodraven said softly with a slight, uncontrollable shiver. “I know of this vale and its protector. Only the most foolhardy young warriors, desperate for fame among their clans, venture into those lands. Few return, and none with the trophies they sought. You propose that I take my brethren there?”

  The king smiled. Not a particularly pleasant turning of his thin mouth. This wasn’t a man that practiced mercy, save when it benefited him and his to do so.

  “Though he hasn’t attended court in a very long time, Lord Elvardo owes a pledge to Suthland. If his cooperation were garnered, then he’d be a mighty shield between your ogr’rons and ogre strikes from the north.”

  Bloodraven tightened his lips, not prepared to argue a point of ogre superstition. Tales of dark and mysterious things centering on that particular vale to the east had passed from mouth to mouth around clan fires for as long as Bloodraven could recall. Tales of witchcrafts and dark magicks that could only be plain truth, considering that no army stood in protection of those lands, no armed force to keep out raiders from the north, and yet the lands stood untouched.

  The king lifted his hand, signaling wine to be broug
ht, and Tangery pulled up a chair of his own, settling next to his brother. The verbal fencing was over, for the most part, and it was time to get down to the particulars.

  Yhalen waited. And waited. And waited. Nerves fraying and irritation growing as time dragged by.

  The presence of the lone guard they’d left him with, had become insignificant, that one man bored and drowsy and probably wishing for nothing so much as the company of his fellows and the warmth of his bunk. He became little more than a sleepy fixture in the small chamber, Yhalen not being threat enough to warrant him standing wary and alert. They more than likely thought Yhalen little more than a servant, which assumption grated. Still, better to be thought a servant than a slave.

  He paced until his legs grew weary, and then sat in the hound-backed chair until that too grew uncomfortable, and paced again. He finished the ale and the remnants of supper, and grew chill as the night progressed into dawn. The walls grew cold to the touch, save for the west one, which must have backed the kitchens and their always burning hearths. He slumped in the chair, arms wrapped about himself, and wondered if Bloodraven were ever coming back. Wondering if he’d offended the King of Suthland with his blunt arrogance and been executed on the spot.

  Which thought made Yhalen’s heart beat a little faster and the food and ale sit uneasily in his stomach. It wasn’t that he cared if Bloodraven met his demise at human hands—he certainly deserved that fate—it was simply what they would, in turn, do to a Ydregi that they had thrown into confidence with him. That they thought had his confidence, at any rate. Bloodraven was monstrously shy at sharing his plots.

  Stubborn half-blood. Secretive and manipulative. And protective, Yhalen admitted with a glum frown. Admitted more, that even chained and under guard, Bloodraven’s presence had made him feel safer among these grim, silent men of the king’s elite than he did now, in the dubious company of a single bored man.

  If they came back without Bloodraven, he thought, it would probably be to silence the only witness to the king even contemplating alliance with the ogr’ron. If that happened, he was weaponless, save for that unpredictable, sinful magic that he’d discovered within himself. He doubted it would do him much good against a bolt shot from range, or an unexpected blade drawn across his throat from behind.

  He drew one knee up and shivered, watching the guard at the end of the table closest to the door and wondering what orders that man had upon the failure of the king’s talk with Bloodraven.

  There was the stamp of feet in the hall outside the door. Yhalen’s forest-bred hearing detected them before the guard did, and he slowly lowered his foot to the floor, pushing himself to his feet in expectation of disaster. The door opened abruptly and his guard started to his feet at attention, but the two men who entered paid him little notice.

  “Come,” they said simply to Yhalen.

  He lifted his chin, head still spinning with thoughts of secretive murder. “Where?”

  “To attend your master, what else?”

  It was said with impatience and no small bit of derision, the guards having their own opinions of the human man that came here at the half ogre’s whim. Arguing his case with them would be pointless. But they seemed more impatient to be about their business than hiding a plot of murder, and Yhalen didn’t feel the hovering scent of threat, so he happily enough quit this small, cool room in the hopes that there were perhaps explanations waiting at wherever it was they were taking him.

  It proved to be a chamber on the second floor of the keep, along a wall lined with stout doors of similar make. There were two guards at the top of the stairwell, and two more across from the doorway of the room they led Yhalen to. It was a bedchamber, and nothing more ominous waited for him within than Bloodraven himself. The halfling stood with his broad back to the door, looking out the slit of a window at a gray sky beyond. There was no one else within the room, but there was fresh water, a thick rug on the floor, and a crackling fire in the small hearth that made the room warm and comfortable. The bed was wide, and long enough for a tall man. Bloodraven’s feet would overhang the edge, but not uncomfortably so. There was no extra cot or pallet, but then, servants slept where they could. On a blanket or bare floor if need be. Yhalen was most certainly prepared to do so.

  They shut the door behind him, and surprisingly there was no sound of lock being turned or bolt being slid into place. He supposed the four guards on duty outside in the hall, and a keep full of armed knights, were adequate enough security. He had no doubt that the king’s quarters were far from this one, and heavily guarded as well.

