by Ari Marmell
The man’s horse reared in fright and tried to bolt, but the human held tightly to the reins, speaking calmly to the terrified animal. By the time Davro drew near, the creature was sufficiently calm that it was unlikely to try to break away, though its eyes rolled about in its head and its breath came in heavy gasps.
The human, however, merely raised an eyebrow at Davro’s charge. Not only had he not fled in mortal terror, he showed no real reaction at all.
This man, Davro decided, must be a lunatic. No honor in killing a lunatic. I’ll give him one more shot.
“Leave this place!” the ogre snarled, his voice deep and rasping, his words slurred slightly by a mouth not meant for the speech of man. “You are not wanted here, human! If you stay, you are dinner!”
“So theatrical, Davro?” the human asked, the corner of his mouth quirking upward in a tiny smile. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
Davro slowly lowered his spear, growing ever more confused, and peered down at the stranger. “Friend? I don’t think I know you, human …”
“Sure you do. Besides, you wouldn’t eat me anyway. You told me once you hate the way humans taste. That’s why you always left the cleanup to your lieutenants.”
Recognition began to dawn. The man’s face and build were not familiar, but … that voice. He knew the voice, even if he couldn’t quite place it.
The ogre tensed, spear half raised, as the man reached for the saddlebags on his horse. But rather than grab the large axe, the human dug inside the bag and removed what appeared to be a skull. His brow furrowed in puzzlement, Davro only barely reacted quickly enough to catch it as the human tossed it toward him.
“Perhaps this will jog your memory, Davro.”
Davro stared at the skull—no, not truly a skull, a helm—that had landed in the palm of his hand. His eye widened, his breath catching in his throat. Ever so slowly, he felt his fingers slacken of their own accord, and he heard, seemingly from a great distance, the sound of his spear striking the ground.
“Lord Rebaine …”
“SO YOU’RE NOT TRYING to conquer Imphallion?” Davro asked for perhaps the fourth time. The ogre, it seemed, was having some trouble with the concept.
They sat comfortably inside Davro’s house, the ogre perched upon the stump, Corvis on the thick mattress that smelled repulsively of untanned hides. Each held before him a mug of broth, Corvis having supplied his own mug from his traveling gear. He’d insisted on letting the ogre take a moment to get over his shock before he’d explained his purpose in coming here, even told him to take a minute to feed the pigs, who were by then squealing angrily at the delay in their dinner.
And then he’d told Davro an abbreviated version of the tale: his escape from the basement of the Hall of Meeting in Denathere, his years with Tyannon, and, most important, the attack on Mellorin.
“No,” Corvis said again, not quite suppressing a smile. “Shocking as it may sound, I’m not out to conquer anything. I just want to stop Audriss from doing it while I still have a family and a home to protect.”
“You might just make a deal with him,” Davro suggested. “He must know that you weren’t—umm, aren’t—someone to trifle with. Ask for … What’d you say it was called, Chelenshire? Ask for Chelenshire to be left alone, and let him get on with it.”
“It’s not so simple, Davro. I know the kind of person Audriss is. That would just be a challenge to his authority. No, he’s got to be stopped cold. And I can’t do it alone.”
Davro exhaled slowly; it took Corvis a moment to recognize the sound as nothing less than a hefty, ogre-sized sigh. “Sorry to disappoint you, after coming all this way. But you’re not my lord anymore, Rebaine. Quite frankly, I haven’t thought about you or the war in years, and I’ve got no intention of starting up again now. You’ll have to find someone else to help you.”
His eye was set, steady, unflinching. It was evident that the ogre was entirely serious, and prepared to be stubborn about it.
“I never saw you as the farmer type, Davro. You must be bored out of your mind here.”
“Actually,” Davro said, his voice indignant, “I’m quite happy.”
“Herding sheep?” Corvis asked mockingly. “Raising pigs?”
“I like sheep and pigs.”
“I need your help, Davro. I can’t afford to take no for an answer.”
