Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(15)
Even from afar, it was obvious that most of the fields were overgrown with high weeds and grasses. A few trees had even taken root. Saplings showed in many places, and one field sported a small copse that had obviously been growing for decades.
As Drizzt and Dahlia crested on a high rise, they came in sight of a rickety farmhouse and barn, and at last saw some cultivated land, but it covered far less than a single acre. It seemed more of a garden than a farm.
Drizzt held Andahar there for a bit, surveying the spreading lands below for some time. He kicked the unicorn into a slow trot, veering to follow the remains of a broken post fence.
“Look,” Dahlia said, pointing past him, beyond the tall grasses and near the garden to a pair of children. At the same time, the children spotted the riders and split away from each other, fleeing with all speed into the heavy grass. A third child, younger still, came into view near the barn only briefly before crawling into the darkness underneath the low entry porch.
“Not warm to visitors,” Drizzt remarked.
“Can you blame them?” Dahlia replied. “I’m sure that most who come this way are the goodly sort who would help with the harvesting, if not the planting,” she added sarcastically.
Drizzt kept Andahar moving at a slow and unthreatening pace. With a thought imparted to the magical unicorn, he bade the steed to enact the magic of the bell-lined barding, and each subsequent stride filled the air with the tinkling of sweet music.
“You think to tease them out with a happy song?” Dahlia asked.
Drizzt veered the unicorn through a break in the weathered fence, then cut a straight line toward the dilapidated porch of the farmhouse. On a couple of occasions, both riders noticed movement to the side—the sudden shift of grass and once, the brief glimpse of a mop-haired young boy.
But the drow didn’t react to any of it. He just kept his mount walking steadily, kept the bells ringing their song, and kept his eyes straight ahead.
At the base of the porch, he dismounted and casually tossed Andahar’s reins back over the unicorn’s strong neck. He offered his hand to Dahlia, but she fell away from him, rolling backward off Andahar to back flip to her feet on the other side of the steed.
“Of course,” the drow whispered, and lowered his hand. He paused and looked all around, noting some movement in the grass not so far away, and ending with his gaze locked on the eyes of the child under the barn’s entryway. He offered a quick smile before turning and walking up the porch steps. He pulled off his black leather glove and knocked on the door.
“They won’t answer, even if anyone is at home,” Dahlia remarked, coming up beside him. “If anyone even lives here, I mean.”
“The garden is meager, but it is tended,” Drizzt replied. “And there are animals.” He pointed to the side of the barn, to a chicken coop, where a few scraggly chickens walked around, pecking at the dirt.
“Someone might live in a nearby house and come here to reap,” Dahlia said. “Safely watching from a distant point when strangers come knocking.”
“Leaving their children to the whims of those strangers?”
Dahlia shrugged. Desperate people were capable of many things, she knew from long and bitter experience, even regarding the safety of their children.
The elf closed her eyes and fought the memory. She stood atop that cliff again, that long-ago time, a baby in her arms …
“There’s no answer to your call,” she said, a sudden urgency in her tone. “Let us be gone.”
In response, Drizzt pushed open the door and walked into the farmhouse.
It was a fairly large home, with several rooms and even a staircase leading up to a loft. It had once been a decent abode for the floors were not dirt, but made of wide oak planks, which squeaked when he walked into the entryway. A half-burned log lay in the hearth and a metal pot sat on the counter across from a small table. Truly the place had fallen into disrepair, but someone lived there.
“Well met,” he called softly, walking in farther and moving from doorway to doorway. “We’re travelers from the south, and no enemies of the good farmer folk of Luskan.”
No response.
“Let us be gone,” Dahlia said, but Drizzt held up his hand and cocked his head. Dahlia followed Drizzt into a side room. The creaking floor surely betrayed them, but once in that room, the couple waited and listened.
They heard the slightest hushed intake of breath, as if a youngster fought hard to not scream out in terror.
Drizzt moved suddenly, bending low and pulling aside the meager bedding, no more than hay and a blanket. He brushed the floor quickly, studying the creases and lines in the wood, then wedged his fingers in one crack and pulled open a secret hatch.
Then he stood, even more suddenly, leaning back as a trigger clicked and a crossbow bolt rose up from the hole, only narrowly missing his chin before finding a hold in the ceiling above him. Without the slightest hesitation, Drizzt rolled forward, reaching down to snatch the feeble crossbow from the hands of its wielder, then to grab the boy as well, by the collar. With frightening suddenness and speed, the drow plucked both from the hole and set the dirty child down on the floor in front of him.
“Quick to shoot,” he scolded.
The boy, no more than ten or eleven years of age, stared wide-eyed at the exotic drow, his jaw hanging open, in awe of the intruder’s white mithral shirt, the unicorn necklace pendant lying against Drizzt’s neck, at the pommels of his fabulous weapons, one gem-encrusted black adamantine fashioned into the likeness of a hunting cat’s head and maw, the other with a single star-cut blue sapphire set into its silver. Even wider went his eyes when he looked at the drow’s elf companion, with her exotic hair and that mesmerizing woad. He gasped and had Drizzt not been quick to guide him aside, he would have fallen back into the hole.