Bloodraven

by Nunn, PL

  He reached the edge of the wood where he hoped the surviving halflings had gathered, and found that Kredja had indeed spread word. It was disheartening to see so few. Less than twenty ogr’rons—not counting those he’d already sent out to carry the message to the halflings of neighboring clans. He knew all their names, save the infant. Aside from Icehand, these frightened half-bloods were family. They understood. They’d endured the same ridicule and suffering, growing up small and different among a harsh, unforgiving people.

  “Is this all?” he asked when he stood among them.

  “All I could find,” Kredja said softly, staring like the rest of them at the still figure in his arms.

  “Is he what they said? A witch? Did he do this?” Glag Rootcarver asked nervously. They would have heard the same rumors, held the same suppositions. Their superstition was no less than their full-blood brethren.

  Bloodraven stared the shorter ogr’ron in the eye, and then swept the rest of them with his gaze.

  “Yes.”

  They murmured in fear, shifting back. He growled at them in frustration, understanding the distrust but not able to abide it with all that was at stake.

  “It wasn’t his nature until they tore it out of him. Who among you wouldn’t strike back if what was done to him were done to you?”

  “None here are witches.”

  “And a good thing for the clan,” Bloodraven snapped. “For who with power would endure what we have all our lives if there was magic at hand to right wrongs?”

  They murmured at that thought, some of them perhaps dwelling upon the implications more than others, the most browbeaten and abused of them probably having wished such destruction upon the clan more than once in his life. Still, he feared for Yhalen among them. Feared what, in their distrust, they might do.

  “Without him, what reason have they to leave us alone? They won’t follow us or harass us in our new home if they fear that which protects us. He’s no danger to you if you don’t give him reason to be.”

  In his right senses, Bloodraven added to himself. If the madness was still upon him when he woke, Bloodraven dreaded having to deal with that. But he would, knowing full well that sometimes broken things could not ever be properly mended.

  “Human magicks would protect us?” one of the more timid ogr’rons asked doubtfully.

  “Do we not have human blood in our veins?” Bloodraven asked and they shifted, never before considering that human blood was a benefit to them. Such as they had only ever been condemned and humiliated for that claim, or killed outright at birth if they were too small and too pale or possessed of small round ears instead of tapering tall ones.

  “We go to Fah’nak Gol.”

  He expected a reaction to that and got it in widening eyes and cries of despair. They had all heard rumors of Elvardo’s vale. It was known as Death in the shadows—the shadows of the mountain, where those foolhardy ogres who went seeking spoils or glory were never heard from again.

  “We’re invited,” Bloodraven spoke, calling above the clamor. “Only those who venture in with spoils in mind invite the wrath of Fah’nak Gol and its master.”

  “You’ve seen him, the wizard of Fah’nak Gol? ”

  “Human.” Bloodraven shrugged. “And not to be trifled with. But he’s given me leave to take you into his valley, which is vast and green and fertile. The place where we’ll build our village is far from him, and the surrounding wood is abundant with game. And we’ll have the protection of the witch of Fah’nak Gol, and of this one.”

  They were uncertain. They feared. They had lost many of their own in the destruction that Yhalen had brought about. But death was no stranger to them, and they would accept it and move on as they always had. None of them could have survived otherwise.

  “I’ll go,” called Fruhk, the smallest and weakest of them. Half lame from the childhood beatings of larger ogres, scarred from their cruelties and spat upon by the proudest of the full-bloods, still he stepped forward and declared his intent. “Death is death, whether it be by the hand of a warrior or by magic. I would chance it to live in village of our own, all equals.”

  Kredja stepped forward, babe in arms. “Daldetjka birthed this little one and threw her out afterwards, too small and pale for her liking. I would have her grow to adulthood instead of dying at the cruel hands of larger children, as she surely will if she stays with the clan. I’ll go as well.”

  With a female and the weakest of the males declared, the others began to assent, until they were all agreed. Sixteen males, two females and one babe. A pitiful showing, but better than none at all. More would hopefully follow, those who had fled to the woods and those who the ogr’rons he had sent out would bring from neighboring clans. Not the army the human king had wished, but then Bloodraven had always known that there were too few of them to match the imaginary force that the humans dreamed of.

  They’d brought with them what supplies they could gather without attracting unwanted notice.

  Bloodraven bid them go out and pilfer what weaponry and armor they could from the dead in the field.

  They would need it for the journey to Elvardo’s valley.

  He clothed Yhalen in oversized trousers and tunic while he waited, doing his best to protect him from a cold the human had little tolerance for. Yhalen endured his handling without stirring, and Bloodraven thought it was perhaps not only the blow from him that kept his human asleep, but the great usage of magicks. He recalled Yhalen drained and tired after a great healing, and what he had done this day went far beyond that.

  He brushed blood-stiffened hair from Yhalen’s face, smoothing his knuckle across a smooth cheek.

  There were no injuries upon his body. A great deal of dried blood, but no hint of what wounds had leaked it. Even the worst of the damage that Bloodraven had beheld while Yhalen had been tied to the execution rack on the field was entirely gone. Little wonder with the life energy that he had taken from the clan and the surrounding wood.

