by Nunn, PL
“Go find your master,” Yhalen said and she simply stared, canting her big head at him. He scuttled to his knees in front of her, fearlessly grabbing her ears and staring into her small dark eyes intently.
“Go and find Bloodraven.” He willed it as much as spoke it and she whined and broke free of his grip, rising and trotting away.
He sat for a while longer, nervous and having no more work to dissipate it. Guilty and defiantly refusing to let it move him. They deserved whatever ill luck fell upon them, even if it wasn’t luck at all.
They deserved something larger than far by them, showing them what it felt like to be small and weak.
But not all of them. There were victims here that didn’t deserve to feel the wrath of what was coming.
Yhalen left the tent, and searched out signs of the camp slaves. The cooking fire was surrounding by ogres now, arguing over their share. No human in his right mind would have ventured close to that snarling, bickering gathering, which meant they were back in their muddy little spot. He moved that way, devoid of Vorja’s company and careful of any loitering ogre that might waylay him. None did.
And there was the old man, and the two younger ones—but no sign of the girl.
Yhalen approached the old man where he sat, peeling long strips of wood from a log to soak in preparation for the weaving of a basket. The young men were back to planing wood.
“Listen to me,” Yhalen said softly, at the old man’s shoulder. “You have to take your people down to the spring by this evening, before dusk. All of them. And you have to keep going. As fast and as far as you can, no matter what you hear.”
The old man stared at him as if he were bereft of his wits. He shook his head finally and took up his peeling. Yhalen grasped his arm and hissed.
“Listen to me! If you value your lives, you’ll be gone from here by late afternoon.”
“Are you mad? And go where that they won’t hunt us down?”
“They won’t follow you,” Yhalen promised. “They’ll have other concerns. At the very least, if you don’t believe, have your people ready to flee and do so at the first sounds of disturbance.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “Does your master bring his own clan down upon this one?”
“No! He has nothing to do with it. My master and I will be long gone. If the girl’s life, if their lives mean anything, you’ll have them flee.”
He could say nothing more to convince them without revealing his own hand in the matter. He hoped before dusk was soon enough. He had no idea how fast a mountain troll with an agenda could travel, but he guessed far, far more swiftly than he and Bloodraven had covered the same ground.
He went back to the tent and waited impatiently for Bloodraven’s return, nerves beginning to fray as time passed. What if the old man, so conditioned to his life as a slave, went and told his captors what Yhalen had warned? What if they didn’t believe Bloodraven wasn’t a party to those dire predictions?
What if they questioned him now, or worse yet, simply cut him down as a simple solution to a problem they wouldn’t quite be able to understand? The next large green hand that pulled the tent flap back might not be Bloodraven’s at all, but the first of an angry ogre party come to rip him to shreds.
But it wasn’t a hand at all that stirred the tent flap, but a broad, flat nose as Vorja stuck her head in. The growled ogrish warning behind her held Bloodraven’s tones, and she whimpered and backed out, letting her master pass through.
Bloodraven’s eyes took him in, brows drawn and face taut.
“Are you hurt? Ill?” the halfling growled softly.
Yhalen shook his head and Bloodraven’s frown deepened. “Then what? This beast prowled about me and whined as if there were some great urgency—“
“We need to go. Now,” Yhalen cut him off, rising and clutching at Bloodraven’s arm. “The packs are ready. Can we leave? Will they let us?”
Bloodraven looked down the two heads that separated them, eyes narrowing in question. “Why? What have you done now, that you fear to stay?”
That was more to the point than Yhalen wished to deal with, but there was little help for it, when Bloodraven refused to budge in the least when Yhalen pulled on his thick arm.
“It’s coming. The troll—the one we saw—it’s coming here. Swiftly.”
Bloodraven stared at Yhalen as if he were bereft of his senses.
“You slept…and had a nightmare?” he ventured finally, with some small bit of hope piercing the somberness of his tone.
“No! I know. I sensed….” I summoned it. But that was not a thing he was willing to admit just yet.
Not here in the midst of this camp.
