Stormblade

15

Finn watched dawnlight glint on his dagger as he cut the draconian’s throat. He jerked his hand back quickly, pulling the blade free of the creature’s scaly flesh before the steel could be caught in the corpse’s transformation from flesh to stone. His stomach pulled tight with disgust, as it always did. He hated these misbegotten beasts living; he loathed them dead. Their kind killed his wife and murdered his son. He couldn’t kill enough of them.

The stenches of battle, blood, and fire filled the small clearing. Rising high on the cold morning breeze, the smoke from burned supply wagons swirled around the tops of the tall pines and slid down toward the nearby river. It caught the currents of air over the water and drifted back to the glade where the draconian patrol and the supply train of three wagons had been caught just before dawn by Finn and his rangers.

Before dawn, Finn thought, and just in time to fill their sleep with the last nightmares they would have.

Thirty strong, the ranger company had not lost a man, though a few were injured. Finn smiled cold satisfaction and looked around for Lehr. Dark shaggy hair lifting lazily in the small breeze, Lehr sighted the rangerlord and trotted across the clearing, jogging around the charred wagons bristling with arrows, and leaping nimbly over bodies turning to stone and dust.

“Any sign of more?”

Lehr shook his head. “Only these, Lord. I’ve been up on the ridge. You can see for miles up there. Nothing moving but the crows, and they’re only wondering when we’ll be gone so they can have breakfast.” Lehr’s eyes lighted with dark humor. “Poor birds. Nothing to pick here but what’s left of the draconians’ dinner last night. Unless they want stone and dust.”

Finn grunted. “Make camp by the river, Lehr. When your brother is finished with his work, both of you join me here.”

“Aye, Lord?” It was an invitation to explain further. When Finn did not accept it, Lehr shrugged and went to find his brother. Finn did not often explain his motives. Lehr didn’t often expect that he would, though he didn’t mind trying for an explanation now and then.

He found Kembal already tending the worst of the wounded and gave him Finn’s word. “Something’s up, Kem. What do you think?”

Kembal, healer and ranger both, looked up at his brother mildly. “Don’t know, but I’ll bet it has something to do with the signs you picked up yesterday.” Kembal eased the arrow from a man’s leg with gentle hands. The man flinched. His face paled, then settled into grim lines of resignation as the blood began to pour from his wound. He knew, as well as Kembal did, that draconian arrows were often poisoned. The blood flow now would be a cleansing, and, though he didn’t like to see it, he accepted it. Kem worked swiftly to clean the wound and didn’t watch as his brother left.

Both knew that Finn had not appreciated the surprise of stumbling upon a draconian patrol and supply train. He knew, too, that though the rangerlord had sent Tyorl and Hauk to Long Ridge to discover just such news of Verminaard’s movements in the foothills, the two had not returned from the town.

It was Lehr’s thinking that the signs he’d seen earlier were Tyorl’s. Kembal expected that Finn agreed. He wrapped the wound and rose to move on to the next man awaiting his attention. He supposed that Finn was going to take this time to let his men breathe, and to track back along the trail and satisfy himself that the tracks Lehr had seen were or were not Tyorl’s.

But what would the elf be doing with such an oddly assorted party as the signs had indicated? A dwarf, a kender, and a light-stepping human or elf?

And where, Kem wondered, was Hauk?

The late afternoon sun, freakishly hot as it sometimes was in autumn, appeared as white splashes on rocky outcroppings. Old brown leaves rattled across the rocks in the light, cool breeze. Stanach wiped sweat from his face with the heel of his hand and dropped to one knee in the shadow-crossed path. Someone had passed along the trail not long ago. The dwarf glanced up at Tyorl standing at his shoulder.

“Your rangers?”

Tyorl shook his head. He pointed to a white-scarred rock in the path. The stone had been scraped by steel. “No ranger in Finn’s company wears steel-capped boots. Look at that foot mark over there.”

Off to the side of the path, the moss, still cool and moist in the shade of a tall larch, held one well-formed impression. No woodsman, Stanach shook his head, frowning.

“A dwarf,” Tyorl said patiently. “Look, the size almost matches your own.”

Stanach closed his eyes thinking of Piper’s cairn crowning the hilltop a day and a half’s journey back through the forest. The Theiwar must have seen it and picked up their trail. It wouldn’t be hard to guess where the four companions were heading now. “Realgar’s men.”

