Stormblade

3

Blood soaked the bust of the road. Four dwarves lay dead, and the only things moving were the wind plucking with cool fingers at their hair and beards, and a crow screaming in the hard blue sky.

Stanach had no thought for three of the dwarves but to be glad that they were dead. The fourth was Kyan Red-axe.

Stanach closed his eyes and bowed his head. Even the finest, most skilled warrior cannot always defend himself from a coward’s attack. His kinsman Kyan Red-axe was dead of a crossbow bolt in the back. A cairn, Stanach thought. He looked up at the crow. We have to build a cairn. For a dwarf to die, with no cairn or tomb to shelter his body was a traitor’s death. Kyan Red-axe did not deserve that. Stanach’s belly twisted sickly when he realized that this might be his kinsman’s fate. The breeze, light and cool, freshened and carried the fading scent of sulphur. Smoke, thick and rolling only a few moments before, thinned to curling tendrils now that the magic fire was gone. Stanach turned and looked for the mage. He saw him a little way off to the side of the road, leaning against the broad trunk of an oak. His red robes were the color of Kyan’s blood.

Blood spilled for Stormblade.

“Piper, we can’t leave him here.”

Piper shook his head. “We can’t stay. They’ll be back. They’re here for a reason, my friend. The only place this road goes to is Long Ridge or the sea. Realgar’s men jumped us the minute we came out of the transport spell. They were waiting for us. We’re in trouble, Stanach.”

Stanach, his hand on Kyan’s chest as though still reaching for a sign of life, looked closely at the mage. Like most humans. Piper seemed taller than anyone needed to be. His face white and drawn, his blue eyes dim. The mage was spent. He sweated in the cold air, and the sweat plastered his sun colored hair to his face and neck.

Piper had loosed two fire-spells, long arms of flame, the instant he and the two dwarves had come out of the transport spell. Realgar’s guards had been waiting. Now, drained by the exertions of the transport and the fire spells, the mage would be no threat to anyone for at least a few hours, and certainly not to the four Theiwar guards still lurking somewhere nearby. Stanach looked around. The dark line of the forest lay in the shadows to his right. Barren ground rose to stony hills on his left. Half as high as the trees, a tumbled pile of stone climbed to the sky at the brink of the woods. The crow’s hoarse cry seemed closer now.

Piper pushed away from the oak, passed through the shadows, and stood behind Stanach. “We have to leave him, my friend. I’m sorry. But we don’t dare stay here any longer.”

Stanach closed his eyes again. Kyan had a war-cry like summer thunder, like a madman’s howl. He had a strong right arm and a warrior’s heart, fierce and generous. He would have no eulogy and not even a hastily built cairn. But he would be remembered.

Stanach got slowly to his feet. He looked up at the sky. The sun had started its long slide down to the west and soon would be setting. He didn’t want to be caught in the night. Theiwar did their best work in the dark.

“Piper, how far to Long Ridge?”

The mage shrugged. “Eight, maybe ten miles through the forest. Five by the road.”

Stanach grunted. He picked up his sword, wet with Theiwar blood, and cleaned it as best he could on the grass by the roadside. He slid it into the scabbard across his back and slung his pack over his shoulder. “We’d better go. If that’s an occupied town as you say, I don’t imagine they’ll be letting strangers in after dark, eh?”

“Likely not. And—” Piper stopped suddenly and pointed to the crest of the closest hill.

Dark as wolves, the four Theiwar, only recently fled, had returned. The shortest among them pointed down toward the edge of the trees. Piper laid a light hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And we’d better split up.”

The four drifted slowly down the slope. Wolves circling. They’d been waiting for the mage’s fire to vanish, waiting to return and finish the killing they’d started.

Stanach shook his head. “No. We stay together.”

Piper’s voice was shadowy and thin. “If we stay together you can be sure we’ll die together.” His fingers tightened on Stanach’s shoulder. “One of us has to get to Long Ridge. Let’s double our chances, eh? You head for the town. These woods aren’t Qualinesti, but neither are you a woodsman, so don’t wander, Stanach. It wouldn’t take elven wards and magic to get you firmly lost in there.

