by Ed Greenwood
That tone in his father's voice, even now when it was but an enfeebled, ghostly echo of his lost vigor, brought Amaddar Yelrya to a halt, as still as any statue. He turned around, and looked down into that wasted face with nothing but eager obedience on his own. He had been well taught.
"For years now," that failing, familiar voice told him, "Ironthorn's verdant farms and busy gemadars have been ruled uneasily by three rival lords. Lord Burrim Hammerhand is the strongest. He uses the badge of an iron gauntlet-a left-handed gage, mind, upright and open-fingered, on a scarlet field-and rules from Hammerhold, a castle on a crag just north of Irontarl, the market town of Ironthorn. The town stands on the banks of the Thorn River."
By the greatest of efforts, Amaddar managed to avoid sighing, rolling his eyes, or letting any exasperation at all cross his face. Lions of the morning, he was going to tell it all.
"Just south across that river is Lyraunt Castle. There Lord Magrandar Lyrose rules, lording it over three side-valleys to the southwest. His badge is a pinwheel, like a caltrop, of three steel-gray thorns, joined at the base, on a yellow field. They say the wizard Malraun smiles on House Lyrose."
Amaddar nodded, struggling to seem interested, trying to look as if any of this was new.
"In the southeast is the valley of Imrush, where Lord Irrance Tesmer rules from his keep, Imtowers. He's the one who used to have all the gems, and buys slaves from every Stormar who'll sell. His badge is a purple diamond on a gray field."
Amaddar nodded. "So he I should cultivate," he murmured, just to show he'd been heeding. "He'll welcome me."
"No!" His father's eyes blazed like two golden suns for an instant, ere fading again. "Stay far from the Tesmer lands, have naught to do with him, and do not, for any reason at all, surrender your real name to any Ironthar!"
Amaddar frowned. "Why?"
"Tesmer's wife was-probably still is-very beautiful. I… she will remember me. So will her lord, and doubtless seek to close claws on the son, when he can't reach the father."
Lion, this was new!
Amaddar realized he was gaping, and shut his mouth with an effort.
"Father!" he heard himself say reproachfully, a moment later.
His father's eyes flashed again. "The gold that reared you to have such pride I earned in season after season of dealing with Lady Telclara Tesmer. We understood each other very well, and when you're older, you'll see better why that leads to… the other."
"But… Mother…"
"Knew all about it, suggested it before ever I rode all that way north, and hooked the cunning Lady Tesmer and played her like a master, with me the straining fishing-line between. Go ask her if you believe me not, and come back to me wiser."
His father lifted one wasted, trembling hand long enough to level one long and accusative finger at Amaddar. "Then perhaps you'll stop fighting down yawns and pretending to listen, and learn enough to keep yourself alive in Ironthorn for a day or two. Perhaps."
Two Hammerhand knights had been everywhere in the battle, hewing and thrusting and whirling to deal death elsewhere before wounded foes could strike back.
One was tall, and fought with his visor raised. The weathered face that stared sternly out of his helm was one even the youngest knights of Lyrose knew: Syregorn, a laconic, scarred man who had long been one of Lord Hammerhand's most trusted veterans.
The other was one of the Hammerhand rearguard, who'd ridden with visors down. This anonymous knight was faster and more reckless than Syregorn in the fray, darting here and there like a hungry falcon. His sword had laid open the throat of Horondeir Lyrose, and he was now swinging it hard and fast at the last few Lyran knights, as the fray dwindled down into a tight knot of snorting, kicking horses in the trees.
Pelmard Lyrose-now heir of his house-was well away and beyond catching, now, if he didn't fall off and his mount avoided breaking a leg.
In the tight fray he'd left behind, a knight of Lyrose suddenly swerved away from a chance to hew a Hammerhand flank, and spurred out of the hacking, ringing heart of the battle to flee after the Lyrose lordling.
The falcon-swift Hammerhand knight pursued the hurrying Lyran, crouching low and urging his mount to greater haste by dealing stout slaps to its withers with the flat of his blade. Like an arrow he raced away from the dwindling knot of bloodied, sword-swinging knights.
