Bloodraven (39 page)

Stubborn half-blood. Secretive and manipulative. And protective, Yhalen admitted with a glum frown. Admitted more, that even chained and under guard, Bloodraven’s presence had made him feel safer among these grim, silent men of the king’s elite than he did now, in the dubious company of a single bored man.

If they came back without Bloodraven, he thought, it would probably be to silence the only witness to the king even contemplating alliance with the ogr’ron. If that happened, he was weaponless, save for that unpredictable, sinful magic that he’d discovered within himself. He doubted it would do him much good against a bolt shot from range, or an unexpected blade drawn across his throat from behind.

He drew one knee up and shivered, watching the guard at the end of the table closest to the door and wondering what orders that man had upon the failure of the king’s talk with Bloodraven.

There was the stamp of feet in the hall outside the door. Yhalen’s forest-bred hearing detected them before the guard did, and he slowly lowered his foot to the floor, pushing himself to his feet in expectation of disaster. The door opened abruptly and his guard started to his feet at attention, but the two men who entered paid him little notice.

“Come,” they said simply to Yhalen.

He lifted his chin, head still spinning with thoughts of secretive murder. “Where?”

“To attend your master, what else?”

It was said with impatience and no small bit of derision, the guards having their own opinions of the human man that came here at the half ogre’s whim. Arguing his case with them would be pointless. But they seemed more impatient to be about their business than hiding a plot of murder, and Yhalen didn’t feel the hovering scent of threat, so he happily enough quit this small, cool room in the hopes that there were perhaps explanations waiting at wherever it was they were taking him.

It proved to be a chamber on the second floor of the keep, along a wall lined with stout doors of similar make. There were two guards at the top of the stairwell, and two more across from the doorway of the room they led Yhalen to. It was a bedchamber, and nothing more ominous waited for him within than Bloodraven himself. The halfling stood with his broad back to the door, looking out the slit of a window at a gray sky beyond. There was no one else within the room, but there was fresh water, a thick rug on the floor, and a crackling fire in the small hearth that made the room warm and comfortable. The bed was wide, and long enough for a tall man. Bloodraven’s feet would overhang the edge, but not uncomfortably so. There was no extra cot or pallet, but then, servants slept where they could. On a blanket or bare floor if need be. Yhalen was most certainly prepared to do so.

They shut the door behind him, and surprisingly there was no sound of lock being turned or bolt being slid into place. He supposed the four guards on duty outside in the hall, and a keep full of armed 119

knights, were adequate enough security. He had no doubt that the king’s quarters were far from this one, and heavily guarded as well.

Bloodraven said nothing. Didn’t even turn to acknowledge him, one hand on the stone flanking the window. He certainly seemed no worse for wear and Yhalen unconsciously released a breath of relief that eased long-held tension from his body.

“What happened?” he asked, an all-encompassing question and one he repeated with passion with Bloodraven didn’t immediately move to answer.

Bloodraven shifted, putting a shoulder to the wall, looking at him from beneath half lowered lids.

“Your king’s a shrewd bargainer.”

“He’s not my king,” Yhalen protested, having developed little enough regard for the lords of Suthland in their treatment of him.

Bloodraven shrugged. “It seems he may be mine.”

Yhalen blinked, drawing breath, trying to wrap his mind around the maneuverings that would bring about such a declaration. Failing. Ydregi politics were nothing if not simple.

“Why? How? You’ll not drag me into this and refuse to tell why!”

“Will I not?”

Bloodraven smiled, a slight baring of teeth. A dare. Not a threat. Yhalen had learned the difference and ignored it, staring steadily up at Bloodraven, waiting for his answer.

Bloodraven shrugged again, the faintly audacious look in his eyes fading, and gave it. A concise, if not abridged version of what bargain had been reached between Bloodraven, as a representative of his half-human, half-ogre brethren, and the king of Suthland. A bargain that Bloodraven had agreed with tenuous expectation, a bargain he hoped to reach if fate gave him the opportunity and ability to do so.

“You planned this...before you even came here, before you crossed into human lands and started your raids?”

