Last Stand of the Blood Land

by Andrew Carpenter

  “We will help,” said Andrika from her perch. “We can show you how to make traps, we will warn you before the Southlanders approach. We will guide your people back into the forest where they can retreat until the Southerners are so extended we will pick them off at our leisure.”

  “The Plainswatchers,” said Arbolante, looking up at the Cherubim, “have been sent by Oberon to protect the forest and your people, to watch the plains for danger.”

  “Where are the males?” asked Debir.

  “Fighting for the North in some unsubtle, uncreative head on attack,” said Stratera.

  “Just where males can always be found,” added Andrika.

  The other Cherubim laughed in their feminine way as did some of the Giants but Debir frowned looking at Atlas.

  “One Elf will teach us how to defeat the South and a heard of females will be our defenders?” he asked, sarcasm in his voice.

  Atlas smiled even though he did not feel like smiling. His stomach churned and he gripped the rock beneath him tightly, uncertain if this approach was the right one for his people.

  “This Elf will teach us to grow enough food to support our warriors and trade for what we need rather than selling our youth into slavery. These Cherubim took Fort Hope with nothing but four Dwarves and they will prepare the way for our people to escape to safety and to ensnare the Southlanders. Fritigern will train our soldiers at Fort Hope so that we may break the Southlanders not with our might, but with our minds.” He pointed to his temple and felt his confidence grow just by saying his plan, the North’s plan, out loud.

  The others nodded, dispersing to go about the million tasks and labors that made up the tactics of the strategy. Atlas was left with the Elf while they watched the Cherubim fly away into the forest to watch the plains and the people. Arbolante led him deeper into the forest to where new clans of Giants were settling the ground he had cleared with his brother.

  “Giants cannot move well in the forest, but they cannot be attacked from a distance either, nor can the South use their phalanxes or numbers to their advantage,” said Arbolante, his falcon shifting on his shoulder. “If you use traps and Cherubim to guide the invaders into your ambushes you can defeat them.”

  Atlas nodded, listening while he looked at the various Giant families that had come from across the North to join them. Some were refugees from Therucilin or the wall while others represented ancient clans that had survived by hiding in the vastness of the Canyon Lands or the remoteness of the western mountains. Tucked away in their hiding places they had been coaxed out by talk of safety and unity, of farms and reclaiming the glories of the past. He felt a deep responsibility to care for them, to outthink the Southerners and build his father’s dream.

  He could see a young female, returning from a lake further in the woods, her cormorant tucked under one arm and a stringer of fish under the other. She removed a ring from around the bird’s neck that prevented it from swallowing the fish and rewarded it with the guts and heads where she sat down to clean the catch.

  “We were like the Cormorant,” he said to the Elf. “Taking the scraps, creating far more value than we were given.”

  Arbolante nodded, calming his bird with his timeless hands.

  “My people were the same,” he said. “Once free and mighty, then subjugated by Southlanders. When we tried to take off the ring from around our necks they choked us rather than letting us leave. I will not let the same happen to your people.”

  “But you Elves trained the Centaurs to massacre us.”

  “When you fought with the South. Now that you fight with us we will teach you to massacre them. The last remnants of my people want vengeance against the South but we also want to prevent them from subjugating or killing off any other tribes.”

  Atlas nodded his massive head and took a deep breath of forest air.

  “Where do we begin?”

  The Elf took him to a rookery where a pair of youths was tending to a dozen owls, hawks, eagles, cormorants, and twice as many eggs.

  “Gifts from the Plainswatchers,” said Arbolante. “Go ahead, see if one of them suits you.”

  The youths stepped aside, awed by the sword on his hip and by the stories of his father. I will give you my own stories. A young great horned owl looked at him with glowing yellow eyes and did not shy away when he reached out his hand. The little black and brown creature tilted its head to the side before hopping happily onto his hand. Its talons instantly broke through the skin. The young Giant took his other hand, slipping a piece of meat into it.

  “Don’t scare her, feed her,” whispered Arbolante.

  Atlas worked through the pain, something the days and weeks after a battle had taught him to do, and reached out to feed the owl. It snapped up the food hungrily, looking up at him for more. One of the youths stepped onto a table so he was at Atlas’ height and tied a thick leather pad onto his shoulder. The Pathmaker transitioned the bird there quickly with a sigh of relief. With instructions that he and no one else should feed the owl, he stepped away with the Elf.

  “She will become your eyes and ears,” he said.

  When Atlas looked puzzled Arbolante continued. “She will carry messages for you from place to place and will hunt food for you at night while you travel. You will learn her calls and train her to keep watch at night. She will be forevermore at your side.”

  Atlas nodded. He could already feel a bond with the bird and knew his people had gained new allies and skills to master by working with the other races. He could see the Giants using the birds to great effect and wondered what other secrets the Plainswatchers had in store.

