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  BLOODRAVEN

  P L NUNN

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  Bloodraven

  Copyright © 2007 P L Nunn

  All rights reserved.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  AUTHOR P.L. Nunn

  CHAPTER ONE

  Yhalen fled with Yherji’s blood on his skin and the flashing image of Yherji’s death-shocked face dancing behind his eyes. Yherji’s last cry as the mallet crashed through bramble to crush the back of his skull with no more effort than a man might make to squash a beetle under his foot, echoed in Yhalen’s ears.

  He could imagine Yherji’s laughter, Yherji’s mocking smile, his crooked nose and his humor in the face of the most dire situation. What had they been talking about? Phralen, perhaps and how very high she’d gotten on blackfern berries at last year’s festival of rites. Of some silly thing she’d done, after Yhalen had reluctantly declined her offers of body and self—something that Yherji had seen and Yhalen had not. She’d never have done so silly a thing in Yhalen’s sight. Rebuffed by him or not, she’d never have risked her value in his eyes, though in Yherji’s, who wasn’t so favored a match within the small confines of the Ydregi young, she’d lapsed.

  Yherji might have been Yhalen’s crib-mate, his closest companion—a young warrior of reputed skill—but his bloodline wasn’t so powerful. His father not the war chief of the Ydregi, his mother not the healer, his grandfather not the rites master and his paternal great grandfather not the high druid of the ancestral forest. Yhalen was as close to royalty in his lineage as the Ydregi knew. It was a given thing that Yhalen follow in his father’s and grandfather’s and great grandfather’s steps. Of course, the unbonded girls wanted him and didn’t want Yherji so much, whose lineage wasn’t so bountiful.

  But Yhalen did, on occasion—when a young body rebelled against the edicts against congress with an unbonded maiden, no matter the willingness of that maiden—not when one’s mother could sense things and always knew when a body had strayed. A body learned well enough there was no physical thing that could be hidden from a Ydregi healer—so a body found pleasures in other pastures.

  They had been about that, out of earshot of their elder companion, Yhakinor, when the forest had crashed in around them. When young trees had been swept aside and the impact of the stone mallet had smashed into the back of Yherji’s curly head, spattering bone and blood.

  And Yhalen had run. Forgetting honor and courage and simple loyalty to a young man who had been his crib-mate, his friend and on occasion more—Yhalen fled for his life, shocked beyond rational thought by the lumbering shape of the monster that had followed that bloody mallet out of the woods in attempts to send him along the path that Yherji had gone.

  He’d heard Yhakinor’s cries after that and those had brought back some semblance of the here and now. Those had chased away the sheer terror that had gripped him in its teeth—it had been Yhakinor and Yherji and him—escorts to Yhalen’s grandfather, the Master of the Rite. Yhalor on his journey to parlay with the men of Nakhanor, to discuss with their wise men and their leaders the possibility of an accord with the Ydregi. A six-day journey past the boundaries of their ancestral forests and into the lands of Ghary and Prauul and Nakhanor. A series of meetings between many tribes and clans to discuss a heretofore unheard of alliance between men, though Grandfather said that many of those clans were more than that: they were great kingdoms that held the loyalty of many thousands of men.

  Yhalen could hardly imagine a thousand men together—could hardly fathom so many people when the Ydregi were so few.

  There were four hundred Ydregi who lived in the ancestral forest. Four hundred of the people whom the great wood sheltered and blessed and of those four hundred there were perhaps a few dozen who had not seen the great fires that had taken the western slopes of the Glazentooth some sixty odd years past. The Ydregi women were so seldom granted the gift of life in their bellies—so seldom brought a child to term and so seldom found themselves blessed with female progeny. The curse of long life, the wise men said. The curse of longevity in the face of other men’s short lives.

  Until the blow of a crudely made mallet took it all away. Oh, Yherji.

  Yhalen stumbled to a halt, shoulder pressed to a vine-covered tree, chest heaving with lost breath and unshed tears. He could not banish the image of Yherji’s face, or the sound of the impact as the back of his skull was bashed in. Yherji had been laughing in the midst of his story, as they took their leisure out of sour-faced Yhakinor’s presence. Easier to sneak a bit of stolen pleasure without the older man’s censure. They were the escorts of Yhalor and ought to be taking their jobs more seriously, but Yhalor was ensconced behind stone walls with the other wise men and his forest-bred escorts felt caged and trapped within the confines of such. Better to wander the woods outside the Nakhanor village and find more entertaining means of passing time.

  Yherji was dead and Yhalen had never heard the conclusion of his story. He never would. He heard a sound that might have been Yhakinor’s cry. If he didn’t go back and help the older man, what would that make him? A coward. Worse than a coward, a traitor.

