Bloodraven (10 page)

The dark woods and the fire and the gathered ogres around it had brought back too many horrible memories of the first night he’d been captured, and Yhalen had crawled under the wagon, making himself as unobtrusive as possible in the shadow, willing them to forget he was there at all. But Bloodraven remembered. Bloodraven rose eventually, and walked towards him, sharp eyes scanning 27

the darkness where Yhalen should have been and spotting the paleness of his flesh against the ground under the cart.

“Yhalen,” Bloodraven spoke his name, beckoning and Yhalen shivered, debating whether or not to rebel. But of course, disobedience would only gain him punishment. Bloodraven didn’t tolerate it in the privacy of his tent, much less in the face of his peers, so Yhalen crawled out, staying on his knees by the wheel and dreading what Bloodraven wanted.

The ogr’ron unfastened his chain and drew him up, leading him across the small clearing to the other side, where the light of the fire didn’t reach so well. The passage was accompanied by laughter and loud comments, the content of which Yhalen could only guess at. But one had a notion. A very good notion of what they thought Bloodraven would do once he’d led him into the darkness of the wood.

Yhalen’s face burned. When Bloodraven stopped, he wasn’t that far from the camp, yet still just within view of the fire—within hearing distance of the grunted conversation as yet progressing around it.

Surely close enough that they would hear and see whatever it was that Bloodraven did to him.

Bloodraven fastened the end of Yhalen’s chain to a metal loop in his belt and settled down with his back to a broad tree. When Yhalen continued to stand, the halfling tugged on the chain and brought him to his knees. There was a bedroll on the ground by the roots of the tree, unfolded before they’d come.

Bloodraven had already chosen this spot as his vantage for the night.

He could hear the voices of the other ogres—they pounded in his ears in rhythm with his blood. If Bloodraven started something here, they would smell it as surely as they smelled fresh blood. It would draw them near, excite them, and then this night might just turn into a repeat of that nightmarish first one.

“Please, please, please—not here,” he whispered, lips numb with fear. How could he stop it if Bloodraven wanted—how could he stop anything?

But the halfling only unhooked his broad sword and laid it on the ground on his other side, then leaned his head back against the tree, shutting his eyes as he did. It seemed as if he intended nothing more than catching a few hours’ rest. Left to his own devices, Yhalen’s heartbeat slowed to a more reasonable pace as he realized he wasn’t about to molested in plain view of the entire camp. He settled on the edge of the bedroll, as far from the ogr’ron as he could get without abandoning the thin comfort of the cloth.

The camp was on its way before dawn, the three carts creaking along at their slow pace while the ogre warriors ranged ahead. It was about mid-day when the attack came. Without warning, bolts flew out of the forest, finding purchase in the flesh of no few of the giants. Very few of them dropped, though, their thick hides and armor protecting them against mortal blows. A cry went up as the ogres hefted weapons and charged into the forest seeking their enemy.

Yhalen tugged at his chain, straining to see into the forest at what force it was that had attacked the raiding party, his spirit soaring at the thought that freedom might be within reach. Human men made themselves known, meeting the ogre charge. Men with swords and bows and thin leather armor. Poor men from the looks of them, and no organized troop of well-outfitted soldiers. No seasoned fighters, these. They were too quick to engage an enemy that outweighed them twice over for a familiarity with battle. Too quick to learn that mere human strength couldn’t match that of a nine-foot ogre warrior.

They were cut down brutally. Someone had released the dogs and the two thick-bodied creatures darted into the fray, rending with teeth and claws.

“Retreat. Retreat, you fools,” Yhalen screamed into the slaughter, straining at the end of his leash.

He saw a man go down, cleaved in two by the swipe of an ogre axe. Saw another slice into the legs of one ogre, drawing a great spurt of dark blood, only to have his head caved in by the hammer of another that came at him from behind. They were vicious fighters, these ogres, and gave no quarter, nor mercy.

There were scattered bodies of men all about the trail and not a single ogre had fallen. Oh, Goddess, perhaps this small party of some three dozen ogres was more formidable than Yhalen had assumed.

