Chapter Two #3
“I seen Kagon a time or two,” Smuta said, dabbing at her mouth with a cloth napkin that she pulled from within her deep cleavage. “He don’t look nothing like this little bird.”
Bird?! I made a sound of high insult. I was no bird!
“True, his hair ain’t ginger root red. Tell me, Chirp,” Asdren said, leaning up to place thick, hairy forearms crisscrossed with old white scars on the glossy table. “Your da, he ain’t the most respectable of elves. What leads me to think that you ain’t just like him, your sunrise hair aside?”
“I am not a thing like my father, or anyone else in my family. I’m a member of King Aelir’s esteemed exploratory committee, a practicing druid with a classification of four, and a member of the scouts council of Celear. Also, my name is Beiro, not Chirp!”
“Oo, he’s got high color now, don’t he?” Smuta guffawed while reaching for a bun from a linen-lined basket. “Makes him even more akin to the red warblers that sing so pretty but fly off at the first sign of a cat!”
I scowled at the foursome chuckling at me.
“Enough now. The lad’s upset. He looks like a dog that just licked the arse end of a skunk,” Asdren said, a smile on his face that did little to ease my upset.
My frown deepened. The mercenary leader turned his attention to Aelir, who was lost in his thoughts, for it took Asdren clearing his throat twice to yank the king back to the table.
“Your Majesty, now we’re all here and food and ale have been offered as it is customary under the shale, maybe we can get to why Porgo reached out to us? Time, as they say, is money.”
I rolled my eyes. Typical cutthroat sellsword. No cares above how much coin is being offered. The king, even sitting with this shady sort of hireling, spoke of how deep in grief our king was, for Aelir would never lower himself to sup with such a band of greedy slugs were he not bound in loss.
“Sorry, yes, my mind was elsewhere.” Aelir thumbed a strand of long gold hair from his cheek.
He looked thinner than when I had left to travel to the Glotte.
“I am in need of a small band of stone brothers—” Smuta coughed.
“And sisters to lead my scout through the Witherhorns to safety on the other side of the peaks. There, if you wish, you may remain with Beiro as he sets off to locate an elf that the court of Melowynn has great interest in bringing back to Avolire.” The four dwarves huddled up as the king stared at me.
“Beiro, I know this is a large request, for this elf may not even be alive, but you, above all others, are capable of tracking this person down.”
“Eight thousand gold,” Asdren announced as I opened my mouth to ask the first of a few dozen questions. “Half now for provisions, bribes, and general goodwill. The other four when we get Chirp here—”
“Beiro,” I snapped. The king actually smiled slightly.
“As I was saying before the warbler began warbling, four when we get Chirp through the tunnels. If we stay with him to act as muscle for the trek across the tundra, the rate will double for them tundra folk ain’t nothing like the fine fancy elves here in Celear.
They’ll lop off your cock and feed it to the gray eagles just as soon as they’d look at you. ”
“Your Majesty,” I barged in, getting a cocked eyebrow from Smuta as she dunked her roll into her second kidney pie. “I do not require the assistance of a band—”
“Tread lightly, Chirp,” Asdren warned. The other three in his group tittered. “You don’t know me or my people well enough to be tossing around highbrow elven disparity.” He glanced at the king. “No disrespect, Your Eminence, but well, you know…”
“No, I take no offense. Many elves are beyond highbrow. My recently departed grandfather among them,” Aelir softly said.
“His hammer is still, but the echoes live on,” Asdren whispered in reverence.
The others also murmured tender things about the Stonefather, the stone, and the path of unbreaking rock.
“Sorry to have drifted from the outline of the prospective job.” He turned those gemstone eyes to me.
“I’ll take you to the cauldron of the Ironmantle himself if the coin is high enough, but I will not brook any snooty elven shit.
” He glanced at the king. “Again, my apologies.” Aelir waved him on.
“There ain’t no way in the Hearthmother’s flame a skinny elf can cross the Witherhorns alone.
If you go over, you’ve got to deal with the yeti.
And I know their king has been making overtures of friendship for a few seasons, but we who call the Witherhorns home know they’ll just as happily eat your fucking spleen as shake your hand.
