Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

“Well, fine,” she whispered to the sword lying in the road, “I’m here. Where is he?”

His hunting leathers were the color of shade and birch. Kelida started and gasped when all of a sudden Tyorl stepped out of the shadows.

“Right here, Kelida.” He smiled and cocked a thumb at the sword.

“What’s that doing here?”

Kelida let go the breath she had caught. “Where else should it be? If you’re leaving, you’ll want to take it with you.”

“He gave it to you.”

Exasperating elf! “I don’t want it anymore. I never did want it. What would I do with it? I can’t sell it; I can’t wield it; I can’t even carry the thing! Won’t you please just take it, go wherever it is you’re going, and leave me alone?”

Tyorl cast a quick look down the road toward the barricade and motioned her to silence. “Be easy, Kelida. I’m going, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He gestured toward the birch thicket. “Come here. I don’t want to say this in front of half the dragonarmy.”

She hesitated, then made a quick decision to do as he asked. The smile had vanished from his eyes, his voice was low and tense. Kelida picked up the sword and let him draw her into the shadows of the trees.

“Listen,” he whispered, “and listen well. I don’t know where Hauk is. I don’t know what’s happened to him, but I know he’s not in this town anymore.” He paused. “You know we’re rangers.”

Kelida nodded.

“Aye, and our lord is a man called Finn. He and our band are waiting for our return. I can’t stay here any longer.”

“You’re just going to forget him?”

Anger flashed in the elf’s eyes. Too late, Kelida realized that her question had been close to an insult.

“No, Kelida. I’m not going to stop looking. There’s a lot of ground between here and the foothills. I’ll look for Hauk every step of the way. But I have to get back to Finn.” He gestured to the sword in her hands.

“Please keep it. It may be that Hauk will come back here, looking for the sword and me. Will you tell him where I’ve gone?”

“But—”

Tyorl’s fingers closed with a strong grip on her wrist. “Kelida, it’s time for me to leave Long Ridge. Hauk and I managed to convince those who have an interest in such things that we are hunters. If I stay any longer, someone will surely notice that I haven’t been doing much hunting. Their next guess is going to be that I’m a ranger.”

Fear skittered up Kelida’s spine. She asked the question before she realized it wouldn’t be wise to know the answer.

“Where are you going?”

Tyorl hesitated only briefly. “Qualinesti’s south border. Finn has work for us there. I’m sorry you brought the sword all the way out here. I wish I could carry it back for you, but I can’t delay any longer.”

“What about the barricade?”

“What about it? Finn would have my skin if I couldn’t slip past a couple of half-drunk dragonarmy scum.” He took the sword from her and ran his palm down the length of the shabby old scabbard. Cold sunlight glinted on the sapphires, making them gleam like ice. “He won this at daggers.”

“I’m not surprised.” Kelida smiled. “He has a good aim.”

Tyorl chuckled. “Aye, he does at that. Keep it for him?”

The wind seemed to grow colder. Kelida thought of the mountains south of Qualinesti, wet and bleak in winter. She thought of Hauk and wondered where he was, why he had abandoned so valuable a sword, and as good a friend as Tyorl.

Then she wondered, where she had not before, if Hauk had simply slipped off in the night, deserting the ranger band. She stole a quick look at Tyorl.

No, the elf would never consider it. Kelida shivered and took the sword. How awkward it was! “I’ll keep it.” She hesitated for only the space of a breath, then rose on tiptoe and lightly kissed his cheek. “Good luck to you.”

“Aye, well, we’ll both need some luck, eh?” He smiled. “Thank you.”

He took her arm and walked her back to the road. Because she was fumbling with the sword belt, Kelida didn’t know that their way was blocked until she felt the elf’s grip tighten. She looked up. Three soldiers, a human, and two draconians, stood across the path to the road. One of the soldiers grinned, showing gapped yellow teeth. “A sweet good-bye,” he drawled. His eyes flicked over Tyorl dismissively and fastened on Kelida, lingering.

Kelida’s stomach twisted weakly.

Lavim Springtoe ran like a rabbit who knows he is too fast for the hound, reveling in speed and the chase. Head down and laughing, he led the four draconians up one street, down another, through a tavern, and out the back door. Roaring and cursing in pursuit, they sounded like animated junkpiles, their swords crashing against their armor as they ran. He ducked down a sooty alley. Nimbly leaping a fence, he gleefully shouted vile taunts to the four who, weighed down with armor and weapons, struggled furiously to climb. Before the first draconian dropped to the ground, the kender squeezed between a clammy brick wall and a garbage keg. He was only a little out of breath.

Lavim let the first one past. It was the second he was most interested in. He was Givrak and Lavim was certain that he would be by in a minute. When Givrak lumbered by, sword out and gleaming in the watery morning light, Lavim’s hoopak shot out between the draconian’s legs and sent him sprawling into the first pursuer. The third, coming too fast to stop, piled into the other two, and the fourth only missed them by throwing himself against the opposite wall.

Lavim hooted with laughter and scrambled over the garbage keg and the three tangled draconians. He darted between the legs of the fourth and headed for the street. He dashed around the wide skirts of a woman, ducked under the long legs of a horse, and tore across the road. Behind him the draconians’ curses told him that they’d untangled themselves and were yet in pursuit.

Lavim knew the streets and byways of Long Ridge as only a kender or a street urchin could. He made for a warehouse, half-burned in the taking of the town, snatching up stones and loose cobbles from the street as he ran. He’d not had this much fun since he’d run, two yards all the way, ahead of an avalanche of snow and stones down a mountainside in Khur. (The two yards was his estimation. Ish, the gnome who was with him at the time, claimed that the distance was closer to a quarter mile, that the avalanche was no avalanche at all but a little slide of snow, and that all of this did not take place on a mountainside, but on a gently sloping hill.) The warehouse was huge, half a block long and wider than any building in the town. Once every kind of trade goods had been stored here: flour, wheat, corn, even bales of snowy wool. Of all the things stored here at the time of the fire, only ashes remained.

Lavim darted into the roofless building. Splashing through dark, ashy puddles from a recent rain, he made for the stairs at the back of the first floor. Givrak and his soldiers pounded behind him, bellowing curses and threats, scattering people like chickens before a gale.

The stink of burning permeated the building. The old kender paused at the bottom of the stairs. Leaning against a fire-thinned wall to catch his breath, he squinted up. There was still a second floor—or part of one. It jutted out from the stair wall like a barn’s loft, black edged and splintered, covering only half the width of the building. From that perch he would be able to fire, with perfect impunity, the stones he’d collected. Sucking in huge gulps of air still tainted with the acrid smell of burned wool and grain, Lavim eyed the stairs. He decided that a light-footed kender would be able to negotiate them and he started up. He moved swiftly on the theory that a soft, quick step would stress the already creaking stairs less than a heavy, cautious one. With half the steps negotiated, his left foot on an upper step, his right on the one below, the lower tread groaned and then collapsed with a splintering snap. Lavim moved fast. He threw himself against the wall and grabbed for purchase above. There was none. Like a collapsing house of cards, the steps above fell away from the second floor. Lavim yelped, dove, and caught the splintery edge of the floor.