A sharp pinch on the arm yanked him away from the depths of a dull troll intellect and he lifted a hand to rub his arm, blinking at the old man in surprise.
“Are you deaf?” the old man snapped. “I had to climb back up to look for you and here you’ve dropped the basket.”
Yhalen looked down and indeed, the basket had slipped from his fingers, but only a few of the eggs had rolled out and cracked upon the stone. He shook his head, wary of the fog that still lingered behind his eyes, feeling very much as if his body hadn’t been his own for a short while there.
He stared eastward and didn’t have to expand his senses to know what was coming, fast and angry and hungry. What he’d called, and oddly enough felt no guilt over.
He picked up the basket and started down the path on the old man’s heels. The old man relieved him of the basket when they’d reached the camp and left him without a word, heading for the cooking fires. The majority of the camp was up and about now. Yhalen lowered his head and stayed at the edges, avoiding any eye as much out of real fear of them as any attempt to act the part of a humbled slave. The dog padded near him, stopping now and then to sniff this or smell that. She growled at no few ogres, most of whom showed no interest in Yhalen at all. Then again, she was no camp mongrel to whimper and wag her tail for a few scraps of food, but a dog trained for war and not used to treading softly among strangers. Most especially not strangers that her master was ill at ease with.
Absently Yhalen curled his fingers in the short fur at her neck, where the skin was thick and loose and easy to grasp. She made no protest her ears twitching as she stood there with her head almost at his chest, her huge tongue lolling from parted jaws. She was on a mission. Guard. Protect what was Bloodraven’s and what therefore was hers. Pleasing the pack leader was her ultimate joy. She was aware of him now, the unique scent of him across the trampled earth of this place within one of the shallow stone dens with other larger males of his species.
Vorja shifted and Yhalen’s head spun, unbalanced and disoriented as he fell from the edges of her world and back into his own. He went down, one knee touching the earth, head pressed to the dog’s hard shoulder and tried to gather the strands of his own thoughts.
Someone passing laughed at him, and he didn’t have to understand the tongue to know that they thought it was the result of yesterday’s punishment that weakened him. Vorja growled but made no move, and Yhalen pried his fingers from her fur, needing separation and finding that even when he had it, his mind was still alarmingly open to the spill of her life force, of the other life forces around him...of the distant one rushing this way.
What had he done that he couldn’t sever the flow? He gained his feet and staggered towards Bloodraven’s guest tent. Dropped to his knees once inside and blindly felt at the edges of the woven basket by the door flap, found a broken strand of wood and pried it up, then jammed the sharp end into his palm.
Bright, sudden pain, bitter with the acrid taste of blood. It brought a sudden breath of clarity with it. A sudden wash of air fresh with nothing more than the stench of sweat and dirt and leather. That outer world was closed off to him and all that was left was the welcome solitude of his own mind. He clutched his hand to his breast, leaning over his knees on the blankets and simply breathing. He’d never in all his life had the hunter’s skill surge so strongly within him. But then, he’d never used it to bring down destructive vengeance upon a people before.
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Goddess.
He looked around in a panic, heart pounding in his chest. Most of the things Bloodraven had rescued from the mules were here, neatly packed. There were a few things that needed adding, and with shaking hands Yhalen gathered up what they had used during the night and secured the pack. His hand was still bleeding, but he left it, wanting that stinging pain as a reminder.
Vorja had worked her way into the tent and lay half in half out of it, watching him curiously.
“Go find your master,” Yhalen said and she simply stared, canting her big head at him. He scuttled to his knees in front of her, fearlessly grabbing her ears and staring into her small dark eyes intently.
“Go and find Bloodraven.” He willed it as much as spoke it and she whined and broke free of his grip, rising and trotting away.
He sat for a while longer, nervous and having no more work to dissipate it. Guilty and defiantly refusing to let it move him. They deserved whatever ill luck fell upon them, even if it wasn’t luck at all.
They deserved something larger than far by them, showing them what it felt like to be small and weak.
