Last Stand of the Blood Land Read online

  Moving into the camp Wotan accepted a gourd on a spear from Skagen, dipping the friendship offering into the creek and raising it to his lips to drink deeply. Once he had had his fill he passed the gourd onto another warrior and so, one by one, they entered into the inner circle of the village. A large, open, circular grassy area sat amidst the teepees and all present gathered into it, tails facing out, according to their age and rank in the tribe with Wotan and Skagen at the very center. Any of the Centaurs attending could speak but few did, most recognizing that they could show their wisdom better by listening.

  Wotan was an eloquent speaker in his native tongue despite sounding like a savage in the foreign tongue of the other races. When he was younger he was angered that they did not learn to speak his language and that he had to piece theirs together through the dying words of defeated enemies or conversations with prisoners before he put them down as he did his own kind. As he aged his anger shifted to embarrassment and finally pride that he could use his mind against the tribe’s enemies, recognizing that their failure to learn his language hurt their soldiers in battle. Skagen spoke first, his curly grey hair tumbling down his white skin and onto his still strong, tan back.

  “I never thought I would see the sons of my sons grow to be bucks in this land.” His voice boomed across the tribe and out into the bright blue sky that ringed the cliffs above them.

  “We grow fewer every year but always we send you our warriors. My father could remember a time when it wasn’t so, when we raided the Dwarves and Giants, when my clan alone was enough to raid the entire land.”

  “We are united now,” said Wotan.

  “Yes, but to what purpose? You have taken the city?”

  War cries rang out in the circle and hooves stomped the rocks. The smell of the tribe reached Wotan’s nostrils and he raised his sword.

  “The Southlanders have been driven over the cliff like so many buffalo.”

  Skagen waited for the cheering to die. “But the city is not gone.”

  Wotan had no answer and so said nothing.

  “As long as the city stands they will be safe from us while we will never be safe from them, so what have you gained with the blood of my bucks?”

  “We have not destroyed the city, but our allies now hold it shut to the South-Men.”

  “The Dwarves!” shouted Skagen.

  Many of the Centaurs shouted in protest at the idea of giving such a prize to a little race for whom they had no ties save their shared history of violence against each other.

  “It is a new way,” said Wotan. “Look around you. For the moment this place is safe, you can sleep a night without the fear that phalanxes will come charging into your village and burn your teepees while you sleep in them. We have done this by working with the other races, the Elves,” there was a cheer at the mention of the Elves, “and the Skraelings who call themselves the Cherubim!”

  The Centaurs shuddered at the mention of the winged people. Stories had been passed down through the generations of death from above, Angels who hunted their people like hawks hunting rabbits. A few of the Centaurs had been at the battle where the last of the Angels had shown themselves one more time and many more had seen the Cherubim’s deadly speed take down their bucks.

  “And you ask that we trust the Skraelings who fought against us just a season past. You ask us to stop hunting the Dwarves and the Giants as we have always done?”

  “I ask you to let them do some of the dying against the Southlands. They have recognized that they will never be free when the kings of Men hold sway over the North and so they fight the South. I ask you to let them fight for us instead of against us while you still have strength left to fight.”

  The crowd was uneasy, unsure of what to believe and who to follow until the returning warriors from their own tribe began to call out.

  “We fought with the Cherubim!”

  “The knights opened the gates for us!”

  Another threw his bundle of scalps, thick from the execution in the citadel, into the center, calling out “The Giants and the Dwarves will help us to take the scalp of every Southman who enters our lands!”

  Skagen raised his arm, sensing his people would follow their warriors.

  “If we fight with the other races against the men, how will we defeat them?” he asked. “They are many, we are fewer every year.”

  “We must eat,” answered Wotan, “and they must eat, yes?”

  Skagen nodded, uncertain of where the dark warrior was going.

  “We eat little, they eat much.”

  The Centaurs laughed at Wotan’s logic but Skagen grasped his meaning.