“There was always a possibility.”

Yhalen took a breath, the faces of the dead Bloodraven’s party had left in its wake mere shadows in the face of his own suffering.

“You came looking for treaty with human men in the guise of an invader? Are you mad? And if that was your plan...why me?”

Yhalen took a frustrated circuit about the room, before fixing Bloodraven with his glare again. “Why not simply leave me be when you were captured? There were no more pretenses to be had, and more likelihood that the men you wished to treat with would look with favor upon you without reminding them of your misdeeds.”

“You, I liked. And,” Bloodraven folded his arms, cupping one elbow and idly stroking his chin with the fingers of the other hand. “You’re property of mine, so it intrigued me to see how far they would bend in interest of what I might offer.”

Yhalen stifled a reply, though it burned on his tongue. It was old ground, the subject of his autonomy, and they were firmly of different beliefs. In a closed room, Bloodraven simply might take the argument to levels that Yhalen couldn’t win. He let it pass and that seemed to please Bloodraven, for the halfling sat down upon the bed, the frame creaking a little under his weight and began unlacing his boots.

“We call this vale the king proposes for haven,
Fah’nak Gol
, which means in your tongue, ‘Death in the Shadows’. I have little liking for it, but less choice, it seems.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Yhalen said stiffly.

“Did you hide in your woods all your life, before this?” Bloodraven lifted a dark brow at him.

“The great forest is vast. Wider than the kingdoms of men that spot the land between it and your mountains,” Yhalen said indignantly, youthful pride stung. “There’s little enough need to ever leave it, and little I’ve experienced outside it has proved worth the foray.”

Bloodraven tilted his head, one ankle across his knee, boot half unlaced. “You’d have been content never venturing out?”

The question was wistful enough to catch Yhalen off his guard. There was something in Bloodraven’s tone that suggested that venturing from the place he’d known all his life had been a desperate dream for no short time.

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“I might have been,” Yhalen said softly. “I was happy there. There are...were people who loved me.

Some of them dead now, because you came.”

“It wasn’t my intent to slaughter every human we passed. It wasn’t the intent of the war-chieftain who sent us into your lands. Gathering human slaves was. I misjudged my ability to hold rein over my warriors when half or more of them held loyalty to that troll-son Deathclaw.”

Yhalen shivered at that name, blood draining from his face, stomach churning with a fluttering nausea, recalling very well the difference in intent between Bloodraven and his full-blooded rival.

Remembering the condemning magicks he’d done in self defense against that ogre. There was nothing associated with Deathclaw that did not make him sick.

Bloodraven must have seen it, for he frowned, staring hard at Yhalen’s pale face.

“I’ll finish the job you started, if he still lives,” he said somberly. “There are no affiliations he holds now that will still my hand.”

It hurt with a physical pang, the obviousness of his weakness, of his shame and his carelessness. It hurt that there was something in Bloodraven’s voice, in the set of his face that hinted at pity.

“I need no vengeance from you,” Yhalen said fiercely, bitter wetness at his eyes. “Not when your offenses against me are as heinous.”

Which stopped whatever Bloodraven might have said next, made the halfling sit there with his second boot half off with an unreadable expression on his face. He yanked it off, finally, and laid it down next to the other, then shrugged out of his human-made tunic, folded it in quarters and laid it on the stand near the bed, always thoughtful in the care of his gear.

“Get what rest you might, we leave at dawn and you may not find much of it over the next few days,” he said finally, shortly, and there was in his tone something that suggested offense.

Yhalen felt a pang of guilt, then a sharper pang of incredulity, that he cared at all for the state of Bloodraven’s feelings. It had not been an entirely fair accusation. Bloodraven’s dealings with him had been nothing like the malicious, careless cruelty of Deathclaw. Bloodraven’s care had been gentle indeed, in comparison. He was still the lesser of two evils. Yhalen tightened his mouth, pulling a quilt off the end of the bed and a soft pillow and making a nest for himself near the warm stones of the hearth.

