The Covenant of The Forge dnt-1

by Dan Parkinson

  “We can still trade,” Olim told him. “Our road will serve.”

  “Fifty miles of tunnel, going the wrong direction? And that isn’t all.” The old dwarf pointed downshore, where long lines of Daewar were operating a bucket brigade. They were carrying water from the lake to the delvings, where it was lifted by ropes. “In Daebardin, Sire, we collected water from above. Cisterns and flows. Here we have to carry it from below. It is not efficient. Your people don’t like it.”

  “Oh? They are grumbling, then? And what else don’t they like?”

  “Many of them don’t like it here,” Slate told him. “Gil Gemcrust and his weavers are upset because there is nothing to weave. The artisans wear gloomy faces because the forges are cold. The woodcrafters … most of them are there in the water line because they have nothing else to do. And not an hour ago I heard Winna Redthread complaining that the only grain left in the stores is oats.”

  “Winna Redthread!” Olim spat. “That female would be desolate if she didn’t have something to complain about.”

  “It is the delvers, too, Sire. And their families. There is much discontent. They say people are supposed to delve into mountainsides, not from the bellies of mountains. They say people are supposed to live inward from outside, not outward from inside.”

  Olim Goldbuckle felt a growl coming on, and stifled it to a rumble in his throat. Leave it to a gray-headed delvemaster to burst the bubbles of dreams! Impatiently, he turned away. “We’ll think of something,” he said.

  It was a logging crew, outbound through the great tunnel, that found the remains of the Theiwar and Daergar who had died fighting each other beyond the iron grate. Hundreds of bodies littered the siding cave, and others beyond. The Daewar wandered for a mile or more, gawking at the fallen dwarves, then turned around and went back to report.

  Gem Bluesleeve led a company of warriors to investigate, all the way back to the north slope of Sky’s End. There he found the wreckage of the citadel and surmised what had occurred.

  Olim Goldbuckle listened to the reports with his council, then sent parties to remove the bodies in the passage and to reseal the tunnel at its far end.

  “Sky’s End is behind us,” he told the council of thane elders. “We came from there to here and will not go back. We will find other ways to the outside. We will explore the paths of Urkhan. If there are not suitable routes from these caverns, then we will drill our own routes, just as we drilled our passage here.”

  Late autumn lay on the Kharolis Mountains when Daewar explorers probing upward broke through into some old, nearly deserted lairs of the Theiwar — lairs that had been worn out and largely abandoned, high on the south shoulder of the peak called Cloudseeker. A few Theiwar were there, and a few Daewar fell to stones and dark blades in the first moments of penetration, but the defense mounted by the Theiwar was pitifully small. In this entire cave system, only a few hundred Theiwar remained, mostly women and children and the very old. But among them at the time were some Theiwar leaders arranging for food supplies. The Daewar troop that followed the delvers through, led by Gem Bluesleeve, subdued and disarmed them with little effort.

  And it was then that Olim Goldbuckle learned that the human intruders had regrouped and attacked again out on the eastern slopes.

  Along a wide front, up through the foothills from the plains, thousands upon thousands of humans now mounted an invasion upon Kal-Thax. Pushed westward by the dragon war in the east, shunned and harried by the organized realm of Ergoth, new hordes of humans — and other races among them — had found themselves blocked by the domains of the dwarves and had reacted as humans do. They had fallen back, milled around in confusion until there were enough of them massed there, then they had organized themselves and attacked.

  With only the Theiwar, Daergar, and Klar to patrol the eastern borders of Kal-Thax, the invaders had pushed far into the passes, farther than they ever had managed to go before. Taking advantage of the latest war between Theiwar and Daergar — with Klar intervening on both sides — the humans and their allies had established a cordon from Grand Gorge to the Cliffs of Shalomar and begun a series of bloody raids against the dwarves.

  A tenuous treaty stood now between the Theiwar and the Daergar, linked in their defense of Kal-Thax against the outsiders. Most of the warriors of both tribes were on the eastern slopes, fighting.

  “Rust!” a thunderous Olim Goldbuckle roared when he heard this report. “Rust and tarnish! Daewar, to arms! The Pact of Kal-Thax calls!”

