by Ed Greenwood
Luraumadar, the mask murmured approvingly, inside his head.
"Let's get going," he told Tantaerra. "No doubt he'll try to ambush us, when he can catch us at a disadvantage."
"The wizard called himself Araungras Karm," the halfling muttered, "just like you said. I know I've never seen him before-but he still reminded me of someone. I just can't think of whom. It's driving me crazy."
"In my experience," Tarram said, "wrestling with memories is futile. Turn to something else, and the answer will unfold in your mind. Trying to hurry it won't work."
Tantaerra sighed. "True enough. So, how far from Hurlandrun are we?"
He shrugged. "Not far-but then again, in this forest and keeping off the roads, 'far' is a rather empty word, yes?"
"Yes," the halfling agreed-then hurled herself hard at the backs of his knees. He went over backward with a startled curse, a crossbow bolt humming through the air above his descending nose.
When he hit the ground, he wasted no time trying to see who was attacking, but rolled away from the source of that bolt, to where the land fell away in another rocky cliff-and over it, snatching at roots and clefts in the rock to keep from plummeting. Tantaerra was nowhere to be seen.
He clambered sideways along the cliff face to where he could get under an overhang, and clung there, waiting.
So, some Molthuni? Or Voyvik again?
Voyvik, for any coin he might wager. The crazed Nirmathi-or agent of Karm-had become far more than a passing annoyance. It was beyond time to deal with him.
"Tarram Armistrade, I have a proposition for you."
It was Voyvik's voice, of course, coming from around the bulge of moss-stained rock to his right.
The Masked smiled sourly. "Let me guess," he replied. "You want me to hand over the mask in return for some generous blandishment or other-so you can then kill me. Or has Karm something new in mind?"
"I've no intention of killing you."
"Are you aware that Karm probably intends to kill you? Through that gem he gave you. The moment he knows you have the mask, he'll set its magic on you."
Sheer bluff, but if Voyvik had dealt long enough with Karm or any wizard, its little worm of doubt should sink into waiting soil …
"So you eavesdropped on our meeting? Then I suppose the time for deals is past. Hand over the mask, and I'll let you live."
Voyvik's voice was closer now. The man had obviously been climbing cautiously along the rock face as they spoke.
The Masked backed into a cleft that he hoped he could sit in and keep his balance, if he had to hurl several daggers. One old root curved past him, and he drew a dagger and planted it in the spongy wood. Then he slid home another beside the first, lining them up ready.
He was reaching for a third as Voyvik came into view around the rocks. Climbing carefully, with no sign of a crossbow, but with daggers strapped to his forearms that hadn't been there before. Unsheathed daggers, their blades coated with something purplish, buckled to stout bracers.
Poisoned. So one scratch-even a clumsy throw-and death would follow.
Tarram deliberately drew forth his third dagger and held it ready, awaiting the right moment for a good throw into Voyvik's face. An eye would be best …
"Last chance," Voyvik said with a smile. "The mask, Armistrade."
The Masked hefted his dagger. Voyvik kept climbing closer.
Then things happened very quickly.
A flurry of dark cloth whipped around Voyvik's head from behind. Startled, he tried to turn, shaking his head to try to get clear-and a small hand clubbed his forehead with the pommel of a dagger, then slammed at his knuckles, twice and thrice.
Then the man was falling, clawing futilely at the rocks he was plunging from, snarling a furious curse as he left them. He slammed into an outcropping farther down, let out a roar of pain …and was gone, leaving behind only the whispering breeze.
That, and a halfling hanging one-handed over the same drop, rather critically inspecting a ragged piece of dark cloth transfixed on the point of her dagger.
"The old underkirtle over the eyes ploy," she commented, "is harder on underkirtles than I recalled."
"Where," The Masked asked her, "did you get a spare underkirtle?"
"I didn't," she snapped, "so kindly spare my dignity, and look elsewhere for a moment or two. I was getting so tired of that man."
Tarram chuckled. "You sound like a jaded lady of pleasure."
"You sound like the sort of pig who'd patronize them, so thank me nicely for ridding us both of Orivin Voyvik, and kindly rise out of your cesspool of lust and get us to the Shattered Tomb before we both die of hunger or a hail of Nirmathi arrows."
