Stormblade

7

The Draconian Givrak was troubled with just enough intelligence to permit him to carry out his orders and, occasionally, to plan a simple strategy. Having received few orders this day, he turned a considerable portion of his slim intellect to the problem of avenging himself on the kender who had the night before cost him a venomous reprimand from Carvath for disturbing his sleep.

Givrak was of the opinion that the kender’s hide would make a fine ornament for a stable door.

The draconian had two squads of soldiers under his command. These he roused at dawn with orders to set up barricades at the three roads leading from the town and then to accompany him on a search of Long Ridge. Givrak was certain that he’d find the kender before nightfall. As he stalked the streets of Long Ridge, Givrak’s anger became unholy anticipation. He was going to be enjoying himself soon. He knew a dozen ways to kill a kender and, even when he employed the quickest of these methods, the screaming did not stop before two days had passed. The morning’s cold wind up from the valley did nothing to freshen the sooty air of Long Ridge. It seemed to Kelida, walking out beyond the town proper, that the gray air could never be clear again. She stumbled, tugged at the sword smacking against her leg, and tried to settle the scabbard belt more comfortably around her waist. Sighing impatiently, she wondered how anyone could wear something this cumbersome and still manage to walk.

She’d tried carrying it and found it too awkward. Each step she took had sent the sword either sliding from its scabbard or digging painfully into her arms. Stupid thing! She’d be glad to be rid of it. She stopped at the broad road’s first bend and tugged at the scabbard belt again. Her skirt twisted and bunched at the waist, and her blouse caught on the buckle and ripped.

Stupid sword! She didn’t want it and she wasn’t going to keep it. All it had given her was bruised legs and torn clothes. Well, Tyorl was just going to take the thing back. There had been no sign of his mad friend Hauk since the night he’d given her the miserable thing. Wherever he was, he wasn’t interested in his wretched sword.

Or me, she thought miserably. Not that he ever really had been. He’d been drunk when he’d given her the sword. Likely he’d wandered off someplace and run afoul of dragonarmy soldiers. Then, probably, he would be wishing that he had his sword!

Kelida shivered, partly from cold and partly from the thought that Hauk might truly have had a need for his sword. She looked around. The road dropped beyond the bend to begin a long, steep descent into the valley. From where she stood, Kelida could not see the valley. Neither could she see the barricade set up by Carvath’s soldiers, but she knew it was there. Like those at each of the three roads leading into Long Ridge, it had been set up at dawn. For some reason, it had been declared that no one would leave Long Ridge today. Some luckless person had (alien under the attention of the occupation.

Kelida wanted to see neither the farm where she had once lived nor the soldiers who had ravaged that valley.

What I want to see, she thought, is Tyorl!

He’d left a message for her with Tenny that he was looking for her. He was leaving Long Ridge and wanted to speak with her outside the town before he left. Kelida had felt a little sad when she’d gotten the message. If the elf was leaving, it must surely mean that he didn’t expect to find his friend Hauk here in Long Ridge. If she would have welcomed a chance to work a little vengeance on the young man, she also would have welcomed the opportunity to hear his bear’s growl of a voice again. Kelida unbuckled the sword belt and let the weapon fall to the ashy dust in the road. The wind carried a rough curse and grating laughter from the direction of the barricade. Kelida would go no farther. She took a seat on a boulder’s flat top, drew up her knees, rested her chin on her forearms, and stared at the black, scarred fields across the road.

The dragon’s fire had been capricious here on the outskirts of the town. East of the road was black desolation. The western verge, however, defended by the broad, golden width of the dirt road, still showed sign of life. The thicket of slim silver birches that crowned the ridge was almost untouched. Sedge, its plumes the rusty gold of autumn, drooped at the roadside. White dead-nettle had scattered its blossoms in tiny petals around its roots, as though presaging winter’s snow. Even the yellow toad-flax showed here and there.

“Well, fine,” she whispered to the sword lying in the road, “I’m here. Where is he?”

His hunting leathers were the color of shade and birch. Kelida started and gasped when all of a sudden Tyorl stepped out of the shadows.

“Right here, Kelida.” He smiled and cocked a thumb at the sword.

“What’s that doing here?”

Kelida let go the breath she had caught. “Where else should it be? If you’re leaving, you’ll want to take it with you.”

“He gave it to you.”

Exasperating elf! “I don’t want it anymore. I never did want it. What would I do with it? I can’t sell it; I can’t wield it; I can’t even carry the thing! Won’t you please just take it, go wherever it is you’re going, and leave me alone?”

