Riverwind the Plainsman

by Paul B. Thompson

  The spiral passage suddenly ended on an open platform dug out of the cave wall. Riverwind’s heart climbed to his throat when he saw where they were: three hundred feet or more above the city, nearly to the roof of the great cavern! For a moment he had the horrible thought that the Hestites were going to hurl him and Catchflea off. They didn’t. Butting against the lip of the platform was a span of milk-colored limestone. This dizziest of bridges rose in a gentle arch and disappeared a dozen yards out in the drifting smoke and haze.

  The soldiers set them on their feet. One cried, “To the Spires! To the Spires!” and the rest took up the frenzied cry. They waved their swords and poked the men in the back with the sharp tips to spur them on.

  “Well, old man, what do you think?” Riverwind asked. “We can die fighting, or we can go out on that span and fall.”

  “Those are not the only choices, yes?” Catchflea said desperately. “Ouch!” An elf pricked him on the calf of his leg. “We could go out and not fall off.”

  Riverwind inhaled deeply and bellowed, “Stand back!” His size still impressed the Hestites, and they did stand away. The plainsman walked to the edge of the platform.

  Light from the brazen sun threw weird shadows from the forest of stalactites. Foundry smoke drifted around the hanging spires. Riverwind coughed as sulfurous fumes swept over him. Through watering eyes he could dimly see a dark mass far off in the smoke, at the other end of the bridge.

  “Come along, Catchflea,” he said. “Let’s show these cave-folk how Que-Shu men face danger.”

  “On my hands and knees,” the old man muttered, closing in behind Riverwind.

  The bridge was only six inches wide, and rounded. A fine film of soot coated the upper surface; just enough, Riverwind mused, to make it slick. He slid his feet onto the glassy surface. It seemed sturdy enough. He brought his trailing foot up slowly. That was the way to do it. Inch along. No hurry, no sudden stops.

  Catchflea imitated him. Only once did the old man look down. Instantly he regretted it. Vertigo punched him in the stomach; his head spun. So did the concentric streets of Vartoom, far below. Catchflea flailed his arms—

  “Tall man!” he gasped. “Help me!”

  Riverwind turned in time to see Catchflea topple. The drop beneath him was over a hundred feet. Riverwind threw himself at Catchflea. He hit the bridge chest-first. The impact drove the air from his lungs, but he reached out and grasped Catchflea’s arms. The old man slid steadily over the rounded rim of the bridge. Riverwind wrapped his long legs around the limestone span and dug his fingers in Catchflea’s rags. The old cloth frayed and ripped, sending up puffs of dust.

  The Hestites, who up till now had been jeering, fell silent. One shouted, “Get a leg up, old giant!” The rest joined in, calling out advice.

  Catchflea tried three times to get his right leg over the bridge, but his heel could find no purchase and skidded off. Tears streaked his dirty face. “I cannot do it,” he groaned.

  Riverwind said, “Try again! This time I’ll pull you just as you swing your leg up!”

  Catchflea was old, but wiry. He threw his leg up again. Riverwind’s arm muscles knotted, drawing the old man toward him. Catchflea’s heel caught. The elves cheered. With much effort, the old man worked his leg over until he was straddling the bridge. He and Riverwind lay nose to nose, panting for breath.

  “Are you set?” asked Riverwind.

  “I think so, yes.”

  Riverwind sat up and swung himself around. He and Catchflea proceeded, sliding along astride the bridge. The soldiers and the cave wall submerged in the smoke and were lost from sight.

  Gradually their destination took shape. A number of especially stout stalactites had been used to support an airy platform. Iron bands circled the spires, securing a floor made of square iron rails. Riverwind grasped a rail and hauled himself onto the platform.

  A dark figure appeared in the smoke. “Who’s there?” When neither man replied, the figure came forward. It was Karn. “So, the outlanders were sent to the Spires, too. How fitting.”

  Riverwind dragged Catchflea off the bridge. The old man clung to the floor like a sailor to a barmaid.

  “This is like no dungeon I ever heard of,” he wheezed.

  “It wasn’t built to be a prison,” Karn said. His pointed features twisted into a sneer. “Once this was the private aerie of the King of Hest. Now, it’s where Her Highness sends those who displease her.”

