He needed a grand display of his competence to gain him a voice in the north. To gain himself respect. For without that, the things he cared about, the causes he’d spent his life trying to further—would be without a champion. He’d made a pledge and he meant to keep it. Whatever the cost.
52
Yhalen woke to jarring impact. He lay curled in a small space and crowded in upon by bundles, sacks and thick squares of canvas, and stared in wide-eyed incomprehension up at the dim canopy of trees overhead. Voices whispered in consternation from beyond his line of vision, rising louder in argument. The surface he lay upon was tilted, and he was pressed against the rough wooden grate of what might have been the back of a cart. His body throbbed. Dull and constant, the pain came in stabbing waves from his arm to his back from some undefined spot inside his skull—but it wasn’t always sharp. Sometimes it faded as his awareness did, melting into nothing but an annoying background noise within the echoing reverberation of the blood pumping steadily through his veins.
That was the extent of his cognizance. Hurt and disorientation. The voices he heard held no meaning. His presence in the back of the cart, amidst the varied supplies, meant nothing. He couldn’t put it together into a cohesive whole. Nor could he do more than shut his eyes and whimper when the dark silhouettes of several bodies heaved the cart out of the rut it had fallen into and got it rolling again. He simply shut his eyes and drifted.
And came out of it again when hands reached for him, gathering him up under the knees and shoulders to lift him out of the space he’d been crammed into. Huge arms and a huge chest that dwarfed him. Vague memories of his father came back to him. Of himself, tiny and crying, having fallen in amongst the thorn thistles—trapped and tearing his skin with every attempt at escape. But Father had come and used his knife to cut Yhalen out, then picked him up and carried him home. He recalled that clearly, and wondered when he’d gotten so small again.
Only it wasn’t Father. Yhalen blinked up into the broad, creased face of a monster. A monster with long silver hair and thick pointed ears and eyes that glowed just a little in the darkness. Other memories came back to him then—of similar faces in the darkness and he cried out hoarsely, trying to struggle away. His resistance was pitiful at best and the monster that carried him didn’t break his stride, but merely curled its massive arms a little tighter to keep Yhalen from twisting out of its grip.
They were approached by a smaller figure out of the darkness. There were a few grunting words exchanged and Yhalen was handed over into arms that were still more powerful than his own by far, but didn’t dwarf him quite so completely.
“Quiet. Or I’ll gag you.”
The words were whispered against the top of his head. Yhalen hadn’t realized he’d been making noise—only now that he concentrated, he thought the sobbing he heard might have issued from his own throat. Not so easy to stifle it when he was lowered to the ground and his back touched the rough bark of a tree. He hissed and clutched at the leather vest of his captor to pull himself forward. Only one arm seemed willing to respond—the other, he noted with alarm, was thickly bound and tied across his chest.
“Yhalen!” One last soft warning and Bloodraven—miserable, cruel Bloodraven, become so much more hateful because he understood the tongue of man—urged Yhalen onto his knees on the folds of a thick bedroll. The halfling fastened the end of his chain around the tree trunk, then rose and padded off into the darkness. Yhalen leaned there, resting on one hand, head spinning and skin throbbing as flashes of memory sporadically came back to torment him.
The dogs—and himself going down under them. Saved from being ripped apart not by grace of the Goddess—but by Bloodraven. His despicable, damnable, half-ogre captor—who had only played at ignorance of Yhalen’s words—after that, memory was harder to come by.
The strength of his arm gave out and he let himself collapse onto the bedroll. He lay curled on his side, eyes straining to see what they were about in the darkness. They made camp of a sorts. The carts remained unloaded and no fires were built, and it seemed as if there were less of them. Perhaps the party had been split for some devious reason or another. Perhaps fate had been kind and something had killed a great many of them.
There was the sound of footsteps in the mulch and Bloodraven came back, followed by the shape of one of the dogs. Yhalen cringed, curling a little tighter, and the dog growled low in its throat, sensing his 53
fear. He couldn’t control it. Not now, not when the pain was so vivid and a great deal of it caused by the beast at Bloodraven’s heels. Bloodraven said something to the dog, sharply, and it flattened its ears before turning to pad off into the darkness.