Tyorl cast a quick look down the road toward the barricade and motioned her to silence. “Be easy, Kelida. I’m going, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He gestured toward the birch thicket. “Come here. I don’t want to say this in front of half the dragonarmy.”

She hesitated, then made a quick decision to do as he asked. The smile had vanished from his eyes, his voice was low and tense. Kelida picked up the sword and let him draw her into the shadows of the trees.

“Listen,” he whispered, “and listen well. I don’t know where Hauk is. I don’t know what’s happened to him, but I know he’s not in this town anymore.” He paused. “You know we’re rangers.”

Kelida nodded.

“Aye, and our lord is a man called Finn. He and our band are waiting for our return. I can’t stay here any longer.”

“You’re just going to forget him?”

Anger flashed in the elf’s eyes. Too late, Kelida realized that her question had been close to an insult.

“No, Kelida. I’m not going to stop looking. There’s a lot of ground between here and the foothills. I’ll look for Hauk every step of the way. But I have to get back to Finn.” He gestured to the sword in her hands.

“Please keep it. It may be that Hauk will come back here, looking for the sword and me. Will you tell him where I’ve gone?”

“But—”

Tyorl’s fingers closed with a strong grip on her wrist. “Kelida, it’s time for me to leave Long Ridge. Hauk and I managed to convince those who have an interest in such things that we are hunters. If I stay any longer, someone will surely notice that I haven’t been doing much hunting. Their next guess is going to be that I’m a ranger.”

Fear skittered up Kelida’s spine. She asked the question before she realized it wouldn’t be wise to know the answer.

“Where are you going?”

Tyorl hesitated only briefly. “Qualinesti’s south border. Finn has work for us there. I’m sorry you brought the sword all the way out here. I wish I could carry it back for you, but I can’t delay any longer.”

“What about the barricade?”

“What about it? Finn would have my skin if I couldn’t slip past a couple of half-drunk dragonarmy scum.” He took the sword from her and ran his palm down the length of the shabby old scabbard. Cold sunlight glinted on the sapphires, making them gleam like ice. “He won this at daggers.”

“I’m not surprised.” Kelida smiled. “He has a good aim.”

Tyorl chuckled. “Aye, he does at that. Keep it for him?”

The wind seemed to grow colder. Kelida thought of the mountains south of Qualinesti, wet and bleak in winter. She thought of Hauk and wondered where he was, why he had abandoned so valuable a sword, and as good a friend as Tyorl.

Then she wondered, where she had not before, if Hauk had simply slipped off in the night, deserting the ranger band. She stole a quick look at Tyorl.

No, the elf would never consider it. Kelida shivered and took the sword. How awkward it was! “I’ll keep it.” She hesitated for only the space of a breath, then rose on tiptoe and lightly kissed his cheek. “Good luck to you.”

“Aye, well, we’ll both need some luck, eh?” He smiled. “Thank you.”

He took her arm and walked her back to the road. Because she was fumbling with the sword belt, Kelida didn’t know that their way was blocked until she felt the elf’s grip tighten. She looked up. Three soldiers, a human, and two draconians, stood across the path to the road. One of the soldiers grinned, showing gapped yellow teeth. “A sweet good-bye,” he drawled. His eyes flicked over Tyorl dismissively and fastened on Kelida, lingering.

Kelida’s stomach twisted weakly.

Lavim Springtoe ran like a rabbit who knows he is too fast for the hound, reveling in speed and the chase. Head down and laughing, he led the four draconians up one street, down another, through a tavern, and out the back door. Roaring and cursing in pursuit, they sounded like animated junkpiles, their swords crashing against their armor as they ran. He ducked down a sooty alley. Nimbly leaping a fence, he gleefully shouted vile taunts to the four who, weighed down with armor and weapons, struggled furiously to climb. Before the first draconian dropped to the ground, the kender squeezed between a clammy brick wall and a garbage keg. He was only a little out of breath.

Lavim let the first one past. It was the second he was most interested in. He was Givrak and Lavim was certain that he would be by in a minute. When Givrak lumbered by, sword out and gleaming in the watery morning light, Lavim’s hoopak shot out between the draconian’s legs and sent him sprawling into the first pursuer. The third, coming too fast to stop, piled into the other two, and the fourth only missed them by throwing himself against the opposite wall.

