The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [4]
"Mayhap you can even sign up to join the forces guarding the trade negotiations of Myth Nantar," another of the young hunters said. He was one of the two largest men in the group. If they weren't twins, they were at least brothers. "I hear that after pulling a tour of duty down in Myth Nantar, you can breathe the ocean waters just like the air itself."
"Standing here talking," Ennalt grumbled, "isn't going to put us any closer to our beds for the evening, or to hunting wolves, if that's what we're going to do."
The reminder pulled Haarn from his inclination to watch the hunting party rather than deal with it. Broadfoot shifted restlessly in the forest to Haarn's left, but the noise he made wasn't something the hunters in the group below would have noticed.
Haarn laid his scimitar across his knees, the flat of the blade resting easily, then cupped his hands before his mouth. He blew gently, making the sound of a bloodybeak, one of the small birds in the forest that fed on the mosquitoes that lived around Evenstar Lake. He hit all four notes perfectly, and a chorus of responses came from the darkness as nearby birds answered him, but Haarn knew Broadfoot would recognize his call and be alerted.
Whisper-quiet, Haarn stood and walked down the hillside toward the hunting party. His arrival startled them, stepping as he did from the trees into the circumference of light from the lanterns.
Tymora watch over me," one of the men snarled as he turned to face Haarn. "What the hell is that?"
All of the men and the woman reached for their weapons, baring blades in a heartbeat. Two of the men lifted heavy crossbows and turned them toward Haarn.
"Leave these lands," Haarn ordered. He stood unafraid before them, certain that he could move even more quickly than the crossbowmen could pull the triggers on their weapons. The trick was to recognize when they were going to fire. "There will be no more wolf hunting."
"Says who?" one of the two big men demanded. "If you continue hunting," Haarn promised emotion-lessly, not thinking of the mother wolf he'd seen killed earlier, "I will hunt you, and I will slay you all before the sun rises again."
"Like hell you will," Tethys said. He pointed the long sword he wielded. "Shoot him!"
CHAPTER TWO
Druz Talimsir stared at the wraith that had stepped from the dark forest around the party of wolf hunters. She gripped her long sword tightly in her fist as the men around her moved, thronging out in a semicircle to confront the man. At least she thought the forest warrior was a man.
An elf, she corrected herself, spotting one pointed ear a moment later.
The elf stood a few inches short of six feet and possessed a slender build. Still, his wide shoulders and deep chest promised strength, though he didn't pack a lot of weight. Most professional sellswords would have looked at the slender figure standing before them with never a qualm about a physical confrontation.
Druz had experienced several combat situations during her years as a mercenary. Though she was only twenty-five, she'd battled ore hordes and bugbears that had tried to take merchant convoys she'd signed on to protect. During the last year, before an injury in Alaghфn had separated her from the mercenary group she'd signed on with for the previous three years, she'd fought in the Serosian War.
That war was a year past, but employment for mercenaries willing to battle the pirates, the shark-worshiping sahuagin now freed throughout the sea, and the nations that battled each other for shipping lanes, salvage from the battles above and below the sea, and trading rights with the newly re-discovered city of Myth Nantar burgeoned. It was one of those battles between shipping guilds that had drawn Druz to Alaghфn.
Studying the slim elf before her, Druz felt certain that her luck had completely soured. That man, dressed as he was in hide armor, his wild black hair pulled back to lay on his shoulders and festooned with sprigs of