Delbossan scowled. “I suppose your four friends are trailing along behind ye, to come and laugh at me, too.”
“Nay, friend, Tymora smiles upon you: I’m alone.”
“Good. I wearied of Jhessail’s merry tinkling waterfall long ago.”
“Her—? Oh. When she laughs. Aye.”
Planting one boot on the battered strongchest the horsemaster had been using as a dining table, Florin leaned forward, chin in hand, and smiled down at his friend. “So give. Tell me why rabbit stew—good rabbit stew by the smell—ends up piled high on the head of Irlgar Delbossan, horsemaster bold!”
Delbossan sighed and leaned out to reclaim one of the discarded bowls. The loud lady who’d presumably flounced off into the pavilion had obviously slammed her own bowl of stew down over his head, flung it aside, and plucked up his own to season him a second time. Holding the bowl glumly under his chin, he raked a goodly amount of stew down off his head into it.
Florin fought the urge to laugh quite successfully this time.
With gravy running in rivulets down his face, Delbossan looked up and muttered, “I’m at my wit’s end, lad. Yon flaming chit of a noble lass—ye heard her, I know ye did—Horns of the Hunt, half the King’s stlarning Forest heard her!—has driven me half mad already. I can see why her parents have had it to here with her!”
“Nobles, aye? Who is she? And what’re you doing with her out here, in the trees? Aren’t her sort all ‘prithee dance me around my great hall’ types, all gowns and gaudy airs in heart-of-all-Faerûn Suzail?”
Delbossan grinned despite himself and licked stew from the back of one hairy hand. Then, as if remembering his manners, he held out the bowl with a dainty flourish. “Stew, lad?”
Florin almost choked, trying not to roar with laughter, but managed to wave the offer away.
Delbossan grinned and got up, stamping his feet to shake great clumps of stew from himself, and headed for the trees. To wash himself clean in the stream that looped and wandered back there, of course. Florin followed, even before the horsemaster’s beckoning wave.
Delbossan sent the two guards out into the glade with a quick hand signal, waved away their grins good-naturedly, and strode along a little trail that led to a privy, and past it, toward the faint tinkle of moving water.
“She’s a fair demon, lad,” he said, wading out into the stream and sitting down. Fish glided away as the horsemaster winced—this creek ran fast and cold—and lowered himself onto his back. “As ye doubtless heard. Like I said, even her parents are fair tired of her high-handed, haughty-to-all behavior. ‘Despairing,’ was the word our lord used. She’s a Crownsilver, and wants all the world to know it.”
“That much I heard. One of the three ‘royal noble’ houses, aye? Yet I must confess, Del, I know nothing much about them. ‘Proud Crownsilvers, fierce Huntsilvers, and Truesilvers bold/Give Obarskyr silver and trouble enough, but no gold.’ Her parents sent her away? To Lord Hezom?”
“Sent her to be trained so she’ll not shame them the more. And aye, Lord Hezom sent me down to throne-town to fetch her back up to Espar for his tutoring. The Lady Narantha Crownsilver, as charming a lass as ever kicked me, dumped my best rabbit stew all over me, slapped me, raked my face with her nails, and shrieked at me worse than any drunken lowcoin lass! Lad, it seems nobles don’t bridle their younglings, these days!”
Florin shook his head in disbelief. “So this banishment is to be punishment for her?”
“Belike they want her temper trained in private, instead of before all Suzail—so ’tis the upcountry backwoods, where stride the likes of ye and me, and no highnose gowned lady goes!” The horsemaster raked the last of the stew out of his hair. Now that it was gone from his face, Florin could see two crisscrossing rows of fresh bloody scratches the Lady Crownsilver had left on Delbossan’s cheek, by way of loving adornment.
Their eyes met, and both men shook their heads in unison.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this, lad,” said Delbossan.
“I can’t see Lord Hezom taming her—not unless he’s planning on using you, Tarleth, and all your whips and bridles to break her!”
“Ha ha, lad, tempt me not,” Delbossan replied, rising and shaking himself like a dog to be rid of a dripcloak of water.
Florin waved an arm at the stream. “So, has she an oh-so-haughty servant to bathe her, or are you expected to do that, too?”
