Mortal Consequences

Chapter 13

"Help! Oh, mercy!" wailed a mother. "They're gone! Taken!"

"Raiders!" shouted a guard. "East! Run east!"

The barbarian camp boiled from under blankets. Fighters grabbed swords, hunters bows and arrows, mothers and fathers their children. Dogs barked in a frenzy. Shouts rang all over.

With no other clues, Sunbright ran east. It was an hour before dawn, prime time for a raid. The tribe was not unprepared, for Magichunger posted guards at night and insisted everyone keep weapons at hand, even under blankets. It paid off as a dozen warriors dashed alongside Sunbright.

The rolling grasslands were broken by a meandering watercourse that sliced ravines jagged as lightning bolts. For days now the tribe had slid into each gully and surmounted the opposite bank. The terrain left them vulnerable, for the ravines were handy avenues for a skulking enemy.

"Where are they?" hollered Strongsea.

"Who are they?" shrilled Kindbloom.

"Just get to the first ravine!" Sunbright yelled. "The guards will tell us!" As if by magic, Knucklebones suddenly pelted alongside, running fleet as a deer despite her short legs and bare feet.

Magichunger had dropped into the first gully and scrambled up the other side. Dashing to the top of a hillock, he scanned, yelled, "It's orcs! They've got two children! Go north! Circle that next bend!"

"Orcs?" gasped Sunbright. That was queer. Orcs avoided the prairie, preferring to strike from forest and scrub with plenty of cover and ways to retreat. Snatching an arrow from his new quiver, he veered right to follow the ravine north. The thief turned with him. Far in the east he heard the signal of a scout spotting prey.

"How'd they steal children from under our noses?" Knucklebones panted.

"The brats snuck off, probably," Sunbright replied, "for a swim before we strike camp."

Up ahead, along the ravine, Firstfortune stamped to a halt, aimed her bow, and shot. By the time Sunbright and Knucklebones arrived, her plain arrow was stuck in a sand bank. Knucklebones called, "I'll follow the bottom!" and bounded down the slope like an antelope.

"Don't get shot!" her lover cried, and sped to catch the other archers.

Rounding a lazy bend in the stream, he glimpsed Magichunger in the ravine on a sandy bank. Trapping an orc in a pocket, the war chief flicked his heavy broadsword over his shoulder and cleaved the enemy's arm from its shoulder. He ran on before the orc fell. Spying Sunbright, he flung a blood-spattered arm and called out, "Here they come! Stand your ground and kill them!"

Sunbright and five others crouched in tall yellow grass, nocked arrows to longbows, and waited. Suddenly, like flushed quail, four gray-skinned orcs with war clubs and cleavers appeared above the grass, spun their heads to orient themselves, and died.

Arrows fletched with turkey feathers and pointed with iron skimmed the grass tops and slammed into their foes. Sunbright's arrow banged an orc's breastbone and knocked him flat.

"Go right! Get after the rest! Run!" Magichunger bellowed from the next ridge, waving a brawny arm. He tore over the landscape like a jackrabbit.

Ripping through waist-high grass, howling like banshees, Sunbright and Knucklebones and Crabbranch and Kindbloom and Strongsea boiled around the ridge, jumped into a sandy gully, and splashed in the rippling stream. Half a dozen orcs looked up in surprise, surrounded by a score of berserk barbarians. They gabbled and bawled and whipped up swords and war clubs and stabbing spears. In their midst crouched two blond, crying children, a boy and a girl.

The orcs died before they could kill their captives.

Knucklebones, clad in leathers and bare feet, poised at another edge of the ravine, took aim with her dark elven blade, snapped it hard, and pierced an orc in the kidney. The orc yelped and reached to grab the pommel. The thief landed behind it, light as a sand crane. Punching from below her waist, using the full power of her body, she slammed the orc's skull twice with her brass knuckledusters. Broken-necked, the orc pitched into the stream.

Sunbright dropped his bow and jerked Harvester over his shoulder. The hooked blade sizzled a glittering arc, bashed aside an arm and a club, then slammed into an orc's neck to the spine. The creature's beady eyes bugged as blood shot in an arc to stain the silver blade. The orc collapsed like a pile of leaves. The shaman wrenched his sword from the carcass, and whirled for another.

