Riverwind hesitated a moment, frowning. “There’s something else working against us. We nearly lost the wall last night because, I hate to say it, our warriors are acting afraid.”
“What?” Kronn asked, offended. “Riverwind, you know kender aren’t capable of fear.”
“Aren’t you?” the old Plainsman shot back, turning his hard gaze on Kronn. “You saw little Billee Juniper when we found her, Kronn-and you were there with me last night. Didn’t you see how the kender behaved when the ogres started to take the wall? They hung back-and Brimble died because of their hesitation. Why would they do that?”
Scowling angrily, Kronn opened his mouth to answer. Before he could speak, however, Paxina interrupted.
“It began a few months ago,” she said, “when the Kenderwood began to wither.”
“Nettles and thorns,” Kronn gasped. “Pax, you can’t be serious.”
She looked up at him, her eyes flashing. “Look at me, Kronn. I’m telling the truth. Malystryx’s magic isn’t just corrupting the Kenderwood; it’s corrupting us. Fear, hopelessness, despair-some of us are feeling all of these emotions for the first time. You don’t notice it, Kronn, because you’ve been away. And you, Catt. But the first time you wake up in the middle of the night, scared half to death by your first nightmare, you’ll believe me.”
“Nightmares!” Catt scoffed.
“All the kender?” asked Kronn solemnly.
“No, thankfully,” said Paxina. “But many… too many.” She turned to the old Plainsman. “Riverwind, I should have told you, but I was too ashamed.”
It was a long time before anyone spoke. Then Catt sighed softly and looked up at the old Plainsman.
“You should leave, Riverwind,” she said solemnly. “You still have a chance to get away before the final attack-all of you.” She glanced at Brightdawn. “We shouldn’t have dragged you into this in the first place.”
“I’m not leaving,” Brightdawn said.
Smiling, Riverwind reached out to his daughter and took her hand. “Neither am I,” he stated. “I, too, am afraid. But there must be a way to defeat the ogres-and the dragon. In this situation; fear or no fear, my friend Tasslehoff wouldn’t have given up and neither will I. There must be a way.”
“How?” Paxina asked.
“I don’t know yet,” the old Plainsman said. “Kronn, let’s talk….”
Chapter 21
It had been a long, woeful day but now it was evening at last. Kronn and an exhausted Riverwind walked together through the maze of Kendermore’s streets, bound for the Plainsman’s house.
“Well, the answer seems pretty obvious to me,” Kronn was saying. “My father used to say, ‘The best solution to a problem’s usually the one right under your nose.’ Only this one’s a bit farther down. It’s under our feet.”
Riverwind bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose as his head throbbed. “The tunnels?” he asked, skeptically.
“Of course!” Kronn declared proudly. He stopped for a moment and stomped his foot on the cobblestone street. “Right down there! We’ve got a ready-made escape-and the tunnels lead all the way to Flotsam, if we want to go that far.”
The old Plainsman shuffled wearily to a halt, his face clouding with thought. “True,” he mused. “But there are thousands of your people in Kendermore, Kronn. It would take days, maybe weeks. Don’t you think the ogres would notice?”
“So we don’t do it all at once,” the kender answered. “We can send a bunch at a time. With all the entrances to the tunnels there are in town, I figure we can get about two hundred people out every hour. Which means maybe five thousand a day, give or take.”
“If we keep it up all day and night,” Riverwind argued.
“And it means abandoning Kendermore.”
“Yes,” said Kronn. “I hate to do that, just handing it over to the ogres. But you were right earlier: we can’t keep the ogres from taking the city. That doesn’t leave us much choice but to evacuate. Let’s say three thousand people a day. Sound better to you?”
Riverwind shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible-”
“So at three thousand a day, and with roughly eighty thousand people in Kendermore, counting the refugees from the other towns and everything, we’re looking at,”-he counted on his fingers, muttering to himself-“somewhere around twenty-six days. Less than a month. We’ll be done a few days after Year-Turning.”
“If you can convince everyone to go along with it,” said Riverwind. “And if you can make things work as smoothly as you say.”
“You’re missing the point,” Kronn said. “You’re thinking about it from too high up. All you see is the problem of organizing the whole thing. Look at it from the perspective of a kender. It’s a big adventure, Riverwind-maybe the biggest in Kendermore’s history. And there’s nothing my people love more than adventure.”
“All right,” Riverwind relented. “I’ll think about it tomorrow. But I really need to go home and sleep, Kronn.”
The kender nodded happily. “That’s good enough for me. Now,” he added, looking up and down the narrow, twisting street, “if I can just figure out which way your home is….”
Riverwind groaned.
Before noon the next day, Riverwind had convinced himself Kronn’s plan might work. “We just have to spread the word,” he told Paxina when the Thistleknots and the Plainsfolk gathered at his house that afternoon. “And we have to make sure everyone doesn’t try to leave at once.”
“Well, the first part’s easy,” Paxina said. “Word spreads quickly around here, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the Kender Council for tomorrow morning. With their help, every kender in town will know about it by sunset. As for the second, we’ll draw lots and make lists. Make a game of it. It could be quite an adventure.”
Kronn winked at Riverwind.
Brightdawn, who had listened to Kronn’s plan dubiously, narrowed her eyes. “Do we really have enough time?”
“Not if we sit around talking,” Catt said. “If you ask me, it’s worth a shot.”
“Good,” Paxina said, “because I’m putting you in charge.”
“Great,” Catt said. “I’m up for the challenge.”
“There it is.” Kronn said. He started toward the door. “Come on, Riverwind. Let’s go see if Giffel’s done with that ogre leader yet.”
One of the problems with Kendermore-although its people never really considered it a problem-was that it had nothing whatsoever that resembled a jail. There wasn’t much point, according to kender thinking. After all, a city only needed a jail if it had criminals, and Kendermore was happily short of crime. Murder was unheard of. The worst fights that broke out among the city’s denizens were vicious taunting contests that never resulted in physical violence-well, rarely. And theft… well, as everyone knew, the kender never stole anything.
The lack of a suitable place to keep prisoners had seldom bothered anyone in Kendermore before. When it had come to deciding what to do with Baloth, the ogre officer Riverwind had captured during the attack on the walls, however, the kender had been at a loss. They’d needed somewhere to put him immediately, and there was nowhere suitable for something as large and dangerous as an ogre. Baloth, who was relatively short for one of his kind, still towered two heads above even Riverwind. The ogre was more than twice as tail as the largest kender in the city.
It had been Giffel Birdwhistle who’d come up with the solution to the problem. “if there’s nowhere to put him up here in the city,” he’d told Riverwind and Kronn the day after the attack, “maybe we can stash him down in the tunnels. They were built by humans, so I think we can squeeze him in, and there’s a few locked vaults down there. We can put Old Hairless in one of those.”
So, with Riverwind’s agreement, the kender had dragged Baloth down into the catacombs beneath the city. It hadn’t been easy-the ogre barely fit down the narrow stairs and had struggled all the way-but at last they’d hauled him into a large, high-ceilinged chamber, shut the door, and used their picks to lock it.