by Ed Greenwood
“Del,” Florin said reprovingly, “that’s not my way.”
“I know it, lad,” the horsemaster growled, wading out of the stream and squelching past Florin. “ ’S just I’ve got troubles enough, about now, without half the King’s Forest thinking I’m bedding this dragon!”
“Dragon, is it? Face full of fangs, has she? Ugly as an old toad?”
“Oh, she’s beautiful enough-if ye like ivory curves mated with the tongue, temper, and nails of a snarling wardog!”
The horsemaster turned, shaking his head, and added, “Must be rooted in being reared noble-no woman of Espar behaves thus!”
Florin surprised himself then. Without really knowing why, he found himself clasping Delbossan’s forearms, leaning down over the older man in his urgency, blurting, “Let me do it, Del. Let me take her on a-a little foray through the forest, then back to meet up with you again. I can follow the Dathyl here up past Espar, and join you at Hunter’s Hollow!”
The horsemaster blinked at him in utter astonishment.
“Wha- why? ”
“I–I think I can break in yon highnose-lass a bit, without whips, lead-reins, bowls of stew, or Lord Hezom made miserable for a summer, with… well, a walk in the woods!”
Delbossan stared at Florin. His jaw had dropped open.
“Let the mud, the thorns, the stinging insects-and feeling lost, cold, and hungry, to say nothing of the little matter of having to walk a good distance,” Florin said swiftly, shaking his old friend, “break her high-and-mightiness, or at least tire her out a bit and make her a shade more grateful for having shelter and riches. I could pretend to be a beast or outlaw after dusk, and chase her out of her tent-and then rescue her, as Florin the wandering forester, the moment she’s in the deep trees.”
“ Lad! She’s not to be touched! If-” Delbossan’s voice was raw with horror.
“I can control my lusts, thank you, Master Delbossan,” Florin said firmly. “And I believe you know me well enough to be sure I’m chasing no ransom here. Nor rescue-coin.”
“But why by all the gods would ye want to get mixed up in this? She’s-”
“Del, I’ve never even seen a noble, let alone talked to one! And beautiful, you say! Silks, velvet, facepaint, and airy graces-all here, not in stinking Suzail with me trying to peer past half a hundred glaring guards, to even get a glimpse of her!”
“But if she’s harmed-if she even thinks ye’ve pawed her, whate’er the truth, lad, your life is forfeit and so’s mine! I dare not-”
“Let her starve on the road to Espar because your bald head is so greedy for rabbit stew!”
The horsemaster shook his head and plucked himself free of Florin’s grasp.
“Ye’re wanderwitted, lad. Wild-crazed!”
“I’m… perhaps I am. Del, hear me! I-don’t you remember when you were young? I’m like that now, aye?”
The horsemaster’s look of horror deepened. “Ye want to bed half Espar, without any of them knowing about the oth-?” Then, as Florin’s expression changed to one of amazement, Delbossan flushed a deep red, shut his mouth like a poacher’s trap, shook his head violently, and whirled around to stamp back down the trail.
“Del!” Florin hissed urgently, grabbing at his arm. “Del, listen! ”
The horsemaster kept walking.
“Del,” Florin said quickly, into the older man’s ear, “you trained me! As a little lad, with smiles, apples, and letting me ride: you trained me. I’m a steed you schooled and sent into the world seeing things your way. My parents told me what was decent and right, aye, but you made their words true by showing me they weren’t just trying to sway me with empty speeches-just by being yourself, you showed me what it is to be of Cormyr. You know what I will and won’t do.”
The horsemaster swung around again.
“Lad,” he said heavily, “ye’re what they call ‘handsome.’ I’d hate to be the cause of the two of ye-both young, both headstrong-rutting because ye’re alone together. What if ye get her with child? Hey? What then? I say again: her life would be ruined, but thine and mine’d be ended, short and sharp! If not by blade by the king’s decree, then by bow or dagger, some night soon, on Lord Crownsilver’s orders!”
“Thaerefoil,” Florin said firmly, fingers busy at one of his belt pouches. He held out the leaves for Delbossan to see. “You know what it does.”
“Makes even a stallion less than a man,” the horsemaster murmured, bending to smell the leaves. “Fresh. Ye just gathered these.”
