During the first three days east of the Great Muddy, they traveled in a kingdom named Miskmehr, land hillier than they were used to, with farms in every significant bottomland. It was a lovely season, the forest canopy washed pale green with opening buds. At a village they bought a cheese and hardtack for basic rations. Their breaks they took in moist roadside woods, eating the wild leeks that grew there till they reeked of them. Macurdy was healing rapidly; his mouth was enough better, he ate what the others ate, though he soaked his hardtack first.
Their road trended more south than east now, and this troubled Macurdy, for his understanding was that the Silver Mountain was east from Oz. But Blue Wing explained that it angled south to strike the Valley Highway, the great road that paralleled the Green River. The highway would take them up the valley all the way to the Great Eastern Mountains, and the dwarvish kingdom named for one of them. No, he had no idea how many days ride they had ahead of them; humans traveled so slowly, he didn't see how they could stand it.
The valley and its margins were kingdoms instead of tribal territories, Blue Wing said, with far more people, towns and villages than the lands they'd seen so far. Its farms were famous for their fertility.
On the fourth day they rode out of the hills into the valley, to the Highway, which was better than any road Macurdy had seen in this world. But the land where the two roads met was nothing to brag about—brushy forest, with half its trees tipped over or broken off by some twister.
Blue Wing, who'd been foraging, was waiting there for them, perched in a swamp white-oak. "Macurdy," he called, then spread his broad wings and hopped off, gliding down to the roadside. "There are men and dwarves just ahead beside the road. They've been fighting each other; there are bodies. It may be dangerous for you there."
"How many men? And dwarves? Alive, that is."
"Numerous. We have trouble with numbers. More men than dwarves though. The dwarves are surrounded."
"How far from here? On which side of the road?"
"You know I don't know your distances!" Blue Wing said, then paused. "If they were shouting, you could probably hear them from here. They're on the south side of the road, but their horses are farther on, on the road itself, with a man guarding them. Another man watches the road in this direction."
"We can bypass them through the woods on the north," Jeremid said. "They'll never know."
Macurdy thought for a moment before answering. "Jeremid, you take the horses off the road and stay with them. Melody, your clothes are harder to notice in the woods. Sneak through the brush on the north side of the road until you see their horses, then stop and keep your eyes open. I'll ride down the road and find out what the situation is. It'd be useful to have dwarves as allies."
He thanked Blue Wing then, and started eastward down the rutted, hoof-packed highway, while Jeremid and Melody disappeared into the forest. He'd ridden perhaps a hundred and fifty yards when a man rose up from behind a fallen tree. His left hand held a bow, and his right a nocked arrow; at twenty yards he could hardly miss. "Stop right there," he called. More loudly than need be, Macurdy thought, unless he wanted his own people to hear him.
Macurdy reined in. "I've been sent to talk to your leader," he said, also loudly.
The man scowled uncertainly, peering at Macurdy's face, still purple and green with bruises. Then a voice called from the woods nearby. "Send him in. I'll listen to him."
Macurdy swung down from his horse, and after tying the reins to a clump of willow, walked into the woods, leaving his spear and bow, but keeping his sword at his waist. The blowdowns were old enough that decay had weakened the branches, allowing many of the trunks to settle to the ground or onto other fallen trees. The heavy opening of the forest roof had allowed the undergrowth to thicken, and saplings had sprung up twenty or more feet high.
A mess, Macurdy thought. At home these would have been cut up for logs and firewood, except for the elm. He picked his way around and over blowdowns in the direction the voice had called from, not trying to keep a low target. A man crouched behind a thick elm, bow ready, his gaze shifting from the woods in front of him to the approaching Macurdy, and back again.
"Are you the leader here?" Macurdy asked.
The man looked at him suspiciously. "I am."
"What have you got pinned down in there?" Macurdy called. Loudly enough, he thought, that the dwarves would hear too.
"What business is it of yours?"
"It's my master's business. I act on his orders. He's a magician, and he says it's dwarves you've trapped here."
The bandit ignored the question. "What the hell happened to your face?" he asked. "I never saw anyone beat up so bad."
Macurdy fingered the hard welt on his broken left cheekbone. "I displeased my master."
They were, he decided, being held off by dwarvish marksmanship. The bandits might have an advantage in numbers, but it seemed to him they had some disadvantages, for at least the leader's quiver looked light for a siege, and he carried a longbow. While according to the lore Macurdy had learned from Maikel and Blue Wing, the dwarves' long-range weapon was the crossbow, whose bolts, short and heavy, would be less deflected by undergrowth.
Meanwhile the bandit had turned to face Macurdy, his bowstring half drawn. At ten feet, Macurdy told himself, the arrow could pass through his breastbone and mostly out his back. He ignored it, lowering to a crouch himself, moving in closer with a hand cupped to his mouth, as if for private conversation. But his voice, when he spoke, was loud.
"Excuse me for shouting," he said, "but your men need to hear me, too. My master's not known for his patience, and your lives mean even less to him than mine. He does business with dwarves from time to time, and considers himself a dwarf friend. He orders you to make terms with them."