But not all of them. There were victims here that didn’t deserve to feel the wrath of what was coming.
Yhalen left the tent, and searched out signs of the camp slaves. The cooking fire was surrounding by ogres now, arguing over their share. No human in his right mind would have ventured close to that snarling, bickering gathering, which meant they were back in their muddy little spot. He moved that way, devoid of Vorja’s company and careful of any loitering ogre that might waylay him. None did.
And there was the old man, and the two younger ones—but no sign of the girl.
Yhalen approached the old man where he sat, peeling long strips of wood from a log to soak in preparation for the weaving of a basket. The young men were back to planing wood.
“Listen to me,” Yhalen said softly, at the old man’s shoulder. “You have to take your people down to the spring by this evening, before dusk. All of them. And you have to keep going. As fast and as far as you can, no matter what you hear.”
The old man stared at him as if he were bereft of his wits. He shook his head finally and took up his peeling. Yhalen grasped his arm and hissed.
“Listen to me! If you value your lives, you’ll be gone from here by late afternoon.”
“Are you mad? And go where that they won’t hunt us down?”
“They won’t follow you,” Yhalen promised. “They’ll have other concerns. At the very least, if you don’t believe, have your people ready to flee and do so at the first sounds of disturbance.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “Does your master bring his own clan down upon this one?”
“No! He has nothing to do with it. My master and I will be long gone. If the girl’s life, if their lives mean anything, you’ll have them flee.”
He could say nothing more to convince them without revealing his own hand in the matter. He hoped before dusk was soon enough. He had no idea how fast a mountain troll with an agenda could travel, but he guessed far, far more swiftly than he and Bloodraven had covered the same ground.
He went back to the tent and waited impatiently for Bloodraven’s return, nerves beginning to fray as time passed. What if the old man, so conditioned to his life as a slave, went and told his captors what Yhalen had warned? What if they didn’t believe Bloodraven wasn’t a party to those dire predictions?
What if they questioned him now, or worse yet, simply cut him down as a simple solution to a problem they wouldn’t quite be able to understand? The next large green hand that pulled the tent flap back might not be Bloodraven’s at all, but the first of an angry ogre party come to rip him to shreds.
But it wasn’t a hand at all that stirred the tent flap, but a broad, flat nose as Vorja stuck her head in. The growled ogrish warning behind her held Bloodraven’s tones, and she whimpered and backed out, letting her master pass through.
Bloodraven’s eyes took him in, brows drawn and face taut.
“Are you hurt? Ill?” the halfling growled softly.
Yhalen shook his head and Bloodraven’s frown deepened. “Then what? This beast prowled about me and whined as if there were some great urgency—“
“We need to go. Now,” Yhalen cut him off, rising and clutching at Bloodraven’s arm. “The packs are ready. Can we leave? Will they let us?”
Bloodraven looked down the two heads that separated them, eyes narrowing in question. “Why?
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What have you done now, that you fear to stay?”
That was more to the point than Yhalen wished to deal with, but there was little help for it, when Bloodraven refused to budge in the least when Yhalen pulled on his thick arm.
“It’s coming. The troll—the one we saw—it’s coming here. Swiftly.”
Bloodraven stared at Yhalen as if he were bereft of his senses.
“You slept...and had a nightmare?” he ventured finally, with some small bit of hope piercing the somberness of his tone.
“No! I know. I sensed....”
I summoned it.
But that was not a thing he was willing to admit just yet.
Not here in the midst of this camp.
Bloodraven pulled his arm from Yhalen’s grip, carefully, somewhat warily, and looked towards the tent flap and the camp beyond. The tip of a nose and a pair of big paws could be seen protruding from the bottom.
“Stay here,” he finally growled, and spun from the tent flap, stepping over Vorja’s bulk and making her growl in turn as she slunk out of his way.
Yhalen sank down to a crouch next to the pack, shivering, afraid to send out his hunter’s sense and find the mountain troll. Afraid not to.
