by Dale Lucas
Torval nodded absently and filled their mugs. He and Rem toasted in silence—in truth, their mouths were full—and swigged. Rem had expected ale, but instead tasted a wonderful, pleasantly sour hard cider. He relished it and drank his entire mug in a single draught.
“All right,” Osma finally said when the light outside had gone from gray to frosty blue, the morning creeping up on them. “Time for us to go, so your father can get some sleep.”
“And where are you going, if I may ask?” Rem inquired, trying to make it clear he was simply curious.
“We have a stall in the east market,” Osma explained. “While the boys go to school in the dwarven quarter, Ammi and I sell greens, fruits, and any sundries that fall into our path.”
Torval raised a finger, reached into his tunic, and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in rag. He handed it to Osma and she unwrapped it. Within were a pair a bracelets, a torque, and some good leather gauntlets—all, Rem knew, taken as fines from routine watch stops. He had seen Torval give the best of his take to the watchkeep treasurer, so he knew well that what remained here was Torval’s true property—his by rights as a member of the watch. “See what you can get for those,” Torval told her, and Osma nodded that she would indeed.
“Come now, little ones,” Osma urged, indicating the door. “Time to go, and go we must. Ammi.”
Ammi moved behind the boys, ushering them toward the door. In that instant, the girl seemed very grown-up, and Rem imagined that someday, if she ever had children of her own, she would take very good care of them. She threw Rem a last, reassuring look, then helped her aunt get the boys out the door. When the door shut and the last of their footsteps faded from the stairs outside, the silence that fell was strange and oppressive. It reminded Rem of his own bedchamber back home: spacious, stone-walled, filled with beautiful things and all the hallmarks of privilege and comfort—but heartless, utterly devoid of warmth or charm. Instantly, Rem wished the children were back again. He liked the life and light they gave this little room.
Torval was staring at him, as if awaiting some round of teasing and bracing for it.
“They’re lovely,” Rem said simply. “You have a fine family, Torval.”
“Aye,” Torval said, his voice softer and more nakedly sincere than Rem had ever heard it. “That I do. Did you really like the stew?”
“I’ve been eating in taverns for the past month, and I’ve had nothing as tasty,” Rem said. “Honestly, your sister’s quite a cook.”
Torval nodded. He picked at the heel of the barley bread before him. The long silence that fell between them was pregnant and uncomfortable. “Go ahead and ask,” he said.
Rem swallowed. “About their mother?”
Torval nodded. “I’ll tell if you ask.”
“You don’t have to,” Rem said. “If it pains you.”
“It does,” Torval said, smiling wistfully. “But that’s no reason not to tell you. And it’s not so grand, really. Just one more banal disaster in a rather bland life.” He sniffed. Rem couldn’t tell if it was derisive or sad.
“What happened to her?” Rem asked.
Torval nodded, and began to tell the story.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What do you know of my people, Gingersnap?” Torval asked, and for the first time, Rem thought he heard something like affection attached to that epithet in the dwarf’s lowered voice.
“I know they’re renowned miners and warriors,” Rem said. “That they tend to prefer the company of their own kind to outsiders, and that the clan-groups aren’t just family units, but act as trade and craft guilds.”
“Very well, then,” Torval said. “That’s a good foundation. Did you also know, though, that we are, among ourselves, forbidden from undertaking work of any sort outside of the clan-guild that we are born into?”
Rem raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
Torval nodded gravely, eyes down. He sipped his cider. “Mine is the Grimwandel clan—the Bloodstones—and we hail from the Ironwall Mountains. For five hundred years we made a good life there, carving new mines out of the mountains and trading with the human principalities on the slopes and in the lowlands. Certain families within our guild were given license to smith and tinker and make jewelry from the ores and gems we mined, but by and large, ours was a mining and a home-trade guild, neither roving merchants nor machinists nor warriors.”
“So you weren’t raised as a warrior,” Rem interjected. “Based on what I’ve seen of your skill and your ferocity, I’m astonished.”
