"How do we kn-?" Tain started to ask…

… but Loden held up a hand to stop the oldster's query. "The word of a Dwarf, the word of a Guardian, 'tis enough."

"But-"

"Accept it, Tain."

Tain bowed his head. "As you will, my Prince."

Loden turned to Vail. "We must get word of our alliance to your Coron and to the Chieftain of the Baeron."

Vail glanced at Loric and then said, "I will ride back, for I am swiftest ahorse."

"What about Arylin?" asked Tip. "She should be coming soon."

"Not until late on the morrow," replied Vail. "I can be back there before then."

At a raised eyebrow from the Prince, Tip said, "Arylin is our go-between, that is, between us on far point and our army."

"Ah," said Loden, "a runner." Loden turned to a young man at his side. "Brandt, I would have you go with Dara Vail as my emissary."

"But, brother, I would be at your side," protested the youth. Even as he said it, he looked about, his eye passing over Tain and lighting on Bekki. "Let Bekki go instead, and then he can explain how he'll arrange it so that we crack them like rotten stone. We've plenty of horses he can use."

Bekki blenched and threw out his hands. "Nay, Prince Brandt, I'll not ride a horse."

Tip looked at Bekki in puzzlement. Here is another Dwarven warrior who will not ride a horse. Surely they are not afrai "Brandt, I have spoken," snapped Loden. "You will go in my stead, for you know our strengths and the way to our hidden camp. Too, these wains they bring, you can guide them the easiest course to a rendezvous with us."

At dawn, Vail and Brandt set out southward, trailing two horses apiece. Standing atop the hill in a brisk autumn wind, Tip watched them go, and when they reached the bottom of the hill and rounded the shoulder of another, Tip turned to Loric. "What now?"

Loric raised an eyebrow at Loden, and the Prince said, "Now, Waldan, we go to our own hidden stand."

Drawing the packhorse behind, Tipperton and Loric rode after Loden and Tain and Bekki down the north slope of the hill and into the draw, and together they followed the shallow gully as it wended northwesterly and into the reaches of the Rimmen Mountains.

As they rode, Bekki fell back alongside Loric. "You speak Chakur." His words were a statement and not a question.

"Aye," replied Loric. "The result of a shipwreck long past, where the only other survivor was a Dwarf named Kelek. He taught me Chakur; I taught him Sylva."

"He must have trusted you well."

"71 Ere the wreck we had traveled together for a number of years, and often we fought back to back. He saved my life many a time."

Bekki looked at Loric intently, as if to gauge something deep within. "Og at da haun ve vain efil dat? "

Loric laughed. "We saved each other so many times we lost count."

"How did you get off the island?" asked Tipperton.

"Ha, now there's a tale:

"The island though moderately large was limited, with little wood, and we spent most of our time foraging in the sea for food: spearing in tidal pools or netting in surf that which we would eat-nets which I made from rock-beaten fiber of a thorny island weed. Birds, too, we netted, and on the high rocky cliffs we raided their nests. Kelek was a splendid climber, and did most of the fetching of eggs. And there was a side-walking blue crab we favored, yet it was a treat most rare.

"One day in the deepest of the pools we came across a trapped shark, and it provided us with meat for many a meal, though shark jerky is not the best of food.

"Yet it was the skin which we prized the most, for if we could fetch several more like it, we could use the hide to make a boat, could we find something with which to make the frame.

"And luck was with us, for no sooner did we see our need than within a moon or two, we found beached on one end of the island the remains of what the Fjordlanders call a 'nahvalr.' "

"A what?" asked Tipperton.

"A nahvalr: 'tis a kind of whale, with a spotted pelt and each male has long, spiral-twisted tusk jutting out from the left side of its head. They live in the icy brine of the far north. What this one was doing in the waters of the Bright Sea, I cannot say, yet there it was, what remained of it, that is, rolling in the surf."

"Oh," said Tip. "-Was this one a male?"

"Aye, for its tusk jutted out like that of a horned horse, only longer, much longer."

Tipperton's eyes widened. "Horned hor-?"

"Hush, Waeran," growled Bekki as the wind swirled 'round. "Let him finish."

Tipperton cocked an eye at Bekki, but held his tongue.

"As to what had slain this nahvalr, I cannot say, for the evidence was gone, there being little left but ivory bones and shreds of rotted meat. -The fish and the crabs had done much of their work, though there was yet some to do.

" 'There is our boat,' I said to Kelek, and down to the skeleton we ran. The stench was quite noisome, yet gulping our breaths we dragged it well up out of the water and into the grasses above. I couldn't have done so by myself, but Kelek was strong beyond his stature.

"For the next several days we dined on crab meat, for they couldn't resist the redolent reek on the air… and neither could the birds. And we let them finish the task of stripping the remains to the bone.

"It took another year altogether to lure enough sharks one by one into the deep tidal pool and slay them for their skins, though the meat was not wasted.

"Finally, with nahvalr bones for our frame, bound together with thongs of sharkhide, and with sewn-together shark skins stretched over all and lashed onto the frame, and with a caulk made of bird guano and fish oil and fiber, we were at last ready to set sail, rainwater and jerky and a few live crabs and an egg or two as our supplies.

"No sooner had we shoved off than the craft began to leak badly, but bailing with frond cups and rowing with weed-woven oars, and with Kelek cursing at the top of his lungs in Chakur, we paddled our sinking, shark-skinned, whale-boned boat below the bird cliffs and 'round the headland only to find Aravan's great ship, the swift Eroean, anchored in the small inlet on the southern end of the isle."

Loric burst into gales of laughter, Tipperton joining in. Bekki looked at them for some moments, and then burst into laughter as well. Riding in the lead, Prince Loden looked over his shoulder, and Tain at his side put his fingers to his lips in a shushing motion and snapped, "Do you want to bring the Spawn down on us? They can hear you all the way to Mineholt North."

This only caused Bekki to laugh all the harder, Loric and Tipperton as well.

It was some time ere they got control of themselves, and even then they broke out into suppressed chortles.

"So the boat did you absolutely no good, eh?" asked Tip after a while.

"Oh, no, to the contrary, Tipperton, it did us a wealth of good: not only did it keep us busy for a year or so, it also proved to be quite profitable, for when Aravan hauled us aboard, 'Nahvalr ivory,' he said upon seeing the necklace Kelek had made of the teeth. 'Have you the tusk as well?' And when we showed it to him, he marveled at its length and perfection, and told us the horn and the remainder of the ivory would bring a small fortune in the city of Jan-jong, there on the Jinga Sea, his next port of call, it seems.

"And so, rather than rowing across the Bright Sea in a leaky, sinking boat, we sailed with Aravan and his forty men and forty Dwarves, the crew of the Eroean.

"In Janjong, Kelek signed on with Aravan as a member of the Drimmen warband, but I went my separate way. In the succeeding seasons he rose to be second in command, I believe."

"Did you ever see him again?"

Loric sighed. "Nay. He remained with Aravan and sailed on the Eroean's last voyage. It was in the time of the destruction of Rwn, and Kelek acquitted himself most honorably in the final battle, though he did not survive to reach his beloved Red Hills again. There at the place of his death, they set a great pyre burning, and he and his other fallen comrades were sung up to the sky."