Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories (48 page)

I thought the elf was going to have the bird put me down somewhere near this pen, but instead of descending, the hawk beat its wings and headed out farther into the darkness, away from both armies. When it finally did descend, I had to bite my lip to avoid crying out as the sensation of plunging earthward struck me right in my now-empty stomach. Rigid with fear, I pulled my legs up toward my chest, as if that would help me survive being driven into the ground like a star falling from the sky. At least it would be fast. I wouldn’t feel no more than the time Simon the Weasel got hisself hit by the catapult that turned him into blood soup and bone shards.

Even in the dark, I could see the ground approaching. It was grass, not trees or rocks. I squeezed my eyes shut, tucked my head, folded my arms, and braced myself. But just about when I figured I’d hit, everything seemed to stop, and I felt as if I was suddenly being jerked upward again. I opened my eyes just in time to see the ground erupting right in my face, but I didn’t even have time to shout before the damned bird released me, and I slammed into the earth on my left side.

My shoulder smacked my jaw so hard it felt like someone had hit me with a right cross. The air was driven from my lungs in one cow-like grunt, and then I was rolling over and over until I finally came to a stop, sprawled flat on my back, bruised, battered, and with the taste of blood in my mouth.

“That was the goddamn plan?” I wanted to shout up at the elf, who had somehow vanished into the sky during my jongleur routine. Instead, I ran my tongue over my teeth to confirm that I wasn’t missing none that I shouldn’t, and I spit out the blood that was slowly oozing from my newly bitten lip. I shrugged, then wiggled my arms and legs to make sure nothing was broken. Nothing seemed to be, although I ached all over like the day after battle. I took a deep breath, then another, and reflected that the she-elf was right to have made me leave my blade behind. Even if it didn’t snap in two amidst all the tumbling, it might have stabbed me through the leg or the belly.

Panic set in. Frantically, I patted my left side. But I quickly found my dagger still safely strapped in its scabbard. A wardog without a weapon is like a dog without teeth, and a man always feels braver for one, no matter how small. Still, the bloody elf could’ve just set me on the ground.

“Are you just going to lie there, Man?”

Startled out of my wits, I scrabbled at my side and managed to draw my knife as I rolled over and leaped to my feet, ready to kill.

The she-elf chuckled softly. Her fair hair and pale face was all that I could see in the darkness.

“I thought you’d just dropped me and flown off!”

“Obviously not.” She pointed to my chest. “You have the instigators?”

“The what?” I stared at her in confusion. “Oh, the stones.” I fumbled awkwardly inside my leather armor and felt the pouch the mage had given me. It was still there. “Yeah, I got them.”

She turned toward the south and the fires that burned like a vast assembly of hell beasts, and she pointed to the nearest flame.

“You saw the pen where the pigs are sleeping. There are guards near the fires, but I saw no patrols about, so you need not be overcautious on your approach. The magister will have given you five shards, each of which should be placed with the icon face down, pointing to the earth, not the sky. Place them equidistant—”

“The icons?” I interrupted.

“The engravings pursuant to the spell. One side is smooth, the other is carved.”

“So the carved side goes—”

“Down, yes,” she said impatiently, as if I was expected to know anything about elf magic. “They don’t need to be perfectly equidistant from each other, but they should encompass the pens. Use the four fires we saw as reference. As soon as all five instigators are in place, return here. I will go to the sky now, but we will watch for you.”

My face must have showed my skepticism, because she smiled contemptuously and shook her head.

“Neither elves nor hawks are night blind, Man. If you make it back here, I will retrieve you. The king has promised your capitaine as much. But place all five or die in the attempt. If you do not, I will leave you to the tender mercies of the orc.”

I believed her. Hellfire, I figured I’d be lucky if the stone-hearted bitch didn’t trigger the spell the moment the stones was in place and roast me along with the bloody pigs. And it was clear there would be no slipping away under the cover of the night either, not with little miss owl eyes watching me from on high. There was only one way out of this alive, and in that direction lay about ten thousand orcs and goblins. Slumbering, I hoped, although the way my fortunes seemed to be running lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them turned out to hail from a tribe known for its insomnia.

