She did so, exchanged cursory formalities, and let the gnome, waist high to her willowy form, into the foyer.
“You are the local adventurer’s guild representative, I understand.”
“That, along with keepin’ the armory from falling apart, repairing tools, an’ a few other things,” said the gnome.
This would normally be the part of an audience where she invited her guests to sit in the parlor and had the servants pour tea. Yet as two of these three things were missing entirely, and the tea needed to be rationed, she simply continued speaking. “The situation in this city is far worse than I was led to believe.”
“The situation’s bad most everywhere these days.”
“The local militia do not have sufficient manpower to defend the immediate countryside, and should we be besieged by anything beyond a skirmishing force, the city would collapse like a goblin-built gazebo.”
“If yer lookin ta brow-beat someone about the poor state of our town, might I suggest the mayor.”
Gnebnik had never been fond of the mayor but realized his comment was less than diplomatic after it had slipped out.
“What I wish to do, master armorer, is to remedy the situation.”
“Sending word to the regional imperial seat asking for resources might be a start.” Gnebnik cringed at his own suggestion just after the words slipped out.
“The obviousness of your suggestion notwithstanding, it does bring me to the impetus for my summons.” Lady Isylnoir set a leather bound notebook on a sturdy, if rather rustic sideboard. “I shall require your services.”
Gnebnik nodded. A notebook? She already has a list of enemies she’s looking to make examples of?
He had no interest in elven court politics, but did possess a vivid imagination of how such things played out. Mostly, though, he wanted to get this particular Damocles sword away from his head so that he could return to more pressing tasks. Like making hinges. Winter was coming, and having shutters torn off in a storm due to a poor supply of hardware would reflect badly on his shop.
Lady Isylnoir took a pair of steps, turned, crossed her arms in front of her, as she reviewed a long mental list. “I could enumerate this town’s deficiencies all day.”
And for a moment, Gnebnik feared she would do just that.
“However this situation requires that I prioritize. The most critical deficiency is our current stock of messenger dragonflies. It is far too low.”
“Being cut-off from outward communication would seem to be… a worriment,” said Gnebnik, proud of his restraint in suppressing a comment about third-graders playing chess. Of course the other worriment was the likelihood of any imperial authorities actually responding to said communications.
Which Gnebnik did not estimate to be very high.
“If I’m to coordinate the supply situation with the regional imperial seat, I shall require a reasonable supply. Form a party and see to it. Standard conditions and rates shall apply.”
Gnebnik nodded, deep enough to almost pass for a bow, as he spoke his farewell. He hesitated at the door a moment long. “Out of curiosity, how low is the town’s supply of messenger dragonflies?”
“At the moment, exactly zero.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Lee clapped Sam on the shoulder, taking a seat on the rough stone battlements next to him. Planks and a wooden railing augmented this section of the wall. He looped an arm through the railing and draped his feet over the edge, gazing at the fifty-foot drop to the fields below. “Let me know where you’re going next time you cut out of work early.”
“It’s a nice view from up here,” said Sam. “And I didn’t cut out. I was done. I work faster than you.”
“Yeah.”
The terrain was a hilly checkerboard for a few hundred paces past the sturdy city wall. Little plots of land were dotted with patches of orange and turquoise pumpkins—brilliant even among a generous scattering of crimson fall leaves. Beyond the groves of uniformly trimmed nut trees loomed a forest that towered over the diminutive constructs of people.
The city, which up close felt so solid and secure, seemed from this vantage point like a quaint birdhouse nestled in an ancient Jurassic forest.
“Having second thoughts about the quest?”
“Quest? It’s hardly a quest. Not the way you think of the word, anyway.”
“I thought we were agreed. Help out Gnebnik and Shin until we figure out a way to make it to one of these gateways.”
“Yes. It’s all perfectly sensible. Until you think about just how long it could all take. Just like going to college. Except this got dropped into our laps with no warning. I was so close on a couple things at work. And I was planning on finally talking to my mother about…” Sam’s voice trailed off.
