Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (81 page)

“When you are done there, having learned what you must learn, you will return to the real world.”

She paused again.

“At this point, you will
have
the powers, and you
will
be able, when necessary, to call them forth. But, once again, you will not have any conscious awareness of anything you have learned there, or that you have even been there. To repeat, you will still not know that you have these powers. You will have to discover this all on your own as you make your way around on your travels.”

“And how will I do that?”

“That depends on how your life unfolds, the circumstances in which you find yourself, and how you react to those circumstances. Some things will be obvious, easy. You will learn, depending on the things that happen to you, that you are different than the other Humans, Elves, and Dwarves of Ravenwild.”

“What kinds of powers are we talking about?”

“Good question, but one I cannot answer. The powers that you will come to possess must be discovered by you, and you alone. And you will.”

There was another long silence.

“Do you have any more questions?” asked the Dukkar.

“Yes. I do. You said that if I chose to not do the six remaining tests I would be returned to the life I had before I ever came here, from wherever it was that I came. What was that life? Who was I? Where did I come from? Twice now you have called me by a name I don’t recognize. How do I know the life I left is
worth
going back to?”

“More good questions, but I can only answer one. You had a blessed life before you came here, one to which you would be only too happy to return.

“Are there any more questions?”

Doreen thought for a minute. “No.”

“Do you accept the last of the conditions,” replied the Dukkar. “You are willing to leave here, and the place to which you must travel if you prevail in the six remaining challenges I will present to you, with no knowledge of ever having been to either?”

“What
will
I remember?”

“You will have all of the memories you had when you first entered the Northland.”

Doreen took a deep breath. “I accept the terms.”

“All three?”

“Yes.”

“You must be certain.”

“Now how can I possibly be certain?” Doreen snapped. “The only thing I
am
absolutely sure of is that Humans and Dwarves and Elves are being slaughtered like food-animals every day, and pretty soon there will be none left to kill. And I won’t
stand by
and let that happen. I won’t. Not for a minute.”

The Dukkar seemed to smile, if it is possible for whatever happened on that face to be called a smile.

“Very well,” she said. “We begin.”

“We need to get you to a place called The Gate,” Jacqueline heard, as Brutus talked to her telepathically, in the way of the Wolves. “You will be safe there.”

They had been loping along for over an hour now, and Jacqueline was amazed that she was not in the least winded. “I’m a Wolf!” she thought. “Cinnamon, can you hear me?” she thought.

“I can, dear,” she answered.

“Is this cool or what? Hey, you’re a Wolf now too. Isn’t it wicked?”

“Yes, I suppose it is. I will say that my bones don’t hurt like they used to. I rather like that.”

“Do you think we should do it?” she asked. “Go to this place named ‘The Gate’, I mean.”

“Of course you should,” interrupted Brutus. “You are, after all, a Human by birth, and you will be with your own kind there. I have no doubt that getting you there gives you the best chance of rejoining your family. There are troops there who can help you to make this happen.”

Roly wanted to interrupt and remind Brutus that everyone at The Gate had been starving for months now, held hostage in their own fortress by the Trolls that had them trapped and flanked to the west, but he held back his thoughts for two reasons. First, Brutus was a very smart Wolf and would not choose this course of action if he did not think it represented Jacqueline’s best chance at surviving. She was clearly both resourceful and resilient, but life in the Agden Forest was no picnic and no one understood this better than the pack leader. Second, Brutus was exactly that, and without a compelling reason, you didn’t challenge orders from the pack leader. So on they ran.

“I feel like I could run forever,” thought Jacqueline. “This is unbelievable.”

They were within a few hours of the southern border of Ravenwild at around sundown. They had run all day, never once stopping to drink, or do their business. Jacqueline smelled the wind, raising her nose up high. “Cinnamon, do you smell that?” she thought.

“I do, dear,” she thought. “Foul. Very foul. What could it be?”

“Troll,” answered Brutus in a normal voice. “From the smell of it, they were here a few hours ago.
Hannibal
, Dillon
, go on up ahead. When you find them, come back straight away.”

Off they ran at about twice the speed at which they had been traveling, but from the smoothness of their gait Jacqueline figured they were capable of a lot more speed than that. The remaining eight of them walked on at a leisurely pace, coming upon a stream that ran straight across the trail they were on. Jacqueline dropped to all fours and drank from it without so much as a thought as to what she was doing. Never had water tasted this good to her.

She looked at Cinnamon, who was staring at something up in the trees.

“Roly,” she thought.

“Yes, Cinnamon?”

She gestured with a flip of her head up towards the top of the tree. “I can catch that. Not enough for a meal for all of us, but certainly enough for a snack. Do I have time?”

Jacqueline’s gaze followed Cinnamon’s. High up in the treetops was another of the large birds similar to the one that they had traded in on their safety.

“I suppose we can wait for you. Go ahead. Don’t fall.”

Cinnamon let out a small snort of disgust and raced up the tree. In a couple of minutes, the giant bird crashed to the ground in front of them. Less than a minute after that, Cinnamon was back standing with them, licking her fur. This time she was entirely uninjured.

“Cinnamon,” thought Jacqueline, “How did you ever do that? That was awesome.”

