Chris Pierson - Spirit of the Wind

Time passed. The shadows of the city walls grew steadily shorter. Then, an hour after dawn, Kurthak felt a dark stirring inside his mind. Recognizing the feeling, he fought back the instinct to resist. His eyes lost focus as the stirring became a presence, and the presence became a voice.

Black-Gazer, it said.

“Malystryx,” he whispered. Tragor looked at him sharply. “Your egg?”

Is safe. Are your people ready?

“Yes.”

Good. It is time.

The voice faded, but the presence remained. Kurthak looked at Tragor and nodded. “Sound the attack,” he said.

With a sanguine leer, the Black-Gazer’s champion pulled a long, curving horn from his belt. He raised it to his lips and blew a single, blaring note.

Catt and Giffel were a league west of the city, walking through the tunnels at the end of a line of kender that stretched ahead for dozens of miles, when the call of the ogres’ war horns echoed faintly down the passage behind them. Hearing the noise, many of the kender stopped and looked back. Catt was one of them.

“That’s it,” she whispered. “It’s started.”

Giffel squeezed her hand. “You can’t go back,” he said, and nodded down the kender-filled tunnel. “We have to get them out of here.”

She looked at him, hurt, then breathed a small, helpless sigh. Swallowing tears, she turned back to the kender who had halted in their march. They were all looking at her.

“All right,” she told them. “Let’s keep moving. We’ve got a long way ahead of us.”

Reluctantly, the kender began to move again. Sliding her arm around Giffel’s waist, Catt followed. For a few minutes she was silent, but then she drew a breath and began to sing.

The song was an old one, older than Kendermore itself. It was a trailsong, a tune Catt’s people whistled to pass the time during their wanderings. Its melody was cheerful and lively, with a brisk, steady rhythm fit for walking. Every kender alive learned it as a child, and knew it by heart:

Old Danilo Twill had a hundred bags o’

gold,

And a dozen times more

silver than he could ever hold,

But he lost it all at knucklebones, till he didn’t have a crumb,

Still, there’ll always be more where that came from.

There’s always more where that came from,

So strike up

the pipes and bang on the drum,

Now don’t be

cross, lads, and don’t be glum,

‘Cause there’s always more where that came from.

Giffel picked up the melody, singing along with her. Then the kender in front of them joined in, snapping their fingers in time with the second verse:

Before a year was done, good old Dan was rich again,

Shipping mead, wine and

grog out across the salty main,

Then all his ships went down with their holds all

full o’ rum,

Still, there’ll always be more where that came from.

Old Dan built himself a mansion, with twenty-seven floors,

Four-and-sixty windows, and twice as many doors,

But it burned right down to the ground and he moved into the slum,

Still, there’ll always be more where that came from.

Swiftly, the trail song spread forward, through the tunnels. The kender whistled and hummed, clapped their hands and stomped their feet. Some whirred their hoopaks in the air; others took apart chapaks and played them as flutes. Dozens of melodies wove together in complex harmonies-and occasional cacophonies. Every voice embellished on the song in some way, making up new verses about Danilo Twill and his resilience in the face of misfortune. And there were thousands of voices.

So, surrounded with music, the kender left their homes behind, bound once more for the road.

Now some folk, they might say old Dan’s luck is running black,

But no matter what he loses, one day soon he’ll win it back,

‘Cause all you need’s a hoopak and a merry tune to hum,

And there’ll always be more where that came from.

On the barren meadow outside Kendermore, the harsh, fierce tone of a hundred war horns sounded all around the city. Howling with bloodlust, the ogres charged, a black wave dotted with foam of bronze and steel. The war bands standards flew high. The thunder of the war drums echoed the pounding of iron shod feet.

In the midst of it all, however, Tragor paused, angling his head and frowning with confusion.

Kurthak glanced at his champion, wondering. “What is it?” he asked, shouting to be heard over the din of his charging troops.

Tragor concentrated a moment longer, then shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. He raised his great sword above his head, bellowing a ferocious battle-cry, then charged onward. He didn’t tell Kurthak that, just for a moment, he would have sworn he’d heard the faint sound of kender singing.

Paxina dashed up the steps to the battlements at the city’s south wall, Moonsong and Stagheart right behind her. At the top, she peered through the crenellations and saw the dark stain spreading out of the Kenderwood.

Fear swelled within her, an unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation that choked off her voice. The sweat that trickled down her face turned cold, and her mouth went dry “So many,” she breathed.

A hand touched her shoulder, its grasp at once tender and firm. Paxina glanced up and saw Moonsong. The Plainswoman’s face was pale, but she smiled nevertheless. That smile was a balm, easing the dread in Paxina’s mind. The Lord Mayor looked back out at the field and laughed.

Then, recklessly, she leapt up on the merlons and turned to face the eerily quiet city. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted as loud as she could. Along the walls and among the streets, other voices echoed her call, sounding it all over Kendermore.

“Be ready! Here they come!”

When the silver-haired kender jumped up on the battlements and sounded the call to arms, Kurthak laughed aloud. He and Tragor marched at the rear of the horde, thousands of raging ogres before them. Swords and hammers, axes and spears waved above the army’s heads.

“Remember!” he bellowed, his voice barely audible above the din. “Take as many of them prisoner as you can! Ten thousand steel pieces to the one who captures the most slaves!” He pointed his spiked club at the silver-haired kender. “And another thousand to whoever brings me that one’s scalp!”

“I’ll remember that,” Tragor said, leering wolfishly. “You’d best be ready to pay up when this is over, my lord.”

The Black-Gazer howled with glee, then raised his cudgel high above his head. “Charge!” he cried.

Tragor winded his horn again. Other trumpeters echoed the call. The army stopped marching and broke into a run, bellowing and shrieking as though their very voices would topple Kendermore’s walls. The ogres closed around the city like a noose. Their pounding feet churned the blasted ground, sending great clouds of dust billowing high into the sky.

Atop the battlements, archers and slingers began to fire. As before, when Baloth’s war band had assailed the city many ogres fell to the barrage-but many, many more held their shields high and kept running, eagerly striving to be the first to reach the walls. They struck on all sides at once, hammering against the flagstones with weapons and fists. The stones did not yield. More and more ogres caught up with their fellows, adding their weight to the onslaught. From atop the walls, the kender on the walls met the attack with more arrows and rocks. Looking up, Kurthak saw the silver-haired kender flinging stones with her hoopak; beside her, one of the Plainsmen peppered the field with arrows.