Bloodraven watched him silently, from under the fall of half-lowered lashes, reclined against pillows and headboard, pale ochre skin cast in yellowish tones from the flickering orange glow of the fire. He said nothing and that silence, though hardly surprising since he was never prone to fits of useless chatter, was unsettling. Yhalen wanted to break that silence, wanted to cry out and demand why he had to make this journey to the ominous vale and its keeper, but of course, he knew why. Even more so than Bloodraven’s stubborn claims, was the simple fact that he knew too much of the king’s dealings to part from this undertaking.

At least alive.

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Yhalen stopped short of the courtyard, standing in the shadows of the great foyer as Bloodraven and his escort marched ahead, into the gray light of early morning. The lady stood at the bottom of the stairs, speaking with Lord Tangery, and dressed in freshly pressed riding attire. It was a different dress than she’d worn on the ride here, though Yhalen had no notion of what luggage she’d carried that had held it. He’d managed to avoid her through the ride here, and to where she’d disappeared inside the keep he neither knew nor cared, as long as the feel of her insidious magic fell far from him.

The stomping of boots behind him made him abandon his shelter, and he moved down the stairs, on the far side from the lady as the king and his own group of retainers and guards stepped out to see the contingent off. The lady had no eyes at all for Yhalen, with the king of Suthland in attendance, and she swept forward to intersect his path, bowing gracefully. He stopped, inclining his own head, exchanging some pleasantry, and then doing her the honor of offering his royal arm. She took it with a smug little smile tugging at her lips and accompanied him towards the cluster of men and horses.

Yhalen shuddered to think what poisons slipped from her lips into the ear of the king. She was deceptively malicious in her maneuverings and he wondered if she’d be so daring as to use her witcheries on men of power, as she was wont to do on those she considered mere tools. Horrifying to think that she could influence a king in such a manner, but then again, Tangery had to have known or at least heard rumors of her arcane interests. Lord Dunval had suggested such when he’d included her in the party. That Tangery had allowed her within the presence of his brother suggested he held no such fears.

There were no chains this morning, though the guard in the courtyard was numerous and alert. More so as King Valeran approached Bloodraven.

Yhalen edged closer, carefully sliding past the powerful, shifting hindquarters of a horse eager to be out of the stable and on its way. He laid a hand cautiously on twitching withers, feeling the pent up power inside the equine body and the somewhat startling warmth of surging, hot life force. He withdrew his hand quickly, surprised at the impression, and somewhat shaken by it. Perhaps he was simply nervous over thoughts of lady Duvera practicing her subtle magicks, and his own senses were strung taut because of it.

He put his hand carefully back on the flank of the horse, wishing calm upon himself, wishing not to know what rich life flowed beneath the sleek hide. It dissipated. It was simply a horse again and Yhalen breathed a sigh of relief at that normalcy. Whatever the king had said to Bloodraven had passed, missed by his distraction with the horse. The lady had mounted, as had a good number of the guard. There were fewer of them, this time. Perhaps a half dozen men, not including Sir Alasdair or the lady’s escort from Keis. Lord Tangery wasn’t dressed for a hard ride. He stood beside his brother, watching the last of the men mount up before he lifted a hand to Alasdair. Alasdair raised his own in salute to his king and the lord Protector of the North.

“Mount up,” someone said to Yhalen, and he did so reluctantly, feeling the complaint of muscles not quite recovered from yesterday’s long ride as he climbed up onto the back of the bay gelding he’d been standing beside. A stableman handed him up the reins and stood looking up at him with drawn brows and a not unkind expression.

“He’s got a soft mouth,” the man said, as if something in the way Yhalen sat suggested to him that he was no horseman. “Be easy on the bit, or you’ll get attitude from him. He’ll follow without you yanking on the reins.”

Yhalen swallowed, nodding, the horse moving out on its own as the rest of the party began to walk for the raised portcullis. Eleven of them in all, with two extra mounts who carried supplies for the road. Yhalen’s horse picked up its pace to a trot, wanting to cluster with the rest of the horses. He came closer than he cared to the lady, who looked at him and smiled her serpent’s smile.