Whisper of Waves

23

17 Tarsakh, the Year of Maidens (1361 DR)

ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NAGAFLOW

Hrothgar Deepcarver couldn’t help but watch the strange human. The man they called Devorast had hair as red as Hrothgar’s own bushy eyebrows, but his beard was but a brown-red stubble-the sort of beard Hrothgar had sported when barely out of diapers-the same color as the dwarf’s.

“He could be a Deepcarver,” Hrothgar said to his cousin Vrengarl. “If he wasn’t so tall and lanky, that is.”

The human’s big eyes were so dark brown they almost matched Hrothgar’s own beady black orbs.

“He works like a Deepcarver,” Vrengarl replied. “You know, slow and clumsy.”

Hrothgar suppressed a smile at the jibe and hefted his bulky stonehammer.

“Did we come here to work,” Vrengarl asked, “or to stare at humans?”

Hrothgar shrugged then swung his hammer down onto a steel wedge. The wedge split a block of stone and Hrothgar kept his eyes off Devorast long enough to appraise the cut. It was straight and true-worthy of a Deepcarver.

“Judging by the shape of your blocks,” Hrothgar taunted his cousin in return, “it looks like you’ve come here to work like a human.”

Vrengarl laughed heartily-as if a dwarf from the Great Rift could laugh any other way-and bent his back to his work, and his blocks were as straight as Hrothgar’s.

The rest of the morning was spent cutting blocks from boulders dug from the limestone quarries north of Innarlith. Hrothgar paid attention to his work, but for a dwarf of his skill and experience, cutting blocks was the simplest of tasks. As he worked he continued to sneak glances at Devorast, who worked as hard as any of the stonemasons, dwarf and human alike. He’d pause only to answer the odd question or to set smaller crews to specific tasks as he saw fit. He gave every order with the same simple confidence he exhibited in his stone cutting.

When he and Vrengarl were done, Hrothgar waved to Devorast who came to examine their work. All morning the dwarf had watched Devorast pick and choose from the blocks cut by the human masons, accepting only the few that met his exacting eye and ignoring the baleful stares of the stonecutters who obviously didn’t share his high standards.

Hrothgar stepped back and watched Devorast examine his blocks. Vrengarl took the opportunity to sit on a rock and take a deep draught of ale from an earthenware jug he’d carried with him from home. Hrothgar’s cousin grimaced at the taste of the human-brewed ale-he’d long since finished the stout dwarven brew that filled the jug when they’d left the Rift-but he drank just as deeply as he always had.

When Devorast finished examining every side of every one of Hrothgar’s stone blocks he stood and locked eyes with the dwarf.

“Fine work,” the human said.

Hrothgar nodded once and stood his ground.

Devorast smiled and said, “Finally, someone who isn’t wasting any of my-”

A shrill scream ripped the air between the nearby riverbank and the startled stonecutters.

Hrothgar turned, instinctively lifting his hammer into a defensive posture while Vrengarl stood and did the same without hesitation. The dwarf saw Devorast bring his own hammer to the ready, but unlike the two dwarves, the human was already running toward the riverbank, covering ground fast with those long, long strides.

“He can cut stone,” Hrothgar growled under his breath, “and he’s got guts too.”

The dwarf shook his head and found himself running after Devorast before he could talk himself out of it. Vrengarl called after him, as angry as he was confused, but Hrothgar ran on even as he wondered himself what he was thinking-or if he was thinking at all.

The stretch of river where the ransar of Innarlith had decided to construct a keep was a wild place. The humans among the crew tended toward the jittery side, and none of them wandered too far off from the crowd. Word of strange water monsters in the river, stranger monsters hiding in the tall grass, and even stranger monsters burrowing up from under the ground were traded back and forth among the men on an almost continuous basis. Hrothgar had been around long enough to believe half of them, and half of them were enough to scare the wits out of anyone with a pinch of brain between his ears.

The scream sounded again, even more desperate. When they came over the crest of a low hill, their legs pushing through the tall brown grass as if wading through waist-deep water, Hrothgar and Devorast saw the source of the terrified screams.

