Bloodraven

by Nunn, PL

  The roar of screaming rock invaded his body, and he spun, staring in dismay as the cliffs began to crumble. Age old dens and cave warrens slid into ruin as the mountain fell in upon itself, and those ogres that had run back to the village for safety found themselves caught in the deluge of earth and rock.

  A body came at him from the swirling dust and he caught a glimpse of Thagnail’s twisted face, a glimmer of a drawn weapon. He ducked and lunged up under the larger ogre’s arm, driving his stolen knife between the edges of leather armor. He wrenched the blade free, shoving Thagnail away from him, not caring particularly at the moment whether it had been a killing blow.

  The dust was heavy now, like a thick, lowlying fog. Something was burning. It smelled of roasting flesh. The earth still shook, but not so violently. He lost his bearings as so many terrified clansmen had lost theirs, running blindly to escape the inescapable. He saw a warrior stagger through the dust, sword out to fight an invisible foe, saw him falter, face twisting in shock as his skin began to blister and blacken, as if he burned from the inside out. Eyes bulged and ruptured and smoke rose from the blackened cavities before the body toppled face first to the shattered earth. Bloodraven saw the silhouette of a figure in the dust cloud, human and naked and radiating power like the heat of a stoked fire. He saw a glimpse of face—of a lean body, bloodstained but whole—with nothing of sanity in dilated green eyes.

  “Bloodraven.”

  He heard his name called, and turned to see a big figure approaching through the tangle of fleeing bodies. Hard to see the face though the dust, but he thought the voice belonged to Bloodaxe, Icehand’s son and his own second during the fateful foray into human lands.

  Almost the big form reached him before he staggered, crying out in a pang of agony.

  “No!” Bloodraven screamed and pelted towards Bloodaxe, slamming a shoulder under his arm and trying to force him away from the pain-mad attention of certain death. Bloodaxe’s legs gave out and Bloodraven went down with him.

  He grasped Bloodaxe’s collar trying to shake him to awareness, horrified at the blood leaking from the eyes of an ogre who’d been a childhood ally, raised in the same den and never resentful of the half-breed his father had taken in. Bloodaxe blinked up at him, dazed, in no position to understand what had taken hold of him, and then the life faded from his face.

  “No!” Bloodraven screamed again, voice gone hoarse from the dust. The grief welled up once more, clogging in his throat.

  He’d never meant for his clan to perish. Never wanted their destruction, simply a better life for the subjugated half-blood children like himself. Blood split in battle was one thing, an honorable death for a warrior. Dying like this—there was no nobility in it. No more honor in it than the death they’d wanted to give Yhalen.

  He laid a hand on Bloodaxe’s chest, then rose and looked for Yhalen. There were more bodies, dead in various bone-chilling ways, burned or withered. One hapless warrior was half consumed by earth that had opened to swallow him, then closed upon his lower body—as if the power that had killed them was eclectic and uncertain of which method to practice in its destruction.

  He felt Yhalen before he saw him. The hair on the back of his arms stood up as a ripple of that indefinable energy that went hand in hand with magical doings passed over him. The earth was cracked and dry under his feet, as if the land had endured a drought for seasons, instead of a fall plentiful with rain and snow. Through the fog he saw the edge of the forest and it too was silvered with death, all the green of healthy foliage stripped away as if a plague had passed through it.

  He was afraid. Fear clutched at his belly, grown from so many sources it was hard to distinguish which held the most sway. He strode forward anyway, zeroing in on the small figure at the center of the ruin.

  Something rocked his body before Yhalen even turned to see him and he staggered a step, feeling pain knot in his insides. Yhalen turned, hair bloody and tangled, face streaked with red. His eyes burned beneath the fall of matted hair, that soft empathy that was so much of Yhalen simply gone, replaced by utter blank madness. Sanity chased away by more pain than a mortal body was made to endure.

  There was no recognition of him. He dropped the knife and spread his hands, fighting the urge to curl up around the hurt in his chest.

  “You saved me, little fool,” he gasped, never stopping his forward movement. “Will you destroy me now?”

  His body did not crumble, or burn from the inside out. The pain lessened and Yhalen stared at him through narrow, suspicion-filled eyes.

