by Ellyn, Court
The trammel of feet stuttered to stillness. Red eyes pinned him, resentful.
“Fogrim!” he called. “Drag a couple of prisoners from the dungeon for them.”
A show of crocodile teeth from the Dragon Claw chieftain, and a roar of approbation from the grunts. The lot of them stormed off toward the dungeon tower. Paggon alone remained, snarling at their backs.
“Pissing yourself yet?” Lothiar asked.
Lord Ulmarr crouched on the roadway, face blanched. He held the bolt across his chest, knuckles of both fists white as bare bone. His crotch, however, was dry. “Are you Lothiar?” he asked.
A miniscule nod. “You have information?”
The human picked himself off the road, spat dust from his mouth. “In exchange for sanctuary.” He raised the bolt, flat across both palms. All the while, his eyes drank in Lothiar’s face, slaking his curiosity.
Lothiar reclaimed the bolt. “Sanctuary?” He chuckled. “Yes, you’re going to need it. But that’s not how this works. You tell me this invaluable tidbit of knowledge, and Paggon will not tear you limb from limb.” A jab of his thumb led the human’s gaze toward the ogre with skillet-sized hands. “Don’t think I’m bluffing. I’ve deprived Paggon from raw meat far too long. He would enjoy feasting on your haunches while you bled to death. So…?”
Daxon’s chin jutted obdurately. But fear shuddered behind his eyes. “Forget it, then.” He turned for the gate, but Da’ith stood in his path, looking as hungry as the ogres. Inside the gatehouse, Ruvion spun the winch. The portcullis rattled down.
“I’m no man’s prisoner!” the human bellowed, a hand diving for his sword. “I’ll cut down anyone in my way.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Da’ith said. With a wide step forward, he planted a fist in Daxon’s belly. He struck the ground like a sack of manure.
Paggon mumbled in Lothiar’s ear, “Break him?”
Lothiar considered, then waved a hand. “Not yet. Let’s give him time to think. Chain. Ankles. Drag him. Follow me.”
On the outskirts of Bramor Town was a butcher’s shop. Behind it, the slaughterhouse. Lothiar let Lord Ulmarr hang upside down like a side of mutton for a couple of hours, during which time he enjoyed his own breakfast in the royal dining hall. By the time he returned to the slaughterhouse, Daxon’s face was tomato-red. The human groaned with what was surely a seething headache. Thick chain, coiled from ankles to elbows, suspended him from the rafters alongside rows of meat hooks.
The place was putrid, the floor coated in dried animal blood and flies. When Lothiar ousted the humans from Bramor’s walls, he hadn’t exactly given them time to tidy up. The ogres had long ago looted the rotting carcasses, hauling them back to camp like other soldiers hauled silver or women.
Paggon, following in Lothiar’s shadow, sniffed about for any morsels that might’ve been left behind.
As soon as Daxon saw his captors, he squirmed against the chain. “Bastard! You didn’t even hear me out!”
“I use many tricks, duínovë. Do you think I don’t recognize when one may be used against me?”
“It’s no trick! I swear to you.”
Lothiar dragged a chair from the foreman’s office and eased down into it, within arm’s reach of the prisoner. “Man of your word, are you? Somehow I doubt that. Besides, the terms you offered were worth less than the ogre shit on my boots. You see, I won’t offer you sanctuary, because I won’t abide your presence. So the offer fell apart the instant you spoke it. You were the one trying to part my company prematurely. Therefore, I must secure the information in another way.”
The chain rattled a protest. “This is uncivilized! Let me down.”
“Tell me first, what did the War Commander do to earn your spite? Or was it Dathiel?”
Daxon snarled through his teeth like any rabid cur. “Kelyn murdered my father. He was just defending his home, and Kelyn beheaded him for it! Then he lets his own murdering son go free.”
The first offense Lothiar understood. The second? Lord Ulmarr hoped the duke would hang for complicity with his enemy, yet he sought out that same enemy with an offering of information? Bloody hypocrite. Did vengeance make every man so stupid?
“For these offenses, you could kill Kelyn yourself.” Despite the bravado it took to ride headlong into enemy headquarters, Lord Ulmarr was a coward. Lothiar would lay coin on it.
