Ay, Swain! Y'keep lookin' at ’er like you think those skinny elven bones would warm y’up of a night….
Chaser will have the warm of her before you do!
She heard the name Ley applied to the elf. She never heard the whole of his name. He seemed to have little to do with most of them. She'd only seen him speak with Brand and a tall, silver-haired woman whose name was Tianna and who had the look of both elf and human. Sometimes he spoke with Char, but the long silences between them seemed more the dwarf's doing than the elf’s.
Brand's band numbered two dozen, among them all only two were women: dark Dell and bright Tianna. These two harbored no sympathy for the captured woman. Their laughter was as raucous as any man's when Elansa looked around for food or water and got none or little, when she fell and struggled up again….
"Fine, fancy riding boots," Dell said once, looking pointedly at the thin-soled leather boots with the thick heel. "You'd do better, princess, to go barefoot."
Brand and Dell, Tianna, the elf Ley and the dwarf Char, Chaser and Swain and Arawn… these names Elansa learned, for these were often together, perhaps the core of the outlaw band. The names of the other outlaws she didn't know—surly, sullen men who ranged before and behind her, who drifted in and out of the shadows at night. These she knew only as a threat. These were the ones whose eyes looked at her from the darkness when the campfires were low, waiting for her to get up to relieve herself, to walk just far enough outside the light that Char or Brand wouldn't see. Then they followed, one or two or three, like wolves. After the second night, Char sent the hound with her, his long loping Fang, with the curt command, "Keep!"
Elansa looked around her in the chill dawn. The outlaws slept, dark shapes hunched under ragged cloaks. The embers of a campfire glittered nearby, and Brand sat stirring them to life with a burned stick No one else was awake but the watch on the ridge, Char and Tianna pacing. Brand looked up at her and then back to his fire making. Near his hand a cold chunk of meat sat, half a hare, furred in the ash of the fire. Elansa’s stomach rumbled, hungry. She'd not eaten since the morning before. In exhaustion, she'd fallen asleep while a dozen lean hares brought down by slender arrows from Dell's quiver and Ley's still cooked over the fires. No one had waked her, and the several hounds who were Fang’s companions dined in peace, without her hungry eyes on them. Elansa had learned the hierarchy of this brigand band: outlaws ate first, dogs next, the lone captive after. She'd learned to respect it quickly, for to complain was to go without.
She pulled her cloak around her shoulders and rough-combed her hair back from her face. Tangled and dirty, the knots pulled painfully against her fingers. Broken fingernails scraped against her cheek. The princess prepared herself for another day in the outland.
Brand looked at her again, then to Fang who came padding through the camp. He stabbed the hunk of meat with his dagger and jerked his head at the hound. They shared the meat, stripped from the bones, the outlaw wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the hound's tail wagging in lazy sweeps. Elansa’s throat closed up painfully, tears pricked at her eyes.
Yawning, Brand peeled off one more strip of flesh from the carcass, gave it to Fang, and flipped the bones, stringy meat clinging, to Elansa. The hound watched it tumble in the air, glanced at Brand, then at Elansa. Bones and pitiful remains fell in the dust.
"Go on," Brand said, to the dog or Elansa.
She didn't wait to guess. She took up the bones and gristle, and took what meat she could from the whole. The hound crept closer. She snapped a bone from the carcass and tossed it. While Fang’s attention was elsewhere, she cracked a leg bone and split it for the marrow. This she did awkwardly, not so handy as those who did not eat from silver plates. Marrow, until three days ago, was no more than flavoring for what the cooks in the elf king’s household liked to call a Hunter's Stew. Here, marrow was part of a meal, one she had learned early not to scorn.
All around her, outlaws woke, separating themselves from the earth and their cloaks. Two, Dell and Arawn, separated themselves from each other. Upon the ridge, Char and Tianna looked east toward the sullen dawn. Elansa licked cracked lips, looking where they did. Unyielding gray, the sky hung low, holding out the promise of rain that never came.
Swift and sudden, a hawk's screech ripped across the dawn stillness. Elansa’s heart jumped. Outlaws stopped what they were doing and looked around, searching east. Hounds rose from the dust, stretching. Char and Tianna seemed to have vanished from the ridge. Elansa looked harder and saw them bounding down the thin path away from the height.
