But Torvik was owed a debt of honor, for his mother as well as himself, and letting him speak first was the cheapest way to pay it. If he was as deep-skulled as he seemed, it might also yield results.
"I suggest that we send two, perhaps three columns inland," the minotaur said. "We find the safest path to the Green Mountain, and keep it open for your people there."
Zeskuk awarded Torvik additional honor for avoiding the insulting term "rescue."
"If we learn this cannot be done safely," Torvik went on, "we think of other stratagems. If the life of the island can be beaten down, then we should post watchers on the Smoker as well. With both mountains well guarded, the island should have fewer secrets, and less dangerous ones."
"Old wisdom often comes from young hearts," Zeskuk said, although he did not feel quite old enough himself to say that with a straight face. "I suggest that we discuss this proposal of Torvik's, and accept it or reject it. I offer you hospitality. Talking is dry work in any weather, more so in this, and I admit no weakness in saying as much."
Sir Darin actually smiled, and no one else seemed adverse to accepting the offer.
"I rejoice," Zeskuk said more formally. "If we agree, then after drinking, we can study ways to march inland without asking more of our warriors than honor allows. If we disagree, we will be refreshed and fitter to discover other courses."
It will also take all of the day and perhaps part of the night, was Zeskuk's unspoken thought to his companions. We are on our home deck, and it does not look to me as if the humans are united in their counsels, or had a good night's sleep.
The kender was running as fast as his short legs would carry him, but Gerik was still gaining rapidly on him. Gerik would have overtaken the fugitive long since, if he had dared to spur his mount past a trot. On this narrow, twisting path, anything more would risk the horse. Tree roots, rocks, soft ground, rabbit burrows-all lay in wait.
The kender turned and made an indescribable gesture at Gerik, The young warrior lowered the tip of his lance and dug in his spurs. The kender darted to one side. Gerik tried to follow him with the lance tip, and the steel rammed itself into a low-hanging branch so hard that the shock nearly unseated the rider.
Before he could recover fully, a noose dropped over his head and left arm, from higher up in the tree. His horse danced wildly, and suddenly Gerik was dangling in the air, as his horse bolted out from under him.
Before the noose could tighten dangerously, however, Gerik snatched a dagger free with his right hand. Two slashes, and noose and rope both parted. He landed spring-legged, without going down, and had his sword drawn the moment he had the use of both arms.
But the rope and noose were the last kender attack. By the time Gerik had retrieved lance and mount, nothing was left of the kender but shrill, mocking laughter and a few rude jests floating out of the trees. A snake would have found it hard to penetrate farther into the forest in pursuit of the little folk; this stretch had not been harvested or even much traveled for generations.
On horseback, all he could do was back his jittery mount until there was a widening of the path in which he could turn around. Then he trotted back to his comrades.
"Well done," Bertsa Wylum said. She wore light armor-a helmet and breastplate-and both her armor and her loose clothing showed a mixture of brown and green patches that made her hard to see from ten paces away.
"It would have been better if I hadn't skewered a tree, instead of that thieving kender." He recounted his adventures on the path.
"Better than I did the first time I practiced mounted sword drill," the more experienced warrior said. "I clipped my horse's left ear clean off his head."
"Ouch!"
"The horse said something stronger, I recall. So did the riding master."
Gerik, Bertsa, and their five guards all turned their horses and rode at a walk down to the road. When the road had taken them far enough out of the forest that no unwanted ears could be hiding close by, they reined in.
"I hope I made it convincing," Gerik said, "My only fear is that I may have made it too much so. What if some of the Spillgather kin think I really do want a blood vengeance on friend Elderdrake? They will not be our friends if we are enemies to their guest."
Bertsa frowned. "Shumeen has done her best to make sure that the truth is spread far and wide. If you want to worry, rather worry about kender who are already friends to our enemies, and will bring word that the Spillgathers work for us."
Gerik grimaced. "Are any kender that foolish?" he asked.
"Your friends are never as good as you want them to be," Bertsa said.
"Does that mean that one's enemies are never as bad?" Gerik countered.
"It ought to. Sometimes it does. Whether it does here, we can only hope."
And pray, thought Gerik. He wished he knew more about whom to pray to, or that the local clerics could be trusted. Too many of them seemed to dance to the kingpriest's tune-and was that a coincidence, so many of that breed tending shrines and groves around Tirabot Manor?
Somehow, Gerik doubted it.
But at least Horimpsot Elderdrake was well away, with every appearance of having turned against the folk of Tirabot, and could wait upon those priests with that known about him. Priestly indiscretion could be made to cut both ways.
"So it is agreed," Zeskuk said. "One column of minotaurs follows our original route to the watch post on the Green Mountain. A second column of humans blazes their own trail to the same destination, from their side of the island. When we have reached our comrades, we shall think about posting watchers on the Smoker, if the island has not resisted so much as to force us to some other course of action."
"It will take much resistance to turn either of us aside," the knight Sir Niebar said. "We did not sail all the way here to go home with the mystery unanswered and comrades unavenged. None of us."
"Also agreed," Zeskuk said. "Not that I ever expected there to be disagreement. We are all warriors with a knowledge of honor.
"But one matter remains. It is-"
"Shelter rights with each other's fleets if the weather gets up," a human merchant said. He was as fat and richly dressed, likewise as apparently unwarlike and landbound, as the rest, but something in his voice said "once a sailor" to Zeskuk.
The minotaur pitched his voice toward more respect than he would have commonly allowed to an interrupter and said, "I thought the law of the sea covered that. Or do some among you doubt this?"
If anyone did, he did not care to admit it-at least aloud, to Zeskuk, aboard his own ship. The minotaur sighed. "As well. At this time of year the weather off Suivinari is commonly fair for weeks on end. I hope we shall be done before the summer storms blow, but the magic at work here may have attracted the attention of the gods…."
Zeskuk thought he saw Torvik's face twitch. Did the young captain know something he had not told the others? The minotaur studied the other humans, seeking for signs of knowledge withheld in a manner that must be denounced as treachery, lest his own fleet not follow him. Human faces were easier to read than those of minotaurs, from the thinner human skin and the more mobile human features.
No one seemed to be hiding anything, or to have noticed Torvik. Or if they were and they had, they would deny it. Calling one's about-to-be allies liars was the sort of mortal insult best saved until it could do useful work.
"The matter of which I spoke was that of observers with each column," Zeskuk continued. "Minotaurs with the humans, humans with the minotaurs."
Zeskuk hoped that no one would now breach the unspoken agreement to avoid using the word "hostage." The observers would be that in all but name, as well as what they were called. But both races had laws and customs that made it difficult to wittingly give hostages.