Legends of the Riftwar (14 page)

Dennis walked away, heading to the front of the men.

The twin columns started to move, Asayaga sprinting to the front of his own line.

They marched for a mile, then came to a small clearing, then halted.

Less than ten minutes later, Gregory came up the trail. He moved past the waiting men and pointed to a barely noticeable side trail leading off to the north-west. ‘We must go that way,' he said. He then took a small jar out of his backpack and started splashing a steaming fluid around the clearing.

Dennis threw him a questioning look, and the Natalese Ranger said, ‘The men are carrying enough hot food to start a small festival. The moredhel will be able to smell it a mile away. This will make it tough for them to determine which path we've taken.' He motioned
for the four Tsurani who had come up the trail with him, behind the main body of men, and indicated they should rejoin their comrades. ‘I'll wait here for Tinuva,' he said. ‘He should be along shortly and we'll do what we can to mask your tracks.'

Asayaga and Dennis exchanged glances, then without comment both motioned for their men to move up the indicated trail.

The wind was at their backs, the frozen ground beneath their feet crunching. He looked up. The trees lining the tops of the ridges to either flank were swaying, cracking under their icy loads. The snow had ceased, the clouds were blowing away, and the stars were coming out. Moonlight illuminated the mountains and the trail ahead.

They headed north, fleeing into unknown lands.

Fog cloaked the pass.

Bovai dismounted, handing the reins of his horse to a human. Like most of his race he had little affection for horses and let the human renegades who brought them north care for them.

The moredhel scouts who had just rushed the stockade parted at his approach. Their uneasy manner and slight shifting of weight from one foot to the other–signs impossible for the human renegades who rode with Bovai to notice–signalled to the moredhel leader that something was dreadfully wrong even before he reached the gates of the fortification. He stopped inside the open gates.

His dark gaze swept the compound, taking in every detail: the bodies of his warriors lying where they had fallen, the stains of blood in the slush, the wisp of smoke still coiling from the chimney of the barracks hall and the fact that the place was empty. The enemy had fled.

The Lesser Chieftain of Clan Raven raised his head and sniffed the air. Nothing: just the scent of the raw wind, smoke, dead bodies, but nothing living, other than his own followers.

He walked to the open gate through which he had just ridden and knelt to examine the neck wounds of two headless corpses sprawled on the ground.

Clean blows, single strikes, the spray of frozen blood indicating that the killer had decapitated one, swirled around, blood flecking off his blade and then taken the second with a back-handed blow.

Masterful.

The fact that one of the dead was a nephew bothered him not at all. If the youth was so foolish as to be taken in such a manner then he was better off dead; besides, his father was a fool.

He absently nudged the body with the toe of his boot, it was unyielding, beginning to freeze into the icy slush, dead most likely since the evening before.

The troop of wood goblins coming up the road behind him approached the open gate. They slowed to a stop, grounding their spear staffs and battle clubs, heads lowered, eyes averted in fear. Their primitive minds knew that the moredhel did not take kindly to others seeing the bodies of their fallen.

He ignored them. In the shadowy mist he saw one of his riders coming back from his scouting ride to the far side of the pass, horse breathing heavily, plumes of steamy mist blowing from its nostrils. It was Tancred, his Master of the Hunt and he did not look pleased.

Dismounting, he approached, eyes as cold as the morning frost.

‘They have joined together.' Tancred pointed out the bodies of both Kingdom soldiers and Tsurani warriors.

Bovai nodded. ‘That is obvious,' he replied, speaking slowly, his voice barely a whisper, as was his fashion. He inclined his head slightly toward the carnage: thirty-two brothers dead, and only eleven bodies of the humans and the alien Tsurani left behind.

Golun, his second-in-command and leader of the scouts, was silent, arms folded, eyes darting back and forth, watching the exchange between the two. Bovai gave him a quick look, a warning. Golun nodded almost imperceptibly and turned away to continue his examination of the tracks in the slush.

‘That they joined and attacked this post is most interesting,' Bovai continued. There was a flicker of a smile on his face. ‘Their dread of us overcomes their own petty hatred of one another at the moment.'

‘Hartraft is the human leader,' Tancred announced.

He could see several of his followers, standing at a respectful distance, look towards him now with interest. Golun, down on his knees running a fingertip along the edge of a footprint in the ice barely looked up, his intent stare indicating agreement.

‘Are you certain?' Bovai asked, attention focused on Tancred.

‘I thought I recognized him back at the fort, on the trail when we pursued them.'

‘Thought, or know for certain?'

