“This will do,” he told Hamil and ducked into the front door.
The common room was crowded and loud. Most of the patrons seemed to be foreigners—Thentian and Melvauntian merchants in the doublets or quilted jerkins and square caps favored in those cities, Mulmasterites with their double baldrics and dueling swords low on their hips, and even a few sullen dwarf craftsmen in heavy fur and iron. A handful of Hulburgans were scattered through the crowd, notable because they tended to be much plainer in dress than the merchants and traders of other cities. Most people in Hulburg preferred a plain hooded cloak and a simple tunic and leggings to the less practical fashions of the bigger cities, since Hulburg was still something of a frontier town, and its people valued warmth and comfort over style. “Where did all these outlanders come from?” Geran wondered aloud. “The town’s full of them.”
“Doubtless most of the natives had the good sense to leave, as you did.”
“Hmmph.” Geran shook his head. Hulburg had been a sleepy little backwater ten years ago when he had set out to see Faerûn, but it seemed that was no longer the case. He realized that he’d seen more foreigners in the streets than native Hulburgans in their short walk up from the docks—men and women in the colors of merchant costers, guilds, and companies from all over the Moonsea. “I wasn’t gone that long. It’s only been ten years. Eight, really.”
You spent too much time with the elves in Myth Drannor, Hamil answered him without speaking. He was a ghost-wise halfling, and his people could make their thoughts heard when they wished. I think they bewitched you, Geran. Ten years is a long time for humans or halflings alike. You’ve forgotten how the rest of us reckon the years.
Geran frowned but made no reply. The two companions chose a table in a far corner of the room and worked their way through a serviceable supper of stew, black bread, and smoked fish. The Sleeping Dragon charged five silver pennies for their board, but at least they included a flagon of passable southern wine with the meal—though Geran doubted that it had ever been within a hundred miles of Sembia. He poured himself two cups and stopped, not wanting to dull himself before finishing the journey. There would be time for that later.
“You haven’t said much about your friend Jarad,” Hamil said after a time.
“Jarad? No, I suppose I haven’t.” Geran returned his attention to his small companion. “He was my closest friend when we were growing up. Once upon a time we were the young kings of this town. We hunted every hilltop and valley for ten miles around, we explored dozens of old ruins, we pilfered and begged and charmed our way through the streets, getting ourselves into more sorts of trouble than you can imagine. We taught ourselves swordplay and picked some fights that we shouldn’t have, but somehow we always came through it. Mirya—that’s Jarad’s sister—and my cousin Kara followed after us as often as not. The four of us were inseparable.” Geran smiled even though the memories made his heart ache. “Hulburg may not seem like much compared to Tantras or Mulmaster, but it was a good place to grow up.”
“Jarad remained in Hulburg when you left?”
“He did. I was anxious to try myself against the world. I couldn’t stand the idea of boxing myself up in this town, but Jarad didn’t see things that way. So I went to study in Thentia, and then I traveled to Procampur to study from the swordmasters there and fell in with the Dragonshields, and I even visited Myth Drannor and lived among the elves for a time—as you well know. Jarad stayed here and became a captain of the Shieldsworn, the harmach’s guards. More than once I tried to talk him into joining me in Tantras or Procampur, but he never had my restlessness. He used to tell me that he had too much to look after right here in Hulburg, but I think he simply liked it here better than anywhere else. He just didn’t see a reason to leave.” Geran drained his cup and set it down. “All right. I think it’s time to call on my family.”
They left a few coppers on the table and made their way outside. The sun had set, and the wind battered at shutters and doors with bitterly cold gusts. Signboards creaked and swayed. The few streetlamps in sight guttered and danced wildly, and people hurried from door to door clutching their cloaks tight around their bodies.
“Charming,” Hamil said with a shiver. The halfling hailed from the warm lands of the south, and he’d never gotten used to the chill of more northerly lands. “I can’t believe that people choose to live in places like this.”
