They were wending their way around the citadel wall, looking over the damage. They descended to a low wall that marked off a quarter of barracks and exercise yards, then climbed a steep stairway overlooking the courtyard. Moreen still had not regained her strength, but she was determined to keep active, to show her people that she was recovering, that she was the Lady of Brackenrock again.
She found herself back where she had been injured, looking over a drop of eight or ten feet into a tangled well of rocks and splintered timbers. Her vision was now almost flat, but even she could perceive the menacing depths of this black hole. She couldn’t imagine being trapped down there, buried by debris. “Such terrible force….”
“Your goddess was watching over you. There’s no other explanation,” Kerrick said sincerely.
“What if they come back?” Moreen said, gazing out at the blue sea. With an irritated sigh, she adjusted the patch that covered her empty socket. Moreen still wasn’t used to wearing the leather flap, and Kerrick too was getting accustomed to Moreen’s permanent eye patch.
“Why, if they come back, we’ll fight them again,” declared the elf boldly, “and defeat them again. “We know that they hold the Axe of Gonnas in awe-we can use that to our advantage.”
“Unless they blow the axe, and all of Brackenrock, to pieces,” Moreen replied bitterly. “No, we need some better plan.”
“What?” Kerrick asked hopefully.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
16
Fires on the Heath
The ogre captain Broadnose stepped cautiously across the marshy bottomland. From concealment atop a nearby elevation, he had watched sheep crossing here earlier in the day and knew that, while wet, the ground was traversable.
A day earlier, the ogres had spotted the village from the crest of the ridge on the opposite side of the stream. It was a typical village of the Whitemoor, barely two dozen huts, surrounded by a few ragged corrals, with a tangle of drying racks stretching upstream and down. The racks were draped with skins, and a small fish house across a tributary creek belched smoke and smelled of trout. The ogres had studied the place and waited until now, when the hour was after midnight and most of the humans were asleep.
Light still suffused the valley, and thus the raiders had been happy to discover this swampy approach route. They were concealed by an overhang of the riverbank. A bend in the stream blocked their view of the settlement-at least, until the attackers crept up behind the first drying racks.
“We spread out, remember. Hit fast. Every man you see gets killed, cut his head off. We’ll pile up the bodies later. If a woman shows some spunk, kill her too. Some of these Arktos females are real fighters. And kill the babies-that’s important, that’ll make a statement. If a few of the kids and women manage to run off… well, chase ’em a bit for show, but then let ’em get away and spread the word.”
The ogres nodded. They had been following the same plan for several weeks, raiding other villages, so they were primed.
“Spears first-then we get to hacking and slashing,” the burly commander reminded his raiders. They looked at him, tusks bared, broad faces dour and fierce. Satisfied, Broadnose uttered a roar that split the peace of the pastoral vale like an axe blade slicing through a loaf of bread.
His warriors bellowed in kind, and the mass of ogres burst upon the village at a full run, sweeping the racks aside, trampling the partially cured pelts. A large guard dog came charging toward Broadnose, barking, fangs bared, and the ogre leader felled the creature with a powerful thrust of his spear. Next he drew his great sword, swinging it into a bunch of racks, smashing them into kindling.
A human emerged from one of the huts and threw a javelin, the barbed point piercing the thigh of a young ogre. The stricken raider went down with a howl, and Broadnose smashed through a line of racks to confront the brazen human. The man now held a steel-bladed tomahawk, and he slashed the weapon hard enough that the ogre had to pull up short. A single crushing down-swipe of his great sword put an end to the skirmish, however, and the sub-captain moved on. He sought living targets-he would leave the mess of decapitation to his less imaginative followers.
Another Arktos man, a warrior dressed in a heavy leather shirt, carrying a shield and sword, darted from a hut to stab a passing ogre in the flank. Strangely, there were very few humans rushing out of the other dwellings, and all those they encountered seemed to he well-armed warriors. A quick glance showed three ogres lying dying or already dead around the central plaza. Broadnose frowned-this was two more than they had lost in their past five raids combined, and this raid, it seemed, was far from over.
Indeed, a score of Arktos fighters had rallied on a low platform in the middle of the town. Each man held a shield and sword or axe. Although they had cast spears when they first burst from the huts, now they fought in melee order, lining the sides of the little rise and facing outward. The platform was deceptively high, and the ogres were exposed to hacks and stabs from the defenders. The raider captain was trying to think of a plan as an ogre staggered back blindly, blood gushing from his gashed forehead.
“This one is empty!” shouted a young ogre off to the side, emerging from a hut and knocking the frail sealskin structure down behind him. Broadnose saw other raiders kick apart more of the human domiciles, unsuccessfully seeking the victims who should have been cowering within.
“They’re all empty!” A big ogre roared in frustration, cleaving his sword right through one of the Arktos abodes.
Suddenly that warrior toppled forward, and Broadnose was startled to see three arrows jutting from the fellow’s back. Another volley of arrows drew the captain’s attention to the ridge on the far side of the village. The slope was swarming with humans, hundreds of them racing downhill while an equal number stood above and launched a shower of dark missiles into the sky. The arrows rained down on the hapless raiders, and even as Broadnose knelt to pull a dart from his leg he was aware that the archers were skilled marksmen and weren’t hitting their own people. Arrows showered across the ogres, for the most part causing pricks of pain more maddening than life-threatening.
