Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

a hard look back at Branwen and Valeria, I nodded. Lifting her crossbow, Branwen nodded at me in return, then toward the open door of the softly lit stables. I indicated for Valeria to remain where she was.

Strife raised, I swiftly rounded the doorway—

And startled the gimlet who, poised upon a stool, giggled to himself while petting the nose of one of the Dardrie horses.

The little fellow shrieked and fell from the seat that had boosted him up to the mare. While the horse whinnied with its own surprise, I faltered in the doorway and looked with open-mouthed surprise at the finding. Branwen, who had been about to hurry in behind me, bumped into my back and fell upon her heel.

“What’s the problem?” She peered around me and lifted her crossbow, but I raised a hand to halt her.

“Wait, you didn’t see him. Look! They haven’t hurt a single horse!”

“So?”

“I think he was petting that mare over there—hey, sh. It’s all right, my friend.”

Seeing how the quivering gimlet had scrambled to his knees and clasped his hands for mercy, I sheathed my blade and showed my empty hands. The pupils of his watery lizard eyes grew more prominent, his fear fading to relief but his hands still clasped—now, to his heart. A terrible guilt washed over me for having charged in; I thanked Weltyr for giving me time and insight enough to spare the life of the creature who did not seem ill-disposed to life. The Bright God had truly answered my prayer for his help in dealing rightly with other beings. At least, he had begun to.

“There,” I said, “now…I’m sorry to have surprised you, friend. Can you understand me? Do you understand the common tongue?”

The gimlet nodded. I must confess I marveled a little at that, having expected to go through the process of some difficult interpretation to make communication even a remote possibility. What a relief to know that was not the case! I sighed aloud, in fact, and gestured toward the house.

“Are those your friends in there?”

Again, the gimlet nodded.

“What’s your name?”

The creature yelped. I grimaced back at Branwen. Lightly clearing my throat, said as politely as I could, “Well, “Yelp””—Yelp laughed at my approximation of his name, and I think we both felt somewhat more at ease with one another from then on—“my name is Rorke Burningsoul, and—”

But Yelp’s eyes grew wide in disbelief. The little gimlet, barely tall enough to reach my chest, scurried up to grab my hand—all while jabbering so excitedly in his doglike voice that the horses grew uneasy and shifted in their stalls. While Branwen soothed the nearest one with a practiced hand and a loving whisper, the gimlet led me outside and pointed with his free hand at the glowing town.

“What about Soot, friend?”

Yelp pointed at his chest, then at me. Mid-gesture toward the town, he grew startled by motion in the dark. The gimlet leapt between me and Valeria, a short growl on his muzzle. I tried not to laugh, but Valeria did so openly.

“You make friends very quickly, Burningsoul…it is your finest quality.”

“I’d be inclined to agree with you, were the same not true of enemies…it’s all right, Yelp. Valeria is—my mate.” My choice of label earned a sizzling glance from the durrow while I happened to note Branwen’s profile in the darkness of the stable. “One of them, anyway.”

“Aha,” the gimlet hilariously enthused, elbowing me with a wiggle of the crests above his eyes. He barked and yelped out a few more chains of laugh-like syllables before waving toward the town with both little lizard paws again.

Finally, I gathered. “You want us to go with you?”

Yelp nodded, tapping the tip of his nose, then pointing again to the town. I rubbed my jaw and asked him, “Why?”

Now it was his turn to look rather thoughtful. Tapping his chin with one finger, the little lizard-dog-man then gestured toward the ranch house. He cocked his head questioningly. I nodded.

“We did intend to go in there, yes. You and your friends can’t stay in the Dardrie house.”

With a hefty sigh, the gimlet nodded as if to say he had known that all along, but that it had been a good time while it lasted. Gesturing with his hands that I stay behind, Yelp turned and took some steps toward the house.

I followed.

Hearing the steps I took, in part due to the plate mail, the gimlet stopped and turned with a bark. Perhaps he expected me to stop. I continued on. Yelp uttered another noise, a shocked little mewl somehow closer to a cat than a dog. He hurried up to me and tugged on my arm, unable to stay me by gripping me and digging in his heels. When he saw my companions following us, he panicked and hurried up to the open back door of the house.

Owing to last time, I did not draw Strife, and I was glad I didn’t.

Were I not concerned about the welfare of the Dardrie family, I would have found the scene somewhat charming—even comical. As it stood, I couldn’t help but find the sight of these gimlets pretending they were citizens of Soot to be somehow very morbid.

No evidence of the Dardries’ actual presence was immediately clear to me. That was a point of great concern when I stepped into the living room and found a pair of gimlets stoking the hearth, yammering before the fire until Yelp successfully interrupted them with a wave of his arms and an urgent series of noises. They looked up—as did the one who, from Mr. Dardrie’s armchair, investigated the luminous illustrations of a printing press-quality book that completely swamped the creature’s small lap. This gimlet uttered a shriek to see me, the volume falling from its knobby knees. Only after a few iterations of Yelp’s frantic patter did they cautiously relax.

One last lizard-creature appeared from the doorway to the kitchen, Mrs. Dardrie’s apron trailing around its waist in a fashion closer to an award banner