“Keep to the shadows and the trees. Have the road always in sight and you’ll find yourself in a farming valley before you know it. The town sits on the crest of the valley’s northern slope. Find Stormblade, do what you have to do to get it. Then get out.”

The dwarves began to put distance between themselves. They fanned out in a semi-circle, still moving slowly. The wind kicked up dust at their feet so that they seemed to be moving a hand’s width above the stony ground. Stanach cocked an eye at his friend.

“And you?”

Piper’s grin was slow and knowing. “I still have it in me for one more spell. Leave me to me, Stanach.” One of the guards laughed, a high, howling sound. “And leave them to me, too. I’ll lead them a fine chase and lose them fast. You just find the sword. I’ll double back and meet you here in two or three days. We’ll be back in Thorbardin before you know it.”

“Aye,” Stanach said wryly, “on the wings of another one of your transport spells, staggering and stumbling and looking for a place to vomit.”

Piper shrugged. “It’s better than walking.”

Stanach agreed. “Wait then. But not forever. If I don’t find the sword soon, we’re going to have to track it together. Give me a five-day. If I’m not back—with the sword or without it—do what you think is best.” He looked one last time at Kyan and at the blood in the road. “Luck, Piper.”

“Aye, luck, Stanach. And if you’re luckless, do what you have to do. Now go!”

Stanach scrambled for the shadows and the trees. Five yards into the wood, he heard voices raised in oaths to evil gods and turned to look back. Like a wave of smoke, a thick black cloud funneled down from the sky. Rustling and a high, nervous chittering filled the air as a sweep of bats, day-blind and guided only by Piper’s will, descended upon the slope of the near hill like a hundred small carrion crows.

Silently, Stanach blessed his friend for the time that spell purchased and headed north.

Stanach gagged on the thick stench of old burning. He’d heard reports of the war from Kyan and his fellows who walked the border patrol along the western edge of the dwarven holdings. He thought he knew, from their tales, what he might find here in the Outlands. He had never imagined the kind of destruction that lay before him now.

At one time, and not too long ago, the valley must have been fertile. Now, he thought, the sparrows would starve before winter. As Piper had said, the town lay on the ridge’s crest on the valley’s northern end. Almost everything below that ridge lay in scorched ruin.

The light of the setting sun fell soft and purple across once-cultivated fields, showing wide black swaths where the flames had run down the length of the vale. Here and there, in scattered patches, small sections of the crops had gone untouched by the fire. These crops, unharvested, shimmered like narrow veins of gold. The fire-blackened willows along the banks of the river, which bisected the valley north to south, clawed the sky like the groping fingers of skeletons. As far as Stanach could see, farmhouses, barns, and small outbuildings lay collapsed, mere piles of rubble now.

A dragon had flown through here.

Laughter, rough and drunken, rose from the valley and echoed against the ridge. Looters, Stanach thought. The place had not been burned that long ago. It would take the dragonarmy soldiers weeks to finish stripping the farmhouses and the dead.

Only two weeks ago, Pax Tharkas in the Kharolis Mountains had been taken by the Highlord Verminaard. The forces of Takhisis had begun their assault on Abanasinia. The wisdom of Thorbardin had it that these humans, blind seekers after new gods, and the elves who had recently fled Qualinesti, had brought this war down on their own heads. They were living with the disaster they’d called upon themselves now. Or they were dead of it.

No business of mine, Stanach thought as he slid his sword from its scabbard and turned away. His business was to find a Kingsword, and at least two hours of walking lay between him and the town. If he didn’t want to be caught in this wretched valley he’d have to hurry. Still, he was happy to leave the place behind. The wind was picking up now and it mourned through the ruined fields sounding like newly made phantoms.

Breathing the dark scent of rich loam, Piper lay as silently as a ghost behind a tangled pile of uprooted trees. The Theiwar guards were as noisy as a passing herd of cattle. Brown and brittle, the fallen leaves rustled beneath their feet, and twigs snapped and popped under their booted feet. When he’d fled into the woods, Piper had regretted that he hadn’t the strength for an invisibility spell. He grinned now as one guard with a wounded arm tripped over an oak’s tangled roots. A blind and deaf mule could keep out of their way!