“I know. And it’s my fault we’re here.”
“It’s not all your fault. If I hadn’t been experimenting with such high voltages.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, it’s not just that. You seem to think of me as the one who plans everything five steps in advance, but I’m not. I’m the one who wants to plan things five steps in advance. There have been plenty of decisions in my life that just sort of happened. I saw an opportunity and took it. And in retrospect…”
An autumn breeze, brisk, refreshing, carrying the scent of moss and mushrooms, blew a lock of Lee’s dark, curly hair out of place. “Something else on your mind?”
“Yes.” Sam glared at him. “No. Maybe later.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything, Sam. But we’re the only people on Arvia that know you go to Toledo, Spain, for swords and Toledo, Ohio, for glass. So if you ever do want to talk.”
“Yeah, I know where you live.”
“Regardless, say what you will about this city, but they need help. Real help. The two of us might make a difference. More of a difference than we would have in Toledo anyway.”
Sam ran a hand along the stone. “It’s going to be an early morning. We’d better get back to the Dancing Dryad.”
Chapter 10
Gnebnik squinted at the silhouette of Shin and Sally a hundred paces ahead of them. Shin flashed the go-ahead hand signal from atop his trusted ospherant and proceeded along the narrow mountain road.
A light tap of his staff, and their donkey cart lurched into motion.
The group made good time, with the donkey maintaining a brisk trot, broken only by regular stops for the party to look, listen and smell the air.
When moving, Sam, Lee, and Gnebnik exchanged words at a whisper: so long as they made no more noise than the crunching of the cart’s wheels against the hard-packed gravel road, it was acceptable.
“This isn’t quite what I expected from a quest,” said Lee, from his precarious perch atop the cart’s slender right-side running board.
“And I suppose you wanted to jump straight into slaying the minotaur.” Sam balanced atop the left side running board. “After the moerko, I’d have thought you were cured of looking for trouble.”
“Yer friend’s right,” said Gnebnik. “An’ this is a fine first quest. A clear and achievable goal, three days out, three days back, and if yer lucky, we’ll see plenty of wildlife on the road.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” said Sam.
“Then the wildlife sees us.”
“Bring ’em.” Lee tugged at a breastplate—his midsection and arm reflected a month of physical labor. He gripped the hilt of the borrowed longsword at a now trimmer waist. “I’m feelin’ pretty confident with this thing.”
“Shush,” said Gnebnik, bringing the cart to a halt at a signal from Shin.
The ranger and reptilian mount glided up to them, the long legs of the ospherant padding softly along the ground, in contrast to the rhythmic clopping of the donkey.
“Caught scent of a herd of caprids.” Shin pointed to a section of road fifty paces ahead where the terrain on the left flattened out to a small grove of trees. “Scent is fresh, they’re probably still close by.”
“Caprids? Are they dangero
us?” said Lee.
“I saw you in bed with that bestiary tome the past two nights,” said Sam. “Did you actually read it, or just look at the pictures?”
“It’s a long book!”
“It’s like a goat, or a sheep,” said Sam. “And no, they are not dangerous.”
“That’s mostly correct,” said Shin.
Sam cocked his head, trying to recall the entry. He prided himself on a meticulous memory. As good as one of those new-fangled photographic devices. They were quick and agile, able to leap tremendous heights, and some were kept domestically for wool, hide and meat. But he didn’t recall the tome mentioning anything especially dangerous about them.
“They’re the preferred prey for anything from wood panthers to bone bills,” said Shin. “If we’re not on the lookout for what’s hunting them, we may become the preferred prey. Let’s sprint past.”
Shin nodded, prodded Sally subtly with his heels—which Lee noted had no spurs, and rider and mount spun and darted off, Sally’s long neck and tail swaying in a serpentine motion as they moved, the pair more in sync than any horse and rider Lee or Sam had ever seen.
Giving them a ten-second start, Gnebnik tapped the donkey with his staff, gave a low clicking whistle, and the cart surged ahead.