  Yhalen had never known such fear, had never flinched at challenge—had taunted Fate and always come out blessed by her. But he’d never seen an ogre before. Only heard tales. He had never imagined them true. But the thing that had lumbered out of the brush could be nothing else. It was why Grandfather was here—because of the things that were creeping down from the northern heights to plague the fertile, forested lands of the south. Yherji’s blood was on his face. Cold now. He could not stomach the thought of Yhakinor’s on his hands as well. He gripped the hilt of the short sword at his belt and slid it from its sheath, starting back first at a cautious jog, then at a run when the forest revealed no further sounds. Branches whipped past his face, caught in his hair. He had no grace in his turmoil of guilt and fear and adrenaline-fed movement.

  “Yhakinor,” he cried, knowing it was foolish to give away his own position, but desperate for some clue that the older
man was alive. No answer. He forced himself to slow. Forced himself to breathe, to feel the essence of the wood—the flow of its life. He was no wise man and certainly no druid, but he was still Ydregi, and even the Ydregi young were attuned to the forest. This one was tainted. The wash of death overlapped the tranquility. Death and dying.

  “Yhakinor,” he whispered, staring down the dark path that led to the most intense disturbance. He moved that way, careful now to make no sound. Aware, so very aware, of the stigma that lay over the wood. Yherji, he thought, had died not far from here. Almost— almost he could smell the scent of Yherji’s blood—of his body’s last dying breath.

  There—against the trunk of a gnarled tree, a body lay twisted—the upper torso at an odd angle in relation to the hips and legs. Yhalen moved forward, trying to pierce the shadows, sword on the verge of shaking in his hand. Yhakinor’s eyes stared up at him. His head had been twisted so that it stared over his back, as if something had taken his body and distorted it, head backwards and hips and legs turned around. Wetness soaked the roots of the tree. A great deal of it.

  Warmth trailed down Yhalen’s cheeks. So few Ydregi and two dead in the span of moments. He slipped to his knees, a half dozen paces from the dead man. He’d only ever seen the dead once, when old Phelecaas had been called to roam the heavens with the ancestral spirits. She’d died in her sleep and been lovingly wrapped and prepared by the tribal women before they buried her under the roots of the Great Tree. It had been so quiet and dignified—Phelecaas’ passing. She’d lived longer than any of them.

  Yhakinor was Yhalen’s father’s age. A young man still. Yherji—Yherji had been a child. Yhalen was simply a child who had won this honor to accompany his esteemed grandfather on this most important journey and failed to live up to the trust given him.

  “I’m sorry. So, so sorry,” he whispered, inching forward, wanting to dig his fingers into the blood-soaked earth and smear it across his face in shame.

  A tree moved behind him, or something that seemed like a towering forest monument. Yhalen almost cried out—caught himself in time to save himself that indignity and scrambled to his feet, his sword held warningly—and could only gape in shock when he saw fully the creature advancing upon him.

  Twice his height almost, with shoulders wider than he could stretch his arms, biceps that were thicker than a large man’s torso and thighs like tree trunks. It held an axe that Yhalen doubted he could have lifted off the ground, in one thick-fingered hand. Its armor was leather and metal, crudely put together.

  A beaten helm topped his head, doing little to hide the long, pointed ears or bristly black hair. Its eyes gleamed yellow, and sharp white teeth were a considerable contrast against skin of a shade to match an algae-covered swamp, yellow-tinged green.

  Yhalen felt quite suddenly like a burrow mouse confronted by a hungry bear. He took a panicked step backwards, and saved himself from the swipe of the one that had come up behind him only by the sound of creaking leather as it drew back its arm to smash the mallet down.

  Yhalen hissed and jumped, half staggering over Yhakinor’s sprawled legs and felt the stinging slice of the axe as it cleaved through the material of his tunic and raked his back.

  A shallow cut at best, that could have sliced him in two if he’d not stumbled. There was no easy path to escape. Their long arms prevented it as they closed in. He lunged at the one with the mallet, preferring to tempt fate with the blunter of the two weapons. His blade caught the ogre—he was certain they were indeed ogres—on the inside of the palm, above the protection of a thick wrist guard. A mere scratch, but enough to make the thing howl and lash its unhindered arm out in a wide sweeping arc.

  Almost, Yhalen avoided it. He was faster. He was smaller and more agile, certainly—but he was hemmed in and on uneven terrain with tangled roots under his boots. The edge of that great hand caught him on the shoulder, knocking him back and off his feet. He came up against something hard, the breath knocked out of him. A heavy weight came down upon his head. It covered his face and compressed his skull and when he frantically lifted a hand to pry it off, he felt leathery skin and nails.

  The ogre. The one had knocked him into the other and that one was about to crush his skull in its mammoth hand. He slashed desperately—blindly—with the sword and it flicked his wrist hard enough to make his entire arm go numb. He didn’t even hear the sword hit the ground. He couldn’t hear anything past the ringing in his ears. He clawed at the hand, digging his nails into thick skin, but it hardly seemed to make a difference. It just made the thing mad—made it lift him up by its grip on his head and shake him like a rag doll. He struggled still, feet kicking uselessly above the ground.

