by Doug Niles
“My beloved hill dwarves,” she began, in a high-pitched voice that, somehow, seemed to carry to all the many thousands of ears in attendance. “Today you embark upon a mission that is blessed by Reorx himself. For ever is our god a foe of injustice, and never has a people suffered greater injustice than his Neidar.
“The mountain dwarves have wronged you, tortured you, made war upon you for many centuries. For all those years, you have been patient and virtuous, disdaining the vengeance that is so rightfully yours. Yet each crime against you, each murder and theft and injustice, has been catalogued by the Master of the Forge. And soon, my Neidar, that record of wrongs shall be made right!
“For know: you march on a quest that is greater than your own desires, mightier than the wrongs that have been done just to you warriors alone. You march to right the wrongs that have been done to all your people, for all the years of the world. You march in righteousness! You march to vengeance! And most of all, you march to victory!”
At her last word, she clenched her talonlike fingers into a fist. A cloud of smoke erupted from the place where she stood, provoking gasps of awe. Even Harn Poleaxe took a step back, gaping in astonishment as the smoke dissipated and he discerned that the old dwarf woman was gone. He raised his jug and took a long drink, aware of the murmurs growing into a dull roar from the gathered throng.
Poleaxe stood tall, raising his long arms over his head and clasping his hands together into a single triumphant fist. The power of the potion pulsed through him, and he felt as though he could smash down the walls of Pax Tharkas with the blows of his own flesh.
But he had an army to carry those walls.
“My Neidar!” he cried, and his voice was like the roar of a bull ogre. “March with me! Make war on the mountain dwarves! Carry their fortress, and end their miserable lives!”
And, he told himself with a private smirk, he had an even more potent ally in reserve—a creature whose desire for killing and vengeance rivaled his own. As the roars of approval rose from the throats of his troops, he sensed the power of his great band, and he knew they were invincible.
“Now, hill dwarves! Now we march! We march to avenge our ancestors! We march to punish our foes! And we march to bring the Neidar to the greatness that has ever been denied!”
The final roar swelled like thunder, carrying through the town, into the air, up and over the ridges of the surrounding hills. The noise had echoed, like terrible thunder or the crashing of powerful waves, as the hill dwarves zestfully hoisted their weapons and marched to war. Even then, a week’s march north of the town, drawing ever closer to their ancient objective, the songs of war and victory rose from the Neidar throats, resounding from the mountain ridges, carried on wings of battle toward the ears of Reorx himself.
“Open this gate, you miserable runt—you filthy gully dwarf!” roared the dwarf captain, pounding his fists against the bars of the portcullis. “Or I’ll tear your arms off and stuff them into your useless mouth!”
Gus huddled on the floor, just on the other side of the closed portcullis—wisely staying far enough away that the trapped mountain dwarves couldn’t reach him with their swords, which they had poked through the grid as soon as they realized they were trapped. He was too terrified to do anything, much less run away.
The Aghar stared, open mouthed, at the enraged dwarves. He wasn’t sure how they had managed to get trapped, though in the back of his mind he suspected it had something to do with the lever he had grabbed. The eyes of the great captain bulged so far from his face that it seemed as though they might pop right out of his head.
“I only want to climb wall,” he protested. “I not try to drop gate!”
His pleadings only seemed to inflame the dwarves. The big captain practically foamed at the mouth, while his two big henchmen each took hold of the nearest gate. Working together, straining until sweat streaked their skin and veins bulged on their foreheads, they were able to lift the massive barrier only scant inches before it crashed back down and they collapsed, gasping for breath.
“I tell you—if you don’t open this gate immediately, your fate will be a suffering that your worst nightmares could never imagine.” The captain’s eyes were wild, bulging, and staring, and he snarled like a wild animal, straining to reach through the closely set bars.
Gus, having endured some very terrible nightmares in his pathetic life, found the threat to be ominous indeed. But he simply didn’t know how to raise the gate, and all the blustering warnings in the world weren’t going to change that. He was terribly afraid of the big, furious dwarves, but it gradually dawned on him that he might sneak away from there and, so long as the gate remained closed, his antagonists wouldn’t be able to chase him.