“Half-Cat, half-Wolf,” Cinnamon thought back, “interesting blend. I could definitely get used to this.”

“Have at it guys,” said Cinnamon. “Lunch is on me.”

The snack took only a minute as they divided up the large bird. Jacqueline was impressed at how fair they were in the way they divided it up into equal portions. These Wolves were the epitome of a team, always looking out for each other.

“Jacqueline, Cinnamon,” said Roly. “Eat.” He passed each a choice piece of breast, being careful to not drop them in the dirt. “We won’t have time to make a fire, and it wouldn’t be safe to make one anyway with Trolls about. Sorry.”

Jacqueline sniffed the piece of meat. To her surprise it didn’t smell raw at all. In fact, it smelled great. She had at it with pleasure. “Cinnamon,” she thought.

“Yes dear.”

“I never would have thought
that
possible; eating raw meat and having it taste
good.”

“It
is
good, isn’t it?” thought Cinnamon. “I’m glad it strikes your fancy.”

“Time for a conference,” said Brutus. “All of us,” he nodded at the five Wolves.

“Know, and
you
need to know as well,” he nodded to Jacqueline and Cinnamon, “that it is very strange that there are Trolls this far south of the border. They have
never
ventured this far in. Not even when they came into our forest to flank the troops at The Gate.”

“Excuse me,” said Jacqueline. “First of all, I have no idea what ‘flanked them’ means. And secondly, could you please explain what ‘The Gate’ actually is?”

“Of course, child. It is said that in times past, the Trolls, Gnomes, and Ravenwilders all got along well enough. They had some issues, mostly over border disputes in the north, but for the most part they lived in peace, even trading with each other.

“The Gate was an actual gate that was used to halt the advancing wagons that were transporting goods, so they could monitor the items passing from one land to the other. Doing inventory counts and things like that. But at some point, things deteriorated, and because this stretch of land now contained a road, one of the first well-developed roads ever constructed, leading directly into Ravenwild from Slova to the east, they built a huge fort there to protect it from invasion. The road is narrow there, with the fort to the north and the Agden River to the south, and more importantly, a little to the west it narrows more, to a footpath, able to accommodate no more than one wagon at a time. Hence it is easily defended by whoever sits on either side of the narrows. So, last summer, the Trolls sent a massive force south and into the forest, into
our
forest, to put enough troops to the west in order to trap the Humans inside the fort and starve them out. We, of course, killed most of them, but enough made it through so that the mission was judged to be a success … ”

“Yeah, we ate good then,” Roly interjected, rubbing his tummy. “Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm.” The other four Wolves nodded in agreement. Brutus gave him a harsh look, and Roly said, “Sorry.”

“At any rate, for months now nobody has gotten in, and nobody has gotten out. 'Flanked' means they have them blocked in.”

“But why haven’t the troops
at
the fort attacked them from
within
the fort?” asked Cinnamon.

“Good question, Cinnamon. Before the arrival of the flanking force, most of the troops were withdrawn from The Gate and sent north, undoubtedly because they needed them to defend their homeland. Logic would dictate that there are not enough left to attack.”

“So they’re all starving?” asked Jacqueline.

“That, I cannot say. It would depend on the amount of food they had inside when the troops moved out, and the amount of those remaining inside the fort.”

“I get it,” said Jacqueline. “Why can’t they all just get along? They
were
getting along.”

“Another good question,” said Brutus. “Nobody knows, and of course it happened a long time ago. But I would bet you a good meal that the Troll leader at the time got it into his head that Trolls are in some way the ‘superior race’. This notion, this belief that one race is somehow superior to the others, has been a plague on Inam'Ra for all time.”

“It’s the same where we come from,” said Jacqueline. “Animals are treated like they are inferior. I hate it.”

Hannibal and Dillon raced in at full gallop, skidding to a stop. Brutus waited for them to catch their breath, then asked, “What do you know?”

Dillon spoke in between pants, “The Trolls … have reinforced their numbers … to the west … Snuck right by us, they did. Looks like they have about twice as many as before. They have also amassed a large strike force to the east. I would guess that they are planning an all out assault on the fortress itself.”

“Food!” said Roly.

Brutus again shot him a hard look. Again Roly lowered his head and thought, “Sorry.”

“Do you think they have a chance?” asked Brutus.

“Hard to say,” answered Hannibal. “They have never managed it before, but we know that the numbers at The Gate are depleted, and if they are all too weak to fight … ” He trailed off, the unstated conclusion obvious to all.

“We can’t let that happen!” cried Jacqueline. “We can’t let them murder all those people! We have to
do
something.”

“What can we possibly do?” asked Brutus. “We are ten. They are hundreds.”

“Thousands,” said Dillon.

There was a prolonged silence.

“How many more of us are there?” asked Cinnamon in a quiet voice.

“Wait a minute, Brutus,” said Stefen. “This is not our fight. This is between Ravenwild and Slova. I say we sit by, let them slaughter each other, and feast on the remains until our bellies burst.”

Jacqueline marched right up to him and put her face in his. “That,” she said, “is
evil
. How could you think such a thought? You should be ashamed of yourself. Ashamed!”