The stranger shrugged. He finished his water in his cup, then bent down to tuck the cup into his pack. When he straightened again, the black staff was in his hand.
“Is the Valeman really so dangerous?”
The Gnomes stared at him sullenly. Spilk tossed aside his water pouch, took a firm grip on his cudgel and came around the edge of the pool until he stood at the forefront of his men.
“Who are you?” he snapped.
Again the stranger shrugged. “No one you want to know.”
Spilk smiled coldly. “Then walk away from here while you still can. This doesn’t concern you.”
The stranger didn’t move. He seemed to be thinking the matter through.
Spilk took a step toward him. “I said this doesn’t concern you.”
“Nine Gnome Hunters traveling through the Southland with a Valeman they’ve bound and gagged like a trussed pig?” A faint smile crossed the stranger’s weathered face. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t concern me.”
He bent down to retrieve his pack, slipped it across one shoulder and started away from the pool, passing in front of the Gnomes. Jair felt his hopes, momentarily lifted, fade again. For just a moment, he had thought the stranger meant to aid him. He started to turn toward the pool again, thirsty for a drink of the water, but Slanter blocked his way. The Gnome’s eyes were still on the stranger, and now his hand came up slowly to grip Jair’s shoulder, guiding him back several paces from the others in the patrol.
The stranger had stopped again.
“On the other hand, maybe you’re wrong.” He stood no more than a half-dozen feet from Spilk. “Maybe this does concern me after all.”
The stranger’s pack slid from his shoulder to the ground, and the flint gray eyes fixed on Spilk. The Sedt stared at him, disbelief and anger twisting the blunt features of his face. Behind him, the other Gnomes glanced at one another uneasily.
“Stay behind me.” Slanter’s voice was a soft hiss in his ear, and the Gnome stepped in front of him.
The stranger moved closer to Spilk. “Why don’t you let the Valeman go?” he suggested softly.
Spilk swung the heavy cudgel at the stranger’s head. Quick as he was, the stranger was quicker, blocking the blow with his staff. The stranger stepped forward then, a smooth, effortless movement. Up came the staff, striking once, twice. The first blow caught the Sedt in the pit of his stomach, bending him double. The second caught him squarely across the head and dropped him like a stone.
For an instant, no one moved. Then, with a howl of dismay, the other Gnomes attacked, swords ripped from their sheaths and axes and spears lifting. Seven strong, they converged on the lone black figure. Jair bit into the gag that held him speechless when he saw what happened next. Cat-quick, the stranger blocked the assault, the black staff whirling. Two more Gnomes dropped in their tracks with shattered skulls. The remainder thrust and cut blindly as the stranger danced away. A glint of metal appeared from beneath the black cloak, and a short sword was gripped in the stranger’s hand. Seconds later, three more of the attackers lay stretched upon the earth, their life blood seeping from their bodies.
Now there were but two of the seven still standing. The stranger crouched before them, feinting with the short sword. The Gnomes glanced hurriedly at each other and backed away. Then one caught sight of Jair, half hidden behind Slanter. Abandoning his companion, he leaped for the Valeman. But to Jair’s surprise, Slanter blocked the way, a long knife in his hand. The attacker howled in rage at the betrayal, his own weapon sweeping up. From twenty feet away, the stranger was a blur of motion. Uncoiling with the suddenness of a snake, he whipped one arm forward, and the attacker went rigid in midstride, a long knife buried in his throat. Soundlessly, he collapsed.
That was enough for the remaining Gnome. Heedless of everything else, he bolted from the clearing and disappeared into the forest.
Only Jair, Slanter, and the stranger remained. The Gnome and the stranger faced each other wordlessly for a moment, weapons poised. The forest had gone silent about them.
“You, also?” the stranger asked quietly.
Slanter shook his head. “Not me.” The hand with the long knife dropped to his side. “I know who you are.”
The stranger did not seem surprised, but merely nodded. With his sword, he gestured at the Gnomes who lay stretched between them. “What about your friends?”
