The Covenant of The Forge dnt-1

by Dan Parkinson

  The drums were muffled, here deep beneath the mountains, but every ear in Thorbardin heard the call and most responded. By the thousands, following the lake shore, they went to see what was going on.

  The table of seven sides was erected again on the scrubbed stone of that same shore where Colin Stonetooth had died, and behind it waited a dozen Hylar drummers and Olim Goldbuckle, Prince of the Daewar. When the thane leaders were present, Olim asked them solemnly to take the seats they had claimed before. When they were seated, Tera Sharn came to stand at her father’s place at the seventh side. With Willen Ironmaul at her shoulder, seeming to tower over her, she gazed silently at one and then another of the four chieftains gathered at the table. When her gaze rested on Olim Goldbuckle she asked, “You ordered the drums?”

  “It is how the thanes were first called.” The Daewar shrugged, his blond whiskers glowing in the subdued light. “I thought it appropriate, and the drummers agreed. We have things to discuss at this table, and now we are assembled.” He glanced around. “Well, most of us are.”

  The Aghar were absent this time, because the entire tribe had wandered off somewhere and had not yet been found. And most of the Einar had retired to their valleys to prepare for spring.

  But the Daewar prince was there, and Slide Tolec, with Vog Ironface of the Daergar, and the Klar leader, Bole Trune. The Hylar drums had called, and they had responded. With wide, dark eyes as wise as her father’s, Tera Sharn regarded them one by one. Then she asked, “You … all of you … avenged my father. Why?”

  There was silence for a moment, then Olim Goldbuckle said, “It was not vengeance. We joined to keep the peace of the covenant.”

  “Glome and his followers would have brought chaos upon Thorbardin.” Slide Tolec nodded. “In Kal-Thax, we have seen the face of chaos. We have despised one another and have paid the price for it.”

  “The Hylar, your father,” Vog rumbled, “brought wisdom here.”

  “I see,” Tera said. “And now my father is gone.”

  “Which is why we are here at this table today,” Olim said. “Who will lead the Hylar now?”

  Behind Tera, Willen Ironmaul said proudly, “Our people have asked my wife to take her father’s place.”

  “You, and not your brother?” Vog raised his mask, looking at the young dwarf woman curiously. Even to his Daergar eyes her beauty was obvious, as apparent as the fullness of her belly. “Your Hylar would follow a female chief?”

  “My brother Cale Greeneye favors the open sky above his head,” Tera said. “He is Neidar and has no wish to lead. He has told our people that.”

  “What have you told your people?” Olim asked.

  “I have given them no answer,” she said. “Though I have thought about the matter.” She hesitated, collecting her thoughts, then said, “Colin Stonetooth, my father, was a wise person. He looked always ahead, and never back. And because of that wisdom, he made a mistake … twice. He trusted the right people, seeing the path ahead, but he failed to see the wrong ones behind. At Thorin, which is now Thoradin, it was humans who betrayed him.”

  A resonant growl came from Vog’s mask, but Tera raised a small hand. “Not all humans,” she said. “Those my father trusted as friends were — as much as they could be — true friends. But others were not. And then here, where we found others of our own kind, he trusted. He trusted and was blind to the enemies who stalked him.”

  “As we all were,” Olim nodded.

  “I am my father’s daughter,” Tera said. “His blood is my blood, and his ways my ways. Sooner or later I would make the same mistakes he made, because I see as he saw. Therefore I will propose another for chieftain of the Hylar, but I believe I would like for each of you to approve before I do.”

  They stared at her blankly. “Why ask us?” Slide Tolec tilted his head. “Each thane in Thorbardin is independent. The Covenant is clear about that.”

  “So it is,” she agreed. “But there is much to do here if Thorbardin as my father envisioned it — and as each of you envision it — is to be built. Old differences among the clans must be recognized, and different ways respected, but the Council of Thanes must act as one on matters of the future. To do things which have never been done before, all must work together. This Council alone can make that occur. Therefore I ask your approval before I say to my people that my husband, Willen Ironmaul, should be their chief.”