“Kill him?” Daxon grunted. “No. I prefer he feel pain.”
“Like the pain you’ve suffered all these years? Aw.” Lothiar’s sympathy was as shallow as an ogre’s thought. “All right, divulge this vital information, or just keep hanging here. I’m sure the flies will thank me. And Paggon.”
Resistance withered. Daxon’s spine went lax. He met Lothiar’s eye. “You already have Kelyn’s daughter. I know where his son is.”
Lothiar thought he did, too. “The duke has left Tírandon so soon?” He remembered Valryk’s plea to his cousin, for Kethlyn to march on Bramor and rescue him. “Is he coming here?”
“He’s gone to the Barren Heights.”
The chair clattered onto the floor as Lothiar surged to his feet. The avedrin! Wait, don’t panic, think! The wards were still in place. Neither the treacherous duke nor Dathiel could have learned where Lothiar had stowed the avedrin. And if they had, the baernavë gate was locked tight. No avedrin in, no avedrin out.
“Why the Heights?” From those empty hills, Kethlyn could secure the route between Tírandon and Graynor, making it possible for his father to move troops and supplies.
“I have no bloody idea,” Daxon grunted. “I’m not exactly on Kelyn’s war council. Your armies are in the Gloamheath, yes? He must mean to take the battle to you.”
More than ten thousand ogres surrounded Brogula Kaem. All of Fire Spear Clan under Tugark, and the remainder of Black Marsh. More still occupied dens deeper in the Heath. The humans would have a hell of a time moving against such numbers, knee-deep in bogland. Suicide. No, this was about supplies.
He breathed easier. “How many did Kethlyn take with him?”
“Nearly four thousand Evaronnans. One hundred Miraji. And Thorn Kingshield.”
Lothiar’s laughter echoed between the gore-stained walls. Kieryn Dathiel was too great an asset to waste guarding supply lines. Damn. Somehow he had learned of the Kaem. Lasharia, Iryan Wingfleet, any number of naenion might have let the location slip, under the right circumstances. Lothiar told Carah this would happen. She hadn’t wanted to believe him. Dathiel would walk through fire—or an army of naenion—to save his beloved niece.
“Lord Ulmarr, you have my undivided attention. Paggon, let him down.”
As the blood drained from his head and back into his feet, Daxon drained himself dry of information. Lothiar tamped down the giddiness yearning to rise in his chest. The opportunity spreading out before him was too beautiful to ignore. What better bargaining chip than Kelyn’s own children? Would the War Commander surrender himself to save them? And would Dathiel do the same to save his brother? A long shot. Too many moves to predict confidently, but, oh, the drunken joy the vision induced.
Lothiar had to apprehend the duke first. The human army was no trouble. The Miraji more so. But it was Dathiel who worried him most. An angry avedra was a peril to be avoided.
Silence descended inside the slaughterhouse. The human hmm’d and haw’d, seeking something else useful. An oily little serpent, he was, haggling for his life.
Lothiar twitched a hand. “Go. Get out. Paggon, escort him to the gate. Don’t let him forget his horse. Hurry, Lord Ulmarr. Before I remember I despise traitors.”
~~~~
29
Private Dispatch
To the War Commander, Lord Ilswythe
For his eyes only
Sir,
We have arrived at the headwaters of the Blythewater and set up camp on its eastern bank. It was not my intention to remain here longer than a single night, but to push on some ten or fifteen miles closer to Direhead Ridge. Our scouts woke me t
his morning, however, with reports that three companies of ogres under the black skull banner of Black Marsh (as Falconeye calls them) were nearly upon us. I thought them merely a war party bent on ransacking local farms, but their tenacity proves that it was my host they meant to engage.
Throughout the morning, their resistance to our westward march has been fierce. But we have the advantage in both numbers and position. Our archers alone have halved their numbers in the past two hours. These ogres must have no regard for their own lives…
Even now, Leng’s bellowed orders tumbled down from the hilltop, and the wind carried the hushed hiss of arrows taking flight. Sheltered at the base of the hill, the Evaronnan camp spread out in neat, systematic rows, at odds with the undulating countryside. Whatever cataclysm had shaped the Barren Heights in eons past, it had left behind deucedly hard ground studded with jagged boulders and toe-cracking stones. Trees did not grow on these unforgiving slopes. Tent stakes snapped clean, eliciting rounds of curses from frustrated soldiers. Bedding could not be thick enough.