  “There’s no gate, no barred door,” Riverwind noted.

  “None are needed, giant. Two guards stand at the end of the bridge, ready to dispatch any who try to leave.” Karn growled low in his throat. “I, who serve Her Highness like a slave, sent here with two barbarians!” He glared at the men. “I should have slain you in the tunnel. And that digger girl, too.”

  “Bitterness is no answer, yes,” Catchflea said.

  “We share a common prison,” Riverwind added. “Couldn’t we work together to gain our freedom?”

  Karn sneered. “I don’t expect you overgrown barbarians to understand a warrior or his code of honor,” he said. “My life belongs to the queen. Her will is mine.”

  “But she sent you here,” said Riverwind.

  Karn folded his arms. “I won’t be here long. Her Highness needs me. I am her right arm.”

  “From what I’ve seen, there are many arms in Hest, yes? Perhaps you are not as valuable as you think,” Catchflea remarked.

  The elf warrior flushed and took a step toward where Catchflea and Riverwind still sat on the floor. He glared hatefully down at the old man. “You know nothing about us!” Karn rasped, breathing heavily. “I may have to take such insults from Vvelz because he is the queen’s brother, but I won’t take them from you!”

  He stepped back from Catchflea, and the old man breathed a sigh of relief. “Vvelz is a weakling and a meddler,” Karn continued. “He is tolerated by the Host only because of the loyalty we bear Her Highness.”

  “He seems witful enough,” Catchflea ventured carefully.

  “Master Vvelz is infamous for his wit. And for using it to aid the diggers. He will subvert the natural order of Hest! Favoring diggers over his own kind—” The flow of words trailed away. After a second of head-shaking, Karn said, “Kinthalas take his eyes!”

  The Que-Shu men exchanged a long and meaningful glance. “Why would Vvelz favor the diggers?” asked Riverwind softly.

  Karn waved the question aside. He dropped on his haunches and scrubbed through his pale hair with his fingers. “Politics, pah! Don’t ask me to fathom such things. It’s not a fitting subject for a warrior to discuss.”

  Karn stared morosely across the chasm, lost in self-pity. Riverwind drew Catchflea away from the sullen warrior.

  “There are many things afoot here,” Riverwind said in a low voice. “Did you hear the queen blame Di An’s thievery on someone else? She said the girl was commanded to go to the surface.”

  Catchflea scratched his bearded cheek. “You think it’s Vvelz, yes?”

  “Could be.”

  “What are you two muttering about over there?” Karn asked loudly.

  “I was wondering if there is anything to eat?” Catchflea inquired politely.

  “How do I know? Am I servant? Look around.” He grinned nastily. “But beware the floor’s edge; there is no rail to keep you from walking right off into the chasm. Still hungry, giants?”

  “What I am is tired,” Riverwind replied truthfully. He scanned the smoky expanse of iron flooring and sighed. “The air here is very bad. Maybe it’s fresher farther away.”

  “It doesn’t get any better,” Karn said.

  “I would find out for myself.” To Catchflea, he murmured, “Let’s go where we can speak without Karn hearing.”

  “And find food, yes?”

  They wandered away. A short distance into the haze they found a brass urn three feet tall. It was full of stale, brackish water, which they drank anyway. Riverwind soaked a kerchief and tied it over
his nose and mouth. Catchflea plucked a rag from his shirt and did likewise.

  “What are you thinking, tall man?” he asked as they walked slowly through the High Spires, watching for sudden drop-offs.

  “I am thinking of Goldmoon,” Riverwind said simply.

  “Ah.”

  “Catchflea, you’re old enough to recall the time when Arrowthorn became chief, aren’t you?”

  The old soothsayer nodded. His rag mask made him look like an elderly bandit. “There was a feud between the followers of Arrowthorn and the men who wanted Oakheart as chieftain. It was a bad time.”

  “My father told me of those days. There was fighting in the streets, theft, burning of houses and crops, even murder.”

  “Oakheart’s murderer was never found,” Catchflea said. “It was only because Arrowthorn was with many people when it happened that he wasn’t accused of the crime.”