Slanter glanced down. “Friends? Not this lot. The misfortunes of war brought us together, and we’d traveled too far already the same road. Stupid bunch, they were.” His dark eyes found the stranger’s. “The journey’s done for me. Time to choose another way.”
He reached back with the long knife and severed the ropes that bound Jair. Then he sheathed the knife and slipped loose the gag.
“Looks like you’ve got the luck this day, boy,” he growled. “You’ve just been rescued by Garet Jax!”
VIII
Even in a tiny Southland village like Shady Vale, they had heard of Garet Jax.
He was the man they called the Weapons Master—a man whose skill in single combat was so finely developed that it was said he had no equal. Choose whatever weapon you might or choose no other weapon than hands, feet, and body, and he was better than any man alive. Some said more than that—he was the best who had ever lived.
The stories were legend. Told in taverns when the drinks were passed about in the hours after work was finished, in village inns by travelers come from far, or about campfires and hearths when the night settled down about those gathered and the dark formed a bond that seemed strengthened somehow by the sharing of words, the stories of Garet Jax were always there. No one knew where he had come from; that part of his life was shrouded in speculation and rumor. But everyone knew at least one place that he had been and had a story to go with it. Most of the stories were true, verified by more than one who had been witness to its happening. Several were common knowledge, told and retold the length and breadth of the Southland and parts of the other lands as well.
Jair Ohmsford knew them all by heart.
One tale, the earliest perhaps, was of Gnome raiders preying on the outlying villages of Callahorn in the eastern borderlands. Smashed once by the Border Legion, the raiders had broken into small groups—remnants of fewer than a dozen men each in most cases—who continued to plague the less protected homesteads and hamlets. Legion patrols scouted the lands at regular intervals, but the raiders stayed hidden until they were gone. Then one day a band of ten struck a farmer’s home just south of the Mermidon’s joinder with the Rabb. There was no one there but the farmer’s wife, small children, and a stranger—little more than a boy himself—who had stopped to share a brief meal and a night’s sleep in exchange for chores that needed doing. Barricading the family in a storm cellar, he met the raiders as they tried to force their way in. He killed eight before the two remaining fled. After that, the raids slowed somewhat, it was said. And everyone began to talk about the stranger named Garet Jax.
Other tales were equally well known. In Arborlon, he had trained a special unit of the Home Guard to act as defenders of the Elven King Ander Elessedil. In Tyrsis, he had trained special units of the Border Legion, and others in Kern and Varfleet. He had fought for a time in the border wars between the Dwarves and Gnomes, instructing the Dwarves on weapons’ use. He had traveled for a time the deep Southland, engaged in the civil wars that raged between member states of the Federation. He had killed a lot of men there, it was said; he had made a great many enemies. He could not go back into the deep Southland anymore . . .
Jair cut short his thinking, aware suddenly that the man was staring at him, almost as if reading his thoughts. He flushed. “Thanks,” he managed.
Garet Jax said nothing. Flint gray eyes regarded him without expression a moment longer, then turned away. The short sword disappeared back within the shadows of the cloak, and the man in black began checking the bodies of the Gnomes who lay scattered about him. Jair watched a moment, then glan
ced furtively at Slanter.
“Is that really Garet Jax?” he whispered.
Slanter gave him a black look. “I said so, didn’t I? You don’t forget someone like that. Knew him five years ago when he was training Legion soldiers in Varfleet. I was tracking for the Legion then, passing time. Like iron I was, but next to him . . .” He shrugged. “I remember once, there were some hard sorts, mad about being passed over in training or something. Went after Jax with pikes when his back was turned. He didn’t even have a weapon. Four of them, all bigger than he was.” The Gnome shook his head, eyes distant. “He killed two of them, broke up the other two. So quick you could barely follow. I was there.”
Jair looked back again at the black-garbed figure. A legend, they said. But they called him other things, too. They called him an assassin—a mercenary with no loyalties, no responsibilities except to those who paid him. He had no companions; Garet Jax always traveled alone. No friends, either. Too dangerous, too hard for that.
So why had he helped Jair?