  Stratera looked up from the pit she was digging to see Atlas and Arbolante approaching. The size of the Giant still shocked her, especially in the confines of her forest home. She had heard stories of the grizzlies on the other side of the mountains but the black bears of her childhood did not come close to matching the size of these creatures. All around her a dozen female Cherubim were hard at work on traps of their own and she smiled at the little owl on the Giant’s shoulder. The eggs and birds were another secret gift from the Nymphs, a tool to help fortify the tribe that buffered their forest from the onslaught they all knew was coming. It was the other gift she held that had caused Atlas to frown.

  “You are creating poisoned traps this close to the village?” he said, pointing at the familiar black gourd in her hand.

  She nodded, realizing she should have gotten buy in from the Pathmaker. But another part of her was angry with the Giant for yelling at her when this ground had always belonged to the Cherubim and they were here to fight to defend it for the Giants. She calmed herself quickly, putting herself in his position. I wouldn’t want poisoned traps near my home either.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t ask you first, its all part of the plan my friend,” she said in a conciliatory voice. “We are teaching your people where the safe trails are but we will not teach the same lessons to the Southlanders when they pursue you into the forest. They will learn the hard way.”

  Something about her voice soothed him and her apology made him feel at ease. He could see the necessity of her traps.

  “Will the Plainswatchers be patrolling these forests?” he asked.

  She nodded, “Yes, we will be everywhere. We are building lookout posts for miles and miles across the plains along the trail south where they will come from so that our runners can give your people notice. We are trapping the trails and creating ambush funnels all the way to Devil’s Lake. We will be like that owl on your shoulder, always watching from above.”

  She pointed up to where one of the female warriors stood perched on a tree, her bow at the ready, watching over her sisters and the Giants at the rookery. He nodded, releasing his initial tension.

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled at him and watched him head off towards the fields with Arbolante before returning to her digging, placing sharpened sticks tipped in poison at the bottom of her pit.

  “Remember
when the Dwarf asked if we had enough rope to climb the mountain?” asked Andrika as she worked on her own pit several feet away.

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if we have enough time, or Plainswatchers, to accomplish everything you just told him we would do.”

  “One hundred is not enough, not if they come this summer.”

  “Dig faster,” said Andrika with a smile.

  Atlas was standing with Theia watching twenty young males shoulder their packs, strapping inherited or scavenged weapons to their sides where once had hung scythes. They were leaving for Fort Hope where Fritigern was taking any Northerners who wanted to train to be warriors. They would receive food, training, and Dwarf forged weapons. Fritigern had promised to turn them into the best-trained fighters in the Blood Lands in exchange for enough of the Giant’s crop to stock the fort. They would also become part of the garrison of the fort, learning tactics and helping to expand their defenses into the Canyon Lands that lay to the east of the forest. To Atlas the labor required to build defenses in the Canyon Lands sounded far too similar to their function in the Old Alliance, but Fritigern had assured him the Dwarves would do much of the work and the tunnel system they would build there was an important part of the North’s battle plan.

  He felt better knowing Fort Hope was just a few days away and that these fighters were not signing their lives away to fight and labor in a cause that was not their own. Theia, oddly tearless, reached out to place a small ruby in his hand while they waved goodbye.

  “Oberon sent that with your father’s sword. It is the last treasure of the Giants, all that remains of a once proud and powerful race.”

  He looked at it, glittering in his hand, and squeezed it, wondering how the Cherub had found it.

  “That,” he said, pointing after the retreating youths, “has always been the treasure of the Giants. We are growing proud and powerful again.”

  She smiled, the tears forming now.

  “Your father would be proud of the Pathmaker you have become,” she said. “Don’t be afraid of your mistakes, and don’t listen to those who ridicule you for them. The Pathmaker always makes mistakes because he leads the people down trails they have never trod. You make the mistakes so that they may follow a safer trail. Parfey had that courage and so do you.”

  He felt pain and pride well up in his chest as a tear escaped his eye. He took one last look at the would-be warriors as they dipped over the horizon and turned to take on the work of transforming his people. Within the week, Ignatius would arrive with still more Giants, survivors of the capture of Therucilin as well as weapons and buffalo. He too would continue on his way to a transforming home.

  Chapter 5

  W otan could feel the land pulsing underneath his hooves. He was running north when he really wanted to be running east, the shortest route to his homeland and his clan in the mesa country nearer to the ocean. He could see thunderstorms on the western mountains and felt the cold wind blowing down, pushing the southern wind away if just for the day. I’ve been pushing the South away my whole life. The chieftain smiled, watching the gold and grey sky streaked with lightening above the green forests running up to jagged, drab peaks; for a Centaur, it felt good to run. He opened up his oversized nostrils, feeling the moist air sucking into his lungs and listening for the thundering hooves of his bucks as they matched his pace. He pictured running naked, without the heavy armor and weapons that were part of his skin, with his wives and colts, through the grasslands of his home in the summer rain. Soon.

  His black dreads and feathers flew back as he pummeled the soft spring earth with his massive hooves, curved swords and trail packs hugging his haunches and ribs. The fight at Therucilin had cost the tribes many bucks and it was going to be hard to convince the clans to accept the help of the other races. In the past they had simply raided and pillaged anyone they could, even other Centaurs. War and raiding were a way of life for his people as it had been for him since he could heft a spear. The black centaur had fought so many battles, seen so much death and pain, that he couldn’t remember another way. He knew they could not stop the South on their own, and the Elves had breathed a cooperative strategy into their natural hit and run fighting style.

