Greyfax Grimwald (26 page)

“I mean no harm, friend. If I may help, I will, if you wish.”

I won’t go back. You may as well finish me now. I won’t go back,” croaked the dry voice, breaking and catching on burning lips.

“You have to go nowhere, friend. I’m called Otter, and only want to aid you. If you’ll show me your hurt, I may be able to mend it.”

The sprawling, fevered form of the injured man pulled upright, half sitting, half supported by an elbow.

“You really mean me no harm?” came the hopeful, hoarse voice.

“None, friend. How are you called?”

“Flewingam, recently private in the 12th Battalion of General George Greymouse.”

Otter started at the mention of the general’s name, for that was how the wizard king he sought called himself among his followers.

“Did you do battle on this side of the border, friend? Or have you come this far alone?” Otter was tying one of his spare handkerchiefs about Flewingam’s hurt arm. “Ah, go easy there. That hurts.” Flewingam moaned between clenched teeth. “We fell upon a rear guard of the enemy not more than five miles from here last night. I was struck by a bomb before I fired a shot, which was well enough by me, so I decided then was as good a time as any to chuck it all. I was a conscript, and never had a heart for fighting anyhow, but you know how it is nowadays. Anyone who can carry a weapon or strike a blow is sucked into the bloody mess.”

Otter had finished binding the arm, and now gave Flewingam a drink from his water jug. “Not too much at first, you’ll choke on it.”

The man gagged once, then greedily took another long pull.

“I’ve been eating snow to keep me going since this morning. I never thought to find a friend here,” he said, falling back against the wall, “What brings you, if you’re not a soldier? Most folks have long left this cursed place, since the fighting.”

“I seek after the general you just named, Greymouse, although I know him better as Mithramuse. Three moons now I have journeyed from my home to find him.”

“You try to find General Greymouse? To what purpose? To turn me in for deserter’s fee?” Flewingam laughed bitterly. “I should have known as much. Fifty gold dollars is all a man is worth who has no stomach for fighting.”

“Money is of no interest to me, friend,” Otter assured him. “I’m waterfolk by trade, and need only a roof and a full river to keep me.”

Flewingam stared up at Otter, trying to see his eyes in the dim silver light.

“I think by your voice you must be what you say.”

“My errand to your general is to seek his aid to help us get back our dwarf. After that, I plan simply to slide all day, or swim, or whatever. These wars are more than I can fathom.”

Otter sat down next to Flewingam, stretching out his awkward legs before him. “Do you have a blanket to cover up with, friend? If not, I have a duster I brought along that you might use.”

The injured man’s teeth chattered a constant, staccato tattoo. “That’s kind, Otter. Is that really what you’re called?”

“If it would not be too much of a shock for you, I’d say I am an otter, but then explaining things to a man is a more difficult thing than conversing with, say, a groundhog or a muskrat.”

“You lead me in circles. Groundhog? I know groundhog stew, and have trapped muskrats often as a boy.”

“Do tell,” snapped Otter, a trace of reproach edging into his voice. “That’s why I never have much commerce in places infested with you folk.”

“Are you a religious hermit, friend?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that, although I do have a chat or two with the great king now and then. Makes more sense than anything I’ve found in Mankind yet. Now you’d better try to sleep. “I’ll be gone soon, but I’ll give you the cover, since you’re hurt, and have none. In return for that favor, you may give me your promise not to trap animals in the future, if you live through the war.” Otter lay back, looking op through the open roof at the dim, glimmering triangle of Styphlus.

“Oh, I’ll live through this all right, and I haven’t trapped an animal, save for food, since I grew into a soldier’s size. I have said something to offend you, I fear. If that’s so, I’m sorry, friend, for you’ve shown me more kindness than many I might have chanced upon.”

Otter, almost asleep, whistled in his own tongue, forgetting his newly found companion would not understand. He fell into a light doze, wondering if he should trust this man. Just as he was on the very light gray border of slumber, heavy, booted footsteps aroused him from that land. Muffled voices, low and harsh, grated the air like iron bars dragged across stone.

