Bloodraven (15 page)

Sometimes Yhalen could commiserate with those of the Ydregi who advocated never leaving the great forest and mingling with the folk of the east. He wished he’d never left this last time, for perhaps some more accomplished hunter might have sniffed out the ogres before they’d scented him and warned his fellows of the menace instead of falling so shamefully to it.

He heard it over the rustling of leaves under the women’s feet. The distant barking of dogs. He shut his eyes, lamenting the fate that had allowed the beasts to find their trail again.

“Meliah,” he said softly. “The dogs have our scent again. You must lead them as quickly as you can towards your lord’s estates. If you pass a brook, wade down it as long as they’re able, and it’ll confuse them. If you hear their barking very close by, don’t run—they’ll only run you to ground. Find a tree you can climb get them all up in it—”

“But where will you be?” Her voice trembled and he saw the whites around her eyes and the utter terror on the face of the other woman as the faint barking became audible to even them.

“I’ll draw them off your trail for as long as I can,” he promised. “Don’t argue and don’t tarry.

They’ll be on you for certain if they’re not distracted. Now run.”

They did, with a last mournful look at him. Yhalen cast it from his mind, darting off in the opposite direction, making as much noise as possible as he ran.

“Stubborn beasts,” he hissed, pausing and listening to the sound of their pursuit, of their hesitation 43

when they reached the point where he and the women had separated. “Follow me. Follow me.”

He willed it, searching out their fierce essences, tweaking the single-minded focus and drawing it towards the more familiar scent that was his. It was more a trick a hunter used to draw game when game was scarce than to summon predators. A true hunter didn’t need it, preferring to take his game on more equal footing, but it was a simple enough trick that most Ydregi were accomplished at, and the minds of simple animals were weak against it. An urge here, an impulse there—not enough to keep a deer from fleeing at the first sign of human presence or a predator from attacking—but enough to
get
them where a man wanted them, if a man were lucky.

They both veered off the women’s path and pelted through the wood on Yhalen’s trail. He let out a breath and resumed his flight. He thought, if the fates were smiling just a little, he could draw them far enough off that they’d lose the others’ trail completely. He thought he could outwit them if given the time and the cooperation of this wood. It wasn’t the great wood, not as old and not as full of secret places to hide—but it was a forest and Ydregi were nothing if not adept at forest craft.

He leapt across a gully, and scampered across the bole of a dead tree, then up a muddy incline, using roots to ease the way—anything to hamper the dogs’ pursuit. Once, when he’d temporarily outdistanced them, he paused to rest against a bent tree and use the same trick he’d played on the dogs to search out something slower of wit and more sedate of nature. Eyes closed and fingers pressed into the bark of the tree, he found the gentle essence of what he thought might have been a deer and persuaded it towards the path he’d taken. Its scent, stronger than his own, might prove a beneficial distraction—should they latch onto its trail, it would lead them a longer and merrier chase than Yhalen could.

He prayed to the Goddess that the women and children were well on their way, and that any ogre pursuit would stay firmly on the trail of the dogs. Perhaps they would even give up, the recapture of a handful of frightened slaves not worth the effort. It was almost dawn now, and Yhalen thought he’d been moving for hours.

He dared not stop, but he did slow to a walk as he listened to the sounds of oncoming morning. The trill of first birdsong, the last chirping serenade of crickets and nighttime insects—the quiet rustle here and there of animals venturing out of their dens to begin the day’s foraging. And then utter silence.

Yhalen froze, one hand a finger’s breadth from the trunk of a tree, foot poised over soft mulch. The forest had caught its breath, hesitant and wary of something more menacing than him that stalked its environs.

There. The crack of a brittle branch. The rustle of leaves as something larger than a burrow mouse shifted through them. And again the whispery stirring of bramble from another direction. If it were his hunters, they’d grown shrewd after hours of fruitless chase. No great surprise, wolves hunted in much the same manner. He started walking again, calmly, casually, flinging out his senses to discover the nature of whatever was out there.

