Kagonesti, p.21
Kagonesti, page 21
But then an eddy of wind brought the smells to him again, and he knew that this was no dream, that the death of the Silvertrout village was a nightmare more chilling, more evil, than any sleep-bound vision. He forced himself to sit, then shakily climbed to his feet and stumbled up the steps leading from the ceremonial pit.
His numbness began to give way to grief as he started to grasp that an entire village—one of the four tribes of Kagonesti—had been exterminated. Tears stung his eyes, but very swiftly anguish fell away in the face of a rising, terrible rage. Who had done this? What enemy brought killing on such a ruthless, all-encompassing scale?
His warrior’s instincts turned his eyes to the ground, and for the first time he noticed hoofprints. Horses had trampled back and forth through the village, yet so numbing had been his shock that he hadn’t noticed the plain spoor when he had first entered the Silvertrout village. Now he saw that the horses must have numbered many dozen, perhaps a hundred.
His first thought, filtered with disbelief, was that the House Elves of Silvanesti had struck this brutal blow. Yet, despite the enmity that had lingered between the two elven clans for more than three thousand years, such brutality seemed incomprehensible. The House Elves drove the Kagonesti out of their heartland, but they had never pursued them this far north. Why, now, would they come with such a killing force?
He remembered the steel arrow shaft, and he knew that this massacre had not been the work of House Elves. Again he turned his attention to the prints in the dust and rubble. Iydahoe saw that the hooves were broad, shod with heavy metal rings. Some legionnaires of Istar rode great horses, he knew. But how could a force of clumsy humans have approached so close to a Kagonesti village? Surely they would have been discovered a day’s march away, met by a deadly ambuscade that blocked them from any such attack! If the force had been huge—perhaps a thousand riders or more—they might have battled through the ambush, but they would never have found the women and children in the village when they got here! Yet, from the hundreds of corpses scattered all over the clearing, Iydahoe knew that the tribe had been taken by surprise.
Had anyone escaped? The young warrior’s eyes ranged over the wreckage as he forced himself to study the ground with all his skill. The underbrush fringing the camp had been thoroughly trampled, but the branches bent inward, toward the village. It was the attackers who had done the trampling, and they had come from all four sides. Even the grassy hillock where the Pathfinder’s hut had stood was smashed flat—it seemed as though a rank of horsemen must have ridden over it in tight formation.
A chill of panic shivered along Iydahoe’s spine at another realization. He raced among the ruined huts, toward the gentle elevation where the lone lodge had once stood. He remembered well his first visit here, seven or eight decades ago, when Washallak Pathfinder had played the Ram’s Horn on that rise. The surreal sounds had soothed Iydahoe and all the other young elves, filling them with a mystical sense of wonder. As he had grown older, the same music had blown soft breath on the coals of his warrior’s pride, keeping his heart fire banked against the coming of danger.
Now the site of the Pathfinder’s hut was a blackened splotch, flattened, burned, destroyed. The green grass had been trampled into mud, the lodge itself smashed into bits of charred kindling. A corpse, as blackened as all the others, extended half out of what had once been the doorway. No marks distinguished the pathetic remains from any other warrior in the village, but Iydahoe knew beyond doubt that this was the body of Washallak Pathfinder.
A curled piece of shell lay on the ground beside Iydahoe’s moccasin. At first he paid no attention to this blackened litter—what was one more bit of debris among a scene of ultimate destruction? The numbness returned as the Pathfinder’s death became further erosion of the foundation of the warrior’s life. Encased in that shroud of stupor, Iydahoe started to turn away, wondering where he could look to spare his eyes a vista of horror, heartbreak, and despair.
But at the last minute, some glimmer of awareness pulled him back. He looked down at the blackened shard, saw that it was not in fact a curled shell. Instead, it was a piece of something larger, something that spiraled into a circle. Here was another piece, and several tiny fragments were nearby, flattened in the print of a mighty, steel-shod hoof.
Even as he looked at the pieces, as he felt the collapse of a way of life that had lasted for more than three millennia, Iydahoe struggled against the truth. Desperately he wanted to deny that which he understood, the evidence of which could lead to no other conclusion.