Torval shrugged. “We are all taught the way of the ax, the sword, and the shield in our childhoods, but that’s seen more as ceremonial training—something to harden our minds and our wills to any task at hand. When we come of age, we take our place in the work of our guild, and if that work isn’t blade work, then our blades are stowed away and rust.”
“No matter how much prowess one of your youngsters shows?” Rem asked.
Torval raised his eyes. There was something like bitter irony and wan humor there. “Correct. No matter how good any of us proves to be with the blade or the bludgeon, we are still obligated, by accident of birth into our clan, to take up our picks and hammers and descend into the mines when we are fully grown.”
Rem nodded. He thought he understood a little more of Torval now—had glimpsed some hidden corner of his soul that he had never realized created a kinship between them.
Torval sighed and sipped his cider again. “When I was a young dwarf, I married my sweet Olian. From the time I was old enough to know I had to marry, I knew she’d be the one—at least, I hoped she’d be. I don’t know if you have an eye to appreciate dwarvish womenfolk, young master, but if so, I can assure you, Olian would have impressed you. Gorgeous flaxen hair, long and flowing down her back, blue eyes as deep as pools and bright as sapphires. She was more beautiful than an ugly little stump like I could have ever hoped for, but somehow, when I made overtures, she chose me. She told me often when I would ask her that she chose me because there was no lying in me—not even boasting—and that was something that few dwarven men could attest to. At least, none that she’d ever known.”
“She recognized quality of character,” Rem said. “As do I.”
Torval shrugged. “Perhaps. She was my treasure. The only thing that I ever loved as much as her were the five little ones we made, each one more polished and precious than the last. By the gods of the mountain, lad, we were a merry pair. We were never well-to-do, or influential, or possessed of powerful friends, but we were happy. I made sure she had all she required to take care of those children, and likewise, did my best to always be honest and true. That was why she loved me, after all, thus I considered it the best part of myself. Certainly more honorable than my temper …”
Already Rem sensed the story about to take a melancholy turn. Torval mentioned five children, but Rem had met only three.
“Did they teach you of the Ironwall Wars in your schooling?”
“I was young,” Rem said. “No older than your little Lokki—but I yet remember talk of the wars in the mountains. The orcs and the Tregga horse nomads joined forces, didn’t they? Started pressing through the passes and threatening the western slopes?”
“Precisely,” Torval said, nodding. “We’re not sure what made those two bands start to coordinate their bloody activities, but they did, and they ran our warrior clans a merry chase. All through the summer and fall our forces harried them where they found them, chased them into the snowy heights and the rocky redoubts. When they couldn’t slay them to the last, they made it clear that the brutes weren’t welcome in those climes. They marked the pass roads with orcish or Tregga heads on pikes and they made them pay dearly for every village they raided, every settlement they put to the torch. All of this news returned to us weekly, sometimes daily, via messenger birds and the occasional wounded warrior who came limping home to take his respite and tap a replacement to go join the roving band. And though most of us were ju
st simple miners and tradesmen, we all thrilled to their exploits and felt that we, too, were on the front lines, doing battle with those ancient enemies of ours for the common good of our homes.
“But while our forces were out on campaign, in the dead of winter, a band of orcish raiders slipped past them. They made their way down the mountain, unchallenged, until they came to the mining settlement where my clan—and my family—made their home.”
He sipped his cider. His eyes were dewy and unfocused now, staring into an agonizing past that Rem could only begin to imagine. He almost wanted Torval to stop his story, to avoid the dread end that Rem knew was coming … but he couldn’t do that now. He had asked. Torval would tell it.
“While I was deep in the mines for my daily shift, Olian, Rinnit, and Gedel—my wife, my son, and my daughter—died under orc iron. The way some of the survivors told it, Olian was defending Lokki—he was just a babe then—and screaming for Rinnit and Gedel to run. Gedel made sure Rinnit ran, because she was older than he, and thought she should defend him, then doubled back to help her mother. Gedel was murdered en route to Olian’s side. Rinnit was cut down as he fled. Olian, she … she died and fell on Lokki. It was a miracle he survived. Osma found him after … after the orcs were gone and the fires all dying. He was wailing and hungry, pinned beneath his dead mother.”
