The Road To Sevendor - A Spellmonger Anthology by Terry Mancour Page A

battle suddenly sounding preferable to discussing the merits of matrimony with these two.  At least less bloody. 
    “My Lord,” Rogo reminded me, “we are on leave.”  His tone wasn’t begging or pleading or even requesting, it was merely informing me that this wasn’t necessarily our fight.  Hell, I wanted to get home to Alya as much as he wanted to return to his wife – more, perhaps – but damn it, I had responsibilities.
    “We’re also at war,” I countered.  “And this road is filled with refugees and supply shipments.”  I looked behind us, at the bulk of our little column.  Together with my two apprentices, there were slightly more than two dozen.  Not enough to make much difference, if there was a large band, but quite enough to finish off a small one decisively.  “We can at least stop and find out if they need assistance,” I conceded.
    “And it might be a trap,” Tyndal said, eagerly.  He wasn’t done killing goblins this season, apparently.
    “Then let’s go see to these goblins,” Rogo sighed, expertly stringing his bow from the saddle.
    “It really would be impolite not to,” I agreed, the thought of the comforts of matrimony receding for at least another day in the process. “Perhaps we can find out how the gurvani feel about marriage.”
     
    *                            *                            *
     
    It would have been an interesting question to ask them.  The problem was they weren’t gurvani. 
    Gurvani stand four to five feet high and have black fur from head to toe, like a furry twelve-year-old.  They are also cunning and vicious warriors.  They are also nocturnal. They don’t move around in the sun voluntarily unless their dark master compels them, or their shamans provide cover from the overbright sun.  This band was in direct sun, and didn’t seem bothered.  That was my first clue.  The group that the soldiers had surrounded was not human, true, but the fur that covered their bodies was also not black.  It was various shades of brown.  
    The soldiers were a simple escort company of militia, local fellas from around Wilderhall quickly conscripted and armed for duty as soon as the harvest could spare them.  They had the same basic accent as the Nirodi.  They had been ordered escort their train to Tudry in support of the war effort, but they were young and eager for battle.  They were ready to avenge their human brethren from Alshar who’d been slain in the war.
    Only these brave stalwarts from the Castali Wilderlands had cornered . . . a harmless band of terrified River Folk.  I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.
    The River Folk are typically smaller than gurvani, with few reaching four feet tall and most adults being around three feet to three and a half, the females being a few inches shorter.  What they lacked in height they more than made up for in girth, however: River Folk are fat.
    That’s not exactly fair – River Folk are built differently than humans, and their proportions do not match ours in several ways.  Because of this, a healthy adult looks to human eyes to be scandalously overweight, if he were human.   They have proportionately wider hips and narrower shoulders, their hands and feet look larger than they should be, attached to stubby little arms and legs.  And their heads are half again as large for their shoulders as a human’s. 
    Add to that their actual fat – and the River Folk can pack it on, a defense against lean times – and their course, fluffy coat of brown fur, and the over-all effect is a kind of enormously obese rodent who happens to enjoy eating and getting drunk and smoking and carousing more than life itself. 
    That was one reason the River Folk had such a bad reputation in their native Riverlands.  Booze.  They knew the art of brewing like my dad knows baking, and they practiced it with the enthusiasm that would make the drunken folk of the