Kender, Gully Dwarves, Gnomes (3 page)

Though he'd always wielded his blade well in practice bouts with a confidence seldom
disappointed, Sturm had only blooded his sword once and that against a human opponent
whose moves could, to some extent, be gauged. Could he have gone against a wolf who would
charge in under a sword's reach with the desperation of a predator starving?

Sliding in the freezing snow, Tanis ran to where he imagined the scent of blood was
strongest. He crashed to his knees and, cursing, regained his feet.

“Sturm!” he howled. He thought in that moment that no blizzard wind could sound a cry as
desolate. “Sturm! Where are you?”

Tanis found him sitting in the snow, bending over drawn up knees. The second wolf lay
sprawled behind him, its head nearly severed from its neck. Beside it, slick with rapidly
congealing blood, lay Sturm's sword. Tanis slid to his knees beside his friend. The rest
of the pack had to be nearby! They had to get out of here!

“Sturm, are you hurt?”

The boy braced and straightened. The leather of his tunic had been shredded by the wolf's
fangs. A trail of blood and ragged wounds whose edges were even now freezing white showed
Tanis where fangs had raked from collarbone to breast. His hands trembling, the half-elf
tried to gently separate leather from freezing blood. A hiss of indrawn breath, Sturm's
only protest against the handling,

made Tanis wince for the pain he caused. “A moment, lad, just a moment longer. There.” The

leather came away, and Tanis heaved a long sigh of relief. The wound was ugly and long.
But though he had dreaded to see the white glare of bone or the dark shadow of exposed
muscle, he did not. Working with hands made awkward by the cold, Tanis tore thick strips
of cloth from his cloak and made a bandage.

“If we can bless the cold for anything, it's that it will prevent you from bleeding
overlong. Can you move your arm?”

Sturm lifted his shoulder, tried to reach. He managed a grim smile. “Yes,” he said, his
voice rough with the effort not to groan. “But I'll not be lifting a sword for a time.”

Tanis shook his head. “The gods willing, you won't have to. Sturm, we have to go on. Those
two cannot have been hunting alone. Can you walk?”

For an answer Sturm got to his feet. He stumbled a little, but righted himself quickly.
The hard gleam in his eyes told Tanis what he needed to know. But when he made to reach
for his pack, Tanis stopped him.

“No. Leave it. We have to get out of here. It will only slow us down.”

“Tanis, we need the wood.” “DAMN the wood!” "Tanis, no! The need for fire is still the
same. And

without a guard fire, won't we have to face the rest of the pack at the shelter? I can
drag the wood."

Sturm was right. Tanis snatched up his pack and shouldered it with a snarled oath. He
retrieved Sturm's sword, wiped it clean on his cloak, and helped the youth to scabbard it.
An arrow lay ready against the bow's string. Don't rush! he told himself. Get your
bearings now!

But that was not so easily done. The wind no longer pushed from any one direction, but
seemed to bellow and thunder from all four. Tanis cast about him, searched the snow to see
if he could tell by the tracks where he'd been standing when the wolves attacked.

There was no sign. “Which way, Tanis?” "I - I can't tell. No, wait. Up, we were moving up
the

hill.“ He squinted into the wind. ”There! That way." Behind them, silent phantoms in the
night, the rest of the

wolf pack moved in to do a starving predator's grisly honor to fallen comrades. *****

Flint roared curses into the screaming wind. That wretched, straw-brained Tas! If there
was a god of mischief and deviltry, he would be no god at all but a kender! He'd not
turned his back for a moment! But a moment, he thought bitterly, was all it took to send
Tas out into the snow. What had he been off after? Tanis and Sturm? Likely not. That would
have been too sensible a motive to ascribe to a kender.

“Tas!” he shouted, flinging up an arm to protect his eyes against the wind's teeth. “Tas!”

The surest way to die, Tanis had said, was to scatter all over the mountain. “Well and
fine, and here we are,” Flint snarled, kicking furiously at the snow drifting past his
knees. “Scattered all over the mountain. If I had half the brains I curse that kender for
NOT having, I'd leave him out here to freeze as a warning to the rest of his empty-headed
kind.”

