“Run. As fast as you can. Follow this trail. We’re close. Just follow the trail.”
“What will you—”
“Just go!” Bloodraven pushed him hard.
He stared down the slope, trying to estimate from the small figures how many there were. Dozens.
Huge and well-armed. Merciless. Were these the same warriors who’d followed them from the far ranges, or had they picked up pursuit of a more local nature? Either way he was outnumbered.
Confronting them head on would only slow them momentarily. They’d cut him down and then be onto the rest of the halflings. But what other way to slow them down?
He glanced behind him at the obvious trail of retreat, spattered with drops of bright red. He grimaced, then whistled softly for Vorja. She padded up to him, blood-stained foam around her jaw, her ears back and fur still on end.
There needed to be a distraction, and he would provide it. He shifted his grip on sword and dagger and stood his ground, watching them struggle up the snowy slope, scattered and undisciplined. When they were close enough to matter, he roared out a challenge, wordless and universal. He plummeted down the slope, foolhardy and reckless and sure to give them pause as to his sanity.
A big notch-eared youngster with piecemeal armor and a crudely forged weapon rushed him, swinging wildly. Bloodraven ducked, coming in under the longer reach and slicing open his belly below the edge of his leather armor. He sidestepped, ripping the dagger across the throat of the ogre on the heels of the first, then avoiding the broad sweep of an axe and planting a boot in the groin of the wielder—sending the big body flailing backwards on the snowy slope, and toppling the warriors behind him.
It was enough of an opening to run. He certainly had their attention, and with luck they might follow him instead of taking time to realize the tracks of his party lead in another direction. He pelted up the slope, and called sharply for Vorja to follow. He lost footing here and there in the snow, but he was fleeter by far than his larger brethren. His size made him more agile over roots and through close growing trees, as well. Vorja loped ahead of him, silent and in hunting mode, but in the flash he’d seen of her in flight, there had been blood on her coat and the deep scores of wounds. There was blood on him, too, more than that of his enemies. He felt it running warm and steady down the side of his face, but could not feel the sting of the wound that had to be leaking it.
It was the rush of adrenalin that came with battle and pushed back awareness of minor pains. There were probably quite a few hurts that he didn’t notice. They’d make themselves known later—if there was a later.
“They come.”
Yhalen looked up at Elvardo’s words. The dark lord had paused, his hand frozen in some gesture, his eyes unfocused and faraway.
They were in a small, rear courtyard of the castle, a secluded silent place, where the only plant life was vines twining up the walls—and even those were stripped bare by the season. The rest was bare stone ground of the stuff the cliffs were made of, with a somber fountain in the center that trickled sedate streams of mountain-cold water. There was new ornamentation sprouting up from the hard ground. Slim fingers of rock, that had been cajoled up and out of the earth like they were stalks of corn instead of unforgiving stone. Yhalen had called them—a slow, arduous task of summoning earth magicks and putting them to use in altering the rock.
He’d been at it for hours, following Elvardo’s instruction instead of his own more fanciful impulses.
Though he didn’t recall most of what had occurred at the village of Bloodraven’s clan, there was a residual memory of the wild power he’d summoned and the mad use he’d put it to. It had been so easy then, to move mountains—yet now, when he attempted a tiny, particular task, it was more arduous than any chore he could recall attempting.
Elvardo said there was a great deal of difference in flinging power about with no purpose—the results of which might be anyone’s guess and most often more destructive than one might wish—and using it with craft and skill, creating the exact results one wanted without wasted effort or collateral damage.
“Who comes?” Yhalen asked, happy for the distraction.
Elvardo was silent for a moment, staring at blank walls. Then, “Halflings. They approach the wards, but—”
“What wards?” Yhalen wished to know, more than the need for distraction from lessons fueling his interest.
“Follow me,” Elvardo murmured, and Yhalen knew it was no physical trail he meant.
It was easy to follow Elvardo’s consciousness when the dark lord had no shields up to prevent it.