Lavim hooted with laughter and scrambled over the garbage keg and the three tangled draconians. He darted between the legs of the fourth and headed for the street. He dashed around the wide skirts of a woman, ducked under the long legs of a horse, and tore across the road. Behind him the draconians’ curses told him that they’d untangled themselves and were yet in pursuit.

Lavim knew the streets and byways of Long Ridge as only a kender or a street urchin could. He made for a warehouse, half-burned in the taking of the town, snatching up stones and loose cobbles from the street as he ran. He’d not had this much fun since he’d run, two yards all the way, ahead of an avalanche of snow and stones down a mountainside in Khur. (The two yards was his estimation. Ish, the gnome who was with him at the time, claimed that the distance was closer to a quarter mile, that the avalanche was no avalanche at all but a little slide of snow, and that all of this did not take place on a mountainside, but on a gently sloping hill.) The warehouse was huge, half a block long and wider than any building in the town. Once every kind of trade goods had been stored here: flour, wheat, corn, even bales of snowy wool. Of all the things stored here at the time of the fire, only ashes remained.

Lavim darted into the roofless building. Splashing through dark, ashy puddles from a recent rain, he made for the stairs at the back of the first floor. Givrak and his soldiers pounded behind him, bellowing curses and threats, scattering people like chickens before a gale.

The stink of burning permeated the building. The old kender paused at the bottom of the stairs. Leaning against a fire-thinned wall to catch his breath, he squinted up. There was still a second floor—or part of one. It jutted out from the stair wall like a barn’s loft, black edged and splintered, covering only half the width of the building. From that perch he would be able to fire, with perfect impunity, the stones he’d collected. Sucking in huge gulps of air still tainted with the acrid smell of burned wool and grain, Lavim eyed the stairs. He decided that a light-footed kender would be able to negotiate them and he started up. He moved swiftly on the theory that a soft, quick step would stress the already creaking stairs less than a heavy, cautious one. With half the steps negotiated, his left foot on an upper step, his right on the one below, the lower tread groaned and then collapsed with a splintering snap. Lavim moved fast. He threw himself against the wall and grabbed for purchase above. There was none. Like a collapsing house of cards, the steps above fell away from the second floor. Lavim yelped, dove, and caught the splintery edge of the floor.

His hands clinging to the crumbling wood, the rest of him dangling over the two story drop at full arm extension, Lavim thought it might be better for him now if kender possessed wings.

He almost lost his hold when a hard, sharp bark of laughter sounded from far below on the first floor. Givrak, his reptilian eyes glittering balefully in the gray light, his thin, snakey tongue flickering, laughed up at the kender.

All his life, Lavim had never been able to resist a sure target. He twisted and spat down between his elbows. Though his aim had been a source of pride in his youth, it had lately been known to fail. It did not fail him now. He hit Givrak squarely between the eyes. The draconian’s shriek of fury echoed around the empty warehouse.

Lavim flinched away from the silver flight of a dagger and elbowed himself higher. He wrapped one hand around a charred, wobbly post. He pulled, felt the post give a little, and dropped his hand back to the floor. Givrak laughed, a grim, cold sound. “Give it up, ratling! There’s no place to run, and I would like to discuss something with you.”

Lavim twisted again, got a knee up, and then slid back. The weakened boards of the second floor groaned.

Metal crashed against wood. The draconian was abandoning his armor.

Lavim, whose curiosity could not be quenched were he about to drop into the shadowy horror of the Abyss, peered down again. Givrak’s armor was a pile of red metal on the floor, his short sword was clamped between long, fanged jaws. His wings, wide stretches of bone and claw-tipped leather, unfolded with crude, jerking motions. The other three stepped back, grinning. They scented an ending.

They’re gliding wings, Lavim reminded himself, and draconians can’t really fly. Everyone knows that …

Givrak couldn’t fly. However, he had thick, powerfully muscled legs and could leap higher than even Lavim would have imagined. On the first leap, the draconian’s long clawed hand raked and missed the shakey post to which Lavim clung.

On the second, black wings thrusting powerfully down, Givrak caught the splintered edge of the floor with one hand and shifted his sword from jaws to free hand.

The kender moved fast then, brought both knees up tight to his chest and twisted, throwing himself up onto the groaning floor. Givrak, laughing horribly, easily hefted himself onto the floor.