“Winter’s worse,” Geran answered. He turned right and set off along High Street, trying his best to ignore the cold. He was a native Hulburgan, after all, and he was not about to let Hamil see that it bothered him too. They came to the small square by the Assayer’s House, a rambling old stone building where the harmach’s officials oversaw the trade in gold dust and mining claims, and descended the stairs leading down to the Middle Bridge and Cinder Way. Once that part of town had been given over to several big smelters, but some sixty years ago Lendon Hulmaster had moved the stink and slag of the furnaces a mile to the east, downwind of the town. Afterward a crowded district of workshops and poorly built rowhouses known as the Tailings had grown up in place of the smelters.
Geran remembered the Tailings as a sparsely inhabited and poor neighborhood, but it seemed it had taken a turn for the worse since he’d last been home. Outlanders crowded every dilapidated house or hovel—dirty and sullen men who gathered around firepits, staring at the two travelers as they passed. Who are these people? Geran wondered again. Miners with no claims to work? Laborers indentured to one of the guilds or merchant companies? Or just more of the rootless wanderers who seemed to collect like last year’s leaves, blown here and there by the winds of ill fortune? The towns and cities of Faerûn were full of such men, especially in the years since the Spellplague.
Geran, Hamil said silently. The swordsman sensed his small companion’s sudden alertness and slowed his steps. He followed Hamil’s gaze and saw what the halfling saw—a gang of five men watching over the street. Three lounged on the sagging stoop of a dismal alehouse, and two gathered around a firepit on the opposite side of the street. They carried cudgels and knives, and each man wore a red-dyed leather gauntlet wrapped in chains on his left hand. Crimson Chains. Slavers.
“I see them,” Geran answered. A slaving company from the city of Melvaunt, the Crimson Chain had a bad name throughout the Moonsea. He’d met them a few times in the Vast, but he never would have expected to find them in Hulburg. The harmachs had outlawed slaving long before he’d been born, and it was a law they kept rigorously. Geran’s mouth tightened, but he kept walking. The Chainsmen might have some legitimate business in Hulburg, he told himself. And even if they didn’t, it wasn’t his place to object. The Shieldsworn would roust them out if they intended trouble.
“Not so fast, friends.” One of the Chainsmen—a short, stocky man with a shaven head and a long, drooping mustache—stepped down from the alehouse stoop into their path. He grinned crookedly, but his eyes were hard and cold. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before, hey? You’ve some dues to pay.”
Geran scowled. He’d seen this sort of thing more than once, but never before in Hulburg. In any event, he was not inclined to pay off thugs anywhere as long as he had good steel on his hip. “Dues? What exactly do I owe dues for, and who’s collecting?”
The bald Chainsman studied Geran with a shark’s smile. “There are lots of bad sorts about, you know. I’m Roldo. My boys and I keep order in the Tailings. Your dues buy you safe passage, my friends. Everybody pays.”
Hamil rolled his eyes. “And how much are your dues?” he asked.
“How much’ve you got?” another one of the slavers asked.
“More than I’d care to part with.”
“Then hand over your purse, little man, and I’ll see how much you can afford,” the Chainsman Roldo said. He spat on the ground. “We’re reasonable fellows, after all.”
Geran studied the Chainsmen surrounding them. Five on the street and possibly more in the alehouse or another place nearby, and mo
st looked like they knew how to use the cudgels at their belts. It would be easier to play their game and buy them off with a couple of silver pennies, but the thought of paying for safe passage in his own hometown did not sit well with him.
Besides, he told himself, they’re probably not as reasonable as they say they are.
Deliberately, Geran let his duffel drop and shrugged his cloak over his shoulder, revealing the backsword at his hip. Harassing two nondescript passersby was one thing for a gang of ruffians, but a man carrying a blade might know how to use it. Hoping the Chainsmen might see things that way, he rested his hand on the pommel. “I think we’ll look after ourselves,” he said easily. “Now, if you don’t mind … ?”