“Dismissed all her maids, or they fled,” the horsemaster growled. “She half-slew the last one, I hear. And no, I don’t expect to be plying any backscrapers or holding out any drycloaks this trip, young Florin! Don’t be spreading word I have been, either!”
“Del,” Florin said reprovingly, “that’s not my way.”
“I know it, lad,” the horsemaster growled, wading out of the stream and squelching past Florin. “ ’S just I’ve got troubles enough, about now, without half the King’s Forest thinking I’m bedding this dragon!”
“Dragon, is it? Face full of fangs, has she? Ugly as an old toad?”
“Oh, she’s beautiful enough—if ye like ivory curves mated with the tongue, temper, and nails of a snarling wardog!”
The horsemaster turned, shaking his head, and added, “Must be rooted in being reared noble—no woman of Espar behaves thus!”
Florin surprised himself then. Without really knowing why, he found himself clasping Delbossan’s forearms, leaning down over the older man in his urgency, blurting, “Let me do it, Del. Let me take her on a—a little foray through the forest, then back to meet up with you again. I can follow the Dathyl here up past Espar, and join you at Hunter’s Hollow!”
The horsemaster blinked at him in utter astonishment.
“Wha—why?”
“I—I think I can break in yon highnose-lass a bit, without whips, lead-reins, bowls of stew, or Lord Hezom made miserable for a summer, with … well, a walk in the woods!”
Delbossan stared at Florin. His jaw had dropped open.
“Let the mud, the thorns, the stinging insects—and feeling lost, cold, and hungry, to say nothing of the little matter of having to walk a good distance,” Florin said swiftly, shaking his old friend, “break her high-and-mightiness, or at least tire her out a bit and make her a shade more grateful for having shelter and riches. I could pretend to be a beast or outlaw after dusk, and chase her out of her tent—and then rescue her, as Florin the wandering forester, the moment she’s in the deep trees.”
“Lad! She’s not to be touched! If—” Delbossan’s voice was raw with horror.
“I can control my lusts, thank you, Master Delbossan,” Florin said firmly. “And I believe you know me well enough to be sure I’m chasing no ransom here. Nor rescue-coin.”
“But why by all the gods would ye want to get mixed up in this? She’s—”
“Del, I’ve never even seen a noble, let alone talked to one! And beautiful, you say! Silks, velvet, facepaint, and airy graces—all here, not in stinking Suzail with me trying to peer past half a hundred glaring guards, to even get a glimpse of her!”
“But if she’s harmed—if she even thinks ye’ve pawed her, whate’er the truth, lad, your life is forfeit and so’s mine! I dare not—”
“Let her starve on the road to Espar because your bald head is so greedy for rabbit stew!”
The horsemaster shook his head and plucked himself free of Florin’s grasp.
“Ye’re wanderwitted, lad. Wild-crazed!”
“I’m … perhaps I am. Del, hear me! I—don’t you remember when you were young? I’m like that now, aye?”
The horsemaster’s look of horror deepened. “Ye want to bed half Espar, without any of them knowing about the oth—?” Then, as Florin’s expression changed to one of amazement, Delbossan flushed a deep red, shut his mouth like a poacher’s trap, shook his head violently, and whirled around to stamp back down the trail.
“Del!” Florin hissed urgently, grabbing at his arm. “Del, listen!”
The horsemaster kept walking
.
“Del,” Florin said quickly, into the older man’s ear, “you trained me! As a little lad, with smiles, apples, and letting me ride: you trained me. I’m a steed you schooled and sent into the world seeing things your way. My parents told me what was decent and right, aye, but you made their words true by showing me they weren’t just trying to sway me with empty speeches—just by being yourself, you showed me what it is to be of Cormyr. You know what I will and won’t do.”
The horsemaster swung around again.
“Lad,” he said heavily, “ye’re what they call ‘handsome.’ I’d hate to be the cause of the two of ye—both young, both headstrong—rutting because ye’re alone together. What if ye get her with child? Hey? What then? I say again: her life would be ruined, but thine and mine’d be ended, short and sharp! If not by blade by the king’s decree, then by bow or dagger, some night soon, on Lord Crownsilver’s orders!”
“Thaerefoil,” Florin said firmly, fingers busy at one of his belt pouches. He held out the leaves for Delbossan to see. “You know what it does.”