  All this time and he had never suspected such power dwelled within so fragile a body. He doubted Yhalen had known. How could he have and endured the collar or any of the things that came with it, all that Bloodraven had forced upon him? That he’d never used that power on Bloodraven, except for the touch of healing, was curious. But he had little enough doubt that if Yhalen woke in the same state as he’d been before Bloodraven knocked him out, the oversight would be remedied.

  The solution to that came skulking towards him from out of the woods. A small, pale figure, clothed in scraps of painted leather. The shaman’s albino slave, bereft of his twin for the first time Bloodraven could recall. The other was probably dead under tons of rock. This one came tentatively and held out an offering of what Bloodraven had requested. A gathering of the herbs that Wrathbone used on Yhalen to quell will and magicks.

  Bloodraven sat the albino to the task of crushing the herbs and rolling them into the little balls that Wrathbone had used, watching the process and listening to the explanation of which plants to use and a suggestion of dosages. Finally, when the pale human had created a dozen or more little aromatic pellets, Bloodraven instructed him to put one in his own mouth, just in case something poisonous had been slipped into the mix.

  If there had been too much hesitation or fear in the doing, Bloodraven would have doubted. But the albino only let out a tired sigh, then put one of the little pellets into his tongue and swallowed it down.

  In short order, his eyes became heavy-lidded and his movements sluggish, but he didn’t drop dead in his tracks. Bloodraven sent him off to find a safe niche in the wood to sleep off the drug while the pale human still had the capacity of walk, and the albino tottered off, leaving Bloodraven the stash of pellets.

  The ogr’rons were filtering back now, weighted down with their scavenging. When the last of them was back, he’d move them out at the fastest rate they could manage.

  “Bloodraven!”

  A voice cried his name and the rage was no less unnerving t
han the familiarity of the tone. He turned, tense and wary and Vorja moved to his side, hair bristling.

  Icehand stalked towards him, dust covered and bloodstained, from the direction of the fractured plain. The relief Bloodraven felt at seeing Icehand alive was fast replaced by a knot of grief and guilt.

  The devastation of the clan and of the village hadn’t caused the utter anguish in Icehand’s eyes.

  Bloodraven knew what he’d found out amidst the bodies left in the wake of Yhalen’s destruction.

  Bloodaxe, Icehand’s son—caught and killed most terribly by Yhalen in his mindless vengeance against the clan. Bloodaxe, who’d died in Bloodraven’s arms.

  He moved forward, away from where Yhalen lay, preferring the blame lay with him and him alone, but Icehand saw regardless and his golden eyes narrowed in anger.

  “I defended your honor and your intentions, and look what it’s brought upon us! What grievous ill has the clan done you for you to bring death among us?”

  “This wasn’t meant to be,” Bloodraven said softly, not moving as Icehand stomped towards him.

  Ready to take what violence the older ogre gave. But Icehand stopped a body length away from him, his fists clenched and breathing hard, as though he fought his own internal battle.

  “My son is dead. Your comrade, your supporter, regardless of the blood that flows in your veins. Was that meant to be?”

  There was nothing he could say to assuage the guilt he felt for Bloodaxe. Most of the death and destruction he could place blame on at the feet of ogre superstition and ogre cruelty, but not those closest to his heart. Not the personal losses. Icehand blamed him no less than he blamed himself for the loss of son and friend. He could do nothing but stand in silence and endure the condemnation that Icehand threw his way.

  “You’re no longer welcome in my den,” Icehand said finally, then flinched and cast his gaze momentarily back towards the ruin of the village and the ancestral caves that had looked down upon it. He had no den to ban Bloodraven from, but it mattered not—the loss of a lifelong friend was blow enough. “You take your halflings and go to whatever place you’ve had them whispering about these past days. There is blood-feud between us, Kavarr Bloodraven, and if we meet after this—I will kill you.”

  Bloodraven inclined his head, accepting the inevitable. Loathing the thought of raising a weapon to Icehand and grateful to his core that the older ogre did not force the issue here and now.

  Icehand turned and left him, taking a great chunk of Bloodraven’s childhood with him. The good memories were all because of him, and now they were tainted. Bloodraven stood and watched him leave. He felt numb, and fought the tremor in his hands. The halflings who’d shrank back into the shelter of the wood during Icehand’s confrontation now crept out in silence.

  He turned back, finally, to survey the gathered halflings. He could not find the concentration to take stock of their number.

  “Are we all here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Kredja answered, having fashioned a sling for the babe across her heavy breasts. She had a dagger at her waist and a small pack at her feet. The others were similarly outfitted, with scavenged weapons that most of them had never had proper training in. Only a few halflings had the strength and tenacity to survive learning combat among full-blooded ogres. Those that didn’t and the females never received clan names. He himself had been nineteen winters before he’d received the honor of his own clan name, Bloodraven. Most ogre youths were given theirs years earlier, as soon as they had the strength and the ferocity to prove their worth as warriors to the clan.

  “Then we move out now.”