Brand snapped Dell's name like an order. The woman grabbed Elansa by the arm and dragged her to her feet. A dagger's gleaming edge pressed against the flesh of Elansa’s neck. "Be still," the woman hissed. Elansa didn't breathe. The hare’s carcass fell from her fingers into the dust, marrow dark in the cracks. The nearness of the delicacy broke Fang’s concentration. The hound snatched the carcass and trotted away to enjoy the last of breakfast.
"Goblins," Char said to Brand, the first to return. "Tianna says about a dozen. I make it maybe less. Ten, likely. No matter the count, we both saw the shine of their weapons. We saw them come in from the west and turn north. Making for Stagger Stream, I’d guess. It’s the nearest trusty water."
Brand heard this in silence, his eyes narrowed. The shine of their weapons, Char had said, and Brand had his hand on his own, the knife always at his belt. He cast a quick glance at his sheathed sword lying near the failing fire, then another swift look over Char's head. "Tianna! Get us going, girl! You and Ley think about east!"
Dell's hand gripped Elansa’s arm tighter. "You're running? Brand, you're running from goblin scum? There's only a dozen, at most. You heard what Char said."
Brand turned as though she'd not spoken. He retrieved his sword, belted it on, and said, "Char, make sure there's no sign of us here for anyone to find. Arawn, you and Chaser in the rear." Then he turned to Dell, his eyes glittering. "’You and Swain at the point. Let Ley and Tianna guide. We're heading east. You have a problem with that?"
Tension crackled between them, like lightning in a storm-sky. Her voice low and tight, Dell said, "I have a problem with running from an easy kill."
"Then get out of here. Take on the goblins if you like." He pointed to Elansa, his finger stabbing the air between them. "You," he said to her, "come here."
Held, she took a step but was not released. The knife's blade pressed closer to her throat.
Brand cocked his head, a slight gesture and dangerous. "Let her go, Dell."
Nearby, Char lifted his head, listening as he kicked out a campfire. In his hand Elansa saw the throwing axe that had, a moment before, been tucked into his belt. What Elansa saw, Dell did. Elansa felt it in the reluctant loosening of the woman's grip, the lifting of the knife.
"Touchy all of a sudden, aren't you, Brand?"
Brand shook his head, not to say he wasn't, to say she'd better not pursue the matter further.
With a rough shove, Dell pushed Elansa toward Char. "Here's your charge, dwarf. You know what to do."
The dwarf kept Elansa close as his own shadow while the outlaws broke camp. Each one stripped the meat from the night's leavings, stuffing it into their pouches, even marrow-bones. Char saw to it that campfire ashes were scattered, burned wood flung wide, the naked bones of last night's supper buried. In short time, two dozen outlaws departed the site of their night camp.
When she looked back over her shoulder, Elansa saw little sign that anyone had occupied that stony ground. She saw the thin gray line of the Qualinesti forest. It no longer ran beside her. Now it disappeared behind, swallowed as though the leaden sky had come down and eaten it. Throughout the long morning she thought of the goblin who had been Brand's hostage only days before. She thought of the and how the goblin’s severed head had made Brand's point to the leader of a goblin town: I despise you, and this is how much.
Should his quest for ransom fail, for whatever reason, would the outlaw
send her own head back to Qualinesti, simply for the satisfaction?
Elansa did not doubt that he would.
They were twelve running north to find Stagger Stream. Twelve goblins, most of them orange-skinned, but one or two with that blue-brown hide that looks like rotting meat. They were, as Char had guessed, looking for water. Nearly every creature with any kind of sense of self-preservation was looking for water these days, but these traveled under orders. The goblin town to which they had belonged, which had lately become the headquarters of the hob they’d learned to refer to as the Great Gnash, had become too small for their new master's army. Goblins were moving into the place and drinking up the water in the puny stream that ran in the gully. Gnash wanted more water, he wanted more room, and he wanted a bigger goblin town from which to reign over the three he now ruled. He wanted four goblin towns and the seat of his power to be a new one.