  Before him, three Theiwar captives stood in wide-eyed awe, staring around them at the immense cavern to which they had been brought blindfolded.

  “What … what is this place?” Slide Tolec asked finally.

  At his arm, a Daewar guard grinned. “It may be your last, best hope, Theiwar,” he whispered. “If we do not beat off the outsiders this time, you and your kind had better hope that our prince will allow you sanctuary in New Daebardin.”

  *

  The war that raged along the east slopes of the Kharolis range was more than a war. It was an ongoing clash between the stubborn, immovable determination of the dwarven nations who had sworn in the name of Reorx to allow no outsiders into Kal-Thax, and the desperate, irresistible drive of thousands upon thousands of displaced creatures who had nowhere else to go.

  The first Daewar company to pour down the slopes of Cloudseeker to reinforce the ragtag army of Theiwar, Daergar, Klar — and, now and then, even clots of terrified Aghar, the reclusive gully dwarves, caught up in a skirmish — ran headlong into the fury of a band of ogres fighting alongside humans. Outnumbered a dozen to one by the Daewar, the ogres yet managed to decimate the company before taking to their heels. In that one clash, seventeen Daewar died and four others were wounded. Five ogres were killed, one captured, and none knew how many were injured.

  From their towering captive, Gem Bluesleeve learned that the ogres had fled a place called Bloten, driven out by a dragon seeking a base from which to fly against elves in the east.

  All up and down the slopes of the Kharolis Mountains, dwarves were fighting against humans, ogres, and — beneath the Cliffs of Shalomar — even some squadrons of goblins. The dwarven lines held day after day, but Olim Goldbuckle of the Daewar, Slide Tolec of the Theiwar, and Vog Ironface of the Daergar all knew that they could not hold for long unless they could somehow turn from defense to attack. Autumn lay upon the mountains, and the advancing ices might give the dwarves a brief reprieve — but only if they could hold the invaders east of the frontal ranges. If the outsiders made it into the high mountains and found shelter in some of the deep valleys hidden there, then by spring, Kal-Thax would be indefensible.

  It was Olim Goldbuckle’s captain, Gem Bluesleeve, who led the first assault down the slopes, hoping to break the cordon.

  With three hundred Daewar and a hundred each of Theiwar and Daergar behind him, Bluesleeve — leading companies of his elite Golden Hammer guard — attacked downslope in phalanx pattern, and the humans there, mostly wild Sackmen from the northern plains, found themselves faced by a moving wall of iron shields from which naked blades flicked like snakes’ tongues. For a moment, the humans held the line, but only for a moment. Flanked by howling, slashing Klar, the phalanx punched through the human defense and spread into a broad wedge of swords and shields, marching across the bodies of fallen foe.

  In disarray, the Sackmen fled down the slopes, and the dwarves pursued … and ran headlong into something few of them had ever seen before.

  Running as though from death itself, the mass of humans spread across the rising plains and disappeared behind a line of tall, ominous figures — fighters of Ergoth, armored from head to toe, sitting upon armored horses, and bringing long lances down for a charge.

  On the open ground, the dwarves were no match for mounted Ergothians led by knights. More than a third of Gem Bluesleeve’s command fell there, before the rest escaped back up the slopes. The line of armored riders pursued only as far as the rising r
idges and stopped there. But one of them raised his faceplate to call after the Golden Hammer, “Stay in your mountains, dwarves! Defend yourselves there if you will, but do not bring your problems to us!”

  Below the retreating dwarves, the armored ones turned methodically and began sweeping the plains, turning Sackmen back toward the mountains.

  Atop a spire, Olim Goldbuckle watched the rout and shook his head sadly. “We have lost our one advantage,” he told Slide Tolec. “Those people do not want our enemies any more than we do. Kal-Thax is lost, and there is nowhere to turn but to the deeps beneath the stone.”

  “We Theiwar have no deeps,” Slide said. “What of us?”

  A few feet away, a featureless mask turned toward them. “Nor do we, Daewar,” the voice of Vog Ironface said, sounding like hollow thunder. “Unless you think we can defend mineshafts.”

  Olim looked from one to the other of them, then fixed his level gaze on the Theiwar. “You once told me that you believed we were creating a fortress,” he reminded him. “Do you remember?”