The man's eyes bulged in angry reaction, then abruptly Macurdy lunged, his left hand chopping sideways, deflecting the bow while his right drew his knife. He backed the bandit against the elm, the man staring not in anger now but fear, for the knife blade was at his belly.
"If you knew my master," Macurdy told him loudly, "you'd understand that I fear him much more than I fear you. Tell your men you're going to make terms. Tell them to be ready to leave when you've got an agreement with the dwarves."
He twitched lightly with the knife, slicing the man's homespun shirt, and the skin beneath it.
"You heard what he said!" the leader shouted.
"Lords of the Mountain!" Macurdy called. "Will you agree not to shoot at these people while they withdraw?"
The answering voice was a deep, accented bass. "Yewr mad if ye think ye can fool us so easily! Ye'd shoot us down in cold blood!"
"What's your name?" Macurdy asked the bandit quietly.
"Slaney."
"Slaney," Macurdy said loudly, "step out here!"
"What?! They'll shoot me!"
"Louder!"
"I said they'd shoot me!"
"I don't think so. But it's a chance you take, being a highwayman, and if you don't step out, I'll spill your guts on the ground right here. I'll count to three: one . . ."
Slaney stepped away from the elm, Macurdy with him, the heavy knife still at the bandit's belly. "We're not highwaymen," the bandit muttered. "But rebels have to eat, and with Gurtho on the throne . . ."
Macurdy's left hand reached, drew Slaney's knife from its sheath and tossed it away. "Hold your bow against the tree."
He did, and Macurdy cut the string. "How many men do you have here?"
"In the woods? Fourteen alive and fit. Three others are dead by those vermin, and two badly hurt."
"Plus two on the road," Macurdy prompted.
The man nodded. "Plus two on the road."
"Tell them to cut their bows with their swords, lay them on a tree and chop them. So I can hear it happen." With a flick of the knife blade, Macurdy made another slit in the man's shirt, another thin red line on his belly. "Tell them!"
Worms writhed in Slaney's face. "You heard what he said," he called. "Chop your bows in two."
Several seconds passed before Macurdy heard the first chop. A moment later he heard a second, then more, though how many had actually struck a bow . . . "Anyone who walks out of here with a whole bow will answer to my master!" he shouted. "With his life!" There were three more chops, then a fourth.
"Lords of the Mountain!" he called, "does that convince you they won't attack if you come out?"
"And what's to prevent yew from fillin' us with arrows?"
"Because we're dwarf friends." Macurdy raised his voice to full shout. "My lord! Send the great raven to vouch for us!"
Blue Wing, who'd been circling well above the trees, spiraled down to perch among the upper branches of one. "Lords of the Mountain," the bird called, "these are honorable men! Trust them!"
"Yew!" the dwarf called out, "the man who's taken it on himself to intercede here! What's yer name?"
"Macurdy."
"Macurdy, why don't ye just kill the boogers?"
"My master is a magician and warrior, not a butcher. And these men haven't harmed us."
"What will they pay for our dead and wounded? And our ponies, and the tallfolk groom they killed?"
"Nothing!" Slaney bellowed, then paled chalk-white as Macurdy's knife slit again, this time through skin and shallowly into the muscle beneath it. Blood oozed, flowing down his hairy belly.
"They'll pay the contents of their purses," Macurdy called back, "whatever that may be. And their horses, keeping enough to ride home on, doubling two on a horse."
Macurdy heard the brief bass rumble of dwarves conferring. Then their leader called again. "All right. Have them hold their purses above their heads. We're comin' out with bows at the ready. We'll not shoot if not threatened, but . . ."
"Do you pledge that on the honor of your sons?"
"On the honor of our sons through three generations!"
Long generations, Macurdy thought. According to Maikel, dwarves lived longer than Sisters, though they aged more or less gradually, and seldom had children before age forty.
"Careful now, Slaney," Macurdy called. "If even one of your men plays false, you all die. Yourself first." Then he shouted at full voice again. "My lord, send in someone to collect their purses for the Lords of the Mountain."
Blue Wing flew off with the message, in case Jeremid hadn't heard. It took several minutes for the Ozman to get there. With saber in one hand he made the circle; the purses he stuffed in his shirt mostly felt empty, or near it, and not every man even admitted to one. Eight dwarves came out, two of them limping. They wore mail shirts that seemed too light to stop a sword blow, but by their shimmer, Macurdy suspected they were more than ordinary steel.
The bandits, it turned out, had more dead than they'd realized. With a well-aimed arrow, Melody had killed the bandit who'd first challenged Macurdy, shot him when he'd started in from the road as if to intervene. Then she'd gone on to the horse guard and shot him too. Her marksmanship impressed Macurdy; both her arrows had pierced the victims' hearts. Her casual willingness to kill people also impressed him—shocked him a bit despite how warlike the Ozians were.
It was dwarves with their crossbows who stood guard over the bandits and chose the horses with which they'd be paid—the ten best of nineteen. Two others had been wounded during the original skirmish, and run off. Meanwhile the dwarves searched the bandits for valuables they might have transferred from their purses, and found little. Another visited the dead bandits, collected their bows and swords, and chopped their spears in two.
