Douglas Niles - The Messenger

Kerrick observed a massive ogre approaching, the creature’s square face with unusually small tusks locked in a scowl. With a shock he saw the straggled hair dangling from her scalp and realized this one was a female. In one hand, the ogress held a long-hafted axe that looked as though the blade was pure gold.

The elf had a feeling of dire apprehension as she looked down on him. With a sharp gesture she reached down, tore his hood away, and seized his blond hair in her sausage-sized fingers.

“It is an elf! The elf!” cried the massive ogress, hoisting him upward with a neck-twisting jerk. “My Lord King! He is here, our prisoner! The messenger of the prophecy!”

She dropped him. Another massive ogre plodded toward them, through the snow. This was a bull, tusks wrapped in gold, wearing a golden breastplate that gleamed across his chest. Around his shoulders was draped a bearskin-the only black pelt among this small army of cloaked ogres. The elf remembered Moreen’s descriptions of Grimwar Bane, who had massacred her tribe and stolen the black bear pelt of her ancestors, and wondered if this could be the same brute-though she had referred to him as a prince, and the ogress had called him “king.”

“You?” growled the monstrous creature, squinting down at Kerrick as if he could barely see him.

Any clever retort he wanted to make died in his throat as he looked upward in awe and dread. “Well, I am an elf,” he admitted.

“What happened to your ear?” demanded the king.

“It was cut … by an elven lord,” Kerrick replied. He seized on a possibly helpful explanation. “I am an outcast, an enemy of my people!”

“Should we kill him now?” the king asked the female. The pale-eyed dwarf, Baldruk Dinmaker had come up behind the king, following in the deep footsteps the ogres had plowed through the snow.

“Not yet,” said the queen, with a pensive look at Kerrick. “There is a mystery to his presence here. Now that he is in our power, I would question him.”

“It will have to wait,” declared the king. “We have the humans trapped in the cave. We found the camp of their dogs and killed most of the mutts and the guards watching over their sleds. From the tracks, though, it’s clear that a great number of them have sought shelter in this barricaded cave.”

“In that little crack?” the queen asked skeptically.

The bull ogre snorted in dry amusement. “That’s a wide cave. They’re tried to block off the entrance with a wall of ice blocks, but we’ll see how that stands up to an ogre charge.”

“Good luck, my husband,” declared the ogress. She looked back at the elf, and Kerrick wondered if she was reconsidering the bother of keeping him alive.

Abruptly she picked up the axe. Kerrick flinched as she twisted her hands in opposing directions on the haft. Abruptly blue flames flickered along the edge of the blade. She lowered the golden head of the weapon, which hissed loudly as it made contact with the snow. Steam rose all around him.

“The Axe of Gonnas,” she said grimly. “With the merest excuse, I will cut off your leg.” She turned to the king. “Go to victory, my husband. I will watch the prisoner myself.”

“Good enough,” grunted the king. He drew a long, snuffling breath and shouted to the great, dark column of his warriors. “Pick up the pace, my ogres! We attack!”

“They’re massing out there,” Lars Redbeard said, as Moreen and Strongwind joined the panicked humans crowded into the great cavern. “There are at least a hundred of them.”

“There’s five hundred or more,” Little Mouse declared loudly. The youth was standing in a dark niche off to the side of the main cavern, six or eight feet above the floor. “A column that goes for a mile, along the far shore of the cove. Some of them went and pulled Kerrick Fallabrine’s boat over to the shore.” He glared at Strongwind Whalebone as he made this last statement.

“What witchcraft is that, lad?” demanded Strongwind. “Do you have a crystal ball?”

“No,” Mouse said. “I have a spyhole up here. The snow has melted in the last few days, and you can see the whole cove, even out to the sea, from up there.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Moreen declared resolutely, though Mouse’s spyhole was news to her. “Mouse is the best scout in our tribe.”

“Five hundred ogres? Or more?” Strongwind Whalebone looked stricken.

“We have two hundred of our men posted in the entry, behind the wall built by the Arktos,” Lars hurriedly explained. “I don’t think it would be wise to move any more in there. We wouldn’t have room to maneuver.”

“No, you’re right,” agreed Strongwind. He pointed. “If they charge the entrance and take the front of the cave, we’ll have to stand against them there, in the bottleneck before the main cavern. We can hold out for a while.…” His words faded. It was clear to everyone that the ogres had them in a nearly perfect trap.

“Is there any other way out of here?” he demanded, turning to Moreen.

She looked at Little Mouse, who had come down from the narrow niche to join the group on the main floor. “Mouse, you know this cave better than any of the rest of us.”

“The spyhole I told you about-one person at a time could squeeze out of it,” Mouse said. “You’d come out on a steep, snowy hillside, maybe two hundred feet above the open water of the cove. Of course, the ogres will spot it sooner or later. Even at night, you can see someone against the snow.”

“What else?” Moreen asked grimly. “Is there any other way out, is there a place we could hide?”

“Not hide,” Mouse said, “but there is one narrow way, a sort of path that climbs up through a chimney way in the back. I didn’t tell you about it before,” he said apologetically, “because it probably leads up to Brackenrock, to the room where all those tuskers sleep. I knew you’d worry about it.”

Moreen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that piece of news-a possible escape route, but one that led straight into a barracks full of walrus-men.

“It’s a tough climb, too,” the lad continued sheepishly. “There’s another reason I didn’t tell you. You’d have been really mad, and told me I could have broken my neck. I guess you’d have been right, too, but I didn’t! I’m sorry.”

“No, you did well,” Moreen said, giving him an embrace as her emotions choked off any more words. They had come all this way, and for what? For her tribe to be caught by surprise and held captive, and now trapped between an army of ogres and enemy tuskers.

“Brave lad you are,” King Strongwind acknowledged with obvious sincerity.

“What of the tuskers up there?” asked Dinekki, who had hobbled up to join the conversation. “Do they know about this cave? Or do they just ignore it?”

“Well, see, they’ve bricked up a wall to cover it it up. I could see through some gaps in the bricks, and we-well, Bruni or somebody else really strong, anyway-could knock that wall down with a good push. So no, I think they might not even know there’s a tunnel to a cave right underneath them.”

The chiefwoman turned to Strongwind Whalebone, found his blue eyes meeting hers with a look of respect. That way lay hope, at least a chance. To stand and try to hold the cave indefinitely was a recipe for disaster. Even if they fought with skill and bravery, the ogres would inevitably prevail.

“Give me two dozen of your men!” Moreen declared. “I’ll take them and some of my own warriors, and we’ll head through the cave and come around at the citadel from the back. With a small force, attacking by surprise, we’ll get the tuskers rushing out of there in a hurry! Your men can fight a rearguard action down here, hold the ogres long enough that we can get everyone up to Brackenrock.”