Stormblade

14

Before the moons had set, Stanach began to build Piper’s cairn. Tyorl, walking watch on the hill, thought the dwarf worked with all the dispassion of a mason constructing a wall. Stones littered the hill’s crest, and Stanach used these to lay the base for the mage’s tomb. The dwarf asked for no help, but he offered no protest when Tyorl asked Kelida to relieve him at watch and, instead of seeking his own rest, bent his back to dragging stones for the cairn. Neither said a word to the other, each was tired and wrapped in his own thoughts. By the time dawnlight turned the dark sky a soft, cool blue, the tomb was laid and ready to accept Piper’s body.

By that time, too, Tyorl had made some decisions. He gratefully accepted Kelida’s water flask, took a hard pull on it, and passed it to Stanach.

“Kelida, wait,” Tyorl said as she moved away from him to return to guard.

Stanach, his back against the pile of cairn stones, looked around. The dwarf’s expression was cool, his large forge-scarred hands moved restlessly over the broad flat rock he’d chosen for the cairn’s footstone.

“What now?”

Tyorl chose his words carefully. “It’s time we know what we’re going to do, Stanach.”

“I’m going to Thorbardin.”

Tyorl nodded. “I thought you would be.”

Tyorl looked for Lavim and found him sitting cross-legged next to the mage’s body. He wondered what so fascinated the kender that he would voluntarily sit watch for the dead.

“Tyorl,” Stanach said, “I’m going to Thorbardin with Stormblade.” He smiled and there was no humor in his black eyes at all. “If you don’t come with me, I’ll be pleased to give your greetings to Hauk. If he lives.”

“You’ve played that tune one time too many, dwarf,” Tyorl snapped.

“He could be alive. Care to risk it?” The dwarf jerked his head at the empty cairn waiting in the morning shadows for Piper. “You build these things awkwardly still. You’ll get better with practice.”

“You’re skilled enough at it,” Tyorl said coldly. “Your friends don’t seem to live very long, Stanach. How many cairns have you built since you left Thorbardin?’’

Kelida, standing in silence between them, clutched Tyorl’s shoulder.

“No, Tyorl, no.”

Stanach held up his hand. “People are dying for this sword. More will die because of it if I don’t fetch it back to where it belongs. True, Tyorl?”

Tyorl said nothing for a long moment. Stanach spoke truly and the elf would not deny it. He looked up at Kelida, still standing between them. The day’s new light ran like gold through her thick red braids, sent her shadow leaping out before her. In that moment, dressed in the gray hunting leathers he’d found for her in Qualinost, Stormblade at her hip, the frightened girl he’d known seemed to vanish. Mud-stained leathers, hand resting on Stormblade’s hilt she looked like she would be at home in Finn’s company of rangers.

Aye, but she wouldn’t be! The girl could barely use a dagger and had only yesterday learned how to walk with Stormblade on her hip without tripping over it. She was no ranger, no warrior woman. She was a farmer’s girl turned barmaid.

Tyorl shook his head and got quickly to his feet. “I’ll tell you this, Stanach: I don’t know if Hauk is living or dead, but I believe your tale about the sword. Stormblade is no longer his. The sword should go to Thorbardin.” He heard Kelida’s sigh of relief and saw it mirrored deep in Stanach’s dark eyes.

“However, it goes someplace else first.” He cut off the dwarf’s protest with with an angry gesture. “My ranger company is nearby. You weren’t the only one hoping to meet friends on the road, Stanach. Finn will want to know what’s happened to Hauk, and he’ll need to know something I was sent to Long Ridge to learn.”

Quickly, with spare detail, Tyorl told Stanach what he and Hauk had discovered in Long Ridge of Verminaard’s plan to move supply bases into the mountains.

Understanding moved like pain across Stanach’s face. “Verminaard plans to attack Thorbardin?”

“Oh, yes,” Tyorl said dryly. “Did you think your precious mountains would be safe forever? Did you think the war would part around them like water around an island? The first supply trains are likely moving around Qualinesti’s borders now. The season advances and Verminaard will want to have his bases in place for a strike before winter. It will be a good idea, don’t you think, if we get to those hills before a horde of draconians arrive? And before whoever killed the mage finds us?”

