Tasslehoff came to a stop and rounded so suddenly that the Knight very nearly tripped over him.
“Hundreds? Killed by a dragon?” Tas was aghast. “What do you mean hundreds of kender died in Kendermore? I never heard that. I never heard anything like that! It’s not true. You’re lying. . . No,” he added miserably. “I take that back. You can’t lie. You’re a Knight and while you may not like me you’re honor-bound not to lie to me.”
Gerard said nothing. Putting his hand on Tas’s shoulder he turned the kender around bodily and started him, once again, on his way.
Tas noticed a queer feeling in the vicinity of his heart a constricting kind of feeling, as if he’d swallowed one of the more ferocious constricting snakes. The feeling was uncomfortable and not at all pleasant. Tas knew in that moment that the Knight had indeed spoken truly. That hundreds of his people had died most horribly and painfully. He did not know, how this had happened, but he knew it was true, as true as the grass growing along the side of the road or the tree branches overhead or the sun gleaming down through the green leaves.
It was true in this world where Caramon’s funeral had been different from what he remembered. But it hadn’t been true in that other world, the world of Caramon’s first funeral.
“I feel sort of strange,” Tas said in a small voice. “Kind of dizzy. Like I might throw up. If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to be quiet for awhile.”
“Praise be,” said the Knight, adding, with another shove.
“Keep walking.”
They walked in silence and eventually, about mid-morning, reached Solace Bridge. The bridge spanned Solace Stream, an easy-going, meandering brook that wandered around the foothills of the Sentinel Mountains and then tumbled blithely through South Pass until it reached the White Rage River. The bridge was wide in order to accommodate wagons and teams of horses as well as foot traffic.
In the old days, the bridge had been free for the use of the traveler, but as traffic increased over the bridge, so did the maintenance and the upkeep of the span. The Solace city fathers grew weary of spending tax money to keep the bridge in operation and so they erected a tollgate and added a toll-taker. The fee required was modest. Solace Stream was shallow, you could walk across it in places, and travelers could always cross at other fords along the route. However, the banks through which the stream ran were steep and slippery. More than one wagon load of valuable merchandise had ended up in the water. Most travelers elected to pay the toll.
The Knight and the kender were the only ones crossing this time of day. The toll-taker was eating breakfast in his booth. Two horses were tied up beneath a stand of cottonwood trees that grew along the bank. A young lad who looked and smelled like a stable hand dozed on the grass. One of the horses was glossy black, his coat gleamed in the sunlight. He was restive, pawed the ground and occasionally gave a jerk on the reins as a test to see if he could free himself. The other mount was a small pony, dapple gray, with a bright eye and twitching ears and nose. Her hooves were almost completely covered by long strands of fur.
The constricting snake around Tas’s heart eased up a good deal at the sight of the pony, who seemed to regard the kender with a friendly, if somewhat mischievous, eye.
“Is she mine!” Tas asked, thrilled beyond belief.
“No,” said Gerard. “The horses have been hired for the journey, that is all.”
He kicked at the stable hand, who woke up and, yawning and scratching at himself, said that they owed him thirty steel for the horses, saddles, and blankets, ten of which would be given back to them upon the animals’ safe return. Gerard took out his money purse and counted out the coin. The stable hand—keeping as far from Tasslehoff as possible—counted the money over again distrustfully, deposited it in a sack and stuffed the sack in his straw-covered shirt.
“What’s the pony’s name?” asked Tasslehoff, delighted.
“Little Gray,” said the stable hand.
Tas frowned. “That doesn’t show much imagination. I think you could have come up with something more original than that. What’s the black horse’s name?”
“Blackie,” replied the stable hand, picking his teeth with a straw.
Tasslehoff sighed deeply.
The tollbooth keeper emerged from his little house. Gerard handed him the amount of the toll. The keeper raised the gate.
This done, he eyed the Knight and kender with intense curiosity and seemed prepared to spend the rest of the morning discussing where the two were headed and why.
Gerard answered shortly, “yay” or “nay” as might be required. He hoisted Tasslehoff onto the pony, who swiveled her head to look back at him and winked at him as if they shared some wonderful secret. Gerard placed the mysterious bundle and the sword wrapped in the blanket on the back of his own horse, tied them securely. He took hold of the reins of Tas’s pony and mounted his own horse, then rode off, leaving the toll-taker standing on the bridge talking to himself.
The Knight rode in front, keeping hold of the pony’s reins. Tas rode behind, his manacled hands holding tight to the pommel of the saddle. Blackie didn’t seem to like the gray pony much better than Gerard liked the kender. Perhaps Blackie was resentful of the slow pace he was forced to set to accommodate the pony or perhaps he was a horse of a stern and serious nature who took umbrage at a certain friskiness exhibited by the pony. Whatever the reason, if the black horse caught the gray pony doing a little sideways shuffle for the sheer fun of it, or if he thought she might be tempted to stop and nibble at some buttercups on the side of the road, he would turn his head and regard her and her rider with a cold eye.
They had ridden about five miles when Gerard called a halt.
He stood in his saddle, looked up and down the road. They had not met any travelers since they had left the bridge, and now the road was completely empty. Dismounting, Gerard removed his cloak and rolling it up, he stuffed it in his bedroll. He was wearing the black breastplate decorated with skulls and the death lily of a Dark Knight.
“What a great disguise!” Tas exclaimed, charmed. “You told Lord Warren you were going to be a Knight and you didn’t lie. You just didn’t tell him what sort of Knight you were going to become. Do I get to be disguised as a Dark Knight? I mean a Neraka Knight? Oh, no, I get it! Don’t tell me. I’m going to be your prisoner!” Tasslehoff was quite proud of himself for having figured this out. “This is going to be more fun—er, interesting—than I’d expected.”
Gerard did not smile. “This is not a joy ride, kender,” he said and his voice was stern and grim. “You hold my life and your own in your hands, as well as the fate of our mission. I must be a fool, to trust something so important to one of your kind, but I have no choice. We will soon be entering the territory controlled by the Knights of Neraka. If you breathe a word about my being a Solamnic Knight, I will be arrested and executed as a spy. But first, before they kill me, they will torture me to find out what I know. They use the rack to torture people. Have you ever seen a man stretched upon the rack, kender?”
“No, but I saw Caramon do calisthenics once, and he said that was torture. . . .”
Gerard ignored him. “They tie your hands and feet to the rack and then pull them in opposite directions. Your arms and legs, wrists and elbows, knees and ankles are pulled from their sockets. The pain is excruciating, but the beauty of the torture is that though the victim suffers terribly, he doesn’t die. They can keep a man on the rack for days. The bones never return to their proper place. When they take a man off the rack, he is a cripple. They have to carry him to the scaffold, put him in a chair in order to hang him. That will be my fate if you betray me, kender. Do you understand ?”