by Don Perrin
Gloth sucked in a breath between his teeth. “By our Queen, what the devil are they doing, sir? Stopping like that right out in the open!”
Kang shook his head. “Beats me. Look! There go some of them now.”
A group of five draconians leapt to their feet and ran off to the north, heading away from the village. Kang thought he recognized Slith in the lead. Within moments, they were out of sight. Kang was baffled.
Gloth was hissing like a boiling kettle. “Sir, please let me go in! The Second Squadron’s botched this raid already! I could—”
He was interrupted by a rustling sound. Kang looked back to see the Second Squadron on the move again. They closed within five hundred feet of the village before a yell went out from the closest watchtower.
“Go! Go! Go!” Kang urged them on, though they were too far away to hear him.
Irlih’k, the commander of the Second Squadron, shouted his battle cry, and it was echoed by the entire squadron. They charged.
Unfortunately, the dwarves were waiting for them. Now Kang knew why his men had stopped. Fifty dwarves poured out of the village, trying to intercept the draconians before they reached their objective.
Gloth was jumping up and down in excitement.
Yethik jerked a claw in Gloth’s direction. “Commander Kang, you might as well send in the First Squadron. Gloth’ll blow out a row of scales if you don’t and it looks like the Second could use the help.”
The Second Squadron hit the dwarves full force. The sounds of thumping and whacking, yells, cries, and curses in two languages were audible. The dwarves were taking the worst of it, but the draconians were stopped cold, at least for the moment.
Gloth quivered like an arrow stuck in a tree trunk. Kang considered Yethik’s advice. It was important to overwhelm the dwarves before they could muster an effective defense.
“All right, go,” Kang said.
Gloth lashed his tail in pleasure. “Up, boys! We’re on! Let’s go!”
The First Squadron rose out of the brush. Cheering, they ran forward, yelling their battle cry.
Even from this distance, Kang could see that the dwarves were startled. More than a few paused, peering around, trying to determine the location of this new threat. Irlih’k’s draconians took advantage of the dwarves’ distraction and pushed ahead. But it was a reduced force. Fewer than forty draconians from the Second Squadron were on the move. The rest were either fighting or lying on the ground, knocked out of the action.
“Sure you don’t want us to join them up there, sir?” Yethik asked, obviously eager to enter the fray.
“No, we can sit this one out. If they get in trouble, I’ll do my bit. It’s good for them to work on their own once in a while. Builds character.”
Yethik looked startled, glanced at Kang to see if he was in his right senses. Kang grinned. Yethik, realizing it was a joke, grinned back.
But not for long. The night sky over Celebundin grew suddenly, unusually, magically bright.
Kang recognized a Bozak light spell.
“Damn!” was all he said. He was up and away, heading for the dwarven village, his clawed feet tearing up the dry grass in the parched fields.
He reached the village only to find the streets deserted. He slowed, caught up on his breathing, and wondered where the hell his army had gone. A dark shape, wings extended, jumped out of a nearby tree, landed on the ground near Kang.
“Gloth sent me to find you, sir.”
“What’s going on?” Kang demanded. “Where is everyone?”
“The dwarves are holed up in the distillery storage shed, sir. The Second Squadron has surrounded the shed. The First Squadron’s holding the road to the center of town, where a large group of dwarves are assembling, sir.”
“Well, what’s the hold-up? Tell the Second Squadron to storm the damn shed!”
“There’s a problem, sir.” The Baaz was apologetic. “The dwarves have locked the doors to the shed and are threatening to dump their brew before they’ll hand it over to us, sir.”
“By the Dark Queen’s heart!” Kang swore, shocked. “Are they serious?”
“We have to assume that they are, sir.” The draconian looked worried, as well he might.
Kang raced off to assess the situation. When he arrived, the draconians were hissing and howling and clashing their swords against their breastplates. At the dire threat to dump the spirits, the draconians were near to forgetting their orders against bloodshed.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Kang’s voice boomed in anger. “You’re draconian soldiers, by god, not a pack of dim-witted goblins! Put those swords away!”