Find a village fat for plunder. Find water.
Simple orders, and the twelve set out to do just that. They were the canniest scouts in Gnash’s army, clever even for their savage kind. They would find what Gnash needed, and each one was certain great reward would follow. Not advancement, for goblins don't think that far ahead. Not one of them envies the position of whichever brute may be ahead of him in power or favor. Goblins envy weapons, treasure, and possessions. When they aren't fighting and killing, goblins like to have things to use and spend.
One of these twelve, a fellow with mottled blue-brown skin, was more eager for reward than the others. He wandered a little afield. He went a little east out of his way. He thought he heard water running, and he was right. A small trickle in a dusty gulch: water. And he saw the flung bones of what at first glance seemed to be some scavenger's meal. When he looked closer, he saw that the dead thing had been a hare, and the thighbone of the eaten hare had been inexpertly cracked for the marrow.
Looking around, the enterprising goblin discovered more bones, these buried in haste. He was a quick reckoner. By the number of supper-bones he found, he supposed there had been a dozen, maybe two, camping there. He thought he should call to his fellows, and then he changed his mind. He'd been south and had not seen two dozen men traveling. Off to the west, no sign, nothing in the north. Whoever had camped here had gone east. Curious and hopeful of gain, the goblin moved off in that direction. Soon he found signs to confirm his guess, the dark splashes on earth and stone to show where travelers had relieved themselves, scraped stone where boots had glanced. And only a little while after his fellows had discovered him gone, he saw a dim line moving across the stonelands.
He stood on a high hill. He couldn't count them or see if they were elves or humans or more goblins. The latter, he doubted. Goblins don't clean a campsite, or even try to. He went down the hill, slipping along behind in shadows until he came close enough to see who traveled.
Grinning, his sharp teeth glittering in the gray light of the overcast day, the goblin thought there would be great reward for him, indeed, if he took this news to Gnash. A whole tribe of human outlaws, that stinking troop with the elf and the one-eyed dwarf and damned Brand himself, was headed east and a little north.
Interestingly, they had a prisoner, and by the look of her gear she was not a woman from a rival band. Those boots were of finest leather, her ripped blouse of silk, her cloak woven in Qualinost or near there. The goblin wondered what that meant—an elven prisoner marching carefully guarded.
Whatever it was about, he reckoned Gnash would like to know, and quickly. Not so much because the elf woman would be of more interest to him than anyone he could eventually sell down to Tarsis. He'd be interested because along with the army of the goblin Golch, who'd lost his son's head in a bad bargain, Gnash had inherited Golch’s hatred of the outlaw Brand, the feud coming to him just as had the weapons, females, and house of the unlucky Golch.
Quickly, the goblin went back along his own trail until he came to a place where it seemed best to turn south toward the goblin town. This he did, and he ran swiftly, like the shadow of a storm-driven cloud, silent on the earth. In only a day and a night of running, he came to the goblin town, and what he'd hoped turned out to be true.
The Great Gnash was, indeed, happy to hear the news that Brand was on the move. He didn't much care to wonder why this was so. What interested him was that there were only two dozen of them, and he had a newly swollen army of goblins to try out. Some of them, it might be imagined, would be anxious to prosecute the old feud between themselves and the human, and Gnash himself hadn't killed anyone since he'd overtaken this goblin town of Golch‘s.
The thing that interested Gnash most, however, was that he'd have a chance to try out a weapon he'd found away south. He'd been carrying it around since he'd discovered it, secret and hidden far beneath the mountains. It had taken a bit of figuring out. He'd done all his conquering and killing in the goblin towns along the Qualinesti border with ever-reliable steel. Now, though, Gnash thought it was time to see if what he'd discovered in darkness might prove to be worth more even than steel.
Chapter 5
Restless, Prince Kethrenan walked, pacing the paths, the byways, and the fair roads of the golden city. His cousin took quick steps to keep up, for Keth stretched his long legs with every stride as though he must put as much distance behind him as possible. Not for the first time Lindenlea thought she and the prince were well matched in spirit but not in length of leg.