Then he heard, mourning above the wind, the howling of the wolves he'd thought to deny.
Fear shivered through the old dwarf. They were close now. He hunched his shoulders against
the wind.

Wolves! Aye, and likely hungry enough not to turn aside from stone-headed kender or young
idiots who can't hie themselves back from a simple wood-gathering trip in decent time. . .
.

“Tas! Where ARE you?!”

The snow erupted right at Flint's feet. Scrambling for balance he slipped, tried to catch
himself and, tripping over a snow-mantled boulder, tumbled into a drift.

“Flint! Wait! Flint! Where'd you go?”

His long brown eyes ablaze with laughter, his face bright with merriment, Tas leaped into
the drift, narrowly missing Flint's head. Tugging and pulling, then shoving and pushing,
he got the dwarf righted and on his feet again.

“Flint, it's a little cold for playing games, don't you think? Look at you, I can't find
your beard for the snow!” His impish laughter skirled high above the wind's roar. “What
are you doing out here, Flint? I thought you said we were to wait at the shelter. You
know, you're really going to be sorry later. There might not be a fire, after all, and
you're so wet you'll freeze solid. You should have stayed inside.”

There WERE words, Flint thought later, to express his fury. And a pity it was that he
could not have found them when he needed them; they would easily have melted the last inch
of snow from the mountain.

“I should have stayed inside?” Flint took a quick swipe at the kender's head, missed, and
slipped to his knees. “I should have stayed?” He flung off the hand that Tas offered him
and climbed to his feet again. “I'd not be out here at all if it weren't for you!”

“Me?” Tas's eyes went round with surprise. “You came out after me? But I'm fine, Flint. I
just went out for a look. I thought I might be able to see a wolf. Or not see one. They
say they're almost invisible against a storm, you know.” His eyes darkened for a moment
with disappointment. “But I didn't see any. Or I didn't NOT see any. I'm not sure which.
And I didn't get very far. You know, Tanis was right. You can hardly see where you've been
out here. You certainly can't see where you're going. On the whole,” he decided, reaching
out a tentative hand to help Flint dust the snow from his back, “I'd really rather be
inside where it's warmer.”

The logic was too tortuous for Flint to follow, and he was too cold and wet - nearly
frozen to death, he thought furiously - to work it out now. He turned and stamped back
toward the shelter, growling and cursing.

Cold, but undaunted, frolicking like a half-grown pup taken to play, Tas scampered ahead.
“You'll feel better once we get inside,” he called back. “It's not much warmer there, but
it is drier. And I've been thinking about my magic pipe while I was out looking for the
wolves. I think I'd be able to find the music if I tried just a little harder.”

Oh, fine, Flint thought, trudging stiffly behind, the dreaded pipe! It wasn't enough that
he had to contend with blizzards and promises to people who haven't the sense to come in
out of a storm, with brainless kender and wolves. No. On top of all of that had to be laid
a “magic” pipe.

When he stumbled, shaking and wet, into the shelter he saw Tas sitting crosslegged and
absent-eyed, hunched over his pipe. The high, tortured wailing that had tormented Flint
all afternoon filled the air, rising almost loud enough to compete with the wind and the
wolves' howls.

“The dreaded pipe,” he sighed. He returned to his task of coaxing a fire from the broken

boards and fine, smooth blocks of his whittling wood. It would barely be enough to thaw
his frozen clothing. It would not be enough to light the lost back to safety.

Tanis negotiated the gently descending slope as though it were a vertical cliff face, and
slid to a ragged halt at the bottom. Sturm skidded past him, overbalanced by his pack, and
dropped to his knees in a drift that seemed to swallow him to the shoulders. Tanis helped
his friend to his feet. His stomach lurched in fear when he saw a dark red spot of fresh
blood on Sturm's bandage.

“Don't stop!” he cried above the wind's scream. “We've got to go on!”

“Aye, Tanis, we do! But WHERE? We're lost!”

They were. Or they might be. Tanis didn't know any more. He was fairly certain of his
direction. This hollow was familiar, more filled with snow and drifts, but still familiar.
Or was that only hope, the last thing inside him that hadn't frozen yet? He could not see
ahead the length of his arm. Had they come to the shelter? Had they passed it? He couldn't
think, and he did not see anymore how it mattered. Now it only mattered that they keep
moving.