The sun, now above the tree line in the east, poured its light over the hill and gilded the stones of Piper’s cairn. The dwarf rose slowly and started down the hill with no word to either Tyorl or Kelida. Kelida watched as Lavim scrambled to his feet and went to meet Stanach. Her eyes were sorrowful and her expression softened by pity. When she looked at Tyorl, the sorrow was gone. The pity remained and Tyorl had the uncomfortable feeling that it was for him.

“That was cruel, Tyorl.”

“What was?”

“What you said about his friends dying.” She left him abruptly and jogged down the hill.

Standing alone, Tyorl shivered in the sunlight.

The high, tuneless squeal of a flute, soared up from the foot of the hill. Down in the hollow, Lavim yelped as Stanach snatched Piper’s flute from his hands.

Tyorl bounded down the slope, his doubts and misgivings forgotten. Draconians and murderous seekers after god-touched swords paled when compared with the nightmare of a kender with an enchanted flute. The dwarf Brek ran thick fingers along the side of his face. The tic near his right eye jumped again. “Where’s Mica?”

“I saw his tracks this side of the road. He’ll be back.” Chert shifted uneasily from foot to foot and offered the only piece of information he’d discovered. “The mage is dead.”

The noon sun, thick and as sickening as the stench of something lately dead and rotting, rebounded in golden darts of light from Chert’s blood-hued helm and mail, and stained the rocky hills with light. The southern road to Long Ridge was only a thin, brown ribbon seen from these low fells; the dark forest a smoky border, its shadows reaching out to pool around the high fall of rock and debris that looked like a giant’s cairn. The smaller one, the real cairn, could not be seen from this distance. Behind, them to the east, the broad blue heights of the Kharolis Mountains reached for the sky. Beneath those mountains lay the Deep Warrens and home.

Brek spat and wondered if he would be dead of the light or the Herald’s dagger before he ever saw the warrens again. He looked sidelong at Agus the clan-reft. He’d been reading his death warrant, glittering in the deeps of the Gray Herald’s one eye, since Hornfel’s pet mage had vanished yesterday.

“How do you know the mage is dead?”

“There’s a newly built cairn in the woods,” Chert offered. There won’t even be that for me, Brek thought. My bones will rot and crumble in the sun if I don’t recover that sword!

He glanced at the Herald again. Realgar did not tolerate incompetence and it would not matter at all to him that Brek had given good and faithful service for the twenty years past.

“I don’t care about cairns,” he snapped.

“Aye, but someone must have built it. Who would take the time but a friend? I saw the signs of three, maybe four people.” Chert grinned and scratched his tangled beard with a battle scarred hand. ‘Warrior’s silver,’ the Theiwar named the scars earned in battle. Chert was wealthy in it.

“One was clearly a dwarf.”

Wulfen, standing apart from his companions, laughed low in his throat. The sound reminded Brek of vulpine snarling.

“Aye, who but a friend? Hammerfell’s apprentice. Could you tell where they were heading?”

“East into the foothills.”

East into the foothills … Hammerfell’s apprentice, tracking home to Thorbardin, was afoot and without the mage’s spells to protect him. Brek relaxed and smiled.

Chert’s hand slipped to the crossbow slung across his shoulder. “Do we follow?”

“No,” Brek said. “We cut him off. Wulfen! Let’s go.”

Not right in his head, Brek thought again as the slim dwarf loped up the hill. Eyes like iced-over mud, Wulfen raised his head and laughed, an eerie howling. He scented prey.

As though Wulfen’s howl were a signal, Mica crested the hill. Brek hailed him and motioned for him to fall in with his fellows. The Herald, one-eyed Agus, said nothing as he followed the three north across the hills.

Tyorl welcomed their return to the forest. Out on the hill, even in its lee, he’d felt exposed and vulnerable. He breathed easier in the shade and shelter of the woods. The berms they had seen the day before, softened by a thin covering of earth and fallen leaves, were now naked gray stone outcroppings, thrusting up from the ground and often half the height of the tall pines. The trail was only an uneven winding path through stone and thick, gnarled tree roots.

