Richard Baker: Swordmage

Several of Rhovann’s friends were attending to the wounded mage or glaring at Geran with cold fury. Geran turned away slowly and rubbed his face with one shaking hand. When he looked up again, he found Alliere staring at him from the spot where she’d stood to watch the contest. She was as pale as the snow, her hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide with horror. The silk handkerchief she was to award the winner lay in the muddy snow at her feet. Their eyes met, and Alliere flinched away.

“What have I done?” Geran murmured. He took two steps toward her, reaching out. “Alliere, I didn’t mean-I don’t know-”

“Oh, Geran,” she said softly. A small, sobbing gasp escaped her throat. “How could you do such a thing?” She backed away several steps and turned to hurry away, disappearing into the shadows under the trees. Geran took one step after her before he stopped where he stood. Alliere had looked on him with fear. What could he possibly say or do to explain himself to her?

Did I mean to wound Rhovann or myself when I struck that blow? he silently asked himself.

“Geran Hulmaster, come with me.” The coronal’s judge-a stern-faced moon elf in the colors of the royal court-approached Geran, one hand riding on the pommel of his sword. Two more Velar Guards waited nearby, equally stern. “You are summoned to appear before the coronal. She must decide this matter now.”

The swordmage stared after Alliere, but she was gone.

11 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

The Moonsea crossing was wet and rough, three hard days of beating through whitecaps and spray in the cold, angry winds of early spring. By the time the battered coaster passed into the shelter of the Arches, every man on board was cold, tired, and soaked. Ships in the service of kings or great nobles accommodated their passengers in cabins and assigned stewards to wait on them, but the coaster was a plain Moonsea tradesman. It was a working ship that offered its passengers nothing more than a place to sleep on the deck. She finally tied up alongside the wharf at the foot of Plank Street shortly before sunset. Longshoremen swarmed aboard to begin unloading her cargo: sacks of flour, casks of wine, and countless other crates and bundles of goods from Vespin to the south. While the laborers began their work, the ship’s only two passengers-one a dark-haired man of thirty or so, the other a well-dressed halfling-carried their own satchels down the gangplank to the creaking wharf.

“So this is Hulburg,” the halfling said. He was of average height for his people, an inch or so over four feet, with a surprisingly sturdy frame under his damp green cloak. He wore daggers, several of them-two at the belt, one in the right boot, and a fourth strapped hilt-down in a large sheath between his shoulder blades-and a hard, suspicious look on his sharp-featured face. Cold water plastered his russet braids close to his scalp, and he began squeezing the water from each braid in turn. “I doubt I’ll like it very much.”

“My business here won’t take long, Hamil,” Geran answered. He towered over the halfling, of course, but in fact he was only a little taller than average. He had the rangy, lean build and the long, well-muscled arms of a born swordsman. Geran’s hands were large and strong, well-calloused from many hours of practice. The sword he’d won in the Coronal’s Guard, a long, elf-made blade with a hilt of mithral wire, rode in a scabbard he wore low on his left hip. His black hair was cut short above wide, thoughtful eyes of gray so it wouldn’t obscure his vision in a fight, but left shoulder length and free otherwise. The swordsman had an unconscious habit of chewing his lip when deep in thought, as he was now. “We’ve already missed Jarad’s funeral. Give me a few days to look after his affairs and see my family, and we’ll be on our way.”

“I guess we might as well wait for better weather before we cross back to the southern shore, anyway,” Hamil said in resignation. He looked back out toward the Moonsea. Wild whitecaps marched and tumbled beyond the spectacular Arches, which divided the calmer waters of the harbor from the open sea. The slender stone ribs soared hundreds of feet into the air, leaping and plunging like the paths of a dozen skipping pebbles somehow frozen in pale green stone. The halfling studied them for a moment and added, “Those don’t look like they belong here. Changeland?”

“The Arches? Yes, they’re changeland. I’m told they erupted from the seabed in a single night in the Year of Blue Fire. Destroyed a quarter of the old city on the Easthead there, but they gave Hulburg the best harbor on the north shore of the Moonsea.”

“Pretty, I suppose, but not much compared to the Claws of Starmantle.” Hamil shrugged. Faerun was littered with such wonders. Not two days ago they’d sailed beneath a forest-covered islet of stone adrift in the stormy skies forty miles out of Mulmaster. Towns and cities had long ago accommodated themselves to changelands as best they could. “So where are we going, Geran?”

The swordsman studied the town’s waterfront, establishing his bearings. Hulburg was Geran’s home, but he had left it behind him more than ten years ago, and this was only the second time he’d returned since. “Where, indeed,” he murmured to himself. In his travels he’d seen dozens upon dozens of cities and towns. It surprised him how much Hulburg resembled the rest after such a long absence.

The town climbed and rambled over a low hill overlooking a sheltered bay between high, rocky headlands two miles apart-Keldon Head to the west and Easthead opposite. The sun was setting, and cookfires by the hundreds burned in stone hearths and outdoor kitchens, sending twisting spirals of smoke into the sky to be caught and carried off by the harsh spring winds. Hulburg was a young town built atop the ruins of a larger and older city. Brash new storehouses and sprawling merchant compounds crowded the harbor district, rambling along crooked, poorly paved streets that had grown like wild roots through the rubble and byways of the old city. Beyond the harbor and its walled tradeyards stood a town whose workshops and houses were made from stone taken from the nearby ruins or sometimes simply built atop the foundations of much older buildings. Most had upper stories framed in heavy timber and roofs covered in rough wooden shakes, since Hulburg had an ample supply of timber close at hand in the forested vales of the Galena Mountains; the steep headlands and hills surrounding the town were too windswept and rocky for trees of any size to find purchase.

Geran looked north along Plank Street and glimpsed the old gray keep of Griffonwatch glowering over the town. It was a mile from the harbor, perched atop a rocky spur of the eastern ridge. While it was not very well situated to guard the city against attacks by sea, that was not why Angar Hulmaster had raised his keep there. Griffonwatch faced north, inland, a defense against the savage orcs, ogres, and other monsters who dwelled in the desolate hills and moorlands of Thar. Many of the buildings and storefronts fronting the harbor or crowding along Plank Street were new to Geran, but the old castle, at least, had not changed.

I’ve missed this place, he found himself thinking. Twice now I’ve come back to bury someone, but never otherwise. Why is that?

“I’m soaked, and this wind is damned cold,” Hamil observed. “Are we going to stand here much longer, Geran?”

“What? — Oh, of course.” Geran looked up and down the busy Bay Street. It was more crowded than he remembered. Gangs of porters, shouting longshoremen, and merchants and their clerks hurried this way and that. Most seemed to be outlanders, men who wore the colors of foreign merchant companis or trading costers. “Forgive me, all of these merchant yards are new. The town’s grown a lot in eight years.”