Bueren leaned her elbow on the bar, her chin on her hand. “Well?”
Kerian took a breath, dropped her voice. “Bueren, yesterday on the eastern bridge of Qualinost the Knights piked the heads of thirteen elves. Four were Qualinesti.”
Bueren, herself Qualinesti, paled.
“The rest were Kagonesti. Like me. Word is they are outlaws, that they have been disrupting the roads and the free flow of wagons with supplies to the Knights and tribute to the dragon. Word is, more heads will foul the bridge if things don’t get quiet here on the roads.”
Bueren’s eyes sparked with fear. “Merciful gods.”
“Bueren, did you know—?”
Bueren Rose snorted. “Any one of the outlaws?” She wiped the bar with wide swipes. “Anyone doesn’t stop in here to eat, I don’t know them. Outlaws, I imagine, aren’t much for socializing with village folk. No, but I don’t hold with such... punishment.” She pressed her lips together, considered and then decided. “Have you heard about the strange stories hunters are telling? You’ve been on the road today. Maybe you’ve noticed... what’s happening in the forest.”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Those two down at the end of the bar, they said they have felt something… not right in the forest. It’s a kind of—” She shook her head, at a loss for the right words.
“I know, Bueren. I’ve seen it or… felt it. No, it’s not like that. Thing is, when it happened, I didn’t see. I didn’t feel or hear.” She showed her friend the scraped and bruised flesh of her hands. “I fell—on hard rocks!—and never felt anything, yet look at my hands. While I was in the forest, Bueren, it was as if my senses were drained away. I couldn’t see clearly, or hear, or even smell anything. Whatever it was, it came and went, all of a sudden. It stopped.”
Almost she looked round at the dwarf Stanach to confirm her report.
“Bueren, I thought something had happened to me—that something dark had touched me in the forest. The more I think of it, though, the more I realize that something must be happening to the forest itself.”
Bueren nodded. “People around here have been saying that for some time now. They used to think the Knights were causing it—or at least that Lord Thagol was—but the Knights don’t know any more about it than we do or like it any better. Some people—” she lowered her eyes—“blame the Kagonesti.”
Out the corner of her eye, Kerian saw one of the elf hunters rise and put a coin on the bar.
“Bueren Rose,” he called, “I’ll see you next trip.”
Bueren called good night and wished the hunter luck. “Father’s got a sackful of walnuts for stuffing, so we’ll take all the grouse and pheasant you can bring us, Kaylt”
“Ay, well, it’s the season, so start shelling.” His glance fell on Kerian then slid away. “You take care while I’m gone, Rosie.”
Kaylt and his companion left, a cool breeze ghosting into the tavern before the door shut. Torches flared, the hounds rose to sniff the night, then sidled up to Stanach’s table where the dwarf put down plates for each. Tails wagging, they dropped muzzles to plate and lapped up gravy and bits of venison.
Bueren wiped crumbs from the bar and gathered up the supper plates. She looked past Kerian, to the windows and the darkness outside. “Keri, the Wilder Elves,” she resumed, speaking softly. “We haven’t seen your brother around here in nearly a year. We hardly see any Kagonesti these days. They aren’t welcome in Sliathnost, because the people around here blame what’s going on in the forest on the tribes.”
The tribes. The phrase had a strange and distant sound to it.
Kerian shook her head, frowning. “The Kagonesti? How—”
Outside the tavern, rough voices, one growling, another snarling. A sharp order crackled, then silence. A breath of air on a quickening breeze slipped beneath the door. Kerian smelled horses. Hollow in the belly, suddenly she thought she smelled blood.
At the hearth, the older hound lifted its head. Tail curled tight, hackles high, it looked from Nayla Firethorn to the door. Nayla made sure of her short sword, while her companion spoke sharply to the hound.
A thud boomed through the tavern, the sound of a booted foot slamming into wood. The door flung opened. The hounds never moved, the older growled low.
Three Knights came into the tavern on a chill gust of wind. Behind them tattered leaves and golden bits of straw whirled around the feet of three of Eamutt Thagol’s Knights. Armed, mailed in black, the Knights wore helms and kept the visors down. They drove a prisoner before them, a woman with hands bound in front, ankles hobbled. Her silvery hair hung in her face, matted with sweat and blood. She wore a hunter’s gear, leathers and a shirt of bleached cotton. Cut loosely, meant to lace in the front, the shirt hung on her torn, rent nearly in half. She held the pieces together across her breast with bound hands. Cuts and bruises marred her lovely face, dirt and tears smeared her cheeks. She’ d fought hard before her capture.
In the firelight and shadow, Kerian realized the woman was Kagonesti. Tattoos wound between the bruises and scratches on the sun-browned skin of her neck and throat, the creamier gold of shoulder and breast. The prisoner looked up, her glance skittering around the common room. Her eyes had a haunted, hunted look in them.
Bueren touched Kerian’s arm. “Hush,” she whispered. “If you do the wrong thing, or even say the wrong thing, you could get her killed. Her, yourself, or the rest of us.”
Eyes on the Knights, the two hounds held their posts. The elf at the window and the two villagers shot glances at each other, looked away, and then quickly abandoned their tables with a skitter of coins. Like shadows, they slipped behind the Knights and their prisoner and out into the chilling night.
Bueren looked up, keeping her expression neutral, her voice level. “Sirs, can I get you food and drink?”
The tallest Knight flung back his visor and removed his helm. His bald pate glistened with sweat, and his scarred face was hardened by the habits of cruelty, eyes cold as stone and narrow, lips twisted in a sneer. He shoved his prisoner forward, so hard she fell to her knees. On elbows and knees, she stayed there, head hung, catching her breath. In her ragged breathing, Kerian heard low groaning.
Bueren gripped her arm, held her back.
The other Knights removed their helms, a dark-haired youth and a red-beard in his middle years. They wore merciless expressions. In another time, in the days before the Chaos War, the Knights of Takhisis admitted only the sons and daughters of nobility to their ranks. Men such as these would not have been allowed to muck out the stables of a Knight’s castle, let alone take a Knight’s oath. The Dark Knights had been hard warriors in the cause of their Dark Queen, dauntless in pursuit of her Vision, but they were Knights, and they had prized honor and all the noble virtues. In these dragon days, these godless times, the Knights of Takhisis—now the Knights of Neraka—must fill their ranks however they could. It was rumored—though no one in Qualinesti could imagine the rumor true—that in some places even half-ogres wore the black armor.
“Sir Egil,” Bueren said, striving to sound casual as she acknowledged the bald one. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Won’t you and your men take that large table in the middle there? I’ll bring drinks—”
“Ale!” snapped the dark-haired one, his voice cracking.
“Dwarf spirit,” growled the red-beard.
In the corner by the hearth, Stanach Hammerfell never budged, not even a twitch of his hand, but Kerian thought she saw the faintest flicker of scorn in his blue-flecked dark eyes.