Wings on my Back

by Alex Sapegin

  The reports of the agents living in the Patskoi Empire yielded troubling and puzzling news. The Forest was buying human female slaves. No one would have ever known about the Forest’s purchasing women if it hadn’t been for one thing. A caravan of merchant ships failed to return from the north, then the merchants’ relatives disappeared. The disappearances caught the attention of imperial investigators. They looked into it. Copies of the documents fell into the hands of one curious “shadow dweller.” According to his research, the merchant sea caravan had been taken by pirates, and the relatives were hiding rather than paying their debts in arrears owed to the bank. The merchants who disappeared had taken out loans to purchase their living “goods,” and had not repaid them. The meticulous dwarfs who lent the money had carefully recorded the details of the transaction, which was a lot of money. The loan taken out by the merchants was enough to procure three hundred and fifty slaves at the slave markets of Rond. The spy master of the western sector of the “dwellers” dug deeper and found out that the slaves had not been taken by Viking settlers. The “goods” had reached their Forest destination.

  The North was boiling. And the boiling was not good. Gray orcs were withdrawing from their islands and sailing to the continent. On many islands, the ancient masters had returned—Arians who were not known for their friendliness. Any ship seen by the commanders of the Arians near the newly acquired islands was immediately attacked by several sentry drekkars and sent to the bottom. What was happening on the islands captured by the Arians was not possible to find out.

  Tolivel and Elima listened carefully to the news and thought; Neritel did not interfere. He poured himself another glass of wine, threw his boots off his feet, and went for a stroll along the green grass barefoot with the wine in his hand. He did not tell the prince and princess that for over two months already his authorized agents had been working with Tantre’s Secret Chancellery and that a joint expedition had left for the north. He didn’t tell them that an envelope was laying on his desk for the third day already containing King Gil’s consent to exchange lands. He didn’t explain the reasons for their neighbors’ military preparations. First, he had to listen to what Tolivel and Elima had to say, what conclusions they would draw, and then show his cards, or not. Elima was the first to break the silence.

  “I don’t think Gil plans to wage war with Pat. These are just preventative measures against a greedy neighbor. The Emperor of Pat is dreaming of the rebirth of an Alatar where Tantre and Meriya were far-off barbarian provinces. The reason for the anti-elf hysteria is the vulnerability of the northern borders of the kingdom, or Gil knows something about the Forest that made him decide to dissociate himself from the Woodies.”

  “Gil’s planning to wage war against the North. I don’t see any other reasons for the hysteria and preparations,” Tolivel summarized. “If Aria lands on the continent, they’ll go up to the old borders, pushing herds of orcs ahead of them. We can dismiss Meriya and Mesaniya; they’ll be trampled underfoot. The Forest won’t get involved. They won’t let the orcs cross their borders, naturally, but they won’t intervene to aid the humans either. My analysts consider war on two fronts a possibility. Pat is pulling its legions towards the mountains and the shore of the Long Sea. The Emperor will strike as soon as he gets a good chance. Gil’s only way out will be to forfeit his position to the Forest, or…”

  “Or to invite the gray orcs to his northern forest steppes. He’s already settling the Vikings on the shore. The construction of the portal indicates this most directly,” Neritel interrupted Tolivel. “Gil is planning to violate the Orten treaty. The orcs should act like a buffer between the Forest and the center. We missed out on the envoy from the Tantrite embassies to the Big Sea-kings of the island orcs, but the ‘shadow dwellers’ were able to untie the tongue of one of the civil servants from the Royal Chancellery.”

  “How?” Tolivel and Elima asked at the same time and looked at one another.

  “Gold, women, and drugs. The usual, but we had to provide twice the usual amounts of gold and women.” Elima scoffed. She was disgusted at what he was saying, but she didn’t see another way. She would have to put up with this filth; the interests of the Rauu people were above all.

