prince’s face. When this kind of temper swept over him all of his underlings except Baldruk Dinmaker left him alone. The other ogres drifted away, and the prince of Suderhold stood alone with his dwarven adviser in the village center, watching with vague displeasure while his minions went about sacking and destroying.
“Search among the fallen! Find me one who still lives!” the ogre prince called impulsively. “I would question a prisoner.”
As if he had been waiting for just that suggestion, one of the ogres gave a shout as he stooped to enter a hut. Cursing, he backed away and plucked a harpoon out of his thigh. Fortunately, the weapon had been thrust weakly, barely puncturing his skin. With an indignant snort the ogre bent double and reached into the small abode. A moment later he rose with a squirming, pathetic figure held in his arms. The prisoner was an old man, and when the warrior brought him to Grimwar and set him down the fellow collapsed weakly to the ground.
“An old human, Majesty,” reported the raider proudly. “ ’Was hiding in that little hut-legs don’t work.”
The poor cripple tried to crawl away from Grimwar, but the younger ogre kicked him around so that the wretch could only stare upward piteously at the prince. Grimwar knew that he made an impressive, even awesome, sight to a human. He puffed out his massive chest, feeling the solid weight of the golden breastplate, allowing the dazzling metal to reflect pale sunlight into the human’s eyes.
“Have you seen any elves here?” demanded the prince.
For a moment the man looked blank, then scowled and shook his head. “Who ever heard of an elf in Icereach?” he demanded.
The ogre who had captured the man cuffed him across the head, a blow that knocked him prone. “Be silent when you answer the prince!” he roared.
Grimwar suppressed a sigh, but didn’t point out the illogic of his underling’s command. Instead, he waited for the man to push himself back to a sitting position. The prince couldn’t help being impressed by the fellow’s spirit- even after such a blow, the human glared with defiance. Though he was an old man, he still had a warrior’s glint in his eye.
“You know nothing of any elves?”
The man’s laugh was dry and humorless. “If you mean, ‘have I ever in my life seen an elf?’ I can tell you ‘no.’ Nor have I heard of any elf in this part of the world-they live far across the sea to the north, as any fool would know.”
The prince held up his hand before his raider could land another blow as punishment for the man’s insolence.
“Tell me about precious stones, then. Why are you people so poor? There have been but a few coins, buckles, and the like among all your wretched villages! Why, do you have so little care for things like gold?”
“Gold? Do I look like I have any need of gold?” The man contemptuously cast his hands over himself, and the prince took note of his ragged leather clothing, the lack of any ornamentation. He didn’t even have a belt buckle-his pants were supported by a belt of frayed rope, tied in a knot at his waist.
“No, for gold you must seek the Highlanders. Talk to their king-he will tell you of gold mines, and then, undoubtedly, he will kill you!”
Grimwar turned away. The first answer pleased him. The second did not. He nodded at Baldruk, who was already holding Snik at the ready. The prince stalked toward the beach, the prisoner already forgotten. Moments later the dwarf, huffing into a jog, caught up with him.
“Where did the damned clouds go?” snorted Baldruk, using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun he hated so much.
This was something the ogre prince had never learned to understand: How could someone hate the sun? He himself pined for a mere glimpse of it during the span of winter, three to four months of frigid night that always seemed to last longer than the whole rest of the year combined. When he was outside, under the open sky, Grimwar resented every shred of cloud that blocked the precious brightness. This dwarf, born in the distant underground realm he called Thorbardin, was forever griping and shading himself.
“Again we hear of this Highlander king,” mused the prince. “Perhaps it is true that the humans in the mountains know of more gold mines.”
“Indeed, Sire. They would be worth a campaign in a future year.”
“Yes. Perhaps we will commence that next spring. And for now, there is no sign of any elf. That is good news.”
“You are still worried about the prophecy made by the high priestess, your wife, aren’t you?” guessed Baldruk.
“Do not discount the wisdom and the warnings of Gonnas the Strong,” Grimwar warned. Especially as interpreted by the stern high priestess Stariz ber Bane, wife of the crown prince, he added to himself.
“I would never imply disrespect to the god of your ancestors,” the dwarf said hastily, “but perhaps the warning refers to a threat that has already been neutralized.”
“My wife did not think so,” Grimwar noted. With a little shiver of nervousness he pictured her in full ceremonial regalia. Stariz ber Bane was a forbidding woman physically, as large as the prince himself at fully four hundred pounds and seven feet of height, his equal in short-tempered stubbornness. When she wore her obsidian mask with its tusked, bestial visage, when she was surrounded by smoke and incense, her appearance was as frightening as anything Grimwar had ever seen. As high priestess of the ancient ogre god, Gonnas the Strong, who was also known as the Willful One, she was prone to casting stones and working auguries, announcing various predictions from a fierce and vengeful deity.
Furthermore, these divinations had a way of proving surprisingly accurate. It had been Stariz who predicted that Grimwar’s father, the king, would banish his first wife, the Elder Queen, to distant Dracoheim. And she had seen that he would then, quickly, take a beautiful young mate in her place. These events, as Grimwar knew only too well, had come to pass. He asked himself silently, why did that young wife have to be Thraid Dimmarkull?
However, it was a recent prophecy that had been on his mind this summer.
“ ‘Beware the Elven Messenger,’ my wife told me, ‘for he brings your doom to Icereach.’ I would mock her faith, and mine, if I took her warning lightly.”
“Of course,” the dwarf agreed unctuously. “But look, Sire, the tide has turned. Shall we put to sea?”
The king nodded, still struggling with a vague discontent. He looked at
In his mind he saw Highlanders and elves, gold and more humans, and war.
4
She held the harpoon against the ground and remained utterly silent, completely still. Her quarry, a sleek, fat gulf seal, was sunning itself on a flat rock above the lapping surf, an instant’s wiggle away from deep water. Moreen knew that she would get one cast, and success or failure would determine whether sixty people had a substantial meal tonight, or-once again-would have to make do with a few greens plucked from the banks of the coastal streams and whatever shellfish and mussels they could scrape off the flat beach.
What would they do in the winter when the Sturmfrost descended upon them and survival out of doors became all but impossible? That question, had come to dominate her thoughts, but she roughly pushed her fears aside. Later she would try to find an answer for the future. Right now, she had to worry about tonight’s dinner.
With deliberate motions she advanced her right hand and the harpoon, then the left hand, then each knee in turn, crawling closer to her prey. Abruptly the seal lifted its head, dark eyes alert, one seeming to fix itself on the human woman who was still fifty feet away, too far away for an effective cast. Moreen heard barking from up the beach, other seals out of sight behind the rock, squabbling and complaining.