The rabbit was no longer certain that he could outrun the hound. Lavim snatched his dagger from its belt sheath and slashed wildly. The blade did little damage to the draconian’s tough, scaled arm. Lavim shifted his grip and tore the blade down and across Givrak’s left wing, ducked beneath the roaring beast’s huge arm, and brought the blade ripping up through the leather of the creature’s right wing. A huge, clawed hand came down on Lavim’s wrist and twisted cruelly. The kender’s dagger fell from nerveless fingers.

Lavim, with the persistence of his kind, drove his knee into Givrak’s belly. When the draconian doubled, howling, Lavim brought his other knee up hard as he could under the creature’s jaw. Teeth clashed, Givrak’s head whipped back. Lavim jerked his wrist free, retrieved his dagger, and bolted.

There was no place to run.

What used to be walls here were now only fire blackened beams and posts and lowering sky. A hauling strut jutted out from the side of the building, a black finger pointing to the hills. Below were the cold, hard cobbles of the streets of Long Ridge. Lavim stopped and turned. The draconian, limping and wings torn, lumbered toward him, murder in his black reptilian eyes.

Kender do not think often, but when they do, they think fast. Lavim Springtoe waited just long enough for Givrak to get up a a little speed, and then he ran for the sky.

Stanach had been looking for the elf since dawn with no luck. The kender was another matter. Stanach heard word of him everywhere. The cooper, the blacksmith, and the candlemaker all had complaints. The cooper wanted his small adze back. The blacksmith vowed to turn Lavim over to Carvath’s authority if he did not have his stamp and chisel in his shop by noon. The candlemaker only cursed his own foul luck to have survived the army’s incursions only to see his few remaining goods carried off by a plague of kenders.

Stanach did not try to explain to the man that one kender hardly constitutes a plague. Semantics, in the matter of kenders, often depend upon which side of the counter one stands behind.

Still searching for Tyorl, the dwarf crossed Lavim’s trail at the butcher’s shop, the tanner’s, and the potter’s. A boy had seen the kender dashing through the alley across the street from a tavern. From there, he heard that Lavim had indeed been in the tavern, but only briefly. He’d been chased by draconian soldiers.

Givrak! It could be no one else. Stanach thought about Tyorl and the sword. The chances were looking slimmer every hour that the elf would know where the sword was. But he was Stanach’s only clue. If this clue proved fruitless, he’d have to start looking somewhere else soon or get back to Piper.

The kender could likely take care of himself. Kenders usually could. Aye, Stanach thought then, but if he’s caught? He didn’t want to think about what would happen to Lavim if the draconian caught him.

“Damn kender!” he muttered. He supposed he could look for the kender and the elf at the same time.

The next thing Stanach heard was that Lavim, white braid flying and legs pumping for all he was worth, had headed for a burned out warehouse in the middle of the block, the draconians still in pursuit. Reluctantly Stanach checked the release of his sword and headed for the warehouse. He approached the warehouse’s blackened skeleton from the opposite side of the street. A catbird’s laughter, or a kender’s, rang mockingly from above.

Stanach looked up in time to see a draconian plunge from the unwalled second floor of the warehouse, arms and legs whirling. The creature spread his wings, now useless, dagger-slashed leather, and screamed. Had the drop been steeper, Stanach would have been able to hear the wind whistling through those slashes. As it was, he only heard the thud of the draconian hitting the ground, the scrape and crack of scales and bones on cobbles. And Lavim’s catbird cackling.

Stanach drew his sword and crossed the street. He kicked the draconian over. It was Givrak.

Stanach shuddered. Even as he recognized the draconian, Givrak’s carcass turned to stone. His heart lurching hard, Stanach backed quickly away from the thing. He’d heard tales of what happened to the bodies of dead draconians, but had only half believed those tales till now. Lavim leaned out over the edge of the building. “Stanach! Good to see you again! Is he dead? He forgot about those holes in his wings. The little details, my father used to say, are very important sooner or later and—Yo! Stanach! Look out!”

Givrak’s three companions, having heard their fellow’s scream, had bolted out the door opposite Stanach. Without a pause, they leaped over their fallen comrade, whose stony corpse was now turning to dust, and charged the dwarf.

After the manner of a good swordcrafter, Stanach’s knowledge of the weapon did not stop at knowing how to make one. He was no warrior; he hadn’t a fighter’s instincts. But he had an intimate knowledge of the weapon and in his hand a blade was a deadly thing. He lopped the sword arm off his first attacker and left him howling on his knees in the street. He noticed that, wounded, the thing did not become stone. Stanach did not waste time wondering why. He backed the other two against the warehouse, his sword a silver flash in the air. He wielded the blade double-handed as though it were an axe. Every move his two opponents tried to make was blocked by singing steel. A good many spans shorter than his attackers, Stanach stood naturally under their guard and pressed that advantage every time he could. One of the draconians stumbled, and in that moment between balance lost and balance recovered, Stanach raised his sword to strike.