  “I mean you no harm,” he promised and held out a hand. Yhalen’s eyes followed the motion, focused on his hand. He got close enough to touch, to reach out and press his palm against the side of Yhalen’s face, to skin unnaturally hot. A little spark of something raced up his arm from the contact and almost he flinched, almost retreating. Almost.

  “No more,” he said softly, pressing his lips to the top of Yhalen’s tangled hair a moment before he slammed his clenched fist into the side of his head, dropping him where he stood.

  The oppressive feeling of unleashed magic evaporated, though it would be some time before the earth settled and the last of the tremors faded. He sat down, legs suddenly gone weak and stared into the settling dust at the ruin that had been made of his ancestral home. He could hear the cries of anguish, the occasional shifting of rock as the debris settled. The droning bark of dogs. He wondered if Vorja had survived.

  He pulled Yhalen into his arms, holding him close against his chest. The unnatural heat was gone from his body now, his skin grown chill from the brisk mountain morning. Bloodraven pressed his palm against Yhalen’s back and felt the slow beat of his heart. Alive, despite all they had done. Whole despite all their tortures and cruel killing games. All they’d done was draw out a power that few of them could survive, a power he wasn’t sure even Yhalen could survive if his mind ever healed enough to comprehend the ferocity of what he’d done.

  When he awoke and that mad power resurfaced, Bloodraven doubted the chances of his own survival. Even a mad creature would remember betrayal and act before it could happen again. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this newfound power, or the lunacy that had sparked it. He knew of only one man who was. It was only a matter of getting Yhalen back to Elvardo’s valley and surviving to tell the tale. Which meant keeping Yhalen in much the state he was in now.

  He rose, cradling his human, and walked across the ravaged plain towards the remnants of the village, the beginnings of a plan budding in his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  An ogre female shrieked something incomprehensible at Bloodraven, her white-rimmed eyes wide and terrified before she ran into the dust-filled rubble that was all that remained of the village. Others scrambled away, bloodstained and dust-coated, dazed and keening in misery.

  There were more gaping rents in the earth than Bloodraven had initially noted, deep chasms that had opened and not closed entirely upon the earth’s settling. Fires burned still, here and there, devouring withered grass. He saw a pack of clan dogs loping along the crumbled edge of the cliff and whistled once sharply. Most of the beasts ignored him, being small and ill-fed and more interested in the scent of blood. The deeper bark of a larger dog alerted him to Vorja’s approach. She trotted from the wood line, the foam of blood on her broad muzzle. Who knew what she had been at, or what had been at her? He decided it had been the latter after seeing the score of what looked to be a blade along her shoulder. Being his, they’d have tried to destroy her. And being what she was, a battle-trained beast, she’d have fought back.

  He shifted Yhalen to his shoulder and bent to lay his hand against her flat head as the dog pressed against his legs. She whined, her tongue lolling as trauma of the morning was washed away by her happiness at his attention.

  If only he could banish his own memory of it so easily.

  He appropriated a cloak from the body of a dead warrior and wrapped it around Yhalen’s chilled flesh, then stood in t
he midst of the destruction, lost in a place that had once been as familiar to him as his own hands. It was gone now, or close enough that it hardly mattered. The shanties of the halflings and the human slaves outside the once protective walls of the village still stood mostly intact, but the web work of caves that had been the most coveted of dens had crumbled with the cliffs, smothering the village of tents and huts below.

  He began to walk, careful of the edges of the chasms. He held Yhalen against his shoulder as he might a sleeping child, and Vorja trotted beside him with her nose twitching furiously from the prevailing scent of blood. They came upon an ogre warrior, huge and blood stained, with one ear stunted and notched. Nobear, who was feared among his fellows as a warrior of unusual strength and ferocity. Bloodraven lifted his appropriated blade in warning and Vorja laid her small ears flat and growled menacingly at his side.

  But Nobear wasn’t staring at him or the snarling dog. He was staring with wide, frightened eyes at the limp human against Bloodraven’s shoulder. He backed a step away, then another before he turned and fled—a cowardly act for a proud ogre warrior. Cowardly, unless superstitions were invoked.

