Kagonesti

Chapter 24

Iydahoe, bow and arrow in his hand, crouched in a thicket and trembled with fear. These days he was always afraid, it seemed, often nearly paralyzed by a terror beyond any he had ever known. He tried to remain motionless, to steady his weapon in case a deer trotted into sight, but still his hands shook with the tremors of his deep, abiding dread. He did not shiver under a fear of pain, or of any suffering that might be visited upon himself. That kind of fear Iydahoe could face, could vanquish or ignore. The terror that gnawed at him now was deeper, a more fundamental and unanswerable menace. It was the fear that he would fail. If Iydahoe was not successful on his hunts, if he could not return regularly with fresh meat, then the Kagonesti of his little tribe would become hungry. This was the fear that threatened to crush him, borne of the knowledge that a score of wild elf lives depended on his skill with the bow and arrow. Though three braves-Kaheena and Hawkan in addition to himself-had survived the massacre, Iydahoe was recognized by all as the only true stalker. In an earlier era this knowledge might have swelled his chest with pride, but now it made him only more afraid.

Iydahoe had learned that there was only one way to counter this consuming dread: he almost never failed.

Yet he had stalked this game trail for more than twenty- four hours, hidden upwind of the path, as silent as a ghost. The tracks in the mud had been plentiful-dozens of deer had come by here on the previous day-yet in all the time he had waited he had seen not even a tremulous fawn. The clear water hole in the nearby valley was one of the few good drinking places in this part of the forest, and the deer and other forest creatures depended on it. Yet many hours had passed without sign of his shy quarry. If no deer came this afternoon or evening, Iydahoe's worst fears would materialize-he would have to return to the little tribe empty-handed.

Of course, there was always the hope that Kaheena would bring in some game. Still, Iydahoe knew that his fellow warrior did not have the steady hand of the deadly hunter-and Kaheena lacked the patience to sit, motionless, as Iydahoe had been doing since before sunrise today.

But all the patience coupled with the steadiest hands on Ansaion could not avail a hunter who never saw any game. Now, in the grip of his fear, Iydahoe grew more and more convinced that no deer would walk down this trail in the foreseeable future.

But why not? The tracks from two days earlier were clear and frequent-what would cause such a dramatic change in the animals' grazing and drinking habits? He couldn't just sit here and wait to find out. He had to do something!

His suspicions at last quelled the trembling of his fear and Iydahoe cautiously rose to his feet. Nothing stirred in the woods as he stepped onto the trail and started the long, winding descent toward the water hole in the valley.

Even as his attention focused on the sights and sounds of the forest around him, much of Iydahoe's consciousness dwelled on the young Kagonesti waiting for him in the grotto. The pathetic little tribe now numbered less than two dozen souls-and of them, only Kaheena and Iydahoe were proper warriors.

Kaheena had survived because he had been making the journey to the village of the Black Feathers when Istar had struck the tribe. When he had arrived at the neighboring village, Kaheena had found the same devastation that had greeted Iydahoe at Silvertrout-and by the time he had returned to his own village, the battle there was over.

Iydahoe, after taking the youngsters to the hidden grotto, had returned to the village to see what he could salvage. This had been very little. After the fight, the legionnaires had soaked the bodies and the wreckage with oil, burning all trace of the village into blackened, wasted rubble. Amid this ruin Iydahoe had met Kaheena. Together they waited several days to see if Altarath, the warrior sent to warn the Bluelake tribe, would return. They never saw him and were forced to conclude that the fourth tribe of the wild elves had met the same brutal fate as the other three-and that their tribemate had been swept into the disaster.

During the long, dark season that followed, the young wild elves had all but despaired under the knowledge that they might be the last survivors of their people on the broad face of Ansalon. Only Hawkan kept their hopes alive, telling them of the old gods, repeating the tale of the Grandfather Ram-the wise, ancient animal who had dwelled in the highest mountains, who had guided Father Kagonesti during the first years of the tribe. Those tales had sustained the flicker of vitality in their young elven breasts.

Hawkan could wield a weapon as well, but his primary skills were as shaman. Indeed, the old elf's healing and sustenance skills were all that had seen the survivors of the massacre through the cold winter following the coming of Istar's legion. Hawkan had known how to find food, or to summon it out of inedible roots and tubers by the use of his priestly magic. He healed the children when they became ill, had even nursed little Faylai-the tot whose name Iydahoe hadn't known at the time of the attack-through a fever that had threatened to consume her life in burning embrace.