“But, sir!” Gloth came bounding up, red eyes blazing. “Sir, they say they’re going to dump it!”
“That’s right!” came a gruff voice from the window of the storage shed. “Come any closer, and we pop the stoppers! We’ve taken an oath. I’m Vellmer, chief brew master, and long as there’s whiskers on my chin, I’ll never again hand over my best brew to you, lizard-bastards!”
“I think you’re bluffing!” Kang shouted back in dwarven. He’d picked up quite a bit of the dwarven language during the past twenty-five years. “Men, go ahead.”
The draconians surged forward.
“Oh, yeah! Is this bluffing?”
A dwarf rolling a barrel appeared on the roof. Silhouetted in Solinari’s silver light, he raised an ax and let it fall, staving in the sides of the barrel. Liquid gurgled out, splatted on the ground. The draconians gasped and came to a standstill. A sigh like a gust of wind swept through their ranks.
“You’ve got to stop this, sir!” Gloth cried in agony.
“I will,” said Kang. “Stand back.”
Lifting his hands, he formed the prescribed circles and slashes in the air and mumbled arcane words. Gloth looked expectant, waiting for something spectacular, perhaps a red dragon to arrive and fly off with the dwarves.
Nothing happened. No dragon. Nothing.
“Sir, your spell must have fizzled,” Gloth said, disappointed, but respectful.
“Wait,” Kang counseled.
A sudden flurry of activity could be heard inside the shed. A moment later, the doors flew open. The dwarves burst out, running as fast as they could from the building. They were gasping and choking, had their noses and mouths covered with handkerchiefs. Several lurched to a halt, doubled over, and began to vomit.
“Let ’em go, men,” Kang ordered. “They’re not important. You know what is.”
The draconians were already on the move. Ignoring the desperately sick dwarves, the draconians charged inside the shed to restopper the kegs and claim their prize. But the first draconians who dashed in dashed out again almost as fast as had the dwarves.
“Phew! That smell’s vile!” Gloth snorted and snuffled.
“Give it a minute,” Kang said.
The smell was already beginning to dissipate from the warehouse. Kang coughed and took a few steps upwind.
“What do you call that spell, sir?” Gloth was impressed.
“Stinking Cloud,” said Kang, letting the words roll off his tongue.
Though he was skilled with a blade and enjoyed the organized, disorganized, brutal confusion of bone-crunching melees, Kang experienced a deep satisfaction when using his magic. He had once thought that he liked magic for the power it gave him over others. But lately he’d come to discount that reason. As a commander, he held life and death power over all his troops, with or without magic. His magic allowed him to create—even if it was nothing more than a horrendous smell. And creating was far more satisfying to him now than destroying.
“What does that remind me of?” Gloth muttered, frowning, trying to recall. “I know I’ve smelled that before. Cow dung mingled with puke and sour apples … Wait! I almost have it …”
“Remember that crazy minotaur officer we worked for, toward the end of the War of the Lance?” Kang asked, rocking back on his heels, allowing himself to rest, momentarily, on his large tail. “Th
e one who did his best to try to get us all killed? The one who came to such an unfortunate and propitious end? The one who got drunk on hard cider …”
“That’s it!” Gloth shouted.
The draconians advanced once more on the deserted shed. Kang went with them, holding his breath as he entered. The smell was fading, but he guessed it would be days before anyone was able to spend much time in this building.
The draconians worked swiftly, no one wanting to stay in the vicinity any longer than necessary. Only one of the huge kegs had been destroyed, and that was the one the dwarves had hauled up to the roof. The rest were safe and sound and still stoppered. The draconians grabbed the kegs, lifted the large heavy wooden barrels up onto their shoulders, and ran for the outskirts of town where Yethik’s wagon waited.
“Here they come!” A shout rose from the commander of First Squadron, who was holding the road.
Kang dashed out of the warehouse.
“Right, men! Grab what you can and get going!” Kang yelled.