  “So he married Tearsong and became chief.”

  “And a strong chief he has been, yes. But what does this have to do with your thoughts of Goldmoon or our situation here?”

  “Such a bad time may come again to our people if I am opposed as chieftain,” Riverwind replied. “Goldmoon already faced death when Hollow-sky tried to kill me. I don’t want her to be a target in a feud.” He looked around at the shifting smoke. “And this place—if brother and sister are plotting to bring each other down, then you and I are in the worst possible position.”

  Catchflea stopped his ambling. “The first to die, yes?”

  “As foreigners, we’ll be blamed for everything.”

  “What can we do?”

  Riverwind brushed tears from his smoke-stung eyes and coughed. “Let’s try to get some rest, then see what comes when we waken,” Riverwind said.

  “An excellent idea. I am wrung out.”

  They tried to make their way back to the brass urn, but the smoke and lack of landmarks confused them. The Que-Shu men wandered aimlessly a short distance until Riverwind called a halt.

  “A strange dungeon, but an effective one,” he said. “Not knowing how big this place is, we could wander in circles and never find the boundaries.”

  Catchflea sat down where he was. “Then all places are the same.” Soon he was asleep and snoring, even as the noxious smoke poured over him.

  Riverwind lay down and closed his eyes. How strange it was that only a short while ago he had set out on his courting quest and now found himself in an underground world embroiled in a political struggle. But the ways of the gods were not easily fathomed by humans. Perhaps these elves were important in his quest. Perhaps they would end up helping him.

  A sigh escaped his lips. He fervently hoped there was some point to all this. His quest was of paramount importance. His quest and his future marriage to Goldmoon. He relaxed and allowed sleep to overtake him. Though he had hoped to dream of his beloved, Riverwind’s sleep was silent and deep and dreamless.

  Riverwind felt a touch on his face. Lightly, fingers traced the line of his jaw. He stirred and brushed at the disturbance. A small thumb and forefinger tweaked his nose gently. He snorted, almost awake, then settled back into slumber. A finger tickled his ear until the itching sensation was too strong to ignore. Riverwind snapped to a sitting position. The kerchief he’d tied over his nose and mouth was up around his eyes. He snatched it off and saw Di An.

  She signaled for him to remain quiet.

  “What are you doing here?” he whispered.

  “No noise. We leave,” she said.

  “But how—?”

  Di An put a small finger to his lips. “You want to go, don’t you?”

  He roused Catchflea. The soothsayer coughed and cleared his throat. “Argh,” he grumbled. “Now I know how a smoked ham feels.”

  They drank greedily from a flask Di An offered them. Being in a cave so far from the sun, Riverwind didn’t know if it was night or day. The bronze sun burned on, a dull orange orb far out in the smoke.

  “Why are we being so quiet?” Catchflea hissed. “Who can hear us?”

  “Ro Karn,” said Di An.

  “Did you bring us weapons?” Riverwind asked. “A sword would improve my spirits greatly.”

  “Follow and make no noise,” Di An said. She crouched low and sprinted away, her bare feet tapping lightly on the iron floor. Riverwind and Catchflea trailed her at a circumspect pace. They couldn’t see more than ten feet ahead, and chasing Di An was not the safest thing in the world to do, as they well knew.

  They caught up with her as she knelt by a copper chest. “This was sent for you,” she said. The men crouched beside her. She raised the lid. Inside were brightly colored fruits and vegetables: apples, pears, plums, radishes, carrots. Two tin bottles held more water, and in the bottom of the box were two stubby Hestite swords. Riverwind slipped one of the weapons through his belt. Catchflea declined the other.

  “I’m no warrior,” he objected. Riverwind didn’t press him to take it.

  They fell upon the food. “I can’t remember the last time we ate,” the plainsman said.

  “It’s been too long ago, yes,” Catchflea mumbled through a bite of pear. “Even this sorry stuff is welcome.”

  It was sorry food indeed. For all their brilliant colors, the apples and pears lacked any sweetness, and the vegetables were bitter and metallic-tasting. The men’s frantic chewing and swallowing slowed and stopped. Catchflea paled.

  “I’m going to be ill, yes.”