  “That was a trick,” Slide frowned. “You let us believe that, to divert us from what you were really doing.”

  “Nonetheless.” Olim shrugged. “We now have deeps, and there is room there for Theiwar” — he glanced aside, dislike plain on his face as he looked at the dark slit in front of Vog’s eyes — “and even for Daergar. The Daewar will not be the ones to break the Pact of Kal-Thax. But the deeps we have found are ours, and only Daewar shall rule there.”

  The Daergar started to answer, then stepped back with a gasp as the air behind Olim Goldbuckle crackled, and a figure appeared there — an ancient, tattered form leaning on a two-tined spear. Eyes that were like darkness gazed out from beneath a mane of silver hair. The phantom shimmered, varying from translucent to almost transparent. It seemed to stand before them, but its feet didn’t quite touch the ground.

  “The highest of the deep shall rule,” a cold voice whispered. “Only the highest of the deep.”

  Olim stared at the apparition. It was the figure from his troubling dreams. “You!” he muttered.

  “Yes,” the cold voice said, then seemed to be talking to no one at all. “Delve the deeps of dwarvendom. Those who rule have yet to come. You will know them when they do. You will know them by the drum.”

  Dumbly, Theiwar and Daergar gawked at the apparition. Then Olim Goldbuckle choked out, “Who, then? What drum?”

  The figure turned slightly and became transparent. “That drum,” it whispered, still turning, toward the plains beyond the mountain slopes. “That drum.” It turned a bit more and was gone.

  Yet on the freshening east wind, sweeping across the seething plains below the Kharolis Mountains, there was a sound. Faint with distance, far beyond the massed confusion of invaders below Kal-Thax, still it was there, and they all heard it.

  The rhythmic, heartbeat sound of marching drums.

  The dwarves weren’t the only ones who heard the distant sound. Down through the foothills, marauders turned their faces eastward, and out on the plains a rank of Ergothians wheeled and rode away, seeking the source of this new thing.

  Gem Bluesleeve saw his chance, and he took it. At his command, hundreds of Daewar stormed down the slopes, with Theiwar and Daergar at their flanks. Confused and surprised, and without the Ergothians behind them, human companies on the slopes turned and fled. Within hours, the Golden Hammer had established a defense perimeter below the shoulders of the high peaks.

  Part V:

  The Life Tree People

  The Eastern Border

  of Kal-Thax

  Century of Wind

  Decade of Oak

  Fall, Year of Copper

  20

  Forging Bonds

  High mountains were visible in the distance when the Hylar made long camp on the banks of a wooded stream. Though still far away, the mountains stood blue in the western sky and called to them, like echoes of Thoradin in their hearts.

  While the campsite was being cleared and fires prepared, Colin Stonetooth and others climbed a knoll and looked to the west. Tera Sharn stood at her father’s shoulder as he tested the winds with ears and nose, the knelt to look at the soil beneath the lush grasses. He pulled a sprig of grass, chewed on it thoughtfully, then scraped earth from beneath and tasted it. The land was rich and fertile, as much of southeastern Ergoth was. But it was land suited to humans more than to dwarves.

  But beyond, where the high mountains rose blue in the autumn light, the vista that tugged at him and the winds sweeping down from there spoke of high meadows and honest stone, of steeps and caverns and mineral deposits … of dwarven places.

  “We will remain here long enough for the animals to graze and the foresters to lay in stores,” Colin Stonetooth decreed. “Let the crafters work their forges and the weavers work their wools. When next we set out our anvils, it will be within those mountains yonder.”

  “Kal-Thax,” said Mistral Thrax. “Kal-Thax is there, in those mountains. The place of Everbardin.”

  “Then tell our bonded knight to lay out his fields and complete his drills,” the chieftain said. “He is human and will not go to Kal-Thax, but we will not pause again until we are there.”

  The site of the camp was well chosen. It offered ripe fields for harvest and graze, wood for fires and forges, and water for bathing and the tending of stock. The Hylar had come far in learning the ways of combat under the tutelage of Glendon Hawke, but there were still more drills to be accomplished, and time was needed for that.

