The Broken Lance was a small, dark place. Weak light filtered through sooty windows on one side of the room, and sour-smelling tallow candles burned at some of the tables. A large fire sputtered across from the door, sending oily peat smoke up toward the ceiling, where it swirled around before leaking out through various gaps in the poorly constructed roof. The sound of raucous laughter mixed with bawdy sea chants and bursts of swearing. Rats scurried freely across the floor, ignored by most of the patrons.
Razor John spotted Mal immediately. The big soldier was locked in an arm wrestling contest. A few men stood around Mal's table, cheering and cursing. Most of the inn's patrons sat huddled over their tarnished tankards, swilling watery ale. Mal won the contest just as the fletcher reached his side. The soldier slammed the other man's hand to the table, sloshing wine from the large wineskin that rested there. Coins exchanged hands, and most of the men drifted back to their own tables. Mal rubbed his arm and only nodded to John as a greeting.
"We're supposed to be ready to march by highsun," the fletcher said softly. He took off his black felt hat and held it before him, twisting it nervously.
"Is that what you're here for?" Mal asked incredulously. He leered and added, "Shouldn't you and your lady love be off somewhere? I hear Kiri's—"
"That's enough!" John said forcefully. His feelings for Kiri Trollslayer had grown steadily over the trip to Telflamm, and he wasn't about to let a drunken soldier—especially one who was supposed to be her friend—start ugly rumors about her.
Mal looked in turn at each of the other two men who sat at the table. One of them, a dalesman by the roughspun tan tunic and breeches he wore, grinned broadly. The other was a dark-eyed, well-armed mercenary, with a sizable and rather ugly scar running along his cheek. He simply snorted and took a long draw from the large tankard set before him. It amazed John to see Mal, who claimed to hate Sembians and dalesmen, drinking with these two soldiers. But then, the fletcher knew that Mal would drink with almost anyone.
John frowned. "The king's back from the north with the Zhentish troops. It's time to go."
"Zhentish troops!" The dalesman spat. "I hear they're orcs, the whole bunch of them. Fine lot of good they'll do us in a battle." He swilled some wine into his tankard. "More'n likely they'll slit our throats when we're sleeping."
"Maybe they're here for us to warm up on," Mal suggested darkly. He lifted the wineskin to pour himself another tankardful, then stopped. He swished the wine around in the skin and announced, "Last swallows." Both he and Razor John looked about the room.
The Sembian mercenary watched the two Cormyrians for a moment, then asked, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Looking for someone of the nobility," John offered. "It's a Cormyrian tradition that the nobleman of the greatest lineage or the highest ranking officer in the taproom gets the last drink from a cask or wineskin."
"If there were any officers in this place, you'd not be giving that wine to them," the dalesman snapped, making a feeble grab for the skin. Mal slapped a hand over the man's thin face and pushed him back in his chair.
As Mal was dealing with the dalesman, the mercenary snatched the wineskin from his hand. "The person who bought it gets to decide what to do with the last swallow," he said loudly. A few heads turned toward the table.
Mal swore and stood up. As he leaned forward to grab the skin from the Sembian, the mercenary drew a dagger and held it to Mal's throat.
"No weapons!" the barkeep cried, then ducked into the back room. A few men and women drew their swords. One or two made for the door.
Mal slowly sat back down and slid his hand around his tankard. The Sembian's evil grin only made his scar turn red and, if possible, more ugly. He handed the wineskin to the dalesman. "You bought it, archer. It's yours."
As the dalesman smiled and uncorked the wineskin, Razor John reached for his own dagger. He certainly didn't intend to fight over something as ridiculous as a mouthful of cheap wine, but he wasn't about to let someone attack him either. "Let's go, Mal," he rumbled, taking a step away from the table. "This isn't worth it." When his countryman didn't stand, John looked down in amazement.
Mal sat hunched over his tankard, which he gripped tightly in his left hand. Beneath a tangle of blond curls, his broad, thick-boned face was caught somewhere between an expression of bewilderment and rage. "Damn Sembians," he muttered. "Damned dalesmen. I should've known better than to drink with merchants and farmers."
"At least this wine's going where it belongs," the dalesman said happily, He pulled the cork and upended the wineskin. The last of the red liquid poured onto the dirty floor, startling a few insects. Before the wine had drained through the widely spaced floorboards, the tan-clad soldier repeated a short, ritualistic prayer to the God of Agriculture.
A few people at nearby tables laughed. The Sembian mercenary stood, slack-jawed and staring. Mal, his alcohol-numbed brain only now registering what had happened, cursed again and stood. His dirty, sweat-soaked clothes clung to his muscular form like a second skin.
"No hard feelings," the dalesman said, offering his hand to Mal. "You've got your traditions; we've got ours."
John saw Mal tense his arm, but the realization that he was going to lash out came to the fletcher too late for action. The warrior swung with his left in a vicious backhanded slap. The dalesman, his reflexes dulled by wine, couldn't get out of the way of the tarnished tankard. With a dull clang, the heavy metal mug hit him square in the face, shattering his nose and more than a few of his teeth.
The dalesman hit the floor with a muffled thud, his blood mixing with the dregs of the spilled wine. The skitter of a dozen swords leaving their sheaths underscored the muttered curses and oaths.
Mal, the tankard still dangling in his left hand, stared dumbly at his victim. "Get up," he said roughly, kicking the body with his mud-caked boots.
With a gasp, Razor John dropped to his knees. He put his ear close to the dalesman's bloody mouth. "He's not breathing." A few tears began to well in the fletcher's eyes. "You idiot!" he screamed. "You killed him over a tankard of wine!"
The Sembian mercenary took a step back and sheathed his dagger. "The generals'll hang you for this. They'll not let murder go unpunished."
