Bloodraven straightened his shoulders, and turned, meeting Yellowtooth’s narrow gaze. The others showed interest as well.
“I captured him in the south,” he explained shortly. “He doesn’t understand our words.”
“Stupid human.” Yellowtooth spat into the snow in disgust, but the carcass his fellows had taken down off the horse soon captured his attention.
By the time Yhalen stumbled back with an armful of wood, they had hacked it into smaller pieces and were quarreling among themselves for the choice cuts. He dropped it into a heap near the cliff wall, and fell to his knees beside it. He had no flint and metal to start the fire on his person, having given up that arduous method some time ago. Creating fire out of thin air without tools would have been a briefly amusing way of calling their doom down upon them in the form of superstitious ogre warriors, but Bloodraven preferred to find his entertainments elsewhere. He untied the small tinder pouch at his belt where he kept his own mundane, fire-making tools and tossed it to Yhalen.
It hit the dirty snow at Yhalen’s side and he stared dumbly at it for a moment, before picking it up and emptying the contents into his hands. He began to strike the metal, creating tiny, weak sparks that died as soon as they touched damp wood.
The ogres barked at him to hurry, impatient now to sear their supper. Yhalen flinched at the tone, and a not so tiny tongue of flame crackled to life at the point where he had last struck flint. He leaned over it, as if blowing it to life, but Bloodraven personally doubted the flame needed any encouragement to grow, being anything but ordinary in its conception.
The ogres advanced upon the fire, and Yhalen scrambled back out of their way.
“Tell him to gather more wood,” Yellowtooth said.
“Gather it yourself if you want it to last the night,” Bloodraven suggested and moved his hand to the hilt of his sword as Yellowtooth growled and tensed, very clearly debating the depth of that offense and whether he needed to address it to save face among his peers.
Bloodraven jerked his chin towards Yhalen, who sagged against a snow-dusted rock, head drooping onto his arms. “This is a weak southern human. He has no stamina for even our mild northern terrain.
He’d as likely fall in the snow and freeze as haul back more wood.”
“Then let him, useless creature,” another of the warriors sneered.
Bloodraven shrugged. “He serves other uses.”
At which they sniggered, after comprehending the implications of that. He went to the horses and began unfastening his bedroll, which some of the ogres found issue with, having claimed the horses for themselves. One even went so far as to lay a hand on his shoulder to jerk him away from the packs, but Bloodraven proved his swiftness and his knowledge of points to inflicting the greatest pain by snatching the thick wrist off his person and bending two big fingers back in such a fashion that joints threatened to pop out of place. The ogre, half again his size, went down to one knee before him with a howl of pain and outrage.
Yellowtooth found this amusing, and since Yellowtooth was the dominant warrior, the others—who had stirred uneasily with the scent of violence—settled back down and chortled at their fellow’s discomfort. Bloodraven let the fellow go and kicked him backwards with a boot square in the chest, thus establishing himself as something less than bottom of the hierarchy in this gathering.
The meat was thrust over the fire on sticks and barely left in the flame long enough to sear the outside before it was devoured. Bloodraven claimed a slab from the dwindling pile of butchered deer meat and cut it with Yhalen’s knife into smaller chunks for roasting. He ate slowly, casually casting a chunk to Yhalen now and then, as if it were scraps he was discarding instead of choice pieces of meat.
He did not look to see if Yhalen accepted them, only hoping that the human would be smart enough take what he was given and pride be damned.
Vorja crunched on bones within the shelter of the rock lee, content with the discarded portions of the carcass. From the way her cropped ears twitched, she had little trust for the ogre hunting party. She
had little love for any ogre save Bloodraven and together with her mate B’rag, had on occasion brought down a full-blooded, armed warrior. By herself, the task would be more treacherous, but he had no doubt she would fight to the death if he required it of her. The ogres of Yellowtooth’s little band cast her occasional wary looks, but none of them flinched from her snarls and warning growls.
