'Oh, no,' Flint rumbled. 'If we let you out of our sight now, who knows what you'll get yourself into next? Home, lad, and the message can be delivered along the way.' He reached into his pack, pulled out a block of wood, and applied his dagger's blade silently for a time. Keli would have offered his thanks, but Tanis caught his eye and stilled him with a smile and a shake of his head.
When Flint looked up again, he spoke not to Keli but to Tanis.
'If we've any sense at all, we'll make for home ourselves after we've delivered this lad and his message.'
That was not what the half-elf had expected to hear. 'Back to Solace this early in the summer?'
Flint was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke at last his voice was rough. Almost cold, Keli thought.
'I thought he was dead,' Flint said, and Keli knew it was Tas of whom he spoke. 'I really did. I didn't fear it. Fear still allows you to slip hope in behind it. I thought he was dead from the minute I saw my mark 6n that rock, and I didn't expect to find anything else.
'It is a bad thing to be without hope.' He cleared his throat softly and went on. 'And Caramon. When he didn't come up from the lake, when Sturm had to dive to find him, I thought, between the first time and the last, that he was dead, too.'
Keli felt that fear, and heard it in the dwarf's voice. His eyes were not so hard now, his expression not nearly as forbidding as it had been. An odd look graced his rough features, but Keli could not put a name to it. He'd seen the look before on his father's face.
Tanis poked up the fire and by its flare Keli saw that he, too, had thought his friends dead. When he spoke, though, it was not to reassure himself but Flint. 'They're all right now.'
The old dwarf drew a long breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. He looked at his young friends sleeping around the fire: Caramon, his scabbarded sword lying near to hand; Sturm, who slept deep and looked as though he could wake fast at need; Raistlin, likely walking in dreams only he could understand; and Tas, curled like an exhausted pup against Caramon's back. When the dwarf spoke again, Keli sensed that some decision was being made. He sat forward and listened.
'Aye, Tanis, they are. But the lands are changing, lad. I feel it in my bones that things are shifting, growing darker. At first it was good to have them along on these trips for their company. Lately, it's been good having them along because I could not ply my trade, such as it is these days, along the old routes without them. Look at what happened to the lad here! Goblins and bandits! And rumors of worse and stranger things haunt the roads now.'
Tanis reached out absently to ruffle Keli's hair. 'You'll not keep them safe in Solace by wishing it so, old friend.'
'No, I know them better than that. And we're partners, you and I, have been for a long time. This isn't a decision I can rightly make for both of us.' Flint shook his head. A smile warred with a scowl. The scowl won, but only barely. 'And we don't get much done these days chasing that pesty kender from one end of the land to the other, do we? No, home sounds better and better to me.'
As hard as the dwarf was to read, that was how easy it was to divine Tanis's thought: plainly he doubted that Solace would keep Tas or any of his friends long for all that it seemed to be home. But aloud he only said, 'All right, then, Flint. Home it is, for Keli and for us.'
Solace won't keep them long, Keli thought. Hawks may grace your wrist for a time, his father had once told him, but they do not domesticate well at all.
Now, Flint leaned forward and gently roughed the sleepy boy's chin. 'Home, aye, lad?'
Keli smiled in the night's shadow. 'Oh, aye, home.'
By the Measure
His head was pounding, and his mouth was dry. He had neither eaten nor slept for two days — not since burning Standel after a day of mourning. Standel, his one companion. The only other knight to accompany him on his flight from an Order that had decayed. Brave, strong Standel. He had never understood his own death.
Garrick scanned the terrain as well as his bleary eyes were able. More of the same. Villagers were coming from the south, away from the advancing army sent by the Dragon Highlord. They were seeking protection from the garrison at Ironrock. The knight smiled bitterly through cracked lips. How long did they think a garrison of one hundred men was going to hold out against an army one hundred times its size? Not to mention the added pressure of trying to feed several hundred refugees.
He steered Auron away from the group. The war-horse turned reluctantly, perhaps sensing the grain the people carried. The horse had been forced to subsist on what little it could forage in this bleak area. Garrick sympathized with its plight, his own last meal having consisted of a handful of berries and some cheese and hardbread bought from the innkeeper who had been indirectly responsible for Standel's death. The lands he had traveled through since offered nothing in the way of sustenance. The inhabitants themselves had long ago spirited away anything edible.
He could not believe what the Order had become. The older knights smiled patronizingly at his plaints;
some of the younger ones scoffed. Some understood him, though. Understood that even the Knights of Solamnia had turned away from Paladine more than they admitted. The Knights were no longer an Order that aided the repressed so much as a petty sect living on its past glories and shunning those they believed had turned on them. Never mind that the Order had such black marks as Lord Soth to live down.
In his worn state, he did not notice the second group of villagers until they were almost on him. Like so many before, they spat at him as they passed and cursed him for being what he was. A stocky man with slightly gray hair and a perpetual scowl blocked his path with an open cart drawn by two oxen. Several other villagers stood behind the man.
'What do you want here, oh great and noble knight?' The venom fairly dripped from his mouth.
Garrick sighed. 'I have sworn by the Measure that I will defend my fellow men from the evil that is the Queen. I intend to keep that pledge.'
They laughed. Laughed loudly. The laughter was magnified a thousand times in Garrick's mind, though he knew it would come. It always had. The loud, bitter laughter.
The stocky leader stepped closer, his eyes shifting back and forth between the knight and the warhorse. It was obvious that he did not trust either of them. Closer now, he studied Garrick's battered armor, the chipped and bent weapons, his pale and sweating face.
'Aye, you look like a terror that will frighten away the dark ones. Frighten them into conquering the world, I'd say!'
There was more laughter, though much more muted than before. The looks the villagers gave Garrick were ugly, full of hate. Hate for his not having been there when it counted. The leader shifted closer, his intentions clear. Pull the knight down into the mud where he belonged. The knight drew his well-worn blade with a speed that belied his weary appearance. He kept the group at bay with the weapon, allowing no one within arm's length.
'For your own sakes, move on.'
Muttering, they did so, much more quickly and complacently than Garrick would have thought possible for them. He realized why with a sadness that sank him deeper into the darkness he had ridden in since Standel's death. He was nothing to them. If anything, they were disgusted with him. Disgusted with all the knights.
It hurt Garrick that they had good reasons for their hatred.
The few huts he passed now were stripped of anything worth carrying. Mere shells. Skeletons. It was as if the war had already been through here. In a sense, he realized, perhaps it had. Standel would have been stronger, more able to cope with the shouts, the curses, the looks. Garrick could not understand why he should live while a better knight should die so ignominiously. Not for the first time since his companion's death, he wavered slightly in his belief in the Measure.
The ground reached for him. Garrick steadied himself and wiped his brow. To collapse this close, to leave his