“We’ll break here and wait till sunrise to set up the rest. Osglat, you and Prax take first watch. The rest of you Seep while you’ve got the chance.”

Then came noises of many men dropping their burden; the jingle of pack harness and the dull metallic clang of weapon butt or barrel as it touched earth, or other gear was heard, and Otter, fighting the urge to return to his other form, silently crept to the window in time to see two large, uniformed shadows approaching the ruins where he and Flewingam lay hidden. Even with the moon gone, the room was light enough to see distinct shapes by, and there was no immediate place to hide. Flewingam crawled to his firearm, and had it ready when Otter moved quickly back from the window.

“There are too many of them for that,” he hissed sharply, remembering at that moment his rucksack, still where he’d left it by the doorway. “I should be captured and roasted alive,” he rebuked himself.

A dark shape crossed the dim outline of the entrance.

“Don’t has so much as a roof,” complained the shadow voice. “But it takes the bite out of that wind, it does.”

“We might as well stay here. I doesn’t like the looks of it. Too many ghosts around for me,” growled the second.

“Is you still full of your balmy stories, Flick? I thought you just got them ghosts on the late watch.” A harsh laugh, followed by a grunt.

“You is going to wish you had listened when they is come for you, dunghead. Them as don’t believe they eat,” snapped the voice called Flick.

“They is going to have themselfs a sorry feed for that, if they takes us. I hasn’t had my stomach full since we stewed that village two days ago. The way these easterns eat, you would thinks they was too weak to carry an ant, much less fight.”

“We ain’t had nothing but trouble since we crossed borders. I don’t see no use in why we is here, except maybe to scare up a few seed planters into thinking about moving on,” the second voice added.

“Like this turnip picker here,” put in Flick, gesturing at the fallen stone house. “Must be pretty hard farming in the middle of a fight Thataway, the only thing you might get planted was yourself, if you get my meaning.” The voice, harsh and guttural, laughed a short rasping echo of humor.

“Let’s see if there’s anything worth having left in here,” snapped one of the-voices. “We might find something to fill our bellies.”

Otter’s rucksack had not been discovered, but the two soldiers approached the door again, and he was sure they would see it this time. . Flewingam held a long, dull black knife in his hand as Otter turned to warn him. “Can you take one of them?” he breathed, barely a whisper into Otter’s ear.

“I’m not much of a fighter,” Otter shot back, but hearing the heavy footsteps almost on them, he slipped behind the doorstone, clutching his thick walking stick after the manner of a cudgel. A gaunt brown form appeared through the dark slit of the rained entrance. From farther away, the snoring of the other beasts reached Otter’s ears.

“Come on, Flick, I smells something in here.” The figure crouched, moving into the room. Otter let die shadow go on, and soon Flick’s grotesquely shaped head showed itself.

There’s some—” the second man started to say, his speech cut short by the blade in his hairy throat. Flick started to run, but a heavy blow from Otter’s stick knocked him senseless to the floor. Flewingam came, and with expert skill dispatched the unconscious Flick with a silent thrust of his knife.

“We must be gone before they’re missed,” whispered Flewingam. “By their gear, I think we’ve landed ourselves in the middle of a Gorgolac raiding party.”

“Did you have to slay them?” asked Otter, surprised at his new companion’s cold actions.

That’s a point, friend I’m sure they wouldn’t have asked us. Let’s get away from this place quickly.” Flewingam’s voice was as gentle as his hand had been quick. Otter reached around the doorpost cautiously, saw no one, and pulled his rucksack quietly in.

“The general will have to know of this,” said Flewingam, turning over some question in his mind.

“I thought you had given up that life,” said Otter, slipping into the harness of his pack.

“I still nave kinsmen in these parts, or I did if these villains haven’t already slain than all. General Greymouse has long protected these regions, and he’ll be quick to remove them. They must have crossed far below his borders.”