  Unless all the fireside tales of the shamans—all the clan wisdom and superstitions, half-believed and fully feared—had all come to life in one dread morning, perpetrated by a human witch pushed beyond the limits of sanity.

  Wrathbone was dead. He’d seen it with his own eyes. So there was no voice to either curb or sway the frantic fears of the clan. The terror would grow unchecked, and the story would spread and evolve.

  And perhaps that ever-changing tale of terror would work to Bloodraven’s benefit.

  His own den with his gear and his weapons was lost along with the rest along the inner cliff walls, so Bloodraven scavenged from the dead. He took both clothing and weaponry, outfitting himself as befitted a warrior before he confronted what was left of the clan.

  There were human slaves fleeing furtively towards the far tree line, taking a chance for freedom that they never would have risked before. He ignored them until he saw one of Wrathbone’s albino slaves scurrying through the rocks with an armful of salvaged booty.

  Bloodraven yelled for the human to stop and the albino froze, caught in the act of escape and thievery. He stared, wide-eyed, with renewed terror as Bloodraven strode towards him. Bloodraven set the trembling slave to a task, upon threat of dire retribution both mundane and magical, if he failed or fled. With Yhalen in his grasp, the slave had no doubt of the veracity of his warning.

  His little human, even limp and insensible in his arms, had become a sharp-edged weapon that he found he had little hesitation in using. And they made it easy for him, spreading rumor and fear and supposition like the fires Yhalen had started in the dead grass.

  A halfling that he knew well from childhood limped past, an infant too small to be a full blood in her arms.

  “Kredja,” he called and she turned, recognizing him but not the significance of what he held, for there was no fear, only the glaze-eyed sheen of shock on her broad face.

  “Kavarr,” she murmured. “We’re cursed.”

  “No,” he said. “We’re handed an opportunity. Go and gather all the ogr’rons. Spread the word that what was spoken of in secrecy is upon us.” He looked about, and finally indicated the wood line to the far east of the village. It hadn’t been touched by Yhalen’s magic, and was still green and fertile. “Gather there and wait for me. Take what supplies you can carry on your back in preparation for several weeks’ journey.”

  She stared at him, not fully comprehending. “But, how can we just…? We’ll be stopped and punished!”

  “By who?” he asked bitterly and gestured about with his sword. “No one will stop you. Not now.”

  He moved past her, taking stock of the dead and the dying. Some had been swallowed by the earth, some burned. Some were withered corpses drained of their life energy, and some wounded, but alive.

  The surviving members of the clan were still in too much shock to go out and see to the damage wrought.

  There was a body withered within its leathers and armor that still lived. Bloodraven heard the rasping of breath, saw the labored attempts at movement. It took him a moment to connect the ring-studded ears and the array of intricate tattooing with Wartooth. The gods knew that the wasted body held no resemblance to the hale and hearty warlord who had condemned him an hour earlier. Like Deathclaw, his body was emaciated and shrunken, his vitality stolen to fuel the destructive rage of his victim. Like Deathclaw, he’d survived the theft. Barely.

  Bloodraven knelt, lying Yhalen down carefully beyond Wartooth’s limited range and ordering Vorja to sit and guard.

  The warlord glared up at him through sunken, bloodshot eyes, mouth working spasmodically as bloody foam spumed upon his lips. No words got past the labored breath, but the accusation that blazed in his gaze was clear enough.

  “The blame lies with you,” Bloodraven said softly. “You chose the wrong prey and you die with your mistake.”

  He slid an exquisitely crafted dagger as long as a human’s forearm from Wartooth’s belt, tested the fine weapon’s balance and stuck it into his own—a small enough theft that he felt no remorse for.

  Rising under the warlord’s seething glare, Bloodraven hefted his sword and with one powerful slice, cleaved Wartooth’s head from his shoulders. He wiped the blade on the tunic of the headless body before sheathing it, then took up Yhalen again before bending to snatch the head by the hair.

  The majority of the surviving clan had gathered beyond the mouth of the buried village. They were dazed and aimless, slowly beginning to take stock of themselves. No few, Bloodraven thought, had fled into the forests and might still be fleeing, the thought of vengeful human magicks lending them strength.