The dwarf sniffed. No tears came, though. Dwarves were not immune to showing their emotions, but they did not do so lightly, and usually not in front of strangers. Only family got to see the true depths of their passions and pains.
“I could not stand by any longer,” Torval said, and looked to Rem with eyes holding a pain so deep and desperate that Rem could barely hold the dwarf’s gaze. “I went to every clan elder, every lord commander of every warrior company that had returned to regroup or that formed in answer to that surprise raid. I begged each for the right to lay down my pick and my hammer and take up the ax and join them on campaign. Once, when I found a legendary band of orc slayers in their clan great house, swilling mead and pouring out libations for the dead, I even went so far as to challenge them. ‘Send four against me,’ I said, ‘No—five! Nay, six! If I can put six of you on your bloody backs, then let me join you! My wife and my children are owed no less!’”
He fell silent, shuddering a little, as if the memory itself left his very body and mind distressed.
“Six?” Rem asked. “That’s a daring challenge, Torval—dare I say, even a little foolhardy.”
“They thought so as well,” Torval said, “but they seemed eager to teach me a lesson. As it turned out, I put nine of them on their backs before another half dozen dog-piled upon me and put me down. They disarmed me and beat me bloody, and when the strongest of them asked their lord commander what punishment a haughty little pickmonkey deserved for daring to challenge men born and sworn to the sword, the lord commander decided that I should be shorn. So—away went my long, braided locks and my beard. I fought every step of the way and probably have more than a few scars on my head from their daggers that I wouldn’t have if I had just taken the punishment they meted out to me with deference—”
“I don’t think you owed them any deference,” Rem said.
Torval smiled. It was a bitter smile—a damned, lost devil’s smile—and it made Rem’s heart ache. “No. No, I didn’t either.”
Silence fell. For a long time, all Rem heard was his breathing and Torval’s and the distant noise from the street outside the shuttered windows.
“So,” Rem said, “you challenged them again, yes? You made them let you join the fight?”
Torval shook his head. “No, lad. They had beaten me, and they had branded me when they took my hair and my beard, and all the clans—mine own and all those born and sworn to the sword—made it clear that I was to cease my campaign to join them on the battlefield forthwith. I was born to a mining clan, after all, thus it would be an affront to nature—and the gods themselves—if I stepped outside the bounds of my true purpose in life to take up arms in vengeance for my dead wife and children. Let fighters fight, they said—in the meantime, I could drown my grief in hard work underground, mining ore and gems to trade to men for weapons and foodstuffs and gold to support the ongoing war against the orcs and their Tregga allies. Labor, not warfare, was the trade the gods had chosen for me—I courted ruin and damnation if I took any further action to undermine that divine ordinance.”
Rem studied the dwarf. Torval emptied his ale cup down his gullet, then reached for the nearby pitcher to pour himself some more.
“So?” Rem finally prodded.
Torval shrugged. “So, I gathered my children, and my sister—who had lost her own husband in the same raid—and we left. We left our clan, we left the mines, we left the mountains. And as we did, we were warned by any and all who saw us, trudging out of there with our meager belongings on our backs like a bunch of stump-legged vagabonds, that if we left, we would never, ever be welcome to return. But what did I care? Why should I submit myself to the will of a people who will give me no choice in my own destiny? Who would not even let me take up arms to avenge the deaths of my precious family, simply because I was born into one clan and not another? I spat on their curses and admonitions and silly divine ordinances and I spit on them still.”
And then, he did just that—turned and spat right on his own floor.
Rem decided to broach a rather intimate question—one that he probably had no business asking the dwarf. “So, you don’t believe in your gods anymore?”
