Angry shouts greeted his abrupt appearance. Yull and the wagon guards had returned.
Realizing the secret was out, Yull unlimbered his single-edged axe and led the hired men against their ostensible escort. They were five against five, but having the mighty Yull on their side seemed to offer the attackers an edge.
Tol had lost his dagger when the unicorn kicked him, but he still had Number Six. With the cry, “Juramona!” he rallied his comrades.
Yull’s men charged. Although not soldiers, they were well-versed in this sort of brawl. With spears and round brass bucklers, they drove the Ergothians away from the wagon and backward up the sloping hill. Yull urged them on, waving his ugly axe and growling. He paused at the rear of the wagon to glance in at the captive.
With a loud thock, a pair of tiny, unshod hooves hit Yull directly between his leather eyepatch and good eye. He staggered back, knees wobbling. The unicorn colt sailed out of the wagon. As soon as his front hooves touched ground, his back legs lashed out.
Yull’s cry caused his men to turn. Immediately, Tol charged. He and his people surged down the hill, slashing at their distracted foes.
Ignoring the resurgent Ergothians, Yull stalked toward the unicorn. Kiya raised her bow, but it was struck from her hands by a skillfully thrown spear.
“Tol!” she yelled. “Save the young Master!”
Tol, dueling with a guard, heard her plea. He lopped off his opponent’s spearhead. The guard brought up his buckler to ward off another blow, and Number Six’s point penetrated the brass shield and stopped a hair’s breadth from the fellow’s right eye. Yelping, the guard abandoned his shield and took to his heels.
Tol freed his blade and closed on Yull. The big man was trying to snag the unicorn’s trailing bonds. He planted one foot on the leather thongs. The unicorn stumbled as its hind legs were caught. Yull raised his heavy axe-
“Stop!” Tol bellowed. “What will your master Orlien do to you when he finds out you killed such a prize?”
The idea was enough to give the angry brute pause. Torn between fear of Orlien’s retribution and the desire to slaughter the insolent beast who’d hurt him, Yull hesitated. For the first time in the entire journey, he spoke.
“You not steal!” he said, pointing from Tol to the trapped unicorn.
“I’ve no intention of stealing anything,” Tol replied, continuing to close the distance between them. “I intend to set him free.”
“No! Valuable! Bring much gold!”
Tol didn’t doubt that. The horn alone had medicinal and magical qualities that would fetch awesome prices in the markets of Daltigoth or Tarsis.
Glaring at the hulking man before him, Tol said, “You’ve no right to hold such a rare creature. Yield now, and I’ll spare your life.”
Yull’s face split in a gap-toothed grin. “Many try to kill Yull. All dead now. You, too, little man.”
Tol jerked his head over his shoulder. “You’re alone.”
One by one, the wagon guards had been slain or had given up. Kiya had a bad gash on her forearm, earned when the bow had been struck from her grasp, but she’d wrapped a strip of cloth tightly around the wound. She and the rest of Tol’s party stood behind him, ready for further combat.
“Let the unicorn go,” Tol urged. “Be free of Orlien, and make your own life.”
Yull’s answer was a powerful sideways slash with his axe. Tol felt the wind from it as he leaped back. Regret flashed through his mind. He would have to kill Yull to free the unicorn.
Before battle could he joined, a chorus of shrill, keening whistles filled the air. Frez, Darpo, and the Dom-shu sisters found themselves engulfed by at least a hundred painted woodland elves. The elves swarmed over them, tearing swords from their hands and immobilizing them with the sheer press of their bodies. Tol, Yull, and the unicorn were likewise surrounded, but the elves did not assault them, merely trapped them inside a living wall of half-naked, painted flesh. More than two score short bows, arrows nocked, were aimed at the two antagonists.
Tol raised his hands slowly. “Peace,” he said loudly. “I mean no harm to you or the young Forestmaster!”
A pair of elves darted forward and freed the unicorn. Yull started to resist, but the collective creak of drawn bowstrings halted him.
A female emerged from the crowd. Her short, spiky black hair was painted with streaks of blue and yellow. She wore a heavy collar of hammered silver beads and carried a tall staff with a forked silver head. From the way her comrades parted for her, Tol took her to be their leader. She barked a few short phrases in her native tongue.