The slaver’s face darkened, and his false humor fell away. He scowled and jerked his head, and the Chainsmen nearby pushed themselves to their feet and started to close in around Geran and Hamil.
“You don’t understand, friends,” Roldo rasped. “Half the ditchdiggers and dirtgrubbers in this town wear steel, hey. I ain’t seen one yet who knows what to do with it. Everybody pays. And your dues are getting steeper.”
Not so steep as you think, Geran reflected. He supposed he could simply walk off and see if the Chainsmen tried to stop him. Or he could wait for one of them to make a move. But he could see where this was going, and if he was right, well, there was no reason to wait for the slavers to start it, was there? He took a deep breath and looked down at Hamil.
The halfling glanced up. Now? he asked silently.
I’ll take care of the alehouse if you deal with the other side of the street, Geran answered. Try not to kill any of them if you can help it.
Done, Hamil replied. Then, without another word, the halfling’s hands flashed to his belt and came up with a pair of daggers. He threw both in the same motion, sinking each dagger into a Chainsman’s knee. Before either ruffian could even cry out, Hamil had the big fighting knife from his shoulder harness in his hand, and he dashed into the stunned pair by the firepit without a sound. Apparently neither of the men there had really thought they might be set upon by someone no bigger than a ten-year-old child. To all appearances the halfling had simply gone berserk.
“What in the Nine Hells?” the leader of the gang growled. He went straight for his own knife, a good piece of fighting iron almost a foot and a half long. The two men on the wooden steps of the alehouse yanked their cudgels out and started to clatter down to the street—but Geran was faster.
By the time the leader had his hand on his knife hilt, Geran had already swept his sword from the scabbard. The elven steel was etched with a triple-rose design, and it was superbly balanced by a pommel in the shape of a steel rose. He’d earned it in the service of Coronal Ilsevele soon after arriving in Myth Drannor, and the sword suited Geran better than any other he’d ever taken in hand. He swept the point up and across the slaver’s knife-hand in one smooth motion with the draw, laying open the man’s forearm. Roldo cursed and reeled away holding his wounded hand, blood streaming through his fingers.
“Take ’em, lads!” he snarled.
The two men on the steps came at Geran in a quick rush. He retreated several steps, emptied his mind with the quick skill of long practice, and found the invocation he wanted. “Cuillen mhariel,” he whispered in Elvish, weaving a spell-shield with his words and his will. Ghostly streamers of pale silver-blue light gleamed around him, seemingly no more solid than wisps of fog. Then Geran stood his ground as the first man lunged out at his skull with the knobbed cudgel. The swordmage passed the heavy blow over his head with the flat of his blade, then slashed the fellow’s left leg out from under him with a deep cut to the calf. The Chainsman went down hard with a grunt of shock.
The second man came at him an instant later. Geran spun away from the one blow, batted aside the other with a hand-jarring parry near his hilt, and smashed the rose-shaped pommel of his blade into the slaver’s nose. Something crunched, and blood gushed as the fellow staggered back and sat down heavily in the street.
A sharp thrumm! whistled in the street. Geran caught a glimpse of a crossbow’s bolt just before it struck him high on the right side of his chest—but his hasty spell-shield held. The bolt rebounded from a sharp, silvery flame flaring brightly in the shadows of the street and clattered away across the cobblestones. The Chainsman leader stood open-mouthed, a small empty crossbow in his good hand.
“Damn it all, he’s a wizard!” the first slaver by Geran snarled. The fellow scrambled awkwardly to his feet and quickly backed away, favoring his injured leg. Then he turned and fled into the night. The man with the broken nose followed, lurching blindly after him. On the other side of the street, the remaining two Chainsmen were limping away from Hamil as fast as they could, giving up the battle.