Human boys no more than ten years of age or so, employed by the work crew to fetch water, always went down to the riverbank in groups of two. Hrothgar could only see one of them. The boy was running as fast as he could up the steep hill toward them, struggling with the tall grass and uneven footing.

A frog the size of an ox gained ground on the boy with every step. The creature ran on its tiptoes, and if the thing were any smaller, any less grotesque, and any less hungry, it might have been comical. Instead, it was all Hrothgar could do to force himself onward at Devorast’s side.

The human never broke stride and went tearing down the hill, holding his hammer up and behind him so he could swing it down hard the second he came close enough to the frog-thing. Hrothgar was barely able to keep up.

A great splash in the river revealed a second of the bulbous green frog creatures. Its wide mouth opened, and Hrothgar had to blink a few times fast before he could be sure he saw the little human hand reaching out from inside the horrid monster’s wide, yellow-lipped mouth. The boy was still alive in there. The thought of it made Hrothgar dizzy, but he ran on.

Devorast passed the running boy, who had the good sense to keep running, and the pursuing giant frog’s attention was drawn to the man. It didn’t take more than a few more of his long, human strides before Devorast was close enough to strike. Hrothgar, still at least a few steps behind, watched the hammer come down-only to be snatched out of Devorast’s strong grip by a long, thick rope of slime-glistening tissue that snapped out of the frog’s cavernous mouth like a bolt from a crossbow.

Devorast looked less surprised than annoyed and only ran faster at the frog-thing, chasing his hammer as the creature drew its tongue-the tool-turned-weapon still wrapped in it-back into its open mouth.

Hrothgar watched what happened next with only half his attention, the other half focusing on the second giant frog splashing out of the river and beginning to come at him. Its still squirming meal seemed to slow the second frog down, and Hrothgar hoped its tongue would move slower too.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Devorast grab hold of the shaft of his hammer just as it passed the giant frog’s straining lips. Only then did he see the knife in Devorast’s hands.

The dwarf brought his hammer down hard at the second frog’s head even as Devorast let his feet come off the ground and allowed himself to be pulled almost into the giant frog’s mouth. A thick ridge of razor-sharp bone sufficed for teeth, which might have bitten Devorast in half if its jaws were fast enough. Devorast kicked the thing’s sensitive yellow lips, one foot on the top lip, one on the bottom, with force enough to make it recoil. Its tongue whipped around like a sling, releasing the hammer.

At that moment, Hrothgar’s own hammer burst the left eye of the second giant frog, eliciting a deep, rumbling croak from the beast. The hammerhead bounced off the thing’s rubbery hide, and Hrothgar almost lost his grip on the leather-wrapped handle.

Devorast fell to the ground, the hammer up in front of him between him and the giant frog, and the monster loomed over him. He pulled the hammer over his head and lifted his feet from the ground, ready to smash the giant frog in the face, but the bloated green thing hopped back so fast it almost appeared to have teleported five feet backward. Hrothgar wondered at how so rotund a creature could move so fast.

The rubbery bounce of the frog’s flesh gave the dwarf an advantage as it helped bring the heavy hammer back into play faster. Taking full advantage of the opening, Hrothgar spun his weapon to the side and brought it back in for a hard smash into the side of the monster’s jaws. He was treated to a loud, echoing snap, the sound reverberating in the thing’s mouth while eliciting a yelp from the boy still trapped within.

Devorast scrambled to his feet, and the frog that had almost swallowed him burst forward, its tongue again shooting from its open mouth. Not as surprised by the second appearance of the slimy appendage, Devorast dodged to one side but wasn’t quick enough to hit the tongue with his hammer before it rolled back into the frog’s gullet.

The dwarf dropped to his rump when the tongue of the frog he was facing lurched out at him. It moved more slowly than the other, but it was still fast enough that Hrothgar could do nothing but get away from it without the luxury of placing himself in position for a counterattack. The slime-soaked tongue moved more like a tentacle and was as big around as one of the dwarf’s muscular arms. It thudded down onto Hrothgar’s shoulder so hard it almost snapped his collar bone then wrapped around him before he could manage to get an arm inside. The stout dwarf was pulled around but could tell the frog was having trouble lifting him with just its tongue.