  But there was still another — and primary — reason why the great caravan of the Hylar stopped. It was time for the wedding of the chieftain’s daughter, Tera Sharn, and the captain of guards, Willen Ironmaul.

  Through a thousand miles of wilderness, and even before in the place that had been Thorin, the people had watched the romance between the robust guardsman and the dark-eyed princess develop. Handil the Drum had become legend among the Hylar, and Tolon the Muse was far behind, ruling a place the Hylar would never again see. Cale Greeneye was well-loved among his father’s people, but was strange to them, preferring other ways to dwarven ways.

  That left Tera Sharn as one for the people to idolize, and idolize her they did. For his part, Willen had traveled the past hundred miles with a wide, silly grin parting his whiskers and sometimes acted as though his head were lost in the clouds.

  It was time for a wedding, and the Hylar set it up in great style. In a clearing they erected a large, ornate forge with crested stone arches above it representing the strength of mountains, and four silver-inlaid bellows, representing the four seasons’ winds that sang across high peaks.

  Throughout one morning, most of the tribe worked to make things ready, the women shouting orders, the men running here and there, doing as they were told. Foresters selected wood for the ceremonial forge — seven varieties of wood, representing the seven precious metals: hickory for steel, symbol of flexibility and wisdom; oak for iron, for strength; maple for tin, for unswerving devotion; cedar for copper, the metal of the heart; ash for nickel, for endurance and faith; multi-colored pine for bronze, symbolic of blendings, and yellow hedge for gold, representing the lasting comforts of home and family.

  A ceremonial bronze hammer had been forged for the occasion, and a set of copper tongs with rosewood grips.

  When the sun was high in the bright sky, the entire tribe assembled around the forge, in which bright coals glowed cherry-red. The Hylar guard — trimmed, shined, and brushed, each warrior mounted on his best tall horse — spread in formation to line a pathway, along which road came Colin Stonetooth and the Ten, followed by a dazed-looking Willen Ironmaul flanked by guardsmen. Sedately, they rode to the forge clearing and dismounted.

  For a moment there was silence, the only sounds those of the breeze, songbirds, and an excited kender voice saying, “Wow! Would you look at that! It’s …” The voice stopped abruptly as strong dwarven hands were clapped over the kender’s mouth. Softly, t
hen, a drum was tapped. Then another, and another, picking up the rhythm. All around the clearing, drummers tapped a soft riff on muffled vibrars as another pathway opened and a dozen dwarf girls came through, strewing handsful of steel coins and arrowheads. Behind them walked Tera Sharn, wearing her finest kilt and lace sandals, a bodice embroidered with sunbursts, and a long, quilted cloak of the finest web-silk fabric. Her hair was tied high on her head and adorned by a copper comb.

  Several of Willen Ironmaul’s escorts stepped close to him, ready to support him in case his knees began to shake.

  Colin Stonetooth strode to the forge and raised his hands. “People of the people,” he intoned. “People of the highest place, people of the Hylar! Gather now in the sight of Reorx, maker of all people, Reorx who must certainly watch over these, his most beloved people, who were created last and best — ”

  “That isn’t right!” a high voice protested from aside. “Dwarves aren’t the …” Hard hands muffled the kender again, and a deep voice whispered, “Get that little nuisance out of here!”

  “Who were created last and are therefore best,” Colin Stonetooth elaborated. “People of the Hylar, observe and witness. Two among us have chosen to bond as husband and wife. Willen Ironmaul, Captain of the General Guard, has chosen Tera Sharn, ah … my daughter. And she has chosen him as well. Does anyone here assembled wish … or dare … to challenge?”

  On cue, Tera Sharn raised a flower-garlanded javelin — ornate but nonetheless deadly — and held it high, turning full circle, her eyes meeting those of each unmarried young woman in the crowd. One of the guards nudged Willen Ironmaul, who seemed to snap out of a trance and raised his sword, where every male in the crowd could see it.

  There being no challengers, Colin Stonetooth nodded. The bride and groom put down their weapons, joined hands and stepped closer to the forge, feeling its pleasant heat on their faces. At its foot stood a gold-embossed eighty-pound anvil, wrapped in ribbons. Willen squatted, hoisted the anvil and set it on the forge’s rim, between the ceremonial hammer and the ceremonial tongs.