Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [26]
Two deer were already turning on rude spits over the fire, and another pair, badly dressed, hung amid buzzing flies nearby. Alea cursed. They didn't even need the food, yet they continued to despoil the forest!
Two days ago she'd come across the site of a human kill. Something large, perhaps a bear, had been brought down. Both human and elf arrows were at the site, and from it led the trail of something heavy dragged off in this direction-passing the corpse of an elf of the Elian clan, who lay bristling with crude human arrows, his ears lopped off.
Alea had no doubt the elf had brought down the game, then been attacked by the humans afterward. She'd tracked the downed prey through the forest to this camp before gathering her hunting companions for the raid. Most of the elves around her had seen fewer than a hundred summers. The elders were discussing and mourning the dead Elian. While the elders talked, Alea's hunters would do something about this outrage!
But a good hunter makes sure of his prey… and they had to be sure of these reeking humans. As the buck was brought into camp, the humans all shouted and waved, jabbering at each other in their mongrel tongue. So much like real speech, thought Alea, but all twisted, like the humans themselves. The buck's slayers made big, sweeping hand signs, indicating the bulk of the stag that had escaped them. The others laughed and hooted, outlining with gestures their own rival escaped beasts, of even more impossibly large proportions.
Alea growled deep in her throat just as the wolves did. These human vermin poached on elven lands! Their clumsy butcherings were beginning to drive the game away, they didn't even have the sense to move on and let the land recover from their depredations. Alea growled more loudly and almost rose to signal the attack, but Lord Iliphar's admonitions held her in place. Were she wrong, she'd be little better than these rightly despised savages.
The door of the largest hut in the camp scraped open, and out strode the petty lord. Apparently he'd been waiting for the last hunters to return before making his own entrance. This one had leathers of a finer cut than most and was bedecked with polished gemstones on leather thongs. He was flanked by two equally tough-looking women. Consorts? Bodyguards? Both?
On one of the lordling's thongs hung two pale slivers of meat, just starting to wrinkle and yellow with age. The ears of an elf.
Alea gave the signal to prepare for battle.
The hairy human lord strode to the fire pit at the center of the gathered humans and jabbered at them. They made assenting sounds. He jabbered at them some more. They grunted another assent. He pointed in Alea's direction, and the elf froze for a moment. Did they know of her presence? But then the lordling marked off the other cardinal points, and Alea realized what he was doing.
He was staking his claim, like a cooshee marking its territory: all this land was his. A fire began to burn within her, rising up into her chest. How dare the savages claim elven hunting lands!
She was about to give the signal to attack when the human lord grunted and waved, and the two muscular bodyguard wives went to the low barricaded hut. One stood outside while the other entered and then dragged out some sort of prisoner.
At first Alea thought the prisoner was an elf, for he was thin and pale compared to the barbarians. But on closer examination, it was clear the prisoner was another human, tall and lean, with a ratty reddish beard. Half his face was puffy with a monstrous bruise, and he hobbled forward on an equally swollen ankle. His wrists were crossed before him and secured together with a single iron cuff. He wore loose, tattered trousers and a shirt of similar stuff all worn and filthy but still of finer cut than the garb of the humans of the camp. He didn't look much like his captors.
The women dragged the frail human forward and forced him to his knees