Luraumadar, the mask said gleefully, inside Tarram's head.
"I thank you," he told Tantaerra. "I'd thank you more handsomely if I could see Voyvik's body safely burned to ashes, his bones shattered and gone so no wizard could send him after us as some sort of horrid skeleton afire with deadly magic, but …"
"That'll do," the halfling replied, her voice more distant now as she climbed back to wherever she'd come from. "Tell me, how're you at sewing?"
Chapter Thirteen
Deep in Nirmathas
Aren't you finished yet?" Tantaerra hissed. "It's cold, sitting here with the wind whistling up my legs."
"The light isn't the best," Tarram told her irritably, "and no, I'm not. Damned thread keeps bunching."
"Next time, steal finer stuff," the halfling hissed back.
"She was going for her bow. I only had time to grab what I could see," he replied. "Are those groundchokes roasted yet?"
The halfling probed into the ashes of the dying fire with her belt knife. "No," she replied disgustedly. "I suppose I'm condemned to wait for everything, tonight!"
"Not your death, Molthuni!" The voice roared at them out of the trees, followed by three arrows.
One tore the underkirtle from Tarram's fingers, needle and all, leaving behind stinging blood. Another sent torn leaves swirling beside his ears, and the third sent embers, ashes, and half-done groundchokes spraying up into Tantaerra's face.
She went over backward, sputtering, as Tarram kicked hard at the ground and curled over into a backward roll in the other direction, clawing out daggers.
"I'm getting more than tired of this," he snarled aloud.
Luraumadar, the mask chirped helpfully.
He ground his teeth in irritation as he arrived behind a tree and found his feet in the same moment, coming up in a sprint. If there were more archers with shafts ready, he and Tantaerra were dead anyway, but if he could get to the bowstrings of those who'd just loosed before they could see someone to take down …
A wild shriek and some crashings of dead leaves and branches off to one side told him Tantaerra was trying to provide him with a noisy diversion.
I'll not waste it, he told himself fiercely, sprinting around tree trunks and ducking under branches-only to plunge right into the heart of the Nirmathi warband.
There were only five-no, six-of them, and one was cursing a snapped bowstring while two others lacked bows and were raising large, rusty old swords to hack at him, faces tightening with the effort. He slammed into one swordsman, not bothering to launch an attack, and used the solid crash of their meeting to deflect himself into the nearest bowman, where a slash of his dagger severed a bowstring while the man was frantically fumbling to defend himself. Tarram spun away from him into a headlong charge at the next bowman-who fell precipitously before he could get there.
He heard rather than saw Tantaerra rolling out from under the falling man's ankles, grinned savagely, and slashed at the face of the next Nirmathi, who ducked away with a yell.
"We make a good team!" he announced cheerfully, spinning and ducking down to batter the head of the fallen man with both dagger-pommels. Then he sprang back up to meet the second swordsman, whose wild swing sliced the bark of a defenseless and innocent tree-before a leaping ball of halfling arrived in the man's face, feet-first. The Nirmathi stagg
ered back, into the man with the snapped bowstring. They both groped for balance, the bowman trying not to put the dagger he'd just drawn into his fellow Nirmathi, so Tarram raced right past them, trying for the last bowman before the man could raise his bow and aim.
He got there as the bow came up, knocking the arrow away and getting his elbow into the man's throat. The man went over with a choking sob, and Tarram rode him to the ground and clubbed him solidly with a dagger-pommel.
Behind Tarram, a man groaned. He spun around again, in time to see a triumphant Tantaerra striking a pose atop two senseless Nirmathi-that second swordsman and the man whose string had parted.
Which left two Nirmathi still on their feet, and no bows intact. The soldiers were now backing uncertainly away through the trees, with two daggers each raised and ready in their hands.
Tarram gave them his coldest smile and stalked toward them, Tantaerra trotting to his side.
He took another menacing step, then spun and fled from them, heading on in the general direction of Hurlandrun-only to stumble and almost fall as Tantaerra sprang and wrapped herself around his right shin, dragging at him.
