The Realms of the Elves a-11

by Коллектив Авторов

The humans in the taproom watched him warily. Daried resigned himself to a more patient approach, and let the doubt and hostility fall from his face.

  "As you must have guessed, the ruin that you name the House of Pale Stone was once my family's home," he began. "I have but lately returned from Evermeet, and I was appalled to discover that the palace had been broken into and the crypts denied. I hope that you can see why I was upset."

  Earek the innkeeper nodded cautiously. "Anyone would be," he agreed. He waited for Daried to continue.

  "Perhaps the man you call Red Harvald was the one who opened our vaults, or perhaps someone else pillaged the place before he ever set foot in it. The gems and jewelry removed from our dead are not that important to me. I wish that my ancestors' sleep had not been disturbed, but it is done, and I will speak no more of it.

  "But there is one thing I ask of you, only one heirloom of my mother's family that I would wish to recover. It was a sword of fine elven steel, with three pearls set in its crossguard and a hilt shaped like a sea serpent. A design like a row of breaking waves graced its blade. Once it was enchanted, but its magic faded away centuries ago. It is nothing more or less than a beautiful old sword now, but it would please me greatly to find it." Daried felt his temper rising again at the idea of the Morvaeril moonblade in the hands of some human brigand, but he checked his anger with a deep breath. "I will, of course, pay a very handsome finder's fee to the current owner. I pass no judgment on anyone who happens to own it now. I will be satisfied with its return."

  The innkeeper's eyes narrowed as Daried described the blade. When he finished, Earek glanced past the blade-singer's shoulder at Vada, seated by the hearth. Daried turned slowly, but Vada made no secret of his assent.

  "I believe him," the old man told Earek. "He and his people have come a long way to shield us from terrible foes. It would be ungrateful-and stupid-of us to ignore his grievances."

  The innkeeper nodded, and returned his attention to Daried. "I've seen that sword," he told the bladesinger. "It hung in a scabbard of red dragon-leather above the fireplace of a man named Andar, the son of Harvald. He lived in the house Harvald built."

  "Very good," said Daried. "I will-"

  Earek stopped him with a raised hand. "Andar was killed two days ago, sir. He led some of our folk against a large warband of Chondathan marauders. But after he drove them away, some of the mercenaries decided to follow him back to his manor. They killed him, looted the place, and burned much of it to the ground. I don't know if your sword is still there or not."

  Daried grimaced. He remembered his scouts telling him of a skirmish near the town a couple of days past, but he had given it little thought. Gangs of desperate men and bands of reavers roamed the dale; he and his elves drove off or slew the ones they caught, but some eluded them. After all, they were watching the forests to the southeast, not the open lands to the west.

  "Chondathans? I thought your enemies were Sembians."

  The innkeeper snorted. "The Sembians don't do much of their own fighting, sir. They hire companies of mercenaries from all over Faerun to serve as their army. Hard, cruel men, all too eager to add some plunder to their Sembian gold."

  "Where can I find the manor?"

  "You'll find the place a little less than two miles southwest of the town," the innkeeper said. "It's a strong fieldstone farmhouse on the top of a small hill, with a big apple-orchard all around it. Just look for the smoke."

  The bladesinger nodded and turned to go, but paused. Two or three violent deaths in a village the size of Glen was a hard thing to bear, even for humans. The Glen-folk hadn't despoiled his family's palace or stripped elven dead of their funerary attire, even if it was likely that their fathers had. They didn't deserve the brunt of his anger. He looked back to Earek and Vada from the door. "Do any of the family survive?" he asked.

  "Andar's sons and their families live here in the town; they weren't there," Vada said. "Nilsa lived with her father, but she went up to Ashabenford earlier that day. She didn't return until the morning after." The old man fixed his watery gaze on Daried, and pointed the stem of his pipe at the elf. "If you should meet them at Harvald's house, remember that they've lost enough in the last few days. Speak less harshly to them than you did to us, if you have a dram of compassion in your heart."