He had almost caught up the fleeing Lyran before that knight heard the drumming of pursuing hooves, turned in his saddle, stared in alarm, and swung his sword wildly.
The racing Hammerhand caught the Lyran blade with the tip of his own and swung his sword in an awkward arc to abet rather than dispute its slash. Overbalanced, the knight of Lyrose was swung right around in his saddle, crying out in pain, and-was impaled for a moment on a tree-bough his terrified horse had already ducked past.
A moment was all the Hammerhand knight needed. His own blade sang down under the edge of the Lyran helm and around as he swept past, drawing a deep and bloody smile across the throat beneath.
Almost beheaded, the knight of Lyrose flopped bonelessly in his saddle, sagging back as his sword tumbled from his dying hand. His body followed it-all but one boot, firmly trapped in its stirrup. The horse raced on through the trees, terrified anew by the ringing, clanging carrion it was now towing.
The Hammerhand knight slowed his snorting, bucking mount and let the Lyran horse flee, turning to follow the trail slowly back to where horses snorted, the smell of blood was strong… and the battle was done.
Syregorn was grimly ordering the bodies of the Lyrose brothers be bound to their horses, and the severed head retrieved. He'd had no need to give orders to his four surviving knights regarding the reverent raising of the dead Dravvan Hammerhand.
"Pelmard?" was all he asked the returning knight, who tore off her helm to watch her dead brother gently laid on his snorting horse, his head wrapped in a Lyran cloak someone was too dead to need any longer.
"Escaped me. Taking with him his father's excuse for raising war."
She pointed at one of the knights of her house to get his attention, and snapped, "Find every last Lyran war-quarrel, and the bows! We must discover if they can pass all our iron-wardings, or we'll all be rotting vaugren-meat, and soon!"
"Yes, Lady," the knight murmured, lowering his eyes from the bright ribbons of tears down the cheeks of the woman who was now the next ruler of Hammerhold. If she somehow lived long enough.
Amteira Hammerhand didn't care if all Falconfar saw her tears.
Dravvan was dead. It was all up to her, now.
Trying to look menacing, Rod slowly drew his sword. As he did, it flashed with a brief, bright white light-and the bracers on his arms winked back at it.
The lorn stiffened, and stopped striding forward.
He stared at it, hefting the sword, trying to look as if he buried the thing in handily nearby lorn every day.
The lorn regarded him as expressionlessly as only lorn can, that mouthless, unchanging skull-face staring back at Rod. Betraying nothing.
God, it was big. Even without that bone-shattering tail, it could probably tear him apart with casual ease. Studying it, close enough to see the little line of breathing and speaking holes under the line of its jaw-well, the chin of its face, even if it lacked a mouth; it certainly looked like the underside of a human jaw-and the two pincers, now slid back inside little sheaths of flesh there, Rod had to fight down a shiver.
Whereupon it sneered at him-he could tell it was sneering, as plainly as anything, though its skull-face remained a frozen mask-sat down, and started eating a hearty meal of Aumrarr. Those pincers slashed and sliced, the flesh that sheathed them rippled and flexed like little gripping hands, and the throat tube with little teeth lining its inside thrust forward obscenely to suck in the blood and meat…
Revolted and suddenly furious again, his fear gone, Rod shook off the gauntlet on his free hand and put it into the pouch that held the rings. Fumbling with the chain until he got its clasp open, he st
arted putting on rings, working by feel and never once taking his eyes off the lorn.
It went on eating, affecting unconcern, but it was watching him closely.
Which meant, for one thing, he dared not retreat. And would be dead once night fell, or sooner. Probably sooner.
Ult Tower, don't fail me now…
Two of the rings made his fingers tingle. Rod raised his hand until he could see them. Staring at the one on the left, he tried to will it to do something. Anything.
Nothing happened. He tried visualizing flames shooting out of it to scorch the lorn, saw the lorn blazing and blackening, collapsing, slate-gray hide melting and crumpling… nothing.
He gave up, and glared at the ring on the right, bearing down with his will until he was trembling and sweating, his head starting to pound. Suddenly-
Nothing happened. And went right on happening, damn it.
