by Dragon Lance
Derkin and his party left the hall through wide plank doors. Luster Redleather and about half of his company followed them out, and the doors closed behind them.
“I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight,” the young Daewar told Derkin.
“How do you think it will go?” Derkin asked.
Luster shrugged. “Who knows? My father might favor your proposal, and maybe Dunbarth Ironthumb. They both regret the way Thorbardin has gone. But the others? Who knows?”
*
Hours had passed, and the sun-tunnels were dimming when the Great Hall’s doors opened again and a guard signaled. Followed by Helta and the Ten, Derkin walked again to the dais. As he passed Calan Silvertoe, the old dwarf frowned and shook his head. “These idiots haven’t changed a bit,” he whispered.
The conclusions of the Council of Thanes, read to Derkin by Jeron Redleather in a level voice that told few details of what had occurred in the privacy of the packed hall, confirmed Calan’s whisper. Thorbardin would produce the weapons and armaments demanded by Hammerhand and would trade them for the goods offered by the Chosen Ones. But Thorbardin would raise no army and would not join in Hammerhand’s war.
Aside, Dunbarth Ironthumb whispered, “I’m sorry, Derkin. The vote was three to two.”
From beyond the dais, Calan Silvertoe’s old voice rasped, “Can you guess what argument carried the decision, Derkin? It was that, if Thorbardin sent an army outside, there wouldn’t be enough reliable guards left inside to keep the peace.”
“To keep the peace?” Derkin muttered. Then, to the chieftains, “You have made your decisions. We of Kal-Thax are on our own. You will trade us weapons, but you will not help us fight. You, Jeron Redleather, said earlier that I have the right to speak. Have I that right still?”
“This council is still in session.” The Daewar nodded.
“Very well.” Derkin turned, addressing the entire assembly, his voice cold and clear.
“Your ancestors once put aside their grudges and their feuds,” he said slowly, “to form a nation in these mountains. Now there is no nation here. Even within this fortress, where you all breathe the same air, drink the same water, eat from the same fields and stores, and hide behind the same gates, there is no real nation. You tell yourselves that Thorbardin lives! Because the vents still bring you fresh winds, and the water troughs still flow, and the warrens still yield food, you tell yourselves that all is well.
“I say Thorbardin does not live! I say Thorbardin is asleep, and if it does not awaken soon, it will truly die!”
A rumble of voices erupted in the crowd, and Derkin turned to glare at the rows of dwarves, his eyes as dark as storm clouds. Gradually, the clamor subsided.
“Once the gates of Thorbardin were funnels of life,” Derkin growled, his deep voice filling the great chamber. “Once Southgate thronged with the traffic of the mines – ores coming in from the Daergar mines around the Thunder Peaks and from Theiwar digs all over the Promontory. Once there were Thorbardin patrols and scouts roaming as far as Sheercliff and the Anviltops, seeking rich new areas to mine. Once Northgate stood open every day, and Neidar from all of Kal-Thax came there to trade the produce of the forests and the fields for the produce of Thorbardin’s mighty forges. Now the gates stand closed except by decree, and Thorbardin is an elaborate prison.
“Once the Shaft of Reorx fed smelters that operated night and day, fed by the ores from Daergar shafts and Theiwar veins. Now the smelters are silent, and the forges are still.
“Once the people of all the thanes labored side by side to give themselves a home like no other home on this world and to forge a mighty destiny for themselves. Now Thorbardin is not a home, but just an arena for petty bickering and useless feuds. And that great destiny forged by your ancestors is as forgotten as the reason it was forged.”
“What great destiny?” a dwarf in the audience shouted sarcastically, then went silent as Derkin’s eyes fixed on him.
“The Covenant of the Thanes,” Hammerhand said. “That great covenant made long ago to preserve the dwarven lands. That is what has been forgotten! The Covenant has not been repealed. It has simply been ignored! Your ancestors fought to defend Kal-Thax against human invasion and built Thorbardin for that purpose. But you have turned your backs on Kal-Thax! Where were Thorbardin’s mighty armies when humans marched across Kal-Thax and looted Neidar villages? Where was Thorbardin when the Emperor of Ergoth sent his slavers through Tharkas to capture dwarven slaves for his mines? And where is Thorbardin now, when Lord Sakar Kane and his regiments occupy the passes south of Tharkas and develop more mines there – mines stolen from dwarven people – to feed the human emperor’s wars in the east?
