The Stories of Elaine Cunningham

by Elaine Cunningham

  Yet even as the thought formed, Drom knew he could never wear such a helmet. Grimlish stood seven feet tall and was immensely strong. His shoulders were nearly as broad as the haft of a spear, and his neck was massive enough to support the antlers, strong enough to wield them in battle.

  Drom was no weakling, and despite his youth he boasted great height and prodigious strength. But he was more human than orc. His face was beardless, but the yellow down on his chin gave promise of a northman's beard. Only his size, and the enlarged canines that thrust upward from his lower lip, gave proof of his orcish heritage.

  Drom slid a glance over at the orc, who was busy with his own trophies. "A good hunt," he ventured.

  "Five," the orc boasted, holding up the proof of his kill. "And two more before the sun returns."

  The half-orc nodded. Today the Talons of Malar had routed a community of elves and slaughtered most of them in pitched battle. Once the moon rose, the hunting would be different. The hoard had broken up into small bands now, the better to run stragglers to ground.

  There were three Talons in this band, all of them from the renegade Snow Wolf tribe. Their third member, a human known only as Badger, was a man of late middle years. His chest and arms were knotted with muscle and covered with tattoos, as was his clean-shaved head. Badger approached the business of killing with a glee and ferocity that awed and sometimes frightened the other members of the tribe. And that, Drom allowed, was saying a great deal. After all, they were all followers of the Great Wolf, and as fierce as any of their four-legged brothers.

  Drom had been born into the Snow Wolf tribe, a small band of northmen fanatic in their worship of their totem animal. Over the years, they had mingled with like-minded orcs who hunted the same expanse of tundra, as well as the occasional renegade who slid into the pack. Badger was such a man-an outcast among his kind, surviving because he was cannier and more fierce than most. Despite the man's small stature and advancing years, he was a fearsome sight. One side of his lower lip had been pierced to accommodate a gold ornament shaped like an orc's tusk. On his opposite cheek was branded the symbol of Malar-a beast's paw, with talons dripping blood. Grim trophies hung about his waist from a well-laden weapons belt: small skulls, the teeth of great predators, and a silver wolf's tail.

  They all wore the wolf, in one form or another. Drom wore a skin about his neck like a cloak, and Grimlish had attached a tail to the back of his helm. These were not trophies, but tributes. They followed Malar, but they still venerated the wolves, and wore skins in honor of these canny hunters.

  Drom, in particular, looked to the wolf for inspiration and guidance. From his earliest years, the wolf had haunted his dreams, filling his waking thoughts. The wolf pelt on his shoulder had the comforting warmth of a brother's hand. Indeed, the wolf who'd yielded the pelt had been more of a brother to Drom than any two-legged male of his village.

  Drom had been a mere child when he first set eyes upon the silver she-wolf, heavy with young. Following the wary female to her den had been no easy matter, but Drom had finally found it: a hollow under a small, rocky hillock. For weeks he'd watched the den, waiting for the pups to venture out into the wider world. Drom had watched, enthralled, as the three pups played and tussled and explored. He had lifted his hand to his mouth to stifle delighted laughter at the sound of their first, infant howls. He had watched them grow into hunters, learned from them, and picked the fiercest as his own. And he had done what any male of his tribe must do: he had challenged and bested his brother wolf.

  Drom lifted one hand to stroke the silvery fur that draped his shoulders. He was certain the wolf's spirit bore him no ill will. It was the way of the pack: honor was due to worthy foe or well-earned prey. Did not the wolves sing after a difficult hunt, in praise of both hunter and hunted?

  As if in echo of his thoughts, a long, eerie cry rose into the night, gathering power as it rose and fell.

  The giant orc grunted in approval. "The Singing Death. A good omen. We will hunt well."

  "We will hunt women," Badger said in disgust. But as he spoke, he drew a long knife from his belt and regarded the blood upon it with deep hunger.

  Drom understood. The elf female was not yet dead, and it galled the old hunter to sit calmly at the fire while her blood dried on his blade. Though Badger spoke of her with derision, Drom had never seen a female fight so fiercely, or so well. In his mind, the fact that Badger had gotten close enough to the female to mark her as his prey was a shining testament to the old one's skill.