Stanach’s sword high, his guard clear, the draconian’s companion lunged from the left and would have neatly skewered the dwarf had a fist-sized stone not caught him hard at the unprotected base of his neck and dropped him like a felled ox.

“Stanach! Don’t let your sword get caught in ’em! The body will hold the blade till they turn to—behind you! Duck!”

Stanach did, and a blade whistled in the air an inch above his head. Another rock flew and missed. Stanach scrambled to his feet and turned only barely in time to deflect and arrest the downward thrust of a draconian’s sword with his own. The draconian hissed. Teeth bared and dripping in long jaws, thin red tongue flicking, he threw all of his weight against Stanach’s defense.

Stanach’s blade moved back. Its razored edge was only a finger’s width from the dwarf’s neck. His hand, wet with cold sweat, slipped on the sword’s grip. His attacker had the advantage of size and bore down on Stanach’s blade with his own, all his weight behind. A bleak understanding shivered through the dwarf: he would not go down until he’d torn his muscles from his bones. Grimly, Stanach put his back into a last push.

A wild cackling sounded from above, Lavim’s laughter. Another of his deadly missiles flew true and hit Stanach’s opponent in the eye.

The next flew foul. A sharp edged stone caught Stanach on the right elbow, numbing his arm to the wrist. His sword flew from his useless hand.

His heart thundering painfully against the cage of his ribs, Stanach spun and dropped to his knees on the cobbles, groping for his weapon, sure that he would feel the fatal plunge of steel between his shoulders before he reached it. He cursed the kender’s aim and gasped a prayer to Reorx all in one breath. At the same instant Lavim, shouted a hasty apology and fired another rock from above.

The draconian roared, staggering now under a rain of stones and cobbles. Lavim whooped. “Get ’im, Stanach! No! Don’t! There’s more of ’em coming! Run, Stanach! Run!”

Steel-soled boots rang against the cobbles like thunder roaring. Four more draconians rounded the corner at the top of the street. Stanach snatched up his sword in his left hand, scrambled to his feet, and waved up to Lavim.

“Get down here, kender!”

Lavim would have liked to, but he didn’t see how that was possible. Wings, he thought, kender really do need wings! He crawled out onto the hauling strut and clutched at the beam with both hands. He dropped to his full length, peered down at Stanach below and yelled, “Catch!”

The best Stanach could do was break the kender’s fall.

They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, cobbles biting into backs and knees. Stanach hauled Lavim to his feet, hoping that most of the kender’s bones were still intact. Hanging onto Lavim’s arm, Stanach ran faster than he’d ever run before.

Tyorl stepped in front of Kelida.

The soldier’s eyes narrowed. He closed his fingers around the hilt of his sword.

“Aye,” the soldier said, his fingers tapping a restless pattern against the hilt. “A sweet good-bye. You weren’t leaving, were you, elf?”

The draconian laughed, a short, hard bark. “I think he was, Harig. What you saw must have been the wench’s farewell kiss.”

Tyorl’s hand itched for a sword. Kelida looked up, her eyes wide. Her breathing harsh with fear. The pulse in her neck leaped.

“I’d wager she’d forget the elf fast enough after he’s dead, Harig. Think you could take him?”

“The elf?” Harig snorted. “My blade’s tasted elf blood before. Thin and old, but it will do.”

Tyorl grabbed Kelida’s shoulder and spun her aside, snatching Hauk’s sword. As he did, Harig drew his sword, too. The draconian and the other human stood away. Neither made a move to intervene, but their eyes were red and hungry.

Harig bared broken, yellowed teeth in a grin. “What say you, elf? Is she worth a little blood?’

The breeze strengthened and moaned around the top of the ridge. The stench of burning and death gusted up from the valley. Along the hilt of Hauk’s sword, sapphires winked and danced in jeweled pattern to a silent song of light.

Tyorl took an easy, loose stand and leveled his sword as though he were not the defender but the challenger. “All your blood,” he said, his voice low and cold as only an elf’s can be, “would not begin to measure the worth.”

Tyorl saw Harig’s intent to strike in his muddy brown eyes. Hauk’s blade rose high and fell hard. The two soldiers howled and Kelida screamed. Harig was dead before he ever moved.

