Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [54]
The farm was only a mile from Suzail, a small glade that Mondar Bleth had cleared to twice its original size. Three main buildings, one with a stone foundation, had stood here, and in this place Mondar had reared a prodigious supply of goats. Now those buildings were smoking husks, and the riven corpses of the goats lay strewn around the camp, along with the human bodies.
Ten men and women had been slain here for no good reason. Mondar himself had been found at the entrance to the farmhouse, his battered body supported by a tripod of thin ivory pikes tipped with gold. Elven weapons. Their bloody points had stood up out of his chest and belly, holding his huge, bearlike body clear of the ground. Mondar's eyes were open and accusing.
Faerlthann came up to his father with Mondar's sword, a huge, heavy-hafted blade that had always hung at the large man's side. Mondar had never been shy about drawing that sword to make a point. The blade was sticky and dark with drying blood. Though there were no elven bodies among the dead, it seemed Mondar had held out well against his attackers.
The eyes of the older and younger Obarskyrs met, and Ondeth saw accusation in his son's eyes. Two of the Bleths had survived this slaughter by being in Suzail at the time. Minda, Mondar's sister, had been a guest for dinner the previous night and had brought Arphoind, Bleth's youngest son, a strapling of all of eight winters, with her.
The visiting Bleths had come for dinner and stayed the night, Arphoind in the loft and Minda… well, Minda was in Ondeth's quarters. No one should have known of their tryst, and the Bleths would have left with the morning sun, the rest of Suzail none the wiser. But in the dawn there was smoke rising from the northwest, and panic in the household, and not a few eyes noted that the raven-tressed beauty of the Bleths had emerged from Ondeth's private room.
They had left Minda and her nephew behind when they went to investigate, which was just as well. Ondeth did not want the woman to see her brother pinioned like a goose held over a fire. And the elves who did this might still be nearby.
Upon seeing the devastation, Ondeth's first thought had been, "What will I tell Minda?" Yet looking into his own son's eyes, he was faced with another question: What do I tell Faerlthann? His son was among those who'd noted Minda's emergence in the morning. His face was pale with anger-not anger for elves, but rather for Ondeth Obarskyr, who had betrayed his mother's memory
As they'd hastened out of Suzail, Faerlthann had said but one thing, a short, barely heard whisper as they pulled their swords from the wall and gathered their light suits of armor. "How could you do it? How could you do that to Mother?" But then he had turned to join the others and there was no time to talk.
Ondeth should have spoken out, and spoken out then. It had been four years since Suzara had left them, tired of the wolves and the mosquitoes and, most of all, the endless work. He should have replied that Mother had already done unto him. Nor had this tryst been the first time, only the first time they'd been caught at it. If Minda had not been at Suzail, she would be dead, here among the flies, and young Arphoind, Faerlthann's friend, as well.
Ondeth should have said something then, but there'd been no time. And now his son looked at him over the bloody edge of Mondar's blade, and his eyes were as accusing as Mondar's own.
Perhaps later they would talk, father and son. Perhaps later he could explain, but now they had to cut down Bleth's body and give him and the others a decent cremation. The Silver brothers were already gathering the dead into a pile, goats on the bottom and humans on the top. Another column of smoke, thick and oily, would rise here this day.
Ondeth looked at Bleth's suspended form, pitched