She didn’t seem the sort of wench liable to give a man a kiss for good luck, so I just nodded at her and began to make my way down toward the warboars. I could have found them even without the fires for reference. All I had to do was follow my poor abused nose.

It took me three times longer to reach the pens from the rendezvous point than it had for me to reach the rendezvous from the elf camp. It was hard to see where I was going, and despite the she-elf’s assurances, I wasn’t convinced that Ulgor would leave off his patrols this close to the elven army. The orc had to know the elves didn’t mind fighting at night. In fact, it occurred to me that a raid on the enemy center would have been a useful diversion. Of course, it would also have roused the boar guards from what I hoped was their sleep, so a quiet, peaceful evening would be to my advantage.

The stench of the giant pigs was bloody near unbearable by the time I was close enough to lay eyes upon them. They snorted and grumbled in their sleep behind a feeble pen that was nothing more than ropes stretched around spears driven into the ground. It wouldn’t have prevented a piglet from breaking out if it was so inclined, which made me wonder if the boars was better trained than I imagined. Then I saw a glint of moonlight reflecting from something metal on the ground near the closest behemoth—the beasts was chained to spikes driven into the ground. That made a little more sense and explained why the boars didn’t do more than lie around. They simply couldn’t do anything else.

I made the first set of guards easily. There was five orcs lying insensate around the glowing embers of a dying campfire not more than a spear's throw away. A pair of empty wineskins made it clear why they was unconscious. Shady would probably have sneaked forward and slit all their throats, but I just slipped past them. Once I reached the perimeter of the boar pen, I reached into my armor, withdrew one of the stones, and felt the carvings under my thumb. I placed it right next to one of the spears holding up the rope, careful to put it so the carvings was pointed downward, in the direction of the flames it seemed they would soon be calling.

Marking the location by the campfire, I circled around the pen as silently as I could manage, counting my steps as I walked with my left hand resting lightly upon the upper rope. After fifty paces, it looked as if I’d covered about a fifth of the circumference, so I kneeled down and placed the second stone.

For the first time, I began to think this wasn’t so bad after all, even though second campfire lay in my way, so I had to abandon the rope and take a wide path around the second set of guards. This group was more conscious than the first, although not much more alert. One orc was staring morosely into the fire. Two of its companions was ululating drunkenly at the boars. And the fourth, a giant brute, was roasting what looked disturbingly like a human leg over the fire. Whether it belonged to an orc or to a goblin I couldn't tell, and I wasn't curious enough to go and ask.

I shook my head as I laid the third stone. The elves was right. Orcs was just nasty pieces of work, and whatever god or demon made them must have had a truly sick sense of humor. But I was glad the breeds was occupied with something other than keeping an eye out for intruders. I continued sneaking around the perimeter, put the fourth in place, and I actually started to relax, thinking I’d be long gone before the orcs had any idea what hit them.

Let that be a lesson to you: Never relax. Don't never think it’s over until it’s actually done and you’re back safely in your tent, because until then, anything can happen.

The third fire was dying down, and I was away from the rope giving it a wide berth when I heard something that sounded like one of the boars grunting, only it was too close to be one. I stopped, drew my dagger, and crouched low to the ground, carefully scanning the darkness in front of me. Then the odor hit me. It wasn’t the stink of the boars, to which I’d somehow nearly gotten accustomed. It was more acrid, more immediate and offensive. Then it hit me, there was someone having a squat, and he was pretty damn close if I could smell him over one hundred and fifty pigs.

I whirled around and found myself face to face, really, more like nose to nose, with an orc, whose yellow eyes was nearly as wide with surprise as my own probably was.

He shouted, a wordless cry of alarm that seemed to echo throughout the silence of the night.

His cry was answered by snorts and grumbling and roars as the boars woke and at least one of his fellow guards called out to him in that throat-crunching noise that appears to pass for their notion of a language.

I reacted without even thinking. I punched my dagger once in the orc’s stomach, ripped up as hard as I could, then grabbed his hair as he started to scream and double over. I pulled his head up and slammed the dagger into his right eye, driving it all the way in to the hilt. That shut him up with little more than a strangled shriek, which was followed by the sound of his body collapsing to the ground with an audible thud.

