Outcast

Chapter Fifteen

Isan watched as his troops collapsed. High on the ridge above the town, he couldn’t see exactly what had happened. There were only two masses of green that seethed and opened to swallow his hapless orcs as they charged towards the village.

This certainly hadn’t been the rousing success he had anticipated. Rather than crumbling in defeat, the elves had effectively decimated his troops. Only a handful of orcs had made it through the trees and into the town itself, and these had been so bewildered and lost that it had been short work to dispatch them. Those that hadn’t been mown down by Mazine’s conjurings had fled screaming into the forest.

A pair of orcs burst through the sea of green and into the clearing before the town. They charged towards a pair of elves, one of them dressed entirely in black. Isan could see that the orcs had fallen and the elves remained standing. Peering more closely, Isan decided the figure in black could only be Larien. The man snarled unhappily as he watched the outcast walk away from the corpses with his golden-haired companion.

Almost nothing remained of Isan’s army. Reluctant to witness his final defeat and fearing Giodono’s wrath, the man fled into the forest.

---

The last of the orcs escaped the ring of trees and disappeared into the forest. To her right, Tay could see Larien and Trishta standing side by side amidst a pile of orcs. For a moment, they seemed to have forgotten their pasts and were speaking softly.

Already, elves were dragging orcs into large piles. Mazine had laid his charms to rest; Tay could see patches in the grass where clumps hadn’t returned.

An elf set fire to one of the piles of corpses as Tay began to make her way towards Larien and Trishta. The stench of burning orc filled her nose and mouth, making her gag. Thick black smoke piled into the air as more pyres were lit. Eyes streaming and coughing violently, Tay staggered to Trishta’s side.

Her arrival made elf and outcast look up with a start. Larien blanched as he realized several elves were staring at him from across the clearing. Trishta’s hand appeared at his elbow, steering him towards a sheltered alley and waking him from his reveries. Tay followed wordlessly.

The alley was deserted. Trishta pulled Larien and Tay close to him, until their shoulders almost touched. Larien glanced behind them nervously, checking instinctively to make sure no one had followed them.

“You can’t stay here,” Trishta whispered. “Even if they don’t blame you for everything that’s happened, they won’t want you here.”

Larien nodded slowly. “I know. We should get going. Should we go the way you wanted us to go before?”

Trishta thought for a moment. “I suppose so. It would be best if you left now; everyone will be inside because of the smoke. You should stop somewhere to get food, though.”

“What about you?”

Trishta turned and walked down the alley, towards an open door. “I’ll stay here. It won’t make a difference for me if you stay or leave. Come here.”

Light inside of the building was dim, but Trishta walked confidently to the cabinet at the far end of the room. From inside, he pulled out a haversack and three cloaks. One had a gaping hole running from the collar down to the hem, but the other two he handed to Larien and Tay. The haversack he filled with supplies from one of the cupboards lining the walls. The outcast looked at it doubtfully.

“Are you sure we should be taking these?”

Trishta smiled. “They belong to me. No one will notice if they’re gone.” He waved the two of them towards the door. “You need to get going before the smoke clears.”

Tay had followed Larien back to the mouth of the alley before she realized that Trishta hadn’t come with them. She opened her mouth to say something, but Larien shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Then he peered around the corner of the building and pointed towards the thickest smoke. The clearing had been deserted as soon as all of the pyres had been lit. The smoke was so thick that Tay had trouble keeping her breath as they ran between the piles and towards the trees.

They had almost reached the clearing when Tay tripped over a cadaver that lay prostrate in a shallow hollow. As she scrambled to her feet, she caught sight of the corpse staring up at her from the trampled grass. It was Vardel’s face, gazing blankly at her through a mask of blood. Tay recoiled, repelled by the gruesome scene before her. Before she could consider it further, Larien’s hand appeared at her elbow and jerked her off into the trees.

---

The sun had begun to set when they reached a river cutting a swath through the trees. A steep bank dropped from where they stood down to the water’s edge. Tay could see where a shallow cave had been carved out of the stone by floodwaters. Treading carefully, so that they left only light footprints in the sand, she and Larien made their way down to the niche.