Out to the boundaries of the mountains that protected the vale, on over the western ridge that sat between the lands of men and the wild territories beyond, and Elvardo’s attention paused at a source of magic. No, not a source—but a weaving that held magic within itself, intricate levels of spell work woven like a web, with strands snaking out into the earth and the forest and the sky. All of them drawing subtle amounts of power to fuel the core of the ward. And that was only one subtle point of power. There were dozens, strung out along the borders of the surrounding mountains—amazing, intricate constructs of warning and defense.
See
, Elvardo directed.
See what triggers them.
They were so powerful, throbbing so vigilantly, that Yhalen wondered that he hadn’t sensed them before this, and then realized it was because they slept. Dormant and unresponsive when they
distinguished no threat to the valley they warded.
There were presences—life forces—that were not of the wood. And once he noticed them, he recognized the unique scent of ogre mixed with man. Although they activated the wards with their approach, the wards didn’t react to them. Elvardo had altered his spells then, to accept those of mixed blood, and the activation of the wards had simply attracted Elvardo’s notice.
No, there is something more.
Yhalen followed the dark lord’s flittering attention, waiting to see what had pricked his interest.
Blood.
Yhalen sensed no such thing, only the life force of the halflings—and that only because he rode the thread of Elvardo’s consciousness. He’d never been so adept at picking up on the essences of higher intellects as he did with lower.
I sense nothing,
Yhalen told him.
I have an affinity for blood,
responded Elvardo.
It is there, soaking into the earth—ah, there, beyond the
boundaries of my wards—ogres full. Do you feel them?
No. Maybe. Yes. Close. Close behind.
Yhalen concentrated, trying to feel what Elvardo felt...and he felt the single-minded, focused rage, the desire to drag down and kill. It was not so far removed from what he might feel from a pack of wolves. Experiencing that group rage made him shudder, envying no one that was the focus of it.
Do something,
he urged Elvardo.
If they reach my wards the forest will take care of the matter.
And if they reached the halflings before, there would be massacre. The distance between them was considerable—but wait, there was conflict, a battle-mad mind that was not human toiled at the edges of the ogre tide. A familiar presence, frenzied and loyal and desperate to protect what was hers. Vorja.
Which meant Bloodraven—but he couldn’t sense him. Why not, when he could scent the others like a bad smell? Was he dead, then? No. No. That Yhalen would not believe. He stretched his senses and felt a spark of familiarity. Focused and determined. A hunter, pretending to be prey. But only one spark amidst a sea of duller specks.
Stop them. Stop them,
he demanded, panicked—helpless with so much distance between them. The greatest portion of his magicks was instinctual and unguided. Learning the skill to direct them was no easy task, and he had developed little enough it in the days under Elvardo’s tutelage to make a difference now.
Elvardo waved a hand in his ethereal face, warning him back with a hint of irritation.
Don’t distract
me and don’t try it yourself. I want my mountain whole, thank you.
Then what?
cried Yhalen, his mental voice echoing with anguish.
Let me work, impatient child. It’s not so easy to work delicately so far outside my wards. You don’t want
him consumed with the rest, do you?
Consumed?
A shiver of new dread passed through Yhalen.
The next time you feel guilty about taking from the forest—here’s an ingenious way of giving back. Watch
and learn.
Bloodraven lost ground when his trail ran into a deep, jagged gully and he had to backtrack to find a passable spot. They caught up with him, dogged in their pursuit, and he struggled to keep the upper ground and some semblance of an advantage. With every passing second, however, more of them drew closer and defeat loomed. He slashed and stabbed and dodged, the pounding of his own blood like the rush of a great river in his ears. It overcame, almost, the roars of the ogres struggling to get up the hill and at his back.
Vorja tried to stop that tide—rushing at the ones who worked their way around, growling low in her throat as she tore into her work. She was a beast possessed.
