It was a grey morning. The air was warm, the sun shone pale through heavy clouds, and all below lay under a blanket of dew. Neri was sitting cross-legged in a half circle of his scary friends, and Yemi was sitting alone by a tree on the sloping river bank, as far from the animal people and their monster as she could be.

Her brother woke suddenly, looked at the blanket they'd lain over him through blinking and confused eyes, opened his mouth to speak, then rolled his eyes and laid back down. She slowly inched across the grass toward him, careful not to let her dress get caught on any rocks or roots. She wished she would have brought some proper travel clothes; leathers and maybe even a light shirt of rings, but she hadn’t expected to be buried alive, chased by murderers, and saved by creatures out of her scariest nightmares.

The monster looked at her the instant she started to move. It saw everything, even though it didn’t have eyes. It’s brow was too low for any eyes to see through at least, and the red skin of its forehead was saggy, and drooped over the hole that passed for its nose. She moved to her brother’s side as quickly as she could, then patted him on the shoulder. He swatted her hand away.

“Halfur,” she whispered, quietly for once in her life.

“Go away,” her brother said.

The monster started to move their way and she wanted to scream, but the rat-faced dog man that watched over it clicked his tongue, and the monster stomped its horse legs and sat down. The monster’s keeper was the strangest of the animal people. His fur was painted in skeletal patterns and bright colors, and he had bones pierced through his ears, nostrils, lips, and wrapped around his neck, wrists, and ankles.

Halfur lifted his head, probably to see what was making the clicking sound, and when he saw the monster he jumped backward out of his bedroll and groped for Yalla. The dog and rat people laughed. Except for the she wolf. Nishta was her name. She stood away from the others, and kept far from the monster.

“Centaur,” her brother said. He was the most frightened Yemi had ever seen him, and that made her even more afraid. She didn’t care if Neri trusted them, or if they saved her life, the animal people and their disgusting pet monster terrified her, and that was that. Only the she wolf seemed somewhat safe to be around, but she had that long nose and sharp teeth, and Yemi saw her kill more of the humans than any of her pack.

“Neri,” her brother said, “where did… I thought you killed them all.”

Yemi looked to Neri. He shook his head and frowned. “There’s too many for that, Dread Highness.”

“I said to get elves,” her brother said. He was getting angry. He got angry when he was afraid.

“Ulfs?!” one of the animal people growled. He was bigger than most of the others. Not taller so much, but really thick, like a dwarf almost, but strong in the wiry and starved way all these strange people were. “We keel all tha ulf! Stoopeed ulf. Murdering ulf. You want ulf? We kill you too, then you go to them!”

“They were the better option, Highness,” Neri said.

Yemi finally got the nerve to speak, though her voice was quiet as a mouse’s. “They saved us, Halfur.”

Her brother struggled to his feet. She could tell he was in terrible pain. His face was pale and sweaty, and his legs shook as he walked. But he still walked, step by shaky step, all the way to the big animal man that just shouted at him. He gave the monster a frightened look as he passed it. It was so huge. Yemi had never seen a beast so large. It’s horse body was more like a bull’s body, and the grotesque man body wasn’t much smaller. And there were those long arms and hideous hands...

“Thank you,” Halfur said. He put his hand on his chest and bowed as low as he could without falling over. “We owe you our lives.”

The animal man spat and growled. “You want ulf! But ulf keel gnoll, and gnoll keel ulf. Now you want gnoll? Or, you want saantur? Yash, saantur keel every ting. You keel that gnoll, saantur go free. Ulf kill too many saantur master, so we have to keel saantur. We come here to live, not keel, but always Koni keel gnoll! Koniland our home too!”

Yemi shuddered at the snarling way the creature spoke. She’d heard of gnolls, of course, and the centaurs, but she’d imagined them as humans with fur. She never dared dream of a kin so wild and bestial, and the centaur was a thing she’d have rather never seen at all.

“Shut ahp, Avataki!” The she wolf threw a rock at the big animal man. “He not know ulf like ush.”

The big one spat again and growled. “I hate all Konies,” he said before backing up and sitting down. The monster made a wailing moan that made Yemi shudder, then wiggled its knuckled teeth and snapped its jaws.