  Bloodraven said nothing. Didn’t even turn to acknowledge him, one hand on the stone flanking the window. He certainly seemed no worse for wear and Yhalen unconsciously released a breath of relief that eased long-held tension from his body.

  “What happened?” he asked, an all-encompassing question and one he repeated with passion with Bloodraven didn’t immediately move to answer.

  Bloodraven shifted, putting a shoulder to the wall, looking at him from beneath half lowered lids.

  “Your king’s a shrewd bargainer.”

  “He’s not my king,” Yhalen protested, having developed little enough regard for the lords of Suthland in their treatment of him.

  Bloodraven shrugged. “It seems he may be mine.”

  Yhalen blinked, drawing breath, trying to wrap his mind around the maneuverings that would bring about such a declaration. Failing. Ydregi politics were nothing if not simple.

  “Why? How? You’ll not drag me into this and refuse to tell why!”

  “Will I not?”

  Bloodraven smiled, a slight baring of teeth. A dare. Not a threat. Yhalen had learned the difference and ignored it, staring steadily up at Bloodraven, waiting for his answer.

  Bloodraven shrugged again, the faintly audacious look in his eyes fading, and gave it. A concise, if not abridged version of what bargain had been reached between Bloodraven, as a representative of his half-human, half-ogre brethren, and the king of Suthland. A bargain that Bloodraven had agreed with tenuous expectation, a bargain he hoped to reach if fate gave him the opportunity and ability to do so.

  “You planned this…before you even came here, before you crossed into human lands and started your raids?”

  “There was always a possibility.”

  Yhalen took a breath, the faces of the dead Bloodraven’s party had left in its wake mere shadows in the face of his own suffering.

  “You came looking for treaty with human men in the guise of an invader? Are you mad? And if that was your plan…why me?”

  Yhalen took a frustrated circuit about the room, before fixing Bloodraven with his glare again. “Why not simply leave me be when you were captured? There were no more pretenses to be had, and more likelihood that the men you wished to treat with would look with favor upon you without reminding them of your misdeeds.”

  “You, I liked. And,” Bloodraven folded his arms, cupping one elbow and idly stroking his chin with the fingers of the other hand. “You’re property of mine, so it intrigued me to see how far they would bend in interest of what I might offer.”

  Yhalen stifled a reply, though it burned on his tongue. It was old ground, the subject of his autonomy, and they were firmly of different beliefs. In a closed room, Bloodraven simply might take the argument to levels that Yhalen couldn’t win. He let it pass and that seemed to please Bloodraven, for the halfling sat down upon the bed, the frame creaking a little under his weight and began unlacing his boots.

  “We call this vale the king proposes for haven, Fah’nak Gol, which means in your tongue, ‘Death in the Shadows’. I have little liking for it, but less choice, it seems.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Yhalen said stiffly.

  “Did you hide in your woods all your life, before this?” Bloodraven lifted a dark brow at him.

  “The great forest is vast. Wider than the kingdoms of men that spot the land between it and your mountains,” Yhalen said indignantly, youthf
ul pride stung. “There’s little enough need to ever leave it, and little I’ve experienced outside it has proved worth the foray.”

  Bloodraven tilted his head, one ankle across his knee, boot half unlaced. “You’d have been content never venturing out?”

  The question was wistful enough to catch Yhalen off his guard. There was something in Bloodraven’s tone that suggested that venturing from the place he’d known all his life had been a desperate dream for no short time.

  “I might have been,” Yhalen said softly. “I was happy there. There are…were people who loved me. Some of them dead now, because you came.”

  “It wasn’t my intent to slaughter every human we passed. It wasn’t the intent of the war-chieftain who sent us into your lands. Gathering human slaves was. I misjudged my ability to hold rein over my warriors when half or more of them held loyalty to that troll-son Deathclaw.”

  Yhalen shivered at that name, blood draining from his face, stomach churning with a fluttering nausea, recalling very well the difference in intent between Bloodraven and his full-blooded rival.

  Remembering the condemning magicks he’d done in self defense against that ogre. There was nothing associated with Deathclaw that did not make him sick.

  Bloodraven must have seen it, for he frowned, staring hard at Yhalen’s pale face.

  “I’ll finish the job you started, if he still lives,” he said somberly. “There are no affiliations he holds now that will still my hand.”

  It hurt with a physical pang, the obviousness of his weakness, of his shame and his carelessness. It hurt that there was something in Bloodraven’s voice, in the set of his face that hinted at pity.

  “I need no vengeance from you,” Yhalen said fiercely, bitter wetness at his eyes. “Not when your offenses against me are as heinous.”

  Which stopped whatever Bloodraven might have said next, made the halfling sit there with his second boot half off with an unreadable expression on his face. He yanked it off, finally, and laid it down next to the other, then shrugged out of his human-made tunic, folded it in quarters and laid it on the stand near the bed, always thoughtful in the care of his gear.