Blood and Honor

“You don’t like hammertail?” Dern asked, half-rising from his cushion and gesturing at the meat before Mordan. “Could be there’s some hardhead or flatmouth.” Halflings were particular about their hospitality, even those outside House Ghallanda. Mordan reached for the food.

“No, it’s good,” he said. “I was thinking, that’s all.” He fell to eating with deliberate relish.

Screams of laughter erupted behind Mordan, and he looked round to see Grasht squaring off against a skin-clad halfling warrior in a clear area beside the main firepit. Grasht was wielding a tent-pole—a center-post as thick as his opponent’s waist—like an oversized quarterstaff, and the halfling was circling him with a thin stick in one hand.

A crowd had gathered around them, laughing and shouting encouragement as the halfling ducked under Grasht’s sweeping blow and darted in to tap him on the chest with the stick. Mordan shook his head and smiled. The halflings had always liked Grasht. With his size, his bluster, and his swagger, they seemed to regard him as a curiosity. He certainly enjoyed their hospitality.

When the feast was over, Mordan went to pay his respects to the group’s elders, who sat on brightly colored rugs in the middle of the camp. Mordan had met Lath Yoldrum and old Hazlon several times in the past—their tribe had been providing the Company of the Skull with scouts and outriders for years—but they always made an impression on him. Neither would have stood much taller than his belt-buckle, but somehow their presence was bigger than they were. Hazlon, the tribe’s shaman, was an arresting sight with his brightly colored headdress, necklace of lizard teeth, and feathered staff carved from the leg bone of a clawfoot lizard. Yoldrum, on the other hand, was dressed in dyed cloth and tanned hides like any member of his tribe, with his graying hair drawn back in a hunter’s ponytail. Only the quiet strength in his dark eyes and the scars of man hunts set him apart from his people.

“You are better,” the lath observed. “That is good.”

“I’m alive, thanks to your healer,” said Mordan, using the dialect of the Plains out of courtesy, “but I think my fighting days may be over.” He held up his stump.

“That might be a good thing.” The lath shrugged. “You can go back to your people and live in peace.”

“I don’t have any people,” he said.

Hazlon chuckled softly. “Your quarrel will be mended,” he said, without further explanation.

Mordan made a non-committal face. He had never talked to anyone about his family. The old halfling was probably guessing. Everyone who signed on with the Company of the Skull had something in their past. The shaman’s eyes rested briefly on the rapier that Mordan wore.

“You should keep that sword,” he said. Etiquette had prevented Mordan from asking if it was magical, and he was glad that Hazlon had raised the matter.

“It belonged to the leader of the elves we fought,” he said.

“I can feel it humming,” said Hazlon. “It’s strong against the dead who walk. The Valenar knew they’d be fighting your dead soldiers. You’ll find it useful.”

Mordan bowed his head to the old halfling. It would have been impolite to point out that the undead of Karrnath were on his side, or that the Company of the Skull had nothing to do with them.

“Thank you for your help and hospitality,” said Mordan.

As he began to stand, Hazlon put a hand on his arm.

“You have a brother,” he said, “with the name of a king. There is trouble around him—and great danger. Your people need you.” His expression—and the fact that he spoke in the common tongue of humans—convinced Mordan that he was deadly serious.

“I didn’t know you spoke our language,” he said.

Hazlon’s habitual smirk came back. “There are many things you don’t know,” he said, as if talking to a small child. He pressed something into Mordan’s hand: a small leather bag on a thong. “This will protect you,” he said.

Interlude

Thirteen-year-old Kasmir ir’Dramon gritted his teeth and fought with all his strength. Laughing with savage glee as he pinned Kasmir down, kneeling on his chest and holding his wrists against the ground, his older brother’s face blotted out most of the sky. Kasmir felt the bump of the anthill pressing into his back, and the ants were starting to crawl inside his clothes. He struggled as they stung and clenched his jaw tighter to stop himself from crying. Gali held him firmly, grinning all the time. Over Gali’s shoulder Kasmir saw the laughing face of his brother’s friend and classmate, Berend Hintram, who was staying for the summer. They had both just completed their first year at Karrnath’s prestigious Rekkenmark military academy and were still wearing their cadet’s uniforms.

The stinging became unbearable. He twisted his left hand free from his brother’s grasp and punched Gali’s side. Rage grew within him, but he was unable to get free.