The song of bells drifted in the air, silvery and rhythmic, dancing to the jogging pace of a lady's pretty mare as she rode through the dark orchards. Her horse, up ahead, looked ghostly gray as the sky. Laughter pealed, and beyond a garden wall children chased the fat heavy flakes of snow drifting down. The first snow of the season fell upon Qualinost, sifting through the black sketch of naked tree branches. The city's graceful buildings, homes, shops, the far-famed Library of Qualinost, temples, and smithies would glow quietly, like faithful hearts beating. Even the barracks, stark and stern, seemed softened, if not by the quiet light, by the mantle of snow on their shoulders.
Beyond the buildings and the naked orchards, four tall watchtowers stood, each lined with burnished silver, each stronger than it looked. Slender bridges, spans which seemed so delicate one might imagine a fallen leaf would collapse them, sketched out the rough square bounds of the city by connecting the towers north to east, east to south, south to west, and west back to north again. Within those gleaming towers contingents of Kethrenan’s warriors were quartered, men and women who kept a strict rotating schedule of duty to insure that no tower ever went unmanned. Upon each of those arching bridges a regular guard walked its rounds. From the founding of the kingdom, the company who kept this watch was known as the King’s Own, the guardians of his very walls. The names of past commanders of this guard decorated elven legend. These days, the King’s Own was Lindenlea’s to command. The honor was a considerable one for Kethrenan’s cousin, and deserved.
The guard on the bridges, hard-eyed soldiers, looked always outward to the broad ravine surrounding the city. That cut in the earth, deep stone plunging down to rushing water, was the first line of Qualinost’s defense. The second line were the troops who patrolled there, mounted squads whose first order in time of conflict was to bum the wooden bridges at the sight of enemies, whose next was to die to the man to keep all invaders away from the city itself.
Dark across the sky, crows sailed, their raucous shrieks damping the laughter of bridle bells. Kethrenan looked up, tracked them, and lost them in the snowy veil.
"What do you hear, Lea, from the watches at the ravine?"
"Only that it’s quiet. ‘Dull as dirt,‘ this morning's messenger said." She shook her head, for the messenger had been a youth, over-eager, untried, full of fancy and ancient songs. The first battle he saw and survived would disabuse him of the notion that a quiet watch was a boring one. "He'd be wise to be grateful for that."
Kethrenan agreed.
Lindenlea slid him a quick glance. "I don't think you're much di
fferent from that eager boy, cousin." "Vastly different. I have a dozen more scars, have seen comrades die in battle…."
She laughed.
"What?" he said, frowning.
"You. You sound like an old man. Old," she said, grinning, "and forgetful. Or is it really hard to remember the days when you used to long for the chance to fight in a battle and live to hear the songs bards would write about your adventures?"
Kethrenan snorted, dismissing a question flown too close to the mark. He could not dismiss her truth, though, and he didn’t try.
Snow sighed, silencing the city. In windows, lights gleamed like eyes smiling for the warmth and the shelter. No birds flew, and few people were about, only the watch on the wall.
Kethrenan lifted his head and looked south, past the tall Tower of the Sun where his brother Solostaran held court, where he and Elansa lived. He thought about her, his wife, and he wondered how she fared out in Bianost. Did the snow keep her from her work? He didn’t imagine it would. They'd had no chance to talk before her leaving, but he didn’t need close conversation to know that Elansa had gone willingly, blight’s enemy sallying forth in the golden autumn. No elf lived who didn’t love the forest. So much could even be said for the Silvanesti kindred who tamed their wildwood into gardens. Yet to woodshapers it sometimes seemed that the trees of the wood were but another tribe of souled beings, the tribe breaking down into clans—Elm-clan, Oak-clan, Birch-clan, Rowan-clan, and Pine-clan….
Woodshapers saw things differently than most elves. Elansa, his wife, was a stubborn girl who would not be put off by mere winter if her healing skills were needed. She would commune with her beloved trees as easily in snow as in sun. He pictured her walking among the naked trees, cloaked in fur, the snow glittering in her golden hair. The sapphire phoenix would sit heavily upon her breast, the stone glittering, the phoenix’s wings spread as though the bird itself would leap from her and fly away.
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