Sweet Silver Blues

39

I wakened to an itchy nose, tittering, and the harumph-harumph of grollish laughter. I opened my eyes. Something brown and fuzzy waved in my face. Behind it was one of the little folk, seated in the crotch of a bush. I controlled my temper and got my forequarters upright, leaning against a tree. I was stiff and sore from sleeping on the ground.

No doubt Morley would argue that it was good for me.

"Where the hell are Morley and Dojango?"

The only answer I got was some big grollish grins and titters from the undergrowth.

"All right. Be that way."

"Sugar?" A tiny voice piped.

"If I'd had any, you would have swiped it while I was sleeping."

"With those great beasties watching over you?" the one in the bush asked.

I didn't feel like arguing. Morning is always too early for anything but self-pity, and even that's usually too much trouble. "Is there anyone in or around the centaur's house?" You have to strive for precision with those folk. "Human or otherwise?"

"Sugar?"

"No sugar."

"Bye, now."

So. No pay, no play. Little mercenaries. I considered going down and burglarizing the centaur's kitchen. But I wasn't hungry enough to bet that Zeck Zack's masters had done the rational thing and gotten the hell out the minute my affidavit and I departed. Besides, I didn't feel like getting up and doing anything.

I sat there trying to reconcile the Kayean who dwelt among the nightmares with the Kayean I had known. I shuffled through what I remembered from her letters to Denny. Nothing there but the occasional hint that she was not happy. Never a word about her whereabouts or circumstances. She hadn't been proud of herself.

No sense worrying about it. That would give me nothing but a headache and the heebie-jeebies. She could explain when I got to her.

Morley showed up around noon, staggering under a load of junk. "What's all that?" I demanded. "You planning an invasion? Where's Dojango? What the hell have you been up to?"

"Taking bids on your butt from Vasco, Rose, and your major. It was hot going till they got up to a quarter mark. Here." He dumped half his load beside me. I noted a sack that looked like it might contain comestibles. I hit it first.

"What is all this stuff?"

"Raw materials. For the arsenal we'll need if we're going into a nest after your lady. They'd smell metal hardware ten miles off. You any good at flaking stone arrow points?"

"I don't know. I've never tried."

He looked exasperated. "Didn't they teach you anything practical in that Marine Corps of yours?"

"Three thousand ways to kill Venageti. I'm a tool user, not a toolmaker."

"I guess the load falls on Doris and Marsha again." He gobbled grollish, and gave the big guys a bunch of stuff. Two minutes later, snarling and rumbling, they were chipping out arrowheads with a touch as delicate as a mouse's. They were good, and they were fast.

Morley said, "They're put out. They say it's dwarf's work. They want to know why they can't just make themselves some ten-foot clubs and go in and break skulls. Grolls are slow sometimes."

I could whittle a bit so I set to making myself a sword from an ironwood lath. It's a good hard wood that will almost take an edge, but won't hold one the way steel will. So I gave myself only one. The backstroke side I channeled and set with waste from the arrowhead flaking. That gave me a vicious tool.

Time rolled by. I shed my troubles in my concentration on my craftsmanship.

"Have mercy, Garrett!" Morley snapped. "Do you really have to put in the blood gutters?"

I looked at the thing in my hand. I sure was doing it up purple. I tried it for balance. "Close. Needs a little more work. A little more polish to lessen the drag during the cut."

"And you call me bloodthirsty."

"I'd rather carry a saber."

"Come off it. One time we're going to use this stuff. Finish it up. I cut some bolts, there. Fletch them and sharpen them. I'll harden and poison the tips when I'm done here." He was removing metal parts from crossbows and replacing them. The reworked weapons wouldn't hold up, but, like he said, it was just the one raid.

"Old Man Tate is going to pee blue vinegar over the expenses. Why poison? It won't do you any good." I dragged bolts, glue, feathers, and thread together and started in.

"Because not everybody we meet is going to be immune."

True. The bloodslaves would fight ferociously to defend their chances of someday joining the order of masters.

"You know anything about the nests in the Cantard, Garrett?"

"Who knows anything about any of them anywhere?"

"True. They wouldn't survive. But?"

"There are rumors. Because of the military situation, they don't have to be as circumspect in the Cantard. Plenty of easy prey, too. Nobody misses a soldier here or there. The nests are supposed to be bigger than usual because of that. When I was stationed down here, there were supposed to be six nests. That got reduced when some Karentine agents snatched a Venageti warlord's daughter and let it out that she had been carried off to a nest. The warlord forgot everything else, went off to the rescue, found the nest and cleansed it, and got himself killed for his trouble. While his army was busy hunting night people, one of ours was sneaking up behind them. And that's all I know. Except to guess that they're happy to see so much silver leaving this part of the world."

"They would know everything about silver, wouldn't they?"

"They would know everything about what everyone was doing, that's for sure. Which explains how Kayean was able to make Denny rich."

Silver is as poisonous to the night people as cobra venom is to humans. It kills them fast and makes it stick. Not much else does. Other metals bother them to a lesser degree.

"Speaking of sneaks," Morley said.

Dojango appeared, burdened with poles and bow-staves and whatnot. He was tipsy. He said, "It's set for tomorrow night."

"How much did you have?" Morley demanded.

"Don't worry, cousin. I came here clean. Actually. They'll have the horses and gear waiting at an abandoned mill they said is three miles up something called North Creek. They said they'd only wait one night. They said they would take the animals and stuff out tomorrow morning and bring them back the next day if we don't show. They seemed a little nervous about being out in the countryside, actually."

"Guess we'll have to resurrect our centaur. Sit down and start turning those dowels into arrows. Garrett. You know this North Creek?"

"Yes." I was tempted to ask who he thought was in charge, but kept my mouth shut. Morley had taken care of things that needed doing.

Dojango started making arrows. "Some interesting news started going around just before I came back up. About the time we were taking a peek into that tomb last night, Glory Mooncalled, unsupported, actually, attacked Indigo Springs."

"Indigo Springs?" I asked. "That's a hundred miles farther south than the army's ever gone. And he tried it without wizards?"

Dojango smirked. "He not only tried it, he pulled it off, actually. Caught them sleeping. Killed Warlord Shomatzo-Zha and his whole staff in the first assault, then wiped out half their army. The rest ran off into the desert barefoot, wearing nothing but their nightshirts."

"Good hunting for the night people," Morley grumbled.

"And unicorns, centaur slavers, wild dogs, hippogriffs, and any other kind of critter that wants a piece of them," Dojango added. "This is going to mean problems, Morley. If we have to spend much time out there."

"How come?"

"If it's true, it's an unprecedented disaster for Venageti arms. When Glory Mooncalled changed sides, he swore vengeance on five warlords. For years he's been waltzing them around the Cantard, making fools of them. Now he's struck deep into traditionally safe territory and stomped one of the five the way I'd stomp a bug."

"So?"

"So the Venageti are going to start flailing around like a boxer with blood in his eyes, hoping they hit something. Karentine forces will begin to move, trying to take advantage. Every nonhuman tribe in the Cantard will be out trying to profit from the confusion. In a week it'll be so hairy it'll be worth your life to squat to poop if you don't have somebody to stand guard."

"Then we'd better move fast, hadn't we?" Morley asked.

A sentiment with which I agreed wholeheartedly. But my sneak to the bloodslave guarding the things in Zeck Zack's ballroom had paid no dividends yet and I doubted that my revelation would come for days—if at all.