others to follow him back into the rocks. «We’ll sit it out here until nightfall,” he called back over his shoulder.
Jair turned to follow and found Slanter at his elbow. «Didn’t notice him bothering to ask me if I agreed,” the Gnome muttered and shouldered his way past.
The little company slipped down into a cluster of boulders, passing into the shadow of their concealment to wait until dark. Seated about the rocks, the six consumed a cold meal, wrapped themselves in their cloaks and settled back in silence. After a time, Foraker and Garet Jax left the cover of the rocks and disappeared down the slide for a closer look at the passage east. Edain Elessedil took the watch, and Helt stretched out comfortably on the rocky ground and was asleep almost at once. Jair sat alone for a few moments, then got up and walked over to where Slanter sat staring out into the empty dusk.
«I appreciate what you did for me back at the Wedge,” he said quietly.
Slanter didn’t turn. «Forget it.»
«I can’t. That’s three times now that you’ve saved my life.»
The Gnome’s laugh was brittle. «That many, is it?»
«That many.»
«Well, maybe next time I won’t be there, boy. What will you do then?»
Jair shook his head. «I don’t know.»
There was an uncomfortable silence. Slanter continued to ignore the Valeman. Jair almost turned away again, but then his stubbornness got the better of him and he forced himself to remain. Deliberately, he took a seat next to the Gnome.
«He should have asked you,” he said quietly.
«Who? Asked me what?»
«Garet Jax — he should have asked you if you were willing to go down to the fortress with us.»
Now Slanter turned. «Hasn’t asked me anything before, has he? Why should he start now?»
«Maybe if you…»
«Maybe if I sprout wings I’ll be able to fly out of this place!» The Gnome’s face flushed with anger. «In any case, what do you care?»
«I care.»
«About what? That I’m here? Do you care about that? You tell me, boy — what am I doing here?»
Jair looked away uncomfortably, but Slanter gripped his arm and brought him about with a jerk.
«Look at me! What am I doing here? What has any of this got to do with me? Nothing, that’s what! The only reason I’m here is because I was foolish enough to agree to guide you as far as Culhaven — that’s the only reason! Help us get past the black walker, you asked! Help us get to the Eastland! You can do it because you’re a tracker! Hah!»
The rough yellow face thrust forward. «And that stupid dream! That’s all it was, boy — just a dream! There isn’t any King of the Silver River, and this whole trek east is a waste of time! Ah, but here I am anyway, aren’t I? I don’t want to be here; there isn’t any reason for me to be here — but here I am anyway!» He shook his head bitterly. «And it’s all because of you!»
Jair pulled free, angry now himself. «Maybe that’s so. Maybe it is my fault that you’re here. But the dream was real, Slanter. And you’re wrong when you say that none of this has anything to do with you. You call me `boy‘ but you’re the one who acts as if he hasn’t grown up!»
Slanter stared at him. «Well, you area wolf’s cub, aren’t you?»
«Whatever you want to call me, that’s fine.» Jair flushed. «But you better start thinking about who you are, too.»
«What’s that supposed to mean?»
«It means that you can’t go on telling yourself that what happens to other people doesn’t have anything to do with you — because it does, Slanter!»
Wordlessly they stared at each other. Darkness had fallen now, deep–shadowed and windless. It was strangely still, the booming of the Gnome drums and the clamor of the battle for Capaal silenced.
«Don’t think much of me, do you?» Slanter said finally.
Jair sighed wearily. «As a matter of fact, that’s not so. I think a lot of you.»
The other studied him for a moment, then looked down. «I like you, too. Told you before — you got sand. You remind me of me in my better moments.» He laughed softly, a hollow chuckle, then looked up again. «But you listen to me now because I’m not going to repeat this again. I don’t belong in this. This isn’t my fight. And whether I like you or not, I’m getting out of it the first chance I get.»
He waited a moment as if to be certain that what he said had the intended effect, then turned away. «Now shove off and leave me be.»
Jair hesitated, trying to decide if he should pursue the matter, then reluctantly climbed to his feet and walked away. He was passing close to the sleeping Helt when he heard the Borderman murmur, «I told you he cares.»
Jair Ohmsford glanced down in surprise, then smiled and continued on. «I know,” he whispered back.
It was drawing toward midnight when Garet Jax took the company out from the sheltering cluster of boulders and back onto the slide. Below, hundreds of Gnome watchfires ringed the fortress of Capaal, spread out across the cliffs on either side of the besieged locks and dams. The six began their descent, Elb Foraker in the lead. They proceeded down along the slide, then turned onto a narrow trail that ran forward into a series of defiles and rocky shelves. Cautiously, they worked their way ahead, silent shadows passing through the night.
It took them better than an hour to reach the perimeter of the watchfires on the near side of the encampment. Here the Gnomes were fewer in number; most were settled close to the edge of the Dwarf battlements. On the trails leading in, the fires were few and scattered. Beyond the siege lines on these southern slopes, a gathering of peaks thrust skyward, bunched at their base like bound and broken fingers, crooking from out of the earth. The six knew that beyond the peaks could be found a scattering of low hills that flanked the southern shores of the Cillidellan, and beyond these was the shelter of the forests that spread east. Once there, they could melt into the night and slip north without risk of being seen.
But first they must work their way close enough to the battlements of Capaal to permit Helt to use the ash bow so that Foraker’s message could be delivered to the Dwarf defenders. It had been decided earlier that the Borderman would attempt the shot, for while the idea had been Edain Elessedil’s, Helt was by far the stronger of the two. With the great ash bow to aid him, he need get no closer than two hundred yards from the fortress walls in order to place the arrow and its message within.
Step by step, the six made their way down from the mountain heights through the lines of the Gnome watch. Stretched upward along the broader paths from where the main encampment ringed the battlements of the fortress, the Gnomes gave little attention to the smaller trails and ledges that crisscrossed the cliff face. It was down these smaller trails and ledges that Foraker took his little group in a slow, cautious descent where the footing was treacherous and the cover thin. Pieces of soft leather bound each booted foot, and charcoal blackened each face. No one spoke. Hands and feet picked their way carefully, wary of loose rock or of any sound that would call attention to their passage.
Two hundred yards from the walls of the fortress, they were still just back of the forward siege lines of the Gnome army. Watchfires burned all about them — all along the trails leading back. Silently, they hunched down within a small gathering of scrub and waited for Helt. The giant Borderman removed the arrow with its message from his quiver, fitted it to the ash bow and slipped forward into the night. Several dozen yards ahead, at the edge of the scrub, he rose to a kneeling position, pulled back the bowstring, held it momentarily to his cheek and released it.
A sharp twang shattered the silence of the little company’s shelter, yet beyond where they hid, the sound was lost in the routine clamor of the Gnome camp. Nevertheless, the six flattened themselves within the brush for long minutes, waiting and listening for any indication that they had been discovered. There was none. Helt slipped back through the darkness and nodded briefly to Foraker. The message had been delivered.
The little company crept back through the night and the lines of watchfires and Gnomes, this time working its way eastward about the dark girth of the peaks toward where the waters of the Cillidellan shimmered with the moon’s soft light. Far away across the lake, where the dam joined with the broad slope of the mountains north, Gnome fires burned fiercely about the encircled locks and dams and along the shoreline of the Cillidellan. Jair glanced at the mass of watchfires and went cold. How many thousands of Gnomes had been brought to besiege this