“Makes even a stallion less than a man,” the horsemaster murmured, bending to smell the leaves. “Fresh. Ye just gathered these.”
“I did. Not with this in mind, but …”
Delbossan looked up at the young forester. “Ye’d drink a tea made with this—of my making, and with me watching?”
Florin put the smallest leaf in his mouth, chewed, opened his mouth to show the horsemaster its crushed paste on his tongue, swallowed, and opened his mouth again for inspection.
“Gods above,” Delbossan murmured, “that much’ll unman ye for days!” He gave Florin a long look. “And if she runs off and breaks her neck, or gets eaten by wolves?”
Florin drew his dagger. “This shall defend her. No harm will come to her, and I’ll demand no coin of her family nor spread falsehood about her. I swear by the Purple Dragon and by the honor of the Falconhands. I swear by the Lady of the Forest I serve.”
His last sentence seemed to roll away among the trees, echoing weirdly, and as Delbossan stepped back in amazement, leaves everywhere seemed to glow, for just a moment. The older man caught his breath as he watched them fade.
Florin seemed unaware of both glow and voice-thunder, but stood eyeing the horsemaster, his gaze steady. “Well?”
Teeth flashed in Delbossan’s sudden smile. “Lad, I begin to feel delighted. Mind ye tell me all about it, after.”
They clasped forearms, as one warrior to another, and the horsemaster leaned forward and muttered conspiratorially, “Do nothing until nightfall—and then wait ’til ye hear yon two jackblades snoring …”
Chapter 2
A HUNGER FOR ADVENTURE
Grand adventures are tales full of wonder, daring, and peril. They all began as slapdash accounts of some folk having a horrible time, long ago and far away, and found a little lace and glimmer along the way.
Thus do sages solemnly record all ‘history.’ Whatever gods smile upon you grant that storytellers favor your tale, so that it displays you brightly, and twists you not so much that your very name and face are lost.
Arasper Ardanneth,
Sage of the Road
Arasper’s Little Book
published in the Year of the Prince
To the north of the scattered cottages of Espar, grassgirt hills rise west of the King’s Road, rolling like half-buried green leviathans for a long way north ere the woodlots scattered across their humpbacks rise and join together into true forest again.
To the west, the hills find close-tangled trees more swiftly. The folk of Espar are not so numerous as to hew firewood enough to swiftly thrust back the woods.
On the crest of the highest hill, at the edge of that close and familiar forest, stand the tumbled foundation stones of a ruined, long-fallen cottage. No man alive in Espar can recall who dwelt there, or when it fell into ruin. All know it as ‘the Stronghold,’ though it was never a keep. For generations it has been the playground of the boldest youths of Espar.
Two such bold youths, young lads in dusty breeches, boots, and homespun, were lounging against its weathered stones, watching the sun descend toward the trees. One had just arrived, puffing slightly from his eager trot up the hillside, and had been greeted thus: “Ho, Clumsum.”
“Hail, Stoop,” the arrival replied calmly. He rarely sounded anything other than calm, which was unusual in a youngling—or anyone else—who bore the silver Ladycoin about his neck and sought to be ordained in the service of Tymora. His name was not ‘Clumsum,’ though few in Espar called him anything else. “Saw you down by the creek this morn. Much luck?”
“Much luck, thanks to your tireless prayers,” came the gently sarcastic reply, “but not so much fish.” As if to punctuate that statement, the speaker’s stomach rumbled loudly. He added a sigh, tossed aside a tough blade of grass, and plucked another to chew upon. Though he was ‘Stoop’ to most of Espar, that wasn’t his real name either. And although he bore around his neck not a luck-coin of Tymora but a sunrise disk of Lathander he’d painted himself, the two Esparrans were firm friends, and always had been. Doust Sulwood and Semoor Wolftooth: Clumsum and Stoop.
“Sit, Doust,” Semoor said around his blade of grass, waving at an adjacent stone. “The shes will be late. As usual.” His boots were propped on a rock before him, and his words came floating lazily past them.
Doust grinned and sat, saying by way of reply, “Well, they do have more chores than we.”
