Within seconds, there wasn’t a single one of them in sight, though she knew that every bit of shelter around her was packed with them.
Curious, Thayla Mesinda stepped across to a potted shrub and parted its fronds. “Hello,” she said to the wide-eyed, pudgy face staring back at her from the gap. “Are you a hero?”
Tunk nearly fainted from fright when the Tall girl confronted him. He gulped, went pale and trembled violently. The chattering of his teeth almost drowned out the frantic, muffled whisper just below: “Tunk! Get foot out of my mouth!”
“Well, are you?” Thayla repeated. “Are you a hero?”
“Nope, don’t think so,” Tunk managed. With a sickly, placating grin he pointed toward a rosebush. “Maybe better see Bron ’bout that. Bron might be one.”
Thayla stepped to the rose bush and walked part way around it, peering. Just beyond it, soft, scurrying sounds told her of someone moving, trying to stay out of sight. She paused, then turned quickly and went around the other way. The one with the ivory stick was there, gawking up at her, nose to locket.
“Are you Bron?” she asked.
“Yep, guess so,” he quavered. “Pardon, just passin’ through.”
“You’re the hero, then,” she decided. Somehow she had expected heroes to be larger, and maybe better-dressed. And it had never occurred to her they might be anything other than human. But she was in no position to quibble over details. “How did you get here?”
“Beats me,” he admitted. “There we were, jus’ mindin’ own business, lookin’ at Talls. Then …”
“At what?”
“Talls,” he repeated. “Like you.”
“Oh,” she said, not understanding at all. A suspicion tugged at her mind. “Did Lord Vulpin send you here?”
“Th’ Highbulp send us,” Bron explained. “Highbulp say, ‘Bron, go look at Talls. See if Talls up to somethin’.’ So here we are. You folks up to somethin’?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Uh, you said the … ah, the Highbulp sent you?”
“Yep. Glitch th’ Most. Th’ Highbulp. Real famous person. Ever’body know him.”
It sounded just bizarre enough to be true. No one had ever mentioned where heroes came from, but they must come from somewhere. Somebody must send them. “Then are you here to take me away?”
“Dunno,” Bron admitted. “Highbulp didn’ say.”
“You probably are,” Thayla decided. “You are my hero, here to rescue me from captivity.”
“Oh,” the gully dwarf said. “Okay, if you say so.”
“It won’t be easy,” Thayla reasoned. “How many are with you?”
Bron glanced around at the thoroughly populated balcony. Every conceivable hiding place was occupied by gully dwarves. He had no idea how many there were, but he gave her his best estimate. “Two,” he said.
From their encampments in the hills, Chatara Kral’s forces moved down into the valley, assembling at staging areas north and west of Tarmish Castle. Most of the commanders and approximately a third of the gathered warriors were Gelnians. The rest were men from many lands, set adrift by the great turmoil of recent years.
By the dozens and hundreds they had come, drawn by the promise of cash and the lure of loot. Companies of barbarian horsemen, squadrons of varied infantry and several entire armed brigades of once Imperial troops answered the call, as well as several platoons of Solamnic heavy cavalry and countless individual warriors of many breeds.
With the end of each new war in the decade of darkness, many had returned to their homes and taken up their plows and their hammers. But many more had not. Mercenaries of all kinds roamed the lands these days, seeking employment or loot, whichever came first.
A lone, armored horseman and his squire paused at the verge of forest fronting the Tarmish fields, and studied the panorama just ahead. By his armor, weapons, the magnificent dark war-horse on which he rode and the practiced ease with which he sat his saddle, the plated one might once have been a knight of one of the great orders, or, more likely, a free-lance candidate for knighthood who had chosen a solitary road instead. No banner flew upon his ensconced lance, and no device of heraldry adorned his attire. But he was no less a formidable figure for all that.
His “squire,” afoot, was a lithe, cloak-wrapped dandy with a trimmed, pointed beard and dark hair that curled in little ringlets above his hooded eyes. His manner, as he attended the reins of his “master,” was brusque and curt, noticeably lacking in subservience.
Dartimien the Cat had played many roles in his time, but this was his first experience as a knight’s steward.
At the forest’s edge he knelt, studying the ground. “They came this way,” he said. “It looks as though they went right into that encampment. Would gully dwarves do that?”
Astride the great horse, Graywing raised the heavy visor of his borrowed helm and scanned the assembling army ahead. “Not if they could help it,” he said. “But maybe they got here first. This is a new camp.”
“Well, if they did,” Dartimien stood, brushing leaves from the knee of his immaculate, dark britches, “they’re up to their necks in humans now. There must be two legions out there.”
“Then I suppose that’s where we must go, too,” Graywing sighed. “I don’t like it much, to tell you the truth. What do you think?”
“Your decision,” Dartimien said, gruffly. “You’re the one with the horse.”
“And three hundred pounds of itching armor,” Graywing snapped. “Remember, you had your chance to be the knight, here. I offered.”
“Some offer,” the Cat sniffed. “You know I can’t stand horses.”
Somewhere behind them, on the slopes above, a confused Solamnian mercenary, naked except for his stained linen undergarment and destitute except for a carefully-written receipt on a scrap of tanned buckskin, was nursing a bump on his head and trying to find his way out of a deep cleft in the rocks. The last thing he remembered before awakening in this predicament was pausing to relieve himself in a laurel thicket. The buckskin receipt itemized all of his belongings and promised their return at some unspecified time.
Neither Graywing nor Dartimien bore the wayward knight-errant any ill will, but they had decided they truly needed his horse, armor, weapons and trappings far more than he did at the moment. A visored knight and his squire might attract less attention in this valley of warriors than two mismatched individuals without credentials.
“There is a little canyon running through the camp,” Graywing pointed. “It isn’t much more than a ditch, but gully dwarves might hide there.”
Dartimien squinted, peering into the distance. His city-bred eyes could read the trail of a beetle or follow the flight of a bee, but he had learned that the Cobar’s sight was far superior when it came to distances. Dartimien’s eyes were like a cat’s eyes. He saw intensely what was near, and his night vision was excellent. But Graywing, the plainsman, had eyes like a hawk. What seemed too far to see, to Dartimien, Graywing saw clearly.
“I’ll take your word for it,” the Cat conceded. “What’s the best way to get there?”
“Straight through the encampment, I’m afraid,” Graywing said. “There’s a worse problem, though. The gully runs directly behind that big pavilion with the banners atop it. There. Do you see it? Where the lone oak tree stands. That’s probably the tent of someone important.”
“You might say that,” Dartimien sighed. “That’s Chatara Kral’s headquarters.”
The “gully” was actually a fan of little canyons, most of them only a few feet deep. Eroded by years of seasonal rainfall, they carried the rivulets that drained this entire quadrant of the valley, carrying waters away to a little creek that wound across the valley like a meandering ribbon among tilled fields.