  "Many hunters sought the blood of that one. The ravens feed on them tonight," Drom pointed out.

  Badger scoffed, misunderstanding the intended compliment. "Perhaps you wish to die an old man?"

  This was the deepest insult one Talon of Malar could offer another. But though Drom was young, he was too wise to challenge the human.

  "If I can reach your years, and equal your kills, I will consider myself a true hunter," he said calmly.

  Badger looked surprised, then pleased. "Maybe the male elf will be yours to kill."

  Coming from the human, this was high praise. "I will hunt well," Drom promised.

  The three of them settled down around the fire, to tell stories of past glories and to await the coming of the moon.

  The attack on the elven village had been sudden, brutal. From all sides they'd come, closing in like a pack of wolves intent upon bringing down a lone stag. In a single moment, the time it might take an elf to pull on his boots or kiss his lady, the gaiety of a spring market faire had been transmuted into a bloody, shrieking nightmare.

  None of the elves had doubted for an instant that they were fighting for their lives. This had been no mere raid, no band of brigands meaning to despoil the village of treasure. The symbol of Malar, the beast's paw with bloody claws, had been much in evidence, proclaiming the intent of the orcs and northmen who swarmed the village and the fate that awaited the elves-and the merchant caravan that had wandered unwitting into the path of a Great Hunt.

  But with the caravan were many well-seasoned warriors, their swords hired by the promise of gold and their loyalty ensured by the fearsome reputation of their employer. Elaith Craulnober, a moon elf merchant lord, fought alongside his mercenaries, and fought better than most of them.

  More than a score of the orc dogs and human mongrels fell to his blades. Elaith killed them with brutal efficiently, though he would have preferred to deal a slower death-or better yet, leave them sorely wounded, maimed past any hope of hunting and cursed with a long, inglorious life.

  But Elaith had no leisure for such games. The elves were gravely outnumbered, and though they fought bravely, the slaughter was swift and terrible. Within moments of the attack, the moon elf knew that the battle was lost. He'd commanded the elves in the old tongue, demanding that they take to the trees, scatter and flee.

  All had obeyed him, save one. A half-elf female stayed, standing back-to-back with one of the hired swords, a northwoman of immense girth and fierce skill. Together the women had guarded the base of a giant cedar, holding off a circle of Malar's hunters and buying time for several wounded elves to climb to safety.

  In retrospect, Elaith realized that he should have expected nothing different. In matters of honor and courage, Arilyn had few peers. There was no one he'd rather have at his back, and no one to whom he owed a deeper loyalty.

  And so he had come to her aid. He'd pulled a knife from his boot and hurled it. The gleaming weapon spun end over end, destined to bury itself between the shoulder blades of the orc warrior bearing down on Arilyn. Elaith had not waited to see the orc fall.

  He'd drawn swords and charged the circle, cutting his way toward the half-elf. When he'd gotten nearly through, he'd dropped into a crouch and deftly cut the hamstrings of the fighters on either side of her. The falling bodies had provided a momentary cover, and he'd used it to slam his swords into their sheaths and sprint toward Arilyn. Not slowing, he'd dodged an orc's battle axe, ducked under the half-elf's defe
nsive parry, and slammed a fist into her jaw. He'd come up still running, with a stunned Arilyn slung over his shoulder and the spell components for a Dust Cloud in his hand.

  The last thing he'd seen upon abandoning his company was the spear lunging toward the mercenary who'd stood with Arilyn. The northwoman was too much the warrior to scream, but she'd grunted like a slaughtered sow when the spear punched through her ribs.

  Arilyn had jolted at the sound, and Elaith braced himself against her outrage, which was typically expressed in a blistering diatribe delivered in Elvish and leavened with dock-side profanity. But she had held her tongue and had enough sense not to fight him, and so they had both escaped with their lives.

