Darkness and Light

Chapter 36

His new horse was a steady plodding beast. Brum- bar, in Old Dwarvish, meant 'Black Bear.' Black he was, and bearishly stolid. Sturm didn't mind. The kind of traveling he was doing now was better suited to a steady animal, rath er than some excitable, fragile charger. Brumbar had a back so broad that Sturm imagined he could put his feet up on the animal's nodding neck and take a nap. Festooned with

Sturm's pack and other belongings, Brumbar kept a jingling pace all day long.

The Lemish forest thinned out to a few spindly pines, growing weakly amid the grassy undergrowth. It was hot on the plain, and very dry. Sturm began to ration his water when the streams and springs started getting fewer and far ther between.

Being off the road, he saw few people. This southernmost finger of the Solamnic Plain, thrust between the Garnet

Mountains and the Lemish forest, was too dry for cattle and farming. There were no robbers here, either; there was nothing to steal.

Alone, Sturm took time to reflect on things. Since he and

Kitiara had left Solace so many weeks ago, he'd come to realize that there was danger on the horizon everywhere.

The strange lizardlike mercenaries he had heard called dra conians had been seen in port cities. Caches of weapons being moved about. Large numbers of brigands infesting the roads of the northern countries. Dark magic at work. Gob lins led by a human magician. What was the common thread in all this? he wondered.

War. Invasion. Evil magic.

Sturm gave Brumbar a kick, and the big horse shuffled into a trot. A welter of vague impressions and shrouded memories surfaced in his mind. The visions he'd had on

Lunitari were lost to him in detail, but shadows of them remained, dimly. The strongest of these was that his father was alive somewhere. There was something about the old castle, too, and death that was somehow linked to lingering impressions of Kitiara's.

Oh, Kit. Where are you now?

The day's shimmering heat built towers of black clouds in the sky. Lightning danced far away, and peals of thunder crossed the grassland long after the flashes of lightning were gone. The smell of rain pulled Brumbar toward the storm, and Sturm let him go. He was thirsty, too.

The storm seemed to retreat from them even as they rode to meet it. Brumbar splashed through gullies running fast with rainwater, The air was wet, oppressive, yet the edge of the rain receded from Sturm's approach. The lightning played about a stand of pines to the east. Sturm reined away from the dangerous display, but Brumbar had other ideas.

Puffing hard through his dry throat, the horse headed straight for the trees.

Light, steamy drops of rain began to hit them. Brumbar cantered heavily through the widely spaced trees. The rain fell harder. Ahead, Sturm saw a dark shape flit between the pines. He blotted water from his eyes and looked again.

A rider in a flowing cape was weaving among the trees.

Now and then, the pale oval of a face turned back, as if the rider were peering over his shoulder at Sturm. He seemed to have a long mustache much like Sturm's own.

Brumbar slowed by a shallow pool of water, but Sturm spurred him on; he was curious about the other rider and wanted to catch up to him.

"Hello!" called Sturm. "Could I talk to you?"

A bolt from the churning sky struck the ground a score of yards away, leaving a smoking crater in the grass. The rider didn't respond to Sturm's call, but continued to weave around the pines. Sturm slapped the reins across his horse's neck, and Brumbar launched into a jarring gallop. They were closing on the stranger.

The rider's dark hair was slicked down by the driving rain. He did indeed have a long mustache, symbol of the

Knights of Solamnia.

The stranger's horse was light and agile, but it must have been running hard too long. Brumbar closed rapidly. Only the passing of a tree between them kept Sturm from reach ing out to grab the other man's lashing cape.

"Wait!" Sturm shouted. "Stop, I want to talk to you!"

The stranger's horse went hard to the left, circling around

Sturm. The man drew up and stopped thirty yards away.

Brumbar shuddered to a halt. The wind was up and blowing rain into Sturm's face, so he turned his horse around. The stranger was waiting for him.

"I didn't mean to chase you," Sturm called out, "but — "

He never heard the stroke of lightning that hit the ground between him and the stranger. Nor did he feel it. In one instant, he was talking and in the next, he was lying on the muddy grass with rain pattering on his face. His arms and legs were leaden and weak.