“I did. Not with this in mind, but…”
Delbossan looked up at the young forester. “Ye’d drink a tea made with this-of my making, and with me watching?”
Florin put the smallest leaf in his mouth, chewed, opened his mouth to show the horsemaster its crushed paste on his tongue, swallowed, and opened his mouth again for inspection.
“Gods above,” Delbossan murmured, “that much’ll unman ye for days!” He gave Florin a long look. “And if she runs off and breaks her neck, or gets eaten by wolves?”
Florin drew his dagger. “This shall defend her. No harm will come to her, and I’ll demand no coin of her family nor spread falsehood about her. I swear by the Purple Dragon and by the honor of the Falconhands. I swear by the Lady of the Forest I serve.”
His last sentence seemed to roll away among the trees, echoing weirdly, and as Delbossan stepped back in amazement, leaves everywhere seemed to glow, for just a moment. The older man caught his breath as he watched them fade.
Florin seemed unaware of both glow and voice-thunder, but stood eyeing the horsemaster, his gaze steady. “Well?”
Teeth flashed in Delbossan’s sudden smile. “Lad, I begin to feel delighted. Mind ye tell me all about it, after.”
They clasped forearms, as one warrior to another, and the horsemaster leaned forward and muttered conspiratorially, “Do nothing until nightfall-and then wait ’til ye hear yon two jackblades snoring…”
Chapter 2
A HUNGER FOR ADVENTURE
Grand adventures are tales full of wonder, daring, and peril. They all began as slapdash accounts of some folk having a horrible time, long ago and far away, and found a little lace and glimmer along the way.
Thus do sages solemnly record all ‘history.’ Whatever gods smile upon you grant that storytellers favor your tale, so that it displays you brightly, and twists you not so much that your very name and face are lost.
Arasper Ardanneth,
Sage of the Road
Arasper’s Little Book published in the Year of the Prince
T o the north of the scattered cottages of Espar, grassgirt hills rise west of the King’s Road, rolling like half-buried green leviathans for a long way north ere the woodlots scattered across their humpbacks rise and join together into true forest again.
To the west, the hills find close-tangled trees more swiftly. The folk of Espar are not so numerous as to hew firewood enough to swiftly thrust back the woods.
On the crest of the highest hill, at the edge of that close and familiar forest, stand the tumbled foundation stones of a ruined, long-fallen cottage. No man alive in Espar can recall who dwelt there, or when it fell into ruin. All know it as ‘the Stronghold,’ though it was never a keep. For generations it has been the playground of the boldest youths of Espar.
Two such bold youths, young lads in dusty breeches, boots, and homespun, were lounging against its weathered stones, watching the sun descend toward the trees. One had just arrived, puffing slightly from his eager trot up the hillside, and had been greeted thus: “Ho, Clumsum.”
“Hail, Stoop,” the arrival replied calmly. He rarely sounded anything other than calm, which was unusual in a youngling-or anyone else-who bore the silver Ladycoin about his neck and sought to be ordained in the service of Tymora. His name was not ‘Clumsum,’ though few in Espar called him anything else. “Saw you down by the creek this morn. Much luck?”
“Much luck, thanks to your tireless prayers,” came the gently
sarcastic reply, “but not so much fish.” As if to punctuate that statement, the speaker’s stomach rumbled loudly. He added a sigh, tossed aside a tough blade of grass, and plucked another to chew upon. Though he was ‘Stoop’ to most of Espar, that wasn’t his real name either. And although he bore around his neck not a luck-coin of Tymora but a sunrise disk of Lathander he’d painted himself, the two Esparrans were firm friends, and always had been. Doust Sulwood and Semoor Wolftooth: Clumsum and Stoop.
“Sit, Doust,” Semoor said around his blade of grass, waving at an adjacent stone. “The shes will be late. As usual.” His boots were propped on a rock before him, and his words came floating lazily past them.
Doust grinned and sat, saying by way of reply, “Well, they do have more chores than we.”
His friend made a rude, dismissive sound halfway between a snort and a spit, and shifted his feet a trifle to give Doust room to prop his own boots up on the same handy rock. Semoor looked even more sleepy than was his wont. There was an easy smile on his rumpled face, and his shoulder-length hair was its usual dusty brown rats’ nest. His overlarge nose jutted out at the world as it always did, giving him something of the look of a vulture.
