Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [70]
Then the cold hit Vhenlar, bitter, searing, but not quite enough to immobilize him. Quite the contrary, like a slap to the face, it tore him from his momentary terror. He realized the dragon's breath weapon had reached its outer limits with the unfortunate scouts. Even so, he did not intend to stay around in case the monster could repeat its trick.
"Run!" he shrieked, and he kicked into the fastest gait his benumbed limbs could manage.
Bunlap's secondhand authority was not needed this time. The men followed Vhenlar without pause or question. As they fled wildly into the forest, their steps were spurred by the sound of cracking ice, a horrid crunching, and the faint and deadly scent of wintermint.
Ten
From the palisades of his fortress, Bunlap had a splendid view of Tethyr and its varied landscapes. To his east lay the Starspire Mountains, their jagged and lofty peaks snow-tipped even now in early summer. On the western side of his land were the rolling foothills, and just north of him the sudden, dense tree line that marked the southern edge of the Forest of Tethir.
A brisk wind ruffled his black beard and sent his cloak swirling up behind him. Bunlap caught the flying folds and wrapped them around himself, folding his arms to keep the garment firmly in place. Mornings were chill, even this time of year, for the western winds came straight off the Starspires, as did the icy waters that spilled into the river below-the northern branch, most called it, but Bunlap liked to think of it as "his" river.
Located as he was, on a cliff overlooking the plain where a dozen or more small waterways converged into a single flow, he could exact a tariff from every small-time farmer or trapper who floated down the tributaries to paddle his goods downriver to the Sulduskoon, and thence to Zazesspur.
It amused Bunlap that his demands were never challenged. The people of Tethyr were too accustomed to paying tariffs and tributes and out-and-out bribes at every turn, for petty noblemen bred like rabbits in this land. Not a single traveler questioned Bunlap's right to tax their cargo. He held this remote territory with a fortress and men-at-arms. In the mind of the Tethyrians, that made him nobility.
"Baron Bunlap," he said aloud, and a wry smile twisted his lips at the irony of it. Not a man alive was more lowly born than he, but what did that matter in Tethyr? In the few short years since he'd left his post at Darkhold, the former Zhentish soldier had amassed more land, wealth, and power than was possessed by most Cormyran lords. Bane's blood, how he loved this country!
"Two-sailed approaching!" called a man from the southern lookout.
Bunlap's mood darkened instantly. He'd received word of this ship's approach the night before, for he kept runners and horsemen stationed along the river to bring him news of water traffic. It was an organization nearly as swift and efficient as the town criers of any city a man could name, and as a result Bunlap knew the business of nearly everyone who traveled Tethyr's main waterway.
Which is why this particular ship disturbed him. Shallow-keeled as a Northman's raiding ship, single-masted but flying a jib as well as a mainsail, the ship was built for speed and stealth. She was small enough to escape the notice of everyone but the most observant and suspicious of men, small enough so that two or three might sail her, yet large enough to hold a dozen men or stow a considerable amount of contrabandvln short, it was the sort of ship that carried trouble and a prime example of what his informants had been trained and paid to notice.
Yet his man at Port Starhaven, one of the few towns that lay along the northern branch, had been the first to note its approach. Bunlap had checked the fortress's log the night before. Recent entries indicated that there were no reported sightings of such a ship on the Sulduskoon, not on either side of the place where the northern branch met the main river.