Slaney stepped over to Macurdy. "The truth between the two of us," he growled, in a tone not to be heard by his men. "There is no master, right? There's only the three of you."
"Right and wrong," Macurdy lied. "There are seven of us, but I'm the leader and magician. The other four don't want their presence known in this country. Also I am dwarf friend, and couldn't let them die here."
Slaney didn't know what to believe, and said nothing more; his aura was thick with hate. He and his men mounted—two to a horse except for himself—and without looking back, headed east down the highway.
Dwarves do not ride full-sized horses; Macurdy had learned that from Maikel. Their legs are short, they require special saddles, and there's the problem of climbing on and off. They ride ponies specially bred—short of leg and very tame, with a quick-footed gait.
This party had been traveling with two saddle ponies each, plus spares and pack ponies, and enough were left that each survivor had one to ride, with several left over. With tallfolk help, they loaded their goods on compensatory horses, on pack saddles lashed together from stout ash saplings. Their dead, including the tallfolk groom they'd hired, were also loaded across horses. Macurdy wondered aloud if it might not be better to build a pyre and burn them, this being the tallfolk custom in Yuulith. The elder dwarf answered that there'd be no decay, and he'd have strong coffins made at the nearest village where a proper cart could be bought.
That said, he put his hand on each corpse, one after the other, concentrating and muttering, as if preserving them with a spell.
The dwarves didn't look forward to tending a string of horses—they preferred not even to tend their ponies if they could hire some tallfolk to do it—but they seemed not to doubt that they could if they had to.
Their biggest problem was that four of them, venturesome youths by dwarvish standards, wanted to join Macurdy, whom they believed would be doing more bold adventurous things—things they hoped to be part of. This, however, would leave their leader with a party of only four, of whom two had been wounded, though one but slightly. But those who wanted to leave claimed the right to do so. They hadn't been part of the original party; had attached themselves to it because they were also from the Diamond Flues.
Old Kittul Kendersson Great Lode disagreed. He pointed out that as a member of the ruling council, he had the authority to take command in emergencies. On the other hand, young Tossi Pellersson Rich Lode, eldest of the four cousins, claimed the emergency was over. And a tallfolk could be hired at the next village to tend the animals.
Old Kittul was apparently not a typical dwarf. He undertook a compromise, for he saw that the Pellerssons would leave despite him, which could give rise to ill feelings in both clans. And at any rate the younger dwarf's arguments had merit. While Tossi, though young, understood the politics of the Diamond Flues. The upshot was that one of the cousins would leave with Kittul. And Tossi, if he lived long enough, was to personally deliver, to the King In Silver Mountain, a report of the events here. He was also to send one in writing, for the king should be apprised that travel entailed risks in this region.
Tossi's three cousins drew straws—Tossi, as senior, held aloof from the risk—the short straw to ride west with Kittul.
When Kittul's party was in the saddle, he called Macurdy to him. "And yewr people," he said, "and yewrs, Tossi Pellersson." When they'd gathered, Kittul cleared his throat and began.
"Macurdy," he said, "ye haven't told me where yer goin' nor why. But yewr a born commander, both in yer manner and yer thinkin', though ye don't flaunt it. And I have no doubt at all that whatever yer about, it's honorable.
"As for yew, Tossi, I suspect yew and yer wild cousins will find adventures enough to last yer lifetime. Which I hope will be long enough to have children to tell them to."
He looked into the crown of a roadside tree. "And yew, great bird," he called. "Knowledge of yer folk is part of our lore, though it's at second hand from the tomttu. We're too much inside the mountain to know ye first hand. But it's well known that yewr kind has a penchant for doin' that which, from time to time, influences events. Sometimes for good, sometimes not, but always honestly. Yer connection with this man is a favorable omen, and I wish ye well."
He turned in his saddle. "Macurdy, hand me your blade."
Macurdy did, and Kittul lay it across his lap (dwarves ride with their knees high), then sat with his eyes closed for a long minute, head back, beard jutting, his ruler's aura swelling upward like pale, purple-blue flame. Then he took Jeremid's saber, frowned a moment over it, and repeated the performance. And then Melody's. When he was done, he looked long at Macurdy before speaking. "It's a hazardous road you've chosen. That much I know, even if I don't know what it is. Much will happen that none of us can foresee. But what I've done with these will help." He gestured at Macurdy's sword. "There is more to refinin' weapons than just forgin'. And though it's not dwarf made, like theirs"—he gestured toward the cousins—"still it's better now than others made by tallfolk."
With that he tossed his head in a dwarvish farewell, turned his pony, and trotted off westward at the head of his party.
With Blue Wing scouting ahead, Macurdy, Jeremid, Melody, and the three young dwarves rode eastward in the direction of the Silver Mountain, the Sisterhood, and he supposed Varia. Before long they crossed a modest river, and shortly afterward, saw where hooves had left the highway on a narrow, well-worn trail that disappeared northward into the forest. It seemed safe to bet they'd never see Slaney and his crew again.