He listened for long moments as they went on, calling to each other and cursing the thick underbrush. Piper hoped they planned to hunt their dinner in these woods; they’d likely warn every rabbit, deer, and squirrel for miles around that there were dwarves about.

After a time, they angled north as Stanach had, keeping to the edge of the wood. Piper shook his head. At the rate these four were going, Stanach would be in and out of Long Ridge before the Theiwar penetrated the valley. Stanach, dwarf though he was, and as likely to make a racket as these four, had at least a two hour start on them. Piper sat up, peered around, and satisfied himself that he was alone.

Two hours head start, he thought, and not searching for a mage who had somehow managed to make himself invisible without a spell. Piper grinned and got to his feet, brushing off his red robes. He squinted up at the sky, brighter here in the shadows of the trees than it had seemed out on the road.

Another hour or so before the sun set. Enough time to tend to Kyan. Piper approached the dead still lying in the road. Like black creatures of the night, a half-dozen carrion crows cursed at him before taking flight. One, perched on the shoulder of one of Realgar’s guards, only found a better balance and cocked his head, eyeing the intruder with cool insolence. I see you, the crow seemed to be saying, and I’ll see you again. Piper shuddered and pitched a stone at the bird. The crow took flight, screaming. Piper bent to his work.

The mage dragged Realgar’s three assassins off the road and far into the darkening woods. Like Stanach, he was only concerned about Kyan. He would make a true cairn for Kyan Red-axe. He looked again at the sun and judged that he would be commending the dwarf’s spirit to Reorx as the sun turned the stone red with its last light.

Piper thought it was fitting.

“Aye” he said, speaking softly to the dead as he worked. “You’ll not go untombed, Kyan, my friend. When word is brought back to Thorbardin that Kyan Red-axe is dead, a king regent will mourn for you.”

As he worked, the mage also thought. Realgar’s guards had ambushed them while he, Kyan, and Stanach were hardly more than a shimmering of the transport spell in the air. Are we that unlucky he wondered, or are they that lucky?

Piper dragged the last of the cairn stones into place and went to sit beside Kyan in the road. The sun was only a red glow and slanting golden shafts behind the western horizon. The road to the north lay in darkness. Piper smoothed the dark leather jerkin over the breeched and bloodstained mail shirt that had failed to protect Kyan Red-axe from a crossbow bolt. Perhaps, he thought as he bent to lift his friend and bear him to the cairn he’d prepared, perhaps Realgar set guards on this road because he already has people in Long Ridge who are looking for Stormblade. They are either going to return this way, or Realgar looks to make certain that no other searcher gets into town.

He laid Kyan in the cairn, then carefully placed the covering stones over his body. As he knew it would, the sun’s last crimson light glowed across the stones.

“Let it be a reflection of the light of the god’s forge,” he murmured.

“Farewell Kyan Red-axe.”

Without thinking, he moved his hand to the flute at his belt. While he’d been working, soft, sad notes had been playing in his mind. Piper shook his head. Kyan’s dirge would have to go unsung for a while. The notes of the flute would carry far in the clear night air.

Night settled fast on the road, and Piper sat down in the grass, his back against Kyan’s tomb. He watched the first early stars appear in the sky and marked the places where the two moons, the red and the silver, would soon rise. He would wait, as he’d promised Stanach.

Piper drew a long breath. Stanach’s no warrior, he thought, and no mage. But he’s sworn and ready to keep his oath no matter what he meets. He wondered if he should try to catch up with Stanach but discarded the idea. No sense crossing paths in the dark. If Stanach found the Kingsword tonight, he’d be back tomorrow.

When you set a place to meet, Kyan once said, you either keep it or you spend a few days chasing down your friends while they wander around looking for you.

Kyan had often dispensed his border-lore over ales in Thorbardin’s taverns. On one such tour of the city’s drinking spots, he mentioned this bit of wisdom. Piper bowed his head. He’d hear no more such lore from Kyan Red-axe, no tales of his adventures. Kyan was dead in the Outlands.