"Warn me of what?"
"A monster hunts you. Like nothing I've ever seen. Tall, thin as a sword, with a hide like ice-worn granite. And more spells than fill a grimoire. It followed you and attacked us, crying for revenge."
Sunbright almost dropped two carcasses. "A what? A monster? After me? Arms of Targus!" he swore. "Why?"
The old weaponsmith shrugged under his grisly burden and said, "You made a powerful enemy somewhere. Mighty queer you don't know it, though. I recall enemies better than friends."
Sunbright asked a dozen questions, learned the gory tale of the tentacles of doom and the shrieking fiend, but knew even less when he'd finished. A monster clad in flint? How was that possible? And why hate him? None of it made sense.
Plodding toward camp with morning sun in his eyes, Sunbright asked, "How did you find me?"
Old, crinkly eyes squinted to guard a secret. "Dwarves know the earth," Drigor answered vaguely. "We listened for your tread."
A lie, Sunbright knew, mystic mumbo-jumbo. Many folks had seen the barbarians enter the prairie, bound west. Hundreds of marchers left a wide track. He didn't press. His mind whirled with enough questions.
The sun was fully up, bright in the huge, deep sky. But a chill stained the air, a painful reminder that winter was not far off. Having failed to win a foothold on the forest, Sunbright's tribe might be trapped on the prairie without food or shelter or fuel. Was there no place for them, now that the tundra had died?
Which reminded him. "Thank you for saving our lives," he said to the dwarf. "Our debt must be repaid in spades. Or do I owe you?"
"You owe me doubly," the dwarf calculated. "Cholena, who had been my wife, was killed by your monster, blasted to flinders before my eyes. And three other sons of the mountain. You brought the monster upon us, and now we've saved your life and hers,"-he nodded at Knucklebones, still being carried aloft-"as we once saved you from yak-men in White Owl Pass.
"My warning of the monster extinguished your debt of returning the hammer. But let's not quibble. You can, perhaps, balance the bargain."
Quibble? thought Sunbright. The old miser attached prices to everything, with Sunbright sinking in debt by the minute. Wearily he asked, "Balance how?"
Drigor stumped along, staring at the horizon, or something inside his head. "Not now," he said. "I'll tell you when 'tis time."
"Fine," the shaman said. "I owe you."
Sunbright let it go. Probably he'd be dead of starvation before spring anyway, providing his tribe didn't stone or burn him to death first…
Sunbright dreamed.
Greenwillow tripped from the night, dainty as a deer. Tall, black-haired, shining green and black like a lizard, ornate silver pommel swaying at her hip. As shadows crept up her frame, her face was revealed. Dour, eyebrows puckered, mouth pursed.
That expression Sunbright recognized. Greenwillow had often been angry at him in life, but never in dreams. He asked, "What is it?" though she'd never spoken in dreams.
"You slay my people!" Her lithe hand fell to her sword pommel.
"They slay mine!" Sunbright protested. "They insist on war! We only seek a home!"
"My people inhabited these woods when yours had tails!"
"We don't seek to usurp them!" Even in a dream, Sunbright's voice whined. "There's no reason-"
"You must not slay my people!" The phantom drew her sword with a hiss. The silver blade winked and flashed in moonlight. "Kill them and you kill me!"
The blade seemed coated with frost, and Sunbright felt its chill. Greenwillow, and her sword, never looked so real. Was it because he lay sleeping near her forest homeland? The keen steel whisked near his neck, seeking blood.
"All right, I shan't harm them!" Sunbright made more promises, more to break. "I wouldn't harm anyone if I could help it! But I can't speak-"
Surprising him, Greenwillow lunged forward, caught his shirt, and kissed him hard. Her lips were icy, but his body stirred at her touch. She was so like Knucklebones, so vital and vibrant, yet so different, as an eagle is from a kingfisher. How were they so alike, yet so different? Who understood women, or dreams?
When Greenwillow pulled back from the chilly kiss, one eye winked, then stayed oddly closed as she retreated. "I'll be seeing you," she said, then she ran into the black forest of death, or limbo, or wherever she dwelt. As she ran, she grew shorter, slighter, smaller.
Clumsy too. No longer silent as a white-tailed deer, her feet pounded the ground. Thumps made his bones thrum. Harder came the blows, until the dream shattered.
Someone kicked him awake. Mightylaugh in big boots laced to his knee. "Wake up!" the big man grunted. "We council!
"About you!"
"… his idea we come here! And he's brought nothing but death to the clans, widows and orphans who weep the night…"
"… befriended an elf, not of our tribe, nor our race. And now we find elves here, hungry to kill us, in the very spot he directed us…"
"… how many have fallen to the Shadow Folk? Yet he goes unharmed amidst the elves! How can this be, unless he works with them…!"
Speaker after speaker took the talking stick and heaped the tribe's woes at Sunbright's feet. Accusations flew, wilder and wilder: he'd led them into the jaws of orcs and elves; pretended visions of these woods; murdered Owldark in the desert to become shaman; consorted with one elf and colluded with more elves to sacrifice his own tribe; practiced magic with cold light and healing; run like a coward from battle, suffering no wounds; opposed plans for the last battle, then informed the elves ahead of time; coveted the position of war chief and so plotted to have Magichunger slain; and on and on.
Sunbright Steelshanks sat like a stone and stared at the council fire as his name was blackened. Some speakers defended him, but not many, nor was he surprised. When a tribe suffered, they needed someone to blame, usually the shaman, who should know the will of the gods and the future. And he had led them here. Monkberry sat beside her son, holding a big hand in her gnarled one. Knucklebones held the other hand, hers cool and strong. Tears silently spilled down both women's cheeks.
Long into the night the council dragged. Finally it was quiet. Mightylaugh offered the stick, saying, "Would anyone else speak? Sunbright Steelshanks, will you?"
The shaman didn't look up from the fire, only shook his head.
"Damn it, I will!" Knucklebones spat, leaped to her feet and, quick as a jackdaw, snatched the baton. "I'll speak!"
She stood defiant, clutching the stick like a fighting knife, as if to kill with it. Objections rang out: "She is not of our tribe!"
"She is an elf!"
"She is Sunbright's friend!"
But croaking Iceborn cut through the tumult.
"Whoever has slain an enemy or born a child may speak in council. There is no custom against an outsider speaking. Long ago, when Heatherhill was chief, a man from the city came-"
"Thank you!" Knucklebones interrupted, stamping her foot. The tribe crowded around the council fire on the open prairie. An early morning wind damp with rain hissed in the grass tops. The fire guttered as if ashamed to see its creator laid low. The thief shook the stick as she spat her words. "You miserable lot of ingrates! If you had the honor of garbage-eating dogs, you'd be ashamed! Sunbright saved all your worthless lives by his actions and sacrifices! He sat three days without food or water in the broiling sun to find the vision of this place! You wallowed in your own dung on a pile of rocks near the ash heaps of a town scorned throughout the empire, but Sunbright made you listen! To make you listen, he challenged the lot of you to combat, when there isn't one man or woman here worth his little finger!