Bloodraven learned, sharing the fire and their meat, that they were lowland ogres from the Forked Stream clan. They were taking advantage of the easy hunting the early snow created. None of them were young warriors out to make a reputation, but more seasoned veterans with less to prove, which was why they had hesitated in killing him outright and taking his head back to their tribe to brag of the feat. It was luck on his part to have run across them, he supposed, even though he’d been ill prepared for it.
When they had eaten their full, they settled for the night, and Bloodraven fetched Yhalen, who had fallen asleep, curled in cold misery against his rock. The ogres teased him about what use he would make of his skinny human beneath the blankets, and would he lend his slave to them afterwards?
Bloodraven chose to make clear issue of ownership and the fact that this slave was not clan property but personal get. He pulled a half-waking Yhalen across his thigh and yanked coat and tunic up, revealing the skin across the small of his back where Bloodraven’s mark lay, crisp and black.
Yhalen made a distressed sound and attempted to twist away, but Bloodraven held him fast, until the lot of them had gotten a good look at his mark.
A warrior only put his personal mark on those things most valuable to him, and would take killing offense at infractions against such claimed property. They might lay more than a casual hand upon Yhalen if the urge came upon them badly enough, but only if they wished to start a blood feud with Bloodraven.
Yellowtooth chuckled finally, settling back into his own niche against the rock wall. “Only a half-blood would be tiny enough between the legs to be able to get more than a single use out of a human, anyway.”
They laughed at that and Bloodraven smiled thinly, pulling Yhalen’s coat down and depositing his struggling human onto the bedding between his own bulk and the rock wall. Vorja padded over and lay down close on Bloodraven’s other side, her big head on her paws, her watchful eyes upon the lowland ogres.
He settled under the blanket, ignoring their fading suggestions and encouragement. Even had the urge been upon him, he wouldn’t have acted upon it within the view of others, no matter that the human in question held value to him. It was more a matter of pride, and perhaps to some degree years of derisive comments about the lack of endowment halflings as a general rule possessed. Not even a warrior fully acknowledged could entirely dismiss years of such ridicule.
He laid a hand on Yhalen’s hip under the covers, a subtle, soothing touch, meant to offer some solicitude, but his human stiffened, unreceptive and no doubt resentful. There was justification, Bloodraven thought, and sighed deeply, pulling Yhalen tight against his warmth, willing or not. He would allow Yhalen his anger beneath the cover of the bedding as long as he practiced proper subservience without.
Despite indignation and fear, Yhalen slept soundly, chased into the depths of slumber by exhaustion. His weariness was so profound that even dreams did not pierce it, and he awoke only to a rough hand shaking him awake. The ogres were gathered around the low fire, feeding it to life with small branches and sticks, rumbling to each other occasionally in their rough tongue. Bloodraven moved among them, a shorter, slimmer figure beside their bulk. With true ogres as comparison, with their square shoulders and broad bodies that seemed almost disproportionate to their height, their deep brows and wide jaws, Bloodraven’s figure seemed all the more human to him. Simply an overtall man, with oddly colored skin and unfortunately tall, sweeping ears.
Since none of them barked at him, or jabbed a finger his way, he scuttled back against the rock wall, pulling the sleep-warmed blankets with him. He huddled there, watching them warily while they cut slabs from last night’s carcass to roast over the fire. Bloodraven seemed at ease among them, more so today than he had been during the first hours of their meeting. The jostling and loud outbursts seemed less likely to erupt into violence now.
Bloodraven claimed a share of meat by swiping it out of the grasp of one of the other ogres, who growled and postured, but eventually settled on another less choice piece. Bloodraven sliced the fatty
gristle side off and tossed it to Vorja, who consumed it in one gulp, then cut the rest into smaller chunks and jabbed them onto the end of a sharpened stick to roast. He liked his meat rare, Yhalen knew from experience. Still, compared to the mostly bloody pieces the other ogres barely let hover in the fire before pulling back to consume, Bloodraven’s meat was well cooked.
