The Jewel of Turmish (2 page)

Trust me,” Tethys said, “this is a lot quicker work and will pay more handsomely than guarding some fat merchant’s caravan from Alaghôn bound for Baldur’s Gate, Calimport, or even Waterdeep.”

Haarn turned the names over in his mind as he listened.

Baldur’s Gate, Calimport, and Waterdeep were all famous cities of the Sword Coast known to him through stories he’d heard as a boy growing up under his father’s tutelage. Ettrian Brightoak had been more socially driven than Haarn had turned out to be. Though he had no desire to go see those cities, thinking of them still fired his imagination.

He had yet to see even Alaghôn, the so-called Jewel of Turmish, and it lay within three days’ travel of Morningstar Hollows where he spent much of his time. The idea of being in a place that housed so many people was at once exciting and terrifying.

Still, his father’s descriptions of the Throne of Turmish, as the city was also known, held fascination, especially when Ettrian Brightoak waxed eloquently—an art Haarn had never acquired—about the history of the city that included stories of Anaglathos, the blue dragon that had ruled the city for a time, or of the Time of Troubles when Malar himself—also called the Stalker and the Beastlord—entered the Gulthmere Forest to destroy the Emerald Enclave.

“Gakhos, the shepherd,” Tethys continued, “is a rich man, and he’s drawn to vengeance. In my experience, a man drawn to avenge—even by proxy, which is what he hired us for—will pay until there is nothing left of his gold or his anger. We can kill a lot of wolves for the gold he’s paying and not have to worry about taking one of those damned overland trips to the Sword Coast.”

“Or maybe you’re wanting to begin a new career as a sellsword aboard one of those new ships that are being outfitted for the Sea of Fallen Stars,” another of the young hunters said. “Since the Serdsian War and the destruction of the Whamite Isles—not to mention the unleashing of the sahuagin throughout the Inner Sea—there’s plenty of call for sailors that don’t mind getting bloody.”

“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!”

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 Alaghôn 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 Alaghôn.

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 wood and blossoms of a half-dozen plants, might look like a vagabond or a madman, but the mercenary felt certain she knew what the man was. Trying to kill him would amount to a death wish.

“Feather the damn dandelion-sipper and be done with it,” Tethys growled again. “I won’t have any man threatening to kill me.”

But that won’t stop you from threatening to kill another man, will it? Druz mused.

The crossbowmen stood on either side of Druz. One of them was Ennalt and the other was Kord—brothers who had signed on with the ragtag outfit. Both of them held their weapons pointed at the forest warrior.

“Don’t,” Druz commanded.

In her days she’d sometimes served as a unit commander. She’d learned how to pitch her voice so that it garnered instant respect and attention. Kord hesitated and raised the crossbow to aim into the star-filled sky.

“To hell with that,” Tethys growled. “Feather that bastard, Ennalt.”

Ennalt’s trigger knuckle whitened as the man took up the crossbow’s slack.

Without hesitation, Druz swung around, bringing her arm up in a powerful sweep that knocked the crossbow, up. The catgut string slid across the stock with a short hiss, and the stubby quarrel took flight.

Arvis, Kord’s younger brother by a year, and more impulsive than his older brother who was known for his steadfast pace and unwavering commitment, closed on the forest warrior. Arvis stood head and shoulders taller than the forest warrior and normally brimmed with over-confidence

anyway. Facing the much smaller man, Arvis showed no hesitation at all as he whirled his battle-axe effortlessly before him.

“Don’t fret over this one,” Arvis boomed in his deep voice. “I have him.” He stepped forward, his grin lighted by the flickering lanterns in the hands of the men around him.

The forest warrior’s attention never seemed to break from the men in front of him. His dark green eyes, glimmering in the lantern light somewhat like a cat’s, regarded Druz curiously. His head cocked slightly, as if he didn’t notice the way the bigger man closed on him. The forest warrior’s scimitar stayed mostly out of sight beside his back leg.

“Don’t kill him,” Druz pleaded. “He’s little more than a boy.”

Arvis, she knew, would resent her deeply for the comment, but if it would help save his life, she didn’t care. Arvis and Kord, though both blooded in skirmishes around Alaghôn and some of the cities along the western coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars, hadn’t yet seen twenty.

“Don’t kill him! Forras repeated, shifting on his bad leg. “Why, Arvis will break this little upstart in half.”

Druz watched, feeling a chill like icy cat’s paws kneading between her shoulders. She liked Arvis, though his aggressive nature made him somewhat hard to take.

Arvis made his situation even worse by not taking the threat the smaller man offered more seriously. He stepped in and casually feinted with the battle-axe.

