Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Stanach laughed aloud, genuinely amused. Let a kender get in one question and you cannot possibly live long enough to answer the thousands of others that follow! “Whoa, now easy, Lavim Springtoe. Yes, I’ve made a lot of swords. This one I made first. The blade is good, the balance maybe not so good, but I’m used to it. And yes, daggers, too, and axe heads.”

Lavim glanced again at the dwarf’s hands, folded now around his empty mug. Though some of the scars were silvered with age, others were more recent. One, a long burn along his right thumb, still looked raw. No camping fire’s burn, that.

It is as if he left his forge only yesterday, Lavim thought. But Thorbardin was hundreds of miles away. Still, here he is. By the look of him, he is one of the Hylar, one of the ruling clan at Thorbardin. Those, Lavim knew, left the mountains about as happily as a fish leaves water. Long Ridge lay squarely under Verminaard’s heel. Ember, the Highlord’s red dragon, made daily passes over the town. Those people who had not been killed in the battle for the town were only barely surviving here. Why would anyone, except himself, of course, come to Long Ridge? Lavim’s curiosity was like a spark in tinder. What would bring a dwarf out from the safety of Thorbardin to this forsaken place?

There was no time to ask. From outside, the sound of a commotion, and finally a roar of fury silenced the tavern.

“Givrak!” Stanach snatched the kender’s arm and jerked him to his feet. “Go to ground, Lavim. He’s back, and I’ve no doubt it’s you he’s looking for.”

Lavim only shrugged. “Maybe.” His green eyes danced with mischief as he sat down. “I knew a draconian once who could never remember what it was he was looking for. It irritated him to no end, as you can imagine. He would turn purple after a while, so strictly speaking perhaps he wasn’t a draconian—”

“If you don’t go, you won’t be drinking your ale, but leaking it like a sieve, kender. There must be a back way out, behind the bar. Go, now, go.”

“But—”

“Go!” Stanach shoved the kender halfway across the room toward the bar.

Lavim stumbled, righted himself, and looked back over his shoulder. Who can understand a dwarf? Moody one minute, companionable in the next, then, all of a sudden and for no reason at all, like thunder and lightning! He made for the door behind the bar. Not because he was afraid of Givrak—the capacity for fear was not in him—but because the matter seemed so important to Stanach.

Dwarves, he thought, always tend to be a little touchy. Its all those hundreds of years in the mountains by themselves.

He flashed a grin at the serving girl. A tall elf, his blue eyes alight with amusement, grabbed Lavim’s arm and hustled him through the doorway and into a storeroom.

“Go, kender,” he whispered, “and don’t stop running till you’re out of town!”

Lavim wasn’t going to run anywhere. He’d slip out the back, since it seemed to matter to everyone that he did, but he wasn’t going to forget about Stanach. The kender pocketed a bung-starter, a small flask of wine, and several other interesting objects and slipped out the back door into the alley just as Givrak entered through the front and roared something about a “god-cursed, lying kender” who’d lived too long for his own, or anyone else’s, good.

The Draconian Givrak was troubled with just enough intelligence to permit him to carry out his orders and, occasionally, to plan a simple strategy. Having received few orders this day, he turned a considerable portion of his slim intellect to the problem of avenging himself on the kender who had the night before cost him a venomous reprimand from Carvath for disturbing his sleep.

Givrak was of the opinion that the kender’s hide would make a fine ornament for a stable door.

The draconian had two squads of soldiers under his command. These he roused at dawn with orders to set up barricades at the three roads leading from the town and then to accompany him on a search of Long Ridge. Givrak was certain that he’d find the kender before nightfall. As he stalked the streets of Long Ridge, Givrak’s anger became unholy anticipation. He was going to be enjoying himself soon. He knew a dozen ways to kill a kender and, even when he employed the quickest of these methods, the screaming did not stop before two days had passed. The morning’s cold wind up from the valley did nothing to freshen the sooty air of Long Ridge. It seemed to Kelida, walking out beyond the town proper, that the gray air could never be clear again. She stumbled, tugged at the sword smacking against her leg, and tried to settle the scabbard belt more comfortably around her waist. Sighing impatiently, she wondered how anyone could wear something this cumbersome and still manage to walk.

She’d tried carrying it and found it too awkward. Each step she took had sent the sword either sliding from its scabbard or digging painfully into her arms. Stupid thing! She’d be glad to be rid of it. She stopped at the broad road’s first bend and tugged at the scabbard belt again. Her skirt twisted and bunched at the waist, and her blouse caught on the buckle and ripped.

Stupid sword! She didn’t want it and she wasn’t going to keep it. All it had given her was bruised legs and torn clothes. Well, Tyorl was just going to take the thing back. There had been no sign of his mad friend Hauk since the night he’d given her the miserable thing. Wherever he was, he wasn’t interested in his wretched sword.

Or me, she thought miserably. Not that he ever really had been. He’d been drunk when he’d given her the sword. Likely he’d wandered off someplace and run afoul of dragonarmy soldiers. Then, probably, he would be wishing that he had his sword!

Kelida shivered, partly from cold and partly from the thought that Hauk might truly have had a need for his sword. She looked around. The road dropped beyond the bend to begin a long, steep descent into the valley. From where she stood, Kelida could not see the valley. Neither could she see the barricade set up by Carvath’s soldiers, but she knew it was there. Like those at each of the three roads leading into Long Ridge, it had been set up at dawn. For some reason, it had been declared that no one would leave Long Ridge today. Some luckless person had (alien under the attention of the occupation.

Kelida wanted to see neither the farm where she had once lived nor the soldiers who had ravaged that valley.

What I want to see, she thought, is Tyorl!

He’d left a message for her with Tenny that he was looking for her. He was leaving Long Ridge and wanted to speak with her outside the town before he left. Kelida had felt a little sad when she’d gotten the message. If the elf was leaving, it must surely mean that he didn’t expect to find his friend Hauk here in Long Ridge. If she would have welcomed a chance to work a little vengeance on the young man, she also would have welcomed the opportunity to hear his bear’s growl of a voice again. Kelida unbuckled the sword belt and let the weapon fall to the ashy dust in the road. The wind carried a rough curse and grating laughter from the direction of the barricade. Kelida would go no farther. She took a seat on a boulder’s flat top, drew up her knees, rested her chin on her forearms, and stared at the black, scarred fields across the road.

The dragon’s fire had been capricious here on the outskirts of the town. East of the road was black desolation. The western verge, however, defended by the broad, golden width of the dirt road, still showed sign of life. The thicket of slim silver birches that crowned the ridge was almost untouched. Sedge, its plumes the rusty gold of autumn, drooped at the roadside. White dead-nettle had scattered its blossoms in tiny petals around its roots, as though presaging winter’s snow. Even the yellow toad-flax showed here and there.