“Everyone knows their light-fingered ways,” he began. The shifting light and shadow played eerily over his scarred face. When his audience snorted at his words, Darpo grinned, saying, “But kender don’t steal the way human thieves do, to enrich themselves. They do it out of mischief more than anything else.”
“Are there female kender?” Miya asked. They snickered at her, and she added hotly, “I’ve never seen one, that’s all!”
“One of the ones with us before Ropunt was female,” Darpo said, and took a long swig of beer, a parting gift from the grateful Lord Urakan.
“Eh? Which one?” Tol asked.
“The smaller one-the one we called Rufus.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Kiya. “He had a face like a spoiled apple, and no shape whatsoever!”
Darpo smiled, pushing dark blond hair back from his face. “Well, she was pretty old. Kender cultivate a vague appearance. They also change their names whenever it suits them.”
“Darpo’s quite right,” Mandes remarked. “I lived among the kender for half a year, and I seldom could tell male from female, or get one to answer to any name I thought I knew.”
As the Dom-shu sisters continued to dispute with Darpo over the gender of their erstwhile guides, Tol said to Mandes, “Once the kender know we’re from Ergoth, they’ll not resist us, will they?”
Mandes shrugged. “No one can predict a kender’s mood, not even another kender.”
“In that case, we’ll keep clear of them as much as we can.” He ordered a standard bearer to ride at the head of the column, displaying the colors of the empire.
They moved out at dawn, fording a shallow stream and entering the ancient forest. Trees here were twice the size of the oldest specimens in the smaller Ropunt woodland, giving the forest more the look of the primeval Great Green. Kiya and Miya were quite taken with their surroundings. It reminded them of home.
According to a map Tol had borrowed from Valaran, the stream they crossed was called Fingle’s Creek. It flowed directly into Hylo Bay, by the town of Old Port. Several well-worn paths followed the creek to the sea. Tol’s column glimpsed a number of kender in the woods, but they melted into the trees at the sight of so many armed men. Ever after, though they saw no one, the Ergothians knew many sharp eyes were watching them with great interest.
The creek broadened into a sizable river about the same time the first whiffs of sea air reached the marching soldiers. Tol reined in Cloud and surveyed the water from bank to bank. A few rickety piers poked out from under the trees, and nothing larger than a canoe was in sight. The kender were indifferent sailors but fanatical traders, and the lack of activity on the river told Tol that either word of the Ergothians’ coming had quieted traffic, or the force responsible for Tylocost’s defeat had cleared the area of commerce.
He asked Mandes, “Can you sense anything untoward?”
“I’m not a seer, my lord. My specialties are potions and perfumes, and I’ve begun studying ways to command the clouds-”
“I didn’t ask for your life’s history, just if you sensed danger!”
Mandes sniffed. “No better than you, my lord.” His tone implied he did not consider it a useful trait.
Tol halted his men. He sent Sanksa and thirty skirmishers ahead to look for trouble. Another company of thirty, under the command of the seasoned Frez, he sent back as a rear guard. The high ground west of the river looked harmless, but Tol sent his engineer, Fellen, with thirty more men to look around there. The balance of the demi-horde resumed its march.
The land remained hilly right down to the sea. Before leaving the cover of the trees, Sanksa’s men returned with word they’d overlooked Old Port and all appeared ordinary.
“What?” Egrin exclaimed. “Is there no garrison of Tarsan troops for us to contend with?”
“We watched all afternoon and saw naught but kender,” Sanksa replied.
Old Port was on the other side of the estuary. Curious to see for himself, Tol told his men to keep to the trees and continue up the shore to the next town, Far-to-go.
“Darpo, Mandes, Miya, and Kiya will accompany me to Old Port for a closer look around,” he said.
Egrin protested, saying a commander should not enter an unknown town without proper escort. Tol assured him no one would know his rank.
He proceeded to take off his helmet and red mantle. He tied a strip of homespun around his forehead as a sweatband. Dressed plainly to start with, without his cloak and helmet Tol looked like an ordinary man-at-arms. He shifted his dagger from his belt to his boot, a style affected by wandering mercenaries. Darpo likewise dressed down, commenting that Mandes already looked like a vagabond. The sorcerer pointedly ignored the slur.
Tol gave Egrin command in his absence, telling him to keep the men out of sight but moving. He wanted the demi-horde in Far-to-go by nightfall.
“How will you catch up with us?” Egrin asked.
“If there’s no danger in Old Port, we’ll hustle up the coast in time to rejoin you before the next town.”
“And if there is danger…?”
Tol let the question hang. He turned Cloud over to Narren, and with his four companions set out for the kender town.
As they walked, they spoke in loud, unguarded voices of ordinary things-food, work, the weather. At the water’s edge they found a kender lying in a flat-bottomed boat, face covered by a woven-grass hat. Snores rose from under the hat.
“Wake up,” Tol said, rapping on the gunwale. “We want passage to town.”
The kender said, “So what’s stoppin’ ya? Ya think I row folks across the river?”
“You mean we have to row ourselves?” said Kiya.
“Yep. One silver piece each, please.”
They all looked to Miya, the renowned haggler. Eyes brightening in anticipation, she rose to the challenge.
“For a silver piece, we could hire a Tarsan galley!” she declared. “A copper per head is plenty.”
“Four coppers per head,” said the kender.
“One!” Miya insisted. “Plus one when we get to the other side.”
“One more each?”
Miya would have continued disputing, but Tol caught her arm and nodded. “Done,” she said to the kender. “One per head now, one per head on arrival.”
“Done.” The kender stretched out one hand. Miya gave him the first half of the payment. They piled in, sat down, and searched in vain for oars or poles.
“Where’s the oars?” demanded Tol.
“Oars would be one silver piece each-”
“You try me, little man!” Miya fumed. “Nothing more! Two coppers each was the price!”
“One was just to get in, and the other pays for getting out. Nobody said anything about oars.”
Tol was somewhat amused, but the Dom-shu most assuredly were not. Kiya seized the kender by his vest and dragged him up. Oddly, the grass hat clung to his face, even when she had him upright.
“Oars!” she bellowed.
The boat owner merely hung limp in her grip. Furious, she flung him into the water. Darpo and Tol rushed to the side to help the unlucky kender, but he bobbed to the surface out of reach. He had a swarthy, sunburned face, despite his clinging hat. Floating serenely on his back, the kender boatman kicked lazily away.
“Now that’s negotiation,” Mandes said dryly.