His friend made a rude, dismissive sound halfway between a snort and a spit, and shifted his feet a trifle to give Doust room to prop his own boots up on the same handy rock. Semoor looked even more sleepy than was his wont. There was an easy smile on his rumpled face, and his shoulder-length hair was its usual dusty brown rats’ nest. His overlarge nose jutted out at the world as it always did, giving him something of the look of a vulture.
Just now, he was waving a disdainful hand at the hillside below.
As usual, the sward was dotted with Hlorn Estle’s flock of patiently grazing sheep—and as usual, Hlorn’s three sons were sitting here and there on the slope, eyeing the two lads up at the Stronghold suspiciously.
“ ’Tis so nice,” Semoor said sarcastically, “to be wanted.”
“Ah, I see the Morninglord’s rosy glow doth suffuse thee, this even,” Doust observed with a little smile, selecting his own blade of grass.
“Sabruin,” Semoor drawled, choosing the least polite way of saying ‘go pleasure yourself.’
“After you do the same, so I can watch and learn how,” Doust responded, and then pointed into the trees across the road below and added in satisfaction, “Ah! Islif comes!”
“Jhess’ll get here first,” his friend replied, pointing across the hillside to where the sheep were gathered most thickly.
Doust scrambled to his feet. “Huh! Belkur’ll set the dogs on her, if she goes walking right through the herd!”
“He already has—and she’s worked some spell or other; they won’t go near her,” Semoor said delightedly.
Belkur Estle’s snarled curses rose clearly into the evening air, amid canine whinings—and through them came a petite lass in long, gray skirts, striding as unconcernedly as if the field were hers and empty but for her strolling self. Fiery orange-brown hair fell free around her shoulders in a tumbling flood, and her eyes were large, gray-green, and merry.
“Ho, sluggards,” she greeted them, lifting her skirts to reveal wineskins hooked about both her garters. She proffered them with a wide grin.
It was matched, with enthusiasm. Semoor plucked one skin and unstoppered it eagerly. “Ah, Flamehair, Lathander sent you!”
“No,” Doust disagreed, claiming the other skin and sitting down again, “I believe Tymora—”
“And I rather believe I managed to bring myself here—and steal the wine from Father’s end vat, too,” Jhessail told them tartly. “Don’t get drunk, now, holy men; I grow tired of slapping the both of you at once.�
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“Ah,” Semoor told her slyly, “but we never tire of being slapped!”
“Sabruin,” Jhessail told him in a dignified tone, settling herself between them. Both promptly laid hands on her thighs in hopes of being slapped, but she gave them withering glances instead. They grinned, shrugged, and applied themselves to emptying wineskins.
A young woman taller and more heavily muscled than anyone on the hillside—including the sheep—was striding up the hill now, clanking as she came. As straight as a blade and as broad of shoulder as the village smith, Islif Lurelake was in a hurry. Some of the Estle dogs barked at her, but none dared rush her, because a drawn sword was gleaming in her hand.
The clanking was familiar; it came from her homemade battle-coat, an old leather jerkin onto which Islif had sewn castoff fragments of old plate-armor in an overlapping array. But none of the three in the Stronghold had ever seen that splendid sword before.
“Heyah, Islif!” Semoor Wolftooth called, when the striding woman was still a good ways below. “Where’d you get that?”
The warrior woman lifted icy gray eyes that stabbed at him like two sword points and said flatly, “From Bardeluk.”
Doust frowned in thought. “Uh … oh, Lord Hezom’s new guard, aye?”
“Ho ho,” Semoor said teasingly. “Persuaded him to give you his second-best blade, did you? Just like that?”
Islif Lurelake strode into the Stronghold and came to a halt, towering over them. When she was this close, broad-shouldered and buxom, her arms corded with muscles Doust and Semoor would have given much to call their own, the battle-coat lost all hint of the ridiculous. She was striking rather than beautiful, with a hard, long-jawed face that had caused her to be dubbed ‘Horseface’ more than once by unfriendly tongues, and her jet-black hair was cut short in a warriors’ helm-bob. With those piercing, almost silver eyes, she looked as dangerous as the sword in her hand.
“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean.”
The would-be servant of Lathander lifted his sunrise disk and told it, “Oh, I never thought you’d been sleeping, in all those half-days—half-days, lass!—you’ve spent behind closed doors with, ah, fortunate Master Bardeluk.”
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