Inside his red pavilion, Kethlyn scribbled out the dispatch. The shouts of men and ogres were as distant as an afterthought. Almost as if the conflict were someone else’s concern. But the ache in Kethlyn’s shoulders, from pulling his own bow throughout the morning, bound him indisputably to the bloodshed.
The ogres had bottled themselves inside a gorse-choked valley. Perhaps they had intended to sneak up on the camp; perhaps they had not realized the camp was there at all. Either way, sharp amber-colored Miraji eyes spotted them advancing in the pre-dawn gloom, and now the ogres were trapped.
Companies of Evaronnan archers ranged across three hilltops in a crescent. Arrows descended in a crossfire, making pincushions of the ogres. But the ogres were stubborn. Suicidally stubborn. They seemed bent on reaching the summit of the ridge and sweeping over it into camp. Much good would it do them. Kethlyn’s cavalry, his infantry, and the Miraji awaited them among the tents. They stood in taut ranks, shoulders drawn back, eyes raised to the rolling skyline where arrows took flight. Waiting for the moment the ogres broke through and descended on them.
I did not expect battle to break so soon upon arriving, though I expected far greater resistance when it did. Once we have dispatched this small division, we will press farther into the Heights, bearing west-northwest. In short, I am pleased to report that our plan appears to be working.
Uncle Thorn is biting at the bit, but he has not yet declared when he will part from my company…
Kethlyn glanced up from the line of drying ink. Thorn lurked at the pavilion’s flap, staring out across the hills. He hadn’t moved in two hours. Persistent, entranced, obsessed. It grated on Kethlyn’s nerves. What was his uncle staring at? Once or twice he tried to follow Thorn’s line of sight and saw only the summit of Slaenhyll.
The bald brow, crowned with its jagged ring of stones, rose head and shoulders over the hills surrounding it. Slaenhyll was a landmark that flung its sinister glower far out into the plain to the east and the marsh to the west. Though Kethlyn did not consider himself a child of Aralorr, he too had been weaned on tales of wraiths haunting its slopes, of hidden passageways leading to crypts or treasure hoards or underground kingdoms. Considering recent events, however, he saw the kernel of truth inside the legends, and the kernel involved ogres and Elarion and veils and nothing more.
So why did the hill haunt his uncle this morning? He stared as if it whispered to him in a language he yearned to puzzle out.
All along the march from Tírandon, Thorn had shared the pavilion with his nephew. Much to Kethlyn’s chagrin. He had expected his uncle to camp with Laniel and the rest of the dranithion, but it was as if Thorn did not want to leave his nephew alone. Ought the phrase be “guarding his nephew” or “keeping his nephew under guard”? If there was a difference, Kethlyn had trouble discerning it.
He had never understood why Carah adored him. The intensity of his presence, his volatility, made Kethlyn squirm. He kept waiting for an explosion, a storm, an earthquake. At least the air around his uncle no longer seethed with latent fire.
Still, dwelling in the close space of the pavilion for the past three days had done nothing to alleviate his discomfort. They minced around one another, as if each was surrounded by a field of eggshells. They avoided contact, avoided small talk. Kethlyn’s belly clenched and old resentment surfaced at Thorn’s every gesture, every huff of breath as he waited for the right time to go his own way.
Were they destined always to be at an impasse?
“Perhaps.”
Thorn’s response to Kethlyn’s unspoken question knocked the quill out of his fingers. He scrambled to swipe the pen aside before it splattered ink all over the dispatch.
“It’s not your fault,” Thorn added, casting a quick glance toward his nephew before turning back to the hypnotic view of Slaenhyll.
Kethlyn stared at his profile, uncertain of what was being conveyed.
“It’s theirs. It’s mine.”
Drawn inexorably, Kethlyn rose from the trestle table and joined his uncle at the flap. “Whose fault? For what?”
“Your mother and father. The reason you and I don’t get along. The reason I wouldn’t allow us to get along. It’s nothing you did or didn’t do. But I punished you anyway. I think Carah has guessed why. Ask her sometime. If she doesn’t know, ask your mum.”
