recognized one of the soldiers as Farl Bloodaxe, commander of the Alliance's infantry.
'I knew this would happen,' the barkeep babbled as he got close. He pointed to Mal. 'I could tell he was a bad sort from the moment he walked in here.'
'We'll all be glad when your troops leave,' the watchman said loudly. Like all of Telflamm's city watch, this man wore a long, bright red overcoat, sashed tight at the waist with shiny black cloth. His high, square black hat was tassled in silver, and a broad, curved sword hung prominently at his side. The guard kicked a chair with the silver toecap of a well-polished boot. 'You've been nothing but trouble since you arrived.'
'That's enough,' Farl said. The ebony-skinned general sighed and looked around. 'Any of you care to tell me what happened?'
Over the next fifteen minutes, Razor John, Mal, and a few others told their versions of the incident. Unsurprisingly, Mal claimed the dalesman had drawn a blade. No one corroborated his story, but Mal seemed unaffected by that. When John denied the tale's veracity, the murderer narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
All the time that Farl was conducting his interviews, John felt a growing wave of nausea wash over him. He had never really liked Mal. In fact, the fletcher had agreed to look for the soldier only because he was a fellow Cormyrian and an acquaintance of Kiri's. Still, he had never really disliked him either. Now John saw his countryman for what he really was-a drunken, violent bully.
As quickly as the murder had occurred, Mal's fate was decided. The soldier suddenly became very calm, more quiet, in fact, than John had ever seen him. Irons were placed on his large hands, and Farl ordered the dalesman's body to be taken out and burned. Before the red-coated guardsman could lead Mal to his fate, the doomed Cormyrian soldier leaned close to the fletcher.
'I thought you would have stuck by me,' Mal whispered through clenched teeth. 'Backed up my story. We're two of a kind, you and me.'
'No,' Razor John said sharply. 'I came to find you because we're both from Cormyr, but-'
'Not that,' Mal said. The guard tugged on the irons and pulled the soldier a step away from John. 'What you did aboard the Sarnath and all.' As the watchman pulled Mal another step away, he snapped viciously, 'All right. You'll have me hanging soon enough.'
Razor John watched in numbed silence as the crowd parted for the watchman and his prisoner. Nausea washed over the fletcher again, and he slumped into a chair. The inn's customers went back to their business, though subdued slightly. John sat for a moment, turning Mal's words over and over in his mind. Then his eyes drifted to the floor, where the dented tankard still lay.
Silently the fletcher picked up the tarnished mug. In his mind, John saw his bow and the arrows he'd used to kill the sailor and the priest who'd visited the plague ship. He'd believed his conscience reconciled with those deeds, but he wondered now how an officer's orders had made his act any different from Mal's.
Tucking the silver tankard under his cloak, John rose swiftly and made his way out of the city to find Kiri and begin the march into Thesk. Thoughts of the incidents at the Broken Lance and aboard the Sarnath plagued the fletcher all through the long, hard march away from the coast.
10
Malmondes of Suzail dangled from a rope on a makeshift scaffold south of Telflamm for eight days, a stark example of military justice. In that time, Alusair and the dwarven army made their way south across the green rolling hills of the Great Dale. Now, ten days and almost seventy miles after parting with King Azoun, Torg's soldiers stood on the edge of Lethyr Forest.
As he had each evening of the march, Torg traveled from clan to clan, marked in camp by their different standards. Before the soldiers went about their duties or to sleep, the ironlord gave them a short, direct speech about the crusade. The orcs, he told the army, were an evil they would put up with until the battle was over. Then the Zhentish beasts, or whatever was left of them, would answer to the troops of Earthfast for their insult.
As the soldiers from Earthfast silently set up camp for the night, Princess Alusair studied the dark edge of the forest to the east. The area the dwarves had been crossing was grassland, generally devoid of trees, so the huge expanse of woods presented an imposing front. And though the most direct route to the location where they would join up with the Army of the Alliance was through the forest, Torg refused to consider taking his troops that way.
'Only elves and other such questionable creatures lurk in forests,' the ironlord had told Alusair. 'I'll not put my soldiers in danger needlessly by taking a shortcut through an obvious haven for traps. We'll go south, then skirt the forest and head east.'
Alusair wasn't quite sure who the ironlord thought would set a trap for the dwarves, but she really didn't care. Torg's inflexibility on the matter only fostered a vague but growing dissatisfaction the princess felt with the ironlord's army. Nine months past, in the middle of autumn, Alusair had gone to the Earthfast Mountains in search of a lost artifact. Instead, she found a small but proud group of dwarves defending their decaying underground city against a seemingly endless onslaught of evil orcs and goblins. Always searching for a worthy cause, the princess joined the fight. Her knowledge of military strategy, gained from her father when she was still a child, proved invaluable to the dwarves of Earthfast. The orcs were routed, and the crumbling city was saved.
Most of the time Alusair had spent with the dwarves had been taken up with battles against orcs and goblins. The princess had never felt anything for the soldiers other than respect or the camaraderie one has for an ally in battle. Until now.
Torg cared little for the tremendous confusion Alusair felt. She'd tried to speak to the ironlord about her father on the first day's march, but he had simply dismissed the topic as idle chatter. The princess knew that few of the dwarves had families; the orcs and goblins had slain most of the women and children in Earthfast years ago. Even Torg's queen had been killed in a battle fifteen years past.
That shouldn't make them so cold, Alusair decided as she watched a lone falcon soar up into the twilight. It moved out from the forest's edge and circled idly over the camp. Occasionally, the bird of prey shrieked. The noise echoed mournfully in the warm early summer's night.
The princess sighed and turned toward her tent, wondering over the fact that Torg had sent a letter to Azoun agreeing to supply troops to the crusade at the end of winter, almost four months past. The year was soaring by as quickly as the bird overhead.
The dwarven sentry that Alusair passed on the way to camp only nodded. Apart from a few softly spoken orders and the unavoidable noise made setting up tents and building watchfires, the camp was silent. Once, Alusair had found the peace and quiet relaxing; now it left her too much time to think. That was the last thing she wanted.
Azoun's actions had puzzled the princess and made her, perhaps, a bit sad. She'd certainly expected the conflict over her leaving home. However, Alusair hadn't believed it possible her father would admit she had control of her own life. She had been ready to take the moral high ground in the dispute, ready to prove to the king how her actions weren't so very different from his own as a youth. She looked at the signet ring Azoun had left with her and cursed.
Her father's less dogmatic attitude toward her independence might have meant an easy reconciliation a few months ago, but not after what Alusair had seen in the dwarves' camp. Her father had openly allied with orcs, creatures of evil. She saw the alliance as the unpardonable product of moral backsliding for political ends. Now Alusair wasn't even sure she wanted to be reconciled with Azoun; he really didn't seem like the good, noble man she remembered from four years ago.
What should I do? she wondered, reviewing the painful question in her mind. No easy answer came.
The princess finally reached her darkened tent. For a moment, she considered contacting Vangerdahast and Azoun using the ring, but decided against it. Instead, she lay on her blankets and listened to the falcon cry out in the growing darkness. Alusair concluded from the lessening sound that the bird was moving back toward the forest. She could still hear the shrill sounds of its call as she drifted off to sleep.
The rain that fell that night didn't wake Alusair, but she felt the cold and damp in her joints when she awoke
