Fate of Thorbardin dh-3

by Douglas Niles

  He had barely finished his courtesies when the door opened to reveal Tarn’s wife, Crystal Heathstone. Gretchan had become good friends with the hill dwarf female, who was considerably younger than her husband, during the cleric’s stay in Pax Tharkas, and she quickly rose and gave Crystal a warm embrace. At first glance she noticed the former queen’s haggard look, the lines of tension radiating outward from her suddenly old-looking eyes. She filed that observation away for future, private conversation. For the time had finally come for her to share her astounding news.

  She opened her backpack and pulled out the wedge of blood-red stone. She laid the artifact on the exiled king’s desk and stood back as his eyes widened in appreciation and recognition.

  “The third part of the hammer!” Tarn said at once. “But … how did you come to have it? You were going to Kayolin, and we all thought that it was in Thorbardin.”

  “You’re right on both counts,” Gretchan said. “It’s a long story, but in brief, we owe it to a gully dwarf.”

  “You reached Kayolin, then?” asked her father. “And Brandon-is he well? Did you leave him there?”

  “There’s so much to tell,” Gretchan said. “Brandon is on his way here, with several thousand Kayolin troops. I came on ahead with the Redstone so that we could meld it with the blue and green parts, and forge the Tricolor Hammerhead. You’ll have to assemble your best smiths and alchemists, of course. And I’ll help in any way I can-that is, if a humble priestess can be of service.”

  “Wait!” Tarn held up a hand. “Kayolin is sending an army? Here? Maybe you should take your time and start at the beginning.”

  So she did. Her four listeners found seats as Gretchan paced around the spacious office, describing the events that had resulted in Brandon Bluestone’s father rising to the governorship of Kayolin and the new sense of political will and cooperation that led to the dispatching of a large force to aid Tarn in reclaiming his rightful throne in Thorbardin.

  “Gus Fishbiter, of all people, is the one who brought us the Redstone. You’ll all remember him; he’s the Aghar who-accidently but fortunately-disabled the trap here before Garn Bloodfist could release it on the Neidar. Anyway, he was able to magically travel from here back to Thorbardin, and he somehow stumbled onto the Redstone. He also learned that the war is actually happening there, the civil war between the black wizard and Jungor Stonespringer’s fanatics. Then he used the same kind of magic-a dimension door spell, it was, cast by some Theiwar wizards-to escape. Only instead of returning here, he found himself in Kayolin. That’s where Kondike found him and brought him to me.”

  “Stop!” Tarn ordered again, frowning. “We discovered some Hylar and Daergar here, in Pax Tharkas. They said they came here through this dimension door you speak of. They said they’d been eager to get away, that conditions in Thorbardin were very bad. But what’s this about the war? You say a war’s really happening? In Thorbardin?”

  “Yes! Gus couldn’t make up the details he gave me. He even talked about a huge dragon, a fiery serpent, fighting on the side of the wizard’s army. But victory was far from settled, and the destruction, inflicted by and upon both sides, is great. Thorbardin is suffering, and her defenses are weakened and conflicted. The time is perfect for us to move against the underground nation. While they are tearing at each other’s throats, we can return and claim your throne back for you and your line.”

  “But the Kayolin Army …?”

  “They’re on the march by now, certainly. Garren Bluestone was going to arrange for passage across the Newsea; he thought he could get assistance from the emperor of Solamnia. I came on ahead so that we could forge the hammer. And also so that we could have time to recruit the hill dwarves to help in our campaign. Slate Fireforge, in Hillhome-can we send for him at once, enlist his help in raising troops?”

  Gretchan noticed the frown creasing Tarn Bellowgranite’s face. “What is it?” she asked immediately. “Have the Neidar gathered against you again? Just in the time since I’ve been gone?” She couldn’t hide her despair. She had been convinced that the treaty signed at the end of the previous year’s battle would be one that would stand the test of time. “We have their promise on the pact! Have they given some kind of word that they won’t honor it?”