“Then you’ll go with me to find him?” Otter brightened at the thought of company.

“Yes, we’ll go together. The two of us will have a better chance, at any rate, of getting through. “I’m sure there are more of these handsome fellows than our friends outside.”

Otter shuddered, thinking of how he would have been caught in his sleep by these new enemies had Flewingam found some other hiding place. He was not entirely trustful of the man, remembering how swiftly he had slain, but then the war changed many men, and Flewingam certainly didn’t seem to have taken pleasure in it. Too, Flewingam knew where the man was he had traveled so far to find. This thought decided Otter. The two of them would go on in search of their general, each for his own reasons. The comfort of having a companion again after so long eased Otter’s weariness a little, and as they crept hurriedly through the broken back window of the ruins toward the snow-blanketed fields beyond, Otter reached out a hand-paw to Flewingam. The man silently took it, and nodded.

At daybreak, the two had entered the outlying rolling hills, where the cover was heavier, and their journey was hastened on until the third hour of sunrise. They had seen no further signs of raiders, but the two decided that one would sleep and one keep watch, taking turns that way until they were both rested enough to go on.

D
warf’s heart swelled with confusion and sadness. He slowly got down from his broken, fire-torn bed, and began wandering about the room trying to piece together all the black, frightening things that had happened. He had no way of knowing how long he had been gone, nor of what time it was. He stepped past the ruined bedroom door into the charred remnants of his snug sitting room and kitchen. The small ancient green clock was rusting, its case only a blackened pile of sticks. The living thatched roof was burned and dead, and the clover floor was nothing but parched, lifeless earth. He crossed the splintered outer door, and looked with dismay and a growing anger at his valley. The forest was gone, grim black trunks rising out of the snow on the surrounding hills, making it all look full of charred tombstones, and the river was no more than a trickle, what water there was not frozen, being a dirty gray-brown color, and poisoned.

He searched in vain for Froghorn and the box. His heart turned as dark and cold as the ice palace of the evil queen when he realized that both were gone.

He ran to Otter’s, wept again when he saw that cheerful little holt burned and falling slowly to dust, and before he reached Bear’s den, a vengeance, swift and terrible, had began growing in his heart, a vengeance more embittered by his helplessness, and more dreadful because of his throwing care for himself aside. All Dwarf sought now was a swift sword, and a reckoning, and if he must perish in die effort, it would be great satisfaction in the empty face of death to know he had at least struck a blow for his companions’ foul murder.

Returning to the crumbled dwarf home of all those long, peaceful years, Broco salvaged what little he could that might be of use to him on his journey. Before leaving the valley for the last time, he fashioned three stone markers with the mallet and hand chisel he had found unharmed, one in the high tongue of Bear, another in Otter’s language. For Froghorn he fashioned a simple Circle of Life on the smooth surface of die old stone. He placed them down near the remnants of where the reed lawn had once seen the merry All Summer’s Day, that midsummer only a burned phantom now in Dwarf’s heart, and pausing for one long, lonely last moment, he wept.

“Aieee,” he wailed, “and now I’ve been the curse and murder of my best comrades, stout Bear and gentle Otter, animal kings from beyond, the great River, and my loyal Froghorn. I brought them all this way on my mad journey, and here, in the valley we loved so well, I find them slain and perished away, and their footsteps will follow mine where I go no longer. I’ve failed them all, and broken Greyfax’s trust. This then, dearest comrades, is our last farewell. “I’ll see thy fair faces no more.” He could not go on, for his voice failed him, and the tears flowed long from his tightly dosed eyes.

“Curse you, filth,” he cried at last, brandishing high the short dwarf sword of Tubal Hall he had found safe behind the fallen fireplace of his wrecked house. “The ancient vengeance of all my father’s fathers forever on your villainous souls. I shall at least have the pleasure of burying Tubal’s blade in your blood, if I never draw a breath after.”