Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [67]
Rathan lumbered along the front of the inn as the man fell, calling plaintively, "Wait for me, will ye?"
At full run, he spread his hands comically and addressed the sky. "Tymora-I try to serve ye faithfully, but this selfish thief never waits for me. Was ever a priest so put upon as I?"
All that day and the next, they walked farmlands, avoiding bulls and their owners alike and, when necessary, keeping to the shelter of the high stone walls that divided one farm from the next. Mirt led them at a tireless, steady pace across country, always seeming to know exactly where he was going. He kept silence when they walked, but was ready with an endless flood of salty jokes and tales whenever they stopped to eat or rest.
It was on the morning of the third day, after a night whose chill made them all stiff, that Delg asked the stout merchant, "Why, Deeppockets, could you not bring along a nag or six for us to ride? We'll die of gray hair and cold winter catching us in these fields before we see Silverymoon.'.
Mirt chuckled. "I did ride some of the way in Cormyr before we met. But horses are wiser than those who seek adventure: ye can't get them to go into deep woods, try as ye might. So I bid them a fair gallop and let them loose, and I walked."
"We're not exactly in deep woods now," Delg reminded him sourly, waving at the empty fields around them. "Or are there trees on all sides of us that I'm too short, perhaps, to see?"
Mirt sighed. "I've also yet to succeed in getting a horse to climb over a stile-or crawl along a stone wall to escape a farmer's eyes. Walking's better… as most dwarves are only too quick to tell me."
Delg sighed in his turn. "You're right, as usual," he replied. "I just mistrust all this open sky above, and not a hole to hide in. These bone dragons that attacked Shan before-they always fly, and I've heard of mages flitting about in the sky, too. I feel… naked."
Mirt nodded. "I prefer shade, and trees overhead, myself. Yet since I took up the harp, I've learned that all country has a way of its own, and ways in which it serves better than other countryside. This may be open-yet it's more private, look ye, than the roads."
Narm nodded. Shandril eyed the fat lord curiously as he wheezed his cautious way up a creaking stile to peer over its top into the field beyond. He nodded, then waved a hand for them to follow.
Shandril climbed up behind him and asked, "What is it, Lord, to be a Harper?"
Mirt froze, then sighed gustily and went on down the other side of the stile. "Don't call me 'Lord,' look ye, lass. I'm not so old as all that." He gained his balance, looked testily all about in the manner of an old and short-sighted lion, and added, "Ye should know, little one, that I'm not a very good Harper."
Shandril smiled. "Don't call me 'little one' -and don't try to wriggle out of answering, either." Behind her, she heard Delg's dry chuckle.
Mirt turned slowly and roomed up over her like an angry mountain. Then he grinned. "Right, then, good Lady Shandril. I shall try to tell thee something of what it is to be a Harper." He cleared his throat grandly and waved his hand at the field before them. It was dotted with cow dung. He lofted the nearest pat into the air with the toe of his boot and added, "As we walk, of course."
"A Harper holds peaceful sharing of the lands above all other goals," Mirt declaimed grandly, waving at the rolling fields around them. Several nearby cows turned their heads to stare at him curiously. "By sharing," he added, winking at the nearest cow, "we mean all the races living in and under the land, where each prefers to live, trading together where desire and need stir them to, and respecting each other's holds and ways-without the daily bloodletting that all too often holds sway in the Realms today."
"If you don't mind a word against that," Narm replied carefully, "it seems all too seldom that Harpers manage to avoid indulging in a little bloodletting