“It’s likely.” Tyorl passed silently up the path, eyes to the ground, and returned after only a moment. “They’re headed for the river. It looks like they passed here at dawn.”

The path, such as it was, led to the only fording place within a day’s walk. The next closest ford lay ten miles south. Stanach rose and tugged absently at his beard. “Damn!” he muttered. “They mean to cut us off!”

“Where’s the kender?”

“Back with Kelida. Why?”

“I want to get across the river today. More than that, I want to know these mage-killers aren’t waiting at the ford. You’ve a steady hand with your sword, Stanach.” The elf slipped his longbow from his shoulder. He strung it quickly and drew an arrow from his quiver. “At best, we’ll be three against four, with Kelida to protect. That won’t be easy. The sword marks her as their target. Can you convince Lavim to stay with her again while we scout?”

“I wouldn’t even try. Don’t worry about it. He’s talking to Kelida, he’ll be occupied for a few minutes. Let’s check the ford while we can.”

Hesitating, Tyorl glanced back down the trail. The bend in the path hid the place where Kelida and Lavim had stopped. The girl, unused to walking and climbing all day, spoke no word of complaint, but wisely took each chance she could to rest. Lavim, never one to lose an audience, kept pace with her.

Sunlight glinted like gold in Tyorl’s hair as he ploughed his fingers through it. Stanach watched as the elf considered.

Kelida’s soft laughter drifted to them on the cool breeze. Lavim’s deep tones ran as counterpoint to her light voice.

Tyorl and Stanach moved down the path, their footfalls on the rising path sounding loud in the still forest. Ten yards beyond the place where they’d found the tracks, the path angled east, narrowing so they could no longer walk abreast.

The path climbed steeply now. Dark, damp earth clung to overturned stones in the path. Moss showed on the tops of some, the sides of others, and in many places the thick, green cover was scraped and scored. “They were hurrying,” Tyorl said, “and not bothering to cover their trail. They cut onto the path just where we first saw their sign.” He looked back over his shoulder. “We shouldn’t have left her alone.”

The breeze quickened, and the shadows sprawled across the path swayed and danced. Stanach tried to catch the sound of Kelida’s voice and heard nothing but the scratching of old leaves against stone. “I’m thinking you’re right. Go back. If Lavim’s still there, send him ahead and tell him to catch up with me.”

Tyorl frowned and Stanach, seeing his doubt, snorted. “I’m no ranger, Tyorl, but I’m not blind either.” He nodded to the signs on the path. “I can follow this, and I can keep quiet enough when I have to.”

He didn’t have to say it: the elf’s longbow could defend Kelida better than a lone sword. Tyorl nodded. “Leave the track here, Stanach. Keep it in sight and follow it from the woods. If they’re waiting up ahead, they’ll have a guard posted along here soon. If you sight him, get back here quietly and quickly. If we can take them, we will.”

“And if we can’t?”

Tyorl shrugged. “We try to cross the river someplace else. However, I don’t want to worry about these mage-killers cropping up in front of us again.”

“Go on then. I’ll be back.”

Stanach watched him go. The dwarf picked his way as quietly as he could through rustling underbrush whose slim branches clawed at his beard and scratched at his face and hands. He paralleled the path for a dozen yards, then was stopped by the broad, high face of an outcropping of stone. Around or over? he wondered, eyeing the obstacle. The stone was hard and old, rough with good grips. Stanach, who had seen nothing but forest for too long, grinned. Over, he decided.

He ran a careful hand over the stone, testing hand-and footholds. The holds were good, and he climbed swiftly, gaining the crest of the outcropping in a few moments. A foolhardy young pine clung to the the top of the rocks, with a few scrawny bushes for company. Except for these, the stone was gray and naked. Crouching low, Stanach kept to the north side of the pine’s trunk. From this cover, he saw the empty trail below. No guard.

Several yards beyond the outcropping, the trail turned again to the right, ran just below the rock where Stanach crouched, and dropped off suddenly. Stanach shifted position a little to gain a clearer view. The trees ended abruptly here, and the path snaked down into a stony river valley. The river itself was a narrow silver ribbon, the ford a shallow place at the path’s end, fringed with browning reeds. There was no sign that whoever had come up the trail before them lingered now in the stony vale.

A hawk wheeled high over the valley and slid down the wind on long, lazy spirals, searching for prey. The water’s wind-ruffled surface split as a small bass leaped high, a silver flash in the sun. Before the fish reached the height of its arc, the hawk dove hard and caught it with a triumphant cry.

