Douglas Niles: The Messenger

Grimwar turned away. The first answer pleased him. The second did not. He nodded at Baldruk, who was already holding Snik at the ready. The prince stalked toward the beach, the prisoner already forgotten. Moments later the dwarf, huffing into a jog, caught up with him.

“Where did the damned clouds go?” snorted Baldruk, using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun he hated so much.

This was something the ogre prince had never learned to understand: How could someone hate the sun? He himself pined for a mere glimpse of it during the span of winter, three to four months of frigid night that always seemed to last longer than the whole rest of the year combined. When he was outside, under the open sky, Grimwar resented every shred of cloud that blocked the precious brightness. This dwarf, born in the distant underground realm he called Thorbardin, was forever griping and shading himself.

“Again we hear of this Highlander king,” mused the prince. “Perhaps it is true that the humans in the mountains know of more gold mines.”

“Indeed, Sire. They would be worth a campaign in a future year.”

“Yes. Perhaps we will commence that next spring. And for now, there is no sign of any elf. That is good news.”

“You are still worried about the prophecy made by the high priestess, your wife, aren’t you?” guessed Baldruk.

“Do not discount the wisdom and the warnings of Gonnas the Strong,” Grimwar warned. Especially as interpreted by the stern high priestess Stariz ber Bane, wife of the crown prince, he added to himself.

“I would never imply disrespect to the god of your ancestors,” the dwarf said hastily, “but perhaps the warning refers to a threat that has already been neutralized.”

“My wife did not think so,” Grimwar noted. With a little shiver of nervousness he pictured her in full ceremonial regalia. Stariz ber Bane was a forbidding woman physically, as large as the prince himself at fully four hundred pounds and seven feet of height, his equal in short-tempered stubbornness. When she wore her obsidian mask with its tusked, bestial visage, when she was surrounded by smoke and incense, her appearance was as frightening as anything Grimwar had ever seen. As high priestess of the ancient ogre god, Gonnas the Strong, who was also known as the Willful One, she was prone to casting stones and working auguries, announcing various predictions from a fierce and vengeful deity.

Furthermore, these divinations had a way of proving surprisingly accurate. It had been Stariz who predicted that Grimwar’s father, the king, would banish his first wife, the Elder Queen, to distant Dracoheim. And she had seen that he would then, quickly, take a beautiful young mate in her place. These events, as Grimwar knew only too well, had come to pass. He asked himself silently, why did that young wife have to be Thraid Dimmarkull?

However, it was a recent prophecy that had been on his mind this summer.

“ ‘Beware the Elven Messenger,’ my wife told me, ‘for he brings your doom to Icereach.’ I would mock her faith, and mine, if I took her warning lightly.”

“Of course,” the dwarf agreed unctuously. “But look, Sire, the tide has turned. Shall we put to sea?”

The king nodded, still struggling with a vague discontent. He looked at Goldwing , knowing that the great ship’s hold was crammed with slaves-hundreds of humans they would take back to Glacierheim, many of whom had been imprisoned below decks for months. Their numbers made this the most profitable campaign against humans in the memory of any ogre. Yet when he paused on the ramp leading to the galley’s deck, his eyes involuntarily shifted back to the land, and followed the rugged crest of mountainous horizon rising a dozen miles behind the beach.

In his mind he saw Highlanders and elves, gold and more humans, and war.

She held the harpoon against the ground and remained utterly silent, completely still. Her quarry, a sleek, fat gulf seal, was sunning itself on a flat rock above the lapping surf, an instant’s wiggle away from deep water. Moreen knew that she would get one cast, and success or failure would determine whether sixty people had a substantial meal tonight, or-once again-would have to make do with a few greens plucked from the banks of the coastal streams and whatever shellfish and mussels they could scrape off the flat beach.

What would they do in the winter when the Sturmfrost descended upon them and survival out of doors became all but impossible? That question, had come to dominate her thoughts, but she roughly pushed her fears aside. Later she would try to find an answer for the future. Right now, she had to worry about tonight’s dinner.

With deliberate motions she advanced her right hand and the harpoon, then the left hand, then each knee in turn, crawling closer to her prey. Abruptly the seal lifted its head, dark eyes alert, one seeming to fix itself on the human woman who was still fifty feet away, too far away for an effective cast. Moreen heard barking from up the beach, other seals out of sight behind the rock, squabbling and complaining.

Finally her intended prey laid down its head once again to bask in the warmth of the midsummer sun. The huntress resumed her cautious approach, watching the tundra before her, careful not to scrape a rock or crush a brittle willow twig. The soft wind came off the sea, safely carrying her scent away from her quarry.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, she wormed her way closer … forty, now thirty feet. The flat coastal ground was so wet that water soaked right through her leather pants, and her knees felt cold and sodden. Her neck grew stiff from holding her head upright, but her alertness paid off. She froze just in time as the seal again lifted its head. This time, when the animal settled into its drowsy repose, she was ready to act.

Gradually, she rose up to a kneeling position, until her back was straight, her throwing hand cocked. The smooth stretch of the harpoon, with its keen ivory tip floating almost weightless before her, was parallel to the ground, at the same height as her ear.

Now all of her care, all of her skill, her hunger, her desperation, came into sharp focus. The target seemed to grow before her, a warm heart pulsing beneath that black, shiny coat, and for just a moment she felt a powerful connection, almost as if the seal’s blood was flowing through her body. She made a soundless prayer to Chislev, a whisper of gratitude for this opportunity, and a plea for steadiness and true aim.

She let fly. The harpoon sailed through the air even as the animal, alerted by the sound of her throw, flipped toward the water. The ivory head pierced the wriggling body, and Moreen sprang to her feet and hauled on the thin line wrapped around her wrist, the sturdy cord attached to the barbed head of the harpoon.

The seal was gone by the time she reached the rock, but when she looked in the water she saw that her aim had been true. The animal floated, lifeless, in a murk of blood. Quickly she pulled upward, wincing as the animal’s dead weight came free from the sea.

“Eighty pounds, I’ll bet you are,” Moreen said. “Thanks be to Chislev Wilder. The Arktos will eat well tonight.”

Only then did her eyes fall on the beach exposed behind this seal’s rocky perch. She was not surprised to see dozens of seals there-the sounds of their barking had suggested as much to her already. Surprisingly, though, several of them were very close to her vantagepoint. This seal had been killed cleanly and had died without barking a warning.

Swiftly she lowered herself to the ground, out of sight of the animals. Methodically she started to coil the cord. Taking only the time to clean the head of her harpoon, she started crawling forward again.