The three mounted their horses, turned them with flamboyant caracoles and accompanying swirls of dust, and rode off to the west, uttering high-pitched yips.
Zaranda watched them go, arms akimbo. "The civic guard," she repeated.
"Perhaps this Baron Faneuil is just the man anarchy-ridden Tethyr needs," Father Pelletyr said. He took an-other bite from his onion.
"How can you do that, Father?" Zaranda asked.
A day and a half west from the little village in which they had encountered the three mercenaries, the country took on a bit more of a lilt and roll. East of Zaranda's county, which lay almost in the Snowflake foothills, the land grew steadily flatter and more sere. Now it was beginning to green about them again as they drew nearer the sea. They even began to see trees, alone or in small woods, that did not cluster along wa-tercourses and had not been planted to give shade or windbreak.
It was still all but desolation to the northerly eyes of Zaranda's comrades.
Farlorn had his yarting unshipped and was playing and singing a song in a strange tongue as they rode. "The very words are music, O Bard," Father Pelletyr said. "What language is that?"
"Wild Elvish," Farlorn said. He had a distant, dreamy expression on his face. "The language of my mother's people. Do you know much Elvish, Father?"
The cleric shook his balding head. "Alas, I do not. I am only a poor priest of Ilmater, blessings to his name. It has never been my calling to minister to the folk of the woods."
Farlorn laughed, not unkindly. "You've saved much breath in that wise, Father. The Green Elves have small use for the religions of man. Or any other of their works, or aught to do with them at all."
"They must have some use for humans," Goldie re-marked, "else where did you come from?"
It seemed to Zaranda that the bard colored slightly, but he ignored the mare, continuing to address Father Pelletyr: "Small matter at all events, for the wild elf tongue is strange even to elven ears, though all the People can with effort comprehend it. And you have spoken wisely, for of all the tongues of Faerun, Wild Elvish is the closest to music pure."
"And what is this beauteous song about, good bard?" the cleric asked, taking a bite from a plum he'd bought from an urchin up the road.
"An elvish maiden sits by a pool in the wood, watch-ing her tears mingle with the clear crystal waters. She has just learned that her lover has been taken and tor-tured to death by orcs. Soon she will open the veins of her wrist, and she sings of how she will be joined once again with her love, when her lifeblood stains the water like wine."
The cleric swallowed. "Delightful, I'm sure," he said weakly.
Farlorn urged his gray knee-to-knee with Zaranda's mare, favoring Zaranda with a wink. "It's really a set of bawdy limericks I heard in Teshwave," he told her in Elvish. "They do sound pretty translated into my own tongue, don't they?"
Zaranda just shook her head. Farlorn flashed her a quick grin, and she felt a tug at her heart, like fingers plucking her sleeve. No, she told herself firmly. All that's between you and him is business. Leave it thus.
Farlorn struck a fresh cord on his yarting.
Riding about twenty yards ahead of Zaranda, Still-hawk suddenly held up a hand.
"What is it?" Zaranda called softly.
Fighting, Stillhawk signed. Up ahead.
Zaranda sighed. Well, 'tis Tethyr. What can you ex-pect? She wasn't yet ready to fall into lockstep behind this baron in Zazesspur, but she did have to admit something needed to be done about the bandits.
After having passed the halfling barricade, the caravan had encountered little trouble. Occasionally it had been shadowed by furtive watchers. Zaranda lacked the wild-craft of her two companions, inborn in the case of Farlorn, gained through painstaking training in Stillhawk's case, but as a veteran campaigner, she had seen her share of re-connoitering and ambush. The covert surveillance had never gone long undetected. In the cases in which it persisted, Stillhawk had slipped off to discourage it—puzzled by his friend and employer's insistence that he take no life unless he was offered violence.
On two occasions Stillhawk detected skulkers actu-ally lying in ambush, and these he dealt with in sum-mary fashion, leaving no survivors to learn new lessons in the need for stealth.
Several larger armed parties with no obvious busi-ness had likewise been encountered, including a score of men on horseback, warriors with ill-kept weapons and ragged cloaks. But Zaranda had assembled her caravan with care. To the observer the caravan looked neither unduly large nor prosperous, and while well guarded, was not so much so as to indicate the richness of the pickings. In truth it was formidably guarded in-deed: the crossbow-and-halberd guards were all hand-picked fighters, tough and well seasoned, their morale stiffened by good pay, decent treatment, and the prospect of fighting side-by-side with warriors of the ilk of Farlorn, Stillhawk, and Zaranda herself.
The menace it did present to the world was sufficient. Across a turbulent life, Zaranda had observed that predators, whether two-legged or four or more, preferred prey that could be taken with a minimum of risk. Though there were a few tense heartbeats during which Zaranda palmed one of the resinous pellets used in her fireball spell, the large mounted party had scrutinized the caravan with some care and then ridden away.
At least half a dozen times they saw to left or right tall spires of smoke rising into the pale sky. On occa-sion, Zaranda clamped her jaw shut and set her eyes on the road ahead. She hated those who preyed on intelli-gent beings, but there was nothing she could do.
Until now, with trouble lying athwart her path. Goldie had pricked up her long, pointy, well-shaped ears, of which she was exceptionally vain. "Louts," she said with authority. "Perhaps a score. Half a mile along the road. From their yelping it seems they harry someone—or thing—like a pack of hounds, not quite daring to close."
Father Pelletyr looked skeptical. "Now, Golden Dawn, dear, prevarication is a sin. How can you tell so much more than our seasoned scout?"
"Because she has ears like the lateen rig on an Amn-ian fishing felucca," supplied Farlorn. "She ought be able to hear a fly fart at that range."
Goldie cast him an aggrieved look.
Stillhawk signed, She’s right. He had his bow across the pommel of his saddle, but hadn't taken an arrow from his quiver. He seemed satisfied that, whatever the disturbance was, it wasn't coming their way.
Zaranda ordered Balmeric and Eogast to get the beasts off the road and into a defensive circle in a field
of yellow and white spring flowers. Before she could hear their complaints at the exertion, she wheeled Goldie and was trotting forward again. "Let's go see what transpires."
"Must you always rush headlong into potential peril, Zaranda?" the cleric asked despairingly.
"Yes," she said. "Besides, some poor soul may need our help."
"Oh," he said. "Oh." And he twitched the flanks of his ass with a little green-leafed twig he'd picked up for the purpose, urging the creature to follow Zaranda, who'd set Goldie into a rolling lope.
"That was manipulative, Randi," said Goldie, who wasn't really exerting herself at this pace. "And you say I'm bad."
Zaranda frowned briefly, then shrugged and laughed. "It was easier than debating with him," she admitted. "At least this way I'll know where he is."
Their only contact with the Zazesspur road had been Zaranda's side trip into Ithmong. As one of only two major east-west routes through Tethyr, it was well main-tained and relatively easy faring. For that reason it also attracted much attention from brigands. Zaranda there-fore kept her train to the back roads, despite the fact some were scarce better than wagon ruts or goat tracks.