‘I am certain, my chieftain. I know his track, his ways on the trail. I followed for nearly five miles.' Tancred nodded back to the crest of the mountain, the road disappearing into the swirling mists.

‘They moved on opposite sides of the path, the Tsurani to one side, the Kingdom men to the other. Traps were laid, cunning was shown.'

‘Where is Kavala?' Bovai asked, his tone casual. ‘He went with you?'

Tancred hesitated.

‘Go on.'

‘You'll see his body when we renew the pursuit. It was an eledhel arrow that slew him.'

Bovai could sense the injured pride. So even his Master of the Hunt had been surprised and bested. Was there fear in his heart now as well?

He gazed intently at Tancred, probing his thoughts. A hunt leader could not show fear, or let it linger in his stomach, for others would sense it soon enough, taste that fear and become possessed by it. They would hesitate when an order was given, and uncertainty would claim their life as readily as the blade of the enemy.

Golun was behind him, eyes fixed on Tancred, waiting for a response.

‘You want revenge, don't you? Your pride is injured because they surprised you and that one was killed.' He avoided using the name of the fallen moredhel.

Tancred nodded.

‘Two tracks turned off from the trail and I dismounted to examine them. One was eledhel, the other heavy, I think the track of the dark-skinned companion of Hartraft, a Natalese Ranger. I should have sensed them; how I did not is difficult to understand.'

‘And then your companion was killed.'

‘If the one aiming at me had shot but a second earlier I would
not be here. I swung my mount around. Using it as a shield I was able to escape.'

‘So they did surprise you?'

Tancred reluctantly grunted an assertion. ‘The mist was heavy and the wind blowing through the trees made it impossible to hear other sounds.'

‘I see. And what else did you observe?'

Tancred looked straight ahead, not daring to look into Bovai's eyes. ‘I counted the tracks of sixty Kingdom soldiers, perhaps seventy of the aliens. Three, perhaps four wounded being carried, or helped.'

‘Curious. Perhaps a soft hearted priest intervened.' Bovai laughed softly.

More of his band came in through the gate: moredhel, these, on foot, bows at the ready. The sight of the carnage within the stockade wall stunned them and several broke ranks to go to the body of a fallen, one drawing a blade, baring his arm to make the ritual cuts of mourning for the death of a father, sprinkling the blood on the eviscerated corpse.

A commander of twenty shouted an order for the bodies to be moved and a prayer-chanter began to sing, his eerie voice high-pitched as he sang to the spirits of the fallen, bidding them to go to the eternal land in the sky.

‘You realize,' Bovai whispered, drawing closer to Tancred, ‘that this should have been anticipated. Yet you assured me that those we left behind were sufficient in number to hold ten times their number.

‘I left thirty-two of our brothers here to guard this pass while we raided and now they are dead. Kin of many who follow me are dead. This sours all that we have accomplished this last fortnight. The rejoicing over our kills is ended, and our victories will not be sung; instead, this is what will be remembered.'

‘It is unheard of that forces of the Kingdom should ally with Tsurani,' Tancred replied hurriedly. He gazed warily at Bovai. ‘You said that we would be able to play against their mutual hatred,' he retorted at last, ‘to use it to our advantage.' His tone was accusatory.

Bovai could see his followers looking away, nervous. Tancred was
speaking within his rights as a brother. He could not challenge him on that and besides, what he said was truth, which at this moment was dangerous. A seed of doubt was being planted and Bovai had to crush it before it grew.

‘Things change. That is part of the reason we came here: to observe, to learn–' he paused ‘–and to kill them. You should have thought of it as well,' Bovai continued, dropping his voice to a faint whisper. ‘You are the Master of the Hunt. What has happened here is a fiasco. What of those back there, what will they now say of seeing so many of our brothers dead? Soon, our Master will call the councils into meeting–less than a year from now if all goes as planned–and if we are to forge a grand alliance, we must not be weak, or we bring discredit to him.'

He paused as he considered the grand plan being forged up at the ancient city of Sar-Sargoth. While the moredhel chieftain knew two or three years more would pass before the plan took form, he felt a sense of urgency. Any mistake laid at his feet could prove disastrous. He looked at Tancred.

‘Clans that have not seen one another in centuries gather soon on the Plain of Sar-Sargoth–word has reached us Liallan and her Snow Leopards will attend, and that she and her husband Delekhan would bear the sight of one another without a fight between them is significant.'

