Bloodraven

by Nunn, PL

  Elvardo? He sent the feeler out, uncertain of his own ability to initiate the mind speak. But the dark lord responded, from wherever he was.

  Yes?

  You said earth magic was difficult to control. How do I learn?

  There was a pause, a hint of speculation from the other end of the mental connection, then. You begin with smaller things, before you try to move mountains.

  There wasn’t an offer. Not like before. But then, Yhalen hadn’t been receptive to the learning of magicks when Elvardo had first attempted to impart knowledge, and Elvardo was nothing if not prideful.

  Would you teach me? Yhalen was not so stubborn, but it was still hard to ask. Hard to admit to himself that he wanted to learn the ways of magic, even though it trampled the beliefs of his people.

  Even if it meant, that like Elvardo, he would truly be outcast.

  Perhaps…if you’re nice.

  If scowls could be felt through the mental connection that possessors of magic seemed to share, then Elvardo surely felt Yhalen’s. He didn’t feel any polite reply to that qualification might be uttered at the moment, so he said nothing. Still, he sensed the vague flitter of Elvardo’s amusement and assumed that the dark lord wouldn’t be averse to the undertaking.

  The next morning, Yhalen attempted the long climb from the lower recesses of the keep to the upper floors. He found himself equal to the task, though it put him out of breath by the time he reached sunlight, and his legs were shaky from the accomplishment. He found a balcony overlooking the vale and looked towards the far end. The morning was grey and fog clung to the sloping walls of the valley.

  The distance was great enough that it was hard to see what—if any—activity took place at the other end. But he thought he saw a thin trickle of smoke and dark shapes that might have been boulders, but seemed too regular.

  Closer to the keep, about half way down the valley, was a clearer encampment. A small collection of tents and pickets, with half a dozen thin trickles of smoke indicating campfires. He could just see the flash of color from a banner snapping in the wind. The king’s colors. Accompanied by the king’s men, no doubt, lingering here to oversee the terms of their agreement with Bloodraven. Yhalen wondered that Elvardo tolerated their presence. But then, Elvardo’s amusements were not always clear to an honest man.

  He looked back to the distant hint of life at the far end, and wondered if Bloodraven were there.

  Elvardo wouldn’t tell him for sure, but it was possible Elvardo might not actually know. It was doubtful that Bloodraven advertised his comings and goings. Especially if he were busy collecting halflings from the far reaches of ogre territories.

  Yhalen was uncertain why he needed so strongly to know if Bloodraven were there, across the scant length of a mountain vale. Bloodraven had felt no such need to come for him—had he? Elvardo had not been entirely clear on that issue either. But perhaps that was just as well, for Yhalen wasn’t certain his own feelings on the subject were trustworthy. Was it reasonable to long after the ogr’ron who’d branded him and dragged him along like a dog on a leash for weeks? Perhaps he’d gone beyond reason, battered and used and subjugated, until he no longer knew what was right and what was wrong. Just like the magic, which he’d ceased to particularly fret over the practice of. Was that Bloodraven’s doing too, at the heart of things?

  He clenched his fists and glowered out over the expanse of vale. At the very least, he needed to set matters straight—that he belonged to no man, neither halfling nor wizard. And he had the budding power to enforce it. That was certainly a reasonable excuse to hunt down Bloodraven.

  With that tinder to fuel him, he was halfway to the courtyard before he stopped to consider the disadvantages of traversing the vale, only newly recovered in strength as he was. But there were stables in the courtyard, sheltered beneath the stone walls, and the means for easier travel across the long valley.

  The old man was out there, by the central well, rinsing what seemed to be colored, polished stones in a basin of drawn water.

  “I need a horse,” Yhalen said, self-righteous indignation still upon him.

  The old man lifted a white brow and scowled at him.

  Yhalen’s resolve faltered somewhat in the face of aged irritation. Ydregi were great believers in respect for the aged and he felt a pang of guilt for his lack of it now.

  “I meant no bother to you. I’d be happy to fetch one myself,” he amended.

  “There are no horses to be had,” the old man said, contradicting the strong smell of horse wafting from the stables and the slow, methodical horse thoughts that Yhalen picked up beyond the stone wings separating stable from courtyard.

  Yhalen opened his mouth and shut it, not sure if arguing the point would be a waste of his time. He somehow doubted it was the obstinacy of the old man that deprived him of the use of an animal. More likely the denial came from a higher source.

  Elvardo? He searched for the usually prominent spark of Elvardo’s consciousness and couldn’t find it. No doubt an intentional retreat.

  He thought less than savory things about the dark lord and sent them into the ether.

  “Fine,” he muttered, marching for the gates of the courtyard. “I’ll walk.”

  Which started out a fine plan, but with strength so newly reacquired, he was hardly down the winding path that led up to the keep before he began to feel the strain. He sat on a rock at the bottom and caught his wind, then stubbornly rose and started walking towards the far end of the valley. There was no reason to hurry, the day being young, and it gave him time to consider the things he might say, as well as of the meeting that he hoped might take place.

  He was less than halfway across, when a trio of riders from the human camp approached him.

  Armed soldiers that he didn’t recognize from the journey here.