"Hold, masked man!" she panted. "I want my underkirtle! Where'm I going to find another my size, here in the middle of this oh-so-beautiful wilderness?"
Tarram hopped to an awkward halt, aided by a handy tree he could carom off, and snarled, "All right! But-"
Tantaerra let go, sprang high, caught hold of his belt, and pulled.
She was too small to overbalance him into a face-first fall, but he stumbled, trying to keep his eyes on the two Nirmathi-now mere dark, distant shiftings amid the leaves, slipping away into the trees-and snarled, "All right, I said!"
"Tarram," the halfling said, eyes not leaving his as she let go and fell to land on both feet, "look behind you."
The Masked whirled.
And saw the faintest of glimmers. A fine, sharp wire was stretched across where he'd been about to run, at just the height of his throat.
"There's another one, about three strides on," Tantaerra told him.
The Masked turned and looked at her. "The Nirmathi are getting nasty," he said slowly.
"No. I'm thinking Voyvik is. I'd say he guided that warband to us. I'll have to do a better job, next time I knock him off a cliff. Let's get away from here, before he finds any more soldiers."
"No disagreement from me," The Masked told her. "Find your kirtle and let's be gone."
Luraumadar, the mask purred in the depths of his mind.
"Be silent," he muttered at it, aloud.
The dirty, half-cooked groundchoke Tantaerra presented him with, a short but panting forest trot later, tasted surprisingly good.
∗ ∗ ∗
They blundered across a trail heading roughly in the right direction, and walked along it the rest of the day and all that night, Tantaerra's mood cheerful thanks to her recovery of her kirtle with thread and needle intact, and only a meager spattering of Tarram's blood on it.
"I can pass that off as battle scars," she said brightly.
"Oh? To whom?" he asked pointedly, rousing the merriest laughter he'd heard out of her in quite some time.
Then they sank back into silence, belatedly mindful that not only Voyvik but all armed Nirmathas was out there in the trees on all sides, only too eager to do harm to intruders.
They walked on, listening tensely, hearing rustlings all around them-some distant, but a few close indeed.
Yet no daggers came, and it seemed their apprehension had been misplaced, because they heard nothing but hooting night birds and small rustling things until morning, when they were both staggering along yawningly seeking a place to hide and sleep for the day.
That was when the faint, distant din of a pitched battle came to their ears.
Wearily walking on toward it, they came to a long valley that narrowed to the north. In the distance, they could see a bridge that carried the best road they'd seen thus far in Nirmathas from one bank of a shallow, rock-studded river to the other.
What was left of quite a large Molthuni army was scattered across the valley floor, their numerous dead all around them.
By the looks of things, Nirmathi bowmen had harassed them from the wooded heights on either side of the valley, turning the bridge into a slaughter-chute until the Molthuni had broken ranks and fled down into the valley-whereupon a line of Nirmathi had formed across the valley and sent a withering storm of arrows down Molthuni throats until the soldiers of Molthune had reached them and started hacking.
"Hurlandrun's somewhere the other side of this valley, isn't it?" Tantaerra asked glumly.
"One ridge beyond what we're looking at, if the map can be trusted," Tarram told her. "I keep looking at it so that if we lose it, my mind will still hold what's left of our way to the Shattered Tomb."
"It might happen sooner than you think," she said. "Look."
A little stream ran down the slope next to them. Below, Nirmathi were following it up toward where she and The Masked stood, a few Molthuni soldiers trudging after them.
Sighing, she bent low for a drink. Tarram joined her at the bank, keeping watch over the trees behind them for Voyvik as she drank her fill.
"Next time we have to take down someone trying to murder us, choose the ones with waterskins at their belts, will you?" she asked. "Your turn."
By the time he was finished drinking, some of the foremost climbers had seen them. "Friends!" Tarram called, waving hands empty of weapons.
Some of the Nirmathi faces looked less than convinced, so he and Tantaerra backed well away from the lip of the valley, and stood back-to-back watching the forest around warily for anyone approaching.
"Nirmathas forever!" Tantaerra called, when the first men reached the top.
"A halfling," one of those Nirmathi told another, then peered again and added, "A female halfling!"
