Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

Rubina could send the letter, however. He was about to tell her so when a sentry hailed him from the roof of the manor. "Ho, Master Gerik!" the soldier called. "There's a woman coming out of the woods across the stream from the lower pasture. She looks a mite ragged and sick, and there's some children with her, too."

This was no surprise to Gerik. Tirabot Manor had a name for being hospitable to those driven off their land by local feud, natural disaster, or sheer ill luck. Four or five such parties knocked at the gate during the average month.

"Rubina," Gerik said, "go to the arms room and have the men there ready to ride. Then go to the stables and have my horse-"

Rubina looked rebellious, but before she could turn looks into words, the sentry called again. This time his voice shook with incredulity.

"By all the True Gods! That woman's got a band of kender with her!"

The shouts that sounded from behind the kender named Horimpsot Elderdrake grew louder. Either someone had seen him, thought they had seen him, or decided to shout just to encourage himself or his comrades.

The kender thought that the humans needed encouraging. Not so much that they caught him, of course, because if they did that they would surely kill him, and he did not want that to happen.

Not that he was really afraid of death. Kender do not fear death, in and of itself, so much as they hate the fact that death tends to keep them from finding out what happens next. Elderdrake had this curiosity as strongly as the next kender, and the next kender (and all other kender) were a race that seemed to have been created by the gods with an extra measure of curiosity.

However, he was afraid, though not exactly as a human would understand it, of failing his new comrades and their human friend. He had wandered onto the land of the Spillgather clan just after they had decided to befriend a young woman named Ellysta, who had offended the kingpriest, or a friend of the kingpriest, or someone who used the kingpriest's name a great deal.

The Spillgathers had not explained Ellysta's alleged offense in much detail. Elderdrake doubted that he would have understood it if they had. In spite of all the time he had spent traveling, he was still young, and not all of that time had been spent among humans. In fact, he made a serious effort to walk very wide of some kinds of humans.

Being properly brought up, Elderdrake had decided to help his hosts bring Ellysta to safety, which turned out to be Tirabot Manor. This seemed wise to Elderdrake, who knew a good deal about Sir Pirvan, Knight of the Rose and lord of Tirabot, and had learned still more from his own former traveling companion, Imsaffor Whistletrot.

All of which explained why Horimpsot Elderdrake was 'darting hither and thither in the forest. He was trying to keep the men who had come for Ellysta on his trail, and lead them away from the trail of the Spillgathers who were taking the woman to the manor. If he kept them chasing him long enough, they would never find Ellysta before she was inside the manor's walls and under the protection of its lord and lady.

More shouts echoed through the trees, now conveying more pain than enthusiasm. Stinging nettles grew freely in these woods, even if not so heavily during the late winter as at other times. It sounded as if someone had blundered into a patch of them, or maybe skewered himself on a comrade's weapon.

Elderdrake reached back to pat his hoopak. Even slung across his back, it was a trifle awkward in dense under-growth, but he would no more abandon it than he would his pouches. It had been a gift from Imsaffor Whistletrot, when the older kender gave up traveling.

The underbrush gave way to a slope deep in dead leaves and the blackened remnants of last year's ferns. By crouching low, Elderdrake discovered that he could be almost completely invisible to anyone either upstream or downstream.

He had just made this discovery when men charged into the open from both directions. They seemed to have some idea of which way he was going, but not where he was. Elderdrake decided to use this fact.

He cupped his hands, pitched his voice to imitate a human's (as well as any kender could, and better than most), and shouted: "Down there! By the big redstripe!"

He had taken note that there were well-grown redstripe trees near both human parties. So naturally, both thought that the shouter was referring to the other redstripe. The range was long for spears, but easy shooting for both longbows and crossbows.

So many arrows and bolts flew, besides the spears, that Elderdrake was amazed the humans did not wipe each other from the face of Krynn. However, few of the archers and none of the spearmen were true masters of their weapons. Only four men went down, and of these, two rose again. One of those who remained lying down howled and cursed like a man in rude health.

Elderdrake realized that he had not reduced the odds against him much. So he crawled down the slope until he had a clear jump to the other side of the ravine, gathered himself into a ball, and hurled himself across.

He landed sprawling and breathless, having made a very fair jump even for one of his nimble race. Shouts said that he was in plain sight of one human party, but only a few arrows flew his way and none struck close. Either the pursuers were short of arrows, or they were suddenly cautious about striking down comrades.

Two humans attempted to follow Elderdrake's leap. One of them made the jump and after much scrabbling and scrambling, managed to reach level ground. By then Elderdrake was again well hidden.

The other men failed the leap and plummeted into the ravine with crashing and screaming that suggested they would be pursuing no one for a while.

Elderdrake used the time it took the other humans to decide on evergreen whose needles would hide him, stout enough to support him at a great height, and close enough to other trees so that after dark he could leap into their branches and make his escape.

Of course, the humans might realize that his letting himself be treed was a ruse. But even if it only took them the rest of the morning to gain this insight, that would be enough for Ellysta and the Spillgathers. Meanwhile, Elderdrake intended to listen carefully to anything the humans said. The Spillgathers might think they knew everything necessary about their enemies, but Elderdrake's experience of war told him otherwise. Also, even if the Spillgathers knew much, he knew very little.

Picking a path through the underbrush, where a four-foot kender could slip along easily and a six-foot human would become hopelessly tangled, Horimpsot Elderdrake sought his tree.

The ship house smelled of fresh lumber, sawdust, paint, and sundry oils. Torvik stopped to watch two workers applying a foul-smelling concoction to the bottom of the ship propped up in the middle of the house, Gridjor Hem's Flying Dart . Hem himself was standing on deck amidships, and hailed Torvik when he saw the younger captain. Torvik sometimes wondered how much his acceptance owed to trust in his skill and how much to memory of his father-or even fear of his mother.

However, Hem seemed sincere in his affability and his fraternal embrace of Torvik, when he had scrambled down to the ship house floor. "Don't worry," he added. "We'll have Dart out of here within a day or two. Plenty of time for your little beauty."

Torvik knew undue optimism when he heard it, and besides, it was nearly the end of Brookgreen. Half the work on the ships gathering in Vuinlod was already being done outdoors.

"Don't cut yourself short for my sake," Torvik said, trying to sound wholly at ease. "A day or few more, and we'll be able to take her over to Hauldown Strand and do her bottom by careening.

"We might buy some of your bottom grease, though, if you've any left when Dart is done. It doesn't smell like you're using whale oil."