Khouryn took a bite. Too quickly-it burned his mouth. But it was tasty, sweet, moist, and spiced with something he didn’t recognize. Vigilant gave a little squawk, begging, and he told her to shut up. “You had your supper before the sun went down.”
“Yes,” said Balasar, grinning, fog blurring his features even though he was just a few feet away. “Do be quiet, Vigilant. Your master has to keep up his strength to protect us poor, helpless dragonborn from harm.”
Khouryn chuckled. “Peace. I think you realize we didn’t tag along because anyone doubts your prowess. It’s just that a few extra spears are never a bad idea. And if we run into angry peasants, well, it’s you they hate, not us. So maybe we can persuade them to back off without needing to kill any.”
Medrash scowled. “I still can’t believe it’s come to this. And, stuck back in Tymanther, we’ll have no way of uncovering the truth.”
“It’s not your fault,” Balasar said. “Although maybe that god of yours is to blame. If he’s what really set you on the trail of the Green Hands.”
Medrash glared. “Torm charged me to further the cause of good. But somehow I bungled the task, and because I did, the alliance fell apart.”
“How?” Balasar asked. “How would any sane person say you botched the job?”
“Perhaps stopping the Green Hands wasn’t the job. Maybe I misunderstood Torm’s prompting from the start. I just don’t know!”
Khouryn decided he didn’t want to watch two friends quarrel, or Medrash wallow in self-recrimination either. Hoping to divert the conversation, he asked, “How did you get to be a paladin, anyway? I always heard that dragonborn don’t worship the gods.”
Medrash smiled like he too was glad of a distraction. “Back in Abeir, where we lived before the Blue Breath of Change hurled us across space, none of us did. But we’ve been in Faerun for a while now. We’re picking up some of your ideas.”
“A pointless craving for novelty that corrupts the old traditions.” Balasar’s tone was severe past the point of pomposity, but then he grinned. “Or at least that’s what the clan elders say. Me, I just think all this praying and such is silly. As far as I can see, all it does is fill fools like my clan brother here with fretting and discontent.”
A coil of the steadily thickening fog billowed across Medrash’s face, half obscuring it. “It gives us purpose.”
“What better reason to avoid it?”
Once again, Khouryn intervened. “All right, that explains how some dragonborn come to embrace the gods. But how did you receive the call to be a paladin?”
“I suppose I heard it,” Medrash said, “because I needed to. As a youngling, I was the shame of my parents and of Clan Daardendrien. Weak, clumsy, and-worst of all-timid in a kindred famous for its warriors.”
Khouryn snorted. “That’s hard to believe.”
“Maybe, but it’s true. All the other youths despised me. Everyone but Balasar.”
“Ascribe it to my kindly nature,” Balasar said. “Or maybe my contrariness.”
“Anyway,” Medrash continued, “I was well embarked on a wretched life. It was even possible Daardendrien would cast me out. But then I started dreaming of a warrior with a steel gauntlet. At the start, I didn’t even realize he was Torm, or a god at all. But I could feel his magnificence, and when he urged me to put my trust in him, what did I have to lose?”
“Clarity of mind?” suggested Balasar.
Medrash gave him an irritated look.
“I take it,” Khouryn said, “that after you pledged yourself to the god-or something like that-things changed for you.”
“Not all at once,” Medrash said. “I didn’t stop being afraid, but I found the willpower to try things even though I was. I threw myself into my warrior training, because for the first time I truly believed I could improve.”
“And that’s the tooth that cracks the shell,” Balasar said. “Attitude. Confidence. I don’t need to believe that a god truly took a personal interest in one sad, puny little child to explain what happened next.”
“After half a year,” Medrash said, “I was stronger, quicker, and a better fighter than a number of my fellow students. After two years, I was better than nearly all of them.”
Balasar swallowed a mouthful of trout. “Except me. Obviously.”
Medrash snorted. “Oh, obviously. Later still, I happened across a Tormish temple. I looked at the paintings and statues and recognized the protector from my dreams. I took instruction from the holy champions and asked them to train me to be a paladin.”
“What did your clan think about that?” Khouryn asked.
“They tolerated it,” Medrash said. “Most dragonborn believe that those who pay homage to the gods are a little odd, but they don’t scorn us the way the Chessentans do their mages.”
“The clan realizes,” Balasar said, “that wherever Medrash’s special talents come from, they’re useful. Anyway, you can’t hate everybody at the same time, and well before any of our folk took an interest in the gods, Tymanther had already chosen targets for its bigotry.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Medrash snapped. “So, Khouryn, you’ve heard my story, such as it is. Now you answer a question for me. I understand why Lord Nicos wanted Perra to have an escort. I don’t understand why one of Aoth Fezim’s senior officers is commanding it. Doesn’t he want you with him when he fights the marauders out of Threskel?”
Plainly, Khouryn thought, I’m not the only one who knows how to change the subject. But fair enough. I don’t need to know who it is that Tymantherans spit at in the street. “I asked to lead the escort. During the riot and again in the fight with the Green Hands, you fellows saved my life.”
Medrash shrugged. “We three simply watched out for one another, as comrades do.”
“Maybe,” Khouryn said, “but I felt like helping you get home safely. Besides, there’s another reason I wanted to come. Tymanther’s not that far from East Rift. My wife’s there, and I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. I’m hoping to travel on down the Dustroad and visit. On griffonback, it’s not that long a trip.”
“Why don’t you live with her?” Medrash asked.
Khouryn grunted. “That’s not as happy a story as yours. Nor one I’m much inclined to tell, except to friends. When I was about as young as the two of you-which is damn young, for a dwarf-”
Vigilant sprang to her feet, dumping her master on his back. Balasar chuckled, but his mirth died away when he saw how the griffon was looking around.
Khouryn scrambled to his feet. “Something’s coming.” His mind raced: What did he have time to do? Pull on his mail? Saddle Vigilant? Quite possibly neither.
“We have sentries,” Balasar said.
“Who don’t see what’s sneaking up on us,” Khouryn said. Mace and boot, now that he was belatedly paying attention, he realized that except for the other campfires, reduced to mere smudges of glow, he could barely even make out the rest of the camp. He raised his voice to a bellow. “Something’s in the fog!”
In response, voices cursed. He could picture his fellow wayfarers hastily rising from their ease and grabbing their weapons, even as he was snatching up his urgrosh.
Balasar and Medrash took up their shields and drew their swords. The paladin rattled off an invocation, set his blade aglow with silvery light, and grimaced when he saw that the luminescence only helped a little to reveal what lay within the mist.
Then, closer to the lake, someone screamed. One of the pickets, maybe cut down before he even realized he was in danger. An instant later, Vigilant gave a deafening screech and charged in that direction.
Khouryn ran after her, and Medrash and Balasar pounded after him. Still, the griffon outdistanced them and vanished into the fog. Then wings snapped, bodies thudded together, and hissing cries rasped. She’d found the enemy.
When Khouryn caught up, he nearly faltered in surprise, for Vigilant was fighting creatures unlike any he’d ever seen. At first glance they somewhat resembled lizardfolk, but with limbs and torsos foreshortened from human- to dwarf-length, and flexible, whipping necks stretched more than long enough to make up the lost height. Their scales gleamed orange-yellow in the glow of Medrash’s sword.