Chapter 5

Part 2

“Both sides charged the other, the bison against the largest Taldrian armored war horses, with all the rest on both sides charging right behind them. The Taldrian wizards spent all their power on their counter to the bison. They had spent the entire night locating the closest three thousand of the largest great northern wildcats by magic, and they Translocated them out of the surrounding forests into a line in front of the charging bison. They knew that large wildcats are natural enemies to bison and they thought the line of wildcats would turn the bison. It might even have worked, if they had done it much sooner. But it took them far longer than they thought it would. The two lines were only fifty meters apart, charging at full speed, with the thousands charging behind them, when the cats appeared. There was no way for anyone or anything to turn around, and you must know what great northern wildcats are like.”

“As heavy as three to five average men, and gray with black tufted ears.” he nodded.

“Yes, and they had the biggest ones. And in that situation they panicked but had no easy escape, so each one became an almost unstoppable agent of death that killed everyone within reach. They jumped up on top of the charging lines of animals to avoid being crushed, and started killing the riders just as the two lines clashed. Everything became chaos, far more chaotic than the chaos it would have become anyway. The bison riders all lost control of their bison. The horsemen lost control of their horses. All the animals that tried to escape ran for the nearest open ground. Our land. And almost every adult in my family was trampled to death.”

They were silent for a moment, then he simply said; “Wow.”

When he finished eating he started checking the contents of the cache; inspecting the food, clothes, bows, arrows, spears, lances, tools, and torches, then turned to her.

“Listen, my mother and my sister and me all used this size of bow and these arrows, but my father used this bigger bow and these bigger arrows. Neither or us can draw his bow, so I’m thinking I might be able to make each of his arrows into two for you. If I can it’ll be a lot less work than making your arrows from scratch. Can I see your arrow?”

She handed it over, and he inspected it by look and feel, then compared it to his father’s arrows. “Yours is cracked, but I can fix it. Will it matter if the ones I make you are thicker like this, and about a finger’s width shorter?.

She shook her head. “They’ll have a bit less range but they’ll hit harder. I’ll have to practice with them to get the arc right, but that’s okay. I’ll take what I can get.”

“Good.” he nodded as he gathered tools and materials. “That saves me making one extra cut per two of your arrows, and shaving down the thickness would have taken a long time.”

With that he sat down and leaned back against the cave wall, and started work.

After he’d made fourteen arrows he asked; “So why do you hate Taldrians more than Bhians?”

She glared at him a moment before she answered. “Taldria started the war. To be exact; Vork the Third, King of Taldria, started the war. It was completely his fault.”

“How do you know?” he asked without looking away from his work.

“After the disaster that killed my family, my people were considering declaring war on both Taldria and Bhia, and they investigated the entire affair thoroughly. No effort was spared, and we used wizards who are specialists in truth-seeking and investigating. But the truth was not hard to find, and half the humans in the northern kingdoms knew it already.

“Sure, in order to justify his depravity Vork fabricated some offense against his honor that was supposedly committed by the King of Bhia, but everyone that was less isolated than you knew it was nothing but crap.

“King Vork is a gambling addict. He spends most of his days down in Bojoston, the capital of The Empire of Thon, in huge and incredibly lavish gambling resorts. He had drained his treasury, then taxed his people until he had bled them dry, in order to fund his habit. The owners of the resorts are very astute, they investigate their best customers, and his status as the king of Taldria carries very little weight in the Empire of Thon.

“When the resorts would no longer extend him credit because they knew he had exhausted all of his legal sources of funds, he came home and conducted a surprise maximum-speed war of pillage and looting against Bhia, simply because he judged them to be the easiest target. He paid off his military commanders with about a tenth of the loot, and allowed his soldiers to commit any offense against the Bhians. Soon they were raping and torturing everywhere they went, which prevented any of them from complaining that they were being forced to take part in a criminal campaign of injustice. Which they were, since any refusal would be considered disobeying orders; a military crime or treason, and be punishable by death.