“She feeds off your fear, slave,” Bloodraven said softly, lowering his own bulk to the bedroll beside Yhalen.
“You think I don’t know?” Yhalen snarled.
Tears leaked from his eyes, the power to stop them beyond his present control. Why couldn’t the halfling have just let him go? Why couldn’t the dogs have latched onto the scent of some passing animal? Had the Goddess turned her eyes from him so completely for what he’d stolen from the forest all those days ago after he’d first been captured?
“Here. Drink.” Bloodraven pulled him up by the good arm, and thrust a tin cup in front of his face.
It smelled like cold broth. It made his stomach churn, which in turn made his head spin. He gagged a little and turned his face away.
“Just water....”
Bloodraven snorted and tossed the contents of the cup aside, then reached for the skin at his side and poured a little water into the tin. Yhalen took it in one shaking hand and tentatively swallowed. It was flavored from the broth but it was clean enough not to make his stomach rebel and soothed his parched throat. He was dizzy and weak enough that by the time he finished it, his fingers hadn’t the strength to hold the cup, so he let it fall and sat slumped, with his head bowed as he tried to make the world stop spinning.
The ogr’ron grunted, ignoring him for the moment as he unbuckled his sword belt and sat the sheathed weapon between himself and the tree, well within easy reach. He leaned back against the bark-rough trunk and stretched his long legs out to either side of Yhalen.
“Come here.”
Yhalen shuddered, looking through the fall of his hair. He didn’t move. Bloodraven wrapped the slim chain around his hand and tugged. There was little fighting it. There was little enough to do but try not and fall on his face into the ogr’ron’s crotch—which was most definitely not where he wished to be.
Sadly enough, it was probably exactly where Bloodraven wished him the most.
Bloodraven caught him by the good arm and pulled him across his hips, so that Yhalen’s legs were on either side of one of the ogr’ron’s thick thighs and his belly pressed against Bloodraven’s lower stomach. It hurt his injured arm, and he tried to push himself up, but the ogr’ron simply untied the knot in the sling behind Yhalen’s neck and unfolded the limb before stretching it out alongside Yhalen’s body.
“Disobedience won’t be tolerated,” Bloodraven told him, unstopping a ceramic jar filled with some pungent stuff and dipping out a thick dollop. He laid callused fingers to Yhalen’s back and his skin stung for a moment before it numbed, which caused a good deal of the burning hurt that he’d endured since he’d awoken, to fade away.
The ogr’ron shifted Yhalen’s hair and smoothed the salve across his shoulders and around his ribs.
Down his spine to the curve of his back, where the fingers paused in their journey, circling a particularly intense spot of pain in apparent fascination. He didn’t recall the getting of that particular pain, nor the injury to his back.
“What did you do to me, beast?” he hissed, cheek pressed against the leather of Bloodraven’s vest.
The hand stilled, fingers splayed out on the swell of his buttock.
“You were punished, slave.” The fingers squeezed, painfully hard, and Yhalen shut his eyes and endured it. “But not nearly so badly as you deserved. I should have let the dogs have you.”
“You should have,” Yhalen agreed. “Better than your touch.”
“Do you think that your injury will stop further punishment?” Bloodraven asked, a hint of anger in his voice, or perhaps frustration. “You should welcome my touch, for it’s the only reason you’re alive, foolish slave.”
“I’m not a slave,” Yhalen retorted, but it was weak and muffled and he had nothing to back it up with.
“You are,” the ogr’ron growled, pushing aside the flap of Yhalen’s loincloth and prodding between his buttocks with his thick fingers. A digit slick with salve slid inside of him, jabbing forward up to the knuckle with hurtful intention. He whimpered, shuddering, trying to escape the intrusion by slithering off Bloodraven to the side, but the ogr’ron tangled his other hand in the hair at Yhalen’s nape and held 54
him firmly in place.
