Ник О'Донохью: Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes

Shuddering, locked for one painful moment in the rictus of fear, Tanis lay on his back. Sweat froze on his face, nausea churned in his belly. His breath, ragged and hurting, sounded like the pumping of a bellows. Dark blood pooled, steaming in the freezing night.

Behind and above him another wolf roared. That challenge was followed swiftly by deadly snarling and then a shocked scream of pain. So horrible was the sound that Tanis could not tell if it had come from the lungs of man or beast.

Sturm! Coppery, musty, the stench of fresh blood filled the air. Tanis scrambled to his feet. The storm wind blinded him, tore at him. He couldn’t see!

Though he’d always wielded his blade well in practice bouts with a confidence seldom disappointed, Sturm had only blooded his sword once and that against a human opponent whose moves could, to some extent, be gauged. Could he have gone against a wolf who would charge in under a sword’s reach with the desperation of a predator starving?

Sliding in the freezing snow, Tanis ran to where he imagined the scent of blood was strongest. He crashed to his knees and, cursing, regained his feet.

“Sturm!” he howled. He thought in that moment that no blizzard wind could sound a cry as desolate. “Sturm! Where are you?”

Tanis found him sitting in the snow, bending over drawn up knees. The second wolf lay sprawled behind him, its head nearly severed from its neck. Beside it, slick with rapidly congealing blood, lay Sturm’s sword. Tanis slid to his knees beside his friend. The rest of the pack had to be nearby! They had to get out of here!

“Sturm, are you hurt?”

The boy braced and straightened. The leather of his tunic had been shredded by the wolf’s fangs. A trail of blood and ragged wounds whose edges were even now freezing white showed Tanis where fangs had raked from collarbone to breast. His hands trembling, the half-elf tried to gently separate leather from freezing blood. A hiss of indrawn breath, Sturm’s only protest against the handling, made Tanis wince for the pain he caused.

“A moment, lad, just a moment longer. There.” The leather came away, and Tanis heaved a long sigh of relief. The wound was ugly and long. But though he had dreaded to see the white glare of bone or the dark shadow of exposed muscle, he did not. Working with hands made awkward by the cold, Tanis tore thick strips of cloth from his cloak and made a bandage.

“If we can bless the cold for anything, it’s that it will prevent you from bleeding overlong. Can you move your arm?”

Sturm lifted his shoulder, tried to reach. He managed a grim smile. “Yes,” he said, his voice rough with the effort not to groan. “But I’ll not be lifting a sword for a time.”

Tanis shook his head. “The gods willing, you won’t have to. Sturm, we have to go on. Those two cannot have been hunting alone. Can you walk?”

For an answer Sturm got to his feet. He stumbled a little, but righted himself quickly. The hard gleam in his eyes told Tanis what he needed to know. But when he made to reach for his pack, Tanis stopped him.

“No. Leave it. We have to get out of here. It will only slow us down.”

“Tanis, we need the wood.”

“ Damn the wood!”

“Tanis, no! The need for fire is still the same. And without a guard fire, won’t we have to face the rest of the pack at the shelter? I can drag the wood.”

Sturm was right. Tanis snatched up his pack and shouldered it with a snarled oath. He retrieved Sturm’s sword, wiped it clean on his cloak, and helped the youth to scabbard it. An arrow lay ready against the bow’s string. Don’t rush! he told himself. Get your bearings now!

But that was not so easily done. The wind no longer pushed from any one direction, but seemed to bellow and thunder from all four. Tanis cast about him, searched the snow to see if he could tell by the tracks where he’d been standing when the wolves attacked.

There was no sign.

“Which way, Tanis?”

“I–I can’t tell. No, wait. Up, we were moving up the hill.” He squinted into the wind. “There! That way.”

Behind them, silent phantoms in the night, the rest of the wolf pack moved in to do a starving predator’s grisly honor to fallen comrades.

Flint roared curses into the screaming wind. That wretched, straw-brained Tas! If there was a god of mischief and deviltry, he would be no god at all but a kender! He’d not turned his back for a moment! But a moment, he thought bitterly, was all it took to send Tas out into the snow. What had he been off after? Tanis and Sturm? Likely not. That would have been too sensible a motive to ascribe to a kender.

“Tas!” he shouted, flinging up an arm to protect his eyes against the wind’s teeth. “Tas!”

The surest way to die, Tanis had said, was to scatter all over the mountain. “Well and fine, and here we are,” Flint snarled, kicking furiously at the snow drifting past his knees. “Scattered all over the mountain. If I had half the brains I curse that kender for not having, I’d leave him out here to freeze as a warning to the rest of his empty-headed kind.”

Then he heard, mourning above the wind, the howling of the wolves he’d thought to deny. Fear shivered through the old dwarf. They were close now. He hunched his shoulders against the wind.

Wolves! Aye, and likely hungry enough not to turn aside from stone-headed kender or young idiots who can’t hie themselves back from a simple wood-gathering trip in decent time ...

“Tas! Where are you?!”

The snow erupted right at Flint’s feet. Scrambling for balance he slipped, tried to catch himself and, tripping over a snow-mantled boulder, tumbled into a drift.

“Flint! Wait! Flint! Where’d you go?”

His long brown eyes ablaze with laughter, his face bright with merriment, Tas leaped into the drift, narrowly missing Flint’s head. Tugging and pulling, then shoving and pushing, he got the dwarf righted and on his feet again.

“Flint, it’s a little cold for playing games, don’t you think? Look at you, I can’t find your beard for the snow!” His impish laughter skirled high above the wind’s roar. “What are you doing out here, Flint? I thought you said we were to wait at the shelter. You know, you’re really going to be sorry later. There might not be a fire, after all, and you’re so wet you’ll freeze solid. You should have stayed inside.”

There were words, Flint thought later, to express his fury. And a pity it was that he could not have found them when he needed them; they would easily have melted the last inch of snow from the mountain.

“I should have stayed inside?” Flint took a quick swipe at the kender’s head, missed, and slipped to his knees. “I should have stayed?” He flung off the hand that Tas offered him and climbed to his feet again. “I’d not be out here at all if it weren’t for you!”

“Me?” Tas’s eyes went round with surprise. “You came out after me? But I’m fine, Flint. I just went out for a look. I thought I might be able to see a wolf. Or not see one. They say they’re almost invisible against a storm, you know.” His eyes darkened for a moment with disappointment. “But I didn’t see any. Or I didn’t not see any. I’m not sure which. And I didn’t get very far. You know, Tanis was right. You can hardly see where you’ve been out here. You certainly can’t see where you’re going. On the whole,” he decided, reaching out a tentative hand to help Flint dust the snow from his back, “I’d really rather be inside where it’s warmer.”

The logic was too tortuous for Flint to follow, and he was too cold and wet—nearly frozen to death, he thought furiously—to work it out now. He turned and stamped back toward the shelter, growling and cursing.