I was quick, but I wasn't quick enough. The flames was already being fanned, and at least two torches was lit; it sounded like a couple of the dead orc’s companions was rushing toward me. I had one stone left and a moment to decide my course of action. If I ran off into the night, I couldn’t be sure of getting away or even of being able to sneak back and place the fifth stone before sunrise. So I did the exact opposite.

Before they could reach me, I put my blade in my teeth, got on my hands and knees, and scrambled forward, right past the pursuit and toward the big pig corral. The light from the first torch barely missed me. I was amazed that none of the orcs managed to spot me as they ran past me. But then, they wasn’t looking for someone doing his best impression of a sprinting tortoise—they was looking for an elven raider, and judging by the tone of their cries, they was terrified that they was going to find one.

I slipped between the two ropes and disappeared into the herd of giant pigs. But with all the ruckus nearby, the boars was snorting and stirring, and as I ran past one monstrosity, it grunted and reluctantly pushed itself to its feet. The whole damn herd was waking! While useful in that they would hide me from the orcs for the moment, the problem with hiding in the midst of the bastards was that any one of the ornery beasts could quite easily do for me.

I ran my left thumb over the engravings on the fifth stone and eyed the general direction where it needed to go. Did I dare just throw it and hope it landed face down? What would happen if it didn’t? Would the spell work anyhow? I wished I’d thought to ask the elf, but there was nothing to do about it now.

SQUEEEEEEE! An outraged squeal erupted right in my ear. It made me jump and very nearly caused me to drop the stone. I spun around and saw a huge warboar straining at the heavy chain that held him in place, tossing his neckless head furiously back and forth as he tried to get at me.

That settled it. I couldn’t stay here anymore, not without getting torn to bits and trampled, and I could see from the torches that the guards had fanned out beyond the perimeter. Two or three of them was even starting to approach the pen, alerted by the angry rumblings from the herd. Could I just run past them, trusting the night to hide me from them? That seemed unlikely, especially once I got outside the wildly unsafe protection of the herd and they could hear me running. What I needed was a distraction.

I looked at the giant hog straining violently at his chain, his mad yellow eyes promising me a painful, messy death if only he could break loose, and I realized that the orcs probably had some kind of release mechanism attaching the chain to the spikes driven into the ground.

“Not you, you bristled waste of bacon,” I hissed at the furious boar, looking around for a less obviously angry animal. There was three nearby that still appeared to be sleeping soundly despite the commotion, so I carefully edged over toward the closest and prayed the monster wouldn’t wake up as I crouched down and reached out for its chain. I ran my hand lightly, following it down toward the ground until I encountered a crude hook that was attached to a circle welded on the top of the iron spike. The hook was loose and easily slipped, so easily that my heart skipped a beat when I realized that it was only dumb luck that all of them had held thus far.

So far, so good. Now for the truly risky part. I took a deep breath then kicked the slumbering brute as hard as I could in the hamhocks. The boar didn’t even move. Astonished, I kicked it again. This time, it grunted in feeble protest, sounding for all the world like Fat Pierre on a cold morning.

Salty bloody pork! I could hear shouts coming from the camp to the south now, about half the animals in the pen was bellowing in full throat, and this lazy bastard of a pig couldn’t even bother to get up. Too angry to be frightened, I booted the boar in its fat arse one more time, and the third time paid for all. The boar came alive and exploded from the ground like a bolt being loosed from a ballista. No sooner was it on its hooves than it crashed into two other boars in front of it. Both of them took extreme exception to the intrusion, squealing and shrieking as if they’d been possessed by all the demons of the Gerasenes.

I took the opportunity to sprint in the general direction I guessed the fifth stone had to go, narrowly avoiding having my coolies ripped off by a pair of tusks before being sent sprawling to the ground by a hairy boar shoulder that felt like a mountain. I rolled to my feet and kept running, desperately hoping to get past the enraged animals before one of them could carve me open or catch me in its jaws.