“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
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.”