  “No, the hill dwarves have done nothing overt,” Tarn admitted. “But I’ll be cursed by Reorx before I’ll let them serve in any army under my command! Thorbardin is a nation of mountain dwarves! And so it shall remain!”

  “But the treaty! You signed it!” she objected impulsively. “The hill dwarves agreed to help in exactly this purpose as soon as it became a real possibility!”

  “Do you really think they meant that pledge?” Tarn snapped. “They signed it-and I signed it-in a moment of weakness!”

  “It certainly can’t hurt to ask them,” Gretchan said, striving to maintain a reasonable tone in the face of such startling, stubborn intransigence.

  “Yes, it can hurt,” the exiled king replied. “Has it occurred to you that Thorbardin harbors a wealth of treasure? If the hill dwarves agree to go with us, it will only be so that they can get their hands on that treasure! It belongs to the mountain dwarves; we will not share it!”

  Gretchan was trying to come up with some kind of reply when she-and the older men-were startled by the loud slam of a door. She spun in surprise and only then noticed that the number of dwarves in the room had decreased by one.

  Crystal Heathstone, the king’s wife and a proud daughter of the Neidar hill dwarves, had just stormed out of the room.

  “Why do you have to be so Reorx-cursed stubborn?” Crystal Heathstone demanded once she and her husband had retired to the privacy of their living chambers. “If you could have just listened to her and seen the wisdom of her words, you could be the greatest leader Thorbardin has ever known! You could be the kind of dwarf I thought you were when I married you!”

  “That’s enough, woman!” retorted Tarn Bellowgranite in a barely contained roar. “You forget who you’re talking to!”

  “Oh no I don’t! I remember very well! I’m talking to a man who has been prejudiced for so long that he can’t see wisdom unless it’s slathered on a piece of bread and offered to him for breakfast!”

  “That’s enough, I say! Do you recall what happened the last time the hill dwarves came to Pax Tharkas? They brought an army and a minion of dark magic! If it hadn’t been for that priestess and her staff, we’d-all of us! — be slaves in the Neidar mines by now!”

  Crystal almost cried with exasperation. She turned and stomped across the office then spun back to face her husband. “That priestess, Gretchan Pax, is the same one who wants to reach out to the hill dwarves! Think about that if you can. This could be an historic moment in the whole history of dwarfkind. You could be the leader who finally moves our people beyond the destruction and rivalry of two thousand years!”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Tarn retorted sternly. “Because I wouldn’t trust a hill dwarf ally any farther than I could throw him across a ravine. I’d be certain that, at the moment of victory, he’d be ready to stab me in the back! There’s a fortune in treasure in Thorbardin, and it is the property of the mountain dwarves. The hill dwarves only want it for themselves!”

  “Think of what you’re saying!” Crystal protested. “These are my people you’re talking about! Do you think I would stab you in the back?”

  Tarn glared without replying. His expression didn’t change as his son suddenly, furtively, slipped through the door. Tor was apparently surprised to find his parents there, for he swiftly turned and ducked out again.

  The king turned back to his wife, who glared at him with an expression of unrelieved stubbornness. He was about to challenge her again when they were both distracted by a fresh knock on the door.

  “What is it?” he demanded loudly. “I’m busy.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” came Mason Axeblade’s reply. “But it’s urgent, an emergency.”

  Tarn stalked across the chamber and p
ulled the door open. “What’s happened?” he snapped.

  “It’s Garn Bloodfist, sire,” Mason explained, his eyes wide with concern. “I’m sorry to report that … well, it seems that he’s escaped.”

  Gretchan couldn’t suppress a sigh as she sat at the window of her guest apartment, a place of honor high up in the East Tower. The sun had set an hour earlier, and the valley floor below her was dotted with torches, bobbing and weaving as their bearers moved through the fields, searching for Garn Bloodfist. Other parties of armed dwarves stormed through the fortress, sometimes pounding down the hallway directly outside of her door. Tarn had ordered a pair of guards posted right there, so at least she didn’t have to endure their entering the room to search every time they passed.