“This one’s still alive.”
The Weapons Master was bending over Spilk. Slanter and Jair glanced at each other, then stepped over to have a look.
“Thick skull,” Garet Jax muttered. He looked up as they joined him. “Help me pick him up.”
Together, they hauled the unconscious Spilk from the center of the clearing to its far side, then propped him against a pine. Retrieving the ropes that had been used to secure Jair, the Weapons Master now bound the Sedt hand and foot. Satisfied, he stepped back from the Gnome and turned to the two watching him.
“What’s your name, Valeman?” he asked Jair.
“Jair Ohmsford,” Jair told him, uneasy under the gaze of those strange gray eyes.
“And you?” he asked Slanter.
“I’m called Slanter,” the tracker replied.
There was a flicker of displeasure in the hard face. “Suppose you tell me what nine Gnome Hunters were doing with this Valeman?”
Slanter grimaced, but then proceeded to relate to the Weapons Master all that had befallen since the time he had first encountered Jair in Shady Vale. Much to the Valeman’s surprise, he even told the other what Jair had done to him to escape. Garet Jax listened without comment. When the tale was finished, he turned again to Jair.
“Is what he says right?”
Jair hesitated, then nodded. It wasn’t, of course—not entirely. A part of it was the fabricated story he had told to Spilk. But there was no reason to change that story now. Better that they both thought his father in Allanon’s company with the Elfstones—at least until Jair knew whom he should trust.
A long pause followed as the Weapons Master thought the situation through. “Well, I don’t think I should leave you alone in this country, Jair Ohmsford. Nor do I think it a good idea to leave you in the company of this Gnome.” Slanter flushed darkly, but held his tongue. “I think you had better come with me. That way I’ll know you’re safe.”
Jair stared at him uncertainly. “Come with you where?”
“To Culhaven. I have an appointment there, and you shall keep it with me. If this Druid and your father have gone into the Eastland, then quite possibly we shall find them there—or if not, at least we shall find someone who can take you to them.”
“But I can’t . . .” Jair started to say, then caught himself. He couldn’t tell them about Brin. He had to be careful not to do that. But he couldn’t go east either! “I can’t do that,” he finished. “I have a mother and sister in the villages south of the Vale who know nothing of what’s happened. I have to go back to warn them.”
Garet Jax shook his head. “Too far. I haven’t time. We’ll go east, then send word back when we get the chance. Besides, if what you’ve told me is right, it’s more dangerous going back than going ahead. The Gnomes and the Wraiths know about you now; they know where you live. Once it’s discovered you’ve escaped, they’ll come looking for you there again. I didn’t rescue you just to have you caught again the moment I’m gone.”
“But . . .”
The flat gray eyes froze him. “It’s decided. You go east.” He glanced briefly at Slanter. “You go where you wish.”
He strode back across the clearing to retrieve his pack and staff. Jair stood looking after him, trapped by indecision. Should he tell the man the truth or go east? But then, even if he told Garet Jax the truth, what difference would that make? The Weapons Master wasn’t likely to take him back in either case.
“Well, luck to you, boy.” Slanter was standing before him looking less than happy. “No hard feelings, I hope.”
Jair stared at him. “Where are you going?”
“What difference does it make?” The Gnome shot a venomous glance at Garet Jax. Then he shrugged. “Look, you’re better off with him than me. I should have gone my own way long ago.”
“I haven’t forgotten that you helped me, Slanter—all during the journey,” Jair said quickly. “And I think you would have helped me again if I needed it.”
“Well, you’re wrong!” the Gnome cut him short. “Just because I felt sorry for you doesn’t . . . . Look, I’d have turned you over to the walkers just as quick as Spilk, because that would have been the smart thing to do! You and this Weapons Master don’t begin to see what you’re up against!”
“I saw you stand there with that knife when the other Gnome came at me!” Jair insisted. “What about that?”