Bloodraven pulled his arm from Yhalen’s grip, carefully, somewhat warily, and looked towards the tent flap and the camp beyond. The tip of a nose and a pair of big paws could be seen protruding from the bottom.
“Stay here,” he finally growled, and spun from the tent flap, stepping over Vorja’s bulk and making her growl in turn as she slunk out of his way.
Yhalen sank down to a crouch next to the pack, shivering, afraid to send out his hunter’s sense and find the mountain troll. Afraid not to.
He curled his fingers in his hair, pulling painfully, calling himself every kind of fool. What had he done? What black path had his soul taken, to summon this sort of vengeance? But they deserved it.
They and their kind that preyed on the weak, that tormented and tortured those who hadn’t the strength to defend themselves. They who tore through human villages, slaughtering those they had no need for and taking the rest for slaves.
Vorja watched him warily, not knowing what to make of Yhalen in the throes of dilemma. She growled occasionally, ears twitching back, baring teeth, then would resort to odd little dog whimpers, tail thumping the ground uncertainly. He ignored her, too busy trying to convince himself that he didn’t deserve to stay here and meet the same fate as the unsuspecting ogre tribe.
Vorja jumped up, crowding around Bloodraven’s legs as he thrust the flaps back. He growled at her, and she shied back, crouching a little in submission to a mood that even Yhalen caught the hazard of.
Bloodraven caught his arm and jerked him up, snatching the straps of the packs with the other hand and hauling both Yhalen and their supplies out of the tent. He thrust the packs into Yhalen’s care once outside, and Yhalen staggered under the weight.
There were a gathering of ogres outside, warriors mostly, and Yhalen was immediately glad for the pack and the excuse to blend into the background as nothing more than a beast of burden.
Words were exchanged that sounded more like angry threats than words of farewell. Bloodraven was thumped on the shoulder by no few ogre warriors and took it without flinching, returning blows of his own in turn. He inclined his head in respect for the tribe leader and there were grunts of approval at that. Then he simply walked away from them and Yhalen reeled in his wake under the awkward burden of a pack half his size or more.
Something stung his back. A rock hurled by one of the ogre children and he tightened his arms around the pack and ignored the taunting laughter, hurrying as much as he was able to keep close to Bloodraven’s heels.
They took the trail out that they had taken in, this time deprived of the mountain horses and the one obstinate mule. The animals and a good portion of their supplies were sacrifice enough to have won their survival among this tribe. Without the offerings, they might not have made it to the camp alive, despite all Bloodraven’s posturing.
Some of the warriors followed them for a while—ominous, hulking forms bearing weapons and grimaces on their broad faces, but then, so few of them ever did anything but growl and frown that the ill-expressions meant little or nothing. Yhalen drove himself to exhaustion keeping Bloodraven’s pace regardless, very much fearing an ambush outside the camp, where their spilled blood would not sully the tribe’s domestic area.
Another silly supposition, he told himself. The women and children w
ould like nothing better than the spectacle of spilt blood. They would demand to have a hand in it. They’d see it soon enough, he thought dully, too distracted traversing the rocky and root tangled path Bloodraven chose to put much energy into guilt.
Eventually Bloodraven took the packs from him, disengaging the dangling smaller pack and tossing it back to Yhalen before slinging the big one over one broad shoulder with ease, hardly looking at Yhalen the while. He was angry. Or he was scared and thus projecting anger to hide it. The ogre clansmen had dropped back and he heard nothing of their clumsy progress, so he guessed they’d turned back. He was not yet ready to use his hunter’s sense, in fear that he would encounter the massive presence of the troll and the quicksand bramble of its focused hunger-rage.
He wondered if he dared broach the subject, having reached a point where Bloodraven’s moods mattered more to him than simply whether he was about to be thrown to the ground and used to satisfy a sexual need.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked, out of breath after struggling up a rocky incline that Bloodraven’s long legs easily traversed. “Are you angry at me, them, or the mountain in general?”
