“A kender,” Cale Greeneye rasped, looking down from the height of Piquin’s saddle. “By Reorx! Are you people everywhere?”
“Not me,” the kender shook his head, eyes widening in surprise. “I’m just right here, at least right now. Of course, before I came here, I was at …”
“What did you mean, crossing the stream won’t be easy?”
“Oh, that’s because of the knight,” the kender said, shrugging.
“What knight?” Cale demanded, raising his voice in irritation.
“Oh, I don’t know. Any night really.” The kender looked from one to another of them, gazing happily up at the frowning faces high above him. “You don’t live around here, do you?”
“Of course not!” Cale snapped. “We’re just passing through.”
“I didn’t think so,” the kender said. “You’re dwarves, and there aren’t any dwarves around here that I know of. But if you plan to pass the knight down there, like you said, then you’d better have a pretty good plan, because he won’t make it easy for you.”
“Who won’t?”
“The knight.”
“What knight?”
“The one down there at the bridge. And you don’t need to shout. I can hear you just fine. I have good ears. Do you know, I can hear insects breathe? Have you ever listened to a pond beetle breathing? It sounds just like an angry minotaur, except a lot smaller. Sand scorpions sound pretty neat, too, but you have to be really careful, or they’ll sting you on the ear. My cousin Chiswin had one ear twice the size of the other for three weeks because he was listening to …”
“Gods’ rust!” Cale Greeneye hissed. “I only asked you a simple question! And you’re babbling on and on, and I haven’t learned anything yet. Don’t you ever shut up?”
“Sure.” The kender nodded and raised a curious brow. “You talk a lot yourself, for a dwarf. Are you sure you aren’t from around here? I believe those are the biggest horses I ever saw. And all seven of them are the same color. The knight’s horse is pretty big, but not that big, and it’s a horse of a different color. Sort of light brown, like …”
Cale took a deep breath. “What knight?” he roared.
“I just told you. The one down there at the bridge.”
“There … is … a … knight … at … the … bridge?” Cale spoke very slowly and distinctly, waving back his companions. Two of them had drawn their axes, out of sheer exasperation.
“There sure is,” the kender assured him. “His name is Glendon.”
“And what is this Glendon doing there, at the bridge?”
“He’s waiting for people to try to cross the stream.”
“Why?”
“So he can stop them. It’s what he does, you know … or, rather, I guess you don’t know, not being from around here.” Abruptly, the kender scampered directly under Piquin’s belly and peered up from the other side. “Aha! I wondered how you dwarves get on and off these big horses. Now I see. You have a little roll-down rope ladder. That’s pretty clever.”
Cale was fighting the reins, barely keeping his startled mount in control. Piquin’s ears were laid back, his eyes rolling, and his jaws fighting the bit. The other horses, sensing his panic, shied and back-stepped, and for a moment all the dwarves had their hands full.
“Rust and corruption!” Cale yelled, baring his teeth in a snarl. “Don’t you know better than to run under a horse?” Furious, Cale brought Piquin under control, slipped off his spurs, loosed the hitch on his mounting ladder, and scurried down. He turned, the reins in one hand, the other balled into a fist. “I won’t stand for …” he stopped, looking this way and that. The kender was nowhere in sight. “Now where did that little tarnish go?”
“Who?” a voice asked, from above.
Cale swung around and looked up. The kender was sitting in his saddle, high atop Piquin. “You!” the dwarf roared. “Come down from there!”
“Oh,” the kender said. He scampered down the ladder, agile as a spider on a web. “That’s all right, I was just curious. But I guess that was bad manners, considering that we haven’t been introduced or anything. My name is Springheel. Castomel Springheel. You can call me Cas if you want to. Who are you?”
“Cale Greeneye,” Cale growled. “And you stay away from my horse!”
“I’m pleased to meet you,” the kender said brightly. “And these others?”
With an impatient hiss, Cale gestured. “That’s Mica Rockreave, Gran Molden, and Coal Bellmetal. The three over there are Flint Cokeras, Pim Bouldersfield, and Shard Feldspar. Did you hear what I told you?”
“Plain as day,” Cas nodded. “It may be a pleasure to meet all of you,” — his brows drew together thoughtfully — “but then, of course, it may not. It’s too early to be sure. What kind of dwarves are you?”
“Hylar,” Cale announced proudly.
“Really? Never heard of them. Are you going to try to pass the knight today?”
“If he’s in our way,” Cale assured the little creature. “You say his name is Glendon? What’s the matter with him?”
“You mean, aside from being a human?”
“I mean, why does he want to stop people from crossing the stream? What’s on the other side?”
“Nothing much. It’s about like this side, only it’s the other side instead.”
Cale closed his eyes tightly and counted to seven. Then he asked, as politely as he could, “Why doesn’t he want us to cross his … his berusted bridge?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” the kender assured him. “It’s just that he made a vow. He said he is testing himself. I guess that’s something knights do.”
Shaking his head, Cale Greeneye clambered back aboard Piquin and hauled up his mounting ladder. “Pim,” he said, turning, “you and Coal go back and report what we’ve heard. The rest of us will go down and see about that knight.”
“Oh, good!” Cas Springheel grinned. “I’ll go tell Glendon that you’re coming. He’ll be delighted. There hasn’t been anybody for him to test himself on since those wandering ogres two days ago.” The kender turned and scampered away.
“What ogres?” Cale called after him. “What happened?”
“Nothing much,” the high voice drifted back up the slope. “They didn’t get across.”
“Rust!” Cale muttered. “I should know better than to try to talk to a kender. Anybody should know better.” With a sigh of disgust, he reached toward his saddle horn, then stopped. “Where’s my other spur?”
“Your what?” Mica Rockreave squinted at him.
“My other spur! I had two of them just a minute ago. Now there’s only one.”
The kender was out of sight by the time the mounted dwarves reached the valley floor, where great, gnarled trees swallowed the path. With drawn blades and loosed shields, they rode into the shadows, their eyes darting around for any sign of danger. But for all its ominous appearance, the grove seemed peaceful enough. Birds of a dozen colors and a hundred voices livened the tops of the trees, and where afternoon sun slanted through breaks in the foliage canopy bright flowers grew.
The path wound downward, the woods spreading and becoming more open. Around a bend Cale led them, then around another, and drew rein. Ahead the forest ended, and brushy slopes led downward to the bank of a rushing stream less than a hundred feet wide at this point. Lying across the stream was a great, gray tree trunk, weathered with age. Its top surface had been hewn level, making a smooth wooden path five feet wide with graded gravel approaches.
But it wasn’t the hewn timber bridge that held the dwarves’ attention. It was the figure atop it. The man — he was apparently human, though not even the slightest part of his face or body was visible — wore an assemblage of oiled chain mail and polished armor that covered him from plumed helm to steel-shod toes, from gantleted hands to plated shins to shrouded breastplate. His cloak and plume were deep blue in color, and the stitchwork device at his breast, like the lacquered emblem on his oval shield, was a red falcon in stoop on a field of gray. Besides his shield, he carried a banded mace at his back, a black-hilted sword at his side, and a long, tapered lance tipped with an iron ball upright in its saddle-boot.