  “How does a yearling hunter kill the mighty buffalo?” said the elder. The tribe knew the answer but he said it anyway. “He cuts him, small at first, then runs when the bull charges him. But he comes back, cutting him again and again until the bull runs, draining his life into the grass. The hunter follows at a distance, always pressing his prey, and when the buffalo falls, he cuts out his heart.”

  The crowd was silent when Wotan answered. “The South is the buffalo, we are the hunter. Just as we hunt with wolves to aid us, we will hunt this prey with the other races.”

  “What will we do if we cannot raid while we wait for this buffalo,” called out a young warrior who was well aware of the important part their raids played in keeping the tribe fed, supplied, and war ready.

  “We will trade.”

  The idea was not unheard of, the clan had traded with Ryogen’s Northmen further up the valley and Ryogen’s people always wanted one thing- buffalo. Buffalo were no faster than horses but they were much harder to kill in battle and it didn’t take much to turn their natural instincts to charge and gouge into weapons of war. Now the Giants were using them to plow fields in the South and the Dwarves were using them to replace the even rarer bears they rode into battle. Demand grows.

  “If you can capture calves,” said Wotan, “the Northmen, the Giants, and the Dwarves will trade you anything you could desire for them. Food, weapons, tools, knowledge.”

  “Trading a buffalo for food is like trading a teepee for shelter,” said Skagen with a laugh.

  The laugh told Wotan he had won the leader’s support. “With these hungry warriors,” he joked, “you will have to keep a close eye on your trade goods.” The tribe’s laughs were like the rolling thunder, like the pounding of hooves; the endless herds had always provided more than enough. There would be more than enough for them to eat and to trade.

  The change had come easier than the black warlord had expected for this clan. Walking away with Skagen he wondered if it was possible that the endless fighting, watching his clan dwindle, had taken a toll on the leader. Perhaps they were ready for a new way. They munched on buffalo and trout, watching the young warriors from other tribes chase the unfamiliar females around the valley, racing the local bucks. The leaders laughed, remembering their own journeys to find wives, battling with their racks when the aspens turned yellow. That time hadn’t lasted long for the warriors when word of their deeds in battle, the wives of widowed clan members, and daughters from allied clans had given them more wives than they could handle.

  “How many points this year?” said Wotan, asking the chief about his rack of antlers.

  “Less than last year,” answered the older Centaur.

  “Less?”

  “Twenty-four two falls ago, twenty-two last fall, maybe twenty this year. But that’s not the only thing there is less of,” he said with a shrug and a coy grin.

  “May the South take me before that happens,” laughed Wotan thinking of the stamina it took to keep up with his wives.

  Such a large gathering of bucks who were not on the war path was a once in a lifetime event for the tribe and so, despite his anxiousness to move on, Wotan stayed another night, drinking whiskey pillaged from the Dwarves and beer from the city. He danced around the fires and chanted with the others, watching races and admiring bone carvings, but always he was talking to Sk
agen and the warriors. He drew maps with his hooves showing them where they would need to stash food and weapons. He talked of where the Southlanders would come from and his plans to hit them, taking advantage of the terrain as they had always done but also working with the other races. They listened, asking questions and adding to the map. He could see the younger bucks watching, learning the ways of the seasoned fighters, and he wished they could see what was at stake as well as their elders. They have more life to lose.

  When it was time to leave he was still talking about strategy, where to trade their buffalo and how to get the best deal. Skagen put his arm on Wotan’s shoulder, quieting him.

  “It is good to see you,” he said.

  Wotan looked at the leader who trusted him to lead not just his clan, but all of the clans.

  “You are a mighty warrior and the hope of our people,” continued the chief. “But do not forget that in the time of our father’s fathers, raids were simply a way to test a young buck. Fights between clans were rare and never resulted in slaughter. Seeing you here, laughing about our wives, watching bucks chase females, that is why we fight.”