  An ogre warrior would face down a mountain troll, well aware of imminent death, if honor were on the line. The bravest of them still quaked at threats from the spirit world, though. The supernatural and the mystical unknown were the terrors that plagued their nightmares, and all from the lifelong teachings and threats of the clan shamans. Wrathbone’s bitter fireside tales would work for Bloodraven now.

  More so with the shaman dead mere feet from the spot where he’d condemned the human witch to a slow, torturous death.

  A few ogres on the edge of the gathering saw him coming. He doubted they even realized it was Yhalen across his shoulder or the head of their war-chief dangling from his hand. They merely recognized him and remembered the accusations made against him by ogres now dead. He walked to the edge of them and stopped, waiting for the tide of attention to spread his way. The clan shifted, both the angrier and calmer heads among them moving to the forefront. Accusations and threats trembled on their lips moments before he flung Wartooth’s head to the ground at their feet.

  Ogres moved back from the tumbling head, less appalled by the grisly nature of it than the meaning of his gifting them with it. Recognition of the victim began to permeate the surviving clan, and ogres pushed against each other to get a look at the dead-eyed glare of their warlord.

  “You did this?” one of the elders spat at him accusingly. Bloodraven bared his teeth and nodded.

  “I finished what human magicks begun.”

  A clamor of outrage spread. He heard weapons clearing sheaths, accompanied by just as many unsettled whispers. It was hard to see how many had gathered here, but he thought there were perhaps three or four dozen alive. More still in the woods and scattered in the vicinity of the village. The clan had numbered in the hundreds. Half dead was an optimistic estimation.

  Bloodraven did not reach for his sword, instead swinging Yhalen off his shoulder to cradle in his arms in such a way that they could see and recognize his bloodstained face. It was a terrible risk, and if he miscalculated the depth of their fears, he and Yhalen would both die here. The only consolation would be that their deaths would be swift and without the theatrics of Yhalen’s attempted execution.

  “Will you risk raising
the wrath of a human sorcerer again?” he asked simply and they froze.

  “Wrathbone did his best to kill this witch and failed. Wartooth ordered the execution and died and how many of the clan with him?”

  Bloodraven cast his eye meaningfully over the destruction that had been wrought, then turned back to meet the mob’s gaze.

  “What honor in sacrificing the rest of your lives following in their steps? Why risk black magicks and curses that will follow you into the afterlife?”

  A murmur of unease went through them and those with drawn weapons were urged not to advance upon Bloodraven by those with healthier superstitions.

  “There’s a curse upon this place,” he said, jerking his head towards the wreckage of the village. “A human curse, that will follow you to the grave if you hinder those of human blood that seek to sever ties with the clan. Slave or half-blood. Think well before you spill more human blood and spread the word of this when you seek a new home.”

  A new home? The cry went up, but it was weak and uncertain, pierced with fear and grief. Almost everything they had was gone, under the rock that buried the village, but ogres, at heart, were nomadic.

  Moving the clan from this place and finding another home would be no great hardship. If there were enough of them, enough hale warriors, they might even bully their way into the village of another, weaker clan. It was their way.

  They would keep the terror of what happened today with them. It might even spread, hindering the seasonal forays into human lands, perhaps even casting some small bit of doubt into the mistreatment of human slaves. If nothing else, it would keep them off his trail on his way back to Elvardo’s vale.

  He turned on his heel, giving them his back. Trusting Vorja to warn him of approach, trusting as well that they still reeled too much from the terrors of the morning to have truly taken stock of the losses suffered. That they had yet to realize how many of them, of their blood relations and comrades, were not among the standing. He hardly wished to dwell upon it, or on the fact that the greatest losses were among those who had not come out to revel in the spectacle of birds feeding upon living flesh. They hadn’t been his enemies, the majority of the clan. Not a family, as such, for full-bloods held little sympathy for their halfling brethren. But they’d been familiar faces and familiar voices that he hadn’t set out to still forever. He shuddered and pushed the thought aside, for to dwell on it would cripple him when he couldn’t afford to be hindered.