  Kondike lay on the floor beside the door. He looked comfortable, sprawled in a mass of gangly black legs and rough, shaggy fur. Yet one of his ears remained pricked alertly upward, and she knew that any disturbance would bring him bounding to his feet, hackles bristling and long teeth bared in the direction of the alarm.

  Could it be that Garn Bloodfist was actually stalking through the halls of Pax Tharkas? She didn’t think so-he was well known and had few friends there. Even the Klar troops who had served him when he had been their captain had seen the danger in his wild hatred and had accepted the wisdom of the treaty that had brought the war to an end.

  She shuddered as she pictured the mad Klar. She hadn’t seen Bloodfist since he had been arrested, at the very end of the battle in Pax Tharkas, but she would never forget the murderous look that he had directed at her, his wide Klar eyes staring wildly, dark spots in circles of white, as if he had been staring right through her.

  How had everything become such a mess? Why did Reorx allow the affairs of dwarves to be so relentlessly cursed with violence, treachery, and murder?

  She held her staff in both of her hands and closed her eyes as she pressed her forehead to the cool, smooth shaft of wood. She murmured a soft prayer to her god, the Master of the Forge. Her evening chants, as always, soothed her, the musical sound of prayer a calming force in even the most tumultuous of times.

  She thought of Brandon, still so far away, and prayed for his safety, for his success in his campaign against the horax, for his speedy progress on his journey south. She continued to think of him as she undressed and slipped into bed-into the bed that was almost obscenely comfortable after all of the rough nights in her bedroll on the trail. Things would be so much better if he were there-of that, she was somehow certain.

  And with that certainty, and the weariness of her long trek at last behind her, she finally allowed herself to sleep.

  SEVEN

  DEPARTURES AND RETURNS

  The Kayolin Army continued its march southward to Caergoth, crossing the Solamnic plains like some miles-long, infinite-legged centipede. Always the dwarves maintained their precise column and held to the cadence set by the hundred drummers. The miles rolled by underfoot, and the sky swept like a vast canopy overhead-an experience that many of the dwarves, those who had spent most if not all of their lives underground, found profoundly unsettling.

  As he walked along the column or stood beside the track and listened to the troops as they passed, Brandon heard many whispered conversations about the uncanny expanse of space there on the surface of the outside world-an expanse that was magnified by the stark emptiness of the plains. A regular debate was waged between those, a majority, who found the daylight hours to be most disturbing, and the vocal minority who had difficulty adjusting to the night sky and its myriad stars. Both sides could agree they couldn’t wait to get back under the shelter of a good mountain range, as Reorx had intended, and escape from the disturbing and vast spaces of the surface world.

  But even as the soldiers groused and complained and bickered, as soldiers have done in every army in every nation on every world throughout all history, Brandon was proud to see that the men grew stronger, leaner, and sturdier during the long hours of the march. By the second day after they had left the mountains, the Garnet Mountains had vanished over the horizon behind them, and the sameness of the plains sprawled into the distance in all four directions like a barren expanse of flatness.

  Morale remained high. The troops believed in their mission, believed in the goal of restoring Thorbardin’s greatness and reinstating the ancient dwarf home among the ranks of the mightiest nations of Krynn. The campaign had tapped into a vein of deep national longing that Brandon himself hadn’t known existed, but he perceived that the brave dwarves, his men, desired much beyond their own personal satisfaction. It made him proud to call them his kinsmen.

  In a few places the dwarves marveled at the wonders of Solamnia. At one point a long column of the emperor’s cavalry fell in beside them for a day of marching, and the dwarves gawked and gossiped about the magnificent horses, some five hundred strong, and the gleaming armored riders who sat astride the magnificent chargers. They came to the great Kingsbridge, a sturdy stone span crossing the Caergoth River that had been rebuilt very recently, following the war that had brought the emperor to his throne. The dwarves marveled at the smooth stonework and nodded knowingly when Brandon informed them that dwarf engineers had aided the human stonecutters and masons in creating the beautiful, functional span.