“Thank you,” Halfur said again. Yemi admired him for being so brave and walking over to them. He’d lost so much blood by the time they bandaged him that she worried he might not wake at all. But there he was, standing and thanking their saviours. He’s so strong. She hoped she could be as strong as him and Ror one day. She wondered what he would say when he found out the animal people licked all the blood and dirt off his wounds before bandaging them. Whatever was on their tongues, it worked, even better than the poultices she’d learned to make from the Heartsmiths.

“Who’s your leader?” her brother asked.

One of the animal people laughed. It was a scary laugh, like the way Audun’s mother used to laugh before she hit him, back before Yemi’s mother took him away. I’d like to feed that mean old woman to the monster. Yemi regretted that thought, as it reminded her of when the monster ate people, then squeezed them out it’s arse, all smushed and slimy. One of the men it ate had clung to her tree, and almost pulled her off her branch. The monster lifted him in the air and swung him around. He grabbed the trunk with both his arms and looked Yemi in the eye as he screamed. Then the monster stuck its long, spider leg looking fingers through his shoulders. His arms went limp and he shrieked and cried while the monster sucked him into its mouth. Even worse than the man’s screaming was the crunching. Yemi felt sick, and couldn’t stop herself from vomiting on Halfur’s bedroll. She looked up and there he was, rolling his eyes. “Sorry,” she whimpered.

He shook his head and looked back to the animal people. “Who rules you? Her?”, he pointed to the she wolf. They all laughed at that. Then the one who laughed first stood and walked to Halfur. He wasn’t very big, but he was tall, and he had a long snout and a mane of scruffy red fur. “Ohm,” he said. The she-wolf growled quietly when he said the name.

“Yash, Nishta,” the thin animal man said, looking at her and grinning. “She Den Mother, and she tink she lead. But we do the Ohm’s way now. Ohm lead, and only Ohm.”

Yemi furrowed her brow. She remembered helping Audun borrow her dad’s book from Magni, the one Narvi wrote when he was losing his wits. He wrote about a creature named Ohm. Ohm Hili it was. It had something to do with an ancient empire that conquered the whole world and made everyone slaves. But the Ohm Hili looked like a serpent bull, not a rat-faced dog person.

“What should I know about Ohm?” her brother asked.

“To stay away, and not keel hish people. You see thees saantur? Thees small one next to his.”

“I can tell you more, Dread Highness,” Neri said.

The thin dog-rat-man laughed again. It was an evil, cackling sound. Yemi didn’t like it. “Yash, he tell you more. You safe now, we done wit you. You owe gnoll for life. Neri shwear you not keel ush now, not ever. Go to mountain, and tell other duvarf we off limits.”

Halfur nodded. “It will be done. Again, thank you.”

Yemi tried to wipe her vomit off his bedroll with some fallen leaves before rolling it up for him. They animal people left and took their monster with him, and the Owls helped her pack up Halfur’s gear.

“Where’s the Hood and his men?” her brother asked. She hoped he wouldn’t ask that.

“The centaur took care of their bodies, Dread Highness,” said one of the Owls.

Halfur looked at Neri. “You said they only swallowed the living. Did the gnolls not kill any of them?”

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Why is he asking? I want to forget it all!

“It was a gruesome sight, my Prince,” said Neri. “The gnolls wounded the Hood’s men, and left the killing to the beast. We carried the bodies to the river after the slaughter. I’d rather not remember how they felt in my hands. Even through my gloves.”

Her brother nodded and finally left it alone. Though he made Neri tell him the worst part.

“And the men we lost?”

“We buried them, Highness.” Halfur nodded and they began their march.

“Tell me everything,” her brother said to Neri the moment they set off. They were moving slowly now, since Halfur had lost so much blood, and only had a single night to rest.

“I found no living elves,” Neri said in a sad voice. “I’m not sure why, but it seems they all rode to war against the gnolls at once.”

“I heard something about that.” Halfur stopped to cough and almost fell over. “I’m fine. Let’s keep walking. How did you find the gnolls?”