  But now, while the night was yet dark and the moon elf deemed the moment safe for a brief rest, Elaith saw the true reason for Arilyn's uncharacteristic docility. He had been a heartbeat too slow, a single pace too late. The half-elf had been wounded. She was bleeding profusely from a gash that opened her arm from shoulder nearly to elbow. There was more blood on her forehead, trickling down from a glancing head wound some orc's weapon had dealt her when she'd been helpless in Elaith's arms. A livid bruise was already forming on one side of her face. The moon elf eased her down, cursing himself, the gods in general, and Malar in particular.

  Arilyn set aside the sword she held-it would take a far greater wound that that she'd taken this day to induce her to drop it-and allowed Elaith to lower her to a fallen log. She glared up at him, her blue and gold eyes fierce in her too-pale face.

  "Forgive me for striking you, Princess. Your safety was my first concern, and I could think of no other way to dissuade you from continuing the fight."

  She impatiently waved this away. "You left your hirelings to die."

  The elf lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "They are human."

  "I am half human," Arilyn retorted.

  "You are also half dead," Elaith pointed out. Though the remark was said in dark humor, there was more truth in it than he liked to speak. He put a hand on the stubborn warrior's shoulder to keep her from rising, and then knelt to tend her. He took a knife from a wrist strap and carefully cut away the blood-soaked fabric other shirt.

  As Elaith examined the wound, the invisible fist that gripped his heart began to relax. "It is not as bad as I feared. None of the main blood routes are severed, and there appears to be no serious damage to the muscles. I will have to clean and stitch it, though."

  Arilyn nodded, then waved away the bit of thick leather he handed her to bite upon. She set her jaw and looked away as he worked, her eyes scanning the forest.

  "The stream there. We can follow it for a while, then run, then take to the trees and double back to the stream. Do that repeatedly, and vary the pattern twice or thrice, and veer off to another stream when the flow converges, and even the Malarites will be hard pressed to follow our trail."

  The plan was solid, and under better circumstances it may well have worked. "But how long could you hold such a pace?"

  Arilyn turned and met his eyes. "As long as I have to."

  Elaith did not doubt that she would try. "And if we are overtaken, you would stand and fight?"

  She shrugged, as if asking him to get to the point.

  The moon elf sighed. Arilyn might be only half elven by blood, she was as stubborn and heartstrong as the elven princess who'd birthed her. Because of Arilyn's heritage, Elaith owed her an elf lord's allegiance, as well as the loyalty of near kin. But there were times, and this was one of them, when he wanted to throttle her. Hers was the sort of traditionally elven thinking that, in Elaith's opinion, had led to the decline of the race, and would undoubtedly lead to her death and his.

  It was time for new tactics.

  Elaith's sharp eyes scanned the forest. Downstream, a doe dipped her muzzle into the dark water.

  A slow, cunning smile curved the elf's lips. "To the stream, then, and quickly," he agreed. "The hunt will begin in earnest with the coming of moonrise."

  The howling intensified, filling the forest around them with eerie music. Grimlish rose and gathered up his horned helm and his gear. The others followed suit. The moon would soon rise: the wolf song heralded its coming as surely as a rooster's call foretold the dawn.

  Suddenly Badger froze. He swore softly and with great delight as he reached for his longest knife. Drom followed his gaze. There, in the shadows of a young pine, was a large silver wolf. Its amber eyes regarded them with keen interest.

  Forgetting his order in this particular pack, Drom reached out and stayed the old hunter's hand. "It will not attack."

  Even as he spoke, Drom's conviction wavered. Wolves were unpredictable, and their ways were too complex and mysterious for most people to fathom. To farmfolk, timid sheep that they were, the wolf was a ravening monster. Rangers, druids, and other like-minded fools took an extreme view: they romanticized the wolf as a noble soul, uncorrupted by the greed and whim that plagued humankind, unselfishly strengthening the bloodline of its prey by culling the weak, the old, the infirm. Drom scorned both of these views, not because they were false-there was some truth to both of them-but because neither captured the true spirit of the wolf, or the Wolf People who took inspiration from the Singing Death. In the year just four winters past, the caribou calves had simply disappeared, though the cows had been heavy in the spring and there was no late, killing snow. The spore of the wolves told the tale: for weeks they ate caribou and little else. Yet even so, surely they had killed more calves than they could possibly eat. Though Drom and his village had suffered that following winter for lack of food, this told the young half-orc that even the grimly practical tundra wolves were not immune to the pure glory of the hunt, the joy of the kill.