The Ram’s Horn of the Kagonesti had been destroyed. Finally his despair rose through numbness, forced aside the anger that had yet to kindle into full rage. Iydahoe knelt beside the corpse of the Pathfinder, trying to gather as many of the pathetic shards as he could find, scraping through the dirt, discarding bits of bark and stone.
Finally, he lowered his head and cried.
Iydahoe ran for two days and nights, desperate to carry word to his people. He prayed that his father, Hawkan, would be there. The old shaman was the only person who might be able to explain the nightmare of the Silvertrout. Yet Hawkan had left only a fortnight before on a journey into the mountains, and the priest’s meditative sojourns often lasted for several moons. The warrior feared that his father would still be gone.
The young Kagonesti runner reached the Whitetail village shortly after dawn, staggering with fatigue as he trotted into the compound.
Kawllaph, seated at his breakfast fire, sprang to his feet in alarm when he saw the grim, ragged expression on his younger brother’s face.
“Iydahoe! What happened?” Kawllaph’s voice was unusually deep for an elf, and now the barrel-chested warrior’s words carried throughout the village.
“Has father returned?” gasped Iydahoe, vainly searching for a sign of Hawkan.
“Still gone,” Kawllaph said tersely. He took his brother’s arm. “We’ll go to the council circle—there you must speak to the warriors.”
At the edge of the ceremonial ring they were met by the village chief, Tarrapin, who had been drawn by the commotion. Tarrapin’s face was locked in an angry glare, the bear claw tattoos across his cheeks seeming to reach inward, ready to rend.
Quickly warriors gathered as Iydahoe recovered his breath, wondering how he could possibly convey the sense of disaster he felt.
He told the tale simply, starting with the smells and progressing to the scene of utter destruction. In two minutes, he had related the important details, and he knew that he could speak for two years and never communicate the true horror.
Yet his description was shocking enough to stun the gathered warriors, until Tarrapin flew into a rage. The gray-haired warrior, his face framed by the bear claw tattoo, drew his steel sword and brandished the weapon in the air. Iydahoe wondered, with the beginnings of outrage, if the chief might turn his blade against the young messenger. Stomping back and forth, shouting skyward, Tarrapin angrily declared that no Kagonesti village could be destroyed by such an attack, certainly not when the attackers were mere humans!
Iydahoe stood stoically before the elder’s rage. He wished again that Hawkan was present to hear and believe the tale—and to stand up for his son. Yet that was obviously not to be.
Instead it was Kawllaph who came to his younger brother’s aid. The warrior stood up and faced the raging Tarrapin. “Let him speak!” demanded the brave. “My brother knows what he has seen. Let him tell us!”
“I have proof. Here!” Iydahoe remembered his belt pouch and pulled forth the fragments he had gathered around the Pathfinder’s hut. “This is what is left of the Ram’s Horn and Washallak Pathfinder’s axe!”
Iydahoe produced the blackened, broken pieces of the horn, and Tarrapin grew silent. The lean, scar-faced chief sat numbly staring at the shards, turning his glittering eyes toward Iydahoe as if he still sought a way to blame the young warrior for the disaster. Iydahoe pulled another bit of proof from his pouch—the grimy head of an axe. The blade was long and thin, and a narrow spike extended from the back of the head. Though the shaft had burned away in the ruins of Washallak’s hut, Iydahoe had found the metal remains of the unique weapon that had always been the axe of the Pathfinder.
Finally, Tarrapin nodded gruffly and rose. He ordered Kaheena and Altarath, both young warriors, to carry word of the disaster to the Bluelake and Black Feather tribes. Then he ordered additional warriors to man the many watch posts located throughout the surrounding forests. Finally—and though it was still early morning—he returned to his lodge to smoke and meditate with a half dozen of the tribe’s veteran braves.
Iydahoe knelt and again gathered the fragments of horn and axe. When he stood, he saw that Kawllaph had gone to comfort Berriama. She clung to his shoulders, weeping, and Kawllaph finally had to pry her away so that he could join the warriors’ meeting with the chief.