The deadly lethargy of freezing had been dogging them with patient tenacity. To give in
now to aching limbs, to sit down just once to rest, to ease the burning of their lungs,
the fire licking behind their eyes, would be to die.

And we'll not freeze to death an arm's length from that damned shelter! Tanis vowed.

But Sturm went down a few moments later and did not rise. He tried, foundered in a drift,
and fell back. For a moment fury blazed so bright in his brown eyes that Tanis could see
it despite the blizzard's concealing curtain.

He dropped to his knees beside his friend, shouted and tried again to pull him to his
feet. He could get no purchase in the drifted snow, no grip with his frozen hands.

“Tanis, no.”

How could he have heard Sturm's whisper above the wind's scream? Or was it that he read
the protest in the boy's eyes?

“Tanis . . . take the wood . . . go.”

“No! We'll rest. Just for a moment. We'll rest.” There was more danger, he knew, in
resting than in going on. The very wind that tore at them now would carry the scent of

fresh blood to the wolves who must be trailing behind. But he, too, was not accustomed to
abandoning his friends.

Tanis went down on his knees again in the snow and drew Sturm as close to him as he could,
hoping to protect the boy from the worst of the piercing wind. Just for a moment, he
promised himself. Just until Sturm can recoup.

So gentle is the paradoxical warmth that suffuses a man just before freezing, so
entrancing, that Tanis did not recognize it for what it was. He only wondered briefly that
he had enough body warmth left to feel, then closed his eyes wearily and forgot to open
them.

The note, coming suddenly amid the squeaks and protests of the pipe, startled Tas. It was
soft, gentle, and reminded him of the sigh of a mourning dove. He moved his numb fingers
over the holes, drew another breath, and found the note again. And then he found another,
higher, and a third, lower. Almost it was a tune, and Tas caught the change. He tried
again.

There was a rabbit in the storm. Caught away from its burrow, too young to know that it
must dig into the snow for its insulating warmth, it scurried this way and that, as though
it might outrun the cold. Home! screamed through the rabbit's veins with the frantic
pumping of panic-driven blood. Home! But home, a burrow snug and warm, smelling of good
brown earth and the comforting odor of safety, was too far away.

Tas heard the rabbit's frightened squeak above the faltering tune he played. How could he
have heard the rabbit's cry? He didn't know, but he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, let
the pipe fall silent, and lost the image and the sound. Before he could think of
absurdity, before he could decide that the pipe had nothing to do with the rabbit, he
hunched over it again and continued to play.

There was a deer, its antlers almost too heavy with the snow's burden to bear. There was a
mountain goat, foundered in a drift, its bleating protest wailing and lost in the biting
wind.

Tas drew a sharp breath, knowing that the deer would soon go to its knees in surrender,
that the mountain goat would thrash and surge against its snowy restraints and surely
break a leg.

If his attention was a vagrant thing, his heart was a kind

one. Poor rabbit! he thought, poor brave deer! He wanted, as much as he had ever wanted
anything, to go out to find them, to show them a way out of the storm. He wanted this more
than he'd wanted anything before. More, even, than he'd wanted to find the magic in his
little pipe.

In Tas's mind there was something dark and still. It was a man - it was Sturm! And beside
him knelt Tan-is! They might have been ice sculptures so cold and motionless were they.

Though it was no doing of his - and yet perhaps it was - a long ache of sadness drifted
through Tas's music when he realized that they might be dead. Like the rabbit or the deer
or the mountain goat, there was no way to tell where they were, near or far, no way to
find them and help. There was only the pipe. He played, then, with all his heart and
trusted to the magic that it would not be a song of farewell.

There was a rabbit in the doorway. Ears aslant, pink nose twitching, it paused for a
second beneath the slight overhang of the roof as though asking permission to enter. Where
he sat before a fire dwindled to meager embers and dying coals, Flint saw the ice frozen
on its back, the snow clumped between its toes. Part of him sighed for pity, and part
decided he must bid his wits goodbye.

And behind him the horrible squealing of Tas's pipe settled gently into a sweet, low song.

The rabbit moved then, hunched forward, and fell onto its side, eyes wide as though it
could no more believe that it now waited a foot away from the old dwarf than Flint could.