Luraumadar, the mask commented airily.
"We were just going to kindle a fire," Tarram called. "Care to join us?"
It was too much to hope these warriors would be carrying food enough to share, but if he and Tantaerra could pass themselves off as Nirmathi displaced from afar in all the fighting …
"And who, before the bleary eyes of Cayden Cailean, are you?" a heavyset, grizzled Nirmathi in rusty chainmail demanded, limping toward them with a notched sword ready in one hand. He had the air of command, and the best armor they'd seen on a Nirmathi since the riverbank.
Which turned out to be a good thing a moment later, when the poisoned dagger that came hurtling through the trees at The Masked missed and glanced off the officer's shoulder with a tling.
Everyone turned. Voyvik was a dark, distant figure hurrying away through the forest, but Tantaerra leaped into the air to draw attention as she shouted, "There he is again! The Molthuni spy who's been trying to kill us!"
A few Nirmathi jogged off into the forest after him, while the rest continued their exhausted limping up the hill. Foremost among the latter camp was the Nirmathi commander, who eyed The Masked and the halfling narrowly, and lurched over to pick up Voyvik's dagger.
"Don't touch it!" Tantaerra warned him quickly. "It's poisoned!"
He halted, giving them an even more suspicious look.
"Narandur!" a Nirmathi called, from the lip of the valley. "The Molthuni are all retreating south along the river. None coming after us, any longer."
"Good," the grizzled commander called back. "Muster to me, here!"
As armed men in motley armor and leathers began to converge, he stumped up to Tarram and the halfling. "You two are coming with us. I need to hear all you've seen of Molthuni these last few days-where, and how many, and what they were doing. Truth, and leave nothing out."
"Gladly," Tarram said quickly, before Tantaerra could say anything sharper. His empty stomach chose that moment to rumble so loudly that Narandur grinned.
"Well, you're no Molthuni, that's for sure." He headed for a stone that looked as if it could serve as a seat. "Never
met a hungry one yet."
∗ ∗ ∗
By nightfall, The Masked, Tantaerra, and their Nirmathi hosts-or were they captors? — had moved a long way north along the heights above the narrowing valley, to make camp far from any surviving Molthuni who might think to steal after them.
Their campsite was a hilltop in the forest, and on that wooded height, within the shattered, tumbled, overgrown remains of a long-ruined fortress watchtower.
Luraumadar, the mask told Tarram approvingly, as he looked around at the head-high ring of massive, ivy-cloaked stones, dark tree trunks thrusting up through and around it like pillars.
Sentries had been posted and fires lit. Tarram had offered to take his turn standing sentry, but Narandur curtly refused.
"You stay here by me, the both of you. I've need of your honest tongues."
They sat.
Tantaerra hadn't let her behind touch the ground for an instant before she asked, "Aren't you worried about the fire? It'll be seen for miles, up on this height. Won't it bring Molthuni creeping here, with ready bows and drawn steel?"
Narandur looked across the flames at her, but his wasn't the only cold grin to be seen. All of the Nirmathi sitting or standing within the ring wore the same expression.
"We hope it does," the grizzled commander told her. "Any Molthuni who dares to draw near-and we don't expect many; we've taught them the hard way not to blunder around our forests by night-will walk right into the night blades."
He hesitated for an instant, to see if either of his two guests would betray themselves as liars about their professed Nirmathi heritage by asking what or who "night blades" were, but neither was foolish enough to step into his trap. It took no particular brilliance to figure out that "night blades" would be Nirmathi who'd been sleeping all day and patrolled the dark hours, awaiting Molthuni trying to blunder through the dark forests.
"This is our land," Narandur added quietly, "and we defend it night and day. Nirmathas is our cloak and our armor, and fights with us."
"While I've no desire at all to see us become part of Molthune," Tarram spoke up, following Tantaerra's lead-for the more time Narandur spent answering them, the less time they'd spend scrambling to answer his probing questions-"two things worry me increasingly, as the years pass and this war drags on." He held up one finger. "How long can we last? Or rather, how long before Molthune bleeds us dry, outslaying us until there are no fit warriors still standing to defend Nirmathas?"