“Thorbardin was created for one purpose – so that Kal-Thax would always be protected against invasion. Thorbardin was to be the sinew and the beating heart of a nation! The dwarven nation of Kal-Thax!
“But Thorbardin has withdrawn into itself, and Kal-Thax lies invaded, conquered, and occupied! And when I come here seeking Thorbardin’s assistance – so that I can do the task that is Thorbardin’s task – what do I find? Do I find armies ready to march, to defend the land of the dwarves? No, I find only Home Guard companies, marching between closed gates to keep down riots and hold troublemakers at bay. Do I find the hard-working, stubborn people who built this great fortress and made it powerful and rich? No, I find sullen, sniveling crowds with nothing better to do than vandalize their neighbors and throw rocks at one another in the streets.”
Here and there in the Great Hall, clamors of outrage erupted, but were quickly stilled by the guards.
When he could be heard again, Derkin continued, “When I left Thorbardin years ago, when I chose the life outside over the life within, it was not because I preferred Neidar ways. I was a person of the hammer, not of the axe. But I was sick of watching my home – the home of my father and of his father and their fathers before them – turn from steel to rust. I was ashamed. I was sick with shame!
“And now I return, and I am still ashamed! Jeron Redleather has called me a citizen. By right of birth, I am a citizen. Hybardin, the Life Tree of the Hylar, was my cradle, and Thorbardin was my home.
“But no more! When I leave Thorbardin this time, I leave my citizenship behind. I renounce it. Prepare the weapons you have agreed to trade and submit them to Calan Silvertoe. He will remain here until the weapons are ready to his satisfaction. When they are, you will send them – and him – to my camp below Northgate. We will trade, and when the trading is done my people and I will leave. We will go from here to Tharkas, and we will make war on behalf of Kal-Thax. Reorx willing, we will find a way to drive Lord Kane from Kal-Thax once and for all.”
Again voices rang in the Great Hall, shouts and questions mingling with comments of grudging agreement, and again the guards restored order while Derkin waited.
“We will win, or we will die,” the red-cloak said when the hall was quiet again. “But if we succeed, then Kal-Thax is ours! It hasn’t been yours for a long time. Thorbardin abandoned it, so you will have no claim to it.”
He paused thoughtfully for a moment, then continued, “It may be that, when the goods we brought have been used up, you of Thorbardin will want to trade again. But next time, the Chosen Ones will not come to you. You will have to come to us. Somewhere west of here, in the wilderness, we will build a new town – a place of trade. Its name will be Barter, and your traders – anyone’s traders – will be welcome there, far away from Thorbardin. This is Hammerhand’s gift to you. It will do some of you people good, to have to go outside to get what you want.”
Softly, behind him, he heard hands clapping. He turned. Jeron Redleather and Dunbarth Ironthumb both were standing, applauding his words and ignoring the glares of the other thane leaders.
With a curt nod, Derkin Hammerhand stepped down and headed for the door. Beside him, Helta Graywood’s lovely eyes glowed with a fierce fire.
In the concourse, Luster Redleather halted them, waiti
ng for his company to reform. “You certainly make your opinions known.” He chuckled, grinning at Derkin. “I think I’ll miss you when you’ve gone. But I guess you won’t be coming back, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Derkin said thoughtfully. “I might.”
“But you said you were renouncing your citizenship in Thorbardin!”
“If I come back to Thorbardin,” Hammerhand said slowly, “it won’t be as a citizen.”
Beaming with fierce pride, Helta Graywood stepped up beside Derkin and took his hand in hers. “Me, too,” she said.
*
Far to the north of Thorbardin, long lines of human soldiers moved eastward along a winding mountain road. Above them, on the right, stood the impassable, snowcapped heights of the Skywall Range. Below and distant on the left were the vast, misty forests, and ahead lay the stronghold of Klanath, at the mouth of Tharkas Pass.