Thus, he wheeled and sprinted off into the darkness, hearing the sounds of the infuriated Klar cursing echoing through the dark passage behind him.
He came to the wardroom leading to Gretchan’s secret room, but she had been so upset before, he didn’t dare approach her. A big mess, he thought miserably, it’s all a big mess.
Still running, he realized he was headed toward the passage where the Kayolin dwarf was imprisoned, which terminated in a dead end not far beyond Brandon’s cell. As long as he was in the neighborhood, he might as well see if the bad kisser dwarf was still alive. He peeked in.
There came a sound from inside the cell, and a fist appeared, clutching the bars on the door. “Hello?”
The question was tentative, suspicious. Gus looked upward and saw Brandon’s face appear in the small, barred window. The Hylar, upon seeing a mere gully dwarf staring back, shrugged his shoulders and moved back into the cell.
Gus thought for a moment, feeling helpless and afraid. The bad kisser dwarf didn’t seem so bad up close, and he hadn’t even tried to kiss Gus.
He ought to do something, he told himself, thinking of the trapped angry dwarves and all the mistakes he had made. There was only one thing he could think of: he went back to the secret door outside of Gretchan’s room. Mustering all of his courage, he knocked on the wooden panel, suddenly worried that she might not be there.
And when she opened the door, she did not look as mad as she had been when he had so anxiously retreated from her presence a day or two earlier.
“Hello, Gus,” she said, frowning down at him. “What do you want this time?”
He wanted to throw himself into her arms and beg forgiveness, but instead he mustered all of his noble character and spoke to her.
“Mean dwarf prince comes to hurt prisoner. I sorry for before and try help. They locked up now, but they still want to come here and hurt him, us. We gotta get prisoner out of there, or else … or else …” He sniffled loudly and wiped away a tear.
To his immense relief, Gretchan did lean down and pat him on the shoulder. “Thank you for coming,” she said, all very matter-of-fact, as though she had known he was coming and what he would say. “That was very brave. Now what do you mean, ‘locked up’?”
“Here, let me show,” he said, tugging her hand, pulling her out of the garrison room and into the corridor. “Wait here,” he whispered as they came closer to the place. “You listen.”
He strolled forward around the last corner and was immediately spotted by the big dwarf captain, who was down on his knees, grunting as he tried to budge the cage.
“You! Gully dwarf! Come here, damn your eyes! Turn that lever and pull this gate up, or so help me Reorx—”
Gus didn’t wait to hear more. He raced back around the corner and was surprised to see that Gretchan was laughing. At first he was insulted, but then his chest swelled with pride as she clapped him on the back and whispered, “Well done!”
Then she frowned. “But you’re right. We have to get Brandon out of here before they’re freed, or they’ll … I don’t know what they’ll do, but I don’t want to find out. We’d better hurry. Others will be coming down to see what happened to them.”
With Gus and Kondike racing along behind her, she hurried to the
cell where the dwarf was imprisoned. Pressing her face to the grate, she called to him. Immediately he appeared.
“Trouble,” she said. “No time to explain, but we’ve got to get you out of here now.”
“I’m all in favor of that,” Brandon replied. “But how? Did you bring a key?”
She shook her head. Pulling her little silver hammer from her belt, she warned the dwarf: “Stand back.”
“Why?” Brandon asked incredulously, giving a slight chuckle. “In case the hammer breaks and a piece goes flying?”
“Suit yourself,” Gretchan replied. She hoisted the little tool, which had a head shaped much like the anvil on her staff, and swung it lightly against the latch on the cell door.
The explosion was so deafening, Gus covered his ears. Wood splintered and iron screeched as the portal was blown off its hinges, the bulk of the heavy door sent flying back into the cell, where it knocked Brandon onto the floor. The heavy wooden beams forming the door were shattered, and the lock itself had shattered into a hundred metal shards.