There were none. The orcs were bloody, smashed heaps on sand and water. Shining ripples carried away ribbons of blood that attracted minnows. Fighters raised gory weapons, cheered and hooted and huzzahed, except for Strongsea who bellowed, "The beggar's given me fleas!"

A chorus of laughs resounded, but was interrupted by?

"Look there! One's getting away!"

A thrum of unshod hooves shook the air. From a bend down the gully there exploded up a sandy slope a brown horse with a gray orc astride. A piebald pony, riderless, squealed and pelted alongside. The orc, clinging desperately, whipped the horse with a club, topped the slope, and bolted into the grass. Barbarians yelled and grabbed for bows. Strongsea flicked up his, shot, hit the riderless horse, and dropped it, but, whipped by the frantic orc, the other horse was gone.

"Bastards!" grumbled Kindbloom. "No one told us they rode horses!" Sunbright agreed it was news to him. He'd thought horses shied from orcs, if only from their stink.

A sniffling arrested Sunbright, and quickly he dodged to the children. Crabbranch already hugged the little boy close, and Sunbright wrapped his arm around the girl's shoulders. "You're safe," he cooed, "you're safe."

"I know," the girl sniffed, trying to rub her eyes without showing it. "I wanted to kill them too!"

"Then we'll get you a real sword, not a wooden one," said Sunbright. The child's smeared face lit up, terror forgotten. Patting her head, the shaman walked for the stream to swish blood off his blade — then stopped cold. He walked to a dead orc, and flipped it over with a boot toe. Slope-skulled and gray, hairy and knobby, the orc was clad in a faded smock gray with filth and campfire smoke. But the breast sported a bright sigil, a large red hand with fingers splayed. Freshly painted.

"Ugly as a rat's rump," spat Knucklebones, then noticed his face. "What?"

"This sigil," Sunbright mused, "brings back memories. The red hand is-or was-the blazon of the One King. A messiah king from the east, they said, who'd bring peace and prosperity, promote goodwill among the speaking races. We once met a party of orcs who invited us to tea! Their starry-eyed leader rambled all night of how wonderful the world would be once the One King ruled it. But when I was hauled before the king I, uh, lost my temper and tried to swipe his head off. I only dented his skin. He was a lich in disguise, an undead lord with big plans."

"And?" Knucklebones said. "Did you kill him, for Mystryl's sake?"

"Hunh? Oh, no. A red dragon tore down the wall and crisped him. Weren't even ashes left. I thought the king's crusade would die out, but later I met fools flocking to his banner. They wouldn't believe he was dead. And here's an orc with the symbol fresh-painted. And they carry steel weapons, and ride ahorse. Odd behavior for orcs…" The shaman shook his head and squeezed Knucklebones's shoulder. "Good fighting."

The part-elf beat her knuckledusters as if testing them. "I must be getting soft," she complained. "I had to hit him twice."

The war party picked up the steel tools, left the orcs for the wolves and foxes, boosted one another up the sandy bank, and swished through tall grass, the rescued children in their midst. Someone ragged Magichunger about the two slipping past the guards to swim. "Pick guards who aren't blind this time!"

The war chief gestured obscenely, but grinned back, "Barbarian brats can slide under snakes! But we'll put you on point, Blackblossom." Laughter answered.

The tribe cheered the rescued and rescuers. The war party hooted back. Sunbright turned from the group to descend a defile. "They can have the glory. We'll take the dirty work."

Scrambling up the opposite bank, they helped Strongsea and Crabbranch skin the dead horse. It was a brown and white piebald growing a thick winter coat. Sunbright plied his belt knife to slice the mask from the long skull.

Knucklebones felt the coarse mane, clucked, "I'm glad for the meat, but this seems such a waste. You can ride horses, you know. I've never done it, but it would make more sense to work these beasts than just chop them up. From horseback, you could round up wild cattle and deer, even attack a mammoth, I should think."