Slanter snorted, turning away angrily. “If I’d had any brains at all, I’d have let him have you. Do you know what I’ve done to myself? I can’t even go back to the Eastland now! That Gnome who ran off will tell them everything I did! Or Spilk, once he gets free!” He threw up his hands. “Well, who cares? Not really my country anyway. Don’t belong there; haven’t for years. Wraiths can’t be worried about tracking one poor Gnome. I’ll go north for a time, or maybe south into the cities, and let this whole thing take its own course.”
“Slanter . . .”
The Gnome wheeled suddenly, his voice a hiss. “But that one—he isn’t any better than me!” He gestured angrily at Garet Jax, who was drinking again from the pool. “Treats me as if this was all my doing—as if I was the one responsible! I didn’t even know about you, boy! I came here hunting the Druid! I didn’t like chasing after you, taking you off to the Wraiths!”
“Slanter, wait a minute!” Mention of the Mord Wraiths reminded the Valeman of something he had almost forgotten in his relief at being freed. “What about the walker we were supposed to meet on the other side of the Oaks?”
Slanter was annoyed at having his tirade cut short. “What about him?”
“He’ll still be there, won’t he?” Jair asked quietly.
The Gnome hesitated, then nodded. “I see your point. Yes, he’ll be there.” He frowned. “Just go another way; go around him.”
Jair stepped close. “Suppose he decides to go through him?” He motioned faintly toward Garet Jax.
Slanter shrugged. “Then there’ll be one less Weapons Master.”
“And one less of me.”
They stared at each other in silence. “What do you want from me, boy?” the Gnome asked finally.
“Come with us.”
“What!”
“You’re a tracker, Slanter. You can get us past the walker. Please, come with us.”
Slanter shook his head emphatically. “No. That’s the Eastland. I can’t go back there. Not now. Besides, you want me to take you to Culhaven. Me! The Dwarves would love that!”
“Just to the border, Slanter,” Jair pressed. “Then go your own way. I won’t ask for any more than that.”
“I’m greatly appreciative of that!” the Gnome snapped. Garet Jax was coming back over to join them. “Look, what’s the point of all this? That one wouldn’t want me along anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” Jair insisted. He turned as the Weapons Master came up to them. “You said that Slanter could go where he wished. Tell him then that he can come with us.”
<
br /> Garet Jax looked at the Gnome. Then he looked back at Jair.
“He’s a tracker,” Jair pointed out. “He might be able to help us avoid the walkers. He might be able to find a safe route east.”
The Weapons Master shrugged. “The choice is his.”
There was a long, awkward silence. “Slanter, if you do this, I’ll show you a little of how the magic works,” Jair said finally.
Sudden interest filled the Gnome’s dark eyes. “Well now, that’s worth a chance or . . .” Then he stopped. “No! What are you trying to do to me? Do you think you can bribe me? Is that what you think?”
“No,” Jair answered hastily. “I just . . .”
“Well, you can’t!” the other cut him short. “I don’t take bribes! I’m not some . . . !” He sputtered off into silence, unable to find the words to express what it was that he wasn’t. Then he straightened. “If it means this much to you, if it’s this important, then all right, I’ll come. If you want me to come, I’ll come—but not for a bribe! I’ll come because I want to come. My idea, understand? And just to the border—not a step farther! I want nothing to do with the Dwarves!”
Jair stared at him in astonishment for a moment, then quickly. stuck out his hand. Solemnly, Slanter shook it.
It was decided that Spilk would be left just as he was. It would take him considerable time to free himself, but eventually he would do so. If worse came to worst, he could always chew his way through the ropes, Slanter suggested blackly. If he yelled for help, perhaps someone would hear him. He would have to be careful though. The Black Oaks were populated by a particularly vicious species of timber wolf, and the calls were likely to draw their attention. On the other hand, the wolves might drift in for water anyway . . .
Spilk heard the last of this, stirring awake as Jair and his companions were preparing to set out. Dazed and angered, the burly Gnome threatened that they would all meet a most unpleasant end when he caught up with them again—and catch up with them he would. They ignored the threats—though Slanter appeared somewhat uneasy at hearing them—and minutes later the Sedt was left behind.