“Don’t say Gus no follow!” he fumed, stomping his way down the stairs into the dungeon. “Gus follow every place! Gus follow, even follow alla way to war!”
And that determination, at least, made him feel a little better. That night, he even let Berta and Slooshy argue about who would get to give him a foot rub. Of course, by the time they settled the argument, he had already fallen asleep.
“Where are you going?” Tarn asked as he discovered Crystal Heathstone busily packing a backpack in the royal quarters. “My army marches tomorrow! I expect you to be on the parapets, leading the cheers as we march off to reclaim Thorbardin!”
His wife, still beautiful and smooth skinned after so many years of tumult and exile, glared at him, and when she spoke, her words were not really all that surprising.
“I’m leaving you,” she said. “I’m going back to my people. You don’t need me here.” Her voice caught and she shook her head angrily. “You don’t want any Neidar here!”
“That’s not true!” he protested. “I–I don’t even think of you as a Neidar!” His voice grew stern. “I think of you as my wife, by Reorx! And I will not have you marching off to the clans of my enemies!”
“They’re not your enemies, you doddering old fool! But I know that I can’t convince you of that! And frankly, I’m ready to give up trying. So I’m going back to Hillhome, to see if there’s more honor among the hill clans than there is here, among your mountain dwarves!”
“I forbid it!” Tarn spluttered. “You will not leave Pax Tharkas!”
She laughed, a short and bitter sound. Something in her eyes caused him to hesitate, to wonder at the determination, the anger, that he had never seen in her before.
“Just try to stop me!” was all she said.
And in the end, he could only watch as she walked away.
Willim the Black awakened from a most unpleasant nightmare in which he had been trying to teleport away from a looming, horrific firestorm. But his magic had failed him, and he could only quiver and tremble and sweat as the lethal, incinerating presence crept closer and closer.
He awakened to find that he had cast off his blanket and was lying on the bare mattress, naked and soaking wet from his own perspiration. Facet was not there-he had sent her away after he had taken his pleasure from her-but he suddenly wished, very desperately, for the comfort of her embrace.
“Master, I heard you,” came her musical voice from the door of his sleeping chamber. “Are you distressed? May I comfort you?”
“Yes-I need you!” he croaked. “Come to me now!”
“Of course, Master. But first, have a cool drink. Here, I brought you some wine.”
He gratefully accepted the full tumbler she offered him, drinking so eagerly that the purple liquid trickled from the sides of his mouth, ran into his beard, and spattered across his chest. He was about to order her to bring him a towel, but for some reason his head was spinning.
He was groggy and terribly tired.
Before he knew it, he slept.
Crystal had packed lightly, for there was little she desired to take away from that place. The one thing that grieved her above all was the thought of leaving her son behind. But she knew Tor would not choose the hill dwarves over his father’s mountain clans. And if she compelled or persuaded him to go, Tarn Bellowgranite would make that an excuse for war.
So she would go alone.
She didn’t even have any regrets, except perhaps for the fact that it had taken her so long to make the decision. But finally she understood the truth: there were too many barriers, too many chasms, existing between her world and her husband’s. She would be better off without him, and he would be better off without her.
She spent a long moment grieving for her daughter, who had died there. Then she shook her head, hoisted her pack onto her back, and started down the stairs. She didn’t look back, not even when she passed the guards at the main gate of Pax Tharkas, and saw them exchange worried looks. Yet neither of them challenged her.
Finally she was on the road, the fortress falling away behind her. Her home was ahead of her, many miles away, but they would be good miles. Of that she was certain.
And there was another thing she knew.
It was good to be free.
The mad dwarf knew that he had outwitted them all. He was clever, too clever by far, for the king and his lackeys to catch him. Once the unseen benefactor had freed him from his cell, he had not gone up into the fortress of Pax Tharkas, where every corridor, every room, every hall would be watched and, as soon as his absence was noted, searched.
No, Garn Bloodfist had not climbed upward. Instead, he made his way even deeper into the Tharkadan cellars, slipping past the slumbering turnkey then making his way toward an ancient route that very few dwarves knew existed.
The Sla-Mori, it was called, the secret way.
And so it was, a way out of Pax Tharkas, a passage that had carried him into a forested ravine more than a mile beyond the high walls, the ranks of torches, and the patrolling sentries.
There he had hidden for countless days, eating berries and grubs, hiding in the streambed whenever anyone approached, using the simple expedient of burying himself in mud until only his eyes and nose were exposed to the air. He kept his eyes closed, and the tactic had worked, for he had not yet been discovered.
