Douglas Niles - The Messenger

“Forward! Carry the pass!” cried the king, seizing his wife’s arm and pulling her out of the way of the avalanche-which meant lunging almost onto the blades of the furiously resisting humans in the narrow pass. Two of his warriors flanked him, cutting down a Highlander in the king’s path, gaining for Grimwar as small space to stand.

They made it by inches as the slab plummeted behind. He turned back just in time to see dozens of ogres vanish in the first strike. The avalanche spread, as more of the snow cover broke free and toppled toward them, until it seemed as though the whole mountain was falling. White fury engulfed the slope, a cascade of powder and ice, burying everything in its path.

The wave of white swept the ogres away as though they were toys. Some of the warriors tried to flee ahead of the catastrophe, tripping and cartwheeling clumsily down the slope. They had little chance. The snow swept down crushingly. So powerful was the avalanche that it tore rocks from the mountainside, mixing these missiles into the mass of snow and ice.

Grimwar watched in horror, until the ogre beside him fell with a dull groan. He turned back to the battle, the Barkon Sword in his hands, to face an infuriated human woman.

“This is for my father, you bastard!” she cried, jabbing a sword with remarkable dexterity, a slashing blow that drew blood from the king’s leg. He chopped back, but his blow was unbalanced, hacking only the trampled snow in the pass.

Another human woman, this one almost as big as an ogre, charged in with a huge hammer raised over her head. One of the king’s warrior’s intercepted her, buying Grimwar precious seconds before falling with a crushed skull. On his other side, Stariz screamed and tumbled against the king, her face gashed by a sword cut, blood spilling through her mouth and onto the snow.

Everywhere the humans were closing in. A trio of Highlanders cut down the last of Grimwar’s ogre warriors, leaving only the king and queen remaining in the pass. The long slope of churned snow spilled downward behind them, and vengeful men and women closed in from the front.

Fear propelled Grimwar Bane into the only choice he could make. Seizing his wife by the arm, he pulled her with him, falling back from the pass, slipping and tumbling down the steep mountainside. With Stariz clinging in terror to him, he skidded and plunged and rolled down from the pass toward the bottom of the mountain. After many minutes-it seemed like hours! — both of them splashed into the icy water. In wild panic Grimwar kicked and grasped, feeling the weight of his gold as a cursed anchor. Somehow his hands dug into the snowbank, and finally he was able to crawl out of the cove, shivering and soaked. Stariz gasped and cursed at his side. She was still bleeding grotesquely, and he saw that half of her nose had been hacked off.

All around his warriors were gasping and thrashing in the cove, many of them slipping beneath the water. The avalanche had been relentless, sweeping away the road, smashing through the ogre ranks. Half of the army was gone, wiped out in the first instant of frosty assault.

Above them now was only a clean, steep mountainside. Around the king were the remains of a proud army, ogres drowning in the water, or clawing their way onto shore. The cove was spotted with floating bodies.

“We must attack, get revenge!” hissed the queen, leaning over Grimwar and staring into his face. Her eyes, staring from that mask of blood, were wild and terrifying. “They have the Axe of Gonnas! Lead your ogres up there again!”

“No!” Grimwar roared, with a look so fierce that, for once, even Stariz shrank back. “We will go back to Winterheim and wait for this accursed snow to melt. I told you, this is no time for a campaign!”

“The Willful One demands, requires vengeance!”

“I promise you this: Summer will come, and the snow will melt. I will gather the rest of my army from Winterheim, bring reinforcements from Glacierheim and Dracoheim, and demand troops from all of my tribute lords.” Grimwar was making a grand plan already, a design for blood and victory. The humans had thwarted him, but they had not defeated-they would never defeat-him!

And the elf-that elf -would taste his vengeance!

“As Gonnas himself is my witness,” Grimwar told Stariz, “we will return and take our revenge.”

Dimly Kerrick heard the cheers from the gatehouse of Brackenrock. Moreen embraced him, and he was touched to see tears in her eyes. She turned to the Highlander king, meeting his abashed look icily.

“You’re don’t know how lucky you are. Killing him would have made me hate you forever. Our tribe owes our very survival to him.”

“I was doubly lucky, it turns out,” said the Highlander king with unusual humility. “His survival is the only thing that saved me when I came out on the snowfield below.” He coughed awkwardly, looking down at the ground, then back into Moreen’s eyes.

“My lady chieftain,” he said bluntly. “I have acted wrongly in ways that, as you have correctly pointed out, are more suited to ogrekind than man. I would humbly and sincerely beg your forgiveness.”

Moreen’s dark eyes flashed, gleamed with a note of triumph. Kerrick watched her, wondering if she would unleash the crooked half-smile that he found so intriguing. Instead, her face remained tight, pensive, and Strongwind eventually lowered his eyes.

“We won!” Little Mouse said, running up to them excitedly. “I took a spear from a tusker! And I killed two of them.…” His voice trailed off, and he looked at the notch, still bloody and covered with scattered bodies, some from their side. “It wasn’t quite the adventure I thought it would be,” he admitted. Then his eyes widened in dismay. “Not Tildey?” he groaned, his voice cracking.

“Yes,” said Bruni, kneeling beside her tribemate. She closed Tildey’s eyes with a gentle touch of her big hand, as the big woman’s tears mingled with Mouse’s and Moreen’s.

“We suffered much today, losses we will never replace,” said the chiefwoman sadly.

Garta and several other Arktos came from the fortress to join them at the pass. The matronly woman, her handless arm draped awkwardly around Feathertail, looked at Moreen with tears of relief and grief in her eyes. “The Highlanders carried me up the rope,” she said. “It’s true, Moreen-you brought us here, to safety! You did it!” Emotion overcoming her, she began to cry softly. Feathertail offered her a small rag to dry her tears.

“Now, don’t be carrying on like that!” snapped Dinekki, hobbling up to join them. “We’ve got plenty of work to do before that place is liveable! And I swear, it’s going to take years to get the fish stink out of these stones.”

“Welcome to Brackenrock,” Moreen said, stepping back and gesturing Kerrick and Strongwind toward the tall towers, the still-yawning gateway where people were still busy gathering tusker bodies, and cleaning up rubble.

“It is warm here, and the sun is returning.” She took the elf’s hands and looked into his face. “Your coming was a message from the goddess to us. You brought us across the strait and here, at the end of the battle, started the greatest avalanche in the history of Icereach. I welcome your friendship and will do anything I can to repay you.”

Kerrick flushed, suddenly ashamed of his base motives. She didn’t know he had sailed on a quest for gold. Right now he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. He nodded gratefully.

“I have a lot I want to say to you,” Moreen added, before looking over at Strongwind Whalebone sternly. “You, too.”

“I will listen,” promised the king of the Highlanders, “but know that my people have paid in blood for this place, even as have yours.”