  In short, who could know what mysterious purpose lurked behind this wolf's amber eyes?

  Badger threw off the half-orc's restraining hand. "Attack? Of course it won't attack. Wolves are too smart. It is one, and we are three. It will run. But if we could catch it, it would be a fine kill."

  "We have other prey," Grimlish pointed out. "Let us be off."

  The two hunters fell into pace behind the big orc. The trail was almost ridiculously easy to follow, for the female left a trickle of blood spoor. Drom envisioned the elf with a mixture of anticipation and awe. Now that would be a fine kill!

  She was tall, with a wild tangle of black hair and eyes that blazed blue fire. Many of the Talons of Malar had fallen to her sword. Even when it must have been clear that all was lost, that death was certain, she had stood her ground. She might be fighting still, had not a male elf with silver hair and a hawk's wild eyes intervened. The male had cast a spell-a cloud of light and stinging dust that had sent the Talons reeling back. It had given the two elves time to escape, but it had not obscured their trail.

  The trail of blood dwindled, but still the Talons followed. A smear of blood on a newly-leafed branch, an occasional deep indentation in the moss when the male's boots had trod. Usually, elves left little sign of their passing, but the male was still carrying the wounded female.

  As the hunters walked, the large wolf followed, its silver-tipped fur reflecting the moonlight. Badger grew increasingly restive, but Grimlish would not permit the man to attack.

  "The wolf is an omen," the big orc insisted. "Perhaps even a spirit guide."

  Badger spat. "The wolf is a wolf. Who's to say it's not testing us?"

  There was some wisdom in the human's words. Wolves often tested their prey, tracking them for long hours and making experimental forays, withdrawing if they deemed the task too dangerous. For a wolf, perhaps one of every fifty hunts begun ended in a kill.

  "We are three, the wolf is one. Perhaps it is you who wishes to die an old man," Grimlish said coldly. The look of disdain he sent the human settled the matter, and reduced Badger to sullen silence.

  They followed the trail deeper into the forest, to a fallen tree not far from a swift-running stream. The elves had stopped here, probably to staunch the tell-tale flow. The
re were no footprints leading away, which meant that the male was once against walking lightly. But the female was weakened now, and staggering. There were smears of blood on branches and vines, the marks a wounded elf might leave if pain made her careless.

  She had not gone far. A hundred paces, no more, and she had fallen heavily into the underbrush-small, broken twigs shouted the story. There was more blood.

  "Her wound opened," Drom murmured.

  But Badger was not so sure. "Alone, the male might survive. To stay with the female means certain death. But is he cunning enough to know this, and ruthless enough to act upon this knowledge?"

  "It would seem not," Grimlish said. The orc knelt nearby, brushing away some of the half-decayed autumn leaves to get to the spring-soft mud beneath. Pressed into it was a print of an elven boot. The male had shouldered his burden once again.

  The trail led to a stream-a simple-minded ploy, one that had even inexperienced Drom snorting in derision. A few paces downstream, they found the trail's end. Beside the stream bed stood an ancient oak, its roots partially exposed by the eroding flow. Some of the soil had been hastily dug, then pressed back in.

  Badger spat. "An elf cairn. We lost the female."

  Drom was not so sure. He circled around the stream in search of the trail. It was there, but faint-the still-damp outline of an elven boot on an otherwise dry rock. "The sign continues here. Only one elf. But it could be that the other took to the trees. Perhaps the cairn is a trick. Perhaps they both live, and they plan to flank us, one to draw us into battle and one to attack by surprise. It is not the usual way of elves, but it would be a worthy plan."

  He was about to say more, but the approach of their silvery shadow stunned him into silence. Cautiously, ears back and belly to the ground, the wolf crept closer-so close that any of the three Talons could reach it with a kick. For the first time Drom noted the creature's prominent ribs, its submissive posture. The wolf was alone and hungry. Its mien was that of a supplicant, asking the more powerful members of the pack for permission to feed.