  Behind her, Willen’s mouth dropped open. “Me? Tera, I am no chief! I’m just a soldier. I wouldn’t know how to …”

  Tera looked around at him and slipped her hand into his. “No one is a chief until the time comes to lead,” she said.

  Slowly, a grin spread across Olim Goldbuckle’s wide face, parting his golden whiskers. “You are your father’s daughter,” he said. “I wonder if your Hylar suspect how fortunate they are.”

  “I would welcome Willen Ironmaul to this table,” Slide Tolec said solemnly. “I know as well as anyone that being chief comes of necessity more than by design.”

  Vog Ironface hesitated, then raised his mask. Glinting ferret eyes in a face that sloped like a fox’s studied the big Hylar guardsman, and he nodded. “I have seen you fight,” Vog said. “There is more to your strategies than strength and precision. There is something unseen. What is it?”

  “It is order.” Willen shrugged. “The teacher who taught us how to fight also taught us why and when. He said that skills without honor — which I think is nothing more than order of the heart — are like a forge without fire.”

  “Honor is order?” the Daergar mused. “Order of the heart. Interesting. Wisdom” — he glanced at Tera — “and honor. Willen Ironmaul, Vog Ironface will welcome you to this table.”

  “As will I,” Olim Goldbuckle chuckled. “Maybe some order of the heart is what is needed to get us all moving forward again.”

  At the far side, Bole Trune rose to his feet, drew his cudgel, and placed it on the table before him. Then he turned to Willen Ironmaul. “Klar have trusted Hylar,” he rumbled. “Bole Trune trusts you.”

  A few days later the muffled drums said that Willen Ironmaul had been named chieftain of Thane Hylar of Thorbardin. And in the song of the drums was a resonance that echoed in the hearts of dwarves of all the thanes, quickening their steps as they worked. Purpose, they felt, had been restored.

  26

  The Road to Reason

  Through the final weeks of winter forges rang beneath Cloudseeker Peak, and the vapors rising above the Windweavers were warm from the fires far below. Though the clans of Kal-Thax had acted in unison for centuries to defend against intrusion into their lands, this was the first time in history that they had actually worked together to achieve something positive, and deep in the heart of the mountain, their combined skills began to show visible results.

  To the Daewar’s genius at delving were added the Hylar arts of stonecutting and masonry, and the delves were no longer limited in their expanse. With the introduction of lift platforms, like those invented by Handil Farsight, the difficulty of working from level to level in a dig was almost eliminated. The dark steel of the Daergar proved excellent for the making of rails and cables, and the dwarves began construction of a series of subterranean roads to connect the centers of all the separate towns of Thorbardin and to accommodate cable carts to and from the warrens.

  Boats were crafted from lumber brought by the Neidar or traded from the region’s independent Einar, and wharves were chiseled into the slopes of the lakeshore. From there, cables were strung out to the base of the great, living stalactite above the water and fixed there. From here would begin the construction of the Hylar’s delves, working upward through the stone and — eventually — downward from the mountain’s peak through shafts that would later accommodate sun-tunnels.

  Most of what would someday exist here was still in the minds and on the scrolls of the crafters, but it was begun and there would be no stopping it.

  The thane leaders envisioned Thorbardin as a fortress, a str
onghold from which the dwarves could issue forth at will to protect their fields and valleys. No longer could all of Kal-Thax be, simply, closed. It was far too large, and too accessible, for the growing press of outsiders to be entirely kept out. In times long past, when intruders were few, that might have been possible. But now it was not a practical option, and the dwarven people were nothing if not practical. Still, the realm could be held against settlement, and this was the intention of the new covenant.

  Some outsiders would get in. Some might journey across Kal-Thax. But with the fortress of Thorbardin dominating the realm, none would take root there.

  An option of a different sort was proposed by Tera Sharn and presented by Willen Ironmaul. If the tide of outsiders could not be stopped, they suggested, then why not turn it, as a shield turns a lance?

  They puzzled over the idea and how it might be accomplished, and it was Olim Goldbuckle who came up with the answer. “Since we don’t want all those people coming here,” he suggested, “maybe we could give them somewhere else to go instead. Most people — humans in particular — are more likely to follow a road than to cross it.”

