Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (36 page)

“I know you’re working on something in that gallant head of yours that is beyond merely staying alive. But let’s get moving. We need to find something to eat. I’m starving.”

By noon they had covered around ten miles. They foraged much of the way, dining on the various fruits, berries, nuts, and ground tubers that were in season, and while certainly not filling, they definitely served to quell the pangs of hunger that both were feeling. They saw no sign of any enemy troops, and in the late afternoon, Jared called a halt to their travels. He had picked out a particularly dense thicket in which they would camp for the night.

“Why are we stopping here?” she asked.

“Watch, and learn.” He approached a large gray tree. “This,” he said, pointing to it with his knife, “is a Barnagad poplar. It was named centuries ago after somebody named Barnagad. It is perhaps the most important tree in the forest. It is neither rare nor common. But what is most assuredly not common about it is the inner surface of the bark.”

He began to strip away a section of it, making vertical cuts. When he was satisfied with his initial incisions, he found a protruding tendril and started to pull on it. It stripped away cleanly to the top of his initial cut, leaving him holding a perfect string about six feet long. “Feel this,” he invited her. “Try and break it.”

She took it from him and did as he said. Pulling as hard as she could she could not make it break.

“Now,” he said, “We tie a few sections of these together. Then we whittle a hook, not from this tree but from a branch of that one over there. That’s a rock maple, the toughest wood in the realm. Then we dig up some bait, and bingo, we catch ourselves some dinner. These nuts and berries will only go so far. We need something called protein, or we will starve to death while we get fat.”

“The books?” she asked.

He smiled. “The books.”

Several hours later they returned to their lair for the night with a stringer of fat trout and a peculiar armload of wood, white as snow and without a blemish on the bark.

“Now this,” he said, “is a bit more rare. This is Burnfast. Most city folks don’t know about Burnfast, but it’s the only wood in the forest that burns with absolutely no smoke. The wood is impregnated with a sap that burns hot as demon-fire. I will not have my lady eating raw fish. I’ll get the fire started and ask you to tend the fish while I fashion some rabbit snares. We may as well have some variety to our fare.”

“Well, aren’t you quite full of yourself.” She laughed quietly.

He grinned, and busied himself with cutting off slivers of the Burnfast. “Now the point is to keep the slivers small, and you need to make a very large pile in advance. That way you won’t run out. If the pieces are too big, they
will
make smoke, and we might find ourselves with uninvited guests.”

“How are you going to get it started?” she asked.

“With these,” he said, pulling out several flints that he held up.

She took over the carving, and he started to fashion snares from the strings he had harvested from the tree and woven into stout lines. “You know,” he said, “You can literally eat the paste from the inner surface of the bark of the Barnagad Poplar tree. Not only does it have a little nutritional value, it has medicinal properties. It’s a pain reliever, and it works against fevers. And, lastly, you can apply a poultice of it to a wound to stop bleeding. It’s a remarkable tree, really.”

“And you learned all of this from your father’s books?” she asked, happily cutting away.

“Not too thick with those shavings, now,” he cautioned gently, then, “I did.”

After a while he spoke again. “There was so much in them. So much I didn’t understand, although I had committed many of them to memory word for word. I always wished for someone with whom to discuss all the things that I had read over the years. Fascinating things. Practical things like we’re using right now. Simple things. And complex things. Things of Science. Things of Prophecy, and things of Magic.”

“You know magic?” she asked.

“No,” he laughed softly. “I know
of
magic. I assure you, I cannot perform any magic. According to what I have read, only those of Elvin descent can perform magic; something to do with the Elves being able to draw power from the earth, the sun, the wind, and water. You don’t happen to have any blood of the Elves coursing through your veins do you?”

“I do not,” she said.

They cooked and ate their banquet in silence. As she was about to throw some water on the few remaining embers, he held up his hand. “No,” he said softly. “Let it burn out on its own. If you cool it off, we will get smoke, and we don’t want that.”

“Of course,” she said. “You must think I’m a ditzel.”

“Never,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. You’re doing fine. We have to help each other. There’s only us, and we need to put our heads together on everything.

“The whole has to be more than the sum of the parts if we’re to survive this, that’s all.”

Rolan frowned deeply at the report brought to him by Thargen. “If it is as you say,” he said, “it’s over. We have no choice but to surrender and try to preserve something of our races.”

“I can tell you this, My King: Neither I, nor a single Human, Dwarf, or Elf under my command will ever agree to surrender to those monsters. We would all rather die fighting. Why
would
we surrender, My Lord? To die in some cooking pot after they had their fun torturing us for countless hours for their sick amusement? Better to die fighting, I say.”

“I know what you’re saying, Thargen, and you carry the scars that back your words. But as King, I have women and children to think about, and the preservation of the three races.

“The way I see it, the only chance we have, other than to surrender under terms that give us some hope, is to organize into small groups of militia, freedom fighters living in the woods, with endless raids on an army that hopelessly outnumbers us. But biting like fleas on the leg of a dog this big, all must know that the chances of any sort of victory will be slim, and more likely we will all slowly die off; From the fighting, yes, but more from the slow processes of starvation, sickness, and exposure.

