Bloodraven (79 page)

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 than 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.

Bloodraven caught the dog by the scruff of the neck and hauled her backwards away from the cowering human. Vorjd stared wide-eyed at the sullen beast, his lean body striped with the gouges of a cruel whipping, his face bruised. It was easy enough to guess that the ill treatment had come from Vorjd’s association with Bloodraven.

Like the other human slaves, Vorjd should have taken this opportunity to flee. Why he was here, on Bloodraven’s trail, was baffling.

“Why do you follow?” Bloodraven asked. “You’re free. Find your people.”

Vorjd stared up at him with hollow, bruised eyes. There was a great deal of dried blood in his beard and the hint of broken teeth behind his lips.

“I have no people,” the human said hoarsely. “Yours wiped my family out. They’ll kill me if I return, for I’m your slave.”

“No longer,” Bloodraven said. “We go to human lands. Come if you wish—or go. Find a place where other humans will welcome you.”

Vorjd made a sound that might have been despair or might have been grim humor.

“He said such things to me.”

Bloodraven knew who ‘he’ was without asking, could tell by the inflection in Vorjd’s rough voice.

“Did he?”

“I didn’t heed him. I didn’t know how.”

Bloodraven stared past the human into the shadow of the woods. Before Yhalen’s wellspring of destructive magicks, he had not known either. Not a certain way to freedom from the clan at any rate.

“Do what you will,” he said simply and turned to return to camp. He’d been away too long.

He sensed the wrongness before he reached camp. Felt the gathering of something heavy in the air that made his skin tingle and his hair stand on end. The small fire was flickering, dancing in an unusual

manner as if the flames were being fueled by something other than deadwood. He saw a spark in the air, a brief flash of airborne fire, quick to birth and quick to death. Then another, brilliant in the darkness.

He cursed and hurried to where he’d left Yhalen. He found the human stirring in the simple bedding, murmuring incoherently on the verge of a nightmare, and waking fast. The ground upon which he knelt was warm and uncannily so. The leaves rustled as if something moved beneath them and Bloodraven felt a shiver of dread that he fought back in favor of reaching for the pouch with the herb pellets. He popped one into Yhalen’s mouth and then pulled the slender body into his arms, stroking hair and back murmuring whispered nonsense in the human tongue until the thrashing stilled. The fire settled with him and the strangeness dissipated from the air. None of the ogr’rons had stirred, sleeping unawares through the arcane magicks that had gathered in the air around them.

Only Vorjd had seen, and Bloodraven doubted that the human understood—if he’d even noted what had almost happened. Just as well, for Bloodraven had no patience to placate when his own heart was hammering rapidly in his chest. He’d hoped that the dread powers awakened in Yhalen would retreat back into dormancy once the human was whole and safe, but if they surfaced even in sleep during the throes of nightmares—which he knew Yhalen was all too prone to have—Bloodraven feared that there would be perilous times ahead.

Perhaps, then, it was a fortuitous thing that Vorjd had followed. If he had to keep Yhalen drugged and unable to fend for himself, then the other human would be of use. For even though he valued his brethren, he didn’t trust his human in their care. They were too used to humans as slaves or enemies, and they feared what Yhalen was to boot. Vorjd he trusted not to try and break Yhalen’s neck while his back was turned, for there would surely be times during this trek when, out of necessity, his attention might be elsewhere.