“Rally, my warriors!” cried Broadnose. “Form a line across-”
He never finished, as another arrow lanced him in the right eye. He stumbled, then fell on his back. Kicking and thrashing, Broadnose seized the missile and pulled it out, flailing in blind agony as blood streamed across his face, his vision reduced to a film of angry, viscous red.
He heard the clash of steel against steel, the thudding and stomping of frantic footsteps. A heavy body collapsed across Broadnose, driving the breath from his lungs. Something warm washed across his face, and he recognized the wet stench of fresh blood. He pushed at whoever had fallen upon him, but the lump of flesh was very heavy and utterly lifeless. Weakened by his own wounds, Broadnose could not budge the corpse. He panted in exhaustion and pain.
He was vaguely aware of ogres shouting everywhere, but he longed to hear a clarion battle cry, a lustful summons to attack, not these strangled barks of fear, shouts of confusion, even one case of pathetic blubbering. An ogre weeping! He sensed the sounds of battle moving away, the clashing and violence fading, scattering to the winds.
Trying to collect his thoughts, Broadnose began to understand that his raiding party had been trapped. The humans had baited him into this village, then struck with a superior force concealed on the opposite heights. Such trickery infuriated him, but as the pain from his bleeding eye socket seemed to spread through his entire skull he found that he had a hard time concentrating, that his fury and indignation was drowned beneath a rising swell of agony and despair. His awareness became a murky numbness, and Broadnose wondered if he was dying.
But the dying lasted too long, and after a time he heard more sounds, the soft thudding of dead flesh being moved around. Coins rattled, weapons were stacked-scavengers undoubtedly were pillaging the purses of slain raiders.
The wounded ogre felt a sudden sense of relief as the corpse of his comrade was rolled off him. He saw blobs of light, though his unwounded eye did not work well either, failing to provide him with any meaningful shapes. He flinched, grunting, as a sharp tip of steel prodded him.
His ears functioned fine, and he heard the sword wielder speak in a thick Arktos accent.
“This one here is alive. Ya wouldn’t know it for all the blood on ’im, though.”
“Alive’s good enough,” said another. “Tie him up real tight. Let’s take him back to Brackenrock.
* * * * *
Seeing the world with only one good eye took adjustment. Moreen’s vision lacked dimensionality, acuity, and color, when she looked at objects more than a stone’s throw away. When she discussed these difficulties with the old shaman woman, Dinekki could only cluck sympathetically and suggest perhaps the chief-woman should consider herself lucky that she could see at all.
Surprisingly enough, Moreen did consider herself lucky. She really didn’t have time to dwell on her problems. There had been many reports of ogre raids against the villages on the Whitemoor, and she could only hope Strongwind and Mouse, with their hundreds of brave warriors, would be able to hamper or stop the depredations. She rubbed her swollen eyelid-the swelling hardly diminished, and it never seemed to stop itching-and turned to the schematic diagrams spread across her work table.
The sketches showed the outline for the new towers and a gate, as well as a reinforced section of stone wall that would be raised to repair the breach. Fortunately, there were good quarries located on the rocky dells just behind the fortress, and hundreds of Arktos and Highlanders were already busy cutting and hauling the needed stone.
The quarries had been there for centuries and in fact probably were among the reasons the citadel was originally built in this location. Thanks to a clever rail-and-cart system devised by Kerrick, the rock was being moved from the excavation to the work site faster than ever. Even so, Moreen felt a sense of urgency. She rose from her table and walked to the window, looking across the courtyard, blinking to clear her blurred vision as best she could.
Something was moving toward the gap, Moreen saw, squinting to make out a long column of men marching in from the western trail. A few lights sparkled above the file, undoubtedly sun glinting off of speartips, so she guessed these were her warriors, returning home.
Moments later there came a knock on the door, and Feathertail entered. “It’s Mouse-I mean, Strongwind and the warriors, returning from Whitemoor!” the younger woman exclaimed. “And they’ve captured an ogre-they have him chained, marching in the middle of the column!”
“Good,” the chiefwoman replied. “Let’s see what the brute has to say.”
A few minutes later they greeted the returning warriors in the great hall of the keep. The ogre captive was held outside while Strongwind and Mouse entered, both crying out with delight as they saw Moreen awaiting them. She grinned, enjoying the Highlander’s consternation as he gaped at her eyepatch, then tried to recover his manners.
“My lady!” he said, rushing forward, gently kissing both of her cheeks, then pressing his lips to hers in sudden exuberance. She kissed him back, actually enjoying the embrace for a second, before disengaging. Still he held her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes with genuine joy. “I feared I would never see your smile again! How are you-”
“I’m well enough,” she said, breaking away to bring Mouse into the conversation. “I understand that you two have been doing good work-you have brought us a prisoner?”
“Yes, one prisoner. A captain.”
“How much damage did they do before you caught them?” asked the chiefwoman.
Mouse replied. “They had wrecked at least five villages by the time we caught up to them. Generally they were moving up the valley of the Whitemoor River, so we got ahead of them, warned the Arkos at Lone Elk Creek, one of the tributaries farther back in the moors. The women and little ones took flight into the hills, and the warriors joined ranks with us. When the ogres came, we were ready for them and caught them by surprise,”
“How many escaped?” asked the chiefwoman.
“Not many,” Strongwind said. “They were running south, away from the nearest villages.”