  Daried nodded once and left, shrugging off the weight of the human gazes on his back.

  The warmth of the day did not diminish noticeably when the sun set. The long, hot afternoon simply faded into a humid, clinging night. The moon was only a thin crescent in the southeast, and the stars were faint and few. If there had been no moonlight at all, it might have been difficult for Daried, but as it was, he could easily follow the trail left by the marauders who had pillaged and burned Harvald's old house. They were driving most of the farmstead's livestock with them and moving slowly, as one might expect of a band of raiders burdened with loot.

  They think that no one dares to chase them, Daried decided. They are that stupid, or that arrogant. Perhaps they figured that no village in this empty corner of the Dale would be able to muster enough skilled warriors to challenge thirty-five or forty seasoned mercenaries. That was Daried's guess as to the size of the warband. It could be larger, if there were other bands who had split off to roam in different directions before he had picked up their trail.

  He'd found the farmstead half-burned, as Earek had told him. The walls of the old fieldstone house survived, but the roof was mostly gone, and the various outbuildings were all burned. An astonishing array of mundane possessions-pots and kettles, stools and chairs, chests and cabinets-had been dragged out of the house and strewn around. Three fresh-dug graves lay a short distance from the house. He didn't know who else beside Harvald's son had died there, but there had been no one at the burned manor to ask.

  A quick divination spell had confirmed his suspicion: the Morvaeril moonblade was no longer there, carried off by the marauders who had pillaged the place. Without a moment's hesitation, Daried had set off in pursuit.

  Humans were unlikely to travel all night long, and the raiders were not moving quickly in any event. Elves, on the other hand, traveled swiftly indeed by night or day and could go for days with minimal rest. Even with their head start, he thought he might be able to overtake the marauders before they reached the Sembian encampment in Battledale. It was his only chance to regain the Morvaeril moonblade.

  Besides, dealing with murderous scum such as the marauders he pursued was one of the reasons Vesilde Gaerth had posted Daried and his small company to Glen in the first place. Corellon only knew what other acts of violence and robbery they had already committed elsewhere in the Dale, or would commit given the chance.

  Daried trotted southward throughout the night, following the swath the mercenaries left behind. Instead of making straight for Battledale, the mercenaries seemed to have veered west for a few miles, skirting the forest border as they made their way south. No doubt they hadn't yet had their fill of blood and loot, and hoped for more opportunities for mayhem before turning homeward. On two occasions he passed lonely farmsteads, sacked by the marauders he followed. Whatever the reason, each detour the murderers took gave Daried more time to catch them before they rejoined the Sembian army.

  At daybreak he allowed himself an hour of rest, eating a little bread and dried fruit he carried in a pouch by his belt. Then he roused himself and pushed on. In the mid-morning the marauders' trail finally turned eastward and disappeared into the shadows of Cormanthor.

  Beneath the trees the day was still quite warm; not a breath of wind stirred the branches. The raiders' path followed an old track in the woods-not an elfroad, for it would have taken elven woodcraft to find and follow one of Cormanthyr's hidden highways. This was a woodcutter's foot-track, for Daried passed a number of old stumps, (zees cut down years ago. He paused to examine the first few he found, and discovered that the old woodcutter had gone out of his way to take only dead or dying trees. At least some humans took elven tea
chings to heart, though elves wouldn't have scarred the forest so much with their harvesting of wood.

  A little more than ten miles from the place where the marauder's trail entered the forest, Daried came to the Ashaba. And there, in the middle of the forest, he found abridge. it was not a human-built bridge, of course. Instead, it was one of the old elven crossings, a set of submerged and semi-submerged boulders that had been surreptitiously arranged to form an easy path across the river. The riverbed itself was arranged to accommodate flooding by spreading the water out across a wide, shallow gravel bank instead of drowning the crossing altogether. Long ago spells of illusion had concealed parts of the span, so that anyone who came across it without knowing its secret would have seen no crossing there. But those spells had failed with time, and the whole pathway was there for anyone to see. Even forest-blind humans couldn't miss it-and in fact they hadn't, because the marauders' trail led over the old crossing.