Tyorl moved fast. He grabbed Kelida’s wrist and pulled her close. Again he leveled his blade in challenge, this time at the two remaining guards. “I can deal the same death to you if you want it.”

The soldiers, swords drawn, flanked him. The draconians hissed, a sound that reminded Tyorl of snakes rising to strike. As they closed in, he prayed to gods too long neglected that his boast was true.

The cobbled streets of Long Ridge left behind, Stanach and Lavim made good speed. So did the pursuing draconians. The kender’s head was down, his small legs pumping. Three belt pouches made of leather, two of cloth, bounced and swung wildly as he ran. Lavim wheezed now like an old bellows and wasted no breath in laughing aloud, though Stanach could still see the laughter in his shining green eyes. Lavim ran for the sheer pleasure of hearing the draconians’ furious cursing.

When one of their pursuers lost his footing in a mud puddle, tangling two others and sending searing curses through the street, Lavim slowed to watch them thrashing and trying to sort themselves out. Stanach grabbed the kender’s arm and, ducking down an alley, dragged Lavim after him. Lavim sprang over cracked barrels stinking of sour wine. Stanach didn’t and only scrambled up out of the mud as the draconians entered the alley roaring. Stanach ran.

Stanach’s heart crashed against his ribs. His legs began to weigh as heavily as lead and the stitch in his side threatened to drop him with every step.

As they approached the last bend before the road wound out of the town to begin its steep descent into the valley, a woman screamed, high and terrified. Neither the dwarf nor the kender could have slowed if he’d wanted to. They were at the bend in the road before the echoes of the woman’s scream had finished rolling down into the valley. Lavim snatched Stanach’s arm, dragged him to a halt, and pointed. Stanach cursed. The elf he’d been searching for all morning was battling for his life against two dragonarmy soldiers. Blood streamed from his right shoulder and his face.

In the road, the serving girl from the tavern scrambled for rocks. She threw what she found at the draconians. Though her aim was good, her missiles gave the elf no help at all, but rebounded harmlessly from the mail of his opponents. What was she doing in the company of the elf, anyway?

Backed to the rocky edge of the ridge, the elf wielded his sword double-handed and with considerable skill. But Stanach knew that skill was not going to win out over numbers and a cliff’s edge. The elf could not possibly hold his ground against the two draconians. If he didn’t miss a step and plunge to his death over the ridge, he’d die on a draconian’s blade.

Lavim, on the theory that anyone fighting a draconian could be none but a friend, bellowed an enthusiastic battle cry and threw himself headfirst at one of the embattled elf’s attackers. The soldier and kender went down in the road.

Stanach moved more cautiously and with considered intent. He had not, as Lavim had, forgotten their pursuit. At any moment, four more draconians were going to round the bend. A kender, a girl, a bleeding elf, and a winded dwarf were not going to be proof against six of Carvath’s creatures. Two dead draconians turning to dust in the road, however, might stop the other four long enough to make escape a slim possibility. There was nothing Stanach wanted more at this moment than to be away from Long Ridge. He ducked in under the draconian’s guard and thrust hard and up, killing the creature and dragging his sword free just as the elf fell to his knees, his blade rattling to the ground. Stanach reached to return the sword. He found the elf’s hand on the grip before his own. He looked down then and, for a long moment, he stopped breathing.

Crimson light streaked through the blood on the steel.

Great Reorx, he thought numbly. This is it! Stormblade!

Then, Tyorl was up and Stormblade was gone, lifted high in the elf’s hand and out of Stanach’s reach.

In the road, Lavim had snatched a rock from the girl and brought it down hard on his fallen opponent’s skull. Bone cracked, the soldier screamed, and Lavim bashed again for good measure.

The elf was breathing hard. Stanach eyed him doubtfully. He was bleeding from a shoulder wound, his eyes were dull, almost unfocused. If you fall here, Stanach thought coldly, I will have what I’ve been searching for, my friend, and I will thank you for it. Oh, I will thank you for it!

The elf did not fall. He lifted his chin, wiped blood from his face, and, by an effort of will, focused on Stanach. “I am all right.”

Stanach snorted. “But can you run?”

The elf barely flinched. “Run? If I have to.”

Stanach pointed back toward the town. As he’d feared, the four draconians were rounding the bend. “You have to,” he said grimly. Aye, he thought, you have to. You and Stormblade have to run with me, my friend.

They ran.