The dented, bloodied tankard dropped to the floor with a hollow clang. Mal shook his head, started to speak, then kicked the dalesman again instead. "Get up, you bastard. You're not dead."
Razor John stood and turned toward another commotion that was breaking out near the door. The innkeeper, followed by two soldiers and a member of the city watch, was pushing his way through the crowd. The fletcher recognized one of the soldiers as Farl Bloodaxe, commander of the Alliance's infantry.
"I knew this would happen," the barkeep babbled as he got close. He pointed to Mal. "I could tell he was a bad sort from the moment he walked in here."
"We'll all be glad when your troops leave," the watchman said loudly. Like all of Telflamm's city watch, this man wore a long, bright red overcoat, sashed tight at the waist with shiny black cloth. His high, square black hat was tassled in silver, and a broad, curved sword hung prominently at his side. The guard kicked a chair with the silver toecap of a well-polished boot. "You've been nothing but trouble since you arrived."
"That's enough," Farl said. The ebony-skinned general sighed and looked around. "Any of you care to tell me what happened?"
Over the next fifteen minutes, Razor John, Mal, and a few others told their versions of the incident. Unsurprisingly, Mal claimed the dalesman had drawn a blade. No one corroborated his story, but Mal seemed unaffected by that. When John denied the tale's veracity, the murderer narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
All the time that Farl was conducting his interviews, John felt a growing wave of nausea wash over him. He had never really liked Mal. In fact, the fletcher had agreed to look for the soldier only because he was a fellow Cormyrian and an acquaintance of Kiri's. Still, he had never really disliked him either. Now John saw his countryman for what he really was—a drunken, violent bully.
As quickly as the murder had occurred, Mal's fate was decided. The soldier suddenly became very calm, more quiet, in fact, than John had ever seen him. Irons were placed on his large hands, and Farl ordered the dalesman's body to be taken out and burned. Before the red-coated guardsman could lead Mal to his fate, the doomed Cormyrian soldier leaned close to the fletcher.
"I thought you would have stuck by me," Mal whispered through clenched teeth. "Backed up my story. We're two of a kind, you and me."
"No," Razor John said sharply. "I came to find you because we're both from Cormyr, but—"
"Not that," Mal said. The guard tugged on the irons and pulled the soldier a step away from John. "What you did aboard the Sarnath and all." As the watchman pulled Mal another step away, he snapped viciously, "All right. You'll have me hanging soon enough."
Razor John watched in numbed silence as the crowd parted for the watchman and his prisoner. Nausea washed over the fletcher again, and he slumped into a chair. The inn's customers went back to their business, though subdued slightly. John sat for a moment, turning Mal's words over and over in his mind. Then his eyes drifted to the floor, where the dented tankard still lay.
Silently the fletcher picked up the tarnished mug. In his mind, John saw his bow and the arrows he'd used to kill the sailor and the priest who'd visited the plague ship. He'd believed his conscience reconciled with those deeds, but he wondered now how an officer's orders had made his act any different from Mal's.
Tucking the silver tankard under his cloak, John rose swiftly and made his way out of the city to find Kiri and begin the march into Thesk. Thoughts of the incidents at the Broken Lance and aboard the Sarnath plagued the fletcher all through the long, hard march away from the coast.
10
Birds of Prey
Malmondes of Suzail dangled from a rope on a makeshift scaffold south of Telflamm for eight days, a stark example of military justice. In that time, Alusair and the dwarven army made their way south across the green rolling hills of the Great Dale. Now, ten days and almost seventy miles after parting with King Azoun, Torg's soldiers stood on the edge of Lethyr Forest.
As he had each evening of the march, Torg traveled from clan to clan, marked in camp by their different standards. Before the soldiers went about their duties or to sleep, the ironlord gave them a short, direct speech about the crusade. The orcs, he told the army, were an evil they would put up with until the battle was over. Then the Zhentish beasts, or whatever was left of them, would answer to the troops of Earthfast for their insult.
As the soldiers from Earthfast silently set up camp for the night, Princess Alusair studied the dark edge of the forest to the east. The area the dwarves had been crossing was grassland, generally devoid of trees, so the huge expanse of woods presented an imposing front. And though the most direct route to the location where they would join up with the Army of the Alliance was through the forest, Torg refused to consider taking his troops that way.
"Only elves and other such questionable creatures lurk in forests," the ironlord had told Alusair. "I'll not put my soldiers in danger needlessly by taking a shortcut through an obvious haven for traps. We'll go south, then skirt the forest and head east."
Alusair wasn't quite sure who the ironlord thought would set a trap for the dwarves, but she really didn't care. Torg's inflexibility on the matter only fostered a vague but growing dissatisfaction the princess felt with the ironlord's army. Nine months past, in the middle of autumn, Alusair had gone to the Earthfast Mountains in search of a lost artifact. Instead, she found a small but proud group of dwarves defending their decaying underground city against a seemingly endless onslaught of evil orcs and goblins. Always searching for a worthy cause, the princess joined the fight. Her knowledge of military strategy, gained from her father when she was still a child, proved invaluable to the dwarves of Earthfast. The orcs were routed, and the crumbling city was saved.
Most of the time Alusair had spent with the dwarves had been taken up with battles against orcs and goblins. The princess had never felt anything for the soldiers other than respect or the camaraderie one has for an ally in battle. Until now.
Torg cared little for the tremendous confusion Alusair felt. She'd tried to speak to the ironlord about her father on the first day's march, but he had simply dismissed the topic as idle chatter. The princess knew that few of the dwarves had families; the orcs and goblins had slain most of the women and children in Earthfast years ago. Even Torg's queen had been killed in a battle fifteen years past.