Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

“Welcome to our village,” Porthios said formally. “We greet you in peace, as our cousins of the forest.”

“Welcome to our forest,” replied the leading Kagonesti, who was a strapping warrior, even taller than the lanky Porthios. “We accept your greetings, as our cousins from beyond the woodlands.”

Porthios couldn’t help but notice the wild elf’s reference to “our” forest. He knew that there were tribes of the Kagonesti throughout Qualinesti, though he had thought them to be pretty well subjugated by the civilized elves. Obviously here was a band that thought of its existence in more independent terms.

“We did not want to startle you, so we allowed your sentries to spy us as we passed them at the summit of the trail,” the leading Kagonesti went on. “The call of the crane was not unskilled, coming as it did from the throat of one raised in the city.”

Porthios flushed. Daringflight, the scout who had hooted the warning, was widely known as one of the most skilled elves at imitating animal sounds. Still, he did not want to offend this visitor, and so he held his tongue.

“I am Dallatar, chieftain of the White Osprey Kagonesti,” the wild elf intoned.

“I am called Porthios Solostaran. Once I was Speaker of all Qualinesti. Now I am chieftain of the Westshore Elves.” He made up the name on the spot, conscious that he didn’t want his band to seem less civilized than these forest-dwelling primitives.

“We have seen that you fight the city elves,” Dallatar noted. “It is curious to see you attack those that we see as the same clan.”

“It is curious to us as well,” Porthios said, unwilling to go into a full explanation. He told himself that this savage would never understand the intricacies of interkingdom politics, though in fact he realized that he was suddenly ashamed of the fractiousness that had driven him to take up the outlaw’s life in the forest.

“We have made ourselves happy here,” he added, feeling even as he spoke that the explanation sounded a little lame.

Dallatar nodded sagely, as if Porthios’s statement was the most logical thing in the world. When next the wild elf spoke, it was to reveal a startling change of topic. “You should know that the city elves are marching from Qualinost to come after you. They have a force of six hundred swords.”

“That’s news.” Though he had expected something like this, Porthios was in fact surprised to hear that the Thalas-Enthia had already put a plan into motion. “Have you seen this force? Is it close?”

“No. They will not depart the city for several days yet. But training is under way, under the captainship of one called Palthainon.”

“General Palthainon... I might have known,” the outlaw leader declared in disgust. Palthainon’s reputation for brutality and bullying had been established, and well earned, during the exile on Ergoth. Now he seemed like a logical choice to send after a group of bandits in the western forests.

Only then did another, very obvious, question occur to him. He asked Dallatar bluntly. “You say they won’t leave for days, yet you know their timetable, even the name of their captain. What’s the source of your intelligence?”

“We Kagonesti have brothers held as slaves in the city of gold. There are many ways we can learn of events in Qualinost without the Qualinesti suspecting that news is traveling back and forth.”

Porthios had to admit to the logic of this statement. He had spent many years in the city and had never suspected that the wild elves who worked as house slaves for some of the more arrogant nobles had maintained any kind of contact with their brethren in the forests. Still, he was now grateful for the fact and said so.

The wild elf chieftain shrugged. “We have heard of you, of course... the one who was once Speaker of the Sun. You were always fair and generous with our people. That is different from the manner of many noble elves.”

Porthios was immediately glad that he had always made a practice of treating the Kagonesti as his equals. He knew what Dallatar meant about the arrogance, even cruelty, of some city elf slave owners, though doubtless they, like he, had never attributed such resourcefulness to the clan that had always been casually dismissed as a bunch of painted barbarians.

“Will you join us in the humble sustenance of our camp?” asked the outlaw who was once a king. “As we are neighbors in the woodlands, I would like to think that so we will also be friends.”

“That is our wish as well,” agreed the tribal chief. At a signal of his hand, many women of his tribe came forward, carrying two freshly killed does, baskets of fish, and satchels full of fruits and berries of varieties that the Qualinesti had only rarely seen. “The woods are a full larder at this time of year, and we have brought gifts of food to share with you.”

The shade was thickening in the gorge as the smells of sizzling deer and roasting fish wafted through the air. Porthios and Dallatar sat beside each other around the large central fire pit. Alhana, with Silvanoshei in his tai-thall , was at her husband’s side, and a beautiful Kagonesti maid, her black hair streaked with startling splashes of silver, joined the wild elf chief.

“This is my bride, Willowfawn,” boasted Dallatar proudly. “She has been mine for more than one hundred winters.”

“And together we have made two children,” the woman said frankly. “It was our son who slayed the largest doe, using only his knife.”

“A mighty hunter is Iydahar,” agreed the chief easily.

“And who is your other child?” Alhana asked.

Porthios noticed a darkness come into the chief’s eyes. “She was taken from us as a young girl during the years on Ergoth. She was sold to a Qualinesti lord. Now she works as a slave in his house.”

Porthios and Alhana exchanged a look of guilt and remorse. They had both grown up around wild elf slaves, but somehow they had never considered the origins of those unwilling workers. Now Porthios thought it seemed unutterably barbaric to remove young children from their parents’ family merely because their tribe was judged to lack civilization.

“And I see that you, too, have a child,” said Willowfawn.

“Our first—not a full month old yet,” Alhana said with a smile. Her eyes twinkled. “Of course, Porthios has only been ‘mine’ for thirty winters.”

If Dallatar thought the juxtaposition of the possessive was remarkable, and undoubtedly he did, he made an exceptional pretense of masking his surprise. “I wish the best of health and happiness to your child,” he said solemnly.

Alhana’s hands were suddenly tight around Porthios’s arm. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you very much.”

Bellaclaw came to rest in the clearing before Porthios and his outlaws. Samar dismounted, dropping easily to the soft loam of the ground.

“Palthainon is a fool,” snapped the warrior-mage, shaking his head in disbelief. “He has his elves marching four abreast, one company following right on the heels of the next. They’re making more noise than a drunken dwarf in a chime shop.”

“What about the warriors in his companies? Was Dallatar’s information correct?” Porthios wondered.

“As far as I could tell. It doesn’t look like more than one in ten of them is a veteran of any kind of campaign. Maybe that’s why he’s holding them in such a tight formation—he’s afraid the novices will run away if he’s not looking over their shoulder every step of the way.”

“So he marches them like swine going to the butcher...” The outlaw leader was still amazed. Every elf who’d ever held a sword knew that a loose formation, flexible and supple, was the best marching order for thick woodlands. That way, if part of a column was attacked, the rest of the elves could circle around and strike the attackers in the flanks. But a dense, short formation such as Samar had just described meant that it was quite possible for the entire force to wander into an ambush.