Finally, then, with the coming of spring, Iydahoe had forced himself to hunt. During the summer and autumn, driven by that consuming fear, he had perfected his skills as a stalker, until nearly every time he ventured out he returned with a plump carcass of fresh meat. Kaheena had devoted time to nets and snares, and Bakali and the older youths had proved to wield deadly fish-spears, so between the two warriors and the younger males they had been able to adequately feed the tribe. By now, many strips of venison jerky had been smoked and dried in preparation for the winter. They would need still more, however, to get through the cold months that lay ahead.

Abruptly Iydahoe heard a foreign noise, a sound that riveted his attention back to his surroundings. The forest was mostly silent around him, but there it was again-a sound harsh, intrusive in origin.

It was the cold laugh of a human.

The noise brought back all the hatred, all the impotent fury that Iydahoe had buried since the day, a year earlier, when he had watched his village die. Since then he had avoided humans, and none had ventured near the grotto where the tribe now made its home.

The noise of the man seemed to come from the direction of the water hole, and Iydahoe began to understand the absence of deer. Soundlessly the warrior slipped into the forest beside the trail. He passed among the trunks and bushes without rustling a leaf, steadily advancing toward the valley bottom.

He found men very near the water. There were four: butchers, standing around the carcass of a doe that had been felled by cruel crossbow darts. Iydahoe watched the men build a roaring fire, roasting the tongue and several steaks, licking their bloody fingers and laughing while the rest of the deer was left to rot.

Iydahoe understood the benefits of remaining undiscovered. As long as the Istarians thought that the Kagonesti were all dead, they would send no more men to kill them. At the same time, he had chafed under the need for vengeance and against the caution that had forced him to hold his hand.

It was the laughter that forced his decision. Hearing these crude killers chuckling and joking over the remains of the deer was too much for Iydahoe to bear. His bow was raised, arrow sighted on the nearest human's back, before he even thought about the results of his actions.

The steel-tipped shaft flew true, piercing the fellow's tunic, spearing his heart. Too startled even to cry out, the dead man toppled over the remains of the doe as Iydahoe released his second arrow. That shaft took another human in the throat, while his third plunged into the next victim's heart. The fourth man, mad with fear, made a futile lunge toward his horse before Iydahoe's arrow brought him quickly, permanently down.

The young warrior didn't even look at the corpses as he passed through the camp, noting instead the litter, the chaos of garbage and debris left by the men's effort to clean the little deer. He claimed the doe's carcass, as well as some hardtack and salt that he found in one of the saddlebags. Hoisting his treasures to his shoulder, Iydahoe turned back to the forest, starting toward the secret shelter of the grotto.

A slash of white drew his eye to a nearby trunk. He saw that the humans had gouged a hatchet into this tree, and to many others extending in a line to the north. Apparently they had been marking a straight path through the forest, slashing the trees to show someone who came later exactly where they had gone.

Further angered by this encroachment, Iydahoe left the place. Some hours later, he entered the narrow gorge, passing between the tall trees, hugging close to the steep, rocky walls. He heard a sharp whistle, and Bakali dropped to the ground before him. As the eldest of the boys in the tribe, the youth took his sentry duties seriously Now he helped Iydahoe with the food, stepping from rock to rock on the stony ground. Though the tribe had lived here for a year, they had taken care to make no trail that could show an enemy where the little village was hidden.

The floor of the little vale was a flat, mossy expanse of soft ground. A half-dozen lodges of bark and skin stood among the shadows of the larger trees. Gray-haired Hawkan looked up from his labors before the largest of these lodges, but only nodded at his son's approach before lowering his face back to his eternal labor.

In front of Hawkan, carefully arranged on the ground, were the fragments Iydahoe had brought from the Silvertrout village. The shaman spent most of his time trying to arrange those fragments in the pattern that might recreate the Ram's Horn. Iydahoe, privately, thought this was a fruitless venture. For one thing, he didn't know if he had found all, or even the majority, of the spiraled horn's pieces. Some of the larger pieces formed a portion of the great bell, and a few others were recognizable as parts of the arcing curve, but it seemed undeniable that many other parts were missing. Iydahoe had even made a return trip to the ruins of the Silvertrout village, but had found only a few tiny shards in addition to the pieces he had earlier salvaged.

Iydahoe himself had remade and now carried the great axe of the Pathfinder. He had whittled a haft of stout iron- wood, and had fire-hardened the shaft before he mounted the long, narrow axe blade onto the wood. The steel had lost none of its edge, and when the warrior had cleaned the grime off it, it gleamed with the silvery brilliance that had marked it in ages past.

Dallatar took the meat from Iydahoe while several girls gathered wet wood for the smokehouse. Some of the venison they would eat fresh, but the rest would be smoked and dried as additions to their winter stores. The warrior squatted beside his father, silently watching as Hawkan meditated above the fragments of the horn. Bakall returned to his watch post overlooking the approach to the grotto.

