The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [13]
Glass sang and screamed into shards, guardian spells shattered in sighing silver smoke and sparkling dust, and the armaragor charged through the ruin into the room, to snatch at the convulsing procurer with a snarl.
The lightning was silver and green this time. It struck the swordmaster like a ram, plucking him from his feet and smashing him back against a wall. In his wake, the procurer was whirled along like a leaf and tumbled against the stones beside him, to be held there as helpless and breathless as Hawkril in the roiling, risen force.
He stared at its source, a room away but striding toward them as terrible as any angry baron shouldering through archways. Tall and terrible she came in her nightgown, with the witchlights of her risen power sparkling and swirling around her. The Lady of Jewels, it seemed, was a powerful sorceress.
The gray and slab-sided peaks known as the Windfangs stood like a shield between Coiling Vale and the worst of the winter winds that seared the rolling plains of Dalondblas to the north, piling up glittering snows there in drifts as high as tall castle towers.
Winter in the Windfangs meant mist-tattered gales howling down the clefts over the glittering corpses of frozen crag sheep, but in summer heavy carts groaned down from quarries through the prosperous barony of Loushoond, whose fat and wine-loving Tersept blinked pale, watery eyes at anyone complaining of brigands and sent armaragors in gilded armor to riding the roads in glittering display. Above the quarries rose tortured knobs and shoulders of rock called the Wildrocks. The frowning mountains rose behind them and betimes sent huge sheets of rock crashing down upon them. They were home to monsters and lawless, desperate men, wherefore law-abiding folk shunned the Wildrocks but spoke much of them, at night in taverns.
On the night when Flaeros set foot in Sirlptar, a tongue of flame rose in the Wildrocks. Crouching around it, cursing at how long it had taken them to bring down a sheep so their cookfire burned in darkness, visible from afar, were two of those lawless, desperate men.
"Oh, sargh!" Craer Delnbone snarled, as flame roared up the dry bough with which he was prodding the fire, scorching his fingertips. "Sargh, sargh, sargh!"
As he shook his hand in pain, the tall, mighty-shouldered man across the fire asked, "Need some help with words, there? Can I offer you a 'bebolt,' or perhaps a 'by the Three!'?"
Craer sent his companion a glare that seared as hot as the flames snapping between them, and hissed, "Graul you, Hawkril! Graul you!"
"Repetition is good, yes," the deep-voiced armaragor agreed, not quite smiling. "Helps us battered helms understand your drift."
"If you're quite finished being clever, Hawk," Craer hissed, "set meat cooking before a wolf has it-perhaps after it's made us its first two feasts!"
"I'll spread the last of the sauce on you, if you'd like to go first."
"We haven't even coins enough to buy another bottle of that," Craer said bitterly.
Hawkril shrugged. "As we don't dare go down to Loushoond to buy one, what boots it?"
Craer sighed as he watched the armaragor set two bloody slabs of lamb to cook, nod, and lounge back against the rocks, unconcerned by the grease and gore of the sheep he'd butchered-or the flies now buzzing around in enthusiastic profusion.
Hawkril Anharu was as good-natured with a price on their heads and no home to return to as he'd been swinging a sword in Ibrelm or peering his way through the brothels of Sirlptar with that same easy grin on his face. A tall, red-skinned mountain of an armaragor, better muscled than most, he wore the scarred bracers of a veteran swordmaster. His only traces of desperation were the words spilling out of him; usually Craer gabbled glibly while Hawkril saved his words, offering a quiet handful only when absolutely necessary.