Without another word Beldimarr whirled back under the fern again and was gone. Narm and Shandril exchanged glances, then did as they'd been told, casting fearful glances around at the forest as they went. It seemed alive with snapping sounds and rustlings, now, but that could just be all the guards on the move, and not a foe.
Or it could be a lot of foes moving in as one.
After what seemed like a very long time, Orthil Voldovan came striding through' the trees to Narm and Shandril. "Either of ye driven horses harnessed to a wagon before?" he barked.
He didn't wait for them to shake their heads but whirled around again, waving at them curtly to accompany him.
They had to run to keep up with the caravan master as he strode along through underbrush and through branches, obviously not caring if he was heard a hundred miles off or broke every bough that dared to hang in his path. They climbed a little tree-cloaked ridge and plunged down into a wooded hollow beyond it, where a grim ring of guards was standing looking down at something in their midst.
Someone was dead.
The guards parted as Voldovan stamped up to them, and he whirled to glare at Shandril and take'her by the arm, to point down and ask, "Ye didn't have anything to do with this, now, did ye?"
Storstil would never grimace at Narbuth's babblings again. The drover lay huddled over a long, gnarled tree root where he'd obviously sat down to relieve himself, a smokeweed pouch and a broken clay pipe beside him, his distinctive red-trimmed, dun-hued tunic strewn with spilled smokeweed. His head was missing-burnt right away to a scattering of ash.
Narm swallowed and turned swiftly away, to walk a few blind steps through the trees. Shandril went white, swayed in Orthil's grip, then managed to say faintly, "No. No, Orthil, I did not."
The caravan master sighed. "So Arauntar said-good it was for ye that he went from the two of ye on to Pelgryn and then Thorst before finding… this. Better for ye that Pel and Thorst were always between here and where ye were sent- and saw ye not."
He turned away, and said over his shoulder, "Leave him for the wolves-after ye search him, Beldimarr, to make sure our Storstil wasn't carrying any secrets that might have made someone slay him. Bring boots, belt, all pouches and weapons, as usual. Thorst, ye're a drover now."
Thorst looked up at Shandril sharply, as if measuring her as a foe in a rocking, pitching wagon, then spat into the dead leaves and nodded without saying anything,
"With me," Voldovan ordered Narm and Shandril, as he turned to stamp back toward the wagons.
Other guards fell in around them, and they'd gone perhaps twenty paces together when the caravan master said suddenly, "I don't like it. I don't like it at all. We always lose a few on this run-clients who stray from their wagons at night to rut or empty their innards or have little covert trade-meetings that go wrong, and sometimes even a few in bright daylight, fighting off raids… but one of our own, like this, on our first stop…"
He shook his head and turned, hard-eyed, to glare at Shandril, then at Narm. He said bluntly, "Don't be a curse on me, now. This run's hard enough without deaths at every stop. Though I know what ye can do if 'tis needful, I also know what the lads'll do to ye if there're more slayings with no slayers before us… or if the killings go on."
They were almost at the wagons when a drover came running out of the camp to meet them, eyes a little wild. "Spells in one of the wagons, Orthil! Two dead, at least, and 'tis still burning-folk in the wagons around all shouting that they saw this man run off into the woods or that one, or five come in, or a dozen devils dancing about with tails a-waving!"
Voldovan quickened his pace into a run. Narm and Shandril, with all the other guards, stayed with him.
As they came out into the sunlight and a sea of frightened faces, the caravan master looked back at Narm and Shandril again. "Don't curse me," he said in a voice of dark promise. "I'm warning ye."
"Orthil," one of the guards snarled from right behind Narm. "What shall we do with these two?"
Voldovan waved a dismissive hand the size of a shovel. "Nothing," he snapped, "for now."
Wild Rides
After the bear and the behir we come to the brigand. Vermin, the lot of them! Almost as black and strangling a plague upon honest trade as marauding ores in summer, or wolves in winter-or caravan-masters any day of the year.
Srusstakur Thond, Master Mapmaker
Know and Vanquish Thy Foe
Year of the Saddle
"One wizard I know about," Orthil Voldovan snapped, "but he was with me-with all of us, and plenty of us watching him suspiciously, too. I ask all of my clients if anyone knows spells or has a wand along, and they all stare at me like so many moon-faced, innocent sheep, and I know three or four of them at least are lying. Mayhap a dozen-or all of them! We've no time to spare for searches and hot words and beating truth out of anyone, but if this goes on, we'll make time. Right now, we must be at Face Crag by nightfall, or the dark'll catch us strung out along the road in the Blackrocks, and it won't matter who slaughtered who in a wagon, because we'll have ores and goblins and probably ghouls, too, clawing and hacking and stabbing at us as they please, up and down the wagon line! Move, you motherless jacks! Whip the beasts, and if any wagon lags, pass it by and keep on!"
The caravan master waved at the road ahead, his gesture vicious with anger, and guards spurred away obediently. Voldovan raised his eyes to Shandril and said grimly, "I didn't gather the lads here because ye needed to hear, but because I wanted them all to know ye heard. Take great care, for thy own safety, that this wagon slows not and that nothing ill befalls Thorst here."
"Voldovan," Shandril said with a sigh, "I want to go on living as much as you do. I mean no one in the world any ill, so long as they leave me alone. I get so tired of folk not believing that."
"Tired enough to cook them where they stand, hey? Well, we may need ye to do just that to someone ere we make Waterdeep-but mind ye warn me first, and don't go blasting folk down whenever I'm looking elsewhere." The caravan master turned his own horse away, and Shandril sighed, felt the weight of someone else's cold gaze, and looked down-right into the eyes of Thorst.
"The Master told us you were some sort of fire-mage," he whispered, his glare dark with anger, "and you look like a little lass who should be in a kitchen somewhere, or washing out chambers in an inn. You've no spellbooks along, no wand I've seen, so what are you, really?"
He shifted his hand on the reins so the cloak on his lap fell away-to reveal what he held in his other hand: another small bowgun, loaded with a wicked bolt that was pointed right into her face.
"I'm not trying to slay you," he added, "yet. I'm trying to stop you doing to me what happened to Storstil."
Shandril kept very still. "I," she said, more calmly than she felt, "can call up a very powerful fire-magic that I can't quite control. I can't tell you much more than that, because I don't know much more than that. I'm on my way to Water-deep to try to find out. The Zhentarim and some other folk are after me because they want this magic, but so far as I know, none of them know I'm here, along on this caravan. I don't want to use any magic that I don't have to, in case someone recognizes it and thereby learns that I'm here- and I certainly haven't used any of my fire on that wagon or on Storstil or anyone else since I made that deal with Orthil in the Tankard in front of all of you."