That was when he and the others saw them-tall shadows among the fog, along the upper ridge of the embankment. Some had swords, some had bows and arrows. They were waiting for the dragonarmy.
Someone to Brack’s right gave a shout and let loose an arrow. Five arrows returned out of the rain and caught the original archer in the chest and belly. He went down, but five of his companions unleashed their arrows, and several of the shadows fell away. There were shouts now, as the sword-wielders above half-ran, half-slid down the embankment to meet Brack’s unit.
Behind Brack a horn sounded charge. Ahead of him, beyond the enemy line, a similar horn responded. Brack was heartened for the moment. They had the enemy surrounded!
A shape loomed up in the fog, no more than silhouette. It was large and man-sized, and Brack lashed out with his blade. As he struck, he wondered if this was some human ally of the gnomes, some adventurer who was helping the small rebels.
Brack’s thoughts were interrupted as his blade pierced the man’s armor and the soldier he fought collapsed. The blade had skittered over armor of a type similar to that found in the dragonarmies. No, not similar. Exactly like it.
Brack wiped the rain from his eyes and stared down at the wounded soldier clutching his side. He had not recognized his foe in the mud and fog. The man was a soldier in dragonarmy armor.
They were fighting themselves. Some group had gotten turned around and they were attacking each other.
Brack shouted for his men to stop fighting, but there was no stopping the juggernaut once it had begun collapsing on itself. Other horns were sounding now as various flanks swept forward to enclose an enemy that was not there. They collided with each other and locked themselves in battle. Most did not recognize their own forces. Some fought only because they were themselves being attacked. A few recognized their foes but blamed sorcery. A few, particularly the last to arrive from the outer flanks, saw it as a chance to settle old scores.
Brack saw only carnage, as his troops ceased to be anything more than a bloodied and bloodthirsty mob. He tried to retreat and ended up almost skewered on a brace of pikemen charging at full tilt into the muddle. He ran forward and danced as arrows stuck in the soft earth at his feet. At last he found a tributary of the muddy river and followed it upward, away from the battle.
The fog was clearing only slightly as he poked his head up out of the dell. He saw a huge, immobile form laving in the grass. Carefully he approached it and saw that it was the green dragon, its emerald scales now striped with blood, its wings and torso peppered with dragonarmy arrows.
Beside the great beast’s head was the dragonlord, his helmet off, his long face buried in grief in his hands. Brack walked up, put a hand on the dragonlord’s shoulder. The warrior looked up, and Brack was unsure if the dragonlord was crying or if it was only rain washing down his face.
“Our own troops,” the dragonlord said at last, looking at his dead mount. “The gnomes turned our own troops against us. What mysterious power could turn our mighty forces against each other?”
Brack did not say what his first thought was. Instead, he knelt down next to the dragonlord, and said, “Let me tell you about gnomes. . ”
“And that’s my story,” said Brack, setting the empty mug down on the table. A serving gnome made to remove it, but Brack held up his hand-no more for him.
“What did you tell the dragonlord?” asked Brack.
“I told him that Rumtuggle the Rebel Gnome had come up with his greatest invention, a device so powerful that even the dragonarmy could not find him and defeat him. Any attempt would end in frustration if the enemy was lucky, and disaster if he was not.” Brack rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Did he believe it?” wondered Augie, still seated. “Did the dragonlord believe you?”
Brack shrugged. “I don’t know. I tendered my resignation then and there and walked away. Been fighting small-unit engagements ever since, for whoever can pay. Fighting against real opponents, for real reasons.”
“What about the dragonlord?” asked Augie.
“He might have done the same,” said Brack, fishing a sack of coins from his belt, “or he might still be out there, trying to hunt down a gnome that isn’t there, sacrificing more armies to the altar of his own stupidity.”
“What of the gnome’s invention?” said Augie, “the cattle-pult? Where were the gnomes hiding? What was it that spooked the hobgoblin scout?”
Brack shook his head, and said, “You don’t understand.” He handed the sack of coins to the gnome waiter and asked, “Gnome, do you know of one of your race named Rumtuggle?”