A dark form loomed over him. For a second, he was afraid. Lying there, helpless, Sturm was easy prey for a thief or assassin.

The stranger, still horsed, towered over him. Against the gray sky, with the rain in his eyes, all Sturm could see of him was dark hair, high forehead and drooping mustache. The cape was close about the man's shoulders, which were wide and powerful.

The stranger sat in the saddle, looking down at Sturm and saying nothing. Sturm managed to gasp, "Who are you?"

The man parted the cape, revealing the hilt of a large sword. Sturm made out the shape of the pommel and some of the filigree work. With a start, he realized that he knew that sword. It was his father's.

"Beware of Merinsaard," said the man, in a voice Sturm didn't recognize.

With tremendous effort, Sturm got to his knees. "Who are you?" He reached out a muddy hand to the stranger.

Where he should have touched the leg of the man's horse, he met nothing. Horse and rider vanished, silently and com pletely.

Sturm staggered to his feet. The rain was over. Already the sun was poking through the tattered clouds. Brumbar was several yards away, drinking from a puddle. Nearby, a pine tree had been blasted to smoking splinters by lightning.

Sturm put his face in his hands. Had he seen what he thought he'd seen? Who was the phantom rider? And what was Merinsaard? A person, a place?

Wearily he mounted Brumbar. The big horse shifted under Sturm's weight, and his broad hooves squelched in the mud. Sturm looked around. There were no other hoof prints in sight besides Brumbar's.

Though described as a plain, the country of Solamnia was not perfectly flat, as were, say, the Plains of Dust. There were ridges and gullies, dry creek beds and small stands of trees that grew like islands in the midst of the grassy steppe land. Sturm rode north at an easy pace, eating wild pears off the trees and filling his water bottle from the herders' wells.

He soon found himself moving among small herds of cat tle, tended and guarded by hard-looking peasants with mauls and bows. They watched him closely as he rode by.

Raiders were common, and in their eyes he might have been a scout for a larger band of rustlers. Also, Sturm wore the mustache and horned helmet of a Solamnic Knight — items not calculated to make him popular among the people who had overthrown the Order. Sturm didn't care. He rode proudly, sword turned out to show that he was ready for trouble. At night, he took special care with polishing his hel met, boots, and sword, to make them shine.

He decided to avoid the city of Solanthus. After the over throw, Solanthus had proclaimed itself a free city, not sub ordinate to anyone but its own Guildmasters. Sturm had heard of several knights, friends and compatriots of his father, who had been imprisoned and executed in Solan thus. While he was willing to proclaim his heritage in open country, he saw no reason to walk into the city and put his head into a noose.

The country beyond Solanthus sloped gently down to the

Vingaard River. It was rich land. The clods turned up by

Brumbar's iron-shod hooves were black and fertile.

The herds were thicker the closer to the river he got. He spent an entire day guiding Brumbar through ranks of rusty brown cows and calves. The heat and dust were so bad that he traded his helmet for a cloth bandanna, like the herd riders wore.

The herds converged on the Ford of Kerdu, an artificial shallows created centuries before by the Solamnic Knights

(another benefit that the common folk had forgotten).

Thousands of small stones were dumped into the Vingaard

River to make a fording place. As the river slowly scoured the stones away, each new generation on the river banks had to renew the ford with its own gathering of stones. A sort of winter festival had developed around the collecting and dumping of rocks in the river.

It soon became too congested for Sturm to ride, so he got off Brumbar and led the horse by his bridle. Here, by the river, the day's heat rapidly dispersed after sunset. Sturm walked down to the river bank where a hundred campfires blazed. The herders were settling for the night.

A half-dozen sun-browned faces turned up as Sturm approached the nearest camp.He raised his palm and said,

"My hands are open," the traditional herders' greeting.

"Sit," said the herd leader, identified by the carved steer horn that he wore on a thong around his neck, Sturm tied

Brumbar to a small tree and joined the men.