Standing straight, Iydahoe concentrated on the banishment of any trace of emotion from his face. Acutely conscious that several of the tribe’s young females watched him from across the compound, he knew that they would never mistake him for the feckless, playful boy he had been just a few short weeks ago. But then the girls, too, seemed more serious, less carefree than they were a few minutes before. His village could never offer the serenity, the peace, that Iydahoe had known here through all the decades of his life.
Would life ever return to normal?
The girls, he saw, had gone back to tanning a rack of doeskins, perhaps sensing the harsh glare of the matron Puiquill, who squatted beside the rack and critically inspected the maidens’ work. She was a stern taskmistress, but skilled with the bone needle and gut-filament thread with which the wild elves had made their clothing since the dawn of time.
The young brave’s mind returned to the horror of Silvertrout, beginning to seethe with thoughts of the vengeance Iydahoe would someday exact against the hated legionnaires of Istar. He himself would slay, would cripple and burn, with the same ruthless—
“Will you take us fishing, Iydahoe?” asked a young boy, shyly approaching the warrior from behind. Iydahoe remembered that the youth’s name was Dallatar. “My father was going to show us the trout pools, but he has gone to speak with Tarrapin.”
Iydahoe turned, startled. How could he be expected to do anything so mundane at a time like this? Then, surprising himself, he nodded. “Gather the youngsters. Make sure that each brings his spear. I will meet you at the head of the stream trail.”
Delighted, Dallatar ran off. As Iydahoe watched, his heart suddenly pounded as Moxilli came around the great smoking lodge in the village’s center. Unlike the tanning girls, but like Iydahoe, Moxilli had recently passed the rituals of adulthood. Over the past sixty years the two of them had been children and adolescents together, though only recently had the young brave become aware of just how beautiful his youthful playmate was.
Moxilli had the long black hair of all Kagonesti, though her flowing locks seemed more iridescent, fuller, and shinier than the hair of any other tribal female. Unconsciously Iydahoe strutted proudly, his chest thrust out, his arms pumping with relaxed precision at his sides as he strode toward his hut to get his fishing spear, then went to the willow tree marking the trail head.
He was quickly joined by Bakall, a young, serious fellow who showed signs of one day becoming a patient, skillful hunter and warrior. Now he scowled toward the stream, as if willing the trout to be ready for his spear. Iydahoe sensed that Bakall would do quite well.
Within minutes, a dozen youths had gathered beside the great willow tree that marked the path down to the river. Each of the boys had a three-pronged spear, which he had carefully whittled from a maple sapling. The tines had been hardened by fire, and on the shank of each prong the boys had carved tiny barbs, designed to keep the pierced fish from wriggling off the weapon. Iydahoe did not inspect the spears, knowing that for each boy the most important lesson would come from the successful landing of a tasty dinner—or the teasing flick of tail as the trout wriggled free.
The lads had been boisterous and playful in the village, but, following Bakall’s intent example, they lapsed into stealthy silence as they followed Iydahoe. Extending into a long, single file, the boys soundlessly padded down the winding trail. Thick-boled trees rose on all sides, while the forest floor off the trail was choked with underbrush that often included hook-thorned vines and dense, tangled brambles.
A sound carried through the woods, rising from the direction of the stream—but clearly unnatural in origin. It was a metallic “clink,” or else the sound of something very hard striking a rock. Iydahoe froze, the boys doing likewise. The brave looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, and Bakall nodded back, before peering into the woods. Apparently the boy had heard the same thing.
The sound was repeated, a muffled noise that nevertheless came clearly to alert, elven ears, probably because its source was closer. In a flash, Iydahoe understood that whatever had made the noise was approaching them up this trail.
Urgently the warrior gestured for the boys to retreat back toward the village, though he didn’t look around to see if they obeyed. Instead, he crouched, watching, among the branches, knowing that the whorls of his tatoos would make his face difficult to see for anyone who might come around the next bend of the trail.