The sword… no, it wasn't reacting to the rings, even though their tingling was growing stronger.
Blazing up like Rod's temper. A God-damned arsenal of magic he'd snatched from Ult Tower, things that glowed and hummed and bloody well buzzed-and not one of them, not one of them, could he make work. The bloody armor had damned well melted away!
He-
No. No, none of it was going to work. Not at all. It would tease him, glowing and humming and tingling like fury, but-
Shaking his head, Rod reached down, plucked up his gauntlet, and slid it back on.
It promptly flared into bright life. Some of the metal fingers spat sudden flames into the air.
The lorn stiffened again, lifting its head.
Rod quickly closed his gaping mouth, made himself smile, and pointed at the beast's inscrutable skull-face.
And a thin tongue of flame spat from his fingertip, right at the lorn.
The beast was gone before the fire arrived, dropping its meal in a sudden scramble, great clap of slate-gray wings, and bound into the air.
It was fleeing! Just like that!
Up it climbed, clawing at the air with its wings in seemingly frantic haste, racing up at the hole in the canopy of leaves that was letting the sunlight in, as Rod wagged his finger at it and pointed again, rage and-yes, exultation rising in him.
His jet of flames fell well short of that lashing tail, but the lorn looked back at him fearfully, and flapped all the faster.
Rod sighed. It was getting away.
No, it had got away… and was gone.
He looked down at all that was left of the Aumrarr-one severed foot, still encased in its boot-and, exultation gone in an instant, had to fight down a sudden urge to vomit.
Sighing harder, he turned away.
Somewhere overhead, the lorn gave tongue to a strange, ululating call.
Chapter Four
Why here, me Viper? Why Stormcrag Castle? Locked in an' with spells to keep us that way? What'd we do, that-" A strange, ululating call echoed across the endless green treetops of the Raurklor, startling Garfist Gulkoun into silence in mid-rumble, and causing the skeletally thin woman in the tattered leathers and once-grand, fur-trimmed cloak to fling up one bony hand in an imperious signal for silence.
Iskarra thrust her head sharply to one side, like a snake seeking to taste the air, and listened hard.
The call came not again, but they sat for a long time in silence ere the stout and growling man who'd been in mid-bluster before the unfamiliar cry dared to rumble, "What was that?"
His longtime companion shook her head slowly, but said nothing.
"Isk?" he growled, a few breaths later.
"It was a strange call," Iskarra said waspishly. "Is your hearinggoing now, too?"
Garfist rolled his eyes in exasperation, belched loudly, and started to pace again. "No, Viper mine, there's nothing wrong with my ears! It's my patience as has broken-again and again, mind-
since we got here!"
"Gar," the woman once infamous as the Viper said patiently, uncoiling herself from where she'd been sitting on the room's lone table with her back to the wall, and striding to the window in the thigh-high boots she'd spent three days prying all the hobnails out of, to make them quiet, "I have noticed this. Even before you remarked on it. The first time."
The bright, acid edge to her voice seemed lost on the burly, pacing-once-more man, who waved his large and hairy hands in the air in wild circles of exasperation, and growled, "How can ye take it all so quietly?"
"With all your noise, 'quietly' isn't a term I'd apply to these last few days," Iskarra replied, peering intently out over the endless forest in search of anything flying or clambering… or just different about the view. It was a search she knew would end in failure, and so was not disappointed.
Giving up, she swung around to face the striding Garfist, and stepped forward at just the right moment to deftly reach out and clap her cupped hand under his codpiece, dragging him to a painfully startled halt.
"Hoah! What? Viper! I-"
"Could start using this on me, you know, while we wait," she said warningly, keeping hold of his rather tender area with one hand and raising her other to the thong-loops of her bodice.
Garfist blinked. His Vipersides was about as buxom as a boar-spear, but she could bend her body as alluringly as any slithering snake-and ply her tongue better than any serpent he'd ever seen. Not that he was in the habit, mind, of entertaining snakes that way…
"Old Ox," Iskarra said coldly, "stop blinking at me as if a thought is battering at your thick skull demanding entry with utter lack of success, and listen."
