Read Online The War Of The Lance by Michael Williams, Richard A. Knaak, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman - Free Book Online

again.
    “Don't worry,” I said - and was startled to hear my own voice. It was burned hoarse, as if
     I had swallowed acid. I forced another breath in. “I won't hurt you,” I finished with a
     gasp.
    The dwarf gulped, never taking his eyes off me. A
    muscle twitched in his left cheek. “'Preciate the thought,” he muttered. “I'll keep it in
     mind.”
    I was curious about the dead hobgoblins. I gave the dwarf an unconcerned shrug before
     kneeling to examine one of the fly-covered bodies. As I'd suspected, the bolt head
     projecting from the hobgoblin's neck was exactly the same type as the one that had hit me.
     I let my right hand drop from inside my shirt and reached out to examine the dirtied tip.
    I quickly pulled my hand back. A strand of black tar clung to the bolt head, worked into
     some of the grooves. I had seen that stuff before, at Neraka. Black wax, my commander had
     called it. Deadly poison. A handful of the Nerakan humans had used it on their weapons,
     their idea of a special welcome for us. The gods only knew where they had gotten it; the
     Nerakans themselves hadn't known how to handle it. We would regularly find their bodies,
     snuggled into ambush points, with little spots of black wax on their careless lips or
     fingers.
    I remembered the sensation of nothingness spreading inside me as I died, the bolt through
     my chest. I'd been the first that night to feel the poison's kiss. I figured my cousins
     must have felt it earlier still. Too bad I hadn't thought to examine their bodies.
    I leaned over to continue checking the hobgoblin, who had probably outweighed me by a
     hundred pounds in life. He was a thick-necked brute; his clothes and armor were as dirty
     as his skin. Knife slashes had opened up his belt pouch, now empty, and the sides of his
     armor and boots. He was also missing his left ear. It appeared to have been cut cleanly
     away, below his helmet line.
    I looked up at the dwarf, who hadn't moved, remembering to put my hand inside my shirt
     before I spoke. “What about him?” I asked hoarsely, pointing a clawlike finger at the dead
     hobgoblin behind him. I sounded like an animal learning to talk.
    The dwarf eased up, but only by a hair. He stepped away from the body behind him, clearing
     my view. This hobgoblin lay face up, an arm flopped down beside an empty wine cask in the
     grass beside him. He'd been stabbed through the darkened leather armor over his abdomen. A
     second stab wound, blue-black now, was visible in his throat. His left ear was missing,
     too, cleanly
    cut away. He had not even gotten up; he had died sitting, then had fallen back.
    I reached up and felt my own ears. Both were still intact.
    “Maybe you could tell me a bit about what you want.” The dwarf's voice was steady and low,
     his axe arm still raised for a strike or a throw.
    I looked beyond the dwarf at the half-forested hilltop. No one else was around. “Looking
     for someone,” I said finally.
    This didn't answer everything, but the dwarf let it go for now. “Got a name?” he asked.
    “Evredd,” I said, the word sounding like a mumble. I covered the wound and said it again,
     more clearly.
    The dwarf's flint-black gaze went to my chest. “You a dead boy, ain't you?” he said.
    I found it hard to answer that. It wasn't something I wanted to face.
    “You a rev'nant, I bet,” the dwarf went on, knowingly. “Been dead a bit, I can tell. I
     seen dead boys before, but not walkin' ones like you. You a rev'nant, come back to get
     your killer man. That right?”
    He was talkative for a dwarf. “Who did this?” I asked him, indicating the bodies.
    The dwarf looked at me a while longer, then glanced around, one eye still on me. The sky
     was darkening with the coming sunset, but the rain had stopped. Behind the dwarf by a
     couple hundred feet, in a tree line, was an irregular outcropping of rock, overgrown with
     vines. A wide gully or eroded road ran out of