“You still have it,” Graywing pointed at the sealed leather pouch, wondering if the man had gone insane. “It’s safe in your pouch.”
“Barbarian!” Clonogh howled at him, dancing about in his rage. “This pouch? This pouch is nothing! It was a ruse! The Fang of Orm is back there! You … you threw it away!”
“I threw it … you mean your walking stick?”
“Walking stick!” Clonogh was almost gibbering now. “That was no walking stick! That was the Fang of Orm, one of the most powerful relics in this pitiful world!”
In the blue of evening, Graywing crept alone up the slope, into the blockaded hills that ringed the Vale of Sunder. Moving like a shadow, he retraced his earlier racing route, looking for the scene of the failed ambush. Ahead he saw the rock spur where the assassins had waited, but there was no sign now that anything had occurred there. The bodies were gone, the trail apparently untouched.
Every sense alert, he moved from cover to cover, his eyes searching. Then a few yards ahead, where there had been no one a moment before, a slim, dark-garbed figure leaned casually against a tree. As Graywing tensed, his hand on his sword hilt, the man straightened and stepped forward. “Don’t bother looking,” a pleasant, musical voice said. “I already searched. It’s gone.”
Graywing squinted, feeling for an instant as though he were looking at a ghost. “Dartimien?” he breathed.
“Of course I’m Dartimien,” the man grinned. “I always was. It’s been a long time, Graywing, though I see you’ve lost none of your deft touch with the big blade. That was quite a mess you left here. Blood all over everything. Took me an hour to cover all the traces.”
“Dartimien,” Graywing repeated. “I thought you were dead, at Neraka.”
“So did those goblins,” Dartimien grinned. “They marched right over me. It was the last mistake they ever made.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Graywing said. “Can’t tolerate goblins. Besides, I always thought if anybody ever killed you, it should be me. What do you mean ‘it’s gone’? What’s gone?”
“That white stick,” the Cat said. “The one you cracked that Gelnian’s skull with. I found everything else, and here you are searching, so I assume that’s what you’re searching for. What is it?”
“None of your business,” Graywing said. Keeping a wary eye on the smaller man, he glanced aside, into the heavy brush, where the ivory stick had gone.
“I looked there,” Dartimien said. “Believe me, it wasn’t to be found.”
With a movement so swift it fooled the eye, Graywing sidestepped and disappeared into the heavy brush. The artifact, the Fang of Orm, should be right there! But nothing was there. The stick had disappeared, as though it had never been. The only trace of any kind was a faint trail, as though rabbits had passed that way.
When he returned to the path, Dartimien the Cat was still there, lounging against a rock.
“I told you,” the Cat purred. “Your stick is gone. I already looked.”
“Those ambushers were yours?”
“They hired me for a job,” Dartimien said. “I did the job. That’s all.”
“I knew there was an expert,” Graywing muttered. Then he arched a brow at the smaller one. “Did you get paid?”
“Of course I got paid,” the Cat snapped. “I always get paid.”
“Well, because of you, I didn’t!”
“A shame,” Dartimien said. “Fortunes of war. Speaking of which, It’s like a war zone around here. But when I was through here before, during the big war, there was a village, just over that hill. Want to have a look? We might find some halfway decent ale.”
“Are you buying?” Graywing scowled.
“I suppose so. It seems only fair, under the circumstances. But tell me, truly. If that thing wasn’t a walking stick, what was it?”
“The Fang of Orm,” Graywing said. “It’s a relic of some kind. A thing of magic. The Tarmites went to a lot of trouble to get it.”
“It must be valuable, then. I guess that’s what the Gelnians were after, too, though they didn’t tell me.” Dartimien cocked his head and raised one eyebrow, a boyish mannerism that made him seem, momentarily, harmless and prankish, though Graywing knew better. Dartimien was one of the most lethal fighters he had ever met. “Maybe we could find it, if we tried,” the Cat mused. “It has to be somewhere.”
Beneath a stone shelf above a human campsite, Bron and his followers were looking at Talls. It was an extremely boring activity. All the Talls had done since nightfall was roast some chickens, eat their supper, then roll up in their blankets and go to sleep. Bron had relieved the boredom by organizing a forage, and now the gully dwarves in their little cave were stuffing themselves on leftover roast chicken, washed down with Tall tea.
“How long Highbulp say we look at Talls?” the chunky Tunk asked now, rubbing sleepy eyes.
“Didn’ say,” Bron said. “But Scrib say see what Talls do, an’ they didn’ do anything yet.”
Tag crept close to peer at Bron’s new bashing tool, a gleaming white stick he had picked up somewhere. It seemed to have pictures carved all over it, but none of the Aghar could figure out what they were pictures of.
“Pretty thing,” Tag allowed, trying again to see into the teardrop openings in the wide end of the stick. The holes were a bit baffling. There didn’t seem to be anything inside, but it was hard to be sure. Even in good light, the little hollow in the stick was as dark as night. It was an inky darkness that defied the eye.
Bron lifted the stick casually, feeling again the solid weight of it, the exquisite balance. “Pretty good bashin’ tool,” he admitted. “Wish I had a rat to bash, test it out.”
The stick in his hand shivered slightly, and a large, beady-eyed rat scurried from cover nearby and ran across the opening of the cave. With a shrug, Bron swung his stick and bashed the rodent.
“Pretty good rat,” Tag allowed, lifting the dead animal by its tail.
“Pretty good bashin’ tool,” said Bron, gazing at his stick fondly. Within the four little teardrop cuts at its heavy end, the blackness had given way to a smoky red glow. Now the glow faded and it was black again.
Somewhere, under a stony crag in a place at once very near and very far away, something stirred and shifted, something huge, massive and sinuous, responding to a momentary, tingling awareness. A great, flat head arose from inky coils, weaving this way and that, searching.
Not in a very long time had his lost fang called to him. The Fang slept, unless awakened by one who could demand its magic. It slept now, and Orm no longer sensed it. But for a moment, it had been awake. And in that moment he had known its direction, and been drawn toward it.
Ageless stone shifted and cracked as Orm moved. Beyond his cold, dry den, stones rattled and great slabs of granite fell away into the abyss below the crag. Where they had been, now was a jagged hole in the rock. And from this hole a great head-a dark, flat head, triangular like a blunt spearhead-emerged in starlight. Scale-circled eyes with slit pupils opened wide, and a long, forked tongue flicked out from the great snout, tasting the air. Dimly, still within the den, great rattles buzzed a dry warning as his tail twitched. The flat, scaly head rose higher and its lower jaw dropped open, hinging back to expose a huge, pale maw where a single, retractable fang as long as a man’s leg flipped forward into striking position.
There was only one fang, the other replaced by misty blackness. The lost fang was still part of him, and in a way was always near, yet separated by a void that was neither distance nor space.
Only when its spirit lived could he sense it, but now he swayed nervously, searching. For a moment it had lived. Maybe it would live again. He knew the direction, and he was hungry. It had been a long time.
The gully dwarves were all sound asleep in their little cave when horns blared at the midnight hour. The bugle calls, repeated from camp to camp all along the line of Gelnian forces ringing the Vale of Sunder, echoed among the hills and became a mighty wail of discordant sound.
Bron awoke abruptly, scrambled upright, banged his head on the stone above him and sat down on Tunk, whose snore became a snort as his arms and legs flailed wildly about. In an instant, two gully dwarves had been kicked entirely out of the cave and were clinging sleepily to the ledge beyond, while the rest rolled and tangled in the darkness above them. It took a while to get it all sorted out, to discover which flailing appendage belonged to