Before he could pull back, the smaller man stepped in quickly, going to Arvis’s left. Anticipating the big warrior’s attempt to block with the battle-axe haft, the small man backhanded his opponent in the nose with his empty fist.

Yelping in pain, Arvis tried to swing around. Instead of keeping his feet planted and merely shifting, Arvis lifted his left foot. The small man kicked the raised foot from under the bigger man as if the feat were nothing.

Off-balance, trying desperately to recover, Arvis fell to the ground, miraculously managing to land on his knee. His opponent walked to his side without apparent haste,

but the effort was amazingly quick. Before Arvis could move, the warrior in hide armor kicked the bigger man’s back foot, causing the younger man to sprawl out. Arvis toppled onto his outstretched hands, trapping his battle-axe against the ground under his own weight.

In a few seemingly effortless moves, the forest warrior had Arvis stretched out and the scimitar’s blade against the young mercenary’s throat like he was a pig awaiting the butcher’s bloodletting. Coldly, the forest warrior glared at the other members of the wolf-hunting party, letting them all know that Arvis’s life was forfeit if they made any sudden moves.

“Don’t kill him,” Druz repeated.

Kord started forward.

“If you value your brother’s life, Kord,” Druz said in a low, anxious voice as she glanced at the big man, “you’ll stay back.”

Kord hesitated.

“If you force him to deal with you,” Druz went on, “hell kill Arvis without blinking an eye. He’ll have one less enemy to face.”

Kord plucked the heavy quarrel from the crossbow and tossed it to the ground. He dropped the bow next and showed his empty hands.

“That’s my brother,” he croaked in a voice that broke. “If you’ll allow it, 111 have him back in one piece. If you harm him in any way, know that I won’t rest until one of us is dead. I swear that by Helm the Vigilant, god of protectors and guardians.”

Arvis trembled, evidently trying to figure out a way to rescue himself.

“Stay,” the forest warrior commanded. He pressed the scimitar against the younger man’s throat meaningfully.

“If he’s meaning to kill us,” Tethys grated, “then we’re better off working together. He can’t get us all.”

The forest warrior turned his dark green eyes on the mercenary leader. “Count up after the dust has settled.”

No one moved.

Tethys swore black oaths, but he stayed where he was.

For all his mercenary experience, Druz knew that Tethys wasn’t an overly courageous man. He was smart on a battlefield, and that made him a successful sellsword.

Making a decision, knowing no one else in the party knew for sure what the forest warrior was or whom he represented, Druz sheathed her sword then unbuckled the belt. She dropped it on the ground, then stepped forward with her empty hands held up before her.

The forest warrior watched her approach but said nothing.

“Clear a path to him, girl,” Forras said. “You’re blocking whatever chance one of us might have to get to him should it come to that.”

Druz ignored the command. Part of the reason the forest warrior allowed her to move in was because she would serve as a human shield.

“Who are you?” Druz asked.

The forest warrior regarded her silently.

“What do you want?” Druz tried again.

“No more wolf hunting,” the forest warrior replied, “and I want the scalps you’ve collected so far. Those that died will not be desecrated further.”

“No,” Tethys disagreed, placing a hand on the bag at his waist where the wolf scalps were stored. “We’re keeping the scalps.”

Druz spoke to the mercenaries without turning around or taking her eyes from the forest warrior. “You’re going to have to give him the scalps.”

“Are you insane?” Forras demanded. “Without those scalps we won’t be able to collect our bounty.”

“If you don’t give him the scalps,” Druz said in a measured voice, “hell kill us, and you won’t be able to collect your bounty.”

“Why would he kill us?” Ennalt demanded, exasperated. “We don’t even know this man.” He paused. “Do you know him, Druz?”

“No,” Druz answered. “I don’t know him… but I know what he is.”

She met the forest warrior’s gaze boldly. Despite her fear of him, and the respect she had for what she guessed

he was capable of, she wasn’t going to flinch away from him. She wouldn’t give him that; she gave no man that.

“He’s one man,” Tethys objected. “Even if he slays Arvis, there are eight of us.”

“I don’t want my brother killed,” Kord said. “If you do something stupid to get him slain, I’ll kill you, Tethys.”

“Eight of us isn’t enough,” Druz said, “and he’s not alone.”

Warily, the men carrying lanterns moved them so the bull’s-eye beams swept the trees around the glen. A wolf bayed in the distance, yipping at the moon that was high in the sky.

“I don’t see anyone,” Tethys replied.

“You won’t see anyone until it’s too late,” Druz said.

She recalled the tales her blacksmith father had told her of men like the one standing so coolly in front of her with his scimitar at Arvis’s throat;

“Who are you?” Tethys demanded of the forest warrior.

“This night,” the man said quietly, “I’m a protector of the wolves you people would slay to line your palms with gold.”