The obvious suspects in such a case were kender, but kender, it was well-known, did not roam the desert. Therefore, suspicion implicated the whole gamut of Ansalon’s folk, human and otherwise.
As the days went by, fear began to feed on that suspicion, and find it a nourishing diet.
The messenger from the Gryphons’ scouts rode into camp as Pirvan and Threehands faced each other in a practice bout.
Pirvan had soon learned he could not have wisely challenged Threehands as he had Hawkbrother. The Gryphon chief’s eldest son had won his name in his earliest fighting days, by wielding weapons with such speed that he seemed to have three hands. He had not lost any of that speed, and had gained skill.
The bout was not being fought to blood, but both fighters were so swift on the attack that accidents were inevitable. Both had slight wounds before the messenger rode up. Threehands tossed his towel to Pirvan and went to meet the man. As Pirvan finished wiping off sweat and sat down to let Eskaia bind the light wound in his thigh, Threehands returned.
“Bad news?” Pirvan asked.
Threehands looked even more sour, whether at the news or at being so easily read, then jerked his head.
“The Istarians are marching?” Eskaia asked. Threehands looked about to put this foreign woman in her place, when Hawkbrother strolled up. The chief’s eldest son shot the youngest an eloquent look, then squatted. While Hawkbrother did his duty patching Threehands’s wounded arm, all listened to the messenger.
The Istarians were indeed on the move, but not in great force. Less than five hundred fighting men, the scouts had reported, perhaps many less. Several clans were watching them, and a prisoner taken by scouts had, before dying, said that desert hobgoblins were also on their trail. Aurhinius was not with them; the prisoner had spoken of one High Captain Zephros.
At this, Pirvan’s eyebrows rose so that all demanded to know what the name meant to him.
“A lapdog of the kingpriest, or rather of the old kingpriest’s faction,” Pirvan said. He explained Istar’s intrigues as best he could to people who had never been within a week’s ride of it.
“So he might be seeking glory for himself, not carrying out a plan of Chief Aurhinius?” Hawkbrother asked. His brother shot another look, but this time the younger replied with a bland smile and an observation: “Duty is done by your wound, Brother. Now we are at council, and I am of Redthorn’s blood as much as you.”
“I would not dispute that if I could, knowing how much time it would waste,” Threehands said, which was the first display of wit Pirvan could recall from him. “Very well, we are at council. But I am chief over the council-”
“Chief along with my father,” Eskaia said. This time it was Pirvan who flung a reproving look, and his daughter who replied with a smile as eloquent as any of her mother’s.
Her message was Somebody must speak up for you, Father, if you are too honorable to do so yourself.
Pirvan briefly contemplated the custom among certain remote tribes, of marrying off daughters when they were no more than fifteen. Doubtless they still developed forward tongues in due time, but at least they exercised them on their husbands or sons, not their fathers.
“Very well, Brother Chief,” Threehands said, and now he even ventured what might have been, without abusing language, called a smile. Pirvan suspected it was not so much new goodwill as the new prospect of a good fight. “What does your war wisdom suggest?”
Pirvan did not have his map with him, and in any case it was one of the knights’ more complete and more secret ones. Memory would have to serve.
“They are either Aurhinius’s vanguard, a feint to disguise his real line of march, or perhaps, as you say, glory-seekers not under his authority. In any case, they are too many to have roaming about unwatched.”
Pirvan went on to explain that where any opponent should wait for Zephros depended on where he was going. There were several possible destinations, but all save one could either move or defend themselves.
“The last is the citadel at Belkuthas. It is half ruined, and the folk there have been at peace with their neighbors for twenty years or more. We were going to visit them before we returned north, to warn them to be on guard and arrange to place them under the knights’ protection, if they wished.”
“Belkuthas is not unknown among the Free Riders,” Threehands said. “Nor unhonored,” he added, “though any who wish the goodwill of the Silvanesti will not be too openly friends with Krythis and Tulia. Even if they need no defending, they will doubtless know much that others have not heard.”
“Also, appearing as their friends will give the Gryphons a fine name among the dwarven folk and the other friends of Belkuthas,” Hawkbrother said. “At times like these, one cannot have too many friends, or at least those who think well of one.”
“Unlike brothers, whom the gods sometimes send in greater numbers than any sensible man could wish,” Threehands said, but he could not quite fight down a smile as he said it. With that, nobody else could keep from laughing aloud.
Then the laughter died, as the council settled down to considering the best road to reach Belkuthas without losing sight of Zephros.
Mostly out of curiosity, Imsaffor Whistletrot and Horimpsot Elderdrake climbed the rocks beside the mouth of a certain pass. They were not likely to venture this way again, and some of the rock needles jutting from the upper portion of the cliff to the north had fascinating shapes that did not seem quite natural.
“I wonder if dwarves ever came out here,” Elderdrake said. “I know they don’t like heat, but maybe once this land was colder. They surely do like to play with rocks, and this cliff looks like somebody’s been playing with it.”
Both kender also felt better getting on high ground above Zephros’s oncoming men. Neither was more a student of war than the average kender, which is to say they could give a junior captain in any regular host headaches and fits. However, old tales they had heard (or read, or maybe both; they had argued over that much of one night) said if you reached high ground ahead of an enemy, you could do more to him than he could do to you, or at least see him more clearly.
So, one night, they scurried ahead of Zephros’s ambling column and were waiting for it at dawn, perched up among the pinnacles.
It had been a hard march and a harder climb. Both kender were sick of the desert and well loaded with items handled from stragglers. They might have had fewer possessions if they had met other kender, but as far as they could tell, they were the only ones in this desert. They refused to simply drop something that might prove useful before long.
This was a display of concentration and foresight rare among kender in their journeying years, and most humans would have been surprised or even frightened by it. But then, most humans had never seriously hurt a kender (not for want of trying), let alone killed one. They had never known a kender to want revenge, to repay them for a compatriot’s death.
The two kender watched as the column marched toward the pass. They had a good view of the approaching men, but Elderdrake wanted a better one.
“If I can count them, maybe we can tell somebody who’s also an enemy of Zephros.”
“Who would that be?”
“Oh, a man like him has to have all sorts of enemies.”
“But do we know any of them?”
“You’re no fun, Imsaffor. You spent too much time with that confounded minotaur.”
“Don’t you dare insult Waydol to my face!”
“Very well, then I’ll talk behind your back.”
“You’ve got a big wind for a kender on his first journey.”
“At least I didn’t stop for years in the middle of a journey!”
At this point Imsaffor Whistletrot turned so many different bright colors (kender can turn more than red, when they put their minds to it) that Elderdrake was afraid. He hurried out of Whistletrot’s reach, then uncoiled a long rope from around his waist.