The forest, though it looked like part of Qualinesti’s border, was in fact the beginning of what Finn termed his ‘run.’ The rangerlord, and his company of thirty elves and humans, hunted the narrow strip of land between Qualinesti and the Kharolis Mountains. Their best prey were draconian patrols.

Finn’s Nightmare Company had been restless, deadly predators since the first draconians had fouled the forests with their presence.

‘Border-keepers’ some in the remote villages and towns called them. The people gave the rangers aid when they could. Sometimes it was only a loaf of bread and a drink at the well. Sometimes aid came in the form of information or, more precious, silence when a squad of draconians passed through in search of those that had savaged a hapless patrol of Verminaard’s soldiers.

Much as he did in Elvenwood, Tyorl felt at home in these stony woods. In a day or two, if not before, he would find Finn.

Or, he thought, Finn will find me.

Tyorl walked ahead, an arrow nocked and ready on his bowstring. He looked over his shoulder, caught the wink of sunlight on the dwarf’s silver earring, and saw that Stanach had dropped back to last position. Though Stanach’s old sword still rested in his back scabbard, Tyorl knew that it was within easy reach. He’d made no comment at all about Tyorl’s plans to seek the rangers, but Tyorl supposed the fact that Stanach was still with them was acceptance enough. Stanach would go where Stormblade went, and, though she had castigated him for what she called a cruel remark, Kelida had to agree that Tyorl’s idea was a good one.

Tyorl scowled. Piper’s flute hung by a thong from Stanach’s belt. Though Tyorl had tried to convince him to entomb the instrument with the mage, Stanach would have none of it.

“I’ve buried him,” Stanach had said stubbornly, “I’ll not bury his music. Piper was Hornfel’s man. The flute I’ll give to him.”

As far as any of them knew, Lavim’s piping had done no mischief. But the potential for mischief, for danger, was real. According to Stanach, the mage had not only invested the flute with several spells, the instrument possessed a magic of its own.

“Piper used to say that it has its own mind,” Stanach had said.

“Sometimes, it chose its own song, and then it wouldn’t matter at all what Piper wanted to play. Or so he liked to say.”

The dwarf had said nothing more, only slipped the thong through his belt and run the palm of his hand along the polished wood. Tyorl looked at the kender, jogging along beside Kelida, spinning some disconnected tale of improbabilities. As often as Lavim looked up at Kelida, that often did his attention wander back to Stanach and the cherry wood flute. Tyorl would have been as happy to lose the kender as the flute. He knew, watching Kelida’s smile, that she would have none of that. He did not stop then to wonder why it mattered to him what Kelida wanted.

Shadows lengthened and the sun’s light was losing its warmth when Tyorl waved Stanach forward. Kelida, her expression telling clearly of aching muscles, sank to a seat on a lichen-painted boulder and only offered a thin smile when Stanach, passing her, dropped a hand onto her shoulder in a gesture of encouragement.

Lavim, uninvited and not caring in the least that he was, followed Stanach. “Why’re we stopping, Tyorl?”

Tyorl ran his thumb along his bowstring. “We’re stopping to hunt, Lavim. You’re stopping to make camp.”

“But I don’t—”

“No arguments, Lavim. There’s a hollow beyond those rocks.” Tyorl gestured with his bow toward a cobble of trees and stone rising to their left. “You’ll find a beck for water and likely the wood you’ll need to make a fire.” He tossed his water flask to the kender and motioned for Stanach to do the same. “Fill the flasks, then get kindling and fuel.”

Lavim scowled, his face a mass of wrinkles and puzzlement. “You know, all I’ve been doing lately is making camp! How come Stanach gets to go hunting and I have to skin catches and drag around wood and kindling?” He slipped his hoopak from his back and looked from one to the other. Kender-quick, his expression changed to a guileful smile of assurance. “I’m an awfully good hunter.”

“No one’s doubting that, kenderkin.” Tyorl drawled. “What I’m doubting is whether we can trust you to come back with dinner when some bird or bush or cloud catches your eyes.”

Lavim bristled, about to argue, when Stanach held up a hand.

“He didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Lavim. He meant—” Stanach faltered. Tyorl had said exactly what he’d meant. He tried another approach. “Well, someone has to stay here with Kelida.”

