Threehands himself spoke strongly in favor of riding straight to Belkuthas. Pirvan disagreed.
“The folk at Belkuthas are friends to all, or at least foes to none who come in peace. But we will have a warmer welcome if we gather knowledge of who else comes. More than Zephros are coming on, I think.”
Threehands clearly found that probability about as agreeable as draining an oasis dry, but acknowledged Pirvan’s wisdom. So they began their wandering path, which left them farther toward Belkuthas at the end of each day but meanwhile let them search the land well to either side of the direct road.
Now it was the last halt of the third day’s march. Pirvan squatted cross-legged. In this pose and garbed as he was, one would have had to look twice to see that he was not a free rider. Haimya lay on a scrap of rawhide, her head in Pirvan’s lap, while he combed the sand out of her hair.
There was more gray in that hair than there had been even as recently as their departure for the desert. But it was still thick, springy, and a delight to run his fingers through. He wished earnestly that a night would soon come, when he and his lady could pitch a tent and withdraw into it.
A shadow fell across them. They looked up to see Hawkbrother.
“Pardon if I intrude-”
Haimya smiled. “You look too much in earnest to be sent away, regardless of what you say.”
“You are more gracious than I deserve. Ah-how much longer shall we expose Tarothin to the perils of this land?”
Pirvan started to bristle, but Haimya put a finger to his lips. “We shall cease when Tarothin bids us, and not before,” she said. “He is an old friend as well as a potent wizard, and this is probably his last quest. We cannot take honor from him by wrapping him like a babe.”
The word “honor” did not have its usual near-magical effect on a Free Rider. Pirvan realized that more was called for, and tried to keep his voice light.
“We do let him use a tent of nights. He has proven he can wake from a sound sleep, shred a tent, jerk pegs and poles out of the ground, and put out fires-all of it using little or no magic.”
“At least once,” Hawkbrother said.
“Once is all he will need. After the first attack, we ride straight for Belkuthas to bring warning.”
Hawkbrother nodded, but seemed to have unspoken words dangling like overripe berries from his lips. Pirvan’s hands ceased their work in Haimya’s hair.
“What truly afflicts you, Hawkbrother? If you do not tell the truth, I shall forbid you to see Eskaia!”
Hawkbrother’s face told Pirvan that this was no proper jest, even before Haimya pinched her husband’s inner thigh so hard that her fingernails nearly met in his flesh. The Gryphon warrior looked enraged enough to draw steel and humiliated enough to weep.
“Your pardon, though I realize my ill-spoken jest may not deserve one,” Pirvan said. Haimya’s pinch turned into a caress.
“It does, for you are my sworn chief and have a right to speak as you wish.”
“Even as a father who forgot that his daughter is a woman grown and not his to command?”
“Even that,” Hawkbrother said, and he smiled. “You and my father should sit down over wine some day and trade stories of how you gave your children commands that they would not obey. I am sure it would console you both.”
“When that day comes, I am sure it will,” Pirvan said. “But your father is far away, and your brother is close. Does he wish to end our search?”
Hawkbrother’s look told Pirvan that he had guessed aright. Haimya’s told him that if he was so shrewd, why had he made a witless jest, insulting to both Hawkbrother and their daughter?
“Well, if your brother speaks plainly of the matter-”
“He will not, Chief Pirvan. But he feels himself a stranger here, facing battle with other strangers in a far land where no Free Rider may pass his grave mound for a century or more.”
Pirvan thought of all the Knights of Solamnia who had ridden out on their appointed duties and vanished forever, to be recorded on the rolls only as “Missing, presumed fallen with honor.” How many of them had doubted the wisdom of being in the place where they fell-and still faced death with courage?
He remembered an adage from his days of training as a Knight of the Crown: “Honor is not a contest. Set no man a test you would not be ready to face yourself.”
That would guide him with Threehands. The Free Rider would not be tested past tomorrow’s moon rise.
Then Solamnic trumpet and Gryphon drum together sounded the call to mount up.
Horimpsot Elderdrake was the first to sight the band of sell-swords waiting in ambush. This nearly ignited an argument with his companion, who disliked the thought of his eyes being dimmer than the younger kender’s.
Fortunately, Imsaffor Whistletrot was the first to sight the mounted column heading north toward the kender’s perch. And both simultaneously sighted the lookouts settling into position at the head of the pass to the east.
“This is going to be a wonderful fight,” Elderdrake said. “It should last all the rest of daylight, and then we can go down and do what we please on the field.”
“No, we cannot,” Whistletrot said. He spoke with a solemnity more commonly associated with White Robe clerics than with kender. “We need to warn the riders.”
“Oh, and if they are grateful, then we can-”
“We need to warn them because they are not Zephros’s men. Every band in this land who is not Zephros’s may in time fight him. It is not what they will do for us, it is what they may do to Zephros.”
“But how are we to warn them before they are in bow shot? Those sell-swords look strong.”
“What kind of a judge of human warriors are you?” Whistletrot snapped. “I have been among them more years than you have been on your journeys.”
“And their horses have been horses more years than you have been alive, and they are still horses!” the younger kender all but shouted.
Whistletrot did not dignify that outburst with a reply. Instead, he stood up and dropped pack, pouches, and weapons on the rock. Then he ran out into the open, toward a slope where he would be in plain view of the sell-sword band.
A moment later Elderdrake heard his companion’s voice rise in shrill mockery.
“Hey, you silly gut-bags up there! The sun will parch you in time, but right now you stink! Go somewhere else and make the air foul!”
The taunting rapidly grew worse.
Elderdrake did not wait long before he, too, stood up and dropped most of his pouches. He did not let go of his hoopak, however.
His friend had gone out there to taunt the sell-swords without more than the clothes on his back. By kender code, any other kender around had to join Whistletrot, or their memories would be taunted.
He ran out into the open, adding the drone of his whirled hoopak to a few well-chosen words about how seldom the sell-swords bathed. He went on to describe what this did to their skins, beards, hair, tongues, digestions, and chances with women. By the time he had run that line of taunting to an end, Imsaffor Whistletrot had come up with a few new ideas of his own.
In between taunts, the kender listened for the sound of sell-swords breaking cover, drawing steel, or nocking arrows. They could now hear easily, almost over the sound of their own voices, the approaching rattle and thump of the mounted column.
Sir Darin, riding in the lead, raised the alarm in a most irregular fashion.
“Why are those idiot children dancing up there?” he exclaimed. Then, in a different tone, he called, “Sir Pirvan! Threehands! I think we’ve found our kender!”
Then, as the westering sun glinted on the helmets and weapons of armed men leaping from cover, Darin shouted: “Attack!”
Some of those riding behind took it as a warning, some as an order. The library of Dargaard Keep was filled with books chronicling battles and campaigns gone awry or even turned into disasters by ambiguous orders. Pirvan spurred his mount forward, shouting to Haimya and Grimsoar to keep their company in hand and guard Tarothin. He would have a few words to say to Darin, who was not fighting his first battle and should have had more sense!