  The bladesinger halted in amazement. There were supposed to be no easy crossings of the great forest river between Ashabenford and the Pool of Yeven. His company was keeping watch twelve miles upstream, ignorant of a perfectly serviceable crossing that at least some of the Sembian sellswords knew about and made use of. The Sembian army hardly needed to improvise a crossing near Glen, when this one would serve almost as well. It was farther from Ashabenford, of course, but it also had a fine path leading right into the western portions of Mistledale.

  Daried thought for a moment. He and his archers could hold the bridge against a small company of human sellswords, but if a few hundred human warriors went that way, they could do little more than slow the attack. But there was a chance at least that the leaders of the Sembian army did not know of the crossing. The mercenaries in Sembia's service might not have reported the crossing to their employers-not before they had an opportunity to do some pillaging first.

  After all, if the Sembians had known about the crossing, why would they not have attacked already?

  "That is tenuous reasoning, Daried," he told himself.

  But if there was even the slightest chance that he could keep knowledge of the crossing from finding its way back to the Sembian commanders, he had to try. And it also meant that he could continue his pursuit of the marauders, didn't it?

  Striding easily from boulder to boulder, he hurried across the hidden bridge and picked up the path on the east bank of the Ashaba. He redoubled his pace and ran through the long, warm hours of the afternoon, gliding through the tree-gloom and brush like a silent green shadow. Sweat glistened on his brow, and his eyes ached from lack of rest, but he refused to slack his pace. Only the soft thudding of his footfalls on the forest loam and the light creaking of his armor betrayed his haste.

  He slowed only when he heard the sounds of human voices ahead of him on the trail.

  Carefully, Daried raised the hood of his cloak and drew it closer around his shoulders despite the heat of the day.

  Its dappled gray-green hue and concealing enchantments would make him much more difficult to see. Then he closed in on his quarry.

  The mercenaries had halted near a dark, still forest pool, setting their camp for the night. They were big, dirty men, dressed in hauberks of heavy mail and leather. Sweat soaked their brows and dripped from their faces, staining their arming coats and tunics. They were crude, callous, and slovenly, but Daried did not miss the care with which they set their sentries or the alertness of those who remained on watch. They might have been mercenaries of the lowest sort, but that also meant that they were professional fighters, and they knew enough to be careful of Cormanthor's watchful silence.

  In an hour of watching, he counted thirty-one of them. He also earmarked the leader of the rough band, a tall, thin fellow with a badly pocked face and a scalp shaven down to short stubble. Most of the mercenaries satisfied themselves with arranging simple lean-tos or rigging open-sided awnings of canvas to keep off any rain, but the leader had a tent, in which he kept most of the band's loot. Several fierce war-hounds prowled about the camp, and in a small hollow nearby the mercenaries created a small corral for the cows, pigs, and horses they'd carried off from the Dalesfolk. The air reeked of dung, sweat, and woodsmoke.

  After a time, Daried withdrew a few hundred yards and found himself a good spot to lie out of sight and rest. He ate a light meal, and permitted himself several hours of Reverie in order to refresh himself and regain his strength. The humans would be there all night; he could afford a few hours' rest.

  Three hours after dusk, he arose from his hiding place. The night was even warmer than the previous one, and the air felt heavy and still-there would be a thunderstorm before long. Avoiding the path, Daried returned to the mercenaries' camp through the trackless forest. He spotted a pair of sentries watching over the path leading back toward Mistledale, and two more keeping an eye on the forest nearby. After watching for a time, he decided that two more sentries guarded the other side of the camp.

  And he found someone else watching the camp, too.

  A short distance ahead of him, a young woman crouched behind a tree, a powerful bow in her hands. She wore a tunic of homespun linen, breeches rather than a skirt, and a green cloak with its hood drawn. She was dressed like one of the Dalesfolk, but it seemed unlikely that one girl would have tracked a whole band of mercenaries into the forest. Of course, Daried himself had done just that, but he was a highly skilled bladesinger and a seasoned warrior; he knew what he was about.

