However, should he be spotted by the lords of these local manors, he feared he would have no excuse not to. He pushed on, stopping little.
His goal was to be at Dragonsgate inside three days.
Launched at last on a new adventure, his spirits rose, and his thoughts turned from the past to the future. The sound of hoofbeats was muffled by snow, and nothing moved in the white stillness to interrupt his deep deliberations.
He wondered about the world. With Vicia-Hemox dead, the barrier that had separated the three lands for centuries was gone as well. There had been only war between the lands for so many centuries could peace really be possible now? His father thought not. But Dorlyth was old, and his foreign adventures had left him bitter toward all ideas that weren’t Man in origin. Could his father and the other leaders of Ngandib-Mar ever look with favor on the words of a Lamathian?
Of course, Dorlyth listened to Pelmen, and Pelmen was no, Rosha thought. Pelmen wasn’t really a Lamathian. But he wasn’t a Mari either. Still and all, Pelmen was a power shaper and didn’t that make him Mari, at least in part?
More critical for Rosha, of course, would be Mari reactions to Chaons.
His Bronwynn was the Chaon Queen or would be soon. For a moment Rosha speculated on the reactions of those wealthy lords who had hosted him, once they heard of his marriage to the ruler of their hated southern rival.
“Let them talk,” he announced to his horse’s mane. “I will marry Bronwynn!” Rosha smiled, pleased with himself. He hadn’t stumbled on a single word.
His second and third days out were as miserable as his first day had been fun. A new storm struck about noon of the second day, forcing him to pitch 4us tent early to wait out the worst of it. Within the confines of its fish-satin walls, he and his horse got better acquainted a bit too well acquainted for Rosha’s tastes. He broke camp early the next morning and pressed on, but the storm had been followed by a dreadful drop in temperature, and Rosha recounted ruefully his father’s pleas for him to wait until spring. The sun came up at last to light his way, but its heat never penetrated the bitter cold.
Rosba’s breath froze on his face, and even the layers of bearskins he wrapped around himself couldn’t slow the chatter of his teeth.
He began to long for a companion, anyone to talk to, to keep his mind off the chill. He talked to his horse for a time. Then he told his plans to his sword. Finally, for want of anything better to do, Rosha began to sing. The afternoon of the third day found him riding up the short incline of the western mouth of Dragonsgate, singing at the top of his lungs while his teeth chattered merrily between choruses.
Had Tibb been sitting any closer to the fire he would have been in it.
“Why’d I ever let you talk me into this?” he chattered.
“Greed,” his companion snorted, as he clapped himself on the shoulders in an effort to keep them from freezing. “A pure lust for stolen gold.
That’s the only thing that could ever budge you from Lamath.”
“Yeah, well, when am I gonna see some of it?” Tibb responded sourly.
“You promised me there’d be piles of it in this cave. There’s piles all right…” Tibb turned his baleful gaze upon the enormous mound of dragon-droppings
: that lined the back of their freezing abode. “Does that
’ smell like gold to you?”
: “We could have had the gold, if we’d gotten here quick enough,”
Pinter snapped. “But no. You had to wait around to loot the Temple of the Dragon.”
“How was I to know the funny little Prophet was gonna board it up?”
“Piles of gold and diamonds, boarded in this cave for centuries, and you pass it up to steal altar cups!”
“Those cups were pure gold! A goblet in the hand is worth two piles of dragon dung any day!”
“Yeah?” Pinter snapped back, now flapping his long arms like a bird.
“Well, you’d better be glad we’ve got it here to burn, or you’d be a solid block of ice.”
“And that’s my fault, I suppose?”
“Yes, it’s your fault. If you hadn’t wasted time we’d be with Admon Faye now, wherever he is. Ill wager he’s not freezing.”
“So let’s go find him, then.”
Pinter regarded Tibb with sheer revulsion. “Two La-mathians in Chaomonous? We’d be in irons by tonight”
“Then let’s go back to Lamath,” Tibb pleaded. “Through the snow?” Pinter stomped to the entrance of the lair and pointed down at the Dragonsgate Pass, fifty feet below them. “Look at it!”
Tibb didn’t need to. The pass had been snow-clogged for weeks. “We can’t just sit here,” he mumbled.
“Oh, yes we can,” Pinter challenged. “We can just relax and wait for Admon Faye’s return, as we agreed. Spring can’t be very far away…”
he added mournfully.
Tibb hunkered down closer to the small fire. It was giving off more smoke and stench that heat, but it beat no blaze at all. “What if he doesn’t want us?” the stocky thief inquired sensibly. “What if he decides to sell us instead? It’s been done,” he protested.
“Tibb.” Pinter sighed in exasperation. “You’re talking about Admon Faye, This is not just some small-fish cutthroat. This man is a true outlaw. He’s got class, style, taste ”
“We talking about the same Admon Faye? Mean fellow with a mug that would scare the wrinkles out of tugolith’s hide?”
“Tibb, this is a man who is truly free. He bows his knee to no King.”
“Still ugly, just the same.”
“And when he returns, we’ll offer him our swords ”
“And hope he doesn’t use ’em on us.”
“ and offer him the tribute we’ve collected in his absence,” Pinter finished loudly, glaring at his comrade.
“Which is exactly nothing,” Tibb snorted.
“There’ll be some,” Pinter affirmed confidently, “There will!” he repeated in the face of Tibb’s snide expression.
“Oh, certainly,” Tibb nodded. “Piles of it.”
Pinter suddenly straightened up. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I hear singing…”
Tibb smiled uneasily. He’d been fearing it… the combination of the snow and these cramped conditions had caused his friend to come unravelled
“Listen!” Pinter shouted. “Don’t you hear it?”
“Sure, Pinter, sure,” Tibb responded with exaggerated calm. “Why don’t you come sit ” He cut off. Now he was hearing it too.
“A merchant!” Pinter shouted, and he jumped with excitement an unfortunate move, since he was tall, and happened to be standing under the low lip of the cave’s entrance. He yelped as his head grazed the rock and he landed hard on his rear. But the blow couldn’t faze him.
He was too thrilled. “Come on, we’ve got to stop him.”
“It’s, ah, it’s probably not a merchant,” Tibb argued nervously. “Why would a merchant be coming through now?”
“Get the weapons! Throw me my helmet! We have to get down and stop him before he gets through.” That would be no easy task. Vicia-Heinox had favored this particular cavern for its inaccessibility. Its entrance, fifty feet up the sheer face of Dragonsgate’s northern cliff, had proved a formidable obstacle to the pair when they’d first arrived.
Sheer desperation for some protection against the cold had finally driven Tibb to scale the wall that, and his expectation of diamonds and gold. Once inside, they’d discovered the remnants of Admon’s Faye’s encampment and a neatly rolled rope ladder of hemp. Now Pinter danced from one side of the cave mouth to the other, shouting orders while he tried to toss the ladder out and down. In his haste he succeeded only in turning the neat roll into a tangled, knotted pile.