Geran ignored them. If they thought he was a wizard and wanted no more of him, he wouldn’t say otherwise. He advanced on the slaver Roldo. The man was already drawing back the string of his crossbow for another try, but Geran put a stop to that by striking him hard across the side of the head with the flat of his blade. The blow split Roldo’s shaven scalp and stretched him senseless on the wooden steps of the alehouse. “That was for taking a shot when I wasn’t looking,” the swordmage growled. He was tempted to give the slaver something more to remember him by, but he held his temper. At least half a dozen spectators were peering through the alehouse’s windows and doors, and some might not be friendly.
Hamil sauntered up, sheathing his knives one by one as he studied the scene. “You let yours run off with hardly a mark on them.”
“I’ll set that straight if I see them again. Did you find all your knives?”
“I’m willing to loan them out for a time, but I want ’em back when all the dancing’s done.” The halfling stooped down to wipe off one last bloody knife on the tunic of the unconscious Chainsman at their feet. “So, is this the typical evening entertainment in Hulburg?”
“No,” said Geran, “it’s not.”
He returned his sword to the sheath and looked up at the old gray towers of the castle overshadowing the town. Dim yellow lights burned in a handful of the keep’s windows; other towers remained dark. Crimson Chain slavers seemed to think they owned the streets. What in the world had happened to Hulburg while he was away? How long had it been like this?
He picked his bag up from the ground and took a deep breath. “Come on, Hamil,” he said. “I think it’s time to find out just what’s been going on around here.”
TWO
11 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One
The castle called Griffonwatch was not really a true castle. Most of its towers and halls were guarded by the steep bluffs of the castle’s hilltop and did not require a thick wall for protection. Only on its lower northern face was Griffonwatch truly fortified, with a strong gatehouse and a tower-studded wall guarding access to the courtyards, barracks, and residences within. Geran had always thought of it as a great rambling, drafty, partially abandoned house that happened to be made out of stone, with the curious afterthought of one castlelike wall to guard the front gate.
“I have to congratulate the builders of the place,” Hamil said. “They picked the highest, coldest, windiest spot in this whole miserable town for their masterpiece.” The castle’s causeway was completely exposed to the northwest wind once the visitors climbed above the roofline of the surrounding town, and the faded banners above the gatehouse flapped loudly in the stiff wind.
Griffonwatch’s gates stood open. Hamil’s step faltered as they entered the dark, tunnel-like passage through the gatehouse. “I never liked these things,” the halfling muttered. He had an instinctive aversion to anything that felt like an ambush, and the front entrance of any well-made castle was designed to be a giant stone trap to its enemies. Menacing arrowslits overlooked the approach to the castle and the gate-passage proper. They stood dark and empty, but in times of war watchful archers would be posted there, ready to cut down attackers at the top of the causeway.
“C
ome on, Hamil,” Geran said quietly. He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “It’s out of the wind, anyway.”
At the inner end of the gate, the castle’s portcullis was lowered into place, blocking most of the passage. The heavy grate was fitted with a small swinging door. Two Shieldsworn guards waited there. They wore knee-length coats of mail under heavy woolen mantles and steel caps trimmed with a ring of fur for warmth. Both carried pikes—perfect for thrusting through the portcullis at enemies on the far side—and a pair of crossbows leaned against the wall nearby.
“Hold there,” said the older of the men, a sergeant with a round, blunt face like the end of a hammer. “State your name and business.”
Geran stepped out of the gate’s shadow and reached up to draw back the hood of his cloak. “I’m Geran Hulmaster,” he said. “And I’m here to call on the harmach and visit with whatever kinfolk of mine happen to be home this evening, Sergeant Kolton.”
The sergeant’s eyes opened wide. “Geran, as I live and breathe! It must be five years!” He fumbled with the small door in the portcullis and finally got it open. “Come in, sir, come in!”
Despite the sour mood that had settled over him after the encounter with the Crimson Chains, Geran smiled. He’d always liked Kolton, and he couldn’t help but enjoy the man’s surprise. “Eight years, Kolton. I haven’t been home since my father died.”
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