Then, past the throb of blood in his head, he heard a high-pitched yelp of pain and, against all good sense, turned his attention her way for a brief second. Saw the dog go down, floundering in bloody snow—and missed entirely the thrust of the blade that hit him in his side, glancing off the link mail under his leathers and sliding into the flesh below where the mail ended, into his ribs.
He staggered, the impact of pain robbing him of breath and coordination. He went down, his feet
sliding out from under him in the snow-trampled leaves. An axe swung over his head, just missing the tip of one ear, and bit into the broad trunk of the pine on his right.
The tree quaked, as if the blow had been a mighty one indeed, and leaves and pine tags showered down from above suddenly, along with clumps of snow caught in the branches above. It was odd enough, this sudden mass shedding of winter foliage, to give a mountain-bred people pause.
Bloodraven looked up, and from his vantage on the ground, it seemed as if the intertwining lattice of limbs had come alive, twisting and slithering like serpents in the trees.
Then, with a great sound of creaking wood, the forest awoke.
The ogre closest to him cried out in surprise as dozens of slithering branches reached down to wrap about his upper torso, piercing flesh as they wove their way around and into his body. They yanked him up off the ground and drew him into the snarl of limbs overhead. His comrades roared in shock, hacking away at wooden attackers as they were snared in the same fashion. And not just the branches from above, but from below, as well. Roots burst up out of the earth to encircle legs, torsos, and heads like great serpents, hauling bodies back into the earth and the tangle of old roots at the base of ancient trees as they retreated.
A feeding frenzy the likes of which Bloodraven had never seen nor imagined possible, the forest itself nourishing itself on the blood and flesh of the living. Those at the bottom of the slope began to flee, screaming and dropping weapons in their desperation to get away. Some few of them might have made it, but the majority were snared by the rippling surge of hunger that possessed the forest further down slope.
Bloodraven lay where he was, untouched. Afraid, quite honestly, to move and gather attention to himself.
Of course it was magic. Magic of a dark and terrible sort. Magic of the kind that protected the vale he led his people to take shelter within. It was too late by far to change his path, but ah, he most certainly questioned the wisdom of his choices. If they’d seen what had just happened, he did not doubt that the halflings who’d struggled so valiantly to get here would have turned tail and run.
Best, then, that they didn’t know the details of the things that protected this haven. He wished he didn’t. Not with blood dripping down from the foliage and seeping out of the contorted trunks of trees.
The feeding seemed to have stopped. The trees appeared to have returned to stillness and tree-like behavior, but he could swear that some of the older, more twisted forest giants seemed to possess an air of satisfaction in the patterns of their gnarled bark. Of their victims, there was no sign. Not even a scrap of armor or the edge of a blade to suggest they had ever been here.
He heard a wheezing whimper and some rustling, and recalled the dog. He turned onto his side, wincing at the biting pain. He could feel the trickle of blood rolling down and soaking his trousers. It was painful but not, he thought, a fatal wound. At least, not yet.
He saw the dog laying a half dozen paces away on her side, her head twisted around to worry at her flank. He scrambled over and saw the knife in her back, between the spine and the fleshy part of her back leg.
He reached for it, and she snarled and snapped at his hand, the pain making her fractious. He said something soft and soothing as he patted her shoulder, grasping the back of her thick collar with one hand to keep her jaws from his other hand as he gripped the hilt of the blade and yanked it out. She yelped and tried to lurch to her feet, wanting away, but he kept hold of her, an easy enough task when her back leg gave out. He held her then in his lap, arms tight around her while she shivered and calmed enough to let him try and stem the bleeding.
He packed the wound with mud made from the melted snow and rich earth under the leaves, then bound it tight around her hips with a long strip of cloth cut from his cloak. Being a dog, she lurched to her feet—but her back leg was strengthless and she floundered, half whimpering and half snarling, her flank twitching and trembling. He scowled and covered his own wound with the same mud mixture before he collected his weapons.