“Miya,” Tol said, “tell her we’re hired fighters, and we mean no harm to the unicorn. Tell her we meant to free it.”
“That’s asking a lot of my poor Elvish,” Miya muttered, then spoke haltingly in the elf tongue.
The female elf studied Tol with a cold, calculating eye, then replied.
“I think she called you a liar,” Miya said. “She says we’re thieves, trying to steal the young Master from Orlien’s men.”
The elf woman spoke again, angrily, and Miya struggled to understand and relay the words to Tol.
Hunters had stolen the unicorn from the forest where the elves dwelt, far to the north of the hill country. They’d sold the rare creature to Orlien for gold. Practically the entire tribe had come south to find the unicorn, which they regarded as their personal godling.
Miya’s command of the language was not up to the task of persuading the elves of her party’s benevolent intentions. The unicorn was led away, and the elves continued to hold the Ergothians and Yull.
Tol thought fast. The elf woman was in command, but she was unarmed; perhaps she was not a chief, but the tribe’s shaman. Her silver adornment and staff lent credence to this theory. With that in mind, he told Miya to propose the elves test him to learn whether he was telling the truth.
The elf woman waved the idea aside. Two score bowstrings tightened.
“Do you care nothing about justice?” Tol cried, and Miya translated as quickly as she could. “I’ve always heard the woodlanders esteemed truth and justice above all other virtues!”
That caused some murmuring in the ranks of elves. Miya told him, “They say, ‘The grasslander is right. Evil will follow us if we slay the just along with the guilty.’ ”
The elf woman lifted a hand, and the murmurs ceased. She stood nose to nose with Tol-they were of a height-and repeated a short phrase four times. He felt a faint flicker of heat across his face, as he did when encountering magic, but the Irda artifact he carried shielded him completely.
The shaman drew back, startled at her failure.
Seeking to press this advantage, Tol said, “Tell her, because I speak the truth, the gods protect me from her spells. None of her magic can hurt me. She can cast any spell she wants, and it won’t effect me.”
Miya only stared at him, and he snapped, “Tell her!” Miya did so.
The elf woman threw back her feather-lined cloak, revealing a close-fitting suit of green-dyed deerskin. Planting her fists on her hips and looking Tol up and down, she laughed and rattled off several comments.
Miya translated: “She says she is Casmarell, the fourteenth descendant of the great Casmarell, first shaman of her people in the time of the Awakening, in the Age of Dreams. She calls you ‘Creekstone.’ ”
“What?” Tol demanded.
“Her exact words were ‘one as smooth and slippery as a flat stone in a flowing creek.’ ”
“Never mind the insults. What about my challenge?”
In answer, the shaman snapped an order to her followers. They seized Tol, plucking the saber from his hand. Kiya, Frez, and Darpo tried to intervene, but Tol ordered them back.
The elves propelled him to an alder tree by the edge of the road and lashed his hands around the trunk behind his back. The elf shaman stalked toward him, parting the ranks of her followers like a plowshare turning turf. Yull and Tol’s companions had no choice but to follow along b
ehind her.
She gestured broadly with her staff, waving its forked silver head in a circle above her. Miya translated her words.
“She will, um, test you with all the spirit power of the woodland race and, um, if you are telling the truth, the gods will protect you.”
Darpo said, “My lord, be of stout heart! We’ll get you out of this-”
“There is no reason to fear,” Tol replied quickly. “Be still.”
Casmarell pointed her staff at Tol, and commenced a low, guttural chant. Again, he felt a weak flicker of heat on his exposed skin but nothing more. She lowered her staff.
Tol smiled cheerfully. Casmarell frowned.
Hazel eyes never leaving his face, she backed away five paces. Throwing her arms wide, she let out a terrifying shriek.
The elves nearest her shrank back, averting their eyes and covering their ears with painted hands. Kiya, Miya, Frez, and Darpo blinked rapidly as their vision blurred, then winced as pain flared in their heads.
This was the Death Shout. According to legend, the greatest shamans among the wild elves could literally scream an enemy to death. Tol did not look away and bore Casmarell’s fury with his eyes wide open.