  He went to gather Yhalen, pausing only to consider the wisdom of putting one of the tiny pellets into the human’s mouth now instead of waiting till later, when he might wake in possible foul humor. The practical part of him urged now, but he dearly hoped to see Yhalen awake from this stupor sane and whole and of some use to them on the treacherous journey ahead. He would wait and see, hoping that if the worst came to pass, he’d be quick enough to remedy it.

  He set a brisk pace, wanting to put as much distance between them and the clan as possible before nightfall. Some of them weren’t used to the hard march, having never ventured far from the village all their lives. Fear of retribution drove them on though. Perhaps fear of Bloodraven who drove them as he might a war party, with little mercy for aching muscles and sore feet. He kept Vorja close to the party, trusting her sharp ears to detect anything untoward in the woods, and he himself brought up the rear, keeping the stragglers in line and constantly watching for pursuit. Yhalen’s weight was of little consequence, being lighter than the oversized armor and weaponry he’d scavenged. He simply shifted him from one shoulder to the other when muscles protested.

  They reached a place he knew just after nightfall. A spot he had sheltered in many times before during hunts and forays. There were rocks on one side and thick wood around the other three that sheltered from the wind while preventing easy access from attackers. There was enough space for a small band of ogres to lay out bedding, and a much used pit with the charred remnants of fires past.

  His own mark was etched into the trunk of one of the thicker trees, along with the marks of other budding ogre huntsmen. He sent Vorja out to prowl the wood, with a word not to venture far afield.

  There would be no better watch, himself included, to warn them of dangers in the night.

  Bloodraven claimed his favored spot, a niche in the rocks at the side of the clearing. He inspected the layer of fall leaves for unwelcome inhabitants, and then nestled Yhalen down into a nest of them.

  The overlarge cloak he had wrapped around him was more than large enough to serve as bedding for a small-boned human.

  He sat upon a flat rock and took stock of himself while his brethren settled themselves by gathering wood to make a small fire and situating what bedding they’d brought, as well as sorting the foodstuffs the wiser heads had brought. Fall root vegetables and mushrooms and strips of dried meats. No meal for pan breads or barley for thick soups. They would have to hunt and gather along the way, for ogre appetites were not slight—even half-blood ogres.

  Kredja and the other female, called Olmuf, wanted to venture into the wood and seek what edible fungi and buried tubers they could among the roots of the trees. Bloodraven forbade it. Not here so close to the clan. He didn’t want them out of his sight if he could help it. They’d make do with what they had tonight and eat light. Tomorrow, he promised, they might take a little time after they had put more distance between them and the village, to forage for food and to hunt as well.

  One of the older halflings had the good sense to bring a bow, and though Degj Flytrue had never held much affinity for the sword or the axe, he was begrudgingly accurate with the bow. That was how he had gained a clan name, though no true ogre warrior held much truck with striking enemies from afar. Not when there was so much more satisfaction having warm blood spatter the face from a close up strike. Still, there was something to be said for an ogre who consistently provided the clan with fresh meat and hides.

  What talk there was stayed quiet and subdued, the impact of the morning still too fresh in their minds to speak lightly of. Very softly, they spoke the names of those missing from the ogr’ron ranks, of those who’d chores to do in the village, jobs to accomplish, who had never come out again after the cliffs fell.

  Bloodraven listened silently, trying not to dwell on the losses, trying not to think too hard about the cause that lay still and quiet beside him. He wasn’t certain which image disturbed him more—the one of Yhalen being torn to pieces on the rack, or of Yhalen walking through the fractured plain, a mad-eyed wraith of palpable destruction. Bloodaxe’s death mask kept flashing in his mind’s eye, unbidden, as did the feather’s width of a margin by which he had escaped the same fate. He ought to feel the dread his fellows felt when they cast wary glances Yhalen’s way, for surely he knew more intimately the subtle range of his magicks—and yet he couldn’
t find it. Reasonable wariness, yes, but the fear of dark magicks wrecking his mortal body and cursing his afterlife wasn’t to be found.

  After their meager supper, the party settled down and, aside from the occasional complaints of the babe, fell silent. Vorja returned, having fed off something she’d chased down in the wood, and lay down next to Bloodraven. He laid a hand on her flank, idly tracing the scabbed line of the wound on her shoulder.

  He drowsed. And came awake at the dog’s low growl. She was already on her feet, her fur bristling as she stared into the darkened wood, by the time he laid a hand on his sword. He spoke a low command and she was off. He rose quietly to follow, leaving the rest of the camp unawares. He wouldn’t go far with the party unguarded, just deep enough to see if he might hear what Vorja had.

  And sure enough, not far from the camp he heard the threatening snarls that meant the dog had something cornered. He heard a weak cry of fear and pelted through the underbrush, coming soon enough on the scene of his big dog growling and lunging at a skinny, pale figure pressed back against the bole of an old pine.

  “Off!” he commanded and the dog ceased her threatening charges, but backed off not at all, her lips still pulled back in a frightening snarl. Other than his particular human, Vorja had little care for the smaller race. It was the fear humans held for the overlarge battle-trained beast that drove her to treat them as prey. And despite long familiarity, Vorjd had never grown accustomed to the dog.