His eye narrowing further, the ogre looked his visitor slowly up and down.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he said slowly, “you can afford not to. It’s been a lot of years, Rebaine. You’re not as intimidating as you used to be.”
Corvis rose to his feet. “I can still take you, Davro. I may not be as strong as I used to be, but I’m as fast as I ever was. And Sunder’s just as sharp. Besides, the magics I control—”
“I don’t think so. I don’t see your amulet anywhere.” The ogre smiled at the sudden consternation on the human’s face. “Your soldiers weren’t all brainless idiots, Rebaine. I’m no expert on sorcery, but I’ve seen enough wizards in action to know you never did cast spells the way the rest of them did. And that pendant was the only thing you ever carried constantly that didn’t serve any real purpose. I can add two and two as well as anyone.”
“It could have just been sentimental,” Corvis muttered gruffly.
“On you? Hardly. Besides, if you had your magic, you’d have convinced me already.”
“I know a few spells yet, Davro.”
“Maybe. But not, I think, enough to worry me. And I just don’t think you’re prepared to attack me head-to-head. No, Rebaine, it’s time for you to be on your way. It was nice talking to you again. We should do this again in another seventeen years.”
A shadow fell across Corvis’s face, and he took a single, slow step toward the ogre. Davro’s hand dropped to his spear.
“I really wouldn’t recommend it, Rebaine.”
Another step. “You took an oath of service, Davro. Remember? I don’t recall that there was an expiration date on it.”
“An oath in Chalsene’s name,” the ogre protested. “I don’t worship him anymore. Gotten about as far from him as possible, in fact, in case the pigs and the sheep hadn’t told you as much. And from the look of things, I don’t think you do, either.”
Corvis smiled harshly. “Truth be told, Davro, I never did. I only accepted the oath because I knew your people worshipped him. But whether you want to acknowledge it or not, I doubt the Night-Bringer takes oaths in his name so lightly.”
Davro’s hand clenched and unclenched rapidly on the haft of his spear, his palms sweating, his expression apprehensive. Still, he shook his head. “I’ll take my chances.”
Corvis all but shrank, the aura of looming violence fading away, until he was again nothing more than a traveler on a long journey, one better suited to a man many years younger.
“Then there’s nothing more I can say,” he said dejectedly. “If that’s your final answer, I’ll be on my way.”
“It is,” Davro said with a succinct nod. Corvis mirrored it, and moved toward the doorway.
He paused as he pushed the curtain aside, as though a thought just popped to mind. “You realize that I need the ogres whether or not you’re with me. Your people make unstoppable shock troops.”
“You go right ahead,” Davro told him, his mind already drifting to other matters. “If you’ve got enough to pay them, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to fight for you again.”
“But if you were with me, they might join up without pay. You could play it up, the return of the great Lord Rebaine and all that.”
“Rebaine … Leave.”
“The thing is,” Corvis continued as if he hadn’t heard, “if I do approach your tribe without you, and identify myself, they’re certain to ask me where you are. I’m sure your family is quite concerned for your well-being. As a sympathetic family man myself, I’m afraid I’d feel obligated to tell them where you are and what you’ve been doing with yourself. Purely for their
own peace of mind, of course. I’m sure you understand.”
Davro roared to his feet, his spear grasped tightly in both hands. The entire house shook as the ogre pounded across the room, fully determined to skewer his former lord and master like a roast.
But Corvis no longer stood in the doorway; he’d leapt from the house the instant he’d finished speaking. He stood now on open ground, Sunder held skillfully in a two-handed grip, spinning slowly before him. With room to maneuver, his own agility might just counter the ogre’s twin advantages of strength and reach. Davro skidded to a halt just outside weapon range, and the two slowly circled. Rascal, ears flattened back against his skull, interrupted his meal of valley grass to watch the drama unfolding, and the sheep set up a loud communal bleat.
“I am going,” Davro informed the human coldly, his voice even deeper than usual, “to kill you.”