Kethlyn squared his feet. “I’m asking you.”
Silence drew out between them. The crown of Slaenhyll was reflected in Thorn’s iris. Smoke from cookfires and dust from the melee wafted into the pavilion. Another volley of arrows clawed across the sun-bleached sky.
Kethlyn decided to help his uncle cough up an explanation. “Have a problem with bastards, is that it? You abide Alyster kindly enough, and Eliad. So what—?
Thorn broke his communion with Slaenhyll to meet Kethlyn’s eye squarely. “I was to marry your mother. You are the reason I didn’t. Clear enough?”
Kethlyn staggered back a step. All these years he had been terrified of what his bastardy meant for himself, but only rarely, cursorily, considered the other lives it affected. His mother’s and father’s, yes, but beyond that? Uncle Thorn … in love with Mum … separated by betrayal … did she love him in return? Preposterous. How could Uncle Thorn tolerate any of them? Carah. He had latched on to Carah, given her all his affection.
Thorn shrugged, maddeningly nonchalant about the confession. “So, yes, I avoided you because you were a reminder of pain, and I inflicted pain in reparation. I’m sorry for that.”
The haste with which he flung the apology at Kethlyn’s feet exposed his own discomfort. Why say it then? Unless he suspected he might not get another chance.
“You don’t think this plan will work, do you?” Kethlyn said, venom rising. “You think we’re going to be slaughtered, and you want to ease your conscience.”
A shadow of disappointment, a flash of contempt. “To ease yours, you dolt.”
“My lord!” A squire’s voice broke on a panicked note as the boy ran down the hill toward the pavilion. “Banners, m’ lord. Banners on the horizon.” His finger jutted west, into the Gloamheath.
Kethlyn and his uncle shoved aside their personal grievances and untethered their horses. A brief canter up a heather-strewn slope brought them to Leng’s command position.
Gray hills heaved northward like whales’ backs breaching. Only thorny gorse and course heather gained a foothold among the rocks. The summer sun baked the slopes. On the valley floor a miniature forest of arrows had sprouted. Corpses lay among them. The vast majority were ogre. A few humans appeared to have been pulled down from their hilltops and ravaged to unrecognizable lumps on reddened stones.
The ogres who had survived the barrage high-tailed it back the way they’d come. Many limped, arrows bristling from their legs, crushing the bodies of denmates underfoot.
Not a single archer cheered in victory. They stared toward the northwestern hills. Banners, dozens, all plain linen
painted with ugly devices, waved upon the summits like pale hands.
Kethlyn reached into a saddlebag for a spyglass and clicked it open. “A flaming spear. Black skulls.” Following the banners, phalanx after phalanx rolled over the hills, a dark flood. Too many ogres to count from such a distance. If each banner led one company…
Commander Leng had the same idea. “Thirty-eight,” he tallied. “Forty-five … fifty-five …” And more continued to rise over the horizon.
Kethlyn swore. The advantage in numbers was no longer his.
The bellow of horns echoed erratically among the slopes. The thump of drums trembled underfoot.
Uncle Thorn gestured at the corpses strewing the valley. “Think this war band was a ploy to keep you busy until the rest arrived?”
Undoubtedly. “How did they know we were here?” The element of surprise, too, had abandoned him. Regardless, this is what he had hoped for. Madness. Teach him to play hero a second time.
“Is this the ground you want to meet them on?” Thorn asked. “You haven’t much time.”
Kethlyn beckoned his commander.
Leng’s step carried an infectious spring; this morning’s target practice had energized him. If sight of the odds bearing down on them daunted him, he didn’t show it.
“We need to claim more high ground, or they will,” Kethlyn told him. “Move the archers forward to those hills there. Have the infantry advance from camp. Divide them among the hilltops. Make it clear that they are not to be lured into valleys like this one. We’ll hold the cavalry in reserve. This is not favorable ground. The Miraji need to surround us, evenly as possible. They can hide us if things take a turn.”
Leng saluted and trotted off, barking orders at heralds and sergeants.
“Is your sister worth it?”
Kethlyn rounded on his uncle. “How can you ask that?”