Dragonlance: The Warriors, Book 07 - The Wayward Knights by Roland Green

Author:Roland Green [Green, Roland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-0696-3
Publisher: Fanversion Publishing
Published: 2015-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The horsemen awoke Horimpsot Elderdrake from a sound sleep in Botsenril Woods, one that he had intended to continue until dawn. So he was in a worse mood than usual for a kender when he started counting them. Before he had finished his count at forty, he had heard a human watcher slipping away along another path. A warning was on the way to Tirabot, so he could do as he pleased.

It pleased him to make these fumble-witted humans pay for their silliness in making trouble for Tirabot Manor. It was going beyond what he or any other kender might owe to Sir Pirvan and all of his people. It was reaching the point where the humans needed to be taught a lesson about making nuisances of themselves.

Really, they were killing each other over things that no kender would have considered worth a quarrel, let alone a fight. Oh, there had been the time when his aunt put a lock on her biscuit cupboard, and half the village vowed not to dine with her or even speak to her for a year. The vow hadn't bound anybody that long, because somebody (Elderdrake suspected who, but would never tell) had picked the lock within a month.

But killing for the freedom to break one's own laws, even if some of those laws were so stupid that no kender would have lived under them for five minutes—this was "virtue"?

Elderdrake used a kenderspeak word that was usually translated as "idiots," in Common.

The kender unslung his pack and pulled out a glazed pottery jar wrapped in straw. He undid the wrapping and held the pot up to his ear. Good. They sounded all right.

One of the Spillgather guests was someone Shumeen hadn't told him about at first. Like many kender priests of Branchala, this one had chosen a practical joke for his masterpiece. It had gone a little far, and his friends had told him to hide out until they had forgotten it, then come back and try again. That was ten years ago and the priest had been with the Spillgathers ever since.

They hadn't asked him to stay away ten years, but like Imsaffor Whistletrot (and how was the old fellow doing, Elderdrake wondered) or Sirbones (who was really too old to be climbing aboard ships and sailing off to fight wizards at the rim of the world) this priest liked the road. He could also make more of his masterpiece, anytime anyone asked, without being paid—although people didn't ask very often, for obvious reasons.

Now it was time to turn the joke loose on Tirabot's uninvited guests. That should keep them from spoiling Gerik's party.

And afterward? Elderdrake studied the riders. They had fine horses and much better weapons and armor than such starved-looking, unkempt sell-swords deserved, or were likely to be able to pay for. Somebody was giving them all this, but there wasn't anybody to the south for quite a distance. So these men had to be like the ghost riders. They had to have their supplies piled somewhere that wasn't on anybody's land.

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