He curled his fingers in his hair, pulling painfully, calling himself every kind of fool. What had he done? What black path had his soul taken, to summon this sort of vengeance? But they deserved it.
They and their kind that preyed on the weak, that tormented and tortured those who hadn’t the strength to defend themselves. They who tore through human villages, slaughtering those they had no need for and taking the rest for slaves.
Vorja watched him warily, not knowing what to make of Yhalen in the throes of dilemma. She growled occasionally, ears twitching back, baring teeth, then would resort to odd little dog whimpers, tail thumping the ground uncertainly. He ignored her, too busy trying to convince himself that he didn’t deserve to stay here and meet the same fate as the unsuspecting ogre tribe.
Vorja jumped up, crowding around Bloodraven’s legs as he thrust the flaps back. He growled at her, and she shied back, crouching a little in submission to a mood that even Yhalen caught the hazard of.
Bloodraven caught his arm and jerked him up, snatching the straps of the packs with the other hand and hauling both Yhalen and their supplies out of the tent. He thrust the packs into Yhalen’s care once outside, and Yhalen staggered under the weight.
There were a gathering of ogres outside, warriors mostly, and Yhalen was immediately glad for the pack and the excuse to blend into the background as nothing more than a beast of burden.
Words were exchanged that sounded more like angry threats than words of farewell. Bloodraven was thumped on the shoulder by no few ogre warriors and took it without flinching, returning blows of his own in turn. He inclined his head in respect for the tribe leader and there were grunts of approval at that. Then he simply walked away from them and Yhalen reeled in his wake under the awkward burden of a pack half his size or more.
Something stung his back. A rock hurled by one of the ogre children and he tightened his arms around the pack and ignored the taunting laughter, hurrying as much as he was able to keep close to Bloodraven’s heels.
They took the trail out that they had taken in, this time deprived of the mountain horses and the one obstinate mule. The animals and a good portion of their supplies were sacrifice enough to have won their survival among this tribe. Without the offerings, they might not have made it to the camp alive, despite all Bloodraven’s posturing.
Some of the warriors followed them for a while—ominous, hulking forms bearing weapons and grimaces on their broad faces, but then, so few of them ever did anything but growl and frown that the ill-expressions meant little or nothing. Yhalen drove himself to exhaustion keeping Bloodraven’s pace regardless, very much fearing an ambush outside the camp, where their spilled blood would not sully the tribe’s domestic area.
Another silly supposition, he told himself. The women and children would like nothing better than the spectacle of spilt blood. They would demand to have a hand in it. They’d see it soon enough, he thought dully, too distracted traversing the rocky and root tangled path Bloodraven chose to put much energy into guilt.
Eventually Bloodraven took the packs from him, disengaging the dangling smaller pack and tossing 208
it back to Yhalen before slinging the big one over one broad shoulder with ease, hardly looking at Yhalen the while. He was angry. Or he was scared and thus projecting anger to hide it. The ogre clansmen had dropped back and he heard nothing of their clumsy progress, so he guessed they’d turned back. He was not yet ready to use his hunter’s sense, in fear that he would encounter the massive presence of the troll and the quicksand bramble of its focused hunger-rage.
He wondered if he dared broach the subject, having reached a point where Bloodraven’s moods mattered more to him than simply whether he was about to be thrown to the ground and used to satisfy a sexual need.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked, out of breath after struggling up a rocky incline that Bloodraven’s long legs easily traversed. “Are you angry at me, them, or the mountain in general?”
Bloodraven kept going. Another half dozen strides without even a grunt in reply. Yhalen drew in a hissing breath and stopped. He leaned against a twisted, dying tree and caught his breath. There was a water skin dangling from the smaller pack and he unstopped it and wet his throat, then as Bloodraven kept climbing, ground his teeth and sat down upon a thick, knotty root. He hadn’t had breakfast and he was tired, miserable, and frustrated. There was a bramble of berries that he recognized as edible.