Orphans - Kevin Killiany [43]
“Jest not, dwarf,” she said. “My daughters live by his breath.”
Langk’s hand stopped halfway to what looked to Naiar like a curved blade without hilt strapped to his back. The gnome was fighter enough to realize no undrawn weapon could stop a ready sword.
“Wisdom, Langk,” said the Doctor Kairn. “Now apologize to the [beatific noble-born female] before she eats your liver.”
“[Waste material],” said Corsi. “I forgot the [doomed] [object] was [atop/active].”
From that point Naiar and Ahrhi found themselves caught up in rounds of introductions and explanations. Names and stories were exchanged as the translation device became more adept. Ahrhi introduced Naiar as an apprentice armsman, by her example assuring him his violation of the code of the Quest would remain their secret.
Tolan and a force of the Tetrarchy’s armsmen were perhaps a day behind, and they advised the gnomes to wait for them in the hollow. The birthing pool was already within the borders of Atwaan. Ahrhi had chosen it because she had planned on going to Atwaan in search of vengeance after she had buried her four children.
The Doctor gnome Lense pronounced Ahrhi’s daughters “strong as Brikars,” though Kairn attributed their health to having Klingon hearts. The Doctor described Kairn’s administration of potions as “overkill,” which, given their survival, must have been a mistranscription by the speech boxes. She had also clearly expected Ahrhi to be somehow weak from childbirth and repeated her Brikar assessment.
Ahrhi and Langk earned each other’s grudging respect sparring with their disparate weapons, while Naiar devoted himself to learning all he could of the gnomes’ many devices.
As they had suspected, the stench of gnome food made the infants wail.
CHAPTER
23
Tolan won the Battle of Atwaan without leading a single charge. His victory was complete without a blow being struck.
The tales of war and battle told around campfires are things of violence and blood. Yet the story of Tolan’s victory was a favorite retold for generations. Though no sword was drawn nor arrow nocked, it was a model of valor and wisdom in the face of deadly peril.
At the van of Tolan’s advance onto the plain before the city of Atwaan, Ahrhi, the shield maiden of Rowath Hold, sat astride Tolan’s finest charger. To her left was the Master gnome Kairn, holding the reins of her mount, for as a girl of the mountains she had never ridden. To her right rode an apprentice armsman without rank—and here the listeners would exchange smiles around the campfire—with a marvelous blue being riding the pommel of his saddle.
Behind these came the vanguard, two elder gnomes— captainsin their tongue—flanked by four fours of battle gnomes. These wore strange and varied regalia, bristling with strange weapons and all manner of mysterious devices.
And well behind them, astride his second finest charger, came Tolan. At his back were mounted four sixty-fours of Master armsmen of the Tetrarchy with four times as many guardsmen afoot.
But it was not this show of force, nor the strangeness of the gnomes, which caused the armsmen and guardsmen of Atwaan to give ground. They fell back, opening a broad avenue to where the baron sat prepared to direct his forces at the sight of the two infants alive in their mother’s arms. Not one of them would have obeyed an order to attack.
Nor would Terant have given it. Even as the invaders marshaled themselves before him, he had eyes only for the two youngest People in all the world. Tolan had to speak his name twice before he looked away.
“Gather all of the women who are with child,” Tolan had said without preamble. “The gnomes will ensure their infants live. After that, we will talk.”
There was more to the story, of course. Every child, and there were many children, knew how the gnomes had cleansed the water and the air and most of all the birthing pools. The gnomes had calmed the accumulator which in ways mysterious had prevented the Giants—the crew —from waking and keeping the world safe and rightly on its path. And