"Sturm," he said, sitting.

"Onthar," said the leader. He pointed to the other men in turn. "Rorin, Frijje, Ostimar, and Belingen." Sturm nodded to each one.

"Share the pot?" said Onthar. A black kettle hung over the fire. Each man had to provide some ingredient in order to share the common meal. Herder's stew — an expression known throughout Krynn as meaning a little bit of every thing.'

Sturm lifted the flap of his pack and saw the last of his provisions: an inch-thick slab of salt pork, two carrots, and a stoppered gourd half full of rye flour. He squatted by the kettle, took out his knife, and started slicing the meat.

"Been a good season?" he asked politely.

"Dry," said Onthar. "Too dry. Fodder on the lower plain is blowing away."

"No sickness, though," observed Frijje, whose straw colored hair hung in two long braids. "We haven't lost a sin gle calf to screwfoot or blue blister."

Shoving wispy red hair from his eyes, Rorin said, "Lot of raiders." He whetted a wicked-looking axe on a smooth gray stone. "Men and goblins together, in the same gang."

"I've seen that, too," Sturm said. "Farther south in

Caergoth and Garnet."

Onthar regarded him with one thin brown eyebrow raised. "You're not from around here, are you?"

Sturm finished the salt pork and started slicing the car rots. "I was born in Solamnia, but grew up in Solace."

"Raise a lot of pigs down there, I hear," Ostimar said. His voice was deep and resonant, seemingly at odds with his small height and skinny body.

"Yes, quite a lot."

"Where you headed, Sturm?" asked Onthar.

"North."

"Looking for work?"

He stopped cutting. Why not? "If I can get some," he said.

"Ever drive cattle before?"

"No. But I can ride."

Ostimar and Belingen snorted derisively, but Onthar said, "We lost a man to goblin raiders two weeks ago, and that left us with a hole in our drag line. All you have to do is keep the beasts going ahead. Well be crossing the Vingaard tomorrow, heading for the keep."

"The keep? But it's been deserted for years," Sturm said.

"Buyer there."

"Sounds fine. What's the pay?"

"Four coppers a day, payable when you leave us."

Sturm knew he was supposed to haggle, so he said, "I couldn't do it for less than eight coppers a day."

"Eight!" exclaimed Frijje. "And him a show rider!"

"Five might be possible," said Onthar.

Sturm shook the gourd to break up the lumps of flour.

"Six?"

Onthar grinned, showing several missing teeth. "Six it is.

Not too much flour now — we're cooking stew, not baking bread." Sturm stirred in a handful of gray rye flour. Rorin gave him a copper bowl and spoon. The stew was dished up, and the men ate quickly and silently. Then they passed a skin around. Sturm took a swig. He almost choked; the bag held a potent, fermented cider. He swallowed and passed the skin on.

"Who's buying cattle at the keep?" he said, after everyone had eaten and drunk.

"Don't know," Onthar admitted. "Men have been coming back from Vingaard Keep for weeks with tales of gold, say ing there is a buyer up there paying top coin for good beasts.

So the keep is where we're going."

The fire died down. Frijje produced a hand-whittled flute and began to blow lonely, lilting notes. The herders curled up on their single blankets and went to sleep. Sturm unsad dled Brumbar and curried him. He led the horse to the river for a drink and returned him to the sapling. That done, he made a bed with his blanket and the saddle.

The sky was clear. The silver moon was low in the south, while Lunitari was climbing toward its zenith. Sturm gazed at the distant red globe.

Had he really trod its crimson soil? Had he really fought tree-men, seen (and ridden) giant ants, and freed a chatter box dragon from an obelisk of red marble? Here, on Krynn, among the simple, direct herdsmen, such memories were like a mad dream, fevered images now banished by the more practical concerns of Sturm's life.

The young knight slept, and dreamed that he was gallop ing through Solace, pursuing a caped man who carried his father's sword. He never gained on the stranger. The vallen wood trees were bathed in a red glow, and all around Sturm felt the cold air echo with the sound of a woman's laughter.