Cursing and furious, Graywing stepped over the struggling gully dwarf, pinned the broadsword beneath a soft-booted foot and leaned down. “Don’t ever do that again!” he ordered.
“Oops, sorry,” Bron said, freeing himself from the weight of the shield. “Didn’ rec’nize you. Thought mebbe you a enemy.”
“Didn’t recognize me?” Graywing snapped. “You’ve seen me a dozen times!”
Bron got his feet under him, dusted himself off with grimy hands and glanced up at the human. “So what? Seen one Tall, seen ’em all.” The little hero got his shield upright and arranged its straps on his arm and shoulder. He reached for his broadsword, tugged on its grip, then noticed the human’s foot planted on the blade. “Pardon,” he said. When the foot didn’t move, Bron heaved the heavy shield around and smacked Graywing on the knee with it. The human hissed, jumped back and hopped around on one foot, cursing.
Bron retrieved his broadsword, squinted for a moment as he tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing, then resumed his position in front of Thayla. He was guarding her.
Thayla shook her head, her eyebrows arched in a pretty frown as she watched Graywing shuffle about, testing his sore knee. “You really shouldn’t be so rough with these little people,” she scolded the dour warrior. “They don’t mean any harm.”
“That little twit tried to cut off my feet!” the plainsman growled.
“Bron? He’s a hero,” Thayla reminded the man. “That’s what heroes do.”
“Right,” Bron agreed, “cut off folks’ feet.”
Graywing tried again, this time staying just out of range of the gully dwarf’s weapon. “Let’s get out of here, girl,” he urged. “This place will be overrun by Tarmites any minute now … and that dragon is still around here someplace.”
“No, it isn’t,” Thayla assured him. “Bron chased it away.”
“He did not!”
“Did, too!” The voice almost directly below his chin startled Graywing. He looked straight down, into the stubborn, serious eyes of a little female gully dwarf who stood almost toe to toe with him. Her head was at about the level of his belt, her hands were little fists planted on her hips and she looked ready to take him on in either debate or combat, whichever he chose.
“Bron say dragon go ’way,” Pert told him, “So dragon go ’way. Ever’body know that. Tall blind?”
Graywing took a deep breath and shook his head. The only thing dumber than a gully dwarf, he had heard, is the fool who tries to argue with one. If he wasn’t careful, he realized, he was going to find himself doing just that.
“Get out of the way,” he snapped, then stepped around Pert, who scurried to confront him again.
“Bron chase dragon away!” the little creature insisted. She glanced around. “Isn’ that right, Bron?”
Bron peered over the top of the legendary Great Stew Bowl, looking puzzled. “Yes, dear.”
“Pert’s right,” Thayla Mesinda said emphatically. “He did.”
“Nobody just … just orders a green dragon around,” Graywing told the girl, his voice thin with exasperation. “Green dragons are-”
“It wasn’t exactly green,” Thayla pointed out. “It was more brown, or maybe like gold and wild honey.”
“Bron’s dragon!” Pert insisted. “Does what Bron says!”
“She’s right,” Thayla said, nodding. “It was a bronze dragon.”
“Alright!” Graywing snapped. “Whatever you say! Now come with me, girl! We’ve got to get-”
From somewhere behind him came the ironic voice of Dartimien the Cat. “Will you all shut up over there? And stop aggravating those gully dwarves, barbarian! I’m trying to read.”
The Cat was over by the main pillar, squinting in the dim light, running a finger down rows of glyphs on a metallic plate attached to the stone. Gully dwarves crowded around him, some of them clambering up his back, hauling themselves up by his shoulder straps for a better view. One chattering little oaf was actually sitting on the assassin’s shoulders, peering over his head.
Graywing swore a muttered oath and headed that way. The distant sounds of battle, filtering in through cracks and grates, had risen in volume until it was a song of chaos. Then, abruptly, the world outside the cavernous cellars had gone silent. Any moment now, Graywing was sure, hordes of Gelnians, Tarmites, mercenary soldiers and who knew what else would be flooding into these recesses. And Dartimien was reading labels on posts.
Pushing through packed mobs of gully dwarves, the plainsman reached Dartimien and squinted at the bronze plaque. “What is it?”