“They found me. I’m fortunate Nishta was there, or I’d have been killed as well. They’re frightened, and quickly becoming angry. Whatever the elves thought to accomplish in attacking them, I’d say it’s backfired.”

“They rode to Solstice. No one rides to Solstice for trivial reasons. My guess is they wanted to drive the gnolls back to Noth.”

“But why, Dread Highness? There’s plenty of room for them in Konistra. They'd never be in the way. They don't go to forests except to hunt and forage, and shun wide open spaces where orcs and humans live. They prefer the grottos in the hollow hills, and the dimlands and shallow caverns where no one dwells. They wouldn't even be in the goblins' way.”

“Is it because everyone drove them away in the past?” Yemi said, venturing into the conversation. “Because I don’t think that’s really what happened.”

She half expected to be scolded, and half expected to be ignored, but her brother and Neri both just looked at her expectantly. “I think the gnolls were sort of, I dunno, like, caught in the middle of something, I guess.”

“And what does Audun think?” Halfur asked.

Yemi almost laughed. “All sorts of things! But I don’t understand half of it. He doesn’t think the gnolls are bad, though. We talked about them a long time ago. That was actually the first big conversation we ever had.”

They were quiet again for a moment, then went back to talking. Neri told more of what happened, but it was pretty much the same thing the animal people, or the gnolls, already said. Neri promised the friendship of the dwarves if they saved them from the murderers, and they agreed, mostly because Neri was friends with the she wolf.

Halfur didn’t seem bothered by where their help came from, but Yemi wished it would have been elves. Elves didn’t keep monsters as pets. Elves shot people with arrows, or stabbed them with spears. They didn’t feed them to… Yemi shuddered and tried to put the memory out of her mind.

The journey was proving to be painfully slow, and the absence of their fallen guards cast a somber mood over everyone. Living in the citadel, one heard of battles and losses, the death tolls of troops on both sides, and saw the sadness on the faces of the captains who cared for their men. She had never seen how the men themselves handled such tragedy. The Owls were still alert and vigilant, but the light in their bright eyes had dimmed, and she could feel their silent mourning in the stillness of their movements.

The next several days passed wearily. The sky was overcast and gloomy, and the air was increasingly humid and more difficult to breath. Yemi also became so faint from exposure to the sky that she frequently had to sit down. Halfur groaned at this, as he was anxious to warn their father of Salimod’s treachery, so she took to clinging to Neri’s back when the open sky made her dizzy. Her brother protested, saying that Neri needed to be unburdened, as he was their chief lookout. But Yemi promised she would let go and drop to the ground the moment their was trouble, and that if she couldn’t ride piggy back then they would simply have to stop every few miles.

They did end up taking more time to rest, as it turned out, on account of Halfur’s wounds. The stab wound under his arm was so painful he needed a sling and the puncture in his waist kept reopening. His face had turned to grey and he sweated profusely. At one point he fell over and didn’t wake for several hours. Yemi had never felt so sad, as she thought the whole time that he might die, and when his eyes opened again she had never felt more joy.

They rested there for the next day, under Neri’s counsel. He respectfully insisted, and Yemi heard him giving secret orders to his men to maintain the appearance of a heightened patrol to appease their prince.

While the day’s rest helped Halfur to feel more stable, and gave a chance for his wounds to heal more completely, the land before them was becoming steep and rocky and he found it almost impossible to climb. They took a path cut into the foothills by human traders, a path that wound endlessly to allow heavy carts and wayns to travel without incident. It was maddening to not be able to simply walk directly over the rocks, and Yemi wondered how humans ever managed to spread so far across the land.

On the seventh day since being saved by the gnolls, Halfur fell again, and this time they couldn’t wake him. Yemi wept when the sun had risen and set on her sleeping brother. He was alive, still, but barely, and each hour his breath grew more shallow and labored. She parted his lips and poured water into his mouth, and kept a damp cloth over his brow, but his wounds had grown more agitated and his blood loss was severe. Also weighing heavily on her heart was the wreckage atop their mountain. The Brow looked worse every day. They were close enough now that they could see the ruins of Magni being done away with. The telescopes were thrown down the mountainside one at a time, as if the goblins were being lazy about their work. She did not want to admit it to herself, but she knew deep down that the battle had been lost.