For a brief instant, Bovai remembered the almost-painful marriage ceremony when blood enemies wed to seal a truce neither side wished for. Delekhan and Liallan would happily cut the hearts out of one another, yet they were husband and wife. Then for an even briefer instant, Bovai admitted he'd prefer it to be Liallan who won that contest, as that would remove a rival Lesser Chieftain from Clan Counsel, and put himself that much closer to Murad, Grand Chieftain of the Clan. Murad himself was unassailable, now that he was Chosen of the Master, but should he fall…

Bovai forced his thoughts back to the present as he confronted Tancred. ‘I hear that even Gorath will bring his Ardanien down from the icy mountains in the far north to see if these rumours about the Master's return are true.'

The Master had first revealed himself to a shaman during a ritual of vision one night when the man was alone upon a mountain top, appearing out of the gloom and stepping into the fire. He had borne the sacred mark and knew the secret ceremonies, and had fasted and chanted with the shaman for three days and nights. The shaman had reported the Master had said, ‘I will return, soon,' then had vanished in smoke and flame. Word had spread like a prairie fire that the shaman had had a prophetic vision, hailing the return of the moredhel's greatest hero.

A month later the Master came to Murad, and in a dark and bloody ceremony had bound him to his service. As a pledge, Murad had cut out his own tongue, so that he would never forswear his oath to the Master. The Master had appeared before the Clan Raven Council of Chieftains with Murad at his side, and took the paramount seat, with Murad at his right hand, and a strange, robed creature with scaled hands and burning eyes at his left.

Now word was spreading that there was to be a huge gathering of clans the next Midsummer's Day, and the matter of a grand alliance to drive the humans out of the Kingdom was to be discussed under the holiest of truces.

Bovai kept his voice low. ‘No, this shall be a gathering not seen in many lifetimes and if we fail here, Murad will not permit either of us to sit at the first circle of chieftains around the council fires; when the war against the humans comes, we shall be relegated to guarding baggage trains and herding goblins.'

He nodded back through the open gate to the column of wood goblins. They were obviously afraid, uneasy. What had been promised as an easy raid with plentiful booty had been marred. They were simple creatures, and their thoughts were filled with barely-suppressed terror. If they had been back in their homelands the column would be melting away, deserters running off to hide and spread word of this humiliation.

Bovai added, ‘Assuming he lets us live. If we do not stop this fear growing within us, no honours will come to our families, no glory for our band, no sharing of spoils. We shall be forced to remain content to glean what we can from the debris left behind
by those in the van, those selected to stand with the Master and Murad.'

‘We can change all this in a day,' Tancred replied hurriedly. ‘Hartraft and the aliens are trapped north of the mountain passes. They must press up the trail to the bridge at Vacosa, it is the only way across the Broad River this time of year. Our garrison there is well fortified and will block them.'

‘Ah, so now you know their strategy?'

Tancred gulped nervously. ‘It is their only hope. Seize the bridge, destroy it, then swing eastward and outrun us. The garrison, however, will hold and we shall come upon them from the rear.'

‘Thank you for that advice,' Bovai whispered.

He turned away from Tancred and walked into the barracks hall. The air within was thick with the stench of their bodies, their musky sweat, the strange scent of the spices the aliens were so fond of in their food. Half a dozen bodies were in the corner: five moredhel, and a Tsurani, his throat cut. The way his corpse was arranged indicated that he had been killed by his own comrades rather than being left alive. Bovai took a small measure of enjoyment from that. It amused some moredhel to torture humans to death, but he had little patience for it; he preferred a quick, artful kill in battle. Besides, they were in a hurry and he would have cut the warrior's throat in almost exactly the same fashion.

He walked over to the fireplace, taking off his gauntlets, extending his hands to warm them. It was an interesting dilemma and with all such dilemmas an opportunity might emerge.
How best to turn this setback into an advantage
, he wondered silently. Fear had driven two enemies into each other's arms and he smiled at that thought.
They fear me more than they do each other and that is good
.

This had started as nothing more than a raid, a training for things yet to come, to give his brothers a taste of blood and to bring home booty. Since the coming of the alien Tsurani all had changed along the frontier, the constant pressure of the humans, the dwarves and eledhel had dissipated, their attention focused instead on containing the invaders. If ever there was a moment to regain all that was lost, it was now. That was what his master had sent him to ascertain, and he knew that this was the moment to strike.

As he looked around the barracks he felt a twinge of doubt. Could Tsurani and Kingdom forces perhaps seek a permanent truce and turn against them? Doubtful, but then who would have believed only a day ago that thirty-two brothers of Clan Raven would fall in an ambush, that a Tsurani warrior could decapitate two of his finest, then unite with Kingdom troops and go marching off to the north? Only a genius might have foreseen such a turn; Bovai had a high opinion of his own skills and ability, but stopped short of considering himself a genius.