The grove wasn’t more than a hundred paces deep by a couple hundred wide, a dense, lush jungle-like oasis amid the craggy terrain and scattered cypress trees. They cleared the grove, with neither Lee nor Sam catching sight of the caprid herd, and settled back into a modest trot a few minutes later.
“I don’t believe we just ran away from a pack of goats,” said Lee.
“At yer level, you should be running away from about everything,” said Gnebnik.
“And at your level?” said Lee.
“Shin an’ I don’t have to run away from everything. But it’s usually the smart thing ta do anyway.”
“Some quest. Retreating every chance we get.” Lee gritted his teeth, gripping a worn wooden rung of the cart’s rail, knuckles turning white from his grasp.
“Retreating and living to see the next quest,” said Sam.
“You’ve got the idea,” said Gnebnik. “You know what the giants call us?”
“Giants? There are giants?” Lee’s expression perked.
“Yes, but I don’t mean the species giant, but the giant species. Ogres, trolls, centaurs, merfolk, nagas, harpies. They’re the giants. An’ they call us littles.”
“Wait, they talk?” said Sam.
“Yup. Speak the common tongue like you and I,” said Gnebnik. “A lot of ’em are very clever too. And to them, we are the littles. A curiosity. Somethin’ to toy with.”
“Why do I suddenly feel like a child’s doll,” said Lee, head once again drooping.
“Because that’s what we are to them. Not all of them are predators, mind you, but a lot are.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” said Sam.
“We may be smaller and weaker than most everything in the wilds, but we use what we have to our advantage,” said Gnebnik. “Especially Shin and Sally. He’s got the eyesight and hearing, Sally has the sense of smell. Even the donkey has better ears than we do, an’ we can use it.”
Lee nodded, scanning the right side of the road: a drop off into a deep valley with a generous scattering of trees sprouting from stony crevices. “What sort of beasts do we expect to encounter along the road.”
“Normally nothin’ more than class two. Tiger-jackals, wood panthers, bone bills. Smaller critters that might look ta opportunistically attack a caravan, but usually don’t actively hunt us. But these are not normal times.”
“The road seems in decent shape,” said Sam, scrutinizing the terrain on the left side, much the same as Lee did on the right. “So was the bridge we crossed a quarter of an hour back. If your civilization can build them, it’s hard to believe you can’t also keep them safe.”
“Civilization covers only a tiny bit of the world. Cities here and there. Little havens of safety. But most of the world is not civilized. Not the way most offworlders think of it. It’s in the hands of the beasties.”
Lee gripped the side rail with renewed vigor “And you can’t fight them?”
“You can. But what’s the point? Even if you win, you defeat a large predator, others will take its place. The world is fertile, full of life. Strong life,” said Gnebnik. “That’s the hardest thing for offlanders ta wrap their heads around. This world is too strong for anything like a gnome—or a human—to tame.”
Lee adjusted his footing on the running board. “There’s a cheerful thought.” His eyes darted between tree trunks, rocky outcroppings, crevices in cliff faces, scanning the terrain for signs of life.
“The thing is, you don’t need ta tame it. Yer best weapon lies right between your ears. This world may be wild, nine of ten critters you encounter might be able to tear you to shreds, but if you’re smart, it doesn’t matter. Take the lindworm. Big reptilian predator. One of them could gobble down all four of us for supper. But it’s not personal. They’re looking for a few hundred pounds of flesh and bone ta chomp on. But not ours specifically. It’s not nature versus us. It’s just nature being nature. We ever go traipsing through a lindworm’s territory, we make sure we don’t anger the beastie, we make sure we’re not the most appealing prey, an’ it won’t come after us.”
“Or we just go around it’s territory,” said Sam.
“Every square foot in the wilderness is some critter’s territory,” said Gnebnik, giving a low whistle, the command for the donkey to stop, while they waited for the go-ahead from Shin. “But that’s not always a bad thing.”