“Do you really think that’s your best option, Davro? There’s a pretty good chance you’ll lose.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“Even if you win,” Corvis pressed, his voice anxious, “I’ll get in a few good shots.”
“I’ll heal.”
“Eventually, maybe. But you won’t be able to care for your animals, Davro! How are you going to manage?”
The ogre frowned around tusks glistening with spittle, but he kept circling.
“Or you can come with me, Davro. Just until Audriss is dealt with. Then you can disappear again. I’ll even help you ‘die’ in front of your tribe, if you want. You can come back home without any fear of being bothered again.”
If anything, Davro’s scowl grew even darker. But he stopped circling and slowly lowered his spear to point at the grass. “You wish to prevent Audriss from destroying the life you’ve built by destroying the one I have?”
Corvis shrugged and let Sunder drop to his side. “Hypocrisy, as it happens, is a sin that I find I can live with.” Then he smiled ever so slightly. “But I’ve no intention of destroying your life, Davro. Just interrupting it for a little while.”
“I could just as easily be wounded or killed doing what you’re asking.”
Corvis shrugged. “Come with me, that might happen. Take me on here—with my magics, with Sunder—or make me tell your tale to your tribe, and it will happen. Better odds,” he added with a smile as forced as it was friendly, “if you cooperate.”
“You’re really not going to give me a choice in this, are you?” Even in the ogre’s rumbling tone, it sounded almost plaintive.
“Not as such. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really have much of a choice myself.”
“Amazingly enough, Rebaine, it doesn’t.” The shaft of Davro’s spear quivered, a hound anxious to be let off its leash, but Corvis was right-helping him was the least risky of the options he had left, and they both knew it.
“Fantastic,” Corvis said as Davro’s shoulders slumped with a frustrated grunt. “I do need you to do something for me, though.”
“And I’ve so been looking forward to repaying you for all the favors you’ve done me. Whatever can I help you with?”
Corvis ignored the ogre’s sarcasm. “I need you to take an oath that you won’t run out on me the first chance you get. That you’ll stay with me, fight alongside me, and in general do your utmost to help me complete my task. And most of all, that you won’t kill me in my sleep.”
It was a vow that both could trust, should Davro willingly take it. There were few ogres alive—indeed, few members of any race or people—who would risk the blasphemy of breaking an oath in their own god’s name.
“Not the trusting sort, are you, Rebaine?”
“As it happens, I’m not a complete idiot. You can’t risk fighting me at my best, but sleeping men tend not to defend themselves all that well. If you’re coming with me, I have to know that you’re really with me.”
Davro shook his head. “I don’t worship Chalsene anymore, I told you that.”
“I know. So swear by whichever of the gods you do honor now.”
Davro flushed, looked down, and muttered something.
“What was that?”
“I said,” the ogre grumbled, “I now offer my prayers to Arhylla.”
Rebaine raised an eyebrow. “She’ll do.”
“Fine. I swear by Arhylla Earth-Mother that I will aid you in your task to the best of my ability until that task is complete, or you release me from this vow.” He frowned. “Will that do, or do you need it carved in stone and signed in blood?”
“That works. Thanks.”
“Who’s going to care for my animals?” the ogre demanded.
“Can you leave them enough food to last for a week or two?”
Davro’s brow furrowed in thought, causing his horn to quiver. “Some of it’ll go bad by the end, and the bugs will be horrific, but I think so. This is going to take a lot longer than two weeks, though. Hell, it would take longer than that just to reach my tribe!”
“Indeed. But we’re not going straight to meet with your people. There’s another stop we’ve got to make on the way.”
“Oh? Are we hiring a shepherd?”
“We are going,” Corvis said with exaggerated patience, “to find Seilloah.”
“Oh.”
“Once she’s with us, I’m sure that, with her abilities, we can arrange something for your animals.”
“Assuming,” Davro said darkly, “she’s got any interest in joining with us. Or were you planning to blackmail her, too?”