The young elf had been gone for only a few minutes when Iydahoe heard the rattling whistle of a crane- Bakall's symbol that a member of the tribe approached with important news. The warrior picked up his weapons and trotted through the narrow cut leading out of their grotto. In moments, he met sweat-streaked Kagwallas, one of the boys a bit younger than Bakall. The younger elf staggered to a stop as he saw Iydahoe.

"I come from Kaheena," Kagwallas declared, forcing his words between deep gulps of breath. "He has taken a House Elf captive. He wants you to come to him."

"A captive?" Iydahoe was alarmed. What use did they have for a House Elf? He was relieved that Kaheena had not brought the prisoner toward the grotto, but nevertheless disturbed by the news of his presence.

"Where is he?"

"In the valley above the twin waterfalls, just beyond the pool where the trout swarm."

Iydahoe knew the place, for it was one of Kaheena's favorite fishing spots. It was only four or five hours from the grotto-distressingly close to have a House Elf. The warrior wasted no time in further conversation. Loping into the woods and maintaining a steady pace, he found the Kagonesti warrior and his prisoner exactly where Kagwallas had said.

The captive was a golden-haired elf sitting sullenly on the ground, hands behind his back. Kaheena squatted nearby, staring at the House Elf as if his hazel eyes would bore through the fellow's light-colored flesh. The warrior barely looked up as Iydahoe joined him in the small clearing. "Who is he?" asked Iydahoe.

"Не claims to be a trail finder. He says that the House Elves and the humans of Istar will make a great road through the forest. He scouts a path to mark the way."

The prisoner's eyes, glaring with hatred, flickered between the two wild elves. Remembering the humans he had encountered, and the strange way they had been marking trees, Iydahoe shivered apprehensively.

"Do the House Elves make peace with Istar?" he asked, suspicious.

The golden-haired elf shrugged. "Who can say what the Kingpriest will do?" He seemed bored, as if resigned to a brutal fate.

"Why do the Silvanesti want a road to Istar?"

Again the House Elf shrugged. "For the singers, perhaps. Every year we send a choir of our apprentice clerics. They sing at the high festivals in the Kingpriest's cathedral, and in return receive training from some of the human priests."

Iydahoe had nothing but scorn for elves who would thus submit themselves to human control, but he bit back his contempt as he pressed for information. "And this is to be the site of the road?" he asked, gesturing to the blazes made along several nearby trees.

"It is one place. In truth, we thought that you Painted Elves were gone, that there would be none to bother the caravans here."

Now the warrior's eyes flashed. "We will release you, House Elf-but when you go back to your city, tell your masters that the Kagonesti are not gone! Any men, any elves, who come to build a road here will be slain!"

The House Elf laughed contemptuously. "You may kill a few, perhaps even many, but if you think you will stop this road, you are a fool. The Kingpriest of Istar sends his men where he wants, with no care for how manу of them die."

'Then ive will kill them all!" Iydahoe's fury clouded his eyes, as the full memory of the massacre came back to him. He could kill many soldiers of Istar every day-and yet he would never fully avenge that brutal attack.

Perhaps it was his rage or the distracting image of his human foes, or the fear that again began to insinuate itself into the warrior's mind. In any event, Iydahoe was slow to see the House Elf's hand emerge from behind his back- unbound! In that hand was a tiny, silver-bladed knife, a weapon that Kaheena had somehow not discovered when he had tied the prisoner's hands.

The Silvanesti lunged upward, driving the blade toward Iydahoe, as the young warrior's mind froze under the strain of apprehension and responsibility. He didn't recognize the danger, couldn't move to respond.

But Kaheena saw. The brave leapt forward, trying to grasp the attacker's hand-and failing. The knife plunged into Kaheena's breast, and the wild elf grunted as Iydahoe finally reacted, raising his steel-bladed axe and slicing it through the Silvanesti's throat. The two elves fell together, blood mingling in the dust before it soaked into the ground.

"No!" hissed Iydahoe, shocked by the gouts of crimson liquid pouring from the knife wound. Kaheena looked very surprised, until his eyes half-closed. Except for the horrid pallor of his face, he might have been sleeping.

When he pulled the bodies apart, Iydahoe noticed a tiny scabbard at the back of the House Elf's belt-the place he had concealed the deadly knife. Iydahoe buried Kaheena where he had fallen, leaving the Silvanesti for the crows.

As the wild elf started back to the grotto, he all but wept at a sense of supreme loneliness and bitter irony. Two elves had killed each other, pouring their lifeblood together as a sanctifier or a curse on the route of the King-priest's road.