“How did you do that?” gasped Brandon, sitting up in astonishment and pushing the wreckage of the door off himself. Aside from some nicks and bruises, he looked only a little worse for wear. “It looked like you only tapped it!”
“Looks can be deceiving,” she replied slyly. “Now do you want to have a long conversation, or do you want to get out of there.”
“Get out!” Brandon replied, shucking away the broken beams and pushing himself up. He glared at her. “But you could have warned me.”
“I tried,” said Gretchan, grinning.
The big mountain dwarf stepped to the door of the cell then stopped. “Wait. I know you carry that hammer with you everywhere; you had it in Hillhome. So you could have done this anytime? Gotten me out of here?”
“I told you—there’s no time to talk!” she snapped in agitation.
“Damn it, I want some answers!” Brandon growled. “You’ve been feeding me, bringing me soup—by Reorx, you kissed me through the bars of the cell! When all this time you could have let me out with one swing of your hammer! It’s like I’ve been some kind of caged pet!”
She snorted but then looked away, abashed. In another moment, her face hardened. “Look. We can talk about it later. For now, I’m getting away. Are you coming along?”
“Oh, I’m coming, all right—if only to get those answers you promised!” Brandon muttered, emerging into the dark corridor. “Who’s that?” he said immediately, pointing to Gus and wrinkling his nose.
Gus sulked and pointed back at Brandon, wrinkling his nose in similar fashion.
“Oh, that’s just Gus,” said Gretchan. “He helped save your life. After he almost got you killed. It’s another long story for later. Now come on!”
“Where are we going?” asked Brandon as she led all three at a trot back out of the dead-end corridor.
“Just trust me,” she said. “This place is full of surprises, and I’ve been learning a lot of them.”
TWENTY-FIVE
A SECRET REVEALED
Help! Help us someone! Open these gates!” Garn Bloodfist shouted for the hundredth time, stalking around the small, square room where he and his two men were caged by the falling portcullis trap.
“I don’t think anyone can hear us, Captain,” Bilious suggested unhelpfully.
“Of course they can’t!” the Klar officer screamed. “Help me make some louder noise, you worthless scum!”
For a time all three of the trapped Klar shouted and hollered until they all were too hoarse to make any sound above a croaking rasp. “What are they doing up there?” demanded the captain in a whisper. “Are they all asleep?
Drunk?”
“I think we’re too far away for them to hear us,” Crank speculated none too brilliantly.
“Your weapons!” Garn said, suddenly struck by inspiration. “Bang them against the bars!”
Crank and Bilious obeyed his order with enthusiasm, drawing their swords and smashing the flats of the blades against the metal bars of the portcullis, raising a din that crashed against their ears with deafening force. The sounds rang and echoed and swelled through the subterranean passage, making an unworldly clamor. Even when the tip of Crank’s blade broke off, the two swordsmen kept up their banging until—finally—a curious Hylar sentry came wandering down into the dungeon to see what all the noise was about.
“Open the gates! Lift the portcullis!” croaked Garn, his voice grown hoarse from more than an hour of shouting. After gaping in momentary astonishment, the rescuer obligingly pulled down on the lever, with each tug of the mechanism working the winch, lifting the two gates an inch at a time. Watching impatiently, the Klar captain wanted to strangle the fellow for taking such a long time, but that would have to wait until he had caught up with the blasted Aghar and the imprisoned Kayolin dwarf.
When the grate was some two feet off the floor, Bloodfist threw himself down flat and squirmed under the barrier, to be quickly followed by Crank and Bilious.
“Finish raising it!” he called back to their rescuer before plunging deeper into the dungeon. His feet pounded on the cold stone floor as he sprinted around corners so fast that he bounced off the walls, putting his head down and urgently charging forward again.
Even before he reached the corridor where Brandon Bluestone was imprisoned, he had the sickening feeling they were going to be too late. Running down the last stretch, he grimaced in almost physical pain as he saw the open doorway to the cell. Skidding to a stop beside the empty chamber, he glared at the wreckage of the splintered door and roared out curses, kicking through the debris as if he expected to find the prisoner hiding there.
