run, he spread his hands comically and addressed the sky. 'Tymora-I try to serve ye faithfully, but this selfish thief never waits for me. Was ever a priest so put upon as I?'
All that day and the next, they walked farmlands, avoiding bulls and their owners alike and, when necessary, keeping to the shelter of the high stone walls that divided one farm from the next. Mirt led them at a tireless, steady pace across country, always seeming to know exactly where he was going. He kept silence when they walked, but was ready with an endless flood of salty jokes and tales whenever they stopped to eat or rest.
It was on the morning of the third day, after a night whose chill made them all stiff, that Delg asked the stout merchant, 'Why, Deeppockets, could you not bring along a nag or six for us to ride? We'll die of gray hair and cold winter catching us in these fields before we see Silverymoon.'.
Mirt chuckled. 'I did ride some of the way in Cormyr before we met. But horses are wiser than those who seek adventure: ye can't get them to go into deep woods, try as ye might. So I bid them a fair gallop and let them loose, and I walked.'
'We're not exactly in deep woods now,' Delg reminded him sourly, waving at the empty fields around them. 'Or are there trees on all sides of us that I'm too short, perhaps, to see?'
Mirt sighed. 'I've also yet to succeed in getting a horse to climb over a stile-or crawl along a stone wall to escape a farmer's eyes. Walking's better… as most dwarves are only too quick to tell me.'
Delg sighed in his turn. 'You're right, as usual,' he replied. 'I just mistrust all this open sky above, and not a hole to hide in. These bone dragons that attacked Shan before-they always fly, and I've heard of mages flitting about in the sky, too. I feel… naked.'
Mirt nodded. 'I prefer shade, and trees overhead, myself. Yet since I took up the harp, I've learned that all country has a way of its own, and ways in which it serves better than other countryside. This may be open-yet it's more private, look ye, than the roads.'
Narm nodded. Shandril eyed the fat lord curiously as he wheezed his cautious way up a creaking stile to peer over its top into the field beyond. He nodded, then waved a hand for them to follow.
Shandril climbed up behind him and asked, 'What is it, Lord, to be a Harper?'
Mirt froze, then sighed gustily and went on down the other side of the stile. 'Don't call me 'Lord,' look ye, lass. I'm not so old as all that.' He gained his balance, looked testily all about in the manner of an old and short- sighted lion, and added, 'Ye should know, little one, that I'm not a very good Harper.'
Shandril smiled. 'Don't call me 'little one' — and don't try to wriggle out of answering, either.' Behind her, she heard Delg's dry chuckle.
Mirt turned slowly and roomed up over her like an angry mountain. Then he grinned. 'Right, then, good Lady Shandril. I shall try to tell thee something of what it is to be a Harper.' He cleared his throat grandly and waved his hand at the field before them. It was dotted with cow dung. He lofted the nearest pat into the air with the toe of his boot and added, 'As we walk, of course.'
'A Harper holds peaceful sharing of the lands above all other goals,' Mirt declaimed grandly, waving at the rolling fields around them. Several nearby cows turned their heads to stare at him curiously. 'By sharing,' he added, winking at the nearest cow, 'we mean all the races living in and under the land, where each prefers to live, trading together where desire and need stir them to, and respecting each other's holds and ways-without the daily bloodletting that all too often holds sway in the Realms today.'
'If you don't mind a word against that,' Narm replied carefully, 'it seems all too seldom that Harpers manage to avoid indulging in a little bloodletting themselves.'
Mirt grinned, rather like a wolf raising bloody jaws from its fallen prey. 'True. We must fight, it seems, often enough to keep old blades such as-'hem-myself busy, our swords and our tempers both sharp enough. Yet, know ye; all of us fight when we must, or die. Moreover ye hear only of blades drawn and death and spells hurled, and never know of the many, many times more that a quiet word and a skillful deal has turned enemies aside from each other, forced a way clear where none was before, or distracted foes from the eager task of tearing each other' s throats out- That is the true Harper way, lad: subtle and quiet, behind the shouting. Trust, and wisdom, and outfoxing others is what we deal in.'