"Naw," Strongsea said as he sliced raw liver, offered everyone a piece, and chewed bloodily. "Riding's a soft southern custom, for sissies. Barbarians walk. We only harness reindeer, and we ain't got none."

"We kayak," put in Crabbranch. "This hide would make a fine boat."

Sunbright agreed. "I've been ahorse a few times body-guarding pack trains. I bumped like a gutted deer and walked like a duck for days."

"I know it's an art," Knucklebones insisted, "and takes time to learn, but in Karsus we had parades with cavalry brought up from the ground, and those men and women rode like centaurs. The horses obeyed their every whim. Their helmets shone like the sun, and the horses wore blue coats with bells around the hem. They're such pretty animals." She sliced the tail intact from the rear of the hide, stroked it absently. "You'd never seen an orc ahorse before. Why not a barbarian?"

Strongsea and Crabbranch exchanged glances at this heresy, a break with tradition. Sunbright offered, "We get along fine walking." But inwardly, a germ of an idea took root. Something he'd have to think about…

Returning to the war party with meat bundled in the piebald hide, Sunbright squeezed Knucklebones and steered for his mother's travois. Monkberry sat on their bundle like a round lump, smiled crinkly at her son and his tiny, exotic lover, but winced as she rose. "How much further must we go, son?" she asked.

The shaman stared at the western horizon, calculating, then said, "I'm not sure. The distance is almost double that from the Horn at the Channel Mountains to Oxbow Lake along the tundra. We've been out, uh, thirty-two days. Perhaps another twenty? Why ask, mother?"

"Oh," she puffed, "walking the world over is fine for young folks, but my poor feet are worn to the knee. It'll be good to find a rock to sit on."

Sunbright laughed, "You'll have rocks, mother, if I have to trudge to Northreach to fetch one."

"If we had horses," Knucklebones cooed, "we could build a bigger travois and you could ride."

Monkberry shook her head, and stated, "Barbarians walk. It's always been that way. I'm good for a few more leagues yet."

Shouldering the harness, now piled with thirty pounds of raw horse meat and hide, Sunbright leaned far forward to get started. "Come on, then. The sooner we walk, the sooner we arrive. I need to find my mother a rock."

The band passed deeper into the prairie, which now began to rise steadily, several feet in every mile. They saw no more ancient animals, mammoths or saber-tooths, and twice passed stands of poplar trees. Several times the tribe skirted ridges too steep to scale with leather soles. The mountains and forest were not far off.

With the good news came bad. Orc raids came more frequently. A woman gathering water was shot in the back by a crude arrow. The Rengarth beat the brush but never found the killer. One night three southmen, half-starved, bearing swords and scraps of armor, were caught rifling the food and were immediately cut down. Hunters found game clumsily butchered, so they paired up for protection. Once, at dawn, a pack of thirty or more orcs howled a battle challenge, hoping to stampede the tribe. When near two hundred fighters screamed back, the orcs melted into gullies. Two hunters were bushwhacked later, with only their heads recovered.

"I've never heard of orcs on the prairie, and suddenly they're thick as fleas," Sunbright mused. "Iceborn and Tulipgrace only recall it once, ages ago, when drought burned the highlands. What's got them on the prod?"

"The One King?" asked Knucklebones. "You saw the red hand on that big war party."

"The king's dead, and not coming back. I saw him blasted by dragon fire. Flagstones under his feet melted. Still…" Guessing got them nowhere, and they had to continue at any cost.

Then one afternoon a hunter pelted through the grass. From her empty hands, they concluded she'd routed an enemy. Magichunger hollered, "To arms! To arms!"

But this news was good. Panting, Firstfortune pointed wildly northwest, and gasped, "I–I've seen it! F-From a ridge top! Sanguine Mountain! Red as blood down a black cleft! Two days' walk. We're almost there-"

Cheering drowned out the rest. Sunbright grabbed Knucklebones and his creaky mother, and spun them both till they gasped. The tribe pushed on till dusk, threw up a hasty camp, then convened to discuss plans. Sunbright had little to say, instead listened to notions both fantastic and practical, glad his people had new ideas to share.