The gnome, who had been bringing the drinks all evening, brightened visibly. “Yes! I have a great uncle named Rumtuggle. He was a mighty warrior and gifted inventor and fought in the war! Everyone knows about Rumtuggle!”
Brack smiled, fished out a few more coins, and handed them to the gnome, who scuttled off. “Every family has at least one Rumtuggle in it, nowadays,” said Brack. “That’s the greatest gnomish invention. Rumtuggle-the gnome so powerful that he invented himself! Think about that the next time you fight gnomes.”
Brack disappeared, leaving Augie at the table. The old warrior looked deep into his near-empty mug and began chuckling. The chuckling became laughter, and the laughter became a roaring bellow.
The gnome waiter brought Augie another ale, while the dwarven barkeep counted Brack’s coins.
The Road Home
Nancy Varian Berberick
Listen, I don’t care how many people you ask-you’re not going to get the truth of the matter of Griff Rees from anyone but me. Griff Raven Friend, some call him; others say Griff Red Hand. In the army of the Dark Queen, in the days before the Second Cataclysm, he was known simply as Killer Griff. Those are the names others gave him. He himself took the name Unsouled, but it was a private name, and I only heard him speak it once, a time ago when we were down around Tarsis, when he was very drunk and thought himself alone.
A wild night at the end of the Falling starts this story. On that night Griff was right here in the Swan and Dagger. Long legs stretched out, he sat picking his teeth with a bone-handled dirk, listening to the wind outside and the roar of the tavern around him, maybe to the dark ebb and flow of voices only he could hear. A newly filled jug of ale sat frothing at his elbow. The remains of his supper lay all over the table, the greasy carcass of a whole duck and all the good things that go with it.
The Swan and Dagger was thunderous that night, howling back at the wind. The air hung thick with the smoke of poorly trimmed candles and fumes from the fireplace. Filled to the walls it was, with the usual clientele Baird Taverner gets in the Swan-ne’er-do-wells of all stripes, goblins, humans, hill dwarfs, and even a few mountain dwarfs like me. Everyone there came of the same dangerous tribe: narrow-eyed vengeance-seekers, quick-fingered thieves, and reckless ramblers who’d hire their swords for a good weight of steel coin, no matter whether they were hired for a border skirmish, a private raid, or a swift assassination.
I’m one of those hirelings, only it’s not a sword I let out. It’s Reaper, my hard-headed warhammer. Griff was one, too, and none better in this part of Abanasinia than Killer Griff.
It was wind that blew me into the Swan and Dagger, wind and the breath of winter coming. Griff was looking right at me when I came in. His eyes narrowed a bit and his lip curled in the sneer that was his smile. When he lifted his hand, a lazy wave, I went to join him.
“Sit,” he said as easily as if it had been five days since he’d seen me last and not five months.
I took the warhammer off my hip and set it on the table. When I sat, Griff poured out some ale from the jug and shoved the tankard my way. I drank long and slow, then looked around to see whether anything remaining from his meal seemed worth picking over. Nothing did; Griff had done that duck to the bone.
“Hungry, are you, Broc?”
“Not so much,” I said, looking past him to the bar where Baird Taverner stood listening to
a whip-thin goblin whine and wheeze over his woes. He was a shabby thing, that goblin, his clothing naught but patches and rags, and he’d lately been in a fight with someone or something mean enough to rip off half the flesh of his pointy left ear.
“Sniveling about the price of dwarf spirits,” Griff said, squinting into the thick air and looking where I did. “It’s gone up some since last you were here. Baird’s getting twenty-five coppers for it now.”
Twenty-five. You could drown yourself in ale for twenty-five coppers, and I had nothing like that much in my pocket. Still, I might have figured the cost would rise. You don’t get dwarf spirits easily these days, what with Thorbardin shut up tight against the world and my dear mountain kin hoarding most of it for themselves. What Baird got he paid hard for, so he charged a steep price to tap a keg.