“Sign,” the gully dwarf on Dartimien’s shoulders chattered happily. “Got runes on it. Say this place fulla crumbs an’ shiny rocks.”
“That’s fulcrum!” Dartimien growled. “The fulcrum on the shining stone!”
“Yeah,” the gully dwarf agreed. “Right.”
The explanation was lost on most of the crowd of gully dwarves. Several dozen of them stared around, thoughtfully, then wandered off in search of crumbs and shiny rocks. Within moments some of them had found a vein of quartz leading upward, ridged with imbedments of gleaming pyrite. Forgetting everything else around them, these intrepid explorers dug out various tools and began climbing the cavern wall, mining pyrite as they went.
“Shiny rocks,” some of them called. “Jus’ like dragon said.”
“That dragon kinda like Highbulp’s dragon,” a gully dwarf proclaimed, “Maybe same dragon?” Almost upsetting Graywing, he pushed forward between the tall man’s legs. He was a portly little individual with a curly, iron-gray beard and puffy little eyes set close above a protruding nose. He wore a crown of rat’s teeth on his unkempt head. “Yep, same dragon,” he decided. “Same dragon as before, long time ago.”
Beside Graywing, Pert bristled. “Bron’s dragon,” she insisted. “Not Highbulp’s.”
Ignoring all of them, Dartimien studied the runes on the metal plaque, then peered closely at the stone around it. Where the mildew was rubbed away, the stone glowed with a soft, pearl-white luster. “Interesting,” the Cat mused. “I think we’ve found something of value here. Something about the high and the low-”
Fifty yards away, at the mouth of a dark, jagged hole in the cavern wall, torchlight flared and suddenly there were armed men there, dozens of them.
Dartimien straightened, daggers flashing in his hands. “Tarmites,” he hissed. “They’ve found us.”
“Ever’body run like crazy!” the Highbulp screeched. The crowd of gully dwarves roaming the cavern floor dissolved into a tumbling tangle of panicked little people as his subjects tried to respond, bouncing one another right and left in their haste. Several of them bounced off a wall and set off a chain reaction of tumbling bodies. The Highbulp was swept off his feet and buried in the turmoil. The lady Lidda dug him out, cuffing gully dwarves right and left. “Glitch a real nuisance,” she observed. Gripping her husband’s ear, she dragged him free and propelled him toward a wall. “Climb!” she ordered.
Shaken from his reverie, Scrib fell on the tottering old Grand Notioner, who cursed loudly, crawled free, got to his unsteady feet and flailed about with his mop handle staff, delivering swats and bruises with enthusiastic abandon. On the walls of the cavern, various gully dwarves looked downward at the melee. Some lost their holds and fell, joining the free-for-all below. Others, though, were absorbed in their tasks. They had found a vein of yellow pyrite above the tumbled portal, and were busily mining it.
All around the great column, the pandemonium spread. In the midst of it, Bron braced himself, his iron shield swaying this way and that. He had lost track of Thayla Mesinda, and without the human girl’s presence to remind him, he was a bit confused as to what he was supposed to be doing. Then he saw a tumbling gully dwarf-one of his closest friends, though the name escaped him for a moment-rolling toward little Pert. Without hesitation he swatted the miscreant with the flat of his broadsword, then placed himself to protect little Pert. As a designated hero, he fe
lt compelled to protect somebody, and Pert was a reasonable choice.
Graywing the barbarian stared around in open-mouthed disbelief. He had never seen such total, all-out confusion, all of it because the pompous little Highbulp-who now was among those on the wall, mining pyrites-had told them to run.
“There’s no place to run to, you little idiots!” Graywing roared. “We’ll have to fight!”
On the wall above, the Highbulp glanced around, almost losing his grip. “What?”
“I said, fight!”
“Okay,” Glitch said. “Ever’body fight!”
All around, agitated Aghar froze, straightened and looked around them. “Okay,” several of them said. “Whatever.” Beside Graywing a husky gully dwarf swung a roundhouse punch that sent another gully dwarf tumbling. Several of them went down, bowled over by the ruckus. The riot became a melee as the entire tribe joined in, gully dwarves pummeling away at other gully dwarves, enthusiastic combatants piling onto those who fell.
