Chapter 11
A/N: Spot the Mel Brooks reference…
Glaive spent most of that night wandering. She never slept much, now that her wounds were healing, and it was not yet wise to allow herself time to think. She was arrogant, and more than slightly impulsive, but she was not at all stupid.
Seven miles out from the settlement, she found her first owl scout. The slightly transparent creature flapped in place above a short pine, hovering in a way a normal owl would never be able to do. Glaive carefully scouted the base of the tree, in case the huntress who had left it might still be there. She took out her glaive and blew on the broken edge. She watched as it began to glow slightly blue. Then she threw it.
The glaive came down on the other side of the tree as the scout evaporated. Glaive caught it easily, and went to look for others.
The new game kept her busy for an hour or so. Seemingly, a fairly large party of huntresses had passed this way. From time to time she encountered the challenge of destroying the scouts without being seen by them, as their fields of vision occasionally overlapped. This became slightly easier when she attacked from the branches of the trees themselves.
The game absorbed her attention, and she did not stop to consider whether there might be a reason for so many scouts in one place. This is how she managed to drop down from an overhanging branch directly into a camp full of satyrs.
Glaive crouched, frozen, as she realized what she had done. She was invisible at once, but that would not last long. A shadowdancer would be bound to see her, even while she shadowmelded, and she dared not climb one of the corrupted ancients that surrounded her.
The large group of satyrs at the other end of the clearing seemed focused on something else. A fire pit burned between them and her position, and she could not quite see what it was. As Glaive watched, one of them kicked something.
"What'd you bring it all the way here for?" a male voice demanded in harshly-accented Elvish. "It's nothing but a skeleton. It's got bits of ice all over it. We can't raise anything from this."
Curiosity outweighed caution, as it often did with Glaive, and she crept closer.
"Look at its chainmail," a female voice said. "This was a knight, and not from anywhere near here. What's it doing in Ashenvale? Something's not right."
"You packed a hundred pounds of bones in armor back to camp because it looked funny? If you're going to act that stupid, you might as well go back to being an Elf."
"Hey, look," another voice said. "Is that socket glowing?"
"Don't be an idiot. Let's just burn the bones. I'll bet I could find a use for that armor."
"Hey, I carried it all the way here - "
Screams erupted as a gray haze fountained up around the group. Satyrs ran in every direction. A Hellcaller staggered toward Glaive, tearing at the skin of his face as it shriveled over the bones. He caught sight of the Elf and started to croak out an alarm. Glaive threw a knife into his eye socket and retrieved it as she ran past, toward the subsiding cloud of gray dust. She had to kill two more satyrs to get there. She knifed a third as he swung a scimitar at a figure in a ragged cloak and hood. She'd always been outnumbered, and now didn't seem like a time to stop.
Unfortunately, Glaive had forgotten the ancients. One Night Elf in shadow may escape notice, but it is entirely impossible to do so while openly running through a camp killing satyrs. She was turning to take care of another Hellcaller when an Ancient of War leaned over and swatted her with a branch as thick as most trunks.
Upon waking, the first thing she noticed was pain. This was not unusual in her recent experience. The fact that she seemed to be lying on the cold ground was. Glaive squeezed her eyes open and squinted up into the shadows under a tattered hood.
Two pinpoints of green flared above her. She stared into the sockets of a naked skull, blinking away the afterimages as the light faded from the depths. The skeleton's hood seemed to have fallen back, and it held a notched sword point-down in its hands.
The jawbone lowered slightly.
"Are you awake?" The voice seemed to echo from a great distance, deep and sepulchral. It was still quite distinctly a man's voice, and Glaive almost answered in Orcish before she realized the words had been in the Common tongue.
Too bad she didn't speak Common much better than Orcish.
"Depends," she said. "You dead?"
"Extremely," the skeleton said.
"Then I guess I 'wake." She sat up slowly, staring at the apparition. "Puzzled, though."
"It would be wise to move on," the skeleton said. "The ancients will uproot themselves in a few moments."
Glaive climbed unsteadily to her feet, shaking her head carefully. It hurt anyway.
"Can't believe I got swatted by a tree," she muttered in Orcish, waiting for the nausea to fade. "Lev ever find out, he never shut up."
Dead satyrs lay all around, twisted into strange contortions and shriveled like mummies. The fire was out. The nearest ancient was a pile of splinters, many of them obviously rotten. The others did seem to be trying to pull their roots up from the ground, wood groaning as it twisted through a range of motion that flesh would not bear.
"Probably best you follow me," Glaive said, and set off into the woods.
She did not have to look back to see if the dead man followed. He was quieter than she had expected, but his bony toes occasionally hit something under the snow. She moved more slowly than usual, frequently forced to pause and wait for waves of dizziness to subside.
By the time they had covered three miles, she had to stop. Glaive leaned against a tree trunk, trying not to gag. Everything she looked at seemed to have a slight aura, an unnatural glow around the edges.
The dead man stopped next to her, watching. She looked at him, forcing herself to straighten, but it was impossible to read any expression on a face devoid of flesh. He leaned on the sword as he looked at her.
"Why were you trying to help me?" the distant voice asked.
"Felt like it," Glaive said, with complete honesty. Then she threw up. The skeleton moved back slightly, but showed no signs of leaving.
Glaive was on her hands and knees when she finished, the snow cold under her palms.
"That is not a reason," the voice said.
"Is for me," Glaive said. She scooped clean snow into her mouth, then spat.
"I have yet to meet an Elf who does not sincerely hate everything that is Undead," the skeleton said, with the finality of a coffin lid slamming.
"Bet you not met one lives with red Orcs, either." Glaive leaned on the tree trunk as she got slowly to her feet. She kicked snow over the mess she had made. The auras did not seem to be going away.
"I realize you have suffered what is undoubtedly a serious head injury, and there is probably no point in arguing with you, but there are no more red Orcs on Azeroth."
"I pass out and freeze to death, you not gonna find out you wrong," Glaive said. She glared at the skeleton, which now seemed to glow faintly green. "You helping, or not?"