Beneath her tribal paint, the shaman’s face darkened from the strain of the Shout. Slowly, she brought her hands together, raising the pitch of her scream as her fingers touched. The air itself rang with the concussion, and Casmarell bent forward against the thrust of her own spell. Dust and dry leaves took to the air.
Tol lifted his chin. Although it took effort, he managed to smile.
Finally the shriek died. Staggering from her effort, Casmarell reeled backward, to be caught by her followers. She shook off their help, snapping a peevish phrase Miya did not need to translate.
Awed mutterings circulated among the elves. Not only had the human escaped an agonizing death, he was smiling insolently at their shaman. Was he truly protected by the gods?
Casmarell smote the ground with the butt of her staff. A tremor echoed through the earth, and a clap of thunder rolled through the cloudless blue sky. She spoke a terse incantation and rushed at Tol.
The Dom-shu sisters and Frez surged vainly against the arms restraining them. Darpo got a hand free and downed one of his captors with a punch. Yull watched Tol’s imminent demise with a wide, gap-toothed grin.
Tol awaited Casmarell’s rush as calmly as he could. The millstone would be little help if she meant to bash his skull. His legs were free, so he tensed, ready to lash out when she came within reach.
The forked silver tip of Casmarell’s staff drove at Tol’s face. One of his knees twitched upward, but the shaman halted suddenly, still out of reach. The staff wavered over the bridge of his nose for a moment then she touched it to his forehead. A prickling sensation passed down through his heels and up through his head, but otherwise he was unaffected.
Trembling, Casmarell opened her eyes. They were shot through with blood from the strain of her efforts. Seeing Tol still utterly unmoved, her strength failed. The staff dropped from her hands. Her legs buckled, and the elf woman slumped to her knees.
The hands holding Kiya, Miya, Darpo, and Frez slowly slackened, then were withdrawn. One by one, the hundreds of Wildrunner elves faced Tol and went down on one knee, their heads bowed. Frez hurried to untie his commander.
Tol picked up the shaman’s staff. It was a dark stave of vallenwood, worn smooth as brass by years of handling.
Casmarell rose up suddenly, a flint knife in her hand. She did not attack Tol, however, but was trying to pierce her own heart. Kiya caught her wrist from behind and twisted the stone blade from her hand.
The elves also had released Yull. The hulking mercenary took to his heels at once, and the elves ignored him. They began to chant a single word, softly, over and over.
“ ‘Creekstone,’ ” Miya translated. “They mean you, Husband.” This time the epithet was said with respect.
An elf with a brass circlet on his head came forward and prostrated himself before Tol. He spoke then looked to Miya.
The Dom-shu woman was startled. “He says he is Robisart, war chief of their tribe. He hails you as the new shaman of his people.”
Kiya laughed briefly, but Tol hushed her with a glance. “Tell the chief he honors me, but I cannot accept. Besides, he has a shaman.” He helped the miserable Casmarell to stand. She trembled in his grip. “Tell them to take the unicorn and go in peace,” he added.
Tol turned away. He located the dwarf-made sword and returned it to his scabbard. The mob of painted woodland elves followed him, watching his every movement raptly.
Casmarell knelt at his feet and spoke quietly. Miya looked very uncomfortable, and Tol had to prompt her twice to translate the shaman’s words.
“She offers herself to you,” Miya said. “She thinks she can, um, partake of your powers if she becomes your mate.”
There was no laughter from the Ergothians or Kiya this time. Casmarell’s distress was too plain.
Tol took the shaman by the shoulders and lifted her again to her feet. Looking her in the eyes, he said, “Go home, Casmarell. Minister to your people.”
Miya translated as he put the staff back in Casmarell’s hands. She took it, but her expression showed plainly that the ancient wood no longer held any power. The nullstone had apparently swallowed it all.
The Ergothians recovered their horses and gear, abandoning the rest of the caravan. Darpo suggested giving the contents to the elves. Tol agreed, and Miya relayed the news. With whoops, the elves fell upon the wagons and carried off Orlien’s ill-gotten goods.