Graywing stared around in disbelief. “Oh, for the gods’ sake!” he breathed. Then, brandishing his sword, wading through rioting Aghar, he headed for the human intruders piling through the broken portal. Dartimien was beside him, bounding over clusters of gully dwarves. From a distance, somewhere behind the Tarmite warriors gaping around in the gloom, came the sounds of falling stone. Billows of dust issued from the jagged portal, partially obscuring the invaders. Dartimien’s eyes narrowed, his darting glances scanning the humans in the dust. They were all footmen-tower guards and warders, low soldiers wearing the colors of home guardsmen. Nowhere among them were any officers’ insignias.
Graywing filled his lungs and raised his sword, ready to fight, but suddenly Dartimien wheeled to face him. “Wait!” the Cat rasped. “We can use these dolts!”
Before Graywing could react, Dartimien turned away again, his hands empty of daggers, and strode toward the Tarmites. “Where is the rest of your detail?” he demanded, his tone as imperious as any field commander’s.
The Tarmites huddled in confusion, their weapons lowered. “I don’t know,” one of them said. “Cap’n was right behind us a minute ago, but I don’t see him now.”
“He’s still outside,” another volunteered. “Lord Vulpin himself was … well, I think he sent us in here.”
“Idiots!” Dartimien rasped. “Don’t you see what has happened? The invaders have tricked you. That rockfall, they’ve sealed us up in these cellars. The attack is above, in the courtyards. Not here!”
“It is?” a burly Tarmite tilted his helmet to scratch his head. “Then what do we do now?”
“You can follow your orders!” Dartimien hissed. “You should be up in the main keep, defending against the enemy!”
“Y-yes, sir,” the burly one said. “But how do we get back there?”
“The way you came, obviously. Now get in there and start digging!”
Obediently, most of the Tarmite warriors turned and headed back the way they had come, through the broken portal and up the tunnel. One or two glanced back, gawking at the scene in the catacombs. There seemed to be gully dwarves everywhere. “Wh-what about them, sir?” one asked, pointing.
“What about them?” Dartimien snapped. “They’re only gully dwarves. Ignore them!”
“Yes, sir.”
Within moments, more than a dozen yeomen of Castle Tarmish were at work in the tunnel, digging away fallen stone.
“That should keep them busy for a while,” Dartimien confided to Graywing, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
“They took your commands,” the plainsman said. “Why did they do that?”
“Don’t you know about the Tarmites and the Gelnians?” Dartimien cocked an ironic brow. “The only difference between them is the colors they wear, yet they’ve been at war against each other, off and on, for hundreds of years. Not one in a hundred on either side has any idea what they fight about. They just take orders from whoever’s in charge at the moment. It’s always been like that.”
“So they accepted you as being in charge? Why?”
“Because I acted like I was. Now I think we should see about getting out of this hole.”
“How? The entrance is blocked.”
“You really don’t know anything about cities, do you, barbarian?” The Cat gestured toward a gloomy alcove a hundred yards away, in the recesses of the cavern. There, shadows among the shadows, a troop of female gully dwarves was descending from above, winding their way around a huge pillar. They carried loads of forage, found somewhere above.
“I suggest we use the stairs,” Dartimien said levelly.
Chapter 21
The Hole Truth
Seething with malignant intent, Clonogh paced the wrecked tower. He had scores to settle, and now, thanks to the intervention of a dragon, he had the power to do so.
He might have gone out to face his enemies, but that was never Clonogh’s way. Here in this tower, he felt aloof, above the turmoil beyond, and he liked the idea of his enemies coming to him-using their own efforts to go to their doom. So, a seething old spider in its chosen lair, he waited.
The skeletal structure of stone that had been the great tower of Tarmish was a twisted ruin now, its precipitous stairway a shambles. But he knew the loft was secure. Where the stones had fallen away, where bombards had blasted outer walls to reveal the winding stairs within, and shattered the dark inner walls beyond them, white stone gleamed-a monolith of pure basalt that descended through the great structure, its foundations deep in the bedrock below. The trappings of mankind might fall away, but this stone was eternal.