“Ravenwild has fallen, my good and loyal friend. I know this because you, the Commander of the Ravenwild fighting forces, have had to serve as a lowly messenger to bring me this horrid news.

“Perhaps Malance Venomisis will negotiate a surrender by which we stay out of the cooking pots and are allowed to live together in some sort of settlement. His military dog is spared the itch of our constant biting, and we might actually survive.

“We could offer ourselves as slaves, servants for now to be sure, with the hope that someday, generations from now, we might arise again strong enough in numbers and will to defeat this terrible foe. Other than that, as I see it, we will all die. And with our deaths, all that was ever Human, Dwarf, and Elf will be lost forever.”

Queen Isabella could stand it no longer. “Are you out of your mind?” she cried. “Surrender to that pig of a being? Never! Never! Never! Never! Your words are lunacy, My Lord. You need to get some sleep. Do you realize what you’re saying? You’re seriously considering brokering some sort of deal with this animal? Surrender, you say, so that we might live in some happy little slave-camp village? If we chose this psychotic pathway, what would happen is this: The day the survivors of our kingdom presented themselves to that hairy pig scum would be the day he exterminated each and every one of us.

“We can’t
surrender
, and
to even suggest it is madness
.”

Thargen and the wizard Taber both looked uncomfortable as she vented her spleen on Rolan’s commentary. Never before had either seen the Queen speak out against the King. Then again, neither had ever seen circumstances as grave as they faced right now.

“My Lord,” said the wizard Taber, “if I may speak.”

“Of course,” said Rolan, with a halfhearted wave of his hand. “Please.”

“Beyond question our situation is grim. Our kingdom is smashed. Our peoples, those that have managed to survive, have
already
run from their homes and taken to the wild, fending entirely for themselves and living off the land. And while both the Troll and Gnome armies occupy
our
land, it means they have extended themselves to a point that neither can have much of a force left defending their
own
lands. I suggest that we organize what we have left in the way of our own military into two contingents, each with the purpose of attacking Vultura and Slova. Attack them on their
own
soil, My Lord. ‘To what end?’ you ask. To force them to withdraw some of their forces in defense of their own lands and give our people some breathing room while they make new lives for themselves in the wilderness. I have a few wizards left. If you can get us within striking distance of the Gnome and Troll capital cities, we can do enough damage to the structures to allow our troops to enter. We might, conceivably, catch our enemies sleeping soundly enough to take out the leadership. Kill the head of the snake and the snake dies.”

“Let me understand this,” said Rolan. “You’re saying that we completely abandon the defense of our homeland, and our peoples, and attack,”

“Wizard Taber,” smiled Thargen. “Are you petitioning for my job?”

Taber returned his smile. “Not likely,” he said. “But the way I see it, it makes no sense to defend something that is already lost, and I am willing to bet that the vast majority of the citizenry of our land would support some sort of attempt by our military to take the offensive
to
Malance Venomisis
.
Even if it is the last offensive our military ever mounts.”

Luke, The Conqueror, knocked loudly on the solid door of their planning room with the hilt of his sword.

“That would be Luke,” said Thargen. He slid back the faceplate to look and, after confirming his assumption, nodded to Taber who motioned slightly with his hand, causing the door to slide open. When Luke had entered, Taber again motioned with his hand, and the door slid back shut.

Thargen and Luke clasped forearms, and Luke next put his fist to his heart, turning to his King. “My Lord.”

“Luke, Minister of Conquest, can I offer you something to eat or drink?”

Luke was in such a harried state that the words seemed to tumble out of him all at once, like a handful of beans dumped out of a can.

“May it please My Lord, not at this time. We sit on the brink of total loss. We have plans to make, urgent plans, that we needed to implement yesterday. I will eat on my way back to the lines.”

He turned to Queen Isabella. “My Queen.”

For the next several hours they discussed battle strategy, current troop locations, battle damage estimates, logistics for marshalling and organizing their remaining troops, and all of the other aspects of their military campaign. All present knew that this might well be the first of the last of such discussions.

“There is one thing that the good wizard Taber seems to have left out of his attack plan,” said Thargen.

“The annual Gnome winter retreat,” said Luke. “No question.”

“Oh, it isn’t that I didn’t consider it,” said the wizard. “I believe we need to attack them on two fronts, but the first will be merely to hold the Gnomes in Vultura. If we take out their bridge on the Dreams of Sky River, we will not only be able to hold them entirely out of the war for the winter, but position our troops to really hit them hard with the coming of spring.”

And so it went, on and on, around and around, as they worked out the details, down to the very smallest, as to how they would proceed.

When they finally adjourned, Queen Isabella and Rolan were alone. “What about our son?”

“Yes, our son.”

The Queen waited for the King to continue. He said nothing, but sat and stared at the bare stone walls of their bedchamber, deep within the hideaway at Mount Gothic.

“My Lord?”

Still he said nothing, so she repeated, “Our son? Have you forgotten about our son?”

Now it was the King’s turn to explode. He jumped up, turning to face her, and screamed, “
Do you honestly think I have forgotten about Erik? Our only son? Do you think his capture has slipped my mind? Do you think it has suddenly escaped me that he is in the hands of our enemies and being subjected to the most heinous tortures imaginable? Is that what you think?”