Perhaps it would take more than an army of men to stop them.

Some of the human attackers had fled into the forest and the sound of ogre pursuit could be heard, but for the most part the attack was over. One of the ogres’ human slaves crept out from his hiding place under the cart, staring with dull-eyed acceptance at the slaughter of his fellow man. There was a blur of darkness and the man screamed, arm and shoulder engulfed in the maw of one of the huge dogs.

The hapless slave was shaken like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. Blood spurted and bone broke.

Yhalen found a brittle tree limb on the ground and lunged to the extent of his chain, beating the dog 28

across the head and shoulders until the branch shattered, then grabbing the thick leather collar and pulling with all his might to haul the animal off, screaming at it to let go all the while.

It did, with a snarling growl, turning on this new irritation. Yhalen slammed an elbow into its muzzle with every bit of force he could muster and stood there as the dog shook its massive head, refusing to back down or let his gaze waver from its. The ears flattened, the blood-frothed jaws drew back, baring all too impressive teeth. But it didn’t attack.

“Stay,” Yhalen said, trying to exude calm and finding the emotion hard to come by. He slid by the dog, along the edge of the cart and crouched next to the battered slave. The man’s arm hung limply at his side, and blood trailed in copious amounts down his skin. The flesh was torn and mangled where the dog’s teeth had gripped. Yhalen’s mother could have repaired such a wound, but Yhalen had not the skill—and without a healer, this man might never use the arm again, if he even survived the encounter.

“We must clean this and bind it,” he said softly, and the man’s glazed eyes flickered to him, then past him, widening in fear. Yhalen started to turn, and caught the edge of a fist against his head. He sprawled, vision spinning, staring dazedly up at the great form of the ogre that blocked out the afternoon sunlight.

It was Deathclaw. He could tell from all the dangling gold, from the expression of malicious humor on the broad face as the ogre picked up the cringing slave and casually broke his neck. Like a man twisting the head off a chicken. Yhalen gasped, horrified as the corpse was tossed to the ground next to him. The gasp turned to a reflexive whimper of fright as Deathclaw stalked towards him, towering over him and staring down. The ogre spoke and there was anger in his tone. The big hand caught the end of Yhalen’s chain where it was attached to the cart and used it to haul him up and close. Yhalen could smell the stench of the ogre’s sweat, of his breath and he almost gagged.

Deathclaw spoke again, low and furious, punctuating his words by jerking the chain in his hand.

“I can’t understand,” Yhalen cried out. “I don’t know what you want.”

And he didn’t, for as clear as Bloodraven was in his wants, what Deathclaw wished, he couldn’t fathom. Other than his pain, his terror, and his death.

Deathclaw raised his free hand, thick fingers clenched in a fist that would shatter Yhalen’s skull should it connect. It never did.

There was the sound of steel unsheathed and the low growl of a dog. Bloodraven stood behind them, the second of his dogs at his heels, his long sword in hand. There was blood on his armor and on his skin, but none of it appeared to be his own.

Deathclaw’s lips drew back in what might have been a smile. Yhalen found it nothing if not ominous. They exchanged words and Deathclaw removed his hand from Yhalen’s chain, only to replace it on Yhalen’s shoulder.

Bloodraven spoke another soft word and Deathclaw’s sharp nails bit into Yhalen’s flesh. He felt a little trickle of warm blood down his back, then Deathclaw let him go, striding towards Bloodraven, brushing past him so close that the smaller half-ogre was forced a half step to the side. Both dogs were now growling, hackles up, staring at Deathclaw as if they wanted to chase him down and tear out his throat. Yhalen wished they would. But Bloodraven spoke a sharp word and they subsided, more readily obedient now that they’d exorcised the demons that called for blood.

