Douglas Niles - Winterheim

He was surprised again when her eyes abruptly swam with tears. Strongwind waited for her to regain her composure.

“I don’t want to make you cry,” he said finally. “I just got here. I don’t understand this place, not at all, but I thought that I understood Highlanders, and the Arktos as well. I would expect them to be working against their captors!”

When she looked at him, her eyes were dry and her tone level but serious. “It’s the queen!” she said. “She has ways of knowing when someone is planning trouble. There was a man, Redd Dearman, who tried to incite a little resistance a few years back. He was discreet about it and careful-but they came for him in the night. He perished on the altar at Autumnblight, but not before the queen made an example of him that every slave in Winterheim would remember. Even the children-the little ones-were forced to come and watch!”

“I would think that’s all the more reason to revolt,” Strongwind said. “How can people live under such tyranny and cruelty?”

“We make do,” Tildy said, looking at him earnestly. “There are some who would make trouble-like Black Mike, who works in the royal kitchen. I have heard of him, and that means others have, too. It will only be a matter of time before the queen’s attention falls upon him. More’s the pity.”

“Who is this Black Mike? How is he making trouble?” The Highlander king asked, trying to disguise the eagerness in his voice.

“Quietly, so far,” Tildy said. “I shouldn’t even tell you-but he is trying to recruit slaves, men and women for a secret purpose. I don’t know what size group he has formed, but I know that the danger to him and to many others is real.” She took Strongwind’s brawny forearms in her small hands. “Tell me that you’ll stay away, that you won’t give the queen any excuse to single you out.”

“Hmmpf, I’ve always been good at taking care of myself-”

“Until you got captured and enslaved!” she retorted pointedly.

He stiffened. “I have no regrets about that. I made a sacrifice to help a friend, the woman I still mourn, who made an even greater sacrifice. If this is to be my fate, I can only hope to meet it with the same courage that she met her own.”

“I’m sorry,” Tildy said quickly. “At least heed my words enough to be careful-please!”

Strongwind Whalebone nodded. “I will not do anything rash,” he promised. “Nor will I endanger others, but I do intend to keep my eyes open.”

She nodded seriously, then dumped some soap and water over his head, scrubbing fiercely. She surprised him by turning and shouting toward the door of the bathing room.

“Hey, Barkstone!” Tildy called, so loudly that the king winced.

“What is it, beautiful?” asked a man, sticking his head in the door. His accent was familiar. He was of the Highlander clans near the king’s own fortress of Guilderglow. Strongwind could tell that, though he couldn’t tell much more because soap was dripping down over his eyes.

“Blondie here doesn’t think I know anything about the lads, he doesn’t. Told me so himself!” Tildy was indignant again. “Thought maybe you could tell him about us in the Moongarden, that time?”

“Ah, Tildy-those memories will last my lifetime and keep me warm though I live through a thousand winters, but it wouldn’t be very gentlemanly for me to speak about them, now would it?”

“I tell you, he doesn’t believe me!” declared the woman.

“Who is he?” asked Barkstone, coming forward.

“Someone just came in on the galley, as fresh as you were yourself nine years ago, when the ogres plucked you off the coast.”

“Sorry to hear that, my friend,” said the slave man. “We’ve a life here, but it’s a pale imitation o’ freedom.”

“I agree,” Strongwind replied, brushing aside the soap and looking up. He was startled as the man, whom he didn’t recognize, took a step backward then dropped to one knee and bowed.

“Your Majesty!” cried Barkstone. “I canna believe that they took you!”

“Majesty?” Tildy Trew said crossly. “Nobody tells me anything.” She glared at Strongwind, and he merely shrugged modestly. “Who are you anyway?”

“This is Strongwind Whalebone, Lord of Guilderglow and king of all the Highlands!” declared Barkstone.

“No kidding!” Tildy threw another bucket of water over him. “I’d better clean him up real good,” she said, her eyes still twinkling.

Four hundred and twelve humans, one elf, and one gully dwarf gathered in the courtyard of Brackenrock. Gray clouds hung low over the fortress, and by the time they were ready to march a steady drizzle had begun to fall. It was hardly the greatest omen for the start of a perilous expedition, and the weather-combined with about four hundred ripping hangovers-cast a pall of gloom over the war party’s departure.

The gates of the fortress had not been repaired since the destructive attack earlier that summer, and the warriors filed through the gaping entrance in no particular order. They carried everything they would need: food, weapons, shelter, a nip or two of warqat for the cold nights. Many more Arktos lined the towers and walls of the fortress, watching in silence as the war party marched away. By the time they had gone a mile, Moreen looked back to see that the citadel had already vanished into the mist and rain.

The soggy weather continued, with drizzle more or less constant over the next ten days. Nevertheless, the war party made good time. Even old Dinekki, who of course had insisted on coming, hobbled along at a brisk pace. Mouse led the way across the Whitemoor, following the same route he had taken two months earlier when he had ambushed the raiding party led by the ogre Broadnose. The long file marched past the ruin of one hamlet after another, the skeletal remains of small huts, no more than a dozen or two for each village, standing as a stark reminder of ogre cruelty. As each little ruin faded into the mist and rain behind them, the Arktos and Highlanders felt anew the hatred of their ancestral foes and the desire for vengeance that had sent them on this mission in the first place.

Even Slyce seemed grim as they passed these sights, the gully dwarf apparently affected more deeply by this devastation than he had been by the accident that had claimed the lives of his comrade and his captain in the submersible boat. Moreen noticed the rotund little fellow sniffled sadly as they passed the muddy remnant of a village, and he looked down and saw the broken pieces of a child’s stick-and-feather doll.

The terrain of the moors undulated gently, the landscape utterly treeless except for a few cedar groves in the most sheltered valleys. Mouse led the band along these streams for the most part, though when swampy marshes blocked the lowlands he took to the rocky ridges. Their bearing remained almost due south, the direction determined by Dinekki’s instinct and confirmed by a nautical compass Kerrick had made from a bit of lodestone.

The months of the midnight sun were drawing to a close-now four or five hours of twilight marked the middle of the night, though even in the cloudy, gray mist it never got truly dark. The short period of dusk seemed to suit the marchers well. They stopped only long enough to stretch out on the driest ground they could find, each person covered by his fur cloak to keep off as much of the rain as possible. Some sipped warqat; others brewed small pots of bitter tea. After a few hours of sleep they rose, ate sparingly from the dried fish, kelp, and trail-bread provisions each warrior carried along, and resumed their march.

Moreen usually fell into step somewhere in the middle of the pack, holding her head up and slogging along among the rest of the Arktos and Highlanders. Most of them were men, and that included of the Highlanders, but several dozen women of the Arktos tribes had eagerly joined the band. Bruni was here of course, as well as several other female veterans of the long march to Brackenrock eight years earlier. Even slender Feathertail, who had been a mere girl then, now carried a bundle of spears lashed to her back and wore the heavy leather tunic that was the traditional-and only-battle armor of her coastal dwelling people.