  The glass door opened just then and a servant entered the summer garden. Derek held a thin leather folder and a diplomatic envelope from Neritel’s office in his hands. Neritel hadn’t ordered him to bring the folder, but the man slid it into the prince’s hand and again disappeared behind the door. “It’s time to get a new one. What a shame,” Neritel thought, opening the folder. Just one piece of paper was tucked inside the folder. The prince ran his eyes over the lines written on it and changed his mind about getting a new servant. Derek knew what was what.

  “Read,” the prince set the paper on the table. “It’s the latest report from the Patskoi Empire.”

  Elima and Tolivel read the short message in turns. The information it contained made them stop and think hard. Elima folded her hands in her lap. Her gaze bore into the distant mountain peaks. Wrinkles appeared on Tolivel’s forehead; he pulled his bottom lip and rubbed his chin as he pondered. The prince was the first to break the silence.

  “Fifteen caravans of prisoners in twenty years. The Forest is preparing some sort of filthy trick. Six or ten thousand human women. What for?” This question was addressed to no one in particular, but Elima just then came out of her stupor.

  “Those fifteen caravans are only the ones we know about. There were probably more and we need to operate on a larger scale. The Forest is preparing an army; the Lordships have decided on an intervention. That’s the only way to explain it. The Woodies don’t need slaves. They’ve turned the women into birthing machines. You can kill me on the spot if mages haven’t changed the offsprings’ nature. The Forest already has this army, and no one even suspected what they were doing! Notice that all the Forest’s latest political moves have been announced from a position of power. That’s what’s been brewing right under our noses! That’s what the shushug dug up!”

  Elima began to expand upon her thought. It seemed the Forest Lordships had been preparing an army for a long time and were planning to use it against humans, but the northern threat changed their plans. Now they would save the army. “The Lordships will wait until the orcs and humans have killed one another and then, without declaring war, this fresh army will put the matter of the territory war to rest once and for all and establish the hegemony of the Forest over the former human kingdoms. The Patskoi Empire will conquer Tantre from the south. The Lordships will re-draw their borders and won’t have to worry about the human threat for a long time. After wiping out the weakened human kingdoms, the Woodies will take to their ancient foes—the Rauu.” She drew this gloomy picture for them.

  “That’s terrible. How dare they call themselves elves? The Forest is no better than the mages of Alatar who created vampires,” Tolivel couldn’t find words to express his indignation.

  “Or the dragons with the true bloods, who created the Rauu,” Neritel added. “Words won’t hurt them. The Forest is searching for and making use of any means possible to survive. All’s fair in this war. The Lordships simply used the old, tried and true methods and can tear their enemies limb from limb. Their mages are not confined by the law against changing people’s nature. No one can accuse them of genocide. Humans themselves sold them the slaves. If I may remind you of history, we, too, were created for war with the green orcs by mixing the blood of elves and Arians. We’re not dependent on the Mellornys, and we can freely live anywhere in the world. The Woodies don’t consider us true elves and call us Arian freaks. Frankly speaking, I couldn’t care less what they think of us or what they call us, but I’m ready to cut any throat necessary for the sake of my people. We need to learn from our forest relatives.” Neritel decided that it was time to take a look at another issue which wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting. In his opinion, this issue was even more important than the other three they had already discussed
. “And about following their example, the Rauu are standing at a threshold, beyond which we begin to die out. If we don’t do something now, in two thousand years they’ll begin to forget about us, as they’re now beginning to forget about the dragons.”

  The last sentence was met with a deathly silence and confusion. Elima and Tolivel looked at him as if they were seeing him for the first time. Their faces showed amazement and disbelief. Had he really said that?

  “What’s got into you? Have you gone mad?” Tolivel was the first to overcome the shock.

  “You’re crazy!” Elima agreed.

