"Well, that was uncalled for," Derst said with a frown. "Aye, Bars… Bars?"
Though he did not speak, it was clear that Bars agreed, for he flushed, stepped forward, and dropped his hands to the maces at his belt.
Greyt saw this and his face skewed up in a crooked smile.
"Oh, a hero, eh?" He pushed his slim chest out and stepped right up to the hulking paladin, a man nearly twice his size. The Lord Singer stood a step higher, so their eyes were almost level.
Bars refused to back down before him, and Greyt laughed in his face. "The gallant knight stands to defend his beleaguered lady, the way all the stories and ballads tell; all flowery, all heroic… all lies."
"Take back what you said," Bars said. Greyt flashed a mocking smile in the paladin's face but did nothing of the sort. "I won't ask again."
"Very well," Greyt said with a shrug. "I take it back, then."
Bars gave him a long, measured look-one that the Lord Singer answered with a gaze of haughty disdain-and backed away. The Lord Singer grinned, put a finger to his forehead, and broke down in a laughing fit.
"Heroism," he cackled.
"Please, uncle," Arya said. "You are drunk."
"Yes, yes I am," the Lord Singer replied with a dazed smile.
Then he lunged forward and seized Arya before either of the other knights could react. He pulled her face to his and went for her lips.
He ended up on the ground clutching at his groin where Arya had kneed him.
"G-get away from me!" stammered Arya.
The Lord Singer, nearly unconscious from drink and pain, was in no position to argue. The three knights hurried out the door, Bars trying to convince Derst that it was all right because the knave was drunk, Arya casting her step-uncle warning glances, and Derst exclaiming at the top of his lungs that they had both taken leave of their senses. Meanwhile, Greyt, face flushed and brows knitted with fury, struggled to growl at them.
Arya Venkyr would regret this, step-niece or no.
Chapter 9
28 Tarsakh
As storm clouds rolled overhead and the residual light from the setting sun faded, Walker made his way back to Quaervarr with a heavy heart and a head full of worries. His sword felt leaden in its scabbard and his clothes similarly weighty because of the light rain. As he had expected, the ghost druid had been nowhere to be found in the grove, but he had still felt her presence, watching him. And, as always when he felt her eyes upon his back, the ghost of Tarm Thardeyn was nowhere to be found.
Any other man may have feared Gylther'yel's retribution, but Walker thought little of this course of events. This was simply the way of things with his teacher, the only mother he had ever known: a mother who neither loved nor forgave.
Elves' memories were long and their scorn hot, she often said to him, and after fifteen years he knew it was the truth. But there was nothing he could do about it, so Walker focused on the task at hand-slaying the third and last of Greyt's henchmen.
At least Walker thought that the giant of a man they called Bilgren was the third attacker-he would not know until he faced the barbarian, until he could feel that same soul of hatred he had sensed that night fifteen years before.
In keeping with his thoughts, the rain strengthened from a dreary drizzle to a gloomy downpour.
Eluding the grim-faced guards at the sole gate of Quaervarr was not a problem. Though they were sharp-eyed and suspicious, clutching their silver-headed spears tightly, visibility was reduced to almost nothing in the rain. Walker slipped through the shadows, hidden in his heavy cloak, within a sword's length of the guards.
A shadow in the rain, he made his way up the empty main street. Few townsfolk came out on a good night, fewer when it rained so heavily. Walker did not need his eyes to navigate the town, for he had walked its streets many times before, unseen and unknown by the townsfolk.
As the street opened up into the main plaza, the rain let up for a moment, and Walker lifted his head. He could see the lamplights bright in the windows of Greyt's manor. He could see faces inside those windows and the shadowy silhouettes of moving figures, but he did not think much on them. He knew that he would be inside that place soon enough.
He turned north and started down the road toward the oldest part of town, through the original shadowtop gates, where the first settlers had set up camp in what would become Quaervarr. Townsfolk claimed that the additional settlers carried a shade of cowardice because they had stayed south, close to the Silverymoon road, where help could come the fastest. It made for a tiny difference, but the northern Old District carried more of a frontier feel.
Bilgren's house, a stout former tavern the barbarian had bought for its ale store and wine cellar, squatted dankly a few buildings down the road next to an unmanned merchant wagon filled with goods in bundles. The entire place seemed worn and abused, even at this distance. The second floor balcony had half-collapsed from mildew and rot and most of the windows were boarded up. The building might have seemed condemned but for the thick iron door set in the front. Carved with roaring tigers, the door represented Bilgren's measure of his own strength-local legend said the barbarian had carried the several hundred pound door single-handedly from the smiths of his homeland, hundreds of miles distant.
Lost in his thoughts, Walker was completely surprised when a hand reached out of an alley, seized him by the shoulder, and yanked him from the hazy night into pitch darkness.
Walker recovered enough from the surprise to draw his shatterspike in the blink of an eye and slash up and across at his unseen attacker. The hand released his shoulder and the dark figure leaped back, but Walker did not let up. He followed, his blade thrusting up and down, then slashing right to left. The first thrust the attacker managed to dodge and the second scraped off hard steel, as of armor. The high slash slammed against a hastily raised shield, a parry that barely managed to block it. The shield did not resist the sword's cut directly, but instead let the slash continue, straight into the wall of a nearby building, where the shield held it.
Releasing the sword, Walker lunged forward and shouldered his opponent, who was already off balance, against the wall of the nearby building. A long sword came up, held in the attacker's other hand, and Walker immediately stepped inside its reach, putting his shoulder against the upper right arm, and held his opponent against the cracked timber wall with his body. The overhang stopped the rain from falling on Walker's head, but the darkness obscured his attacker's face.
"Stop-" he started to say, but a flash of lightning overhead lit the alley for the barest of instants and bathed his opponent's face in light.
It was the auburn-haired woman, the one he had happened across in the alley, saved from an unknown assailant, then confronted in Torlic's house, all within a short amount of time.
"You-" began his next question, but it cut off in a grunt as pain exploded up his leg from where she had stomped hard on his foot. He staggered back and a knee met his midsection. Walker doubled over, the air stolen from his lungs, but managed to reach up for his sword, still stuck in the wall.
The woman made no move to attack, but she kept her sword up as she stepped away from the wall. "A less honorable woman would have put that knee between your legs," she observed casually as she wiped a lock of auburn hair out of her face with her sword arm.
Walker managed to right himself, holding himself up against the opposite wall until his stomach cramp disappeared, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
The knight saw that he was vertical again and smiled. "Now-"
Whatever the knight had been about to say became a startled gasp as she leaped back, barely avoiding a silvery blade through the ribs as Walker lunged. She slapped the sword away and fell back into a defensive stance, shield up and ready.