Aye, dinner for you, Stanach thought, and likely you’ve left some for us.

The vale was empty, the river full of fish, and the fording would be easy. Smiling, he rose and turned.

He stood face to face with the one-eyed Theiwar known in Thorbardin as the Gray Herald.

Cold fear filled his belly. Trapped! Even as he understood that, Stanach instinctively ducked his right shoulder and pulled his sword free of the scabbard across his back. The high, singing whine of steel coming free was overwhelmed by the Gray Herald’s hard, brittle laughter. Stanach, fearing that he had already lost, knew it was so when his mighty double-handed blow rebounded inches from Agus’s neck. The air around the mageling flared scarlet, spat hot, fat sparks, and Stanach’s arms ached to the shoulders as though he’d struck mountain stone.

Agus, laughing still, lifted his right hand, caressing the air. He whispered a word, then another, and the sun-filled air around Stanach became cold as a winter night. The sky, blue a moment ago, became heavy, smelled of fear and despair. As though a huge hand had struck him from behind, Stanach crashed to his knees. Dimly, he heard the clatter of his sword on stone and saw Agus reach for the blade and snatch it up from the boulder.

Stanach tried to find air to breathe. There was none. It was as though the Gray Herald’s spell had sucked all the air out of Stanach’s lungs. This, Stanach thought, is how Piper was taken. Ambushed by a Theiwar mageling.

Thinking of Piper, he remembered his friend’s flute hanging from his belt. Though Piper had invested it with several spells, though the flute possessed an inherent magic of its own, it was useless to Stanach, who was not versed in magic. He knew instantly that it would be a powerful tool in the hands of the Gray Herald. The Theiwar would surely fathom its use if he had the time to study it. Under the guise of struggling to move, Stanach freed the flute from his belt and shoved it fast and hard into a crack in the boulder.

Agus lifted his hands again, and Stanach knew the gestures he made now. The words he spoke, only three, were oddly gentle ones which gave Stanach no comfort at all. They were the words of a transport spell. Agus reached down, touched Stanach’s head, and smiled into his eyes. Caught in the familiar wrench and grab of a transport spell, Stanach doubled over as all feeling drained from his arms and legs, all sense of being fled his heart and mind.

Lavim perched on a boulder just off the trail where he could see up the path and down. His hoopak balanced across his knees and a large leather pouch containing stones ranging from smooth pebbles to rough-sided, fist-sized rocks lay between his feet. He examined the stones one by one, the way an archer will check his arrows. He held up a reddish brown and green stone mottled with shining bits of yellow pyrite and white calcite for Kelida’s inspection.

“This rock,” he said, watching the sun catch the pyrite and calcite,

“killed a goblin at a hundred paces.”

Kelida eyed him doubtfully. “A hundred, Lavim?” The old kender nodded casually as though his veracity had not been questioned. “Maybe a hundred and ten. I didn’t have time to count, you understand.”

“But you fetched back the rock after it killed this goblin?”

“Oh, yes. It’s a good rock, a lucky rock. I’ve had it for a long time. It was my father’s, and he had it from his father.”

Kelida swallowed a smile. “Sort of a family heirloom, is it?”

Lavim tucked the stone back into his pouch. “Well, I never thought of it like that, but yes, I suppose it is.”

The picture of two generations of kenders dutifully retrieving this rock each time it flew from a hoopak’s sling was too absurd to consider. Though she hid her smile behind her hand, Lavim saw it in her green eyes.

“What’s so funny about that, Kelida?”

“Oh, I’m not laughing, not really. I’m—I’m smiling because it’s nice that you have something to remember your father and grandfather by.”

Kelida drew her legs up tight to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. She watched the kender continue his inspection of his weapons. Thin sunlight ran like silver down his long, white braid. In his weather-browned and wrinkled face, his green eyes shone like spring leaves in sunlight.

“I was just thinking I don’t have anything to remember my family by—no lucky rock, at least.”

Lavim looked up. “Oh, there are plenty of them in Khur. Have you ever been there? That’s where I was born. It’s a nice country, all hills and mountains. Some pretty valleys, too. You should see it sometime, Kelida. I’d like to go back there myself. I always mean to but—I dunno, something always tugs me in the opposite direction. Like this Stormblade, although I’ll be darned if I can figure out what it is, exactly.