Corvis laughed. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Why don’t you go get your stuff, Davro. We need to get moving. And polish that sword, for the gods’ sakes! There’s enough dust on that thing to choke a wyvern!”
“I’m helping out on this because you haven’t left me a choice,” the ogre growled. “It doesn’t mean you go back to being my superior officer, and it doesn’t mean you get to pull rank. You let me worry about polishing my own sword, thank you very much.”
“Always sound advice,” Corvis said with a smirk. “I’ll just wait for you here then.”
Grumbling, Davro stormed back into his house.
Chapter Six
The mounted lancers charged across the shallow fen, weapons bristling and protruding like a steel hedge—or perhaps the back end of an armored porcupine—and the towering ogres set their feet and their spears to meet that charge.
Fantails of watery mud plumed from the horse’s hooves, blotting out the world beyond the attacking knights, and the young ogre called Davro wondered again what could possibly be driving them on. The sucking mud clutched greedily at the horses’ hooves, slowing their advance, and the humans outnumbered the ogres by less than three to one: suicidal odds by any reckoning. Yet still they had come, into reaches well known to be part of ogre lands, as though determined to throw their lives away.
Lances and spears met armor and flesh with a deafening crash, and then there was little time to think at all. Davro thrust about him, his spear plunging through human and horse alike—and sometimes both at once. To his left, a knight stepped within his reach, swinging a broadsword with both hands, and Davro casually kicked his attacker with enough strength to buckle both the armor and the bones beneath. Another, still mounted on his wide-eyed charger, stabbed the jagged end of a broken lance at the ogre’s midsection. Davro plunged his spear point-first into the earth, caught the lance with both hands, and used that grip to literally fling the knight from his saddle. Before the fallen fellow could even hope to rise, Davro had recovered his spear and—a paean to Chalsene Night-Bringer on his lips—plunged it through the knight’s chest.
Still, though the ogres had no doubt of their eventual victory, the battle was not going quite so easily for others as it was for Davro. More than one lance had found a home in ogre hide, and the humans’ swords were sharp, their armor sturdy. Much of the blood spilling onto the fen was not human, and not every corpse to fall that day was possessed of two eyes.
From the thickest knot of fightin
g, Davro heard the voice of Gundrek—the tribe’s chieftain, an old ogre tough as saddle leather—raised in a fearsome war cry. Swiftly, the younger ogre moved toward his revered leader. He would never have insulted Gundrek by calling out to ask if the chieftain required aid, but neither would he let the venerable warrior be borne down by sheer weight of numbers.
From beyond the gathered knights and warhorses, Davro’s spear flashed. Hot blood sprayed across Gundrek’s face and horn, and the wrinkled ogre’s face split in a savage grin. His own jagged sword lashed up and out, cleaving through the torso and the mount of a knight who had spun to face the sudden assault from behind.
Penned in from two sides, the humans attacking the chieftain had lost the advantage of mobility—and against the ogres, mobility was the only advantage they had.
The rest was not battle, but butchery. With neither need nor desire for prisoners, the ogres moved through the battlefield, slaughtering those who had fallen but survived. Not even the horses were spared. And then, too, were slaughtered those ogres whose wounds would have proved crippling, allowing them to die a warrior’s death on the battlefield rather than returning home as a burden to their tribe.
Only then, when the ogres had fed death its fill, did some of the uninjured tend to the wounds of those who might yet recover, while others set about efficiently carving the edible meats from the bodies of fallen horses and men.
“It’s peculiar, though,” Gundrek mused in the harsh tongue of the ogres as he examined the last of the fallen. “What could have driven them to such folly?”
Davro could only shrug. “Who understands the ways of humans? I certainly do not—”
He and Gundrek—indeed, all the surviving ogres of the band-froze as one as the morning haze of the swamp finally burned away beneath the rising sun. There, at the edges of their lands, waited another human force, far larger than the first. A dozen clashing styles of dress and armor made them appear almost slapdash, but there was nothing haphazard in how they held their blades.