  He thought they spoke. A guttural, harsh language—or perhaps it was merely the ragged sound of his own breath, his own body betraying him in its weakness, in his terror.

  It released him suddenly and, unprepared, his legs crumpled under him when they hit ground. The other one made a swipe at him, cuffing him across the side in what might have been a light tap for an ogre, but sent Yhalen tumbling across the knotty ground to come up hard against the other ogre’s legs. It reached down and jerked him up, hand enveloping one of his arms. It lifted him, threatening to dislocate his shoulder and drew him in close to a face twice the size of his own, his feet dangling almost his body length from the ground. It growled at him, showing its yellowed fangs, and barked something. It shook him once then tossed him back to the ground. The impact took what little breath he had left, bruising his shoulder and hip, making him shred the inside of his mouth on the sharp edges of his own teeth. He couldn’t quite see for the dark spots crowding his vision. He could not have escaped the hands of the other one even if he’d been able to, with his legs unstable, and his breath shallow and scarce.

  They played with him like big cats with some small helpless victim. The sharp edges of their blunt nails tore his clothing and the skin under it. They didn’t kill him. They broke ribs and tore skin. He twisted his ankle badly on the roots when they played at batting him back and forth between them.

  After that, he couldn’t keep his feet for long enough to entertain them.

  All he could do was lie there, curled in pain, and wish for the blackness that would take it all away.

  But it wouldn’t come. Oh, it most stubbornly refused him its grace.

  One, with a line of gold hoops in its pointed ear and a ring through its flat nose, snatched Yhalen’s braid between its fingers, winding it around its index finger. It drew him up by the hair, almost off his feet, but not quite, and bent down to peer at him. With its other hand it pulled at the neck of Yhalen’s tunic. The lacings snapped like fine spider web, and despite Yhalen’s attempts to prevent it, the ogre tore the tunic off, baring his lacerated, bruised upper body.

  The ogre said something, almost questioningly, and the other one came and crouched next to him, reaching out and running one big hand down Yhalen’s chest and stomach. The fingers worked themselves between his legs and he hissed, struggles renewed at the indignity.

  Another bout of conversation, and something seemed to be decided. With an almost casual movement the second ogre flicked one large finger against Yhalen’s stomach. It drove the air out and then let the blackness in.

  He was only marginally aware after that, of being swung with ease over a shoulder the size of a horse’s back and of the two ogres picking up their weapons and moving through the woods.

  He came to again in darkness. The sound of more than two voices. The crackle of a fire. The smell of roasting meat. Himself on his side, his arms numb behind him, his breath constricted by the rough rope around his neck that they’d attached to the ropes binding his arms and then tied to the tree at his back.

  If he struggled too much, he’d choke himself.

  A miserable situation for a man to find himself in. Disgraced by his cowardice, captured by creatures out of the distant north—he lay there, glassy-eyed, stunned, seeing Yherji’s face over and over. Seeing Yhak
inor’s twisted body. What if no one found them? What if there was no one to send them on their way? To bury them under a great tree so that their bodies might contribute to the continuity of the forest and their souls might soar? He needed to make sure of that. He needed to at least do them that justice.

  He turned his face into the soft leaves and tried not to shame himself further by crying. Tried to gather his scattered wits and make sense of what had happened. Ogres as far south as the Nakhanor Valley? How? How could they travel so far and not have it known? They were most certainly not the stealthiest of creatures.

  His grandfather, Yhalor, had come to Nakhanor to discuss the dangers of the ogres’ migration—the eventuality, not the actuality.

  Oh, Goddess— Grandfather—what if they’d come, these brutish people, because of the gathering at the Nakhanor city? What if they meant to kill the wise men of the southern races to ease their own invasion?

  He narrowed his eyes and stared into the fire-lit night. It was full dark now, and the shadows deep.

  He was in a clearing, a dozen paces from a good-sized fire. Around that fire sat four large forms. They spoke and laughed amongst themselves, tearing at the meat of some animal that they’d spitted over the fire.

  Only four. No great army, that. Even four creatures as large as ogres could not defeat the forces gathered at the Nakhanor village. Two well-armed, well-prepared men might take one of them, Yhalen thought. If they were lucky. Just these four were no danger.

  There was a glint of yellow eyes and a short burst of laughter. One of them had turned to look his way. The others followed suit and Yhalen shivered at the malicious gleams in their eyes, in the wide grins that split their faces.

  Oh, Goddess, please, please, please let them forget me. He very seldom begged the Goddess who permeated the forest for anything. Having a druid as a great grandfather, one learned not to lightly call on the Goddess for minor things. He prayed to her now, with a frantic zeal. But she ignored him, perhaps punishment for his flight when he should have stayed to confront the evil that had taken his childhood friend.