Torval raised his eyes. He shrugged, shook his head, fiddled with his cider cup. “I don’t know. If the gods were as the elders said they were, then they were slavers and despots, and I should not bow to them. And if they were other than the elders always said—kinder, freer, more benevolent—then they were also lazy, because they did not save my Olian and my children when they could have, and they further denied me the honor of avenging them when I sought it. So, those seem to be my choices—the gods are tyrants, or the gods are fools.”
“Some say the gods are mad,” Rem offered. “Others say there are no gods at all.”
“And what do you say?”
Rem was about to answer—then suddenly realized he had no answer at the ready. What did he believe, so far as the gods were concerned? In all his years of attending services and participating in rituals and learning the holy scriptures from both the Book of Aemon and the Scrolls of the Panoply, no one had ever asked him what he believed.
And though he could have served Torval some evasive pap, he decided that he should not. Torval had shared a deep and terrible wound with him; the least Rem could do was repay the dwarf’s trust with his own.
“I say praying gives me comfort,” Rem answered, “even when it does me no good. Believing that there is a plan, an endgame, gives me the same sort of comfort. I suppose I would say that, even when I don’t trust them or fear they’re nothing but smoke, the gods deserve some ration of courtesy and respect—the same courtesy and respect I’d give any stranger, at any rate.”
Torval waved his thick hand, as if waving away a swarm of bothersome flies. “Cack, all of it. I know that the gods have nothing to offer me, so I offer them nothing in return. When my children ask, I still tell them the old stories and urge them to say their prayers and make offerings as tradition demands. That’s why I finally put the boys in a dwarven school here in the city. They should know who they are, where they come from, who their ancestors prayed to. I took their home and their clan from them, but I shan’t take their gods. Let them throw off the yoke of those watchful old ghosts in their own time, according to their own hearts.”
“Just so,” Rem said. “Because everyone deserves a choice, don’t they?”
Torval met his gaze, and Rem thought he saw real kinship and understanding in the dwarf’s blue eyes. “Aye—everyone deserves a choice. That’s why we left. That’s why we eventually settled here.”
“Why here, specifically?” Rem asked.
Torval took
a moment, seeming to honestly consider his answer before offering it. “Because here, at last,” he said, “I found what I sought, for myself and for my children. For good or ill, come salvation or perdition, Yenara always offers us a choice. That, I think, is the great gift she has given the world, and the main reason that men still fight to possess her and are possessed by her. Whatever your fate when your mother whelped you, when you come here, it is all erased. Yenara strips us of what we were, and demands that we become what we truly are.”
“Or what we want to be,” Rem said under his breath.
“One and the same,” Torval said. “One and the same.”
Torval smiled, then Rem smiled in answer. Without a word, Rem raised his cup and Torval raised his own. Their cups touched and man and dwarf drank.
“Your children love you,” Rem said. “I saw it on all their faces. I felt it.”
Torval nodded and finished his ale. “Aye, they do. Never mind I let their mother die because I wasn’t there to protect her.”
A silence hung between them then. It was as if Torval intended to say something else, but didn’t. And Rem, though he was not close to the dwarf and could not know him well, thought he could guess what it might have been.
Never mind I let their mother die because I wasn’t there to protect her … and Freygaf.
“I’m truly sorry,” Rem said. “Not just for your wife but for Freygaf as well. I know I’ve benefited from your loss. I know that may color me in your eyes—”
“Bah!” Torval barked. “It’s the chance we take. As watchmen.”
But he didn’t seem convinced.
“Do you believe him?” Rem asked. “The Creeper? About Freygaf’s … secrets?”
Torval considered that question long and hard. He didn’t raise his eyes before answering. “I don’t know. I thought I knew Freygaf as well as anyone could, but … well, maybe I didn’t. Maybe you never can.” Then he raised his eyes. He glared at Rem, his gaze piercing right through the young man like a spear through a straw target. “I don’t know you, but something tells me I can trust you.”