The snows of winter were gone now on the lower slopes, and the emperor’s forces were on the move. The eastern expansion campaign, which many had begun to call Ullves’s War, would soon be entering its fourth year, and the emperor’s “boy general,” Giarna, had been in the field for three years. In that time, the war of conquest had grown and spread. Strong elven forces from Silvanesti, led by the elf prince Kith-Kanan and the Wildrunners, had moved out onto the plains of eastern Ergoth to counter the humans’ assaults. And increasingly strong units of elves – often reinforced by human nomads from the plains – ranged as far as the forests northwest of Kal-Thax, to harass the humans moving eastward from Daltigoth and Caergoth.
What had once been foreseen as a quick, simple campaign to extend the empire of Quivalin Soth V – or Ullves – entirely across southern Ansalon, now had become protracted war as the human invaders met stubborn resistance far beyond their anticipation. Not only had the elves proved to be masters of strategy and tactic, and truly formidable fighters, but they were increasingly reinforced by the free tribes of humans on the central plains. Under the leadership of the fierce, implacable Cobar tribes, hordes of nomadic Sackmen and Baruk warriors, stealthy Phaerots, and men of a dozen other tribes had joined forces to counter the empire’s aims.
Often, in recent seasons, empire units had found themselves fighting desperately against consolidated armies of humans and elves, all with one common goal: to keep their people and their lands free of the yoke of the empire.
But still the armies came, marching out of Daltigoth, reinforced at Caergoth, and provisioned at Klanath as they streamed eastward, season after season, to fight and die at the pleasure of the Emperor Quivalin Soth V.
And though the emperor’s commanding general, Giarna, led each campaign, there was often another with him – the dark, enigmatic man known only as Dreyus. It was whispered that where Dreyus went, no enemies survived the battles.
Each winter brought a lessening of hostilities, simply because travel was difficult in the cold season. But now it was spring again, and the armies of the empire were again on the march. By regiment and brigade, by company and platoon, the empire’s units advanceed eastward, toward the lesser ranges and the plains beyond, to press again for conquest.
A key to the assault strategy was the fortress of Lord Kane at Klanath. Located at the mouth of Tharkas Pass, the fortress not only stockpiled supplies and provisions for the final marches into the plains, it also provided a safe zone, a midway place where travel-weary soldiers could rest and regain their strength for the assaults ahead. Lord Kane’s forces held a wide perimeter here, with regular patrols along the fringes of the enchanted forest where elven rangers and guerrilla units lurked, and into the mountains south of Tharkas, to guard against any attack from that side.
For a time, after the slave revolt at Klanath Mines, dwarven raiding parties had harassed and tormented the empire’s armies and supply trains. In a span of months, there had been hundreds of scattered attacks, always sudden, always unexpected, and almost always successful. Small, deadly parties of armed dwarves had seemed to come out of nowhere, slashing and killing, looting and pillaging, then vanished as quickly as they had come.
The horses, weapons, supplies, and equipment they had taken in these raids would have outfitted and fed a sizable army.
But then the raids had stopped. For almost two years now, Lord Kane’s scouts and patrols had not seen so much as a single dwarf. It seemed as though the dwarves had tired of their raids and withdrawn completely from this part of Ansalon. Many of Lord Kane’s advisors assumed that the wild dwarves had retreated into the vast mountain wilderness of the distant Anviltop Range, far south and west of Tharkas. Others suspected that they had withdrawn southward, to that mysterious and impregnable subterranean fortress that they called Thorbardin. A few even suggested that the dwarven raiders had migrated into the frozen lands.
But wherever they had gone, they had disappeared. And though the human patrols still had to range far into the mountains of old Kal-Thax, the lord’s task of holding Klanath was easier now that they no longer had to deal with the short, fierce people whose mountains these had once been.
Part III
MASTER OF THARKAS
Chapter 12
A COBAR OUTING
Had Sakar Kane been a lesser man, the disgrace he had suffered some years earlier – when thousands of dwarven mine slaves had revolted, murdered their overseers, and escaped into the mountains beyond Tharkas – would have ruined him. The Emperor of Ergoth was not a forgiving man, nor one who tolerated failure. The Wall of Skulls in Daltigoth was evidence of that.