By means of the handle she refused to relinquish, she towed him over to the wall, thrust his great shoulders back against it, and tapped his chest with the forefinger of her free hand.
"Now," she said, as severely as any nursemaid teaching a rebellious youngling, "when was the last time we didn't have to scramble for coins? Or think about where we could find a bed that wasn't a-crawl with biting bugs or within easy reach of some thieving night-knife? Or get endless meals for free? Or have our own place to stay, as warm and as roomy as we could want for, with no one hounding us over debts or because of what we'd done to them a few days back? Our own glorking castle, mind you?"
"Our own prison, more like."
"You think I don't know that? What I don't know is why you can't just accept that it's a prison we can't get out of, and relax. Rest a bit. Eat like the utter boar I know you can be, given feastables enough! Find the most comfortable bed, in all these bedchambers full of comfortable beds, and get in some snoring!"
"I–I-" Garfist shook his shaggy head, words failing him. "It's just-just… It sticks in my gullet, it does, to be so swindled! Reward, they said, not imprisonment! See it or not, there's a wall of magic around the fishpond and garden as hard as rock and as high as I can throw a stone! We're penned in here like beasts! Strange sort of reward, indeed, those four feather-lasses gave us!"
"Reward, my left teat, Gar," Iskarra snapped. "Those four wing-bitches wanted us well out of Galath, too far away to worm our ways back into any of its castles-and all that gold and wine and jewels just lying about for the taking-without them seeing us coming, all the way down open, wind-howling, arrow-filled Sardray."
"Well, why'd they not just kill us, then?" Garfist rumbled. "Why carry us-three days and nights of hard flying, mind! — over half Falconfar, to set us down here, in a deserted castle in the heart of a forest, that just happens to have barrels of flour and apples and a glorking stocked fishpondf They wouldn't even have had to fight us, to slay us; just soar high enough and let go!"
"Gar, are you truly that much a fool? Or just playing at being one to nettle me? They brought us here-away from our foes, too, mark you-because they still have a use for us, some task or other too risky to chance their own necks in. When they judge the time right, they'll be back to pluck us up and fly us right back into waiting doom, you'll see! I'll wager they've laid magic on us that tells them just where we are, and lets them watch and listen to us whenever they please!"
"That will be quite enough, loosetongued Old Ox! We're not back in last night now, and I've had my fill of certain vices-"
Garfist leered.
"— to last me a season or two. It may take that long for the marks to fade."
Garfist stepped back from his longtime lover-only to come to a painful halt. She hadn't relinquished her hold.
"Strange sort of thinking ye have," he growled, pointing down at her hand. "Had yer fill, have ye? Then why d'ye keep hold of me? And speak of me using it on ye? So, now, which is it? One, or the other?"
"Both," Iskarra said tartly, but let go. "These last few days, have you forgotten everything you've learned about women?"
"No, but I thought ye were better than all the rest," Garfist said bitterly. "Ye said not a word when I knotted the bedsheets and tried to climb out yon window; most lasses I've met would never have let me forget it."
The bone-thin woman smiled. "And worked their ways around, by now, from astonishment at finding some invisible spell that let in wind and rain but made the air as hard as stone to our passage, to having anticipated and told you about such a barrier beforehand, so they could scold you repeatedly for ignoring their advice and climbing out the window anyway!"
The large and shaggy onetime pirate, sometime trader, and constant swindler she'd spent so many years with frowned at her as he thought her words through, nodded, then grinned.
Iskarra smiled back. The grin hadn't taken long to appear, this time.
"So the Aumrarr have left us here-stowed us in a cupboard-until they need us again," he said, still nodding. "While back in Galath-"
"Back in Galath, Melander Brorsavar is calling himself king, and of course the nobles-sponsored by this greedy merchant of Tauren or that greedy one from some city on the Sea of Storms-are all fighting each other or allying with the royal forces. Castles burning, veldukes spurring their warhorses this way and that, creeks running red with the blood of the butchered… and we're well out of it all, Gar. No amount of loot is worth losing your head over, or having your belly slit open and being left staked out in a forest to await the hungry little jaws that come scuttling in the night."