would be freed, and without bloodshed.”
“I found another!” a voice carried from the edge of the woods. “The arrow is still in it!”
“Haw!” Lord Buxley laughed.
“Start stacking it,” Captain Trant told the men he’d wagered against.
“Not just yet,” one of them grumbled. “There’s still another out there, he may not have gotten it.”
“Just start counting,” the other gambler said dejectedly. “Don’t you know when you’ve been had?”
Lord Northall was staring intently at a place in the moonlit sky. His expression showed that he was contemplating Hyden’s idea. “We would need protection for those we freed so that they could work without being molested by sell-swords from Dakahn or skeeks from Westland.” He turned back to Hyden. “This High King, is he a good man?”
“Mikahl is as honorable as they come,” answered Hyden. Though he spoke with a proud reverence for his friend, he couldn’t forget the incident with the squat weed. “He will find a way to protect those you free. I’ll arrange it myself when I return from this trip. But I’m thinking King Jarrek will have it worked out long before then. If the rumors are true, he has already killed half a dozen Dakaneese overlords and freed thousands of his people.”
“You’re a rare kind of man, Sir Hyden Hawk,” Northall said. “Most men would be trying to turn a situation like this into a profit for themselves.”
“Found it!” Dannor yelled breathlessly. “It’s hit. That’s three for three!”
“Scoundrels like Captain Trant here are always trying to make a profit off of a poor fellow,” one of the reluctant losers smarted as he started adding his coins to his fellow’s pile.
“The man drank wine from a golden goblet this night, and he fancies himself poor,” Trant shot back.
“The miners and smiths you so desperately need are all spending this night under a Dakaneese whip,” Hyden reminded them. “Don’t you forget it.” After a beat his scowl turned into a grin. “Shall we try four?”
Chapter Twenty
Flick stood, with a long brass looking tube to his eye, watching from the prow of the zard ship Slither as the Seawander eased out of the bay of Salazar under the power of its water mage. The hood of Flick’s plain black robe had blown back with the breeze, revealing his slick white-skinned head. He was glad to have the ship in his sights. He had used a dozen sparrows in the last few weeks keeping track of their location, and the cage was nearly empty. Each time he cast the spell to find the locating stone that was hidden aboard the Seawander he had to drink fresh sparrow’s blood. He had no idea if he would be able to obtain more of the birds from the island. If he lost sight of them again it could become a problem.
“Keep us well behind,” he told Slake, the sarzard captain of the ship. “But don’t lose them.” He handed the telescope back to the glittery green scaled lizard-man.
The morning was bright and Flick pulled his hood back over his head to keep the sun from burning his scalp.
Down below, Drolz and Varch, Flick’s two breed giant fighters, were snoring away. The whole ship vibrated with the irregular rumbles. The two primitive half-breeds were so big that they had to have special hammocks made to sleep in. They had to stay on separate sides of the ship too, otherwise it would list with their weight. Both were well over eight feet tall and together they weighed more than a wagon load of granite blocks.
Flick was glad that this would be over in a few more days. One of Slake’s human crewmen had been sent to the inn called The Sword of Salt to spy on the hawk-man’s party. The dwarf and the Wildermont soldier had been overheard saying that the island they were searching for was only four days south of Salazar. Flick hoped that it was so. If they lost the Seawander, and ran out of sparrows, he would be forced to go skulking back to Queen Shaella looking like an incompetent fool. He didn’t want that to happen. He didn’t want to kill Hyden Skyler either, but she had ordered him to do so. Flick had become Gerard Skyler’s friend during the days of planning the theft of the dragon egg. It had been Flick who’d rowed Gerard through the marsh to the Dragon Spire. To kill his friend’s brother would be hard, but he would do it. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he knew that he would do anything Queen Shaella asked him to.
Bzorch, the lord of Locar, was thinking deeply.
In a recent visit, Queen Shaella had told the breed giant that he could no longer have human slaves pulling his wagon-chair about the city. She told him he could no longer have human slaves at all. He didn’t dare continue, but his cousin, Cozchin was trying to explain to him that, if he paid the humans to pull him about Locar, they wouldn’t be slaves: they would be employees. Bzorch wasn’t sure if Queen Shaella would approve. As much as he was growing to dislike her and her skeeks, he was still afraid of her considerable power. Tempting her wrath might jeopardize the little empire he was building just across the river from Castlemont.
Before the great bridge to Wildermont was destroyed, Locar had been the main center of land trade for Westland and most of the continent. Now, it was the one civilized place for the breed giants to live. Only a few hundred of their kind had chosen to remain in Westland. Men inhabited the city of Locar too, but the zard stayed well away. There was a base sort of revulsion there. The zard hated the breed almost as much as the breed hated the zard. If not for Queen Shaella’s demand that they leave each other alone, Bzorch would have had zard-men pulling his wagon long ago.
Sitting in a big wooden throne in the lobby of a commandeered manor, Bzorch was contemplating why his kinsman, Vachen, had recently crossed the river to fight with the skeeks against the Valleyans. He had already dismissed the idea of having men pull his wagon chair around. As usual, Cozchin was thinking a few moments behind him.
“Is he going to live?” Bzorch asked as he rose to his feet.
The question threw Cozchin off for a few moments because he was still turning arguments for keeping the human wagon team in place through his primitive mind.
“Vachen?” the bewildered brute asked.
Bzorch was nearly ten feet tall, and as intimidating as a breed giant could be. He was the alpha of his kind and exuded dominance. The title that Queen Shaella had bestowed upon him, for his help destroying the bridge to the east, had little to do with the firm control he asserted over his people. Cozchin, at just over eight feet tall, was trembling as he looked up to meet his brooding lord’s gaze.
“Yes, Vachen!” Bzorch snapped. His one, long caterpillar-like eyebrow formed a sharp ’V‘ over his deeply set eyes. One of his lower fangs was jutting up over his upper lip when he wrinkled his snout into a snarl.
Cozchin took a reflexive step back and spoke more quickly than he would have liked. “Lost his arm. He swears that the sword that wounded him was the same sword that old King Balton used to banish us.”
“The rumors are true then,” growled Bzorch. “Shaella said Ironspike found an heir.” He started striding back and forth before his wooden throne while he continued to think. If he could capture the sword and its wielder he could increase his favor tenfold. If he presented Ironspike to the Dragon Queen, he was quite sure she would let him hand-pick a team of bug-eyed skeeks to pull his wagon cart anywhere he wanted to go. The idea made him smile and growl with mirth.
“Go find that big sneaky bastard Graven and send him here,” Bzorch ordered. “Then see if Vachen can get one of his skeek friends to swim a trolley rope across the river north of Castlemont. After that’s done, kill Vachen and those nasty skeeks he brought back.”
“What are you going to do?” Cozchin asked, now enamored with the prospect of killing zard-men.
“I’m going to send Graven over to Wildermont to sniff around. Put the tower men on alert. I want all movement across the river reported. If Ironspike is really over there I will have it.'
“Wheen the High King heers of thes ye’ll find yee’re in a fix,” Princess Rosa chirped indignantly. “He well come for me, you knew.”