  Thus, even before the first thaw of spring was felt in the valleys, Cale Greeneye rode out from Kal-Thax with a company of Neidar volunteers to scout the internal ranges, and Willen Ironmaul rode eastward with a hundred mounted Hylar warriors led by his new guard captain, Sand Sakor, and accompanied by Gem Bluesleeve and his Golden Hammer footmen. On behalf of the Council of Thanes, Willen intended to have a talk with whoever was in charge in southeastern Ergoth. The humans who lived there were as beset by the flood of refugees from the east as the dwarves of Kal-Thax were.

  During the Hylar migration, they had seen human citadels scattered here and there across the countryside. Homes and fiefdoms to the knights of the lords that governed the land, some of these were no more than manor houses perched atop ridges and rocky hills overlooking the fields and herds of their supplicants. But there was one that Cale Greeneye had seen from a distance and reported. It was a great, walled keep atop a high bluff and was obviously the home of someone important. It sat several miles north of the field where the Hylar had defeated the Cobar raiders, and Willen suspected that the place was the seat of that gray knight who had spoken warning to him on that day — the one Glendon Hawke called Lord Charon. For Calnar horses and sturdy Daewar footmen, the place was not too far away, and the man had seemed to be in charge. Willen decided he would be the one to see.

  Two days out from the lower slopes, the dwarf troop entered tilled fields and meadows, with little villages visible here and there among them. A few miles farther and the great citadel was in sight. It was as Cale had described it — a tall fortification of gray stone, with ramparts and parapets where banners flew. It was not a great structure by Hylar standards, but better than most things Willen had seen built by humans.

  He wasn’t sure what protocols were involved in approaching a human stronghold to discuss business, but he had observed back in Thoradin that humans were very much like dwarves in their thinking, except for their inability to really concentrate on anything for very long. So he took the direct approach. With his troops at his back, the new chieftain of the Hylar of Thorbardin simply headed for the place and assumed he would be noticed soon.

  The first to notice the dwarves were villagers at a little place where thatch-roofed huts crowded along what seemed to be the beginning of a road. At first glance there were no people visible, either in the village or thereabouts in the crusted fields where the melting snows had left gray-white patterns atop the dark mud beneath. No one was stirring, but there was smoke above the huts, so Willen had a trumpeter blow salute, then led his troops right into the center of the place. Here and there shutters parted, and doors opened a crack. Shadowed eyes stared out at the short, armored creatures perched on the tall horses, then shutters slammed and doors echoed to the sounds of bolts being dropped into place. From somewhere a flimsy arrow — like a quarrel from a badly strung crossbow — arced in the sunlight and glanced off Willen’s helm.

  He raised his shield and quartered around in his high saddle. “Here, now!” he roared. “There’s no call for that!”

  Somewhere nearby, a great squawking and flailing erupted. It sounded like foxes in a chicken coop. At one flank of the dwarf troop, a shutter opened momentarily and something flew out, bouncing harmlessly off the armor of Sand Sakor. Sand looked down at the fallen object, then looked up at his chieftain. “It’s a potato,” he said in disbelief. “Somebody threw a potato at me.”

  Gem Bluesleeve strolled forward to ask, “Would you like for us to haul those people out where we can see them?”

  “Go away!” a muffled human voice called from within one of the huts. “Go away! There’s nothing here for you!”

  And another voice, even more muffled, said, “Hoodlums! Can’t they just leave us alone?”

  And another, “Wait, Mullin! I don’t think these are the same hoodlums. Look how short they are. Do you think those might be dwarves?”

  “Dwarves don’t ride horses, idiot!” the first voice chided.

  “Are those really horses? How’d they get so big?”

  The sound of chickens in panic came again, then stopped. Willen shook his head. “We mean no harm!” he called. “We’re just passing through. We’re looking for the home of Lord Charon.”

  “You see?” a voice insisted. “They’re the same ones. The hoodlums looking for Lord Charon.”

  “They can’t be the same ones. Those were bigger and their horses were shorter, and besides, those already know where Lord Charon is.”