Sam swiveled his head to look the gnome in the eyes. Not a bad thing? Is this a joke? “Oh, reeeally?”
“What’s the safest place anywhere in the wilds?”
Great, another puzzle to try to make me look stupid, thought Sam. And to make Lee look stupid. Not that Lee seemed to care.
“I don’t know? An empty cave?” said Lee.
“An’ empty cave’ll do in a pinch, that’s fer sure,” said Gnebnik. “But the safest place is the territory of any powerful critter who’s just fed.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Sam.
“What?!” said Lee.
“This world is too strange for offlanders like myself to wrap our heads around.”
Lee frowned at Sam.
“A powerful beastie will fight to keep anything that could be a challenge to them out of their territory,” said Gnebnik. “An’ if they’ve just fed, they’ll most likely be sleepy an’ not inclined to take a bite out a’ you.”
Lee bit his lip as he pondered. “Soo… how do we know if a particular beast has recently fed?”
“Quite simple,” said Shin, who had somehow reappeared next to the cart without either Lee or Sam noticing. “You have a ranger in your party.”
Sam and Lee glanced at each other, both with the same thought, both unwilling to speak it. They had a lot to learn.
“Spine swine in the valley ahead,” said Shin. “Unlikely to charge up the hill at us, but they can be unpredictable. Better to take the next half mile as quickly as we can.”
Gnebnik nodded. Shin prodded Sally with his heels and rider and mount darted ahead in their curious slithering gait.
After the customary head start, the cart and three riders followed.
Lee scanned the valley to their right. After his experiences so far, he was not at all sure what this ‘spine swine’ would look like.
The yards ticked past, the powerful sakura donkey shrugging off the weight of the modest cart and three riders, able to maintain an impressive canter. Lee finally caught a glimpse of a creature in the valley below, half hidden behind a shrub with bright orange berries. The creature looked more rhinoceros than any pig or boar he had ever seen, and thankfully ignored them as they sped by.
◊ ◊ ◊
The group passed two caravans traveling the opposite direction that afternoon. The larger ca
ravan, consisting of a half-dozen heavy wagons, was pulled by draft horses and escorted by no less than seven warriors. They exchanged greetings and information both times, and both caravans reported a quiet road with no predator sightings.
As sun dipped low on the horizon, Gnebnik checked the map against the rocky terrain. “There’s a series of small caverns marked as potential shelters.”
They unhitched the cart and shoved it to the side of the cavern mouth. The cavern was tall but shallow, the top of the triangular mouth as high as the roof peak of a two-story building, though the cavern extended only a couple dozen paces into the cliff. Nevertheless, it provided shelter from weather and defense on three sides against nocturnal predators, and its shallow depth meant they could clearly see from a distance that it was not occupied by dragons, trolls, or any other creatures that might fancy a human, gnome, or neko snack. A generous collection of usefully sized and shaped stones were piled about the entrance, no doubt leftovers from countless groups of adventurers who had camped there over the centuries.
Lee and Gnebnik set up camp, with Lee demonstrating enough campcraft skill for Gnebnik not to lecture him on the finer points of fire rings, while Sam and Shin went to fetch water for them and the two mounts from a brook a hundred and fifty paces distant.
“There’s an art to a good camp location,” whispered Shin, his vigilant eyes seeming to glow in the twilight, darting from tree trunk to shrub to rotting stump: anywhere a predator might hide.
Sam did his best to follow suit, but said nothing.
“Close to fresh water, but not too close. The sound of running water can mask the approach of a predator.” He motioned Sam to stop just a few paces from the brook, scanning the pools of water, the little banks on both shores, and finally pointing to a tangled mass of roots on the far bank, some twenty paces distant. “Tusk toad.”
Sam strained to make out the outline of a toad in the dim light. “I don’t see it.”
“Right there. Big root furthest to the right. Down a little. You’ll see a reddish-orange eye.”
A billiard-ball-sized amphibian eye blinked.
Hazelhearth Hires Heroes Page 8