The Wall was seven feet thick and higher than a tall man could reach. It surrounded three sides of the formal garden abutting the east wing of the emperor’s palace. And it was built entirely of the bleached skulls of those who had displeased Quivalin Soth V and his imperial ancestors.
Another man in Lord Kane’s situation – having lost most of his best slaves, thus compromising the production of the emperor’s mines – would have suffered recall to Daltigoth, inquisition by the emperor himself, subsequent prolonged tortures, and death. And his skull would have become part of the Wall of Skulls.
But Sakar Kane was no ordinary subject of the empire. Without waiting for recall to court, Lord Kane had acted. He immediately sent armed patrols to find and arrest all of his subordinates and bring them to the inner hall of his Klanath fortress. When they were all gathered there – everyone from old Renus Sabad, the Master of Mines, down to his deputies, chief warders, and even his accounting clerks, most of them still in their sleeping gowns – Sakar Kane gave orders to fifty of his most trusted field troops. On that morning, the only people who left the inner hall alive were those fifty blood-soaked men.
Then, with the brigades at his command, Sakar Kane swept eastward through Redrock Cleft, the final mountain portal to the vast plains, and launched a lightning sweep northward, striking camp after camp, village after village of the barbarians who roamed the arid plains beyond the Cobar steppes. With the several thousand slaves taken in this raid, Lord Kane had the mines in operation again long before the emperor’s spies reached Daltigoth. And with the additional slaves he was able to purchase at Xak Tsaroth – nearly depleting his personal coffers – he had actually expanded production by the time the emperor’s wardens reached Klanath.
He had a stroke of luck, as well. In one of the pit mines, his guards found a large stockpile of fine, already mined ores, obviously hoarded by some overseer for his own purposes.
Lord Kane was recalled to Daltigoth, escorted by the emperor’s wardens. He went not in chains, but riding proudly at the head of the procession, followed by the empire inspectors who had just seen the bustling mines and rich ores. And he returned some months later, not in disgrace, but as Prince of Klanath. Quivalin Soth V was a cruel man, and a ruthless one, but he was not stupid. He understood both what had happened at Klanath – the successful revolt of dwarven slaves – and what Sakar Kane had done so expeditiously to regain favor.
Such a man would serve him well, the emperor knew, as l
ong as he could serve himself in the process. In making Lord Kane Prince of Klanath, the emperor gave him a free hand as concerned the old dwarven lands south of there … and an excellent reason to do all in his power to build and sustain a mighty empire presence at the mouth of Tharkas Pass.
In the years since, Klanath had become a powerful seat of the empire. Not only was the fortress strengthened, but wide perimeter walls had been erected around it, and the sprawling, ungainly mining camp of before had become a walled city – a city that served and defended the southern road of the empire, where marched the armies, reinforcements, and supplies required by General Giarna in his eastern campaigns.
For a time, both the outlying areas of Klanath and the road approaching it were plagued by those wild dwarven raiders, striking swiftly and fiercely from the dizzy heights south of the road. Many hundreds of horses had been stolen by raiders from herds being driven eastward. Supply trains had been attacked – often in the dark of night – and large quantities of supplies, consigned to Klanath’s stores, had disappeared. Countless weapons had been taken, and the number of drovers, drivers, handlers, and guards killed by rampaging dwarves had risen into the hundreds over a few seasons.
Lord Kane issued orders to all of his units to take prisoners when possible. It proved difficult. Even when a trap was sprung, and a party of raiders surrounded, the dwarves refused to lay down their weapons, preferring to fight to the death. Finally, though, a mounted guard company did bring in five dwarf captives. The guard captain reported that they were all that remained of a group of fourteen, decoyed and trapped on the supply road, and that it had cost him eighteen men to collect them.
Two of the prisoners were females, and all five of them bore the marks of slaves. One of the males had worked in the Klanath mines. The other two, and the females, had been slaves at Tharkas.