Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Tanis turned sharply at the sound of the dwarf’s approach and visibly relaxed as he recognized the Daewar.

“If you’re looking for Hornfel,” Tanis said mildly, “he’s not here.”

“I can see that.” Gneiss eyed him carefully. “Something you need here?”

The half-elf shook his head. “Just enjoying the garden.” When Gneiss’s careful look became one of slight suspicion, Tanis smiled. “Easy, Gneiss. Hornfel was here a moment ago. We were talking and a guard—one of your own by the livery—called him away.”

“Say where he was going?”

“Not to me.”

An awkward moment of silence fell between the two. Tanis, his long green eyes hooded, scratched his beard. “Gneiss, you don’t like me, do you?”

Caught off guard, Gneiss stammered, “I haven’t an opinion one way or the other.”

“Oh yes, you do.” Tanis settled back on his heels and pitched another pebble into the pond. “You don’t like Outlanders, and you especially don’t want them in Thorbardin. Tell me, why did you finally vote to shelter those refugees?”

“Because all of Hornfel’s arguments made sense.” Gneiss said curtly. He narrowed his eyes. “What do you want, Half-Elven?”

“Safety for the refugees.” Tanis got to his feet with easy grace and let the pebbles fall from his hand.

“You’ve got it.”

“Aye? Not as long as they’re in danger of being caught between the anvil and the hammer. Or both sides of a revolution.” Tanis looked out beyond the fragrant boxwood hedges to the street outside. “They’re nervous put there, Gneiss. Tell me you can’t taste it in the air.”

Gneiss said nothing. He did not consider Thorbardin’s politics and problems fit matter for discussion with an Outlander.

“It’s very uncomfortable in the middle, Gneiss. Before you came, Hornfel and I were talking about that. The refugees will fight if they have to. It would be better if they were fighting with you, and not in spite of you. If a revolution does break out here, you are going to need our help.”

Gneiss shook his head. “Not the help of untrained farmers, I don’t.”

The half-elf ran a gentle finger along the edge of a half-blown spray of queen’s plume. The featherlike blossom left a faint dusting of golden pollen on his knuckle. “What about the help of the people who freed those refugees from slavery—snatched them from under Verminaard’s nose, Gneiss!—and brought them here all the way from Pax Tharkas?”

Eight hundred, Gneiss thought. Maybe half of them would be able to fight, or at least defend the East Warrens if it came to that.

But he didn’t think it would come to that. Realgar would not mount his revolution if he were not certain that he would win. Yet, if Realgar did strike, it would be because Ranee had thrown in his lot with the Theiwar. The first thanes would not waste time trying a first strike on the remote farming warrens in the east of Thorbardin. There was no need to involve the half-elf or his refugees.

Or was there?

Gneiss eyed Tanis again. This time there was no suspicion or mistrust in his gauging. He smiled slowly. There was not any certain way to know when, or even if, the derro would strike. But there was a way to assure that their blow, if struck, would be weakened.

The East Warrens opened into Ranee’s Daergar city from the north and the south. Pinned in their city like rats in holes, the Daergar would find it difficult to support Realgar’s attempt at revolution.

He looked at Tanis and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know much about farmers, Half-Elven. I’d imagine that they have to be good at trapping vermin to protect their crops.”

Tanis shrugged. “I would imagine.”

Gneiss stroked his silvered beard. “Then I might have a job for your farmers after all.” He bent to retrieve one of Tanis’s pebbles and pitched it into the pond. Like echoes, the ripples of the stone’s strike sighed out to the edges of the water.

Tyorl sagged against the rough barked trunk of a tall pine. His hunting leathers hung wet and heavy on him, covered with mud from the bogs, smeared with black ash and mud. His legs strengthless, his arms and back a mass of aching muscle and bone, he knew that if it were not for the tree’s support he would fall.

Smoke and ash sent hot tears running down his face. Shivering with cold, Tyorl wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, smearing soot and mud across pale cheeks in the horrible semblance of a mourner’s ashes. Behind him raged a swiftly advancing wall of flame. Guyll fyr rioted in the bog, flames shooting high into the sky. Pillars of fire pierced the thick roil of smoke billowing toward the foothills. There would not be more than a few moments for him and his friends to rest.

“Finn,” he rasped. The word caught in Tyorl’s hot, dry throat. “Finn, what do you know of these mountains?”

Finn shook his head, his lips twitching in a bitter, cynical smile. “I’m no dwarf. I know as much as anyone does of this arm of the mountains—which is about nothing. I hear the dwarves call these foothills and mountains the Outlands. But then, they have never been ones to encourage visitors. Pity you don’t have your broken-handed friend with you now.”

A pity, indeed, Tyorl thought. While the young dwarf had never been a favorite companion, he would be useful now. But Stanach, ever cold and silently brooding, was likely dead.

Tyorl winced at the callousness of the thought. Cold Stanach had always been, and distant, but Tyorl knew that Stanach had leaped for the dragon and hauled himself, one-handed and exhausted, onto the beast’s back more for Kelida’s sake than for that damned Stormblade.

Tyorl shook his head, tired with running and tired with thinking. His companions were both dead now. They were part of Stormblade’s bloody toll.

Finn coughed in the thickening air and Tyorl looked up. “We are guideless, Finn. We’ll have to do the best we can and make outrunning the guyll fyr our goal.”

“Not all of us will see the goal.” Finn gestured toward Lavim. The kender, too, braced against a pine’s supporting trunk. His head low, Lavim’s heaving gasps for breath shuddered through his small body, rattling in his chest like wind in the reeds. He’d been limping the last mile, muttering about stones in his boot.

There was a big enough hole in one of the kender’s old boots to support the excuse. Still, it was an excuse Tyorl did not believe. Even now, thinking himself unobserved, Lavim bent over his right knee, rubbing it with slow, careful strokes. He’d wrenched it hard coming out of the bog. Tyorl glanced at Finn. The rangerlord shook his head again, a light of pity in his smoke blue eyes. Though Finn had argued for cutting the kender’s throat and leaving him in the swamp, his anger, as always, had been short-lived. It was he who hauled Lavim, cursing and sputtering, out of the last and deepest waters.

We are the last of four who set out, Lavim and I, the elf thought. And none of us really knew a thing about the others but their names. He suddenly realized that, in a handful of days, these people had become important to him. The deaths of two of them—aye, even grim Stanach!—would echo darkly in his heart for long years.

Tyorl pushed away from the tree.

“We’re wasting time. Stanach isn’t with us. I know the direction he intended to take. South of the bog and east. I know little about Thorbardin, but I do know that we must be yet north of the place. The winds are pushing the fire north and east. It will be a hard road up and south to Thorbardin. We’d best get moving now while we still can.

“As for Lavim, he’ll get as far as I do, Finn, because when he can’t go any farther I will carry him.”