Just beyond the sprung portal a wide-shouldered gully dwarf approached, scrambling upward through the ruins. Clonogh smiled faintly. The little creature was bringing him the Fang of Orm.
Shielding himself casually with invisibility, Clonogh waited by the doorway. The gully dwarf would be here in moments. And not far behind, climbing through the wreckage from different sides, were the spawn of a Dragon Highlord-Chatara Kral and Lord Vulpin.
The footsteps on the stairs hesitated, then a tattered Aghar crept out into the ravaged room, peering this way and that with nervous, beady little eyes. The creature was sturdy for a gully dwarf, squat and broad-shouldered. He was well over three feet tall, larger then most of his kind, and there were streaks and tangles of gray in his unkempt hair. Clonogh studied him for a moment, unimpressed. One gully dwarf was pretty much like another, despite slight differences. What did interest the mage was the thing the gully dwarf carried in his grimy hands-the Fang of Orm.
With a muttered spell, Clonogh dropped the cloak of invisibility and stood blocking the doorway. “That talisman is mine,” he said. “Give it to me.”
Clout whirled and gawked at the man, blinking in terror. “Wh-what?”
“That.” Clonogh pointed. “It’s mine!”
“This thing?” Clout raised the Fang, peering at it as though he had never seen it before.
“Yes,” Clonogh said. “It’s mine.”
Clout stared at the man a moment longer, then backed away, frightened but stubborn. He had grown to cherish the implement he carried. “This thing my bashin’ tool,” he said. “Not yours.”
“Give it to me!” Clonogh snarled, lunging forward. “That is no ‘bashing tool,’ you little twit!”
Clout dodged aside, ducked into a broken cabinet and peered out. “Is, too,” he quavered. “Good for bashin’ rats. Talls don’ bash rats.”
“I’ll turn you into a rat!” Clonogh said. “My powers are restored. I command magic now!”
“Do?” Clout squinted, not understanding a word of it. The old Tall seemed to be as crazy as a loon, even crazier than old what’s-’is-name, the Highbulp. The gully dwarf’s sullen stubbornness dissolved, replaced by confusion. “How come?” he asked, hoping for a clue to what the human was talking about.
“There was a dragon here,” Clonogh said, easing toward the broken cabinet. “It cast a spell, and I was within its range. It … it r
esonated me. I am finally complete!”
“Sorry ’bout that,” Clout said, baffled.
“Why in the names of the gods am I trying to explain anything to a gully dwarf?” Clonogh asked himself, sneering. Another step, and he would be able to trap the gully dwarf at the cabinet. If he could just keep the creature distracted for a moment more … “It certainly did,” he said. “I am no longer as I was.”
“Poor Tall!” The gully dwarf’s voice within the cabinet was full of real sympathy “Wish you were.”
Clonogh’s shriek of anguish echoed from the broken tower walls as he felt his newfound powers, all his wonderful, dragon-induced powers, slip away. In an instant the dragon magic was gone. He couldn’t for the life of him remember how to phrase the spells that had contained it. With a wail, he collapsed on the stone floor, and from the stairwell came the tread of hard boots, climbing toward him. He didn’t know which was coming first, Lord Vulpin or Chatara Kral, but whichever it was, the other would be close behind.
“Please,” he wheezed in an ancient voice, rheumy eyes trying to focus on the dull, confused face of the gully dwarf, “Please, reverse that wish.”
“Do what?” Clout sidled from the cabinet, staring at the suddenly-collapsed human on the floor.
“Wish!” Clonogh pleaded. “You pathetic little twit! Why must you be so dense? Please, before my enemies find me like this. Make a wish!”
Clout scratched his head, deep in thought. “Wish? Okay. Bet ladies makin’ stew ’bout now. Wish I had some stew.”
In a realm far away as distances are measured, but very near as they are not, the great one-fanged serpent called Orm raised its evil head, slitted nostrils twitching, forked tongue tasting the air as resonances long awaited touched its senses. There! Just there, only a strike away for one whose plane was not bounded by the sensory dimensions, the creature’s lost fang called-twice! Gigantic muscles tensed. But once again, the resonance was just too brief, just too uncertain for a clear target. The Fang had been used, its magic awakened, but its user’s concentration had lapsed almost before the magic had occurred.
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