“I’ll stand you a drink,” Griff said, leaning back and gesturing to the taverner.
I stopped him. “Don’t. I can’t afford to be in your debt.”
He shrugged, as if to say I must please myself. “Where have you been, Broc? Someone told me you were dead, killed out there in the hills of Darken Wood.”
I’d heard the same tale told of me in several versions. “Did you mourn me, Griff?”
In the uneasy light of candle and hearth the scars on his face shone like cruel silver as he leaned back in his chair and yawned.
“My heart broke,” said the man whose heart sat like a stone in his chest, beating but never moved. “Good to see you again,” he added roughly as he lifted the jug and filled the tankard for me again.
I drank his health with a silent gesture, drained the tankard, and filled it a third time as he leaned across the table. That close to him, most people look away, from the scars and from his eyes. I never looked away, though sometimes when I met his eyes I saw ghosts there, peering out at me. That night, as on other nights, I thought Griff’s eyes held the ghosts of all the people he’d killed.
“Listen,” he said, the word falling heavily between us to let me know he had something to say worth hearing. He tapped Reaper’s head. “Broc, are you looking for work?”
“I’m here,” I said simply. “Me and the season. It’s not a good place when the snow falls, that wild wood yon. I’d rather be under roof.”
He took a long pull of ale and banged the tankard onto the table. “So says the Dwarf of Darken Wood. Well, I can give you work to make sure you can buy yourself the finest house in Long Ridge and stock it with dwarf spirits all the year through.”
I leaned forward, wiping ale foam from my mouth. If I had any money, I’d not be wasting it on a fine and fancy house. A room over the Swan and Dagger was enough for me, with some coin left over to buy enough dwarf spirits to warm away the winter.
“It’s a sweet job,” Griff said, hitching his chair closer to the table. He glanced right and left, then dropped his voice low. “We’ll be in and out before anyone knows what happened.”
The job was a vengeance killing down in Elm High, one of the big towns on the Whiterage River. The details were not unusual: a ruined daughter, a son murdered trying to defend his sister, and a father too old to do what needed to be done and rich enough to offer Griff one hundred in steel coin to fund the expedition, two hundred more when we came back with the proof of our success.
“That proof,” I said, “what would it be?”
Griff slashed his thumb across his neck. A head. Well, that’s easy enough.
“How much for me?”
“The usual.”
One-third. Over at the bar, the goblin whined some more and shoved enough coins at Baird to see his cup refilled. One-third of three hundred — a fine payday.
“Done,” I said.
In the moment I said it, Baird Taverner pointed across the smoky room to us. Griff cocked his head as the crowd at the bar shifted, then parted. A young woman stood revealed, gray eyes wide and slender hands clasped modestly before her.
Dove among the wolves, I thought.
She took a timid step forward, then clasped her hands tighter and made her step firmer. She had a gauntlet to pass of gropers and grabbers, but she managed that well enough. She had a sharp elbow, that one, and she looked as if she knew how to use her knee if she had to. Right to us she came and stood at the table. This close to her, I saw it wasn’t her hands she clasped but a small green velvet pouch kept close. By the look of it, a good deal of coin nestled in there. By the look of her, lips pressed tight and eyes anxious, that was all the coin she had.
“I’ve come to find Griff Rees,” she said, “and they tell me he is here.”
Griff said nothing, only eyed her, cool and quiet, so that she must look at one or the other of us. She did that but once, then stood in silence until at last I said, “It’s not me you’re wanting, girl. It’s that lout across the table from me.”
Her glance thanked me, and she turned to Griff. She flinched a little to see his scars, and she could not hold his eye; no shame to her for it.
“I’ve come,” she said, “to hire you, Griff Rees, for a job of work.”
“Have you now?” Griff said, drawling lazy and low. “Well, you’ve come late, mistress. I’ve just taken”-he smiled to mock-”a job of work.” He leaned back in his chair, shouted to Baird for more ale, and seemed surprised to find the young woman still there. “Did you not hear me?”