Yhalen stood there, trembling, waiting for Goddess knew what. But Bloodraven didn’t spare him a glance, striding off instead with the dogs at his heels to survey the damage and the dead. Yhalen’s knees gave out and he collapsed down into a squat, leaving one hand on the cart to support himself and bracing the other on the ground. The mangled body of the slave was to his left, glassy eyes staring up at the foliage-obscured sky. It could have been him. If Deathclaw had had his way, he’d be lying there too, beyond care, beyond pain and humiliation.

A few days’ past, it’d have been welcome. Now, he found he’d regained his taste for life. He didn’t want to die. He wanted freedom and he wanted vengeance. But, as things were going, there seemed little hope for either in the foreseeable future. Not without help, at any rate, and today had proved that humans were very little match against the strength and ferocity of mountain ogres.

29

The men had come from a small village—a tiny little hamlet nestled in the forest that likely survived on trading furs and mushrooms gleaned from the woods. They’d likely been hunters who’d discovered the band of invaders heading inadvertently towards their home and attacked out of desperation, hoping to drive the ogres away.

Yhalen, tethered to his cart, came to the village only after the ogres had already overrun it. There was smoke in the air and the bitter smell of blood and urine and death. Small favor that he’d not had to witness the slaughter of the innocents there. Bile still rose in his throat, filling his mouth with its vile taste and cramping his stomach so badly that he crumbled to his knees as soon as the cart rolled to a stop to retch up what small breakfast he’d been given.

There were dead in the street. Butchered and left to lie while the ogres pilfered what little there was to steal. The healthy men had tried to stop them outside of the village, the old and the infirm and the young had tried within the boundary of this small settlement. And all of them had failed.

There was a scream that was high-pitched and feminine, and it occurred to Yhalen that the women and the youngest children might have been hidden somewhere while the men tried to defend their homes. He scrambled to his feet, straining to the end of his leash to see beyond the cart and the shifting bodies of the ogres that milled in the blood-soaked street between the rows of cottages.

There. A flash of small, huddled forms through the bodies of ogres. The soft crying of a child, followed by the whimper of a woman. Oh, Goddess, Goddess, not more fodder for the ogre’s malicious humor.

An ogre shifted and stepped back against Yhalen, turned and snarled down at him like a fractious wolf. Yhalen cringed back against the cart, grasping one wooden rail—momentarily forgetting the plight of the women and children of this hamlet in the face of his own. But the ogre, other than growling something incomprehensible at him and showing his sharp-yellowed teeth, didn’t raise a hand towards him.

There were perhaps seven of them. Three women and four children, ranging in age from one or two to about ten. The only survivors. And they were herded into the midst of the milling ogre warriors and poked and shoved and harassed, much like Yhalen had been when he’d first encountered the ogres in the forest—before they’d taken him back to their camp to do worse. These terrified women and children were not so resilient and huddled on the ground where they fell, crying and whimpering. One screamed mindlessly until an ogre tired of the shrill sound and backhanded her hard enough to quiet her for good. A child wailed, scrambling to the still body and clutching at torn clothes desperately, bereft of a mother because she’d not been able to keep her silence. When the child’s wails did not cease, one of the ogres plucked it up by one small arm and shook it. One of the other women lunged forward in an act of desperate, mindless bravery, screaming at the beast to release the child, pounding on the stomach of a creature twice or thrice her size.

They laughed her tenacity and the one threw the child aside and raised a hand towards the girl.

A command was barked forth that made the ogre hesitate. The others shifted, parting warily as first one, then another of the great dogs padded through their number. Bloodraven himself followed, flanked by two of his lieutenants, the three of them adorned with bits of twigs and leaves and forest debris as if they’d been running through thickets. They might have been in pursuit of the last of the village hunters whilst the bulk of their party wrecked havoc in the village.

They spoke, as ogres were wont to speak, in loud voices with a great many hand gestures. Even among themselves, interaction seemed on the verge of violence. Deathclaw said something from the sidelines where he and a few of his followers had gathered to watch the entertainment. Even in an indiscernible tongue, the comment seemed laced with derision. Bloodraven stared hard across the circle of ogres, not flinching from Deathclaw’s stare, and said something softly. Whatever it was, it made the other ogre flinch, just a little.