“Yes, but—”

“That someone is you. You wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings, would you?”

“No, but I don’t see how me not staying would—”

Tyorl moved restlessly, impatiently, but Stanach waved him to silence.

“If Tyorl or I stayed, she’d be sure that she was being, well, looked after. She’d think maybe we don’t trust her to take care of herself.”

“You don’t?”

“If she could, I would. She can’t. But you can manage the thing better than we could. You’re good at that, Lavim.”

The kender dug in stubbornly. “Kelida knows how to use her dagger. I taught her and—”

“Ah, she’s that quick a study, is she? We’ll all be taking lessons from her soon, I guess.”

Lavim drew in a chestful of air and let it out in a gusty sigh. “No, of course not. I haven’t taught her my over-the-shoulder double-trouble trick yet—among other things. But Stanach, I—”

“Well, then? Are you going to leave her by herself to make camp and maybe just hope she’s there when we get back?” He sighed deliberately. “I guess I was wrong about one thing.”

Lavim wore the look of one who suspects he is being led, but he couldn’t resist the question. “About what?”

“I got the idea that you’d taken Kelida under your wing. You know, teaching her to use the dagger, telling her stories to keep her mind off being tired and frightened.” Stanach, his dark eyes as wide and innocent as any kender’s, shrugged. “I guess I was wrong.”

Tyorl swallowed a smile as Lavim, dragging his heels and kicking at small stones, returned to Kelida. “I never heard of anyone trying to actually reason with a kender before; I certainly never heard of it working,” said Tyorl.

Stanach shrugged. “He really is fond of Kelida. I figured I could take a chance on that. I don’t expect that ploy will work every time.” He jerked a thumb at Tyorl’s longbow. “I suppose I get to flush the grouse?”

“Not unless you’d like to chase a squirrel or two with your sword.”

Stanach said nothing, but followed the elf into the woods. The stars promised a clear day. The moons, both red and silver, rode high in the midnight sky, spilling light through the forest. Shadows wavered like ghosts across the ground.

Someday, Lavim told himself, I’d like to be able to move around as quietly as a ghost. He crouched down by the stream’s edge and scooped up a handful of icy water. Without, of course, actually being one. Still, there would be advantages.

Moonlight sparkled on something just beneath the water’s surface. Lavim slipped his finger back into the water and pried a gleaming stone about the size of his fist from the stream bed. Brownish red and shot through with green striations, the rock seemed to shimmer in the faint moonlight. Flecks of yellow and and white danced on the stone’s surface. Like gold and diamonds! Well, they’re probably not bits of gold and diamonds. They’re probably something with some name that only gnomes or dwarves would know.

Lavim tucked the stone into one of his pouches. He sat back on his heels and watched the moonlight rippling through the water. A gray fox barked in the thickets behind him. A nighthawk screamed high in the sky beyond the roof of the forest and a rabbit dove for its burrow in skittering panic. All around the kender, leaves rustled with the comings and goings of night creatures, stalked and stalking.

Why do you suppose, he asked himself, that people always say silent as a forest at night? This place is noisier than a market fair!

The kender laughed silently. He’d lately fallen into the habit of talking to himself. Probably because I’m getting old, he thought. People always said that the old talk to themselves because they know they’re the only ones who’ll give themselves a good answer.

Lavim found a more comfortable position and settled back to watch the forest and think in the moonlight.

That’s what I’m really doing: I’m thinking, he thought. I’m not talking to myself because I’m not all that old. Sixty isn’t really that old. Maybe my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I still managed to save young Stanach from all those draconians!

He smiled. Right. And as long as we’re talking about Stanach … Lavim knew—and recognized the matter with only a careless shrug—that what he’d really been doing all along (as well as talking to himself) was trying to find a good answer to the puzzle of how to get his hands on Piper’s flute. Stanach had kept it close and never once let it out of his sight all day.