  He had trusted them, the pointy-eared swordsmen, and with their help they had slaughtered Theseus and his men, stopping the progress of the wall that would have divided the eastern and western tribes, sealing their fate. Now he had trusted the Cherubim and they had sacked Therucilin, the one place where men could hide armies big enough to control the plains and the place where they had sent forth the dreaded Companion Cavalry. He could still remember facing them and seeing his warriors out-matched for the first time by Giants, Dwarves, and Men who used their own tactics against them. Those days are gone now; we have but one enemy. Out here, running on the trail, was the best place to think.

  His gaze swept across the greening grasses where his people could run forever, the grasses that fed the buffalo on which they depended. He felt the endless openness around him and howled the long mournful cry of the wilderness.

  “HOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!”

  All around him he sensed his wolves, their pack one with his. They joined in the howl and soon the wolves and bucks were crying out with the soulless cold song of a silent winter night. Wotan felt alive and at home in the lands he had worked and bled to keep free, if violent, since his mother dropped him. To continue that fight would require asking the other clan Chiefs to believe in his vision enough to change a lifestyle that went back to the first days. He had shown them the south could be beaten with the help of the other races. Now he needed them to trade with, rather than raid, the northern tribes. This meant convincing the young bucks to fight with him when he called them and only when he called them. Galloping onwards into the evening he knew this meant asking them not to fight for part of the summer, something they had never done. A people whose culture is based on fighting have a hard time waiting for the real enemy.

  The thunderstorms were moving out into their valley, the lightening striking out at random and the thunder echoing endlessly from peak to peak. Turning his pack west he followed a trail to a rocky overhang, hidden from all sides. He paused on the lip of the undercut, where he would station his sentries, and looked out to where the buffalo were stampeding, panicked by the storm. How can I convince them to fight when I need them? Can they see the value of a buffalo that isn’t dead, a buffalo they can trade?

  They spent that night tending to each other’s wounds. The other races were terrified of his savage tribe but he wondered if any of them realized how tender, how close, a clan must be when all of its members couldn’t reach most of their own bodies. He watched with affection while the brutal warriors groomed each other, pulling off armor and sewing gashes while others held the hind legs still. They were of many clans, and their numbers would shrink as they passed through each of their home territories so Wotan could speak to their leaders, but here, in the aftermath of battle, they were family.

  They didn’t risk a fire even though there were no forces this far north that could match them, and instead sang a death chant to the beat of the thunder for those they had dragged out of Therucilin and left on pallets in the forest to ascend into the afterlife. The song started low and slow, chanting and wailing rising faster as they stomped in a circle. Soon they were shaking the scalps they had taken and dancing the war dance that had never stopped for any of their lives. He fell asleep standing that night, thinking of what he would say when he met Chief Skagen, whose homelands they would enter in the morning, to convince him of his plan. Before he closed his eyes he could see the buffalo in the lightening, he could hear the chanting and the water dripping from the rock, and he dreamed of home.

  They loaded gear onto each other’s backs and broke camp, filling their bellies with the meat of slaughtered animals from the big city. The more badly wounded Centaurs who could still walk rode a day behind with a guard; those that could not walk had been put down by th
eir brother’s hands, as they had always been. Wotan didn’t think of those deaths anymore, he had seen too many. Riding out he was careful not to spook the buffalo; Skagen’s people would be using their wolves to drive them over the nearby buffalo jump as the great beasts made their way north for the summer. Perhaps he could convince the leader to capture some for trade.

  The bucks from Skagen’s tribe led the way into their mountain stronghold where they had managed to keep the forces of the Old Alliance at bay for many years. There were several ways into the little side valley running west out of Therucilin’s valley, all of them easy to defend. Even so, Wotan’s brow furrowed when he saw how few teepees there were compared to years past when they had not even worried about the South. Too many fights for too long. A people can only fight a losing battle for so long.

  His hooves missed the grass of the prairie. The rivers and forests of the valley did little to distract from his desire for a more open space. The returning war party was bigger than any that had ever come through that part of the Blood Lands, bigger even than the war party that had converged across the eastern mountains to encircle Theseus at his last stand. Wotan had seen the Angels help them defeat Aristippus’ soldiers in the Canyon Lands and now they had defeated the remnants of Theseus’ phalanxes. For the first time in several lifetimes, there were no Southland forces in the north that could threaten them. Another will come.

  He watched Skagen riding out with the old and young bucks of his tribe, thoughts of the battles to come sticking in his mind. Wotan grabbed the war chief’s arm and nodded approvingly at the headdress of feathers he wore. The Centaur was much older than Wotan and just as distinguished in battle. There were shouts and woops from the teepees as the fighters were reunited with their families, sad smiles and woops of their own from the warriors who were still separated from their own by many miles of trail. He noted the places of quiet, the places where a buck had not returned. The quiet speaks the loudest.