  “Ho. You from the keep. What business do you have?”

  Yhalen stopped and squinted up at them. After dealing with ogres, trolls and wizards he felt a distinct lack of intimidation from three self-important, human guardsmen.

  “What business is it of yours?” he countered, doubting seriously that Elvardo had given the king’s men authority over his vale.

  “Who are you?”

  They glared at him suspiciously, casting glances back the dark keep. For all he knew, they might think he was Elvardo out for a morning stroll.

  “If I were him,” Yhalen canted his head at them. “You’d surely regret your lack of manners. I’m just on my way across the valley.”

  “Interaction with the ogres is prohibited except by express order of Sir Alasdair.”

  “Half-ogres,” Yhalen corrected. “Half-human, as well.”

  “If you’re from the keep, turn around and go back.” They had hands on their weapons and scowls on their tense faces.

  It was a wonder, Yhalen thought, with the king’s men this much on edge that violence hadn’t erupted between them and Bloodraven’s people. Perhaps it had already. How were the halflings ever to learn to live in human lands if they didn’t learn to live with humans? It was disheartening and it made him angry, that all Bloodraven’s hard effort might be dashed on the rocks if human men refused to give the halflings a chance to be other than fodder on the front lines of battle.

  “No,” he said. “Go tell Alasdair if you wish.”

  They stared at him a second, caught off guard by flat refusal from an unarmed man in the face of their numbers and their weapons. Before they could take their issue to a physical level, he planted the urgent need to be back at camp and picket and grain in the minds of the horses, along with the very pressing urge not to be near him.

  With snorts and a taking of bits between teeth, the soldiers’ mounts turned tail and began to canter back towards camp, paying no heed whatsoever to the loud objections of their riders.

  They’re taking liberties in your vale. As if it was the King’s instead of yours. He sent that thought back towards the keep.

  After a while, the whisper
of response tickled his mind. If you’re going to try and manipulate me, learn more subtlety— and then was gone. But there had been a hint of annoyance. So subtle or no, he’d hit the mark.

  The sun was very high in the sky by the time he reached the end of the valley. He was accosted no more by men from Alasdair’s camp. It hit him just how long he must have been bereft of his wit in Elvardo’s keep when he saw the progress made. He remembered Bloodraven’s speculation about the prospects of this end of the vale and saw that the building of it had clung closely to Bloodraven’s vision. The end of the vale sloped upwards from grassy ground into large rocks and finally into forest.

  Structures of wood and stone had been craftily built into the nooks provided by some of the larger overhanging slabs of rock, and father up the slope round huts with domed roofs made out of thatch sat within the outskirts of the woods, camouflaged somewhat by the straight boles of pine and birch.

  There were perhaps a dozen of the huts, small by ogre standards, but good-sized from a human perspective, and several more under construction. Smoke trickled up from openings in the roofs of a few, and there was a trampled area between the huts nestled within the wood, the ones that took advantage of the rocks that seemed to be a gathering place. A large fire pit sat there, burning low with cook pots warming around the edges. It was all neat and well organized, as if they were taking utmost care not to make their presence overly obvious. Which, he supposed, they weren’t, what with the fickle moods of their landlord. This little settlement was barely a speck in the vale and there was certainly room for a good deal of expansion without intruding upon Elvardo’s generosity.

  They were even attempting a small field of crops, though it was clumsily done. Although Yhalen wasn’t a farmer, he doubted they’d get much yield even from winter produce this late in the season. He stood a ways out from the village and watched the halflings move about, doing the sorts of things that villagers of any ilk needed to do to survive.

  Eventually someone saw him, and called out a warning in surprise. Warily they gathered to observe and with little other choice than turning about and walking back to the keep, he began to climb the slope towards the village. He shivered a little as he reached the closest of the ogr’rons, for even half human as they were, they stood a head or more taller than him, and he still had too many nightmares about pain at the hands of giants. But it was they who backed away from him as he passed, with panicked looks on their faces as if they were afraid of him.

  It was a bizarre notion—until he recalled what reason he might have given them to fear him. These people might well remember more of the disaster that had befallen the mountain village of Bloodraven’s clan than he did.

  They were mostly male, but Bloodraven had said that only the exceptional half-breed females survived the cruelty of full-blood ogre children, being smaller and weaker. He saw perhaps four females that had emerged from the huts further upslope. If there were more, they remained hidden.

  He stopped at the base of the clearing, wary of venturing further into the ranks where they’d assembled, a formidable, if uncertain, gathering of ochre-skinned people. He recognized none of their faces, which was no bad thing since the ogre faces he did recall were associated with nightmare. Of Bloodraven he saw no sign, but then he might have been hunting or out helping procure the lumber they used for the huts, since there was no sign of felled trees on the slopes of the valley.

  “Bloodraven?” he ventured, feeling no small bit uncertain himself when faced with this company.

  They muttered among themselves, then glanced behind them and parted to let a figure through their ranks. A small, pale-skinned figure whom Yhalen barely recognized, until he looked into light blue eyes that were old with hardship and loss.

  “Vorjd?”