An avalanche of angry dwarves crashed into the front ranks of the First Squadron and rolled right over the draconians. Though the draconians were taller and outweighed the dwarves, the dwarves were closer to the ground and, with their lower center of gravity and compact build, smashed into the draconians’ legs with the force of boulders bounding down a mountainside. They beat on the draconians with fists and clubs, brooms and ax-handles. And more dwarves were coming around from the side streets. The draconians fell back fighting, retreating as fast as they could, taking what they could.
As soon as Kang saw the Second Squadron draconians reach the safety of the trees, he ordered the First Squadron to run for it.
“Protect the brew!” Kang yelled.
Grabbing their wounded, flinging them over their shoulders or dragging them by the heels, the draconians hurried back to the wagons. A few dwarves—the infuriated Brew Master Vellmer among them—seemed inclined to give chase, but a grizzled old straight-backed graybeard, whom Kang recognized as the dwarves’ war chief, took command of the situation and called a halt at the tree line.
Undoubtedly aware that more draconians were lying in ambush among the trees, the war chief decided to cut his losses. The dwarves had driven off the invaders. The war chief wouldn’t push his luck. By his orders, two dwarves put a hammerlock on the cursing brew master and dragged him away, kicking and vowing to see all draconians roasting in Reorx’s kitchen.
Kang, dashing out of town, gave the war chief a salute. The war chief returned the salute with an obscene gesture and thus ended another raid.
Back at the wagon, Kang took charge.
“Right, good haul, boys! Let’s get this loot back home.”
Watching the wagon roll out, Kang realized someone was missing. He motioned Irlih’k over. “Where in the Abyss is Slith? I didn’t see him the whole battle.”
Irlih’k shrugged. “We were closing in on the town when we spotted a group of four dwarves leaving it. We thought they’d spotted us.”
“Ah, so that’s why you called a halt there at the beginning. I wondered what was going on.
“That was it, sir. The four dwarves just kept on going though. Slith thought that the dwarves were up to no good, maybe pulling a sneak raid on our village. He ordered a section to follow him, and they went after them.”
“Only four?”
Kang shook his head. It just didn’t seem logical. Then he recalled the incident with his foot locker and the stolen holy symbol. He had a sudden vision of dwarves rooting through all the draconian’s possessions, like a pack of dirty little kender. A shiver of disgust ran from his tail up his spine to his snout. He was glad Slith had taken the initiative, gone after the rotten thieves.
Dwarves turned to evil. It was a sad state of affairs. Apparently, you couldn’t trust anybody these days, Kang mused as he ran alongside the wagon and wondered what the world was coming to.
Chapter Nine
Slith and his draconians trailed the dwarves far into the night. There was really no need to follow them. The dwarves weren’t setting out to raid the draconian village. But Slith was now intensely curious.
In addition, the Sivak was an opportunist, and this had all the earmarks of a “for profit” deal. Dwarves didn’t generally put this much effort into a venture unless they expected to gain something from it.
The mountaintops were starting to redden with the first rays of the sun. The dwarves had reached a pass between the mountains. The leader—a scrawny looking dwarf with a scroungy beard—ordered a halt. As if they didn’t have a care in the world, the dwarves pulled out food from their packs and sat down to breakfast.
Slith and the draconians hid in the bushes and watched.
Slith listened to the dwarves’ conversation, but he wasn’t much good at languages, and he could only make out about half of what the dwarves were saying. What he could understand only increased his desire to find out where they were going. He had caught the dwarven word for “loot,” repeated several times.
If this had been a party of humans, they would have curled up in their blankets and taken a rest now. Dwarves had greater endurance and stamina, and Slith wasn’t surprised to see them brush the crumbs out of their beards and prepare to move on. Removing ropes from their packs, they tied the ropes around their waists and then attached themselves to each other. This done, they started negotiating the narrow pass.
The dwarves moved out of Slith’s sight.
Slith motioned. Corporal Vruss crawled over.
“Yes, sir?”
“I want you and the rest to go back and report to Commander Kang. Tell him I’ll be away a few days,” Slith ordered.
Vruss protested. “Sir, we can’t leave you out here alone!”
