R. Salvatore - The Highwayman

Abelle Harkin cracked his whip with an urgency wrought of terror. Orrin slumped next to him, a spear buried deep in his side, bright blood flowing freely, staining his brown woolen tunic a dark and ugly red black.

"Come on, run!" Harkin urged his team, and he cracked the whip hard again. He couldn't help but consider the terrible irony of it all. He had been transferred from the front lines of battle-in a war that had been raging since he was a young man-to the seemingly safe job of driving Prince Yeslnik about the growing lands of Greater Delaval. And now this-to be caught and killed on the road!

The horses dug in and pulled hard, but an undeniable drag slowed the coach. "Orrin, you hold on!" Harkin cried to his injured friend, and he shifted his hands just enough so that he could pull back the slumping man, who seemed as if he would tumble from his seat.

Harkin glanced all around frantically. He heard Prince Yeslnik shout, though the words were lost in the tumult. He heard Prince Yeslnik's wife, Olym, scream in fear. When the coach hit one straight, flat stretch of the tree-lined road in the southeastern reaches of Pryd Holding, Harkin dared to stand quickly and look back. The coach was dragging a tangle of logs. "Ah, you cunning beasts," he lamented, for the bloody-capped powries had hit the coach with some sort of grapnel, affixed by rope to the logs.

Harkin's mind tumbled through the possibilities. He knew that he had to do something; it was only a matter of time before those bouncing logs caught on a tree or some other obstacle at the side of the road and either stopped the coach or, more likely, tore it apart. He couldn't go back to free the grapnel while they were charging along, and he couldn't stop. He knew the truth. He had seen the bright red berets. He had heard the grating voices and the guttural shouts. These were powrie dwarves, and powries showed no mercy.

"Come on," he called again to his straining team, and he cracked the whip once more.

Good fortune got them through the straight section of road without any serious entanglements, but Harkin knew that the flagstone path twisted and wound around many stones and trees, down into dells and into sharp-cornered turns over ridges. "Bah!" He snorted in dismay, and he pulled back hard on the reins, bringing the coach to an abrupt halt. Before the wheels had even fully stopped turning, Harkin looped the reins about the bench seat and leaped to the ground. "Stay inside, my prince!" he cried to Yeslnik as he ran past the door's open window and around the back of the coach.

He followed the rope to the grapnel, and found it secured underneath the carriage. Cunning powries, indeed! They hadn't hit the coach with a spear or anything like that, but rather had set a trap in the road to hook it from beneath.

Harkin started to bend and even dropped to one knee, starting under the coach frame to free it, but the thought of crawling on the ground, so vulnerably, with powries closing, had him gasping for breath. Instead, he drew out his short bronze sword and began hacking at the rope with all his might.

"You fool! What are you doing?" cried the prince, leaning out and hanging on the now-opened door. "Why have you stopped? I am the nephew of the Laird of Delaval!"

"We cannot go, my liege," poor Harkin tried to explain. He hacked with all his strength, and finally the rope snapped. Yeslnik saw it and cried out in dismay, and then he saw a spear come arcing in and hit the coach near Harkin.

"Get back in, I beg you, my liege!" Harkin cried, and this time Yeslnik didn't argue.

Harkin scrambled around the coach and back up into his seat. If he could just get them moving

The reins were not there.

Harkin's gaze went forward to the nervous team, and there, between them, he saw his doom. For there stood a powrie, a smile on its leathery and wrinkled face, white teeth showing behind the long hairs of an overgrown red mustache.

"Ye lookin' for these, me lord?" the dwarf asked, and he held up and jiggled the reins. "Aye, but ain't yer horses tired from yer stupid run?"

Harkin could hardly draw breath as he heard other dwarves moving around the sides of the coach, for the powries' reputation preceded them. They were not here for treasure, other than human blood.

The dwarf in front dropped the reins and drew forth a long, curving knife with a wicked, serrated edge. "If ye don't fight, it won't hurt as much."

Harkin's mind whirled-he didn't want to die, certainly not like this! "Wait!" he cried as he heard the coach creak behind him and knew that a dwarf was beginning to climb on it. "I got something for you. Something that'll get you all the blood and money you want!"

The dwarf in front held up his hand, and the one creeping near Harkin stopped.

Poor Harkin heard the coach door open, and a moment later, he heard Prince Yeslnik's wife scream, followed by a protest from the prince himself.

"Aye, that one," Harkin improvised. "He's noble blood, and his laird'll pay whatever you want to get him back. Money and people-it won't matter to Laird Delaval, as long as he gets the safe return of his precious nephew."

"Hmmm," the dwarf in front mused.

Harkin could hear more movement and shouting from behind, but no sounds of battle yet joined. The dwarves were waiting, he believed and prayed.

"What're ye thinking, Turgol?" asked the one in front. "Ransom? That be our game?"

"Nah," said the dwarf to the side and behind Harkin, and he nearly fainted when he realized how close this second one actually was. "Lots o' work in that, and we're to rile up a laird? Nah, kill 'em now, I say. Three humans to brighten me cap."

The dwarf in front began to nod and smile all the wider, and he opened his mouth to speak.

"Oh, wrong answer," came a voice from above-a human voice and not the grumbling chant of a powrie. Harkin and the dwarves turned, their gazes flying up, up to the high boughs of a wide oak tree.

And there he sat on a limb, a smallish man dressed head to toe in a black outfit of some exotic fabric. He wore a mask black as night that covered more than half his face, with holes cut out for the eyes.

"If it was just a business deal-a good one-then perhaps I could have wandered along on my way without interfering," the mysterious man said. "But since you insist"

As he finished he shoved off the branch and came flying down at the coach.

"By the gods!" Harkin cried, and he fell back, throwing his arm up in front of him, expecting the man to go crashing through the coach.

The powrie behind Harkin shrieked but instead of retreating, lifted up a heavy battle-axe.

The dwarf roared and swung trying to bat the man in black out of the air. But amazingly, the axe whipped below the descending man, as if he had somehow slowed his fall. And he didn't crash through the coach roof-as he should have after falling from so high-but rather touched down firmly on it right behind the swinging blade. He fell as he hit, absorbing the impact with a forward roll following the swing of the axe, and he came up tangled with the dwarf-at least as far as the dwarf was concerned. For the man's balance as he rolled fast to his feet remained perfect, and as he leaped down from the coach his hands caught the dwarf so that the dwarf had no choice but to go flying away with him.

Again the man landed in perfect and easy balance, as the powrie crashed down hard beside him, sprawling on the ground, its axe flying away.

"Not a graceful sort, now is he?" the man asked a pair of powries standing before him, their mouths agape. He jabbed his elbow back as he spoke, for he had cleverly landed right beside the open coach door, and a simple shove from that elbow had it swinging closed. "I beg your pardon, Prince Yeslnik, but would you please remain inside while I finish my business out here?"