The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [14]
Feeling Craer's gaze, he looked up, flashed that grin, and used the back edge of his sword blade to scratch an itch between his shoulderblades. "How fared you in Dranmaer, swordbrother?"
"No better than in Sirlptar," the short, spiderlike man replied. "Everyone remembers an overclever procurer who snatched a haunch or a handful of coins from them a season ago, it seems."
"Well, if you didn't taunt and sing and play jugglers' pranks when you stole things," Hawkril said calmly, "folk might not be so swift to remember your face."
"When I want you to slap my face with simple facts, Tall Post of an armaragor," Craer told him wearily, "I'll be sure to bid you to do so. Until then…"
"Oho, a threat looms before me," Hawkril rumbled.
"Unfurl it, pray, Master Clevertongue; quaking, I await the bright blade of your wit."
"As I suffer under the spiked bludgeon of yours," Craer snapped, snatching at his belt. A black-bladed knife spun from his fingers to find firewood with a solid thunk-pinning slowly sliding lamb instants before it would have fallen into the flames.
Memory flared: a man of the Isle choking on that same knife and falling; a fate shared with many. Yet for all the deadly skill of Craer Delnbone, veteran procurer, the Isles of Ieirembor stood unconquered yet, and it was Hawkril and Craer who'd come scrambling home on leaking, overladen ships-to instant outlawry.
Baron Ezendor Blackgult had been a proud and handsome man with a swordarm of iron, a wit sharp enough to hew foes with, and a ready laugh. Under him, Blackgult had risen to become the largest and mightiest of the River Holds, richer than Ornentar and even Silvertree, with coins to spare for folk to hire bards to craft new songs… coins enough almost to rival the Glittering City itself.
Perhaps that had been Blackgult's downfall. The rich merchants of Sirlptar had grown to fear the baron's rise, war wisdom, and reach. A prosperous barony up-river was one thing-but a barony with the stomach to snatch at the Isles of Ieirembor was quite another.
The Isles rose out of the sea like a wall sheltering the mouth of the Silverflow, five shoulders of forest-girt rock that were both Sirlptar's treasure garden and its rear battlements. The most populous, Ibrelm, rivaled only the smallest barony, but all five held rich stands of the timber that made the Glittering City's close-packed buildings soar, and the copper that gleamed as pots and pans in its every third shop. Perhaps those shopowners had hired wizards and swordmasters enough to break the warriors of the Golden Griffon.
Craer and Hawkril had never seen such endless, tireless foes before. The Baron's bold stroke had failed, and his few surviving loyal warriors fled home from bloody defeats to find their Lord Baron dead or fled and Blackgult conquered by his old rival Faerod Silvertree. The Golden Griffon badge now meant not only slim hopes of honest coin but also a price on the heads of its wearers-and the long-mythical throne of Aglirta seemed very close to feeling the backside of proud and ruthless Baron Silvertree.
Hawkril stretched. "It's good to be back with you, Craer," he said slowly, squatting by the meat with his belt knife flashing bright in one hairy hand. "Shall we hunt together?"
The procurer shrugged, not wanting his brother-in-arms to see eager tears in his eyes. "I can think of no better road than one we share," he said awkwardly. "Meat done yet?"
The armaragor chuckled "I'd miss that tongue of yours, if I wasn't around to hear it."
2
The Trembling Flight of the Castle
Slender fingers and lips that were thin with anger wove a spell that might well hold their deaths. Eyes that blazed raked them up and down. Craer and Hawkril could do nothing but watch.
Numbing, searing lightnings held them hard against the wall, pressed against the cold curves of gems and wire bodice-snakes and harnesses; their greatest strainings left them gasping, sweating, and shuddering, muscles burning in protest-and won them, amid soft tinklings of metal, only a few feeble shiftings of their limbs.
Helpless