“Dread Highness,” Neri said one evening. Yemi had fallen asleep while holding her brother’s hand. She blinked and looked up. Neri’s eyes looked like he’d been crying too, only she knew he hadn’t. Still, the sadness was plain on his face as it must have been on hers.

“We can’t go home, can we?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

“No,” Neri said. “But I do have some good news. Well, as good as news can be.”

“What is it?” Yemi felt nothing, though she tried to sound hopeful. I’m their princess. I have to be their strength now that Halfur can’t. She glanced down at her dying brother. I have to be his strength too.

“Help has come,” Neri said.

Yemi blinked and shrugged. What help could there be now, with their kingdom in ruins and brother dying?

Neri seemed to know what she was thinking, as he gestured to a steep cliff off the trail. Yemi followed him down to a spur of rock that jutted outward enough to give a commanding view of the foothill. Neri pointed to a patch of grey stone covered in grey mist. Yemi stared blankly for a moment, then saw what he pointed to. A long, lean, and muscular body was moving swiftly up the rocks, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on all fours. It was Nishta, the Den Mother, whatever that meant. But Yemi saw something else behind her that gave her hope. A pair of moving shapes, furry as Nishta, but much larger. They were barhu, the rugged and scraggly bears that made their homes in the dimlands and the caverns inside the mountains, and on their backs were armored dwarves.

“Bear riders,” she said dully. The realization set in slow, but soon her joy had returned and she leapt gleefully into Neri’s arms. He laughed as he struggled to keep his footing on the rocky spur, then set her down and led the way back to their camp on the side of the pass.

The Owls stood guard while the Bear Riders fastened her brother to the riding harnass on one of the bears. The Rider, a tough looking man with bright orange hair named Luz, explained how Ror had sent them to High Alden with news of the battle. They were greeted by Salimod himself, and given food and water, as well as fresh venison for their bears. Salimod informed them that their prince and princess had left for home already, and they had decided not to divulge the fate of Thrond to the human king, as something about his manner ‘seemed off’ to them. They bristled with anger when Yemi told them of the attempt to bury them in their rooms, and of the humans that hunted them on the road. All the while, Nishta stood silently on the road.

“The gnolls saved us,” Neri said. “His Highness sent me to find help from the elves, but they made war on the gnolls and were driven back. Nishta convinced her people to help us, and she helped us hunt down the centaur brood before. She’s proving to be a good friend.”

Luz nodded. “We would have passed you by if not for her.”

The other Rider offered his bear to Yemi and she eagerly climbed into the harnass.

“Her name’s Ersa, Dread Highness,” the Rider told her. Ersa looked back over her shoulder at Yemi and snapped playfully. Yemi giggled and scratched Balthamir under her jaw. The bear groaned happily and licked her hand. Ror had taken her to the Bear pens when she was little, and had often wished she could have one of her own. She nudged Balthamir around with her heel and faced Nishta.

“Thank you for helping us,” she said. “I’m sorry the elves are attacking you. When we get back home, I’ll tell my brother and parents that the gnolls are our friends. Maybe my dad can talk to the elves and get them to stop.”

Nishta bowed, said goodbye to Neri, then turned and left. Yemi whistled at how nimble and fast Nishta was.

The Riders walked ahead of their bears, leading them north and then east.

“We made camp at Valengald,” Luz said to Neri, “but Prince Ror is leading the people to Cloud Hammer, where we’re to recoup and plan the counter invasion.”

Yemi didn’t want to know what happened in the battle, as she feared what she might find out, but she felt it was her duty as the princess to ask about such things, so she did. It was a struggle to keep her eyes dry when Luz told how her parents had been held captive, and that her Uncle Balvor was slain. I am their strength, she kept telling herself.

They made their way then up a wide hill that sloped down into a deep valley in the northern spire of the mountains. Their people were camped in a massive hollow next to a lake fed by glacial runoff. Yemi kept her composure for as long as she could, but when she recognized Audun hiding behind a tree stump at the edge of the camp, she began screaming his name and kicked Ersa into a run.