  Wotan realized the chief did have a vision for the future, for time beyond war. He nodded at the leader while the females draped wampum on his neck and tied raven feathers in his hair. All around the camp the departing warriors were getting the same treatment, save the wampum that no tribe could afford to give to so many warriors. He pointed where a young warrior from a tribe further up the valley was kissing a female from Skagen’s clan, his hind legs bucking with excitement.

  “That is worth fighting for,” said Wotan, chuckling in a way his enemies had never seen.

  Skagen nodded. “You will have our fighters when you call for them, and we will try trade instead of raiding. But don’t forget that if there isn’t a time to look for when the people can build a life around something other than war, then there is no point.”

  Wotan locked eyes with Skagen and nodded silently, showing his respect and understanding before turning to face the tribe. Baring his fangs, he letting out a war cry that was joined by all the Centaurs, even the females.

  “AAAAAAAALAAAALAAAALALA!!!”

  Running out of camp and heading north to the next clan, Wotan listened to the reduction in hooves, heard his wolves calling back to the wolves that had stayed, and thought about the warrior who would be returning for the female he had kissed. That is why we fight, but the only way to keep it is for the South to be gone. That war will never end. He knew that the other races and some Centaur Chiefs thought there could be a time after the South, a time of safety. But he knew that could never be. They might win against the South but if they wanted to keep their way of life, winning would have to be followed with vigilance and offense. The only way to stop those who do not believe in your way of life is to kill their belief. To do that you have to kill them all.

  The other clans went much the same way, some asking what they would trade when the other races began to breed their own buffalo, others wanting to know how many Southlanders would come and when. He didn’t have many answers but his victories over Theseus and in Therucilin, and their Chief’s acknowledgement that something must change if they were to survive, united them all to his side. He watched the clan leaders and realized he had been neglecting his own. He had spent his life thinking about their race, and the North, rather than his family. In the long run, he believed what he did was for the good of his family but he knew it would be hard for them to see it that way.

  Ryogen took no convincing, he had lived in the South and fled North with his Men and their families to escape the oppression of his own race. The Southlanders had only reached his stronghold, a city built into the side of a cliff under an arch, that last year. He had burned Remnar and his solders alive, sparring Atlas, Onidas, and Oberon when he bought into Oberon’s vision for a united North. The Centaurs could not climb the ladders that were the only way to access the cliffs above and so they met in the forest below.

  Wotan sniffed the strange scents of the forest, which Ryogen’s people had cleared of underbrush. The Northmen had decorated the branches with dream catchers, carvings and ropes. The Horse-Man found the openness of the forest appealing; he could run here, but the art adorning the branches was hard for him to appreciate.

  Ryogen was more interested in the details of the plan than any of the other leaders; how would they would use Therucilin, how trade would work between the races, how the Canyon Lands would play to their advantage. He wanted to know how they could coordinate their efforts over so many miles and what would happen when things went wrong. The only answer available to coordination was for messengers to make the long trips overland; Ryogen did not like how slow this would make them to respond but there was no other answer.

  Wotan told him of the plans they had drafted that winter at Devil’s lake. Nicolo, one of Ryogen’s commanders, and Caldera, Ryogen’s daughter, had represented the Northmen when all of the races discussed the battle plan for the North. King Aram, of the Dwarves, Atlas, Pathmaker of the Giants, Rebus of the Elves, and even Taragon, Chief of the Nymphs, had sat in the cave of the Council of Elders at Devil’s Lake. The Old Alliance had met in the same way each year to discuss strategy, except at Devil’s Lake the races did not come before the King of one race as subjects in an alliance dominated by one. They met as equals in an oligarchy where consensus and deliberation were practiced relying on the value of mutual interest in the face of an existential threat. Above all, that council had cemented the need for each tribe to maintain its independence, working together and coordinating through trade, discussion, and unity around what they now called the Blood Land.

