nearly starved to death and those two have eaten everything
but the bones of that rabbit. It’s these thongs. It’s not easy to
breathe when your hands, your knees, AND your feet are
tied!”
The kender was more actively suffering now, so
completely bound, than he had been all day. His breathing
was the short, hard gasping Keli had seen once in a dog
whose collar was caught in a fence.
“Kender,” he whispered, thinking to distract his
companion from his troubles, “I’m Keli. What’s your
name?”
“Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Call me Tas, all my friends do.”
“Tas, how did they get you? And why?”
“With a sack over the head, followed quickly, I can tell
you, by a big stick of wood. I was in the barn, at the tavern,
just looking. Someone had ridden in that night on a big red
horse, and Caramon said he’d never seen a bay with a mane
and tail that color before. They were all gold, you see, and I
just wanted a look. Nasty beast, too. Nearly took off all my
fingers when I went to touch his mane. It was like gold,
though, soft and yellow.” Tas hitched himself up so that the
small of his back rested against a boulder. In restless
preoccupation, he worked his wrists against the binding
leather. “I walked in on them just as they were tying you
up.”
From where he lay Keli saw a thin line of blood, black
in the darkness, trickling down Tas’s wrists to his fingers.
“Stop – ” he hissed, “you’re bleeding!”
After a moment, Tas sat still. “Why did they take you?”
Keli shook his head. “I – I don’t know.”
Tigo’s shadow, thin as a black knife, cut between them.
Keli fell silent, hoping the kender would do the same. For
once Tas did.
Tigo’s eyes gleamed like dark, hateful stars. “Don’t you
KNOW, boy?”
Keli chewed his lip and shook his head.
“You don’t know the tale of the brave knight Ergon who
went boldly against a barely armed pickpocket with his
sword?”
Keli flared. “My father would NEVER fight an
opponent who was not equally matched!”
“Wouldn’t he?” Slowly Tigo raised his hook-hand. For a
moment he seemed lost in the play of Lunitari’s blood-red
light along the steel. His eyes dimmed as though all their
gleam had gone into the grapnel. When he spoke again, his
voice was flat. If dead men could speak, Keli thought, his
was the voice they would use.
“This hook is a thing I must thank the courageous
knight Ergon for. My hand he claimed in payment for an
old man’s purse.”
“You lie,” Keli spat.
“Careful, boy. This hand is not flesh and it cuts deep.”
“Aye, and you’ll kill me anyway. You’ve said as much.
I’d sooner die for the truth than a lie.”
Tigo’s eyes burned, his jaw twitched. “It is no lie!”
The night’s heat was cool when compared with Keli’s
outrage. It was no easy thing to be a knight in these troubled
days. All his life Ergon had followed the rules of his order
humbly, honorably, as though they were a code he was born
to.
“I remember the tale well – I thought my father would
die of the wounds he got at your hands and those of your
accomplices. And the old man, he DID die, thief. He was no
match for four daggers. My father barely was. And it was
no sword my father used, but his own dagger.”
Keli choked on his fury, would have said more, but Tas,
under pretense of shifting cramped muscles, fell hard
against him. Tigo reacted with a howl of outrage. “You’ll
die for your twisted truth, boy, soon enough. But not yet.
For now,” he said, eyeing Tas, “I’ve an interest in the
kender.
“What’s in your pouches, little bandit?”
Tas shrugged and grinned. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Like a hawk diving, Tigo’s good hand came
down, caught the kender by the front of his shirt and lifted
him full off the ground, dangling him in front of Staag.
“Why don’t I believe that?”
The buzzing of the gnats and the shrilling of the crickets
seemed louder to Keli. He hoped with all his heart that the