The mage dragged Realgar’s three assassins off the road and far into the darkening woods. Like Stanach, he was only concerned about Kyan. He would make a true cairn for Kyan Red-axe. He looked again at the sun and judged that he would be commending the dwarf’s spirit to Reorx as the sun turned the stone red with its last light.
Piper thought it was fitting.
“Aye” he said, speaking softly to the dead as he worked. “You’ll not go untombed, Kyan, my friend. When word is brought back to Thorbardin that Kyan Red-axe is dead, a king regent will mourn for you.”
As he worked, the mage also thought. Realgar’s guards had ambushed them while he, Kyan, and Stanach were hardly more than a shimmering of the transport spell in the air. Are we that unlucky he wondered, or are they that lucky?
Piper dragged the last of the cairn stones into place and went to sit beside Kyan in the road. The sun was only a red glow and slanting golden shafts behind the western horizon. The road to the north lay in darkness. Piper smoothed the dark leather jerkin over the breeched and bloodstained mail shirt that had failed to protect Kyan Red-axe from a crossbow bolt. Perhaps, he thought as he bent to lift his friend and bear him to the cairn he’d prepared, perhaps Realgar set guards on this road because he already has people in Long Ridge who are looking for Stormblade. They are either going to return this way, or Realgar looks to make certain that no other searcher gets into town.
He laid Kyan in the cairn, then carefully placed the covering stones over his body. As he knew it would, the sun’s last crimson light glowed across the stones.
“Let it be a reflection of the light of the god’s forge,” he murmured.
“Farewell Kyan Red-axe.”
Without thinking, he moved his hand to the flute at his belt. While he’d been working, soft, sad notes had been playing in his mind. Piper shook his head. Kyan’s dirge would have to go unsung for a while. The notes of the flute would carry far in the clear night air.
Night settled fast on the road, and Piper sat down in the grass, his back against Kyan’s tomb. He watched the first early stars appear in the sky and marked the places where the two moons, the red and the silver, would soon rise. He would wait, as he’d promised Stanach.
Piper drew a long breath. Stanach’s no warrior, he thought, and no mage. But he’s sworn and ready to keep his oath no matter what he meets. He wondered if he should try to catch up with Stanach but discarded the idea. No sense crossing paths in the dark. If Stanach found the Kingsword tonight, he’d be back tomorrow.
When you set a place to meet, Kyan once said, you either keep it or you spend a few days chasing down your friends while they wander around looking for you.
Kyan had often dispensed his border-lore over ales in Thorbardin’s taverns. On one such tour of the city’s drinking spots, he mentioned this bit of wisdom. Piper bowed his head. He’d hear no more such lore from Kyan Red-axe, no tales of his adventures. Kyan was dead in the Outlands.
4
The citizens of Long Ridge did not become seriously interested in questions of theology until the red dragon struck. The town supported the religion of the new gods, the religion of the ancient gods, and the more common religion of indifference. In Long Ridge, the High Seekers were not zealots, and the believers in the old gods, whom some called the true gods, were quiet enough about their creed. In some towns, the faithful of each party broke the heads of unbelievers. In Long Ridge, life had been too steady, too assured, too sweet for religious arguments. Fed from the produce of the rich farms along the river valley and the game abounding in field and wood, Long Ridge proved the old dictum that a hungry man will fight, while a well fed man will smile contentedly and look toward his next meal. When Solace to the north of them was destroyed, the citizens of Long Ridge should have looked to the skies. They did not.
When he came, red-armored Verminaard, fresh from his easy victory over Solace, took Long Ridge in a day. He needed no flight of dragons, only one, his crimson Ember. He barely needed his troops of soldiers, still stinking of burned vallenwoods and death.
While his army poured into the town, Verminaard and the red dragon Ember fired the farms in the valley, dealing destruction and death with an iron-fisted hand. By the time the farms were reduced to burning wastelands, his troops had surrounded Long Ridge, moved in, and strangled the town like a torturer’s band of soaked leather, drying and tightening around a helpless victim’s throat.
The Highlord permitted his soldiers enough license to blunt the edge of their bloodlust. Then, with half the town destroyed and a good portion of the populace dead or marked for slavery in the mines at Pax Tharkas, Verminaard called a halt to the looting, raping, and killing. He set Carvath in command of the occupation with orders to squeeze out of the town and its citizens whatever wealth remained. A dark eyed, thin young human captain, Carvath reminded all who saw him of a wolverine, though some might have thought the comparison unfair to that foul-tempered, vicious animal.
Hideous draconians, drunken human soldiers, and even goblins owned the streets of Long Ridge now. They were brutal and savage victors who took what they wanted when they wanted it and did not hesitate to kill any who offered protest. They were like wolves feeding in a shepherdless fold. While the elves cast the blame at the door of the humans, the dwarves, in their mountain fastness of Thorbardin, filled with bitter and ancient disdain, held both races accountable for sins of the past and the present. They would happily have blamed them for sins of the future as well. In Long Ridge, people tried to survive the occupation of Highlord Verminaard’s brutal army day by day. When the slaves in the mines of Pax Tharkas rebelled and fled the mountains, Verminaard turned his attention away from insignificant Long Ridge and left the town wholly in Carvath’s hands.
In the dark cold nights of late autumn, the people of Long Ridge wondered if they should have taken their gods more seriously. The tavern was called simply Tenny’s and it was, in as much as it could be, a “free” tavern. That meant it was only occasionally visited by the draconian officers of the occupation and, by Carvath’s orders, forbidden to the common soldiers. It was an open secret that Carvath’s spies frequented the place, though their business most often had to do with things well outside the ken and concern of the town’s citizens. It was for the sake of these that Carvath had granted the tavern free status.
Tyorl watched Hauk over the rim of his tankard of ale. Hauk was just the type of man Finn liked best for his rangers, for his Nightmare Company—young and bold, with a grudge against the dragonarmy in general, and with Verminaard specifically. Every man or elf in the company had lost friends or kin to Verminaard’s draconians. Hauk’s village had been wiped out by the savage warriors; his old father, his only kin, had been killed by them. Tyorl, though his own kin were safely fled to Qualinesti, had lost friends and a homeland. The two were typical of Finn’s rangers.
Finn’s men prowled the eastern borderlands between Qualinesti and the Kharolis Mountains for the pleasure of wreaking that vengeance on isolated draconian patrols. Finn saw no reason not to take advantage of Tenny’s status and had sent Hauk and Tyorl to find out what they could about Carvath’s plans for patrol movements in the area.
Tonight, Tyorl had heard something to confirm the rumor of a troop movement into the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. The Highlord would be moving not only troops, but a supply base as well. Verminaard, still furious over the loss of his eight hundred slaves and looking for a way to salve his wounded pride, wanted to take his war south and east. He wanted Thorbardin, and he wanted to take the dwarven kingdoms before winter.
The rangerlord would snarl when he learned of Verminaard’s plans and most of the snarling would be in the direction of Thorbardin. Finn railed constantly against the dwarves who would happily let ranger companies scour the borders of Thorbardin but still held back from entering the war. Still, it would not stop him from doing his best to torment the Highlord’s warriors.