Just now, he was waving a disdainful hand at the hillside below.
As usual, the sward was dotted with Hlorn Estle’s flock of patiently grazing sheep-and as usual, Hlorn’s three sons were sitting here and there on the slope, eyeing the two lads up at the Stronghold suspiciously.
“ ’Tis so nice,” Semoor said sarcastically, “to be wanted.”
“Ah, I see the Morninglord’s rosy glow doth suffuse thee, this even,” Doust observed with a little smile, selecting his own blade of grass.
“Sabruin,” Semoor drawled, choosing the least polite way of saying ‘go pleasure yourself.’
“After you do the same, so I can watch and learn how,” Doust responded, and then pointed into the trees across the road below and added in satisfaction, “Ah! Islif comes!”
“Jhess’ll get here first,” his friend replied, pointing across the hillside to where the sheep were gathered most thickly.
Doust scrambled to his feet. “Huh! Belkur’ll set the dogs on her, if she goes walking right through the herd!”
“He already has-and she’s worked some spell or other; they won’t go near her,” Semoor said delightedly.
Belkur Estle’s snarled curses rose clearly into the evening air, amid canine whinings-and through them came a petite lass in long, gray skirts, striding as unconcernedly as if the field were hers and empty but for her strolling self. Fiery orange-brown hair fell free around her shoulders in a tumbling flood, and her eyes were large, gray-green, and merry.
“Ho, sluggards,” she greeted them, lifting her skirts to reveal wineskins hooked about both her garters. She proffered them with a wide grin.
It was matched, with enthusiasm. Semoor plucked one skin and unstoppered it eagerly. “Ah, Flamehair, Lathander sent you!”
“No,” Doust disagreed, claiming the other skin and sitting down again, “I believe Tymora-”
“And I rather believe I managed to bring myself here — and steal the wine from Father’s end vat, too,” Jhessail told them tartly. “Don’t get drunk, now, holy men; I grow tired of slapping the both of you at once.”
“Ah,” Semoor told her slyly, “but we never tire of being slapped!”
“Sabruin,” Jhessail told him in a dignified tone, settling herself between them. Both promptly laid hands on her thighs in hopes of being slapped, but she gave them withering glances instead. They grinned, shrugged, and applied themselves to emptying wineskins.
A young woman taller and more heavily muscled than anyone on the hillside-including the sheep-was striding up the hill now, clanking as she came. As straight as a blade and as broad of shoulder as the village smith, Islif Lurelake was in a hurry. Some of the Estle dogs barked at her, but none dared rush her, because a drawn sword was gleaming in her hand.
The clanking was familiar; it came from her homemade battle-coat, an old leather jerkin onto which Islif had sewn castoff fragments of old plate-armor in an overlapping array. But none of the three in the Stronghold had ever seen that splendid sword before.
“Heyah, Islif!” Semoor Wolftooth called, when the striding woman was still a good ways below. “Where’d you get that? ”
The warrior woman lifted icy gray eyes that stabbed at him like two sword points and said flatly, “From Bardeluk.”
Doust frowned in thought. “Uh… oh, Lord Hezom’s new guard, aye?”
“Ho ho,” Semoor said teasingly. “ Persuaded him to give you his second-best blade, did you? Just like that?”
Islif Lurelake strode into the Stronghold and came to a halt, towering over them. When she was this close, broad-shouldered and buxom, her arms corded with muscles Doust and Semoor would have given much to call their own, the battle-coat lost all hint of the ridiculous. She was striking rather than beautiful, with a hard, long-jawed face that had caused her to be dubbed ‘Horseface’ more than once by unfriendly tongues, and her jet-black hair was cut short in a warriors’ helm-bob. With those piercing, almost silver eyes, she looked as dangerous as the sword in her hand.
“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean.”
The would-be servant of Lathander lifted his sunrise disk and told it, “Oh, I never thought you’d been sleeping, in all those half-days-half-days, lass! — you’ve spent behind closed doors with, ah, fortunate Master Bardeluk.”