As the days passed and the imminence of winter became more clear with each chill night, he wondered what to do. He watched the road leading away from the fortress, hiding as the hill dwarf traders and mountain dwarf hunting parties went past. He reminded himself that he hated them all, the hill dwarves and the mountain dwarves. They were all his foes, and they would pay.
Then one afternoon he was startled to see a lone female figure striding away from the fortress. He recognized the beautiful hair, gray but still soft, and the strong, determined stride. She was the former queen, the one who had visited him and calmed him in his dungeon of torment. He loved her, in his own way, for that care.
But then he remembered another truth, undeniable, and burning like a fire in his gut.
Oh, yes, he hated her too.
PARTII
TEN
ROADS INTO THE WILD
It’s been too short, our time here together. I wish we weren’t leaving for another week! Why’d you have to be so Reorx-cursed efficient?” groused Brandon, looking at his steel breastplate with distaste.
Gretchan sighed, making a sound that was a mixture of affection and aggravation. She was already dressed in her traveling clothes: her leather moccasins were laced tightly over her calves, and the woolen outer cloak she wore for warmth lay across the trunk, along with her sacred staff. The window’s shutter was open, mountain darkness and chill yawning beyond, and he knew that she, too, would have been more than happy to simply go back to bed.
“I wish we could take some more time together right now. Believe me, I do,” she said. “But we’d just be passing the hours here in a mountain fortress built for war, with another war looming as soon as we decide to take care of our responsibilities.” Her voice turned sharp. “Or would you have us forget about Thorbardin, forget about everything but our own selfish desires?”
“No,” Brandon acknowledged, sliding his arms through the sleeves of his metal armor. “Not when there’s a real chance that the next war might be the last war, at least as it pertains to us dwarves. We might as well have at it.”
If only the last three days hadn’t been so restful, so pleasant, so … loving! In the back of his mind, he realized that he’d been hoping to spend a week or more there, assuming that it would take at least that long for the two armies to muster, gather supplies, and coalesce as a single force.
But Gretchan’s early arrival had allowed Tarn Bellowgranite time to prepare his men for an expedition, and the combined army was ready to march from Pax Tharkas a mere seventy-two hours after the Kayolin troops had turned up. Supplies had been stockpiled, weapons and armor repaired and readied for the campa
ign, captains assigned, and units organized for war. Tarn himself had become the mission’s most ardent supporter, and his own men had taken heart from their leader’s resurgent energy.
Too soon the dawn of the first march had come, with gray light suffusing the valley of Pax Tharkas while the snowy massif of Cloudseeker Peak, with its corona of cornice and glacier, slowly took shape on the southern horizon. Brandon gazed at that mountain and shuddered, unable to suppress a shiver of growing apprehension and almost insurmountable reluctance.
Gretchan seemed, as usual, to know what he was feeling deep inside.
“I wish we could stay here, right under these covers,” she agreed as though reading his thoughts, wistfully looking at the large, still disheveled, bed. “But you’re right: this campaign could finally end these decades, even centuries, of violence. If we restore freedom to Thorbardin, we can look forward to a long and well-deserved peacetime.”
“I still wish that stubborn old fellow would have agreed to bring the hill dwarves with us,” Brandon complained. “I’d feel better about our chances.”
“Of course, you are right about that,” the female cleric agreed with maddening calm. “But even without the Neidar, we’ll be marching with a very capable force.”
The Kayolin general had to admit the assembled army was impressive. Right outside their window, hundreds of cookfires dotted the vast encampment to the south of the fortress wall. In addition to the four thousand troops he had brought south, Tarn Bellowgranite had mustered another thousand well-trained veterans, dwarves he called the Tharkadan Legion.
Among that force were some five hundred Klar of proven courage and loyalty. They were commanded by a one-eyed captain named Wildon Dacker. Dacker had served with Tarn Bellowgranite even before the long exile and was a much steadier and more reliable captain than his predecessor, Garn Bloodfist. And Dacker undeniably held the loyalty of his Klar warriors. Though they retained the impetuous and frenzied traits of their clan, they made for exceptional shock troops, and when they attacked in a berserking frenzy, their whoops and wails would test the courage of even the stoutest opponent.
The rest of the Tharkadan Legion consisted of heavily armed and armored Hylar and Daergar, under the command of Mason Axeblade. They, too, were seasoned veterans who had proven their loyalty to Tarn Bellowgranite many times over through the years-so much so that all of them had chosen to follow him into exile more than a decade earlier. They were ready to march with him unto death to reclaim his rightful throne.