She stood tall and straight, her black hair glinting in the firelight. She said she had heard him, and she said she hoped he would give her as good a hearing. “For I’ve got the steel to pay you well.”
Griff’s dark eyes lighted. He wasn’t one for sentiment, and so the sad tale of the ruined daughter and the murdered son wouldn’t move him to dismiss this young woman if her purse proved deeper than that of the old man who couldn’t take his own revenge. He threw out his leg and hooked a chair with his foot, dragging it over to the table. She sat, looking around her uneasily, her pouch and her hands in her lap.
“I am Olwynn Haugh,” she said, “and I am a widow. My husband-” Her voice faltered. “My husband was a farmer, below in the valley. He is lately dead. I have a child, Cae, she’s but a month old, and I want to take her and go home to my father. I want to be with him before winter sets in and-”
Griff laughed, the sound like a bear shouting in the hills. “Mistress Haugh, someone has misinformed you. I don’t hire out to escort young ladies home to their fathers.” He leaned across the table, giving her full sight of his scarred face, his dark and dangerous eyes. “I travel harder roads than that.”
“And crueler,” she said, her eyes on the table, on me, on anything but his face. “I know who you are. That’s why I want to hire you to protect me on my way. My father lives in Haven, and the best road to there passes around Darken Wood.”
Well, Olwynn Haugh was no fool, that much we now knew. We’ve a long history around here in Abanasinia, one full of dark threads and some bright. In these after-days many of the doings are grim, and much of that grim work goes on in Darken Wood, home to cutthroats and thieves and people like me who aren’t so delicate about whom they kill or why as long as the pay is good.
Olwynn lifted her pouch and put it on the table. It didn’t seem as fat as it would need to be to tempt Griff away from a job promising one hundred steel to start and two hundred to finish.
“Look,” Griff said, wearying of this conversation, “take your money and go hire a half-dozen strong men to guide you home. Say some prayers to gods along the way, if you still believe in them. I’ve other work to do, and it’s time for me to be at it.”
He turned from her. In his mind, the matter was finished. Olwynn took up her green velvet pouch and opened it.
“See,” she said, presenting all her wealth, “I do have the steel to pay you. Here is a ring my father gave me, as well as a necklace of emeralds and rubies that belonged to my mother and my grandmother before her.”
The ring was of good enough make. You might get a few steel for it from a generous man. The necklace, though-that
looked like something out of Thorbardin, and a lot older than this girl’s grandmother. Each jewel was perfectly cut and enchained. It was worth a good deal more than a few steel if you showed it to the right person.
Across the room the skinny goblin leaned his back against the bar and made sure he had a clear view of us. I drew Reaper closer to me. Griff saw that, but he never moved. A look had come on him, white and terrible. I swear by Reorx himself or whichever of the vanished gods you’d like me to name, I swear his hand trembled and the ale slopped over the brim of his tankard.
Firelight glinted off the little heap of steel coins, a pile much too small to outweigh the three hundred promised Griff for that simple killing down in Elm High, but he wasn’t doing that kind of reckoning. He wasn’t doing any reckoning at all. He stared, like a man come suddenly upon an adder, and what held his eye was that ring sitting atop the little pile of steel, a long narrow oval of gold upon which was embossed a double eagle, a fierce raptor with two heads, each in opposition to the other.
The farmer’s pretty widow smiled and grew easy, believing she’d shown just what was needed to hire her man: good coin and, if the sum weren’t enough, a golden ring and some jewelry to make up the difference.
“Will you do it, then?” she asked, gathering up the pouch and cinching it tight.
“Done,” Griff said. From the sound, his mouth must have been drier than ash. He reached for his ale and drank the tankard down. “Be ready for us in the morning.”
“So soon? But-”
“Tomorrow, or not at all,” he growled. “Meet me outside of here at first light.”
She made no other protest and left us. Me, though, I had a thing or two to say. I poured myself some ale, then said it.
“Have you lost your mind? You just passed up the best job I’ve heard of in months. For what? Maybe a third of what that old man in Elm High is promising to pay?”
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