  He still had to ask, for with neatly stitched leathers that any honest free man would be proud of, with clean skin and trimmed hair and beard—he little resembled the raw-boned slave Yhalen recalled.

  Indeed, he looked healthy.

  The human man walked forward and there was no sneering or disrespect from the ogr’rons he passed. They moved aside for him, watching him intently as he walked to Yhalen. A few of them spoke to him in the ogre tongue and it was as if Yhalen had learned no words of it at all, it seemed so foreign to him.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Vorjd said.

  “I—”

  He did not know what to say. He looked beyond them to the huts and the well-built fire pit. Looked at the neat rows of drying racks where skins were stretched and saw none of the squalor that the halflings or the human slaves had lived in among their own clan, and he felt some small surge of satisfaction. How pleased Bloodraven must be to see the subtle growth of this little settlement—to see the health and the happiness of his folk.

  “They don’t know why you are here,” Vorjd prompted. “Are you from the soldiers, they wish to know, or from…him?” He indicated the distant keep with a jut of his chin.

  “I came from the keep, but on no mission for its lord. I just—I just wanted to see if he had succeeded. Bloodraven. I wanted to see if he were here?”

  It ended up a question and Yhalen chewed his bottom lip in burgeoning anxiety.

  “No,” Vorjd said. “He’s not. He led a band to the far west range to seek out others of mixed blood. He’s been gone a moon at least. It may be days or many more moons before he returns.”

  “Oh.”

  A great hollow opened up within him. An emptiness that made him feel small and lost, and very, very tired. All the things he had been planning to say, all the declarations, all the indignities to be aired, all of it trickled away in the face of disappointment.

  He stood there, the center of their attention and nervous because of it, bereft of purpose now that he’d come all this way only to find what he sought was absent.

  “Are these all from Bloodraven’s clan?” he asked, because something needed to be said.

  “No. Some from Fork River clan. A few who fled from Death Gully clan when they heard word.”

  “Their clans let them go?”

  Vorjd lifted a shaggy blonde brow at him as if the question were a foolish one. Yhalen supposed that it was.

  “Not all that tried made it here. The clans are proud and don’t like to lose what they consider their own.”

  And Bloodraven had taken the strongest of the halflings back into the mountains with him, to convince further clans of the wisdom of letting go. He would meet strong resistance, and remembering well the savagery of ogres in battle, Yhalen felt a curl of nausea in his gut. Fear. It was fear.

  “Death Gully clan pursued the ones from their clan here,” Vorjd said. “They killed two before the other four passed into the vale and then—” The man shivered, eyes flickering to the sloping, forested walls of the valley. “Something stopped them. The wood itself. But it let the halflings pass. Sorcery, from there.” Vorjd lifted a finger towards the keep. “They’ve been taught to fear it all their lives, but even so, they appreciate that which protects them better than armor and iron.”

  Ironic, that those raised on superstitions from the tales of their shamans all their lives—raised to hate and fear magic—were now here, taking shelter in the vale of the most magical being he knew of, and thriving under his dubious protections. As he was, which proved that they were not so dissimilar after all, he and the ogr’rons. For would not his own people be aghast at the liberties Elvardo—that Yhalen himself—took with the powers the goddess had allotted them? They might not go to the lengths that the ogres had in trying to destroy such magic, but they’d reject it all the same. One way or another.

  “You look unwell,” Vorjd said gently. “Do you still hold injury from…?”

  He trailed off, face paling somewhat. Yhalen recalled him in the cave of the shaman, translating the malicious old ogre’s intent.

  Yhalen shook his head shortly, not wishing to dredge up those memories again. Not here and now, not among the ogr’rons. “No.
I’m just…tired. From the walk. It’s the first time I’ve been up and about since—well, in a long time. My legs complain.”

  Vorjd nodded. “Then come and rest before you return. The tea is weak, for we have little to spare, but it’s warm on a cool day.”

  Yhalen frowned, not certain if he should, but Vorjd was already speaking with the ogr’rons and they were watching, their eyes shifting between Yhalen and Vorjd. Some of them were grimly expressionless, and some of them were nodding, accepting whatever it was Vorjd was telling them. Trusting Vorjd, Yhalen saw, because he was the only bridge with Bloodraven gone between them and the humans within whose lands they now lived.

  Vorjd urged Yhalen up the trail into the clearing, with some of the halflings following curiously and others going back to their chores. He took Yhalen to the fire, where large rounds of logs had been placed as crude but effective seating where a body could warm itself by the flames. Vorjd dipped water from an iron kettle heating by the edge of the fire into a mug made for ogr’ron hands. One of the females came forward, casting curious, uncertain glances at Yhalen, and offered a pinch of herb. She said something, soft and quick.

  “Thyle leaf and mint, she says,” Vorjd translated. “It makes for soothing tea.”

  “Th–thank you. Thank her.”

  Yhalen took the mug in both hands and held it in his lap while the herbs steeped. It was barely enough herb to flavor the water, but it was a kind offering. He would ask Elvardo—ask prettily if he had to—to see about sending a few delicacies the way of the new settlement. Sir Alasdair needed speaking with as well, about the introduction of these people to human ways and human charities, if such a thing could be found amidst the political maneuverings of the royals.