  “Then these are more of the same.” The voice rose again. “Go away and leave us alone!”

  “Rust!” Willen growled. “All right! We’ll go away! Just tell us if that citadel ahead is Lord Charon’s keep!”

  “Of course it is,” a querulous voice snapped. “What else would it be?”

  “Thank you,” Willen Ironmaul said. He flicked his reins and headed out of the village.

  Behind him, the hidden voices chattered, “I tell you, Mullin, those are dwarves!” “Nonsense! Why would dwarves come here? And what would dwarves want with Lord Charon?” “Well, I think it’s more of those same hoodlums from Xak Tsaroth.” “There aren’t any dwarves in Xak Tsaroth, it’s a human city.” “Then maybe the hoodlums are getting shorter there.”

  “What do you suppose that was all about?” Sand Sakor wondered.

  “I can probably tell you what it was about, if you want to know,” a high voice said from below.

  Willen glanced down and frowned. “You!”

  “Of course I’m me,” Castomel Springheel assured him. “I’ve been me most of my life, except maybe the time when that old mage turned me into a goat for a day and a half. I wasn’t quite myself then.”

  The kender was trotting along happily, almost under the hooves of Willen’s great horse, Shag, and was carrying a brace of chickens. “If you’re looking for Lord Charon,” he said, “that’s his stronghold up there on that hill. But then, if you’re looking for the Tariff Overlord’s people, that’s where they are, too. Except they’re outside. Lord Charon doesn’t invite them in.” The kender’s brow lowered in disapproval. “They steal anything they can get their hands on.”

  “Like someone else I’ve met,” Willen snorted.

  Cas glanced up at him. “Who?”

  “Never mind. Where did you get those chickens?”

  “What chickens? Oh, these?” the kender glanced at the birds dangling from his hands as though surprised to find them there. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about supper, and sure enough, there were some chickens just waiting around. I don’t suppose they belonged to anybody. If they did, they didn’t say so. How about letting me have a ride on your horse?”

  “Absolutely not!” Willen rasped. “I prefer you down there with your hands full of chickens.”

  “That’s all right,” the kender said happily, glancing around. Behind a
nd flanking the mounted Hylar, Gem Bluesleeve’s foot troop had been keeping pace. Now, though, at a hand signal from Willen, all of the Daewar had veered aside and were streaming off at an angle to the left, disappearing by threes and sixes into a ravine that wandered between fields. “Where are they going?” When no answer came the kender shrugged. “Well, if those people can run like that, with all that armor on, then I guess I can’t complain.”

  The hillside below the citadel looked like a travelers’ camp. There were cook-fires, and tents, and a makeshift corral with a dozen or more horses in it. At a glance, it seemed there were several hundred human males camped there, and that they had been there for a while. On the parapets above, where pennants flew, liveried guardsmen patrolled.

  “Those are Lord Charon’s household troops,” Cas Springheel chatted, pointing a chicken-laden hand toward the heights of the citadel. “Lord Charon isn’t very happy about the Tariff Overlord in Xak Tsaroth sending all these people out here to collect taxes, so he doesn’t let them in. But at the same time he doesn’t want to drive them away because the Tariff Overlord of Xak Tsaroth is recognized as a legitimate civil authority in Ergoth, though Lord Charon personally considers him a buffoon.”

  “So what are they doing?” Willen asked.

  “Nothing,” the kender said, trotting along beside the large horse. “It’s kind of a standoff.”

  “Humans,” Willen muttered, shaking his head.

  Trumpets sounded then, atop the citadel, and Willen knew that they had been noticed.

  A hundred yards from the citadel, the mounted column of dwarves halted. The guards atop the tower had doubled in number, their heads and shoulders visible against the sky, but no weapons were being brandished. They seemed to be just watching. The high gates of the keep remained closed. But in front of them, on the hillside, were nearly a dozen mounted humans in heavy armor, and a broad, double rank of armed footmen — hundreds of them — with pikes and longaxes. As the dwarves halted, a rider stepped his mount forward from the center and gazed at them. Without turning, he bellowed, “By the gods, I think these are dwarves!”