Inside was cool and dark. Tay peered anxiously into the back of the cave to make sure no animals lived there, but all she saw the sandy floor extending to the back of the cave. Despite the moisture from the river that dampened the stone, Larien dropped his haversack to the ground and sank down to lean his back against the wall. Beyond him, the last rays of light faded and disappeared to nothing.

Tay wrapped herself in the cloak Trishta had given her and came to sit beside the outcast. She shivered slightly as a cool breeze blew in from over the water. Larien looked at her.

“We won’t be able to build a fire tonight. Someone might see us.”

Tay nodded in silent agreement and pulled the cloak more tightly around her shoulders. They sat without speaking until the stars winked out at them from the dark sky from between the boughs of the trees. Larien shifted towards Tay until she could see his profile, dark against the moonlight outside.

“I’m not going to be able to bring you to Culbar anymore. I have to go….home.” He lingered over the last word as if he weren’t used to using it. “I’m sorry I got you mixed up in all of this; it would have been better if I had dropped you off someplace instead of trying to help.” He reached up to rub the bridge of his nose, then looked out the cave opening.

Tay wasn’t sure how to reply. She had come to the conclusion earlier that she had absolutely no plans at all, but she wasn’t about to turn around and return to Draug.

“That’s all right. If you’ll just point me towards Nimnen in the morning, I’ll make my way there myself.”

Larien turned to stare at her in disbelief. “Why are you so desperate to get away from Draug?”

Tay could feel the color rising in her cheeks. “Because they won’t stand up to Giodono. They hide in their houses and let his orcs steal their sheep and trample their fields, and then they say that they’re leading good lives. They’re too stubborn to leave and find better homes because that would be giving up their land, even though they’ve already given everything else up. And the land isn’t even worth it; the soil is thin and the crops they grow are tasteless.”

She pulled knees up to her chest and covered them with the cloak’s end to keep her legs warm. Beside her, Larien chuckled softly.

“And you expect to find something different in Culbar?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

He shook his head. “It has been the same everywhere ever since Giodono gained power. No one wants to stand up to him and lose.” He paused for a moment, then said softly, “They always lose.”

There was another long silence as Tay considered what he had just said. She found it hard to believe that everyone had ceded to Gidiono. If Valuyial were completely under his control, then there would have been no reason for the attack she had witnessed on Yevenna earlier that day.

Something else was nagging at the back of her mind as well. She was sure the body she had seen as they had left Yevenna had been that of the boy accompanying Isan when she and Larien had been captured. But if Vardel had been in Yevenna during the battle, then that meant that he must have been working for Giodono. Tay knew she had been kidnapped because she was with Larien; there was nothing she could have done to earn Giodono’s interest.

Larien’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “You know, if you really want to….”

“What?” she replied as he hesitated.

“There is a resistance, but I don’t think you’ll want to be a part of it.” He hesitated as if he weren’t sure he should be speaking.

“Why not?”

“It’s run entirely by outcasts – we’re the only ones who don’t have anywhere to hide from Giodono.” He laughed mirthlessly. “We’re also the only ones who don’t have anything to lose. But there aren’t really enough of us; help is always welcome. I don’t know if you want to come along, but that’s where I’ll be heading.”

Tay pulled her knees up beneath her chin and stared intently at the cave wall opposite her. She was alone – too much had happened since she left Draug for her to think about where she was going until then. Sitting next to Larien in the cave, she realized that she didn’t know anyone in Culbar and had no idea how to get there. Even if she managed to find her way south, she didn’t know what she would do once she arrived. And if what Larien said was true, then Culbar wouldn’t be any different from Draug.

There was also Larien’s offer to consider. Tay had no reason to go with him; she had no reason to believe anything he had told her. But it was tempting to go with him to Moredhel, where there was at least a slim chance that she might find what she was looking for. And if Larien really were part of an underground resistance, then it would explain why Giodono had had them kidnapped.

Larien stretched out with his head on his haversack and his back to Tay. “You think about that and tell me in the morning.”

Tay watched him lay there, a dark patch against the lighter stone of the cave floor. Suddenly, she made up her mind. “I’ll come with you.”

Larien twisted to look at her over his shoulder. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

He lay back down. “All right.”

Tay curled up around her haversack, surprised at how easy that had been. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that this had better not have been a mistake.