  The girl drew a deep breath, and raised her bow, sighting on the nearest sentry, a shot of twenty yards or so from where she crouched. Daried scowled-if she started shooting mercenaries, she'd rouse the whole camp and likely get herself killed. It certainly would not aid his efforts at all.

  He glided closer and whispered, "Do not shoot. You'll wake them all."

  The girl whirled in surprise, bringing her bow around to aim at him, but Daried had been careful enough to place a tree between them. He made a small motion of his hand: "Wait."

  Slowly, the girl lowered her bow. She studied Daried with suspicion. She was unusually fine-featured for a human, with delicate eyes, a narrow face, and ears that showed just the subtlest of points.

  She has elf blood! Daried realized. Of course. The humans plundered everything else of ours. Why not take what they wanted from our women as well?

  He considered leaving, and allowing the girl to simply get herself killed. She was born in violence and robbery; why should he intervene to spare her from the consequences of human rashness? But before he decided to abandon her, she spoke.

  "I am Daried Selsherryn, of Evermeet," he answered, keeping his voice low. "Those sellswords have something that belongs to my family, and I mean to get it back."

  "Fine, you are welcome to search their belongings when I am done with them." She turned her back on him and raised her bow again.

  Daried had certainly not expected to be ignored. He was so nonplussed that he almost let her begin her fight without another word. But he took two soft steps closer and shook his head. "I can't have you put them on their guard yet. Now, who are you? And why is one human girl seeking her own death by attacking a camp full of hardened sellswords?"

  "I am Nilsa Harvalmeer. These murderers killed my father and burned my home. I am going to see them pay for what they have done."

  Daried looked at her more closely. "Nilsa, the daughter of Andar?"

  "Yes. How do you know me?"

  "I followed this band of mercenaries from your father's house."

  The girl studied him. "You're the elf captain whose archers are near Glen, aren't you?"

  "I am." He hadn't realized that any of the Glen-folk knew who he was.

  "Are the rest of your warriors nearby? Can you wipe out this whole band?"

  Daried shook his head. "I am the only one here," he said.

  Nilsa frowned. "Why are you here by yourself?"

  Do I explain myself? he wondered. She might regard the Morvaeril moonblade as a heirloom of her House, not
mine. Still, in his experience, it was always better to be truthful, even when the words would be hard to hear.

  "I came for the sword your grandfather took from my family's ancestral home," he said. "I only learned two days ago that it was missing. The townspeople told me that it was in your family's keeping. When I found that your house had been plundered, I decided to follow the marauders and take it back."

  She stared at him in disbelief. "You came here to take back a sword?"

  "Yes, but now that I am here, I think I'll discourage these brigands from raiding your Dale again. It would be unconscionable to leave them free to murder and rob anybody else."

  "You have a high opinion of your ability to discourage them."

  "I know what I can do," he said. He looked at the bow in her hands. "Are you skilled with that weapon?"

  "I know what I can do," Nilsa answered him. "At this range, I'll kill a man each time I shoot."

  Reading her face, Daried decided that she believed she was speaking the truth. That was no more or less than he would expect from an elf archer, after all. Whether or not her opinion of her own archery was founded on truth, he could not say. Most likely, she'd manage a couple of good shots, but she'd lose her nerve and her aim when the surprise of her attack faded. But still, he could use a couple of good arrows at the right moment.

  "All right," he said. "I will take care of the sentries on this side of the camp, then slip in and slay their captain. Then I will call out for you in Elvish. You will shoot any man you see in the middle of the camp. Fire five arrows, and withdraw. Accurate fire is more important than rapid fire. I'd rather have one man dead or wounded than five men missed. I will trust that you do not shoot me.

  "After I have caused a little more havoc, I will also withdraw. I will meet you a half-mile back down the trail, and we will set an ambush in case we are pursued."

  Nilsa scowled in the shadows. "Who decided that you were in charge of this?"

  "I did. Do you have a better plan?"