  But mostly Solamnia was just vast, flat, and empty. Each of those features was a strange thing to dwarves born and raised under the ground, and it was no surprise that they found them strange. Each served to awe and impress the troops in its own way, perhaps reminding the warriors of how small each individual was when set against the whole breadth of the world. Even their nation of Kayolin, the land they knew with such righteous pride, was a mere province when compared to the great sweep of land on the surface of Krynn.

  The days were cool, which made for comfortable marching, and the nights were cold enough to encourage the men to stay put in their bedrolls. There was no brawling, little scuffling, only an occasional duel, and-perhaps most surprisingly-no further complaints about the three gully dwarves who had given their pledge that they would stay out of trouble. Gus and his girls seemed to be as good as their word: they stayed out of sight and, as far as Brandon knew, out of mischief.

  The smooth ground provided no obstacle to the progress of the march, and early on Brandon had seen the wisdom in purchasing carts and wagons. The horses and mules pulling them spared his soldiers the burden of carrying all of their supplies. Morale skyrocketed when the dwarves understood that they would have plenty of food and at least a nip or two of the fermented beverages they cherished in every night’s camp. Sturdy draft horses were strapped into the traces of the three Firespitters, and those great weapons, too, rolled along with good speed at little cost in dwarf sweat and blisters.

  And a moment of true wonder was shared by all when, after a fortnight’s march, the army crested the great hill before the city of Caergoth, overlooking that bustling seaport. Dozens of trading and merchant vessels as well as warships flying a half dozen different flags were under sail, some arriving, some leaving. But nearby, just off the harbor mouth and standing easily at anchor, were some hundred massive transport ships, and Brandon immediately recognized them as the fleet promised by the emperor to allow the Kayolin Army to cross the sea.

  “They’re huge!” gasped Tankard Hacksaw, who happened to be marching beside Brandon as the ships came into view. “Like castles on the water!”

  “Galleons, they’re called,” Brandon explained breezily. As a veteran of three sea voyages, all of them across that same body of water, he felt well qualified to share his wisdom with the less-experienced dwarves-and that meant all of the troops of his army.

  Each ship boasted three tall masts, bare at that moment, rising like pine trunks from the wide wooden decks. Those masts would sprout canvas sails like vast leaves, Brandon remembered, and the sheets would fill with wind and allow the sailors to drive their ships wherever they cared to go. The great hulls were round, like fat bellies on the tall, sturdy vess
els, and the largest of the ships would be capable of carrying at least one of the Firespitters. Those heavy weapons, as well as the oxen and carts, would be loaded aboard by the cranes they could see dotting the wharves along the near side of the harbor.

  Brandon felt a rush of affection for Dram Feldspar and, by extension, his master, the emperor of Solamnia. The human was as good as his word. The ships were waiting. The army could cross the water.

  And for the first time, Brandon allowed himself to believe that their crazy plan just possibly had a chance of success.

  “This is Bardic Stonehammer, the greatest smith in Pax Tharkas. He has been the chief armorer in my army since my days as king,” Tarn Bellowgranite explained to Gretchan after she had accepted his invitation to join him in the foundry below the base of the fortress’s East Tower.

  “My lady,” said the smith with an affectionate smile and a deep bow. “It is a pleasure, indeed, to finally meet you.”

  “Thank you for that greeting and for offering to help us with the work,” the priestess replied. She was impressed: Bardic Stonehammer was probably the largest, sturdiest-looking dwarf she had ever met. His shoulders were broad and square, and his arms were as thick and strapping as any normal dwarf’s thighs. His head was bald, and his beard trimmed short-or perhaps, she wondered, to judge from the irregular cut of his whiskers, he just tended to singe it in his forge.

  “It is an opportunity that I would not want to miss,” the big smith said with infectious cheerfulness. Indeed, he had a broad smile that seemed to compel good humor all around. “Not since Theros Ironfeld was entrusted with the secret of the dragonlance has such a powerful artifact been placed in the hands of one of my trade,” he noted solemnly.