The next afternoon, the peak of Sanguine Mountain topped the grass. Two days later, they saw the whole mountain, and others beyond it, gray and solemn marching to the sky, while a counterpane of green shot with orange and gold and red cloaked their stony feet.

In the last mile, someone hollered and streaked forward. A child ran after, soon outstripped by two more youngsters. "A tree! First to touch a tree!" A flock of runners broke and ran headlong. The stragglers behind cheered the race.

The forest spilled from the hillside in long ragged arms of color to trickle amidst the yellow grass. Having reached the trees, someone shouted anew, and a race back to the tribe began. This time the runners carried leaves they'd snatched as proof of their triumph. Sharing their treasures, they were grabbed and kissed and jostled. Songs went up, and prayers of thanks.

Far at the rear of the wandering train, Sunbright stopped dragging their travois. Monkberry caught his wrist on one side, and Knucklebones the other. The small thief said, "You did it, Sunbright! You've brought them to safety! You pushed and pleaded and nagged, but they've arrived!"

"All the tribe," Monkberry added. "Every one."

Sunbright was quiet, for this place carried memories. It had been here, to the southern slopes of the Barren Mountains, that he'd first retreated when driven from the tribe years back. The mountains had proved bitter and barren, but the forest had sustained him.

"I hope it's safe," he sighed. "I hope this new soil receives my uprooted people…"

The hillside swarmed with barbarians busy as beavers, each with a hundred tasks to do and each happy, for this new land promised great things.

While hunters slipped into the forest, men cut saplings with bronze and iron swords, dug holes to receive them, bent and lashed them with spruce roots, then moved on while women and children layered leafy branches to finish the wigwams. Days ago, Forestvictory had declared her task as trail chief ended with the trail, so Goodbell was appointed camp chief. Now the young woman, with twins slung on her back and a third swelling her belly, directed the laying out of wigwams and slit trenches for latrines, the packing with sticks and mud for a small dam to widen an errant stream, the digging of fire pits, and other tasks.

The tribe had chosen a wide vale with only a slight slope embraced on two sides by highlands of trees. Sanguine Mountain reared above the forest to the north like an orange-black beacon built by gods. The forest itself was edged by green-black spruces whose petticoats brushed the ground. Rising behind were bursts of yellow, orange, and red; tall, vase-shaped elms, round sugar maples, and thin, graceful birches. Sheltered on three sides, sloping to prairie, their camp looked like a harbor town verging on a yellow sea, and it was as busy as any seaport.

Sunbright left Monkberry and Knucklebones to house construction, and busied himself laying out a council ring. Sharpening a stick, he scraped away moss and grass and levered up rocks. He rolled them in a ring, careful that each touched its neighbors, then scraped off dirt for a seat. He whistled as he worked, happy, for they'd finished one odious chore, crossing the plains, and embarked on a new and promising one. Even the air was sweeter, rich with loam and pine and sparkling water, unlike the grainy dust smell of the prairie.

As he fiddled with stones, a tall barbarian named Wreathhonor approached, asked, "Goodbell asks how deep shall we dig the trenches? How long will we stay here?"

Sunbright scraped an imaginary crack. He'd dreaded and avoided this question for weeks, and had no answer now. Or rather, had an answer no one would like. "I think we'll be here a while. All winter, perhaps."

"All winter?" Wreathhonor scratched his head, and went away muttering, "Deep trenches."

It wasn't long before others came calling. Goodbell herself, with Wreathhonor trailing, and Magichunger and Mightylaugh, and even hobbling old Tulipgrace. Goodbell asked, "What's this about we're wintering over? I thought this was a temporary camp. Won't we return to the tundra after the first snowfall? We'll need to build dog sleds for seal season…"

Weary in mind, Sunbright plumped on a rock. Gently, he offered, "The tundra can't support us over the winter. The land is sick…" He listed the bad signs, hoping they'd understand.

They didn't. Goodbell frowned. "But if we don't cross the tundra…" she said. "Do you mean to stay through winter and into spring? What of the salmon run-"

"To arms!" From up the slope, the alarm-giver's voice broke, "To arms!"

