brazen gambit, The - Lynn Abbey Page 0,79

was concerned, he expected trouble rather than a sulking absence. He kept those expectations to himself, naturally, and fell in step beside Yohan. The dwarf’s preferred pace, a bit slower than his own, got them to the village as the Moonrace fore-runners arrived, dusted with salt from their run across the place, but otherwise unsweated and full of breath.

The Quraite farmers were wrestling a stake-and-rope perimeter around the village’s fields to protect their crops from the Moonracers” kanks. There was no point in asking the elves to confine their herd. Freedom was a virtue among elves second only to friendship. If Quraite valued Moonracer friendship, it was the farmers’ chore to enclose the tender green plants.

Yohan grabbed a rock-headed maul and started hammering stakes into the ground. The stakes, with a burnt opening at one end for the rope and a dirt-caked point at the other—this was clearly not the first time Quraite had hurriedly defended its ripening fields—were bound into easily managed bundles. Pavek hesitated a moment, waiting for someone to tell him to do the obvious, then picked up two bundles and a maul.

Ropes had been threaded through the stakes and knotted fright by the time the heart of the tribe and its herd settled down on the scrubland beyond the village. Tall, elven women and their loose-limbed children visited the wells to replenish their water jugs—always the first and most important task at any encampment. Other elves traded bright-colored cloth and metalware for Quraite’s surplus fruits, vegetables, and grain.

For his part, Pavek followed Yohan and the others who had worked up a thirst protecting the fields. They entered the elven camp where, as the dwarf had promised, a barrel of honey-ale had been broached.

And while the Moonrace tribe would not confine their herd nor stoop to farmers’ labor, they understood the virtue of compromise well enough to offer the Quraiters as much ale as they cared to drink. Pavek drained his first mug between breaths. The sweet, amber-colored brew slid easily down his throat and shot into his blood. He got a second mug and, sipping it slowly, walked away from the barrel.

Pavek had lived without many possessions, first in the templar orphanage, then the barracks, and now the bachelor’s hut. The traders offered little that tempted him, and anyway, he had nothing to offer the elves in return, like his templar medallion, the few coins he’d slung from his belt the day he left Urik hadn’t been returned to him. Since Ruari had the medallion, he assumed the half-wit scum had his coins, as well. More from idle curiosity than any desire to feel the weight of his small wealth against his leg again, he glanced among the traders, looking for that unmistakable coppery hair.

He spotted it, too, but not among the traders. Much as Yohan had predicted, Ruari had joined his elven age-mates in their constant games of skill and daring. At least, that was what Ruari was trying to do. Tall and lithe among the Quraiters, Ruari showed his human blood against his Moonrace kin. As Pavek watched, he lost both a footrace and a barrel-leaping contest. The victorious elves made no secret of their contempt for a slow, clumsy, outcast relative and would-be elf.

The elves ridiculed Ruari mercilessly. The scum issued brash challenges he couldn’t hope to carry through. Remembering his lesser moments, when he’d joined in the torment of those orphans who did not survive to become templars, he hoped Ruari would have sense enough to back down before the mockery turned physical—though a half-elf would have the edge, if it came to brawling.

Elves were lousy wrestlers, no match for a well-made fist. They took more than their share of bruises and broken bones on the practice fields where he’d trained with and against every Tableland’s race. A templar’s training was as thorough as his enemies were numerous; it had to be. From where Pavek stood, he could see any number of ways he, a heavy-set human, could have bested the boasting elves. Even a few that didn’t resort to cheating. With his nearly full mug of ale clutched in his fist, he found a piece of shade with a view not only of Ruari’s hapless struggle, but of most of the village as well. The Moonrace elders with their piercing eyes and wind-carved faces had begun to assemble near the central well. Akashia, Yohan, and several others, including several Pavek had marked as farmers, not druids, appeared with platters of Quraite’s