“What happened?” asked Crank, gaping stupidly. “Did that gully dwarf knock the door down?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” snapped Garn. “She did this! She’s here, somewhere, working against me. She’s a witch, I tell you; I knew it the first time I saw her! And that gully dwarf told me: she’s lurking right here, in Pax Tharkas!” He stared up and down the corridor as if he could command Gretchan to appear simply by the dint of his willpower.
But of course, that would never happen.
Instead, he ordered Crank to run back to the garrison hall and alert the company of Klar warriors.
“Make sure they are all armed. Send half the men down here to start searching in the dungeon. Have the rest disperse through the East Tower. We must catch them before they escape.”
His father’s bloody face seemed to shimmer in the air before him, and the Klar captain let out a wail of grief and fury that ensured Crank would sprint back to the tower at full speed. Drawing his own sword, Garn Bloodfist held his weapon tightly, striding through the dungeon of Pax Tharkas on a mission of punishment and revenge.
Two Neidar scouts came down from the ridge, dragging a body between them. They tossed it onto the road before Harn Poleaxe. The army commander, peering through the eye slits on his helmet visor, saw a dead dwarf with pair of crossbow bolts jutting from his back.
“He was a lookout—Klar,” said one of the scouts, spitting on the corpse. “But he won’t be doing much looking out—or anything else—anymore.”
“Good work,” Poleaxe said. He raised his visor so he could take a drink, and while he drained his jug, he looked up, scanning the steep ridges that flanked the road along which his army marched. His advance parties were swarming all over those heights, but even so, he knew it was unrealistic to think they would be able to approach the fortress unnoticed. After all, it was the only route an army could use to get into the pass from the south, and the mountain dwarves were sure to have many more sentries posted.
But the Neidar still hoped for a surprise attack. “Get back up there, and find us another one,” he ordered, and the two hill dwarves—both of whom were dressed for agility and silence in leather armor and soft walking boots—turned back to the heights at a jog.
Harn tossed his empty jug to Rune, who followed immediately behind the army co
mmander, leading a mule that was bearing two kegs of dwarf spirits strapped to its panniers. As a reward for his assistant’s loyalty, Harn had given Rune the axe he had taken from Brandon Bluestone. The Neidar, who had been badly beaten during the prisoner’s escape, wore that weapon proudly, strapped to his back where all could admire the splendid craftsmanship, the keen steel edge.
The kegs were the exclusive refreshment of Harn Poleaxe, and they had been full when the army departed Hillhome. Rune, who took care to refill the jug alternately from the left and right keg so as to keep the mule’s load even, promptly turned the spigot. Poleaxe fidgeted in his saddle, scratching at the blisters that marred both cheeks and his entire forehead, until his subordinate, with a deep bow, brought him the freshly filled vessel. Harn took a deep drink and once again waved the column forward.
As the army neared the enemy stronghold, the ranks of the Neidar had tightened and the marching songs ceased. Morale was high; that was apparent from the joyful determination Poleaxe saw in every face, in the way the dwarves carefully sharpened their weapons at each night’s camp, in the way the scouts ranged eagerly and swiftly onto the surrounding heights.
On the tenth day of the march, several of his scouts had reported a glimpse of the fortress’s towers around the next bend of the winding but only gently climbing pass. To the best of Harn’s knowledge, no mountain dwarf lookout had survived to carry word of their approach to the Pax Tharkas garrison, but of course, if such a sentry had indeed slipped away from his scouts, it was likely that the hill dwarves would not know about it.
So they established a camp a half day’s march from their objective, protecting it with a full set of defensive preparations. Instead of sleeping in a meadow on the valley floor as they had done each previous night of the march, where fresh water would be readily available, the Neidar unrolled their bedrolls across a series of plateaulike surfaces crowning the ridge to the west of the road. They carried a plentiful supply of water up to their compounds, and the captains posted double the number of usual guards to make sure they stayed watchful in shifts throughout the night.