T Lain - The Sundered Arms

“Don’t finish that thought,” said Lidda, holding up a finger. “You aren’t even a little bit funny. You think you are, but you aren’t.”

“Dwarves have a tremendous sense of humor.”

“Some dwarves,” she said. “Not you.”

“Not now, you two,” said Devis. “Maybe you should sort this out by taking the first watch. I’m beat.” He yawned into his fist.

Vadania spread her bedroll on the floor. When Devis placed his beside hers, they exchanged a sidelong glance that both Tordek and Lidda noticed.

“What’s she doing?” muttered Lidda. “She doesn’t need to sleep like people do.”

“Maybe you can find the trap,” said Tordek, hoping to distract her from the little drama Devis was nurturing.

“Maybe you can find it,” snapped the halfling without taking her eyes off the bard and the druid.

“Already did,” he said. “You’re just about standing on it.”

Lidda shot him a suspicious glance. “Fool me once…” she warned.

“I’m not joking. You’re fine as long as you don’t pull that lever or pull on the vault door.”

“How can you tell?” she asked.

Tordek pointed to the flagstones. Their creases were filled with dust and grime. “See how much space is between them? That’s because they’re on a balance of some sort. If they were meant to be firm, they’d be mortared.”

“All right,” said Lidda, stepping carefully back. “I see it now. You had a dwarf advantage on that one.”

“Aye,” agreed Tordek. “Still, I couldn’t figure out how to disable it if I tried.”

“Bet I could,” said Lidda.

“How much?”

“What?”

“How much would you like to bet?”

“You never bet!”

“I will this time,” said Tordek. The more incentive he could give her to concentrate on something other than Devis and Vadania, he reckoned, the less likely she was to sulk, complain, or otherwise irritate him while he stood watch.

“A hundred gold,” she said with her chin held high.

“Done,” said Tordek.

“Damn. I should have said two hundred.”

“Do you have two hundred?”

“I will when this bet is settled,” she replied.

“One hundred it is. I’ll get out of your way and keep an eye on the door.”

For the first time in hours, Tordek breathed easily. He could still feel the strange, dead core through his lung where the hammer’s accursed power sealed his wound, but at least it didn’t hurt or seem to be spreading. He walked toward the door and found a comfortable seat on a block of granite that had been an elegant bench before something smashed one end. Gulo was curled up nearby. He opened one wary eye as the dwarf approached.

Tordek knew that Vadania’s bond with her animals did not necessarily include her two-legged companions, but he had met Gulo when the wolverine was little bigger than a wolfhound. He reached out a cautious hand and stroked the big animal’s head. Gulo made a contented sound and closed his eyes. Tordek smiled but withdrew his hand. Better not to press his luck.

“I think I’ve done it,” said Lidda an hour later. Rather than pleased, she sounded weary and sullen.

“You didn’t try one of the doors, did you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Not while both the healers are… sleeping.”

Tordek looked past the halfling to see Vadania nestled under Devis’s arm.

“Besides,” she said, “I thought you weren’t interested in finding treasure here.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested,” said Tordek. “It’s just not as important as stopping Hargrimm.”

“Yeah,” said Lidda. “About that, you have any ideas how we’re going to do it?”

“I don’t know,” sighed the dwarf. “I wish we had a small army.”

“I wish we had a big army,” said Lidda, “with tall feathered hats. We could make them march.”

Tordek shook his head and turned his eyes up to the heavens.

“See?” she cried after him. “Me, funny. You, crabby.”

“All right,” said Tordek. “I concede the point.”

“You’ll give me a hundred gold, too, once we open one of those vault doors.”

Tordek nodded, glad to see Lidda thinking of something other than that foolish bard. It wasn’t a great surprise that the fun-loving halfling had gotten her head turned by Devis’s silver tongue. What surprised him was Vadania. The elf was older than he by considerable years. She should have known what trouble such trifles could cause among a small group that depended on each other so much. He would have to broach the matter with her later, in private.

They kept watch silently for an hour and then whispered for a while concerning theories about how the vault doors must open. Lidda identified the particulars of the trap. The pressure plates triggered a battery of spikes or spears from the floor. As if that weren’t enough to deter a thief, it appeared that the ceiling was rigged to fall on the skewered intruders moments afterward. The more she described the mechanisms she had perceived from the hidden clues of the stonework and vault hinges, the less Tordek wanted to explore the treasures that lay beyond the trap.

Vadania sat up, gently setting Devis’s arm aside as he snored. She blinked a few times and stretched her neck, but then she appeared as alert as if she had never closed her eyes. Tordek had seen her go from seeming slumber to action in the time it took a stone to fall from shoulder height. These elven reveries were yet another way in which the fair folk were set apart from the other races, as well as another excuse for those who feared and hated them.

Lidda had never been one to shun elves, but she sniffed and turned away as Vadania joined them on the broken bench. Tordek moved over to make room for her.

“Shall I make a fire?” she asked Tordek.

“Not on my account.”

He noticed that she did not make the same offer to Lidda. So did the halfling, judging from her arched eyebrow.

“You look a little stiff,” said Tordek, nodding to the bloodstained wound on her shoulder. All of her cure spells were expended on Devis. She had made do with a simple bandage.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “In a few hours, I’ll be able to mend it. Or perhaps Devis will do me the honor.”

Lidda snorted derisively. “Is that what you elves call it?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“ ‘The honor’,” Lidda mugged like a child. “It’s a wonder he didn’t ‘do you the honor’ right there in front of the rest of us, after you rubbed yourself all over him.”

“Lidda,” admonished Tordek.

“No, let her speak,” said Vadania. “She is obviously troubled by the attention Devis shows me.”

“Shows you!” Lidda sputtered. “I’m the one he was singing to. I’m the one who got us in here so he could sleep.”

“Who?” said Devis, stirring from his slumber.

Tordek held his head in both hands.

“Well, you’ve put an end to that, haven’t you,” said Vadania. “If I knew how irrational and jealous you would be, I never would have invited you on this quest.”

“Invited?” said Lidda. “Why, you practically blackmailed me into this. Devis, too. I have half a mind—”

“That’s the main problem,” interjected Vadania.

“Ladies, ladies,” said Devis, gesturing for calm. “There’s no need to fight over me. I’m perfectly willing to—”

“This has nothing to do with you, minstrel boy!” spat Lidda. “Butt out.”

“Yes,” agreed Vadania. “This is between me and the brownie.”

“Who are you calling a brownie, you green hag!”

Tordek made a tactical withdrawal behind Gulo, who was already snuffling as the loud voices jolted him from dreams of slapping salmon out of the river—or so Tordek imagined. The thought of standing in an icy river was appealing to him, too, at the moment, as long as it was far from here.