Bloodraven kept going. Another half dozen strides without even a grunt in reply. Yhalen drew in a hissing breath and stopped. He leaned against a twisted, dying tree and caught his breath. There was a water skin dangling from the smaller pack and he unstopped it and wet his throat, then as Bloodraven kept climbing, ground his teeth and sat down upon a thick, knotty root. He hadn’t had breakfast and he was tired, miserable, and frustrated. There was a bramble of berries that he recognized as edible.
Birds had eaten most of the ripe ones, but there were a few plump offerings near the bottom that he plucked without scratching his hand. He wished there were a bush full to quench his hunger. He would have taken them over a spit roasted leg of beast, and happily.
Bloodraven came stalking back, quieter than his full-blood brethren by far. Vorja’s presence alerted Yhalen to the approach a moment before Bloodraven strode up to him and yanked him bodily up from his crouch near the berry bramble.
“It isn’t the time for rest.”
Yhalen got a little shake for emphasis and he gasped as he tried to pry the big fingers from his arm.
Bloodraven let him go by propelling him forward up the non-existent trail the halfling had been following.
“You might have had breakfast, but I haven’t!” Yhalen stumbled a few feet and turned to accuse.
“Are you so sorry to leave so pleasant a place that your mood has soured?”
Bloodraven growled and Yhalen took a hasty step backwards, knowing full well he couldn’t outrun Bloodraven on this particular terrain, should it come to that.
Bloodraven’s golden eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry to be dragged away from a meeting of warriors like an errant child by the insistent whining of a dog. A dog sent by a—”
“Don’t say it!” Yhalen snapped, stabbing a finger at Bloodraven. “Because I’m not and it was important.”
“Yes,” said Bloodraven, advancing. “A troll, you say.”
“Yes.” Yhalen took a step backwards, courage wavering in the face of the grim suspicion on Bloodraven’s face.
“A troll, miles away, heading directly towards that clan…of all the places it could range. You had no hand in it?”
Yhalen opened his mouth. Shut it. If he lied now, it would fester inside him forever, until it would be too large and rancid a thing to safely expel.
“I had a hand.”
A growl and Bloodraven grasped his shoulders. This time, his teeth rattled when Bloodraven shook him. His back hit the old tree he’d been leaning against and with his feet barely touched the ground. He could see it in Bloodraven’s eyes—the fear, the superstition, the memory of the very wives’ tale he’d told Yhalen during the night of human sorcerers bringing the wrath of animals down upon hapless clans. And if that sorcerer had existed, perhaps he’d been a man much like Yhalen, pushed beyond his limits of control. Beyond the limits of compassion for a people who had none of their own. He didn’t want to be that man. He didn’t want to be another Elvardo.
“I didn’t plan it,” he gasped. Salty wetness trailed into his mouth. He hadn’t realized he’d leaked tears. He hated it. “I just felt it. So huge and angry—it drew me in and I called it here. I wasn’t thinking.”
“For vengeance,” Bloodraven said.
Yhalen blinked wetness from his lashes and whispered, “For vengeance. I swear, I didn’t set out to do it…. I look back now and can’t understand why….”
“Perhaps that snake in Fah’nak Gol can tell you, if we ever see the vale again. Vengeance, I can understand.” He released Yhalen, and Yhalen’s knees almost buckled when his weight hit his legs. He pressed his back against the tree and stared warily.
“You’re angry?”
Bloodraven gave him a look no less wary than his own must have been. “They weren’t the most unmerciful clan I’ve encountered, but then I’ve lived my life among the people, so I’ve seen the range of their cruelties. Take your vengeance now, while you can, where there are few enough of them to connect it to us and hunt us down for retaliation of their own.”
He picked up the pack he’d dropped and began climbing the trail.
Yhalen stared after him, stricken. “But I didn’t mean…how can you not be angry?”
“I have allied myself with the humans. I will kill more than a few dozen if need be to secure that alliance.”