The former king of Thorbardin suggested that the entire force should be named the Dwarf Home Army, and so it was done. The agreement had been sealed over two nights of feasting and celebration and, dwarves being dwarves, much drinking. The captains of the two realms had gotten to know each other as friends, while the troops had sized each other up and been satisfied, even impressed, by their new comrades in arms.
Dawn was brightening toward full daylight with inexorable speed as Brandon hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and took up the Bluestone Axe. Gretchan hoisted her staff too, and they were at last ready to go.
Near the door, Kondike whined and waved his tail halfheartedly.
“You’ll have to stay here, old friend,” Gretchan said sadly and fondly. She gave the dog a pat on his broad head but wouldn’t let him out the door. “Tor Bellowgranite will come and let you out in a few hours,” she explained as if the animal could understand. “But I’m keeping you behind the door until we’re well over the horizon.”
Tarn’s son, like Kondike, had been disappointed at being left behind. The priestess had tried to ease his chagrin with words of encouragement about the future. Finally, though, after being charged with the dog’s care while Gretchan was away, the young dwarf had seemed to accept his decidedly minor role in the master battle plan.
By the time Gretchan and Brandon had descended from her room in the high tower, the whole of the Dwarf Home Army had assembled on the terraced ground just south of the great fortress. They looked ready to go to war.
Tarn Bellowgranite was at the center of a circle that included Otaxx Shortbeard, the Klar Wildon Dacker, and Mason Axeblade. He waved the couple over as soon as they emerged from the gates.
“Brandon! Gretchan! This is a great day!” he declared loudly. “Are you ready to make history?”
“Indeed we are,” Brandon said, inspired in spite of himself by the old dwarf’s ebullience.
Gretchan nodded, studying Tarn with slightly narrowed eyes. Brandon knew that Gretchen was worried about the absence of Crystal Heathstone and the effect that might have on the king. The Kayolin dwarf noticed Tarn glance once upward, toward the windows of his royal apartment, while an expression of sadness flickered across his face. But that look vanished immediately as the exiled king clapped a hand on the hilt of the short sword he wore at his waist and turned his eyes to the south, toward Thorbardin.
Bardic Stonehammer stood near the king. He clasped Brandon’s hand and embraced Gretchan. The hulking smith carried a leather-wrapped bundle slung over his broad shoulder, and Brandon, once again, was glad to have the burly dwarf along, chosen as the best one to wield the Tricolor Hammer. All of their hopes depended on that artifact doing what it was supposed to do: cracking the unbreachable gate of Thorbardin.
And that would be only the beginning of what was certain to be a long and bloody campaign.
Still, it was a column of optimistic dwarves who started on the mountain road. They had hot food in their bellies, a worthy goal before them, and a priestess of Reorx to counsel them. As if to beckon them onward, Cloudseeker was outlined in bright sunlight, the glacial summit sparkling like a massive gemstone before them.
The hope of all their futures awaited them under the mountain.
Meanwhile, the mad dwarf was skulking along the ridgetop, bouncing from ravine to ledge to rocky crest on all fours, peering around the corner of a boulder, watching his … his quarry? His friend …? His woman …?
More and more, he found himself thinking in terms of the latter.
Surely she recognized their bond too! Wasn’t that the reason she had come to visit him so often while he languished in his cell? Her kindness had been more than mere charity. That much was obvious. As the mad dwarf remembered things, he could almost hear the quiver of longing in her voice whenever she had spoken to him. Her eyes, when he had glimpsed them, had positively shined with what must certainly have been desire.
He had located a good vantage atop a rocky crest, with the road curving around the base of the elevation, and settled himself on a flat rock, lying on his belly as he studied Crystal Heathstone’s resolute progress away from Pax Tharkas.
She walked as if she knew that he was observing her; at least, that was the thought in the mad dwarf’s mind. The sway of her hips as she walked over the rough ground was alluring, a personal signal to him. His heart tripped. Was that a furtive look over her shoulder? A coy glance at the watcher on the hilltop? Did she suspect he was up there?
He almost convinced himself that she knew his position. Only with a great exertion of will did he restrain himself from leaping to his feet, waving wildly, and running down the steep and rocky slope to sweep her into his arms. Oh, how he wanted to!
But he had retained more than a vestige of his cunning, and he realized that, if