Crusade - James Lowder [87]
Frowning slightly, Alusair nodded an affirmation.
"Well," Jad said happily, "we must have a talk. I've heard a great deal about you." The chieftain turned to his guards. "You may go. I'll stay here with Torg and the princess awhile." As the guards braced their lances and cantered about, preparing for the run back to the woods, Jad added, "And make sure that food I asked for gets out here quickly."
Torg sighed, resigning himself to having a guest in camp, at least for a short time. He, however, was going to beg out of entertaining the centaur. "I have things to see to, Chief," the dwarven king began.
Before Torg could add any embellishment to his excuse, Jad nodded and smiled. "Of course, Ironlord. No insult taken." The man-horse twisted at the waist and glanced at Alusair. "I hope, however, that the princess has time to talk."
"Certainly," Alusair said quickly. And a bit too enthusiastically, she noted with a twinge of guilt when she saw Torg furrow his brows. The feeling lasted only a second, as the seemingly endless days of silence with the dwarves pushed back into her consciousness.
Torg shuffled his feet uncomfortably for a moment, then bid Jad and Alusair good night and stalked off to his tent.
"Torg is everything I'd been led to believe," Jad said, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. He looked at Alusair, gauging her reaction. His tail twitched nervously behind him.
The princess smothered a short laugh. "And more, I'm sure," she noted, her voice lowered to match the chief's. After pausing for an instant, Alusair tilted her head. "You've 'heard' quite a lot for someone living in a rather isolated part of the world."
For a moment, Jad Eyesbright was silent. He removed a large brown glove that hung at his belt and slid it over his left hand. When the glove was in place, he said, "Information is easy to come by. We stop many travelers in and around the forest, and some of them are friendly enough to tell us the news in Faerun." He motioned toward the ground with his empty right hand.
Alusair understood the gesture and nodded. She took a seat as Jad folded his beautifully muscled black legs under him. The centaur sat with a slight grunt, then squirmed for a moment to get comfortable. "I've heard a great deal about your father from various mercenaries and traders, the same folk who warned me about King Torg's short temper and distrust of anything nondwarven," the centaur explained casually.
Alusair swatted away a bug. "And me?" she asked.
"Bounty hunters spoke of you most frequently," the chieftain replied. He paused again, then lifted his left hand. Putting his right hand to his mouth, Jad whistled. Alusair started, and two dwarven sentries stationed nearby came running at a trot.
"Oh, dear," Jad said when he noticed them coming toward him. "You'd best tell them there's nothing-"
Before the centaur chieftain could finish his sentence, the falcon arced down from the twilight and swooped onto his gloved, outstretched left hand.
Alusair said a few words in Dwarvish. The two sentries silently returned to their posts, pushing through the tall grass.
As Jad grabbed the jesses attached to the bird's legs, the falcon tightened its grip on the glove. The centaur deftly snatched the leather straps with his right hand and slid them into the grip of his left. The bird's sharp talons bit into the leather glove, and it squeaked a short, piercing note. "Yes, yes," Jad said paternally, moving his face close to the falcon's. "You've done your job well."
He pulled a small piece of food from his pouch and fed it to the bird.
"He's very beautiful," Alusair said. She studied the falcon's plumage-its darkly hooded head and yellow legs. "A peregrine, if I know my hunting birds."
Jad nodded appreciatively. "Right again, Princess," he chimed.
"And you can communicate with him somehow, if he's been spying for you."
The centaur chieftain held up his right hand. For the first time, Alusair noticed a thin silver bracelet around his wrist. "A present from a mage my tribe once helped. It has a spell