Islif snorted, and nudged him with the metal-shod toe of a much-patched boot. “What a small mind you have, holynose! I’ve been shut up teaching him to read and write. This-” She hefted the long, slightly curved longsword, and they saw a blue sheen race down it-“was my price, from the beginning.”
“Stop waving that about,” Jhessail said quietly. “You’re… impressing me.”
Islif grounded the blade on the toe of one boot-and surprised them all by smiling broadly. “Well,” she said, bright teeth flashing, “that’s a start.”
“You’re certainly impressing the Estle boys,” Doust observed. “Their eyes are like roundshields!”
Jhessail looked downslope. “They look less impressed than suspicious to me.” She sniffed. “Afraid we’ll pounce on one of their precious sheep and butcher it right here, belike.”
“Huh,” Semoor grunted. “More likely they’re hoping we’ll start kissing, and you’ll take your clothes off. That’s what they use the Stronghold for.”
“Live in hope, don’t you, Wolf?” Jhessail replied, her words dripping acid.
The priestling of Lathander shrugged and spread his hands-an elaborate gesture somewhat spoiled by the half-empty wineskin wrapped around one of them. “Lady Flamehair,” he explained, as if to an idiot child, “that’s what holy folk do. Live in the hope that the gods grant us, every day.”
“Until, in the fullness of time, you die like everyone else,” Islif commented, extending an imperious hand for his wineskin.
Semoor pretended not to notice, and declaimed, “Islif Lurelake, Jhessail Silvertree, Semoor Wolftooth, and Doust Sulwood-adventurers bold!”
Doust sighed. “I’m not so sure ‘bold’ is telling truth. Say: restless for adventure.”
“And you neglected to mention the boldest of us all,” Jhessail said, from between the two priestlings. “Florin, who’s off somewhere tracking stags and exploring the King’s Forest right now!”
It was Semoor’s turn to sigh. “The man in whose shadow I dwell, day after month after season.”
“Well, that’s because you’re not-in truth-bold enough,” Islif pointed out, firmly plucking the wineskin from his grasp as a breeze rose at her back, setting the leaves rustling. “Florin is. Which is why he’s elsewhere, whilst we sit here watching the last of the day fade, talking and dreaming-and no more than that.”
“But we can’t just go tearing off into the woods hacking at things and telling everyone we’re adventurers!” Semoor’s growl was as f
ierce as it was sudden. “Or ’tis the inside of one of the king’s jails we’ll be finding, soon enough! We need a charter-and charters cost coins none of us have!”
Doust looked at his friend, his eyes even darker blue than usual. “Coins we could scrape together, but we still have to convince someone we deserve a charter, and by all Tymora’s holy kisses, I don’t know how! Would you grant a bunch of restless younglings license to wander about the realm, hacking at things and looking for trouble?”
Semoor snorted. “Of course. Stupid question. Fortunately for the realm-and ill luck for us-I’m not King Azoun.”
“Stoop, don’t say that. Tymora frowns on those who speak of… ah, ‘poor fortune.’ ”
“ ’Tisn’t Lady Luck’s frown that makes me despair of ever managing to convince any court official to grant us a charter,” Jhessail snapped, her face going red. “I mean, look at us! Bored, restless younglings, yes? Get apprenticed, they’ll say! Learn a trade! Earn an honest day-coin! And send word back to us that you’ve done so, to save us the trouble of sending a war wizard by to peer at you as we serve all the malcontents!”
She stopped waving her arms suddenly, snatched the wineskin Doust was holding, and took a long, deep drink.
The two priestlings exchanged glances. Semoor spoke first.
“Let’s just go to Sembia, and to the Nine Hells with a charter!”
Jhessail gave him a fierce look. “And bid farewell to Cormyr? ” She waved down the hill at its ripples of waving grass, then swung around to indicate the gently dancing leaves in the great gnarled trees above. “Our home? Leave this? ”
“Well,” Islif said dryly, “I haven’t noticed any great mustering of outlaws in Espar. Or heaps of treasure, dragons’ caves, or evil wizards, for that matter. And if we walk around our neighbors’ lanes and pastures trying to stir up adventure, there soon will be outlaws hereabouts: us.”
“Aye,” Doust said slowly, gazing out across the fields, “Espar’s a fair and pleasant place… but watching sheep wander is about all the excitement any who dwell here can expect, most days.”