The breeze, which had been listless all morning, suddenly picked up, carrying the unmistakable scent of horses to Iydahoe’s nose. His hand tightened around his spear as the terrifying thought came: legionnaires! He stared at the trail with blazing intensity, but he saw nothing.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, he remembered the butchery worked against the Silvertrouts. Now, as he thought of the youths behind him, the girls at their tanning rack, and beautiful Moxilli, brushing her hair by the well, he almost groaned aloud.
He felt, rather than heard, the presence of Bakall close by and knew that they had to get back to the village, to carry the alarm. But an alarm of what? All he knew was that someone with horses and metallic equipment was creeping up the trail.
“Go back,” Iydahoe hissed, holding his lips a few inches from Bakall’s ear. “Tell the warriors there are horsemen coming up the stream trail. Now, go!”
Eyes wide, the young Kagonesti scrambled silently up the trail, urging the other youths before him. Iydahoe slipped off the path, ignoring the brambles that scratched his skin, and started to work his way downward, seeking a look at these intrusive horsemen. How could they have gotten so close to the village? Were all the sentries dead?
Within a few moments, he heard the sounds of hoofbeats, though the steps had a surreptitious quality—the riders were holding their steeds back in an effort at stealth. Peering from beneath a leafy fern, the Kagonesti looked down a straight stretch of trail. He saw branches moving, pushed aside by a solid presence—but it was a presence that Iydahoe couldn’t see!
Hoofprints appeared in the dust of the trail, advancing steadily closer. The warrior stared, but he saw no horse, no rider—nothing! A faint shimmering obscured the trail, as more and more puffs of dust floated upward. But how—when there was still nothing to see? Yet something was undeniably there, advancing up the trail. Iydahoe caught the unmistakable smell of horses, and he knew that he couldn’t be wrong.
But why couldn’t he see? There was only that shimmering—like a cloudy presence, an essence of something that was solid but invisible.
Iydahoe stood, bursting upward from the concealment of the bush. He heard a horse whinny in alarm, a man’s curse commanding obedience. The fishing spear seemed like a horribly flimsy weapon, but the warrior hurled it with all of his strength. The shaft flew outward, then struck something unseen and dropped to the ground.
The horse gave a shrill cry of pain, and more curses were added to the din. Iydahoe heard a sharp, powerful word cut through the chaos and, abruptly, the screening cloak was removed and a column of horses and riders blinked into sight. The lead mount had bucked off its rider, and now that skittish horse blocked the others from moving up the trail.
Second in line rode a strangely garbed man clad in long gray robes. That fellow pointed at the wild elf and shouted—“There he is! Kill him!”
Iydahoe recognized the voice, knew that this was the man who had spoken before, whose single powerful word had broken the screen of invisibility. With a shiver of apprehension, the warrior knew that he faced a wizard.
The first man struggled to remount, hampered because he had instinctively drawn his sword. Other riders pressed forward, tightly packed on the narrow trail. These Istarian legionnaires, wearing cloaks of red and breastplates of polished brass, formed a column so long that its tail was out of sight somewhere down the trail—enough soldiers to form a grave threat to the village.
Iydahoe slipped backward, rising to a crouch when he was out of sight of the trail. He raced through the underbrush toward the village. After two dozen paces he stepped back onto the trail, since the bends in the winding path would conceal him from the humans and the broad track would save him precious seconds on his race to warn the tribe.
Then sounds of violence rocked through the trees, and he knew he would be too late. Terrified screams rose from the unseen village, splitting the pastoral forest air, while hoarse shouts and the clash of steel against steel told him that there were more humans than just the party advancing up the trail behind him. Kagonesti war cries mingled with crude commands and grim shouts of triumph. Loud hoofbeats now pounded to the rear, and he knew that the horsemen had heard the sounds of battle and wasted no time as they raced to the fighting.
Iydahoe burst into the village clearing, his knife in his hand, a furious war cry shrieking from his lips. Yet his worst moments of bleak imagination could not have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes.
A line of legionnaires on foot, shields held across their chests, advanced from the forest across the village. Several braves leapt toward them, courageously attacking, but these wild elves fell quickly before the scythelike reaper of the close-packed footmen. Kawllaph, Iydahoe’s proud, capable brother, raced to the attack and then fell immediately, his head all but slashed from his torso.
