“You could have knocked before entering my private room,” said the halfling, in controlled tones once more.
“I nearly beat your door down,” Siobhan retorted. “You have, perhaps, forgotten our meeting with King Bellick dan Burso of DunDarrow?”
“Forgotten it?” Oliver balked. He scooped up his silken undertunic and pulled it over his shoulders. “Why, I have spent all the night in preparation. Why do you think you have found me so weary?”
“The pillow was demanding?” Siobhan replied, looking to the disheveled bed.
Oliver growled and let it pass. He dropped suddenly to one knee, slapped aside the edge of the comforter to reveal the hilt of his rapier, then drew the blade out from between the mattresses. “I do not take lightly my so important position,” he said. “Halflings are more attuned . . .”
“A-too-ned?” Siobhan interrupted, mocking Oliver’s Gascon accent, which seemed to extend every syllable of every word.
“Attu-ned!” Oliver gruffly answered. “Halflings are more attu-ned to the ways and likes of dwarfs than are peoples, and elfy-types!”
“Elfy-types?” Siobhan whispered under her breath, but she didn’t bother to interrupt openly, for Oliver had hit his verbal stride. On he rambled about the value of halfling diplomats, of how they had stopped this war or that, of how they had talked “stupid human king-types” right out of their “jew-wels,” family and otherwise. As he spoke, the halfling looked all around, then finally up, to see his hat atop the post. Not missing a syllable, Oliver flipped the rapier to catch it by the blade and threw it straight up, hilt first. It clipped the hat, lifting it from the post, and down both came.
Oliver caught the blade by the hilt above his head and moved it incredibly smoothly to poke the floor beside his bare, hair-topped foot, striking a gallant pose.
“So there,” finished the halfling, who had regained his dignity, and on cue his hat fell perfectly atop his head.
“You have style,” Siobhan had to admit. Then she added with a snicker, “And you are cute without your clothes.”
Oliver’s heroic pose disintegrated. “Oh!” he wailed, lifting the rapier and poking it down harder—and this time nicking the side of his foot.
Trying to hold to his fast-falling dignity, the halfling spun and ambled away, scooping his doublet, stockings, shoes, and gauntlets as he went. “I will find my revenge for this!” Oliver promised.
“I, too, sleep without any clothes,” Siobhan said teasingly.
Oliver stopped dead in his tracks and nearly fell over. He knew that Siobhan was toying with him, hitting his amorous spirit where it could not defend itself, but the conjured image evoked by those six little words overwhelmed him, sent him into a trembling fit from head to hairy toe. He turned about, stammering for some retort, then just squealed in defeat and stormed to the door, grabbing his baldric as he passed.
Forgetting his own trap.
Down fell the supporting tab and over went the suspended bucket, dropping cold water all over the halfling, sending the brim of his great hat drooping low.
Oliver, cooled, turned back to Siobhan. “I meant to do that,” he insisted, and then he was gone.
Siobhan stood in the room for a long while, shaking her head and laughing. Despite all the trouble this one caused, there was indeed something charming about Oliver deBurrows.
Oliver was back in form in time for the all-important meeting at the assigned house, a commandeered piece of real estate that had formerly belonged to a nobleman loyal to Greensparrow. The man had fled Eriador, and Brind’Amour had taken his house to use as the palace of Caer MacDonald, though most business was conducted at the Ministry, the huge cathedral that dominated the city. Oliver had dried off and somehow managed to get his wide-brimmed hat to stand out stiffly again—even the feather was properly rigid. Siobhan stared at that transformation incredulously, wondering if the halfling possessed more than one of the outrageous, plumed “chapeaus,” as he called them.
Oliver sat on a higher stool on one side of a huge oaken table, flanking King Brind’Amour on the left, while Siobhan sat on the old wizard’s right.
Across from them sat a quartet of grim-faced dwarfs. King Bellick dan Burso was directly across from Brind’Amour, his blue eyes locking intently with the wizard’s—though Brind’Amour could hardly see them under the dwarf’s tremendous eyebrows, fiery orange in hue, like his remarkable beard. So bright and bushy was that beard, and long enough for Bellick to tuck it into his belt, that it was often whispered that the dwarf king wore a suit of living flames. Shuglin, friend to the rebels who had conquered Caer MacDonald, sat beside Bellick, calm and confident. It had been Shuglin, a dwarf of Caer MacDonald and not of the Iron Cross, who had initiated this meeting and all the discussions between his mountain brethren and the new leaders of Eriador. Any alliance between the groups would benefit both, Shuglin realized, for these two kings, Bellick and Brind’Amour, were of like mind and goodly ilk.
Two other dwarfs, broad-shouldered generals, flanked King Bellick and Shuglin.
The formal greetings went off well, with Oliver doing most of the talking, as Brind’Amour had planned. This was their party, after all; through the emissary Shuglin, it had been Brind’Amour, and not Bellick, who had requested the summit.
“You know our gratitude for your help in overcoming Princetown,” Brind’Amour began quietly. Indeed the dwarfs did know, for Brind’Amour had sent many, many messengers, all of them bearing gifts, to the stronghold of DunDarrow, the dwarfish underground complex nestled deep in the Iron Cross mountain range. Bellick’s folk had arrived on the field outside of Princetown, Avon’s northernmost city, just in time to cut off the retreat of the Avon garrison, which had been routed in Glen Durritch by the Eriadorans. With Bellick’s sturdy force blocking the way, the victory had been complete. “Eriador owes much to King Bellick dan Burso and his warriors,” Brind’Amour reaffirmed.
Bellick gave an accepting nod. “Princetown would have fallen in any event, even without our help,” the dwarf replied graciously.
“Ah, but if the soldiers of Princetown had gotten back behind their so high walls . . .” Oliver put in, though it was certainly not his place to interrupt.
Brind’Amour only chuckled, more than used to the halfling’s often irreverent ways.
Bellick did not seem so pleased, a fact that made Brind’Amour eye him curiously. At first, the wizard thought that the dwarf had taken insult at Oliver’s interruption, but then he realized that something else was bothering Bellick.
The dwarf king looked to Shuglin and nodded, and Shuglin stood solemnly and cleared his throat.
“Twenty Fairborn were slain yestereve in the foothills of the Iron Cross,” he reported. “Not twenty miles from here.”
Brind’Amour sank back in his high-backed chair and looked to Siobhan, who bit her lip and nodded her head in frustration. The half-elf had heard rumors of the battle, for her people, the Fairborn, were not numerous throughout Avonsea, and kept general tabs on each other. Now it seemed the number of Fairborn had diminished once again.
“Cyclopian raiders,” Shuglin continued. “A group of at least a hundred.”
“Never before have the one-eyes been so organized,” Bellick added. “It would seem that your little war has riled the beasts from the deep mountain holes.”
Brind’Amour understood the dwarf’s frustration and the accusation, if that was what Bellick had just offered. The cyclopian activity along the northern foothills of the Iron Cross had indeed heightened tremendously since the signing of the truce with Greensparrow of Avon. Brind’Amour kept his gaze on Siobhan for a long moment, wondering how she would react. Then he looked to Oliver, and realized that his companions also understood that the cyclopian activity so soon after the truce was not a coincidence.