“Initially, the Bhians were almost helpless. They were as prepared as any for a conventional war for territory, but not for this high speed war of theft and rape. The Taldrians made no attempt to capture or hold territory until they were forced to do so in order to prevent themselves from being attacked from the rear. They simply went from place to place as fast as they could and looted them, and avoided all contact with the Bhian armies for as long as they could.

“Three days after his war in Bhia began, Vork was already back in Bojoston, gambling away the proceeds. By the time the Bhians had recovered from the shock and surprise of his attack and began to counter-attack effectively, Vork had already looted a third of Bhia, and though this was an absolutely astounding fortune by most standards, he lost it as fast as he gained it.

“Taldria and Bhia battled each other to standstill, culminating in The Battle of Three Borders, as the minstrels are calling the debacle that killed my family. They continued to skirmish for the last year, but every Bhian in the eastern half of their country has been evacuated to the west with all their valuables, and the battle line hasn’t moved for four months.

“With no more easy loot, and facing a nation that hates them with a viciousness that will be legendary for centuries, the Taldrian commanders finally convinced their liege to accept terms for peace about a week ago.

“The Bhians don’t want the peace either, they want vengeance. But their stores are exhausted and spring is already half over, and they know that if they can’t farm all of their lands between now and the beginning of winter, they’ll be unable to feed their evacuees, and they’ll have mass starvation and civil unrest.

“But I don’t care about that. For me the war is not over. My people’s investigation determined that my family were killed by accident since no one ordered the stampede onto our land or intended it to happen, and because of that my people will not declare war for the sake of vengeance for two dozen powerless border dwellers. And I cannot blame them, since that war would be sure to cause the death of an even greater number of my people, even though we would win the war easily. The loss of a few hundred lives might be considered a small price for winning a war against two nations, but it’s still hundreds of dead elves, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

“The few remaining adults of my family who had escaped being trampled to death demanded that ten thousand hectares of territory each from both Bhia and Taldria should be added to the territory of The People Of Life and to the holdings owned by my family as restitution, including the entirety of the meadow that the battle was fought upon, (ruined though it is), and we received it. As far as my nation is concerned, the matter is settled.

“But not for me. Not for me.”

“Huh. How many Taldrians have you killed?”

“One thousand, six hundred and fourteen, as closely as I can count.”

“Really? You’ve pretty much said that you’re not a mighty wizard, so how could you have possibly killed that many?”

Chapter 6

Part 2

She gave him an evil smile. “I poisoned almost all of them in the last few days. I couldn’t kill more than forty-three over most of the last year, but then the war ended and they stopped guarding their food supplies as they headed home. Actually they stopped guarding anything except their loot for a while, but after they started screaming and dying by the hundreds every day they started guarding things and posting sentries again. Now they’ve taken to traveling in squads at their own pace and choice of route so they don’t have to breath the dust of a marching army. That’s letting me pick them off a little easier, until this morning when I ran out of arrows again.

“My people are glad to re-supply me, as long as I don’t let any Taldrians see me coming or going from my nation. And I can make sure no Taldrians see me doing anything if I want to. I’m extremely stealthy, and I may not have much wizard power and even less skill at most spells, but I can do the Unseen spell as well as any wizard alive. And I have a talent for making the most of a very weak Movement.”

“Really? Would you show me?”

“Not now, I won’t waste the power. I’ll show you tomorrow morning when we kill the Taldrians. They’re sure to send a platoon of twenty-four after us, since we let those two live today. If only one had lived he’d have lied about it and said they were attacked by superior forces, but not two. So they’ll send enough to make sure they get us, since they’ll consider us an easy mission, whereas if they thought they were facing a dozen elves they might have let the deaths of two soldiers slide.”

She considered a moment, then asked him; “Do you really think those traps will kill all twenty-four of them?”

He shook his head. “No, unless we get lucky. As my father always said; strange things always happen in fights. But there is a pretty good chance that all the survivors will be badly injured.”

“Ah. Is there a high place we can go where we can watch when they get there, but they can’t reach quickly if they have able-bodied survivors?”

