Chapter 4

“It does, and it’ll taste just as bad.” he nodded as he cut his own with a hunting knife from the cache. “The marinade it’s made with is mixed to make it last, not to make it tasty. But it’ll keep you alive and strong, and it doesn’t weigh very much.”

“Damn, I can’t eat this by itself!” she cursed. “I’m going out to forage for food plants.”

“There’s red wren berries in the jars you took from my house.” he told her. “You’re brave not to say so, but they’re too heavy to carry for any long distance, and I can see that the straps of the pack have been hurting your shoulders. So we should eat those soon.”

“Ah. Good thinking.” she nodded as she retrieved the clay jars from her pack.

“Here. You have to break the tops open real careful like this, then there’s wax underneath, then the berries in thin syrup.” he instructed as he demonstrated.

“Ooooh!” she went, then grinned as she closed her eyes and inhaled the scent. “That smells good enough to make up for the jerky!”

“Yeah. Tuck a bite of jerky in each cheek, then eat the berries real slow. By the time we’re done a jar of these the jerky will be soft, and mostly taste like the berries.” he instructed, then demonstrated.

Later, as they were chewing the meat, he asked around his mouthful; “So, what did you do to your people to make them declare you a renegade?”

She held up a finger as she swallowed half a mouthful of juice, then told him; “Nothing, I volunteered for it. It’s a political technicality. The People Of Life aren’t at war with Taldria, so if one of our citizens kills a bunch of Taldrians, that person becomes a criminal to both nations. But since I renounced my citizenship and got my people to declare me a renegade, they don’t have to do anything about it when I kill Taldrians. And my people think the entire situation is just delightful. They like nothing better than knowing that elves are killing Taldrians, and they are mightily amused that I’m doing so.”

“Ah. That’s very funny.” he nodded, but he didn’t laugh, and barely smiled. “I imagine for you to be out killing Taldrians by yourself, they must have done something to your family that wasn’t that different from what they did to mine.”

“Not hardly.” she said with a shake of her head. She paused for so long that he thought she would say no more on the subject, and when she spoke, every word was tinged with bitter hatred. “If something like that had happened, I might have succeeded in convincing my people to declare war on Taldria. But the Taldrians know that, so do the Bhians, and neither side wants to fight us, so the soldiers of both sides were under strict orders to not cross the border into our lands and to not harm any of us.”

She paused again, for most of a minute, then suddenly continued. “You have to understand; most of our people who are weakest in wizard power live in isolated hamlets near the border. There’s no law that says it must be so, it just works out that way. The weak don’t want to be reminded of their weakness by being around the powerful. The powerful don’t want to be made uncomfortable about the weakness of the weak. The border is where the power field is weakest, so no one else wants the land, and the weak power field makes the weak even weaker. Having weak wizards on the border decreases the hatred felt for us by the humans who live close to the other side of the border, since we’re more like them, and so it helps prevent border clashes and squabbles. They see us doing ‘honest work’ with our hands, and that’s okay, but if they see us doing our work with magic when they can’t, they resent it.

“Most of the nations of northern Debevin are covered with low mountains and patchy mixed forest, just like here, so there’s not very many places that are good for holding a really huge battle. But it so happened that over a year ago both Bhia and Taldria were ready for a really huge battle. Both sides felt that they couldn’t avoid it, and both sides thought they would win it.

“Taldria had about thirty thousand soldiers, and about half of them were mounted on trained war horses.

“Bhia had about twenty-three thousand soldiers, about a third of them mounted on horses, and about half their horses were trained as war horses. But what Taldria initially didn’t know was that Bhia had bought about ten thousand war-trained bison from the plains herders of the southern empires. A bison weighs at least double what a war horse weighs, and they’re far better suited for battle, both in their temperament and in their physical build, since they have thick, sharp horns, huge shoulders, and very thick skulls. They could not have been better designed for charging into enemies, they love nothing better than doing so, and the Bhians thought they would make their side invincible.

“Anyway, the only place in the region where the armies were that was suitable for such a battle was in a huge and beautiful meadow where the three borders of Bhia, Taldria, and The People Of Life all meet. About a quarter of that meadow was on the lands of The People Of Life. That land, that quarter of the meadow, is owned by my family.

“All my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, my great-aunts and great-uncles, all my older cousins, my older brother, all of the adults of my family, went to the commander of the Bhians under a flag of truce as the armies were setting up their camps, and then they went to the commander of the Taldrians, and they tried to convince both sides to avoid the battle, or to at least hold it elsewhere, since the meadow was a beautiful and wonderful shared resource that was vital to the local economies of the nearby areas of all three nations. But human commanders care nothing for wonder or beauty or economies, only for victories, and so my family were refused.

“So, my family pooled all of their meager wizard power, and they cast a huge glowing blue stripe on the ground along our border, and they warned both commanders of humans that if their armies attacked on our side of the line it would be an act of war against The People Of Life. To ensure that the humans would not be tempted to do so anyway, all of the adults of my family stood in a line on our side of the stripe, near the center of the meadow.

“The Bhians knew they could not hide their ten thousand war bison until the moment of the charge, but they thought they had kept up the deception long enough that the Taldrians could do nothing about it. Due to the war training the bison had, even fire or illusions of dragons would not dissuade them. Of course the Taldrian scouts detected the bison two days before the battle, and reported the development to their superiors.

“The kings on both sides had a few Royal Wizards that they put with their armies, though of dubious skill compared to those of my people, but none of them were experienced Battle Wizards. It is certain from what happened that none on the Taldrian side at least were experienced at working with bison, or even with horses, but some among them must have been skilled at storing power, for otherwise they could not have had more than the tiniest fraction of the power they needed for what they did.

“The battle began an hour after dawn. I was watching with the rest of the children of my family, far away in the forest, using a Seeing Stone that projected an illusion of what was seen by our family’s leader, my great-grandfather Ve…” She stopped mid-syllable and swallowed, then continued with even more hatred in her voice than before.