  As Ryogen listened he felt the Centaur’s words resonating in his core, connecting him to the other tribes of the land despite their physical differences. They shared the blood of the land now, rivers pumping through their veins, forests for skin and mountains for bones. When Wotan asked him to send a force east and then south to take the wall from any Southerners who might be there and to hold it so the Centaurs could move through it, while the invaders must go around, he agreed without question, asking instead about his daughter.

  “She is in love,” he said in his native tongue.

  Ryogen was the only being Wotan had ever met who had wanted to learn some of the Centaur’s language. He had to explain love to the leader in his broken version of the human’s language, and it was one of Ryogen’s men who first realized what the Centaur was describing.

  “Love!” shouted the man when he realized the answer to the riddle even without knowing the words.

  “Ah yes,” said Ryogen, “THE connection, what causes us to die for our families, the feeling of completion, of a perfect match between hearts even if minds, bodies, and circumstances do not.”

  Ryogen repeated the Centaur word several times and thought of Oberon and the medicine that resided underneath the Cherubim’s curly black hair. His wings, grey and beautiful, and the clear, bright blue eyes of a warrior and a thinker were impossible to forget. The bodies certainly do not match but perhaps the hearts do. Caldera had a wild spirit and the Northman found satisfaction that she was off among a miraculous people on a risky adventure with her winged lover.

  They left the next day, hundreds of Ryogen’s buffalo mounted warriors following Wotan’s dwindling heard of bucks. The Northmen knew the longer they waited the more the scattered Southlanders could coalesce on the safety of the wall, barricading themselves in to wait for reinforcements. The long line of warriors cut through the secret mountain passes, the Centaurs and buffalo the Men rode still slogging through chest deep snow in the highest passes. When they began their descent towards the eastern plains Ryogen took Wotan’s arm before turning south, promising that when Wotan came that way two months hence he would be ready to open the gate.

  Wotan smelled the prairie, knowing that if he ran far enough and the wind was right he could catch the scent of the salty ocean breeze. Despite the months on the trail and all the fi
ghting he could feel the earth pulling his hooves forward beneath him, two hundred bucks from his clan racing him across the open grasses. They ran all through the night under a full moon, howling with the wolves at their wild brothers and sisters, all under an untouched sky of twinkling stars. Their feathers streaked backwards in the wind and the fighters felt their hearts pulling free of the bonds of war. By sunrise Wotan could see the mesas before losing them when they entered the ancient riverbed that led to his home.

  His wives and yearlings would be waiting for him and he would have his dream of running naked, without his weapons, through the warm summer rain in a homeland that was still free, that still belonged to him and his clan. Soon he would head south to prepare for war with the gigantic buffalo that was the South. But for now, at least for a while, he would take Skagen’s advice and feel what life could be like beyond war.

  Chapter 6

  O beron watched the construction of the underwater bridge from the treetop battlements that were being constructed in the forest. The defensive network that would mire the Southlanders, making them suffer unacceptable losses for every yard gained, were growing more extensive by the day. He was basing the assumption that this network of defenses would stall the Southlanders advance on the council of Rebus, an Elf from the Southlands who had fought them his entire life. Who knows what the South will accept.

  The Cherubim war chief looked down from a fortified bridge between two trees that held storehouses of food and arrows. Cherubim could move through the treetops with ease and these positions would allow Dwarven archers to join them, their night vision creating a day and night bombardment of the invaders from above. Below them, Giants were clearing the underbrush in kill zones to allow shooting lanes for the archers. If the Southlanders wanted to take the forest, they would have to pay dearly. The Plainswatchers were hard at work trapping the densest, most difficult to traverse portions of the woods in order to funnel the soldiers into the Northerner’s ambushes. The trees would break up phalanxes, leaving the soldiers exposed. If they tried to cut through the trapped areas they would be easy to detect and the Cherubim could cut them down from above with abandon while they were mired in the difficult terrain.