'Oh,' Delg grunted, 'how'd you get to be a Harper, then?'
Mirt sighed. 'My long patience had something to do with it, as I recall,' he answered deliberately, drawing a gleaming dagger and, with a single flick of his wrist, casually trimming off the tips of the nails on one hand. Narm stared, fascinated, but Shandril shuddered. If he'd missed by half an inch…
But he hadn't. The Old Wolf smiled at her again, a mirthless grin that reminded her of a grinning skull she'd seen-long ago, it seemed-amid the ruins of Myth Drannor. Then he pointed ahead. 'We turn here,' he said shortly, and then added, looking down, 'even if we're clever dwarves.'
Delg grunted in reply. 'If I hear you tell us we're lost, just once,' he threatened, 'you'll find yourself rapidly becoming more my size.' He glared at the tranquil winddriven clouds that filled the sky and the endless rolling fields and rubble walls around them.
'I've crawled along in the dirt once or twice before, ye know,' Mirt told him, and added over his shoulder to Shandril, 'that's something else to being a Harper 'there's fools' pride: the sort that won't get dirty, an' do this or that-and then there's Harpers' pride: where ye won't quit and won't be scared off. If ye only have the first kind, ye seldom live long enough to learn the second, unless ye leave off being a Harper altogether.'
'Do all Harpers talk this much?' Delg asked innocently from somewhere just out of reach.
Mirt sighed again. 'It's one way to keep from fighting,' he replied patiently, then turned to Narm and Shandril. 'Ah-remember that, too.'
'You'll remind me, from time to time, about all the things 1 should be remembering?' Shandril asked him dryly, eyes twinkling.
'Certainly.' the fat merchant boomed cheerfully. 'All the way to Silverymoon, if ye like.'
'I was afraid you'd say that,' Narm told him as they approached another stile.
Mirt grinned at him. 'Ye, lad, are already beginning to speak as a Harper does. If ye can learn some spells to match that mouth, ye'll be a mageling to be reckoned with… now, where was I?'
'At the strutting grandly bit, Lord,' Shandril told him, so softly that it was almost a full breath later before Delg snorted. Shandril chuckled softly despite herself, and Narm started to laugh. It was another breath after that before Mirt joined in.
Overhead, the moon rode high above dark, ragged, racing clouds that streamed across the stars like tattered banners. Where the moonlight fell between the clouds, it laid bright white strips across the field.
Narm lay drowsily watching the clouds, Shandril asleep on his shoulder. The two of them were buried in a warm haystack, only their shoulders and heads protruding. Beside Narm's face lay Shandril's hair, a swirling mass that smelled faintly of spices. Baergasra had given her some bathing spices to ruin her scent for dogs-and worse things-the Zhents might use to track her.
To his left, Narm could just see the alert shadow that was Delg sitting watch. The dwarf sat with his blanket held over the ready axe in his lap, thereby preventing moongleams from betraying their presence to a watcher in the night. Despite Delg's caution, the deep, rhythmic snores of Mirt the Moneylender-once Mirt the Merciless, mighty Lord of Waterdeep-could tell anyone in this corner of Faerun right where they were.
To Narm's left, something moved. It was Delg, creeping silently as a cat to peer into the night nearby. He seemed to see nothing amiss, because after a few moments, he turned and looked toward the haystack. His eyes met Narm's. The dwarf nodded and withdrew to his post as silently as he had left it
Narm thought the dwarf's face looked bitter and drawn in the moonlight Usually Delg seemed lit by a fierce fire from within, his face like a smithy door, spitting surly sparks with energy to spare. Not now. He looked like a ruined farmer Narm had once seen-beaten, bereft of hope.
The dwarf stared out across the moonlit field again, beaked nose pointing like an accusing finger into the night. Then something cold and wise crept slowly up Narm s spine, and with sudden certainty he knew the look Delg wore. He looked like a man about to leave his friends behind forever and go down into the darkness that does not end.
For all their differences, dwarves and men do look like brothers when their faces wear the same hopeless expression. Delg looked like a man who knew he was about to die.