He found a familiar sense even as the first of the beasts broke through the cover of foliage and lunged towards him. Yhalen broke into a run, veering sharply to the side as the other dog came out of the shadows at him. Find a tree, he thought, and follow the advice he’d given Meliah. But they were so close on his trail, and so tall, that they’d likely have him before he could scamper high enough to be safe from them.

Stupid to think he’d shaken them. Stupid to slow his pace and give them the time to recover his trail. They were no simple hounds, easily distracted by something so mundane as a deer in their path—they were dogs of war and no doubt trained to hunt two-legged prey.

And they were faster than he was by far. He felt the heat on his back, heard the rasping breath and the low voiced growls. They would have him in a heartbeat if he kept running, so he simply stopped and fell forward lengthwise so abruptly that one dog bounded over and past him. Rolling, he flung an armful of leaves and dirt into the face of the other while scrambling backwards to get his back to a tree.

As he did, he snatched the small paring knife from the belt of his loincloth, swiping out once, then twice and catching the closest of the beasts across the nose as it came at him. The pain of the cut meant nothing to it, and its huge jaws snapped shut a hairsbreadth from his hand.

“Back off! Back off!” he yelled at them, hoping for some small bit of the respect they’d shown him along the trail. But they were having none of it, too caught up in the hunt to care whether he was friend or foe.

The second one, the smaller and quicker of the two, darted in, and great jaws closed in upon 44

Yhalen’s calf. It jerked him off his feet, his back impacting upon the ground a more painful thing at the moment than the teeth breaking the barrier of his flesh. One shake of its head and it probably would have broken his leg, but it never got the chance. A shape larger than the two beasts loomed up and a fist slammed down onto the flat head of the dog. The blow was accompanied by a shouted command that echoed incomprehensibly in Yhalen’s ears.

A big body waded in amongst the dogs, and they turned, snarling and snapping even as they were caught by the thick studded collars around their necks and hauled backwards. There was the sound of another blow, and another, before the pain finally got through. The dogs slunk back, tails tentatively wagging, teeth still bared and eyes still white around the rims.

“Goddess—“ Yhalen almost placed a curse behind her name, but hadn’t the breath for it as his arm was grasped and he himself yanked up and off his feet, then slammed back into the tree he’d had at his back. Bloodraven’s angry face loomed close to his own. Bloodraven’s lips pulled back in a snarl not that different than that of his dogs.

“Little fool! Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”

Yhalen winced at the sheer anger of the question, at the grip of Bloodraven’s fingers. It took him a moment to realize that he actually understood the words. But by then, his body was already reacting, twisting and struggling for freedom, as he brought the hand with the knife up and plunged the blade into his captor’s side. There was no armor there to stop it. Nothing but linen and flesh and muscle for it to slide through. The ogr’ron hissed, dropping him and staggering one step to the side even as Yhalen darted past his reach.

He had no clear destination in mind other than escape, but the dogs were waiting to prevent even that. The larger one was on him before he got three yards and he went down under the weight, only barely getting an arm up in time to save his throat as the jaws snapped down. With a savage wrench the bone snapped—Yhalen heard it before he felt it. Another jerk and skin tore—that, he felt immediately, and screamed in pain. With the knife gone, he had no leverage to get the beast off him, much less pry its jaws from about his arm. From the corner of his swimming vision, he saw the other one coming at him. They’d tear him apart, between the two of them, like he was a rabbit they’d chased down.

But the smaller beast was intercepted with a kick to its belly that made it yelp and skulk off, circling the melee. Then Bloodraven’s fist came down once and twice against the side of the larger dog’s skull, which did nothing but make it clamp its jaws tighter around Yhalen’s forearm. Which made the world slide out of focus and inky blackness wash over his sight.

A fresh bout of pain chased it away. Bloodraven had his fingers around the thick snout and was prying the mouth open. He got it finally and Yhalen’s arm dropped strengthless to his chest. The pain blossomed again in time with his beating heart—in time with Bloodraven’s voice threatening the dogs to stay back. In time with flashes of them circling, still wild-eyed and feral, even towards their master.

