direction-passing the corpse of an elf of the Elian clan, who lay bristling with crude human arrows, his ears lopped off.
Alea had no doubt the elf had brought down the game, then been attacked by the humans afterward. She’d tracked the downed prey through the forest to this camp before gathering her hunting companions for the raid. Most of the elves around her had seen fewer than a hundred summers. The elders were discussing and mourning the dead Elian. While the elders talked, Alea’s hunters would do something about this outrage!
But a good hunter makes sure of his prey… and they had to be sure of these reeking humans. As the buck was brought into camp, the humans all shouted and waved, jabbering at each other in their mongrel tongue. So much like real speech, thought Alea, but all twisted, like the humans themselves. The buck’s slayers made big, sweeping hand signs, indicating the bulk of the stag that had escaped them. The others laughed and hooted, outlining with gestures their own rival escaped beasts, of even more impossibly large proportions.
Alea growled deep in her throat just as the wolves did. These human vermin poached on elven lands! Their clumsy butcherings were beginning to drive the game away, they didn’t even have the sense to move on and let the land recover from their depredations. Alea growled more loudly and almost rose to signal the attack, but Lord Iliphar’s admonitions held her in place. Were she wrong, she’d be little better than these rightly despised savages.
The door of the largest hut in the camp scraped open, and out strode the petty lord. Apparently he’d been waiting for the last hunters to return before making his own entrance. This one had leathers of a finer cut than most and was bedecked with polished gemstones on leather thongs. He was flanked by two equally tough-looking women. Consorts? Bodyguards? Both?
On one of the lordling’s thongs hung two pale slivers of meat, just starting to wrinkle and yellow with age. The ears of an elf.
Alea gave the signal to prepare for battle.
The hairy human lord strode to the fire pit at the center of the gathered humans and jabbered at them. They made assenting sounds. He jabbered at them some more. They grunted another assent. He pointed in Alea’s direction, and the elf froze for a moment. Did they know of her presence? But then the lordling marked off the other cardinal points, and Alea realized what he was doing.
He was staking his claim, like a cooshee marking its territory: all this land was his. A fire began to burn within her, rising up into her chest. How dare the savages claim elven hunting lands!
She was about to give the signal to attack when the human lord grunted and waved, and the two muscular bodyguard wives went to the low barricaded hut. One stood outside while the other entered and then dragged out some sort of prisoner.
At first Alea thought the prisoner was an elf, for he was thin and pale compared to the barbarians. But on closer examination, it was clear the prisoner was another human, tall and lean, with a ratty reddish beard. Half his face was puffy with a monstrous bruise, and he hobbled forward on an equally swollen ankle. His wrists were crossed before him and secured together with a single iron cuff. He wore loose, tattered trousers and a shirt of similar stuff all worn and filthy but still of finer cut than the garb of the humans of the camp. He didn’t look much like his captors.
The women dragged the frail human forward and forced him to his knees in front of the hairy lord. His lordship puffed out his chest and smiled. He was missing his front teeth, upper and lower.
His lordship barked a question in the mangled human language. Alea did not catch the wispy human’s response, but it was apparently insufficient. The lord cuffed him, hard, on the bruised side of his face. The captive’s eye on that side was swollen shut, and he did not see the blow coming. He went sprawling backward for his lack of awareness.
The crowd of watching humans shouted its approval. One of the muscular consorts dragged the thin human back to the barbarian lord’s feet. Again the question was jabbered. Again the damaged human said something. Again the local lord cuffed him, he sprawled, and the crowd hooted.
This apparently passed for human entertainment, and the crowd looked as if it could enjoy it all night. The local lord boasted of his accomplishments, pointed in all directions, and pulled the elven ears on the thong at his side, dancing them in front of the other human. And again he asked the question.
Alea raised her hand, and in the semicircle concealed around the camp other elves raised theirs as well, preparing to leap forward. Safety wedges were carefully unclipped from crossbows, and wolves were slipped silently from their harnesses.
The predictability of humans did not disappoint them. Once more the lord slapped his frail prisoner down and the crowd hooted their approval. Alea dropped her hand and charged forward.
It took more than a moment for the humans to react, to realize that the shouts they heard were not their own. By that time, the elves were fully free of the brambles. The wolves bounded in front of their masters but were beaten to the foe by elven crossbow quarrels, which hummed into the crowd of humans from both sides of the clearing. More than half a dozen human warriors toppled, clutching at transfixed stomachs and necks, and the beaten ground tasted barbarian blood.
Then the wolves struck as most of the humans were still grabbing for their blades. Alea had managed to gather only a dozen, but they were well trained, as responsive as an elven hound in the court of Myth Drannor. They knew to go for an arm holding a weapon, or if no weapon was obvious, bite at the crotch. Nine or ten humans crumpled under their assault as the rest scrambled to stand and fight.
Alea led the main charge, about twenty elves in all, with those who’d fired crossbows dropping their weapons and joining the assault in a second wave. The elves ran through the confusion of wolf-savaged warriors into the heart of the shouting, hurrying humans. Any chance of the hairy folk of the camp forming a battle line, if they even knew what one was, was gone in the space of a few breaths as the battle became a series of single combats.
As straight and unswerving as a leaping arrow, Alea made for the human lordling. He was the one most responsible for what these stinking folk did, the one who wore the ears of an elf of the Elian clan. He would pay the price for the crimes of his people.
The lordling was ready for her. He’d used the time bought in blood by his dying comrades to pull his own weapon from his scabbard. It was a heavy black sword, little more than a cold iron bar with a single rough edge. He snarled and jabbered something in barbarian-speak. Alea’s only reply was to draw back her lips in a grin that promised swift death.
The human lunged, and Alea dodged nimbly out of the way, her own narrow blade a mere ribbon of steel. As she glided past, she brought her blade up smoothly and was rewarded with the wet, tearing sound of leather and flesh parting. She danced back to face her foe and saw that the human was bleeding along his sword arm.
Bright rage flared in the human’s eyes, and he snarled, but then calmed visibly and went into a crouch. This was no battle-mad beast that would charge conveniently onto her sword. Instead, the human held his blade out, its point tracing a small circle in the air, waiting for her to come to him.
She took a step forward, and he lunged again. This time she brought her steel up against the human’s iron blade. The cold-wrought iron grated roughly against her own smooth-edged sword, and she caught the lordling’s blade against the guards of her own weapon. Straining, she turned it aside, stripping the weapon from her opponent’s hand. As it clattered to the ground, she danced back, and then darted in, blade sweeping up to gut the man from belly to throat.
Something large and furry thundered into her ribs from the right, and Alea was suddenly falling to the ground herself, rolling clear as she fell. The large furry thing was one of the female bodyguards, who loomed large above her-and then disappeared under the leap of another fur-covered streak, this time a wolf. The barbarian woman toppled backward with a scream that ended in a bloody gurgle.
Then Alea was on her feet again, shaking her head to clear her vision. The lordling had disappeared in the dust and confusion of the fray. Was he hunting for another weapon, or had he decided the surrounding woods would be a safer place for him than an encampment overrun by elves?
The frail human captive with the ragged red beard was stumbling up to her, holding his manacled wrists forward. In elvish, the rail-thin mortal said politely, “Unlock these, if you please.”
The words hit Alea with the force of a blow. She hadn’t expected any of these ground apes to know the True Tongue, and this one spoke it with only the barest hint of an accent. Who was he? And if she let him go, would he help or flee into the woods?
Across the dusty clearing, she spotted the hairy human lordling.