Especially in the summer rut. Just ask your bronze warrior. ”
The mercenaries all nodded, cheeks full like chipmunks, ale froth on their chins. I knew all of this. I’d ventured to the tundra once four or so seasons ago but had skirted the snowy peaks and traveled out of the Verboten Woods. Avoiding the yeti and their famed temperaments was key that trip.
“If you opt to try to go through and under the Witherhorns, you won’t get through the Iron Gates without a dwarven escort,” Asdren continued.
“The queen don’t like elves, humans, or other types snooping around in her mines.
Non-shale folk tend to get light fingered.
Be a shame if them pretty little bird fingers got lopped off for plucking a diamond from a cart. ”
“My fingers are not birdy! They are calloused from the bowstring, and I do not steal!” I flung back.
The dwarves all smiled at me as one would a child.
“I could just go around the Witherhorns and skirt Lake Falomar as I did previously,” I argued, my stomach reminding me this was all well and good, but there was food that my gut wanted badly.
“Aye, you could, but then you’d be running a good chance of riding into a clan squabble.
The tundra folks have been at war with themselves for the past two seasons since their highest-ranking head of state came up dead in his bed.
Again, one skinny elf ain’t going to ride through a vast tundra filled with irate warriors and not come out missing a few body parts. ”
I huffed. Granted, his reasonings were fine and probably true. I’d heard tales of the Bhaston uprisings a few times, but nothing that said the lake region was now a danger for outriders. I would have to pass that along to the other scouts.
“I can use the mountain pass,” I argued.
“No, not right now. It got taken out by an avalanche in the spring. Unless you’re a crag goat, you ain’t using that shortcut. Be a good couple of seasons before that’s usable again,” Asdren informed me.
Well, shit on a stick, to quote Tezen. “Surely there must be—”
“Friends, we have little time to spend squabbling,” Aelir broke into the bickering.
“Finding this elf is of paramount importance. He was spirited away from Renedith several seasons before my birth. According to the now excommunicated grand cloisterer of Renedith, the babe was named Coelum and born with a head of black hair and blue eyes. He would be fully grown and in his prime now. There is little else to go on, I’m afraid, other than the scribblings of my grandfather in an old journal where he mentions the Cadere bastard.
” Aelir’s frow furrowed at the mention of Umeris.
My curiosity about what had taken place grew as the king spoke.
“Perhaps that is the mention of the father of this child, or the child itself. Seems my grandfather had little time or care for half-breed babes, but we all knew that. I just did not know how deeply that hatred truly ran.”
I could tell this was a mission of great import to the king, and so it would be to me as well.
Aelir had given me much since that day he and V’alor had ridden into my barn on a rainy day.
I have a good life now, free from the clutches of my past. I was an honored outrider, a respected druid, and a friend to many.
“Can you tell us anything else about this elf we’re seeking?” I timidly asked, for the king was greatly displeased now. Something large had taken place with Umeris and his grandson. That I was sure of now.
“The child and a wet nurse, who we are still seeking, were given over to a questionable conveyance where the child and she were to be turned over to the pirates of the Stormhold.” My mouth fell open.
What kind of monstrous people would send a tiny baby and a mother who had lost a child to live among the Ice Pirates?
Even the bandits of my family clan were not that ruthless.
No, that was a lie. My father’s followers would slit their mother’s throat for a few coins.
“The wet nurse may still live among the pirates, or she could be dead. The same for this Coelum. Perhaps both perished on the way to the Stormhold headland, where the Silvura and the Stormhold merge.”
I scratched at my chin in thought. I did not wish to bicker with the king but following a trail so long cold would be nigh onto impossible.
There would be no signs left to follow after all this time.
Why he felt me the better person to find this missing elf, I had no idea.
His spies seemed a much better pick. Perhaps the shadowy clan could not find a way to skulk about in the tundra or even under the tops of the snowy Witherhorns.
Yes, I had dallied about with the whispering ones from time to time, picking up some tricks to aid me when tracking prey with two legs instead of four.
The king knew of this training. He had advised it.
So perhaps this was why I had been chosen to make my way to the fabled pirate lighthouse that guided the looters into the Stormhold during bad weather.
And the weather was always bad on the Stormhold, so the stories go.