“You didn’t always used to be a barmaid, did you? You used to live on a farm with your family, right? Before the dragon—uh, well, before you were a barmaid. Well, if you like farming, you’d love the valleys in Khur. I’d be happy to take you there. That way I’d get back, too. For a while, anyway. After we take care of Stormblade.” He paused. “Say, you don’t suppose this Hauk fellow is going to want to come to Khur, too, do you?”

Kelida watched sun dazzle on stone. “Why would he want to?”

“Well, if you were there he might. He probably knows you’re coming to Thorbardin to rescue him, and he’ll probably be grateful. I wonder if they’ve got him in a gaol or a dungeon? Gaols are all right, I guess, for limited duration. The food’s usually really nasty, but it’s pretty regular.

“Dungeons? I don’t like them so much. The food’s not much worse, but you don’t see it as often. The people who put you there tend to forget about you after a while.

“You know, Thorbardin’s a really big place. Not one city—six of ’em. They’re all sort of connected somehow. Maybe with bridges. And it’s built right inside the mountain. Can you imagine that?

“There’s gardens, too. Did you know that? But, if they’re inside the mountain, how do they get sunlight? How do they get rain? Well, I suppose they could save up the rain and water their gardens, but that would be a big job, don’t you think? Even if they did—water the gardens, I mean—that still doesn’t solve the problem of sunlight. You can’t carry that in a bucket.”

Lavim rambled on. Kelida only half heard him. She was thinking of dungeons and gaols and wondering if Hauk did, indeed, know that someone was coming to help him.

He must know, she thought. He must know that Tyorl is searching for him. She ran her hand along the sheathed flat of the Kingsword. He has to know his imprisonment is because of this sword.

“Of course, if you were going to carry sunlight in buckets, the buckets would have to have a tight lid, wouldn’t they?”

If he’s alive, she thought, Hauk knows. Can he still be alive? It had been six days since the night he’d walked out of Tenny’s. She thought of Piper, the mage, and the cairn on the hill in the forest, and of Stanach’s eyes when he spoke of his kinsman’s death. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her drawn up knees.

She tried to hear Hauk’s voice, find the little break in it that told of a gentleness hiding behind the bear’s rumble. She imagined that if she could always hear his voice in her memory, he would still be alive. If she could always see his eyes as he laid the sword at her feet, he would not be dead. She had built, of the few moments she’d spoken with him, an image of gallantry and kindness, and she no longer remembered that, in those real moments in Tenny’s, she had feared him.

“… And they’d have to be dark buckets—maybe lined with lead or something like that—so the sunlight wouldn’t always be leaking out. Hmmm. I wonder if they’ve thought of that.”

Kelida closed her fingers around the scabbarded sword. Kingsword, Stanach called it. Stormblade. For Kelida it would always be the sword of the man who risked her life for a gamble and then gambled with his own to keep her safe.

Bushes rustled, a stone skittered on the path, and Lavim scrambled from his rocky perch, scooping rocks back into his pouch. Kelida looked around and saw Tyorl standing beside her. She moved to get to her feet, but the elf waved her back.

“Not yet. Lavim. Get up the trail and catch up with Stanach, will you?”

The kender slung his hoopak across his back. “Sure, Tyorl. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Go find Stanach. And don’t wander.”

Grinning happily, the kender loped away up the trail, pack and pouches jogging.

“I heard him halfway up the trail.” Tyorl said. He settled on the boulder that the kender had abandoned. “What was he on about?”

Kelida smiled. “Thorbardin and sunlight in lead-lined buckets.”

“Sunlight in—?” Tyorl scratched his jaw. “Why?”

“Oh, for the gardens. He says there are a lot of gardens in Thorbardin. Are there?”

The elf shrugged. “I don’t know. The city’s inside the mountain so I don’t see how there could be. Kender-talk is half dreams and half imagination.”

Kelida watched in silence for a long moment as Tyorl ran his thumb along the longbow’s string. “Where is Stanach?”

“Up the trail.” Tyorl shrugged again. “Running scout.”

“Shouldn’t we catch up with him?”

Tyorl looked into the shadows. Though he heard nothing but wind in the trees, he shook his head. “In a minute. It’s a long climb up the trail. We can wait here still.”

Kelida nodded and fell silent, watching the shadows weaving on the trail. Tyorl watched the sunlight running like gold thread through her hair. You see, the thing about the buckets, Lavim told himself, is that they might work and they might not. But you never know until you try, right?

The wind sighed in the treetops, and Lavim trotted up the trail. Right, he thought. Of course, if they do have gardens in Thorbardin, then they must’ve figured something out about the light.