“Sure. There’s a peak only about two hundred meters from there, but we’ll have to hike over two hours to get to the top, and they’d have to do the same to get to us, as well as either tracking us or knowing the way. Unless of course they have some very expert cliff climbers who survive the traps and have all their gear with them, then they could reach it in thirty minutes, but if they do that we’ll just drop rocks on them while they’re climbing, and there’ll be nothing they can do about it.”

“Good.”

They sat silently for a while, except for the quiet sounds of his fletching, then he spoke again.

“You know, I’m surprised that your people let you go out to kill all the Taldrians by yourself, considering your age and your lack of wizard power.”

“I just didn’t want anyone else with me.” she shrugged. “Many would have come if I asked, and a few offered to, but I refused them. I’m old enough to have the right to do this my own way, especially considering what happened to my family.”

“Huh. You know, it’s going to take a long time to kill all the Taldrian soldiers, let alone all the humans.”

“I know, but I’m an elf. I have the time.”

“Huh. So you’re going to kill every human alive. You know, my soul may be dead, but yours isn’t exactly normal.”

She stared at him until he met her piercing gaze, then she fiercely declared; “No, it’s not. My soul is not normal. It’s bent and broken and sick and twisted. I wish it was dead. As I said, you’re lucky yours is, because that’s a lot better than what I’ve got. I wish I was dead, but I want to kill Vork The Third and all his sadistic brutes a lot more than I want to die.”

He nodded, and nothing more was said.

Four hours later he built a tiny fire, made a crude stew from the rest of the soldiers’ trail rations and some dried vegetables and spices from the cache, and they ate again.

When they slept they did it sitting and leaning back against the cave wall, so they only dozed lightly and woke often.

PART 3

Well before the rising of the sun she gave him a light shake and said; “Time to get ready and go.”

He just nodded, and rose. They ate the leftover stew, cold.

After they’d eaten he told her; “We might as well leave everything here except what we need for the next few hours. Bows, arrows, your knife, one short sword with a scabbard, one pack with two meals and one water skin. There’s good drinking water in streams along the way.”

She nodded, gathered the ashes and charcoal from the fire of the night before in a square of cloth, and tucked it into a pocket.

He had her go first while he carefully erased their tracks from the cave to the path, then he led the way back down toward the road for about eight minutes, to a barely visible game trail that branched off the path.

“Make sure we don’t leave any tracks on this trail for the next ten minutes or so, if you can.” he instructed.

“I can.” she nodded, and they made their way forward more slowly and carefully.

After they’d been hiking for almost an hour she asked him; “Did you dream last night?”

He replied without turning back to her. “Yes. I saw everything that happened the night before. I saw my family being killed again, except it was like it wasn’t happening to me. I was just watching, and I watched myself in it like he was someone else. And there were no feelings to it, no emotions. Just watching something happen, like watching any normal day.”

“Huh.” she said as she nodded. “You’ll probably dream it every night. Still, you’re so lucky. Every night I see my Great-grandfather’s view of my family getting trampled, and I feel it all again as I felt it that day. It only takes a minute, so if I even nod off for two minutes I see it. Sometimes I see it a dozen times a night.”

He didn’t reply for a few paces, then said; “You’re right. I’m very lucky.”

She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or sincere.

Finally they reached their lookout, and he took out his sword to point with it. “Okay, there’s the path down there. There’s the traps, there’s the rock pile.”

“All right.” she nodded as she doffed her mostly-empty pack and emptied it out on the ground. “If they’re coming they’ll be there soon. I want you to look exactly as you did yesterday when you killed that soldier. It was very sinister when you did that, and if the two who got away see you looking the same as you did then it’ll put some fear into them, which can spread to the rest of them. But don’t show yourself until after they’ve set off the traps.

“If there are any survivors, give them a few seconds to collect their wits, then yell your best insults at them in Taldrian until you have their attention. Try to do it in a Bhian accent if you can, and wave your sword around, I saved a bit of the berry juice to help make it look bloody. It’s not exactly the same red, but it’ll still help put some fear into them. After you have their attention, drop you sword, grab your bow, and shoot them.”