Bloodraven ate all but one chunk, and that he tossed with unerring accuracy at Yhalen, the browned piece of meat landing in his lap instead of the ground. He felt less than appropriate gratitude for the method of receiving his breakfast, but he dared not show it. Dared not even lift his eyes and glare at Bloodraven, should the other ogres take note of his willfulness.
He consumed the meat and licked his fingers clean of the last stain of grease, hardly realizing how hungry he had been. He could happily have eaten a half dozen more such chunks, but it was not to be.
When the ogres set out breaking camp, he scrambled to roll the bedding and secure it to the mule, then took up a wary stance with the horses between him and the ogres.
When they sat out again, the pace was as grueling as before. The only saving grace was the mule.
Stubborn and steady, it refused to break into the near trot that the horses were urged to, and the ogres had the choice of either leaving it or slowing their own pace. It got many a harsh slap on the flanks though, in efforts to urge it to a faster pace, as occasionally did Yhalen from a passing ogre who thought it amusing to see him flinch or stumble. They didn’t lay harsher hands upon him though, and either Bloodraven or Vorja seemed to always be within close range.
When the snow was particularly deep and difficult to traverse, he walked in the path the horses made. When, after hours of particularly treacherous going, his legs trembled and threatened to give out, he grasped the mule’s tack and let its unflagging strength help propel him up uphill. He gleaned an appreciation for the beady-eyed creature that he’d not had before.
The ogres paused once in their trek to track prey, and with Vorja’s help, quickly cornered a massive, tusked boar, bigger even than Bloodraven’s great dog. The boar did not go down without a fight, and more than one of the ogres came back with gouges in his thick hide. But the fight and the bloodletting seemed to cheer them, for they were in as a good a mood as ogres tended to be when they returned dragging the carcass. The curling horns they kept, Yellowtooth claiming them as war trophies of his own against the muttering complaints of his fellows.
Bloodraven had blood upon his armor and sword, which he sat down to clean while the other ogres gutted the carcass. Vorja, who’d earned her fair share, got the entrails. They packed the divided meat upon the horses and continued on their way.
They trekked throughout the afternoon up a rocky, tree dotted slope that seemed never to end, and when they finally reached the ridge, Yhalen detected the faint scent of smoke rising from the vale below.
The ogres scented it too, and proceeded downhill with all haste. Vorja bounded ahead until Bloodraven called her back sharply, and she came, tail wagging and head low to pace at his side.
Through the trees and amidst a heaping collection of rocky slabs that protected the dark openings of shallow caves and niches, was a camp of sorts. It seemed a transient one, consisting of hides stretched over cave mouths and tents erected close to the shelter of trees or rocky slope. He recalled Bloodraven telling him that many of the ogre clans were nomadic, following the flow of mountain game. The greater clans, like the one Bloodraven hailed from, had permanent settlements, deeper in the northern range.
This was a small clan, the majority of which emerged from their shelter when the alert was raised at their approach. Perhaps three or four dozen ogres gathered to greet their returning warriors, females and young among them. Yhalen had never seen an ogre female before, and upon observation of the broad, shrewd-faced matrons that ambled out to assess what their hunters had brought back, Yhalen began to understand why Bloodraven might prefer human bed partners. While the males might casually practice cruelty to amuse themselves, there was such animosity and spite in the eyes of the females that even the strutting Yellowtooth shed his bravado when faced with the most decorated and brazen of the females and offered the meat as if it were a token to purchase good will.
Yhalen curled his hand in Vorja’s short coat, staying close by her side as full-grown ogres clustered around him, more interested in the horses than in a human slave. They had a few human slaves of their own, silent and unobtrusive, staying far out of the way. They wore rags, threadbare ponchos and poorly assembled boots and leggings to protect from the cold. Their eyes were dead, all spirit beaten out of them.
Bloodraven was noticed, a stranger among them, and a loud outcry was raised as ogre males from the camp came threateningly up to him. Bloodraven held his ground, not touching his weapons or speaking. Yellowtooth waved a hand at him, explaining the circumstances of their meeting, perhaps.