Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

His hands clinging to the crumbling wood, the rest of him dangling over the two story drop at full arm extension, Lavim thought it might be better for him now if kender possessed wings.

He almost lost his hold when a hard, sharp bark of laughter sounded from far below on the first floor. Givrak, his reptilian eyes glittering balefully in the gray light, his thin, snakey tongue flickering, laughed up at the kender.

All his life, Lavim had never been able to resist a sure target. He twisted and spat down between his elbows. Though his aim had been a source of pride in his youth, it had lately been known to fail. It did not fail him now. He hit Givrak squarely between the eyes. The draconian’s shriek of fury echoed around the empty warehouse.

Lavim flinched away from the silver flight of a dagger and elbowed himself higher. He wrapped one hand around a charred, wobbly post. He pulled, felt the post give a little, and dropped his hand back to the floor. Givrak laughed, a grim, cold sound. “Give it up, ratling! There’s no place to run, and I would like to discuss something with you.”

Lavim twisted again, got a knee up, and then slid back. The weakened boards of the second floor groaned.

Metal crashed against wood. The draconian was abandoning his armor.

Lavim, whose curiosity could not be quenched were he about to drop into the shadowy horror of the Abyss, peered down again. Givrak’s armor was a pile of red metal on the floor, his short sword was clamped between long, fanged jaws. His wings, wide stretches of bone and claw-tipped leather, unfolded with crude, jerking motions. The other three stepped back, grinning. They scented an ending.

They’re gliding wings, Lavim reminded himself, and draconians can’t really fly. Everyone knows that …

Givrak couldn’t fly. However, he had thick, powerfully muscled legs and could leap higher than even Lavim would have imagined. On the first leap, the draconian’s long clawed hand raked and missed the shakey post to which Lavim clung.

On the second, black wings thrusting powerfully down, Givrak caught the splintered edge of the floor with one hand and shifted his sword from jaws to free hand.

The kender moved fast then, brought both knees up tight to his chest and twisted, throwing himself up onto the groaning floor. Givrak, laughing horribly, easily hefted himself onto the floor.

The rabbit was no longer certain that he could outrun the hound. Lavim snatched his dagger from its belt sheath and slashed wildly. The blade did little damage to the draconian’s tough, scaled arm. Lavim shifted his grip and tore the blade down and across Givrak’s left wing, ducked beneath the roaring beast’s huge arm, and brought the blade ripping up through the leather of the creature’s right wing. A huge, clawed hand came down on Lavim’s wrist and twisted cruelly. The kender’s dagger fell from nerveless fingers.

Lavim, with the persistence of his kind, drove his knee into Givrak’s belly. When the draconian doubled, howling, Lavim brought his other knee up hard as he could under the creature’s jaw. Teeth clashed, Givrak’s head whipped back. Lavim jerked his wrist free, retrieved his dagger, and bolted.

There was no place to run.

What used to be walls here were now only fire blackened beams and posts and lowering sky. A hauling strut jutted out from the side of the building, a black finger pointing to the hills. Below were the cold, hard cobbles of the streets of Long Ridge. Lavim stopped and turned. The draconian, limping and wings torn, lumbered toward him, murder in his black reptilian eyes.

Kender do not think often, but when they do, they think fast. Lavim Springtoe waited just long enough for Givrak to get up a a little speed, and then he ran for the sky.

Stanach had been looking for the elf since dawn with no luck. The kender was another matter. Stanach heard word of him everywhere. The cooper, the blacksmith, and the candlemaker all had complaints. The cooper wanted his small adze back. The blacksmith vowed to turn Lavim over to Carvath’s authority if he did not have his stamp and chisel in his shop by noon. The candlemaker only cursed his own foul luck to have survived the army’s incursions only to see his few remaining goods carried off by a plague of kenders.

Stanach did not try to explain to the man that one kender hardly constitutes a plague. Semantics, in the matter of kenders, often depend upon which side of the counter one stands behind.

Still searching for Tyorl, the dwarf crossed Lavim’s trail at the butcher’s shop, the tanner’s, and the potter’s. A boy had seen the kender dashing through the alley across the street from a tavern. From there, he heard that Lavim had indeed been in the tavern, but only briefly. He’d been chased by draconian soldiers.

Givrak! It could be no one else. Stanach thought about Tyorl and the sword. The chances were looking slimmer every hour that the elf would know where the sword was. But he was Stanach’s only clue. If this clue proved fruitless, he’d have to start looking somewhere else soon or get back to Piper.

The kender could likely take care of himself. Kenders usually could. Aye, Stanach thought then, but if he’s caught? He didn’t want to think about what would happen to Lavim if the draconian caught him.

“Damn kender!” he muttered. He supposed he could look for the kender and the elf at the same time.

The next thing Stanach heard was that Lavim, white braid flying and legs pumping for all he was worth, had headed for a burned out warehouse in the middle of the block, the draconians still in pursuit. Reluctantly Stanach checked the release of his sword and headed for the warehouse. He approached the warehouse’s blackened skeleton from the opposite side of the street. A catbird’s laughter, or a kender’s, rang mockingly from above.

Stanach looked up in time to see a draconian plunge from the unwalled second floor of the warehouse, arms and legs whirling. The creature spread his wings, now useless, dagger-slashed leather, and screamed. Had the drop been steeper, Stanach would have been able to hear the wind whistling through those slashes. As it was, he only heard the thud of the draconian hitting the ground, the scrape and crack of scales and bones on cobbles. And Lavim’s catbird cackling.

Stanach drew his sword and crossed the street. He kicked the draconian over. It was Givrak.

Stanach shuddered. Even as he recognized the draconian, Givrak’s carcass turned to stone. His heart lurching hard, Stanach backed quickly away from the thing. He’d heard tales of what happened to the bodies of dead draconians, but had only half believed those tales till now. Lavim leaned out over the edge of the building. “Stanach! Good to see you again! Is he dead? He forgot about those holes in his wings. The little details, my father used to say, are very important sooner or later and—Yo! Stanach! Look out!”

Givrak’s three companions, having heard their fellow’s scream, had bolted out the door opposite Stanach. Without a pause, they leaped over their fallen comrade, whose stony corpse was now turning to dust, and charged the dwarf.

After the manner of a good swordcrafter, Stanach’s knowledge of the weapon did not stop at knowing how to make one. He was no warrior; he hadn’t a fighter’s instincts. But he had an intimate knowledge of the weapon and in his hand a blade was a deadly thing. He lopped the sword arm off his first attacker and left him howling on his knees in the street. He noticed that, wounded, the thing did not become stone. Stanach did not waste time wondering why. He backed the other two against the warehouse, his sword a silver flash in the air. He wielded the blade double-handed as though it were an axe. Every move his two opponents tried to make was blocked by singing steel. A good many spans shorter than his attackers, Stanach stood naturally under their guard and pressed that advantage every time he could. One of the draconians stumbled, and in that moment between balance lost and balance recovered, Stanach raised his sword to strike.