Lavim had decided that he wasn’t going to worry about this new habit of talking to himself. Besides, he enjoyed it almost as much as talking to someone else. For one thing, he never interrupted himself. Besides, it seemed as though Stanach and Tyorl just couldn’t be happy unless they were cutting him off in mid-sentence. Kelida listened, sometimes. But, all in all, he was beginning to enjoy his conversations with himself. He gave and got good answers.

He left the path where broken bushes and trampled underbrush showed him Stanach’s trail.

Just like a dwarf! He cuts a path a mile wide so everyone can see where he’s been. They’re not real good in the woods, dwarves, are they?

A stone outcropping rose tall and gray before him. Lavim grinned. I’ll bet he went this way. Why didn’t he stick to the path? Oh, well. I’ll ask him when I find him.

He grabbed for hand and footholds and scrambled up the stone. Oh, yes, Stanach had been here. The lichen clinging to the rock was scuffed and torn. Lavim shook his head. Might as well paint a sign in red that says, I WENT THIS WAY.

Sunlight winked on something smooth and red-brown where it lay in a narrow crevice in the stone. Lavim reached for the gleam and frowned when he picked up Piper’s flute.

Lavim drew a long breath and let it out in a low whistle. Piper’s flute!

What a find!

He raised the flute to his lips, ready at once to make good his resolve to see if the flute would teach him songs. He tried a note and then another. Before he could draw another breath, he was stopped by a sudden thought. Now why, he thought, would Stanach leave this up here? He’s always real careful not to leave things lying around—annoyingly careful—and here is Piper’s flute, just tossed aside.

The kender rubbed his thumbs along the smooth cherry wood, then held the flute up to the sunlight, watching the red and brown glints deep inside the wood. Had the dwarf dropped it?

Lavim snorted. Not likely! It was Piper’s flute and, so Stanach said, magic. You don’t just drop a magic flute that’s been hanging from your belt for two days and that you check every six minutes to make sure is still there.

Lavim peered closely at the stone beneath his feet. Someone else had been here, too. The dirt around the small pine at the crest of the stone showed two sets of footprints.

Not Tyorl’s footprints, the kender thought. He dropped to his haunches and laid his hand along the prints. One set was narrower than the other, but both were of a length. Another dwarf.

Now why do you suppose there’d be another dwarf way out here in the middle of the woods? Oh, he thought, right, the whadyacallems. Theiwar.

“Right,” he said, “Theiwar. That means—” Lavim snapped his mouth shut and looked around. Wind sighed in the underbrush. The river in the valley below whispered and laughed. A jay scolded from the top of an oak and took noisy wing. There was no one around, but he’d heard a voice, hollow as the wind or a distant flute song. “Uh, hello?”

Lavim, Stanach is in trouble.

Lavim turned this way and that, frowning into the valley, scowling at the thickets back down the trail. “Where are you?” he said aloud. “For that matter, who are you? How do you know Stanach’s in trouble?”

You have to help him, Lavim.

“Yes, but—Now wait a minute! How do I know you’re not one of those, uh …”

Theiwar.

“Right! How do I know—”

Why would I tell you he’s in trouble?

“Why don’t you show yourself? How about that? Where are you?”

Right behind you.

Lavim spun around. No one stood behind him. He turned back. No one stood there. He couldn’t be hearing a voice if no one was there to speak. Was he talking to himself again?

This didn’t sound like his voice. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember what his voice sounded like when he was talking to himself. (Thinking, he reminded himself.) But he couldn’t recall, and on the chance that he wasn’t having some strange conversation with his own mind, the kender opened his eyes again and peered around.

“Now listen—”

The voice, behind and on all sides of him now, had changed from wind-hollow to steel.

Lavim, you called me. Now listen to me! Go get Tyorl!

Lavim sighed. If he was still talking to himself, he’d picked up Tyorl’s and Stanach’s annoying habit of interrupting himself.

“I called you? I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t—”

We’ll talk about it later! Go!

Lavim scrambled down the outcropping and headed for the trail. Fear didn’t send him running. Neither did obedience.

What caused him to run, as noisy as a dwarf through the underbrush, was the sudden and complete realization that, this time, it was not his voice and he had not been talking to himself.

Well, he amended, I might’ve been talking to myself, but someone else was answering!

Lavim laughed and brandished the old wooden flute high as he ran. He guessed who had been answering him.