  “I am too,” Riverwind muttered. “Is this stuff poisoned?”

  Catchflea grasped his stomach. “I pray it is—at least we won’t suffer long!”

  Di An gawked at them. “What’s wrong? This is warrior food. It’s very good.”

  “It’s tainted,” Riverwind gasped.

  The elf girl shook her head in wonder and helped herself to an apple. She sank her teeth into it and munched away with every evidence of satisfaction. “Come,” she said. “They are waiting.” With that, she darted off, still devouring the fruit.

  “ ‘They’?” Riverwind repeated. Catchflea, who had been sipping water to clear the taste of bitter radish from his mouth, looked alarmed. Riverwind said, “If enemies wanted to trap and kill us, they wouldn’t put swords in our hands, would they?”

  “No,” the old man said. “They’d probably poison us.”

  Riverwind, gripping the sword tightly, set off after Di An. Catchflea lingered by the chest, still holding his stomach. Riverwind went no more than twenty yards and found the girl waiting by a gigantic stalactite a dozen feet wide. Where the massive spire thrust through the floor, several iron rails had been bent back, creating enough of a gap for Riverwind and Catchflea to squeeze through. Di An waved for him to come on.

  “Where are we going?” he insisted again.

  “Just come!” Di An pushed herself forward and slipped into the hole. Riverwind ran to the opening and looked down. Di An was floating slowly down, hands held tightly against her sides. The slow-falling spell again.

  A commotion arose in the smoke behind him. He turned and saw two figures struggling. Catchflea cried, “Tall man, help!”

  Riverwind dashed back. He found the old man fighting a losing battle with Karn for possession of the second sword Di An had brought. Riverwind shouted a challenge. The elf warrior punched Catchflea in the belly and seized the sword.

  “I knew you were up to something,” Karn said triumphantly. “Surrender, giant!”

  “You’ll have to fight, bully,” Riverwind replied.

  Karn whirled his sword around his head and cut hard at Riverwind. The plainsman easily turned the attack and countered with fast slashes at Karn’s face and neck. He knew from experience that fighters used to armor would retreat if these vulnerable areas were threatened. Karn backed up.

  “Get moving, old man!” Riverwind snapped. Catchflea crawled weakly behind him. “That way.” Riverwind tossed his head. Catchflea tottered to his feet, clutched his stomach, and shuffled toward the stalactite.

  “Y
ou can’t escape!” Karn yelled.

  Riverwind sidled away, always keeping his sword toward Karn. He found the old soothsayer leaning on the stone spire, breathing hard.

  “What are you waiting for?” Riverwind said. “Jump!”

  “Down there?” Catchflea gasped. “Are you mad?”

  “The slow-fall spell, remember?”

  Understanding gleamed in the old man’s eye. “So? Be of stout heart, Catchflea!” he admonished himself. “Here I go, yes!”

  Catchflea eased himself into the space between the stalactite and the floor. Eyes screwed shut, he let go the stone spire and plunged a few feet before an invisible net slowed and caught him in its folds. The spell felt different than that in the long shaft that had brought them to Hest—weird tickling sensations crawled over his skin, like the strands of an enormous spider web. The spell was different in another way, too, for Catchflea could feel himself fall faster, slow down, fall, slow, and so on as he descended. He prayed aloud to Majere to strengthen the hand of whomever was performing the spell.

  Riverwind saw his friend disappear. In the next instant, Karn was on him, slashing madly, first from one side, then the other. Riverwind retreated before the elf’s wild assault until he felt the great spire at his back. He couldn’t lower his guard long enough to get through the opening in the floor. If he could just distract Karn for a moment …

  Riverwind reversed his grip on the Hestite sword and hurled it at Karn. He turned to jump. Something hard hit him square on the back of the head. He pitched forward, crashing into the stalactite and falling to the floor, still in the High Spires.

  Riverwind shook off the blow, but as he started to rise, he felt a cold steel edge against his neck. “Give me a reason to strike,” Karn said. Riverwind saw, not ten inches from his outstretched hand, Karn’s sword. The fighter had caught him by throwing his own sword at Riverwind, retrieving the plainsman’s weapon, and pinning him as he lay stunned.