Hands on his body, hauling him up, with his arm caught between himself and Bloodraven, and agonizing little sparks of pain making bright patterns in his vision.

Bloodraven put him down against the tree and he whimpered, then screamed outright when the ogr’ron lifted his arm. It was slick with blood and torn flesh. There was the faint glimmer of white bone beneath the red.

“
Thak noz gru
—hold still, fool!” Bloodraven hissed at him, and it occurred to Yhalen through the pain that those last two words had not been the only ones spoken to him that he’d understood.

“You bastard! You...lying b-bastard, you understand. You understand!” Yhalen screamed it, because at the moment a scream was the only thing his tortured body could produce.

The ogr’ron ignored him. He pulled off his tunic and ripped it into strips before wrapping Yhalen’s arm and binding it immobile against his chest. The procedure stole what was left of Yhalen’s coherency.

He didn’t quite pass out—the hurt was too poignant to allow him that grace, but he drifted. Heard through the rush of blood in his ears the sound of Bloodraven’s voice yelling at the dogs. Felt, through the Goddess-sent numbness that was creeping over his limbs, the ogr’ron move away from him, perhaps physically reprimanding the dogs when they ignored the verbal warning. They were not entirely tame then, to even their master’s hand. Little surprise there, for no wild beast forced to domestication ever truly was. And they’d tasted blood and the smell of it was still fresh in the air.

Then, minutes later—hours?—the ground disappeared from beneath him and the world swam, clouded in darkness. And after that, Yhalen ceased to know anything.

45

The trickle of blood was a warm, wet reminder of the wound in Bloodraven’s side. His human had a bite. And a temper. Which was all fine and well when a body was of a mind to be amused by the antics of a body’s personal possessions—but damned annoying when the same antics roused the whole of the camp and put Bloodraven himself at a great disadvantage in the eyes of his fellows. It was a blow to an ogre’s honor to be disregarded by a slave. A thin-limbed, little human slave at that, who was a head or more shorter and half his weight. Even more devastating a blow that the same frail human had scored a hit and drawn blood, especially with such an inconsequential weapon. Bloodraven picked up the small cooking knife and snorted, disgusted at himself for allowing it to happen—for leaving himself open to such a desperate, and no doubt lucky, lunge.

He should have let the dogs have him. Should have stood back and let them rip the boy to shreds and taken back the head as a trophy to let his fellows know that the hunt had not been an unsuccessful one. It wouldn’t have stopped Deathclaw from mocking him for letting the slave escape in the first place. Deathclaw never passed up such an opportunity, but then again Deathclaw hadn’t the wit to know when he was treading on ice too thin to support his massive body.

Deathclaw, like the majority of full-blooded ogres, thought less with his head and more with his heart, following the dictum of whims and by far too interested in the deadly scramble for power that appealed to the whole of their race. As if he’d know what to do with it, once he got it. As if he’d do anything other than thrash about crushing those weaker than himself, consumed with the notion that that was the only proper way to show the world and his fellows what a great warrior he was.

The fact that he was here, under Bloodraven’s command at the behest of his ominous and much respected sire, was proof that the Mountain Gods were frowning on this venture. But then Bloodraven had stopped praying to the Mountain Gods a very long while ago when they’d showed no interest in granting him their protection.

Bloodraven scooped up his human and the boy’s head rolled listlessly against his shoulder, lashes fluttering against too pale cheeks. The bandages were already soaked through. With the loss of enough blood and the shock, he might not survive the trip back to the village. Despite Bloodraven’s irritation and the problems likely to arise at his return, he rather hoped that wouldn’t be the case. This little slave amused him. He was appealing in both body and spirit.

It was a mystery why Deathclaw had gifted him with the boy. It made little sense. He’d expected some monumental flaw, some embarrassing trick—but the young human proved faultless—perfect in body if not always in disposition. There was no dishonor in owning a spirited slave as long as he bent to his master’s will, and for the most part this one had, adjusting to his place quickly enough.