Whirling, the impromptu council saw Firstfortune stumble down the slope. She dragged Lightrobin, an arrow jutting from her back. Not a barbarian arrow of plain wood, but a long, black arrow fletched with white. Firstfortune gave one more alarm, then was knocked sprawling by another arrow that slammed into her hip.

Magichunger howled to grab bows, parents shrieked for children, Goodbell yelled for non-fighters to take cover and ready bandages, Sunbright shouted for Knucklebones and his mother to duck behind trees. Even as they bolted in different directions, slow-thinking Wreathhonor caught an arrow in his lower belly. He collapsed, holding the shaft and crying like a child.

Sunbright left Goodbell to tend the wounded, and dodged from tree to tree up the slope to fetch his longbow and quiver. He already wore Harvester on his back, indeed took it off only to sleep or bathe. By the time he reached the pocket they'd selected, Knucklebones had shoved Monkberry flat and flipped the flimsy travois over her. The thief had shucked to her leathers, loosened her dagger in its sheath, and hunted a dozen round rocks for her sling. Between two trunks with one eye she studied dark spruces thick as walls of thorns.

Sunbright grabbed his tackle and flopped on his belly beside her. As he hauled an arrow around to check the fletching he asked, "See anything?"

"Movement, very low, like rabbits creeping. Whoever they are, they're good. Silent, too."

"I'm not surprised. That was an elven arrow."

"Elven?" piped the woman with pointed ears.

"Very long, thin shaft, black. More a bird arrow than a war arrow." The shaman craned to see his tribe, most out of sight. Fighters with nocked bows crept up the slope. Sunbright touched his mother's shoulder, and said, "I'll cover you. Get down the slope toward the middle." Wasting no words, Monkberry scurried to the next tree.

In that instant, the attack broke.

Two spruces parted six feet in the air before Sunbright's eyes. Like a black panther, an elven warrior burst screaming from the green cover. The shaman glimpsed gleaming black armor, a shimmering green shirt, long, wild black hair and pointed ears, a black headband studded with white feathers, a curved bow and quiver. And swinging to meet the shaman, a sword with an ornate handle and a deadly, slim blade.

Before he was even sure of his target, Sunbright jumped to his feet and loosed. His broad arrowhead punched through the elf-woman's boiled-leather cuirass. Her screech cut off as her lung collapsed and her heart stopped. She'd bounded so close her dead body cannoned into the shaman's. He smelled wood smoke and sage, a painfully familiar perfume. The dying elf slumped, and Sunbright kicked her away with sudden, savage fury.

As he untangled his bow, another black ball exploded from high between trees. Knucklebones shrieked her own cry-oddly, "Kar-sus!" — and slashed the air with her long knife. An elven warrior slapped his feet in a fighting stance, and grabbed his sword in two hands to swing and chop the thief in half. But Sunbright hopped over the dead elf, lurched in a long reach, and banged his bow against the warrior's sword to spoil his aim. The bowstring parted with a twunk! the elf hesitated, and Knucklebones lunged. Sliding her dark dagger under the warrior's shirt, she slashed him behind the knee. Hamstrung, the leg collapsed, but he still slashed sidelong and almost parted Knucklebones's hair. As he fell, she twirled the blade and severed an artery. Bright, frothy blood skyrocketed. The elf dropped his sword to grab at the wound. Sunbright kicked his weapon away, kicking the elf's head to stun him. Lost blood and the blow laid him out, and he died in a pool of blood.

"Back!" Sunbright hollered. "Down the slope!"

Barefoot and nimble, the thief hopped backward in giant leaps like a hare's, knife out, ready to kill. Sunbright jigged and jogged, shuffling to keep his feet without tripping. They retreated, for a quick glance showed the elves weren't the only ones dying. The barbarians were attacked from three sides by dozens of black-wrapped, screaming elves.

Sunbright lurched, grabbed a tree for support, and skipped after Knucklebones to regain the ring of barbarians.

But inside he was stunned and heartsick. For he recognized these elves, their armor and weapons, their clothes, even the cut of their faces. He knew who they were.

Cormanthyran Elves of the High Forest.

Greenwillow's people!