The whispering from beyond the barricade rose to a crescendo. A commotion came from the branches of the tree, and with a certain amount of crackling and rustling, a small figure appeared, crawling between dead branches. Once clear it paused to haul forth a glaive-guisarme fully thrice its own length, then hopped erect with more swagger than conviction to con-front Zaranda.
"We represent an autonomous collective of demi-humans of diminutive stature," the apparition an-nounced in the deepest voice it could muster. It was a halfling male, no more than three feet tall, wearing a morion helmet easily three sizes too large and a brigan-dine corselet that came down almost to the hair on the tops of his feet. "We demand toll of all who would pass this way."
The morion spoiled the effect by slipping abruptly down, covering his face to his snub nose. Goldie pawed the earth and whickered laughter. The halfling pushed up the helmet and looked aggrieved.
A half dozen other halflings had clambered up in the branches on the abatis's far side, or onto the piles of boulders, to observe the proceedings from relative safety. Like the spokesman, they were all got up in a parody of brigands.
"Do you maintain this road?" Zaranda asked.
Carefully holding his helmet in place, the halfling blinked innocent blue eyes at her. "No," he admitted.
"Then by what right do you demand toll?"
This provoked another flurry of conversation in the piping halfling tongue instead of the accented Common the spokesman used with Zaranda; though most hu-manoids in Tethyr spoke Common, few would consent to do so without a heavy dose of regional or racial ac-cent, to prove they weren't that familiar with it. Zaranda had a smattering of Halfling, and could have followed the conversation had she chosen to do so.
"Because we're an autonomous collective," one of the onlookers finally said. The spokesman turned back to her with renewed purpose.
"Because we're an autonomous collective," he said.
"So?" Goldie asked.
The halfling goggled at her. "It talks!"
"Bites, too." Goldie stretched her fine arched neck and with a considerable display of teeth pulled up a clump of tough trail grass . "Best mind your manners," she added, munching significantly.
Zaranda noted that the watchers in the gallery kept casting covert glances to the sheer heights above; the cliffs dropped a hundred sheer feet before they gave way abruptly to foothills.
One of the spectators, clearly dissatisfied with the spokesman's polemical talents, called out, "This road belongs to the people."
Zaranda flashed a smile. It was a smile with consid-erable flash to it, too, which smoothed away the years and the cares and made her seem a maiden girl again. When she wasn't angry.
"Just so," she said. "And we're people, aren't we?"
The halflings blinked at her.
From behind strode, or rather waddled, Father Pel-letyr. Even a noncombatant clerk of Ilmater had a hard time taking this lot as a serious threat. All the same, he held his holy symbol prominently out before him. Half-lings were reputed to have a wicked way with stones of the slung or flung varieties.
"Let us remain calm, my children," he said in a sonorous and only ever-so-slightly quavering voice. Zaranda had to remind herself that in fiend-haunted Thay of the Red Wizards, not so very long before, she had seen this man face rank upon rank of ghouls and animated skeletons without flinching, and make mighty specters flee his wrath. The father was a man of enormous and sincere piety, and, well, death to the undead. It was living threats he could use some stiffening on. "Surely we can settle this matter in amicable wise."
"Surely we can, Father," Zaranda said.
"Pay us!" several halflings offered helpfully.
"And while it goes against my principles as a mer-chant to pay tribute to casual banditti on the high road, I was about to ask my comrade-in-arms, here, to pro-vide an entertainment to our hosts. Stillhawk?"
Quick as thought, the dark man had an arrow from his quiver and nocked. He aimed his longbow skyward, scarcely drew back the strength. Yet when he released, the shaft shot a good two hundred yards straight up to-ward the puffy white cumulus mounds overhead.
When it reached the top of its trajectory and fell sideways to begin its return to earth, Stillhawk's sec-ond shot struck its shaft in the middle and transfixed it. The conjoined arrows fell to ground not a score of feet from Zaranda.
The halflings goggled. "Is that not an elven bow?" one asked in wonder.
"That is indeed an elven bow," Zaranda replied. Stillhawk walked over to retrieve his arrows. His soft-booted feet scarce made impressions on the earth. "Made for him by the elves of the Elven Woods,
who raised him and taught him archery."
The dark man plucked the razor-edged broad head from the shaft, licked the ash-wood arrow lightly, and ran a scarred thumb across it. When it passed the arrow-head, the split shaft was mended.
"And sundry minor magics as well," Zaranda added. "Kindly forgive my answering for him. He cannot speak; an orcish raiding party cut out his tongue when he was a boy."
Stillhawk nodded in satisfaction and returned both arrows to his quiver. The halflings made ooh ing sounds.
"Wasn't that nice?" Father Pelletyr said, beaming. "Now, if you splendid little fellows could pull this tree aside—"
The spokesman began to sidle and roll his eyes at the heights. "Well, with all respect due a man of the cloth, Father, it ain't perhaps so simple as that. No, not at all."
Zaranda stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
Something arced out from the top of the cliff, some-thing round and initially dark against the clouds. It showed a glint of metal in the sun as it fell, rebounded from a rock with a clang, and rolled until it almost touched the tips of the spokesman's hairy toes.
It was a helmet. He gaped at it in dismay.
"Don't fear, my friend," Zaranda said. "Your com-rade's head is not within. Your fellows above are as safe as if they were home hiding behind their mothers' skirts. But they won't be pelting us with boulders from above."
The halflings stared upward. A figure appeared, leaning precariously out over the rim, and gave them a jaunty wave of his hat.
"Permit me to introduce the noted bard Farlorn Half-Elven," Zaranda said. "A man whose skills go quite beyond his gift for the making and playing of songs. Now, if you'd be so kind as to remove this barrier, gentlefolk, you and ourselves might be about our re-spective businesses in peace."
2
"It is a long and dusty road we ride, Zaranda," Fa-ther Pelletyr said. "Surely a more direct route to Zazesspur might be found?"
The dust was more metaphorical than real. It was the month of Mirtul, called the Melting, with the feast of Greengrass a few days past. Despite that, and the fact that snow still glittered like silver plate on the highest of the peaks behind them, most of spring's runoff had flowed into the flat Tethyr lowlands a fort-night since. This far south, the climate was temperate, with mild seasonal variations. Tethyr was an "Empire of the Sand" by courtesy of the overworked imagination of northern cartographers influenced by the Calim Desert to the south. The grass was green, and rain had touched the land recently enough to lay the dust, and long enough ago that mud was blessedly absent.
"Indeed, Father," Zaranda replied, "but in Tethyr the most direct route is not always the quickest."
"And there's truth for you," added Farlorn Half-Elven, who rode near Zaranda on his dappled gray mare. "Tethyr's a land of anarchy. No one rules, since the royal family was destroyed years ago."
"Rather, I'd say Tethyr suffers a surfeit of rule," Zaranda said. "Behind every hedgerow lurks a would-be duke or baron, each determined to enforce his will on whomever he can catch—and his taxes too."