  Neritel waved and Derek brought a box with infocrystals. Sending him away, Neritel fixed the crystals into special holders. This all took less than a minute. The guests didn’t say a word during this time; apparently, they had gotten caught up in the gravity of the moment. Putting the last crystal in place, he said the magical activation formula. A visual illusion unfolded over the ground. Columns and numbers of various colors appeared in what looked like a diagram.

  “I’ll now explain the analysts’ work of art,” Neritel said and picked up a long cane. “These blue columns and numbers over our heads show the number of the Rauu from the fall of the Empire of Alatar up until today. The interval is every three hundred years. You can thank my great-grandfather for the data. He’s the one who thought of conducting a regular census of the population. The red columns show the birth rate, the green and yellow show the percentage of pure-blooded Rauu and half-bloods among the total births. The black columns, as you can imagine, show the death rate. It’s all been happening right under our noses. We just couldn’t see the woods through the trees. I’ve asked Revitel, captain of the internal guard, to keep records and here you have it; this is what he and the analysts did. Well, what do you think? How crazy am I?”

  Elima stood up and walked over to the illusionogram, as if doing so would make the black columns shrink. Nothing changed. The last two control dates showed steadily declining birth rates and a lower number of Rauu. The black columns grew with each subsequent control. More were dying than were being born. There were a third more half-bloods at first, and at the latest control, there were twice as many. Neritel was right. The Rauu were standing on a threshold. The Snow Elves’ blood was being dissolved in human blood.

  “I’m sorry, Ner.” Elima turned to Neritel and bowed ceremonially. Tolivel mumbled something guiltily as if to say please excuse the idiot; I spoke without thinking. Neritel waved his hand. He expected them to react like that. Elima went on: “You wouldn’t have shown us THIS if you didn’t have a couple suggestions in mind for what to do about it. I’m ready to listen carefully to whatever you have to say. The same goes for Toli, I think.”

  Neritel had one crazy suggestion, but he had no idea whether the others would accept it. He took the diagram down and said some new magic words. A figure of an elf appeared over the table. The viewers were surprised at the unusual image. The illusory elf was handsome and well-built. The unusual thing about him was that his skin was a shade of purple. His fingers ended in white claws; his eyes gleamed with red pupils. Only his long snow-white braid indicated that he was a Rauu.

  “What is this?” Tolivel and Elima again asked in unison. They didn’t glance at one another this time, but kept staring at the figure.

  “The perfect warrior and killer,” Tolivel put in. “What wild beauty. If he were white, all the women would swoon.”

  “I’ll start from way back. Thirty years ago, Senima, the daughter of Norel Trilist, didn’t come back after her studies in Orten. The girl got married in a hurry. She had chosen the vampire from the clan of the Mountain Cats as her beloved,” the guests nodded. They knew this story. The parents on both sides of the barricade stood up against the marriage. It was unheard of. A vampire and an elf?! The judgment would have been less harsh on the young lady if she had chosen a human serf as her beloved. The problem wasn’t that vampires had been created from the human race. The Rauu weren’t too pure in this sense either and couldn’t boast of a pure origin. Although, it wasn’t necessary for people to know their little secrets either. The problem was that the vampires had fought on the side of the Empire of Alatar and were the enemies of the Rauu and the Forest elves, and the elves remember old offenses for a long, long time. No one could recall a single case in which an elf and a vampire had lived together for the last fifteen hundred years since the fall of the Empire, and all of a sudden these kids wanted just such a thing. The newlyweds did not heed their parents, and one fine night they disappeared together. No one ever saw them again. “Four weeks ago, Norel Trilist passed away in the mountains. Apparently, he could no longer hold back the avalanche. Semina came to his funeral. She had sensed her father’s death. She came with her husband, five children, and two grandchildren. The grandchildren, a boy and a girl, are the children of her and R’ron’s eldest son. Semina herself is pregnant with her sixth child, expecting her third daughter. The illusionogram is showing a portrait of her middle son. Semina and R’ron’s children have one peculiarity: until the time they are twenty years old, they develop at the speed of humans or vampires, and then their growth and aging slows down to the pace of an elf. Why hasn’t there been a single case of interbreeding between elves and vampires in one thousand five hundred years? Not even with half-elves? Due to the small numbers of vampire clans and the strict taboo. And by persecuting any romantic relationship by their offspring on the side, the elves have looked after the purity of the race and the honor of the best mercenaries and killers. It’s only in the last ten years there have been indulgences.”

