Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

If he doesn’t , Piper said, his mental voice sounding decidedly weak and hoarse, I do !

But—but. Piper, he thought, I was only trying to help. I was only trying to get—Piper?

The mage did not respond.

Aw, c’mon, Piper. Really, I only wanted to help!

Look around you, Lavim . Piper snarled. You haven’t done anything but make sure that you and your friends are going to be roasted before you get anywhere near Thorbardin.

Lavim glanced over his shoulder and stumbled a little trying to see behind and walk ahead. The sheets of fire raging behind them were closer now, leaping and snapping and sending wild sprays of embers into the black night sky.

Lavim wisely decided to wait until they got out of the fire and the bogs before he reminded Tyorl and Piper that, while they might not actually be in Thorbardin, they were probably whole days closer.

Gneiss of the Daewar made his way through the crooked alleys and paths created by the hastily built field-keeper’s huts that lined the walls of the East Farming Warrens. There will not be air enough for a dwarf to breathe, he had said. Even he admitted that the complaint was hyperbole, but each time he came into the farming warrens the thought growled in his mind.

The eight hundred human refugees had managed to settle quickly. The youngest children, those who were not out in the fields with the men, scampered through the tangle of huts, their cries high and loud, echoing around the cavern walls and flying up to the roof many hundreds of feet above. Women tended the stock, the few dozen horses needed for ploughing, a rowdy herd of goats, and far, far too many chickens and ducks.

Damn place looks and smells like a ragged border town on the edge of nowhere! A note of reluctant admiration crept into the Daewar’s thoughts. Reorx knew, it didn’t take them long to recover from their trek across the Outlands.

Though the fields were not at all what these human farmers were used to, they’d adapted quickly to the level acres of deep black soil transported into the warrens many years ago and replenished and refreshed seasonally from the valley outside Southgate. No stone fouled the plough blades, not even the smallest grade challenged the horses or their ploughmen. Gneiss stopped at the edge of a newly furrowed field. The dark soil glistened under the light from the many crystal shafts high above. Boys with large, heavy canvas seed pouches slung over their shoulders followed the carefully laid lines of the furrows, sowing to the left and right as they walked. Soon the wealthy black soil would be covered with a tender green carpet of new-growing wheat. Beyond this field they planted corn, and in the cavern into which this one led, millet, hay and pasturage for the stock would soon thrive.

Yes, they were doing well, Goldmoon’s people. One could almost believe that Mesalax had blessed their efforts. One could almost believe that the Plainswoman did, indeed, have the goddess’s favor. Almost. Gneiss snorted. He hadn’t heard that one of the gifts Mesalax granted her clerics was the ability to enchant thanes. And Hornfel was enchanted. These days it seemed that he spent more time here among the refugee farmers than in the upper cities.

And me, the Daewar thought, I have to drag down here after him like some errand lad each time I want to speak a word to him! Courting allies, he says. The best way to gain an ally is to know him, he says. Hah! What kind of allies will these ragtag refugees make? Damn poor ones, I’ll wager.

Raucous and high, a child’s shriek of laughter preceded her as she pelted out from behind a hut, head down and arms flailing. She bowled into Gneiss before the Daewar could turn, staggering him, and she tumbled to the ground.

He snatched up the child by her elbows and dumped her unceremoniously on her feet again. “Easy with your wild running, lass! You’ve two eyes—use them!”

The two eyes so noted, wide and blue as the sea, stared at Gneiss as the girl edged cautiously toward the field.

All skinny legs and skinnier arms, Gneiss thought. Someone ought to think about feeding the thing. And what have they cut the creature’s hair with? A saw’s blade by the look of it.

“Hold still a moment, will you?”

The girl stopped where she stood and pushed ragged black hair back from her face.

“I’m looking for Goldmoon and—” He smiled sourly “—her prisoner Hornfel. Where are they?”

“Prisoner?” The girl’s eyes grew, if possible, wider with sudden laughter. “Oh, yer jokin’, Grandfather.”

“Grandfather!”

She pointed with a grubby finger to his long, graying beard. Gneiss’s eyes narrowed against an unbidden smile. Impudent little scamps shouldn’t be encouraged, aye, by no means.

The impudent scamp’s face split in a grin. “I know where they are. I’ll take you.”

“Aye,” the dwarf growled, “and then you’d better be taking yourself off to your mother for a wash and a combing, eh?”

She shook her head and shrugged in the most matter-of-fact manner.

“Can’t do it, grandfather.”

“Can’t you? Why not?”

“The lady Goldmoon says m’ mother an’ m’ father have gone to be with Mishakal.” The child’s expression clouded. “I think they’re dead.”

So saying, the girl scampered away, and Gneiss had to step quickly to catch up. The children of war are fatalists, he reminded himself. He’d seen it often enough and had never become used to it, warrior though he was. Gneiss followed the child through the winding, newly made streets to a field-keeper’s hut, low-roofed and featureless, no different than all the others. Inside the tiny hut, he found Hornfel seated with the Plainswoman at a table. The half-elf was on his heels by the door, there being no place else to sit, fletching arrows with the absent skill of one who performs the chore as much to pass the time as to keep his weapons in good order. Though fox-haired Tanis and Goldmoon were often seen together as the leaders of these refugees, rumor had it that there was a great and brooding Plainsman about somewhere who might well have the right to call Goldmoon his lady. In fact, there were nine people in this motley band who had rescued the slaves from Verminaard’s mine. Gneiss had only met and spoken with the half-elf and Goldmoon. The other seven either had business of their own or were happy enough to leave the matter of negotiations to these two.

It’s just as well they did, Gneiss thought. He’d heard that one among the party was a hill dwarf of the ill-famed Fireforge clan. He’d no interest at all in speaking with a hill dwarf, let alone in being in the same room with one whose grandfather had fought against the mountain dwarves in the Dwarf gate Wars.

Yes, and here sits Hornfel, the Daewar thought, taking a cup of spirits with Outlanders! As though there were nothing else to concern him or the council but finding a pleasant way to pass the afternoon!

Gneiss regretted his assessment when he saw his friend’s eyes. The dark shadows in the Hylar’s eyes told of heavy matters discussed. Goldmoon smiled and gestured Gneiss into the hut as though the tiny place were hers and she were proud to welcome a guest.

“You are looking for your friend? You may accurately accuse me of selfishness, Thane Gneiss. I have kept him here too long.”

Chieftain’s daughter was her proper title. Gneiss thought that he would like to have known her father, if only to meet the man who so well trained Goldmoon to this regality.

“Aye, lady. We’ve had a need of him. Hornfel,” he said, “word has come from the border. Guyll fyr’ .” He’d spoken the words in Dwarven and was surprised when the half-elf reacted.