Slith snorted. “What do you take me for? A namby-pamby elf-maid? I can take care of myself. I can shadow these dwarves faster and quieter on my own. Now, go and report to Kang.”
Vruss nodded and backed out of the bushes. He motioned for the rest to follow. Within minutes, they were out of sight, heading back south.
The pass over Mount Celebund was easy for Slith, with his clawed feet and hands, to traverse. In places where the path proved too treacherous to negotiate, the Sivak used his wings, flew over the rough spots. The greatest difficulty he encountered was keeping behind the dwarves, not passing them up. His quarry was easy to follow.
Dwarves are not noted for their stealthy ways and make more noise trying to be quiet than a brigade of Solamnic Knights makes while on parade. These dwarves had no idea they were being tracked, and they clumped and shouted and swore and rattled all the way down the mountain.
Descending into the valley between Mount Celebund and Mount Bletheron, Slith passed from daybreak back into night. The sun was obscured by the high valley walls, and the valley was shadowy and cool until nearly a third of the way into the morning. But all that would change soon. Just as the sun glared over the rocks and flooded the valley with light, Slith slid into a crevice. The dwarves—not a thousand yards ahead of Slith—stretched and stopped and looked around, appreciating the warmth.
Slith could again overhear scraps of the conversation, tried very hard to puzzle out what they were saying. He wished Kang were here. The Bozak had an excellent facility for other races’ palaver.
Slith recognized the dwarven word for “sun,” and he knew “mountain dwarf” and thought he heard “hate” but that was about it.
Then the wind changed direction, and Slith couldn’t make out any more. Whatever they were discussing, it hadn’t sounded important. He’d heard nothing more about loot. After a brief rest and a mouthful of water, the dwarves reshouldered their packs and continued north, across the valley.
It was well past noon sun when the dwarves began the crossing between Mount Bletheron and Mount Prenechial. Again, Slith stopped to let the dwarves move on ahead. He was, by now, extremely hungry. He hadn’t brought along any provisions, not having expected to be gone this long. A stream bubbled from the
rocks. As soon as the dwarves were out of sight, Slith bent down and took a long drink, hoping the water in his stomach would ease the hunger pangs.
He spent a moment watching for fish, but none swam into view, and he couldn’t wait all morning to try to catch one.
Trying not to think about food, Slith crossed the second pass a half hour later. The trail, which skirted the right of Mount Prenechial, was carved into the side of the mountain. A huge rock face of solid granite was on his left, to the right, a cliff drop of fifty feet or more. The pass was only wide enough for one person to traverse. Slith had to move carefully, afraid of dislodging a rock and giving himself away.
He saw the dwarves only once. They were well ahead, still tied together with ropes.
Night came before Slith was ready for it. Watching his footing, he had not been paying attention to the position of the sun, and when it vanished behind the mountain peak, the valley was plunged into deep shadows. He had been only a few thousand feet from the end of the pass, or so he had judged by glimpses of a meadow beyond. But, in the darkness, he had to slow down or risk losing his footing. He considered taking to the air, but he might fly past the dwarves in the darkness, and they were certain to hear the sound of flapping wings.
At last his feet touched cool grass, not hard rock. He was about to heave a sigh of relief, when he rounded a boulder, and instead of releasing his breath, he sucked it back between his teeth.
A cooking fire burned not ten yards ahead. The four dwarves were making camp, roasting a couple of rabbits that they’d managed to snare and spreading out their bedrolls. If one of them had glanced his direction, they would have seen him. None of them did look his way, though. Slowly, carefully, Slith backed into the shadows.
The dwarves chattered among themselves; Slith understood about one word in twenty.
“Slipped … fell.”
“Helefundis Ridge … wind. Danger.”
More talk, then, “Mine shaft” and “Thorbardin” and “tomorrow.”
Loot. Thorbardin. So that was the plan.
Slith hunched down in the shadows. Smelling the rabbit roasting, watching the dwarves eat it, watching them slurp up the juice and savor each bite was the worst torture the draconian had ever had to endure, and he’d once been captured by elves.