  Neritel fell silent. The others were quiet too, digesting the shocking news. Six children! Elf females had problems conceiving, carrying, and giving birth to even two children; three was very hard. But here she had six already, and it didn’t seem the spouses were planning on capping the number any time soon. Vampires live five or six hundred years, elves even longer.

  “Could this be an isolated case?” Elima asked. In her four hundred years she had yet to become a mother. She calculated for a moment, and her eyes lit up with a fanatical fire.

  Neritel shook his head. “The Life mages conducted an inquiry into the married couple and made an unequivocal verdict—no deviations. Vampires and Rauu are an excellent match. That’s the twist from the magical creations of humans and elves. Put them together, and it works out just fine. Elf women carry vampires’ children easily. It’s the same way when the father is the elf, and the mother is the vampire. The only thing is, their children and their children’s children will be purple and have several other distinct differences in terms of claws, red eyes, and longer fangs. The rest, including the form of the ears, won’t differ from the Rauu.”

  “Isn’t it frightening, Neritel? You’re now suggesting we destroy the Rauu and replace the Snow Elves with a new race. That’s like signing a death sentence to your own child or parent. Who were you planning on fighting with, your own self?” It seemed Tolivel was speaking to no one in particular. He wasn’t even listening to himself. Elima’s eyes told him more than Neritel could. Elf women and men would give anything for the chance to have several children without any implications. He had seen the envy in his wife’s eyes when she looked at the daughters and son of the prince of the Middle principality and he himself envied Neritel’s family happiness. In fifty years of marriage with Imitel, he’d been fortunate to experience being a father to his daughter Yuli but observed how his wife suffered because she wanted more. Long life didn’t make elves happier. Marriages with humans didn’t solve this problem; the children of such unions took after their human parents. The living example, Selima, would beget an uncontrollable wave of interracial relationships. It was too late to hide this case; too many witnesses in the Middle kingdom. Neritel was simply suggesting taking control of the situation by the authorities.

  “If that’s true, I’ll be the first to give birth to three or four red-eyed children with a vampire,” Elima decided. She had made up her mind and spoken
it; now she needed to prove it.

  “You’re a brute, Neritel. You hit where it hurts most. We need to get the conversation back to a political one,” Tolivel thought.

  “Besides vampires, we still have the questions of the Forest and Tantre. The north can wait a bit. What are we to do?”

  Elima came out of her trance. A discussion ensued. The rulers of the principalities arranged problems in order of their severity and looked at them from all sides. Each person present refuted the arguments of his or her opponents and suggested his own solutions, which were just as soon shot down into fluff by the other side. The sun was far lower than noon when a compromise was finally reached.

  They would hand all information on the Forests and the Forest Lordships to the king of Tantre. They couldn’t allow the Lordships to grow in strength. They would agree to cooperate with the intelligence service. War was inevitable, and since it were so, they would offer Tantre a full-scale political and military alliance, including handing over the vampires’ lands to the protectorate of the Rauu principalities. In exchange, they would hand over the foothill plains. They planned to hire skilled dwarf masters for their defensive construction needs and to reinforce all western fortresses and build extra ones at the passes. It was better to be prepared for the worst case scenario and meet their former allies with all the military might they could muster. No one knew what had happened to the Arians over two thousand years of isolation, and no one could say whether they remembered the Rauu there or not. The new fortresses wouldn’t be in vain in any case when they met the Woodies. They would send emissaries to the vampires with a high level of authorization to act….