All I want to do, Lavim assured himself, is just borrow it for a minute or two. I could see, he went on, why the flute is really important to him, seeing as it was Piper’s and they were such good friends. Poor Stanach. He must be lonely without Piper. He was really looking forward to seeing Piper again. He’s a long way from home and probably would have appreciated seeing a friendly face. Though you’d think he’d be happy he’s getting the sword back. Now what was I saying? Oh, right. The flute. He’d be really happy to find out afterward—if I managed to get my hands on it in the first place—that he didn’t lose it but that I only borrowed it. Lavim grinned up at the moons. He hadn’t the least doubt that he’d be able to get his hands on the flute. It only required the right time and place. Red and brown cherry wood, long and light, the flute had haunted the kender ever since he’d first seen it. He’d managed to squeek just a note or two out of it before Stanach had grabbed it away. He wondered now what kind of spell must live in a mage’s flute. The kind that teaches you songs, maybe?

Lavim wrapped his arms around his drawn up knees. Aye, the kind that teaches you songs. He understood nothing about playing songs and music, but he just knew that if he ever got his hands on Piper’s flute again that would change.

The kender climbed stiffly to his feet. The ground was cold and he hadn’t caught anything for breakfast yet. It was about the only thing anyone let him do besides make camp, find wood, fill flasks, and break camp.

He slipped into the shadows, thinking about enchanted flutes, rabbits, and hot broth made from what was left of the grouse.

The smoke drifting up to the top of the cobble still smelled sweetly of roasted grouse. Stanach looked down at the camp and wondered when kenders slept. Lavim was nowhere to be seen. Kelida slept close to the fire. Tyorl, his back against a hawthorn, slept with his head resting on drawn up knees.

Not for long, Stanach thought as he started down the rocks. Tyorl should have taken the watch before now, and the dwarf wasn’t going to wait any longer for him to wake. All Stanach wanted was the fire’s warmth for a few moments and then a place to sleep that wasn’t too stony. The fire threw black shadows against the trees and made them seem to sway in a silent wind. Stanach caught a glint of fire on steel and saw Stormblade under Kelida’s outflung hand. The peace strings on the scabbard were loose and the blade lay half outside its sheath. He knelt to slide the sword back into the scabbard.

His palm touched the rough place on the chasing. He’d been smoothing that silver when the Kingsword was stolen, when the walls of the forge had shattered before his eyes.

Fire had exploded in his head and he’d felt blood running down his neck, before darkness swallowed the world and he’d fallen, senseless, to the floor.

A crimson light pulsed in the steel that was not the reflection of the fire. Stanach slid Stormblade from the scabbard so quietly that Kelida’s breathing never hitched. He stood slowly and stepped away. He held Stormblade across both palms.

Kyan Red-axe had died for this sword. Piper had died for it, too. Realgar’s men would have searched for the mage. They would have seen the cairn. I shouldn’t have built it, he thought. He shook his head. No, the Theiwar would have found Piper’s body sooner or later. By the carrion crows. Stanach shuddered.

Do what you have to do. It was the last thing Piper had said to him. I’m doing it, Stanach thought.

It was what he’d planned all along. Find Piper, take the sword, and get back to Hornfel. Now, by taking the sword, he would be leaving his companions to their deaths if the Theiwar caught up with them. Stanach looked down at Kelida. Her heart was so simple to read! He wondered when she would realize that she had fallen in love with the half-drunk ranger who had given her his sword.

When she knows that he’s dead, his mind’s voice whispered. She’ll know it when she finally knows that he’s dead.

Stanach looked at the Kingsword in his hands. He would happily have taken the sword that first night in Qualinesti. He would gladly have left her, Tyorl, and Lavim behind in the forest and made his own way to Thorbardin. Because he couldn’t do that, he did the next best thing: he’d given Kelida a reason to carry Stormblade to Thorbardin. He’d given her a dead man to love.

I’m sorry, she’d said as he sat mourning for Piper. She’d stayed with him for a long time, her hand on his, warm and silently telling him that, for this moment at least, he was not alone. The comfort she offered had been as simple as a kinswoman’s, a sister’s silent understanding. Knowing that he ought to leave now, make off into the forest with the Kingsword and hope that he could buy time by leaving these three to the Theiwar, Stanach knelt and slipped Stormblade into the scabbard again.

Aye, Stanach thought, you understand, don’t you? You’ve lost kin and friends. You understand, lyt chwaer, little sister.

He tied the peace strings, two leather thongs on each side of the sheath, and silently rose to wake Tyorl.