Devorast lifted his hammer in front of him in only one hand, and Hrothgar waited for a hard blow to the top of the frog’s head, but the blow never came. The man seemed frozen in front of his enemy, his body gone rigid as if from panic, but his face showed no sign of terror. The giant frog’s tongue lashed out again, and Devorast deftly moved the hammer between himself and the unfurling appendage so that the thing wrapped itself around the hammer’s handle once more. Hrothgar saw a flash of steel in Devorast’s other hand: the knife.

Hrothgar’s own predicament worsened when the frog managed to find the strength or the leverage to finally lift him bodily off the ground. The tongue pulled him to the very edge of the giant frog’s mouth, but the dwarf set the soles of his wide, hard boots onto the thing’s puckered yellow lips and pressed with all his might. He managed to balance out the pull of the tongue, and there they stood, the frog trying to draw him in, the dwarf trying to pull the tongue out. The giant frog, not knowing any better, kept up the fight.

Before the hammer was pulled from his grip, Devorast stabbed into the slimy yellow tongue, then dragged his blade around in a circle as if he were peeling some huge, rotten apple. The last three feet of the long tongue came away, trailing a string of pale yellow sinew then snapping off entirely. Devorast staggered back, shaking the dismembered tongue from his hammer.

Hrothgar, pressing with all his might, looked down into the giant frog’s mouth. Behind him, the sound of the other amphibian’s deep, grumbling screams were punctuated by thud after thud as Devorast beat the thing with his hammer over and over. Hrothgar let his own hammer fall to the ground in order to free up the hand closest to his enemy’s mouth. Bending at the knees, giving the frog the impression that he was being pulled farther in, Hrothgar reached, straining every muscle and tendon in his arm until they creaked. When his hand found human flesh, he squeezed as tightly as he could and pulled with his arm, his back, and both legs. Swallowing, the giant frog fought against him, but Hrothgar could feel the boy starting to slide in his direction.

Something made the giant frog bounce, and the grip of the tongue weakened just enough that Hrothgar, with one great pull, wrenched the boy’s face clear of the thing’s gullet. The dwarf made eye contact with the waterboy, whose face was a reddened, slime-covered mask of sheer terror, his mouth open wide in a silent scream, his eyes as red as his cheeks.

The frog jerked again, and Hrothgar realized that Devorast, having taken down his own giant frog, stood next to the thing, pounding away at it with his hammer.

The hammer blows, combined with Hrothgar’s relentless pull on the struggling boy and the natural impulse of any animal when it finds something lodged half in and half out of its throat, finally forced the boy free. The dwarf tossed him to the ground where he rolled away, mouth still gaping, eyes wide, body shaking, skin and eyes red, clothes torn, and drenched in the frog’s vile, slimy spittle.

Devorast paused in his attacks only long enough to hand Hrothgar his hammer. The two of them-the human standing in the tall grass and the dwarf still pushing against the relentless pull of the massive tongue-went to work on the giant frog one stone-splitting hammer blow at a time.

It took dozens and dozens of those blows to kill the thing, but in time, Hrothgar fell from the dead tongue’s embrace.

He sat on the ground for half a dozen deep, rattling breaths before he looked up at Devorast. The human looked around, brushing away the grass with the back of one hand.

A cheer and a smattering of applause came from the top of the hill, where the other workers had gathered. Hrothgar didn’t allow himself to wonder how long the whoresons had been standing there watching, not helping, while he and Devorast saved the waterboys and killed two giant frogs all on their own. He looked back at Devorast instead.

The human said, “Where are the water buckets?”

Hrothgar took a breath, almost answered, then lay back in the tall grass and laughed.

Had he looked up just then he might have seen a pair of cold, hard eyes half in and half out of the water and the top of what would have looked like a woman’s head barely breaking the river’s surface. Those malevolent, critical eyes watched every move Ivar Devorast made until he finally strode back up the hill to get back to work. Then it slid back into the unforgiving waters of the Nagaflow.