“Do you doubt, little human slave, that you’re my property? To be used in whatever fashion I, as your master, see fit. When I have the leisure, I
will
teach you proper respect—but for now—” The finger slid out and pushed back in. “The next disrespect you show, I’ll punish by bending you over in the midst of my company and showing them to just what use I put you. Understand, slave?”
There was little response a body could make to that. Not with the sure knowledge that Bloodraven didn’t make idle threats, so Yhalen weakly nodded his head and bit his tongue to keep from crying aloud with each rough thrust of the ogr’ron’s too large finger.
Bloodraven withdrew his hand and wiped his finger on Yhalen’s loincloth. Yhalen feared he might make further use of him then and there, but the halfling simply leaned his head back against the tree and shut his eyes, leaving one hand still on Yhalen’s neck and the other near the hilt of the sword propped up next to him.
There was darkness, broken occasionally by flashes of nightmare—broken as well by the creak of leather and the crunch of leaves underfoot. Yhalen opened his eyes to more darkness, but this time it was simply the shadow of twilight. He lay, snug and relatively comfortable in the crook of Bloodraven’s arm, his knee flung over a leather-clad thigh and his splinted arm draped across the ogr’ron broad chest. Bloodraven slept, his breathing quiet and even. Chin bowed to chest, he was a warm, solid mass—at peace, for the moment.
It wasn’t any action of Bloodraven’s that had roused Yhalen. Perhaps nothing at all, save the intensity of whatever fever dream he’d been having. His skin was hot with the heat from his wounds.
His head swam with it.
But he’d thought....
Yhalen shifted his head and looked up, seeing the towering silhouette that separated itself from the cover of the trees and crept upon them. There was the glint of gold, the soft tinkle of earrings moving against each other. The shadows revealed features, unforgettable, hateful features. He knew this ogre from his nightmares. There was the glint of an axe blade over Deathclaw’s shoulder. Though he didn’t speak their language, he knew well enough that there was no love lost between Bloodraven and Deathclaw. No matter how much he might despise Bloodraven, his care was by far preferable to Deathclaw’s.
“Wake up,” he whispered, pushing at the ogr’ron’s chest. It didn’t take much. Bloodraven was reaching for his sword before he’d fully shaken the sleep from his eyes. He dislodged Yhalen effortlessly, sending him painfully sprawling on the ground, and crouched between him and Deathclaw with the sheath of the sword in one hand and the hilt gripped in the other.
He spat something in his ogrish tongue and Deathclaw grinned, looking beyond Bloodraven’s shoulder at Yhalen before answering. Bloodraven hissed and snapped something, at which Deathclaw shrugged and turned to trot off. Bloodraven cast Yhalen a look, black brows drawn, scowling darkly.
“Stay,” he finally said. “If there’s fighting—hold close to the tree.”
As if Yhalen had a choice, tethered to the tree, leashed like a dog. An injured dog, at that. Then Bloodraven was gone, trotting into the darkness, just one more large shadow among so many others.
They were not stealthy, ogres. Yhalen could hear the harshness of their very breath if he concentrated, the shifting of great bodies in the distance. But to a man not bred in the forest, not attuned to her nuances—such things might pass notice. If there were human men about—men from the cities on the plains—they might walk into a trap. Bloodraven had taken no precautions to ensure Yhalen’s silence.
All it might take was a yell to alert human men that danger was near. If it were human men at all. And if it were not—well, his bones ached too much to endure punishment for naught.
But the question was taken from him at the first cry of battle that drifted through the wood. The high-pitched clang of steel and the scream of someone in pain. The roar of ogres and the battle cries of men. Yhalen shut his eyes, clutching the chain attached to his collar, praying to the Goddess to grant luck to whomever his captors engaged.
Perhaps it was his fever that made the shadows more ominous, the sounds of battle more lurid, for surely the conflict was a goodly distance. His head swam when he concentrated too hard in making out the sounds. He leaned against the solid support of the tree and cursed his weaknesses.
The shadows shifted in the wood around him, but before he could question his senses, a thick, 55