Tol’s party rode away. They hadn’t gone fifty paces before Kiya spotted Casmarell trailing after them on foot.
The Dom-shu woman’s face held an unaccustomed look of sadness. “Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed her knife,” she murmured.
Tol frowned. “She’ll get over it,” he said. “She has her Forestmaster back. Miya, tell her again she must go and take care of her people.”
Miya did so, but added, “Husband, you have a way of sticking in people’s heads. I doubt she’ll forget you.”
They turned away again, riding on for a moment in silence, and then Darpo asked, “How did you withstand the elf’s magic, my lord?”
He did not answer but urged Shadow to a trot, eager to put distance between himself, Darpo’s question, and the lonely figure of Casmarell still standing in the road.
They smelled the sea long before they saw it. Salt flavored the wind that tossed the juniper trees so common in the hills above the Gulf of Ergoth. Brown soil changed to white sand.
It was late afternoon, six days out of Tarsis. The clash with the elves had cost them an extra day, as had a running encounter with a dozen bandits the day after they freed the unicorn. Six of the bandits had perished and the rest dispersed, leaving Tol’s party free to make the final dash to the coast.
Frez was scouting ahead. From atop a high dune, he spotted the sea and waved to his companions to hurry and join him. Soon all of them were looking down upon the windy bay.
Although there was no proper port for many leagues, three ships lay offshore. The three were “in irons,” as Darpo phrased it. Prows pointing directly into the wind, sails furled, they remained in place, bobbing slowly atop the low swells.
Unscrupulous captains would draw up to any likely spot on the eastern coast, hang a lantern from their tallest mast, and wait. Eventually, thieves would turn up, eager to unload their swag. Later the smugglers would sail to Ergoth, Sancrist, or Tarsis, peddling stolen property in shady seaside markets. Nevertheless, the three ships were a welcome sight. One of them was their way home.
They rode down the dune, the horses’ hooves slinging up gouts of loose sand. Whistles and shouts from the shore showed they’d been spotted. Ox-drawn carts stood on the beach near several mounds of goods, no doubt ill-gotten. Sailors in baggy pants and stocking caps prowled the scene with pikes on their shoulders. The thieves and sailors watched the newcomers with cold calcu
lation.
Tol skirted the crew busy with the ox carts. With such a full cargo on their hands, they’d be less interested in passengers. Further down the beach four longboats were drawn up on the sand, their crews waiting idly for more purloined goods to come their way. Tol led his people to them.
“Greetings,” he called. “What ship are you?”
The mate-so marked by the gray tassel on his black cap-pointed to a blue-hulled roundship rolling in the surf behind him. “The Blue Gull. Captain Torwalder is her master. Who be you?”
“Soldiers, out of work. We seek passage to Thorngoth.” This was the port at the mouth of Greenthorn River, across the gulf.
The mate pushed the cap back on his sunburned head. “Imperial territory? Why would you want to go there?”
“It’s a big port,” said Tol, shrugging. “A good place to get lost.”
“Cost ya.”
Miya couldn’t resist. “How much?”
The mate spat on the sand. “Fifty gold for the five o’ you and the horses.”
“Fifty!” Miya exploded. “For fifty gold pieces we could buy our own ship and hire a better crew than you!”
The mate countered with a cheerfully obscene suggestion, and Miya plunged into the negotiations with enthusiasm. They at last agreed on a price of sixteen gold for their passage and the conveyance of the horses. The mate was red-faced and grumbling by the time the deal was struck, as were most who tried to out-bargain Miya.
A freshening wind stirred the waves, making the trip out to the Blue Gull rather hair-raising. The longboats rose and fell like hatchets, cleaving the sea with great foaming splashes. Tethered behind the boats, the horses swam against the tide, eyes rolling with anxiety.
Drawing alongside Blue Gull’s flaking hull, the Ergothians had to call upon all their agility to make the leap from the heaving longboats and grab the rope ladder hanging down the ship’s side. Former sailor Darpo managed handily enough, but as soon as Tol jumped for the ladder the longboat dropped out from under him, and he was thrown back among the rowers. Only his pride was hurt, and he eventually made it aboard.
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