“Ho there, trooper! Close up your ranks.”
Sullenly the guards reined their horses about. They weren’t usually so glum, but they happened to have been assigned to the strictest, most particular captain in the Guards of the Sun. Verhanna Kanan did not spare herself, or anyone in her command.
Verhanna’s troop was moving northward, patrolling the western slopes of the Magnet Mountains, a small but steep range of peaks west of Qualinost. The stream that flowed past the western side of the city originated in these mountains. The land was sparsely wooded this close to the range of hills. Lord Ambrodel had given Verhanna’s troop the task of searching closest to the foot of the peaks, where the guards were vulnerable to ambush from above.
The captain kept her warriors close together. She didn’t want any stragglers getting picked off. Her eyes never left the hillside. The red rock and brown soil were streaked with veins of black. These were deposits of lodestone, the natural magnets that gave the mountains their name. Kender shamans came from all across Ansalon to dig up the lodestone for protective amulets. So far on this sortie, the only living things Verhanna had seen were a few of the small kender race, working at the outcroppings of lodestone with deer antler picks.
Her second-in-command, a former Silvanesti named Merithynos, Merith for short, kept by her side as their horses picked their way slowly over the stony ground. The slopes were in shadow all morning.
“A futile task,” Merith said, sighing loudly. “What are we doing here?”
“Carrying out the Speaker’s command,” Verhanna replied firmly. Her gaze rested on a dark figure nestled in a fold in the ground. She stared hard at it but soon realized it was only a holly bush.
Merith yawned, one hand pressed against his mouth. “But it’s such a bore.”
“Yes, I know. You’d rather be in Qualinost, strutting down the street, impressing the maids with your sword and armor,” Verhanna, said dryly. “At least out here you’re earning your pay.”
“Captain! You wound me.” Merith clutched his chest and swayed as if shot by an arrow.
She scowled at him, a mock frown on her face. “Fool! How did a dandy like you ever get in the guards?” she asked.
“Actually, it was my father’s idea. Priesthood or warriorhood, that’s what he told me. ‘There’s no room in Clan Silver Moon for wastrels’, he said.”
Verhanna stiffened and reined her horse up short. “Quiet,” she hissed. “I saw something.”
With hand signals, the captain divided her troop of twenty in half, with ten warriors, including herself, dismounting. Sword and buckler at the ready, she led the guards up the gravelly slope. Their booted feet slid in the loose dirt. The climb was a slow one.
Suddenly a shape rose up in front of Verhanna and scampered away, like a partridge flushed by a spaniel.
“Get him!” the captain shouted. The small creature, which seemed to be wrapped in a white cloth, darted away but lost its footing and rolled downhill. It came to rest with a bump against Merith’s booted feet.
He put the tip of his slender elven blade against the sheeted mound, pricking the creature until it lay still. “Captain,” Merith called coolly, “I have him.”
The guards closed around the captive. Verhanna took one edge of the white sheet and pulled hard, spinning the occupant around. Out popped a small, sinewy figure with flaming red hair and a face to match.
“Stinkin’, poxy, rancid, dirty, lice-ridden—” he sputtered, rubbing his backside. “Who poked me?”
“I did,” Merith said. “And I’ll do it again if you don’t hold your tongue, kender.”
“That’s enough, Lieutenant,” Verhanna said sharply. Merith shrugged and gave the outraged fellow an insolent smile. The captain turned to her captive and demanded, “Who are you? Why did you run from us?”
“Wrinklecap is who I am, and you’d run, too, if you woke from a nap to see a dozen swords over you!” The kender stopped rubbing his backside and twisted around to look at it. An almost comical expression of outrage widened his pale blue eyes. “You made a hole in my trousers!” he said, glaring at them. “Someone’s gonna pay for this!”
“Be still,” Verhanna said. She shook out the sheet Wrinklecap had been sleeping in. A double handful of black pebbles fell from its folds. “A lodestone gatherer,” she said. The disappointment in her voice was obvious.
“The lodestone gatherer,” intoned the tiny fellow, tapping his chest with one finger. “Rufus Wrinklecap of Balifor, that’s me.”
The guards who were waiting below on horseback called out to their captain. Verhanna shouted back that all was well. Sheathing her sword, she said to the kender, “You’d better come along with us.”
“Why?” piped Rufus.
Verhanna was tired of bandying words with the noisy kender, so she pushed him ahead. Rufus snatched his sheet from the elven captain and rolled it up as he walked.
“Not fair—big bunch of bullies—creepin’, pointyheaded elves—” he grumbled all the way down the slope.
Verhanna halted and ordered her troopers to remount. She sat down on a handy boulder and waved the kender over. “How long have you been in these parts?” she asked him.
After a few seconds of hesitation, the kender took a deep breath and said, “Well, after Uncle Trapspringer escaped from the walrus men and was eaten by the great ice bear—”
The captain quickly clamped a hand over the kender’s open mouth. “No,” she said firmly. “I do not want your entire life history. Simply answer my questions, or I’ll let Lieutenant Merith poke you again.”
His long red topknot bobbled as Rufus swallowed hard. Verhanna was easily twice his size. Merith, from his mounted position next to them, was tapping the pommel of his sword meaningfully. The kender nodded. Verhanna released her hold on him.
“I’ve been here going on two months,” Rufus said sulkily.
Verhanna remembered the loose stones he’d had. “You don’t have much to show for two month’s work,” she commented.
Rufus puffed out his thin chest. “I only take the best stones,” he said proudly. “I don’t fill my pockets with trash like all them others do.”
Ignoring for the moment the little fellow’s last remark, Verhanna asked, “How do you live? I don’t see any camp gear, cooking pot, or waterskin.”
The kender turned innocent azure eyes on her and said, “I find what I need.”
Merith snorted loudly. A smile touched Verhanna’s lips. “Find, eh? Kender are good at that. Who have you ‘found’ things from?” she asked.
“Different people.”
Verhanna drew a long, double-edged dagger from her belt and began to strop it slowly against her boot. “We’re looking for some different people,” she said carefully, making sure the kender followed every stroke of the bright blade. “Humans. Maybe some elves.” The dagger paused. “Slavers.”
Rufus let out his breath with a whoosh. “Oh!” he exclaimed, his high-pitched voice descending the scale. “Is that who you’re after? Well, why didn’t you say so?”
The kender launched into a typically random account of his activities of the past few days—caves he’d explored, wonders he’d beheld, and a secret camp he’d found over the mountains. In this camp, he claimed there were humans and elves holding other humans and elves in chains. Rufus had seen the camp just two days before.
“On the other side of the mountains?” Verhanna said sharply. “The eastern slope?”
“Yup. Right by the river. Are you going to attack them?” The kender’s eagerness was unmistakable. His darting gaze took in their armor and weapons, and he added, “Well, of course you are. Want me to show you where I saw them?”
Verhanna did indeed. She ordered food and water for Rufus while she conferred with Merith about this new intelligence.