He looked back the way they’d come, hours’ walk now from the clan village. He wondered how close the troll was, but dared not stretch his senses to see. Could he stop it, if he tried? Doubtful. He had done nothing more than urge its predominant impulses towards a path of his choosing—he hadn’t created the irrational rage, the hunger, or the need to destroy. He could no more stop those things than he could slow the stampede of herd beasts whose minds were filled with panic.
It was a terrible thing, this blossoming power that could turn a mundane gift that every Ydregi possessed and make it murderous.
He shouldered the small pack and began up the trail in Bloodraven’s wake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In the days following, Yhalen’s sleep was not peaceful. He was plagued by nightmare visions of blood and slaughter and the screams of the dying rang in his ears when he awoke, usually to Bloodraven’s prodding, the next morning. Even during waking hours, he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread, of blood-drenched guilt that created too vivid images in his mind. He paid little heed to his surroundings, passing time in a daze as they traveled, wrapped in a miasma of culpability that he couldn’t shake. He knew it was cold. Bitterly cold during the nights, simple misery during the days as they reached higher and higher ground. Snow seemed a permanent part of the landscape now.
For several nights, Bloodraven didn’t touch him. Didn’t speak more than a few necessary words and seemed to fall progressively into a fouler and fouler mood. They lay close enough together to share blankets and warmth, but no lustful touch crossed his skin and no possessive arms pulled him into the sheltering warmth of Bloodraven’s big body.
Only Vorja seemed unconcerned about what they had left behind, very much in her element as she bounded through the snow after game, often leaving them for half a day in her hunts. She always dutifully returned with some offering or another for dinner.
Yhalen had no qualms about pulling fire out of the very air to start their nightly camp fires, nor it seemed, did Bloodraven. He found it was easier to create the fire when he was distracted than when he paid full attention to what it was he was accomplishing.
It was perhaps the fifth day of travel since the ogre clan that Bloodraven’s temper broke. They had traveled silently all the day and found that evening what appeared to be a long, abandoned hunter’s shelter in the lee of a very shallow. It was scooped outside of an incline on one side and had a slanted, lashed together wall of long dead limbs on the other. The twine was rotting and falling apar
t in places, but so many pine tags and vines had coated the makeshift shelter that it seemed steady enough. It was free from snow at the furthest point, at any rate, and showed signs of a fire pit long, long unused. A large section of log had been rolled in, making a rough seat. It was more shelter than they had seen for several nights, so they broke for camp early.
Yhalen automatically began searching for wood to make a fire while Bloodraven cleared out the thickest debris from the floor of their little shelter, making sure no venomous inhabitants lurked beneath the layer of leaves and mulch. Yhalen dumped his damp wood into the shallow fire pit, arranging the sticks reflexively to his liking before wishing the fire into existence. It sprang to life and greedily began consuming the fuel he’d prepared for it.
Supper would be scarce, since Vorja hadn’t had luck hunting down game larger than forest shrews and the birds had picked the various berry brambles clean of fruit. There was tea, which they used sparingly in melted snow, and mushrooms that Bloodraven found under a layer of snow at the foot of a large tree.
It was a dissatisfying supper and even in the midst of his own distractions, Yhalen noticed Bloodraven’s descent into darker brooding. Vorja lay between Bloodraven and the fire, tail thumping furtively and eyes nervous, as if she too sensed her master’s sullen mood.
When the rotting twine that bound the limbs of the shanty together gave under the sudden weight of snow dropping from the foliage above, three or four of the snow sodden limbs fell inwards, dropping upon Bloodraven’s shoulders and head.
Bloodraven roared in surprise, lurching to his feet with hand to sword, dislodging more of the tenuous shelter. Yhalen scrambled backwards, startled out of his study of the fire and Vorja yelped, scampering away as Bloodraven snatched one of the fallen limbs and flung it into the dark forest. He snarled, grabbing another that was still half attached at the bottom and upended the whole structure.
Snow fell into the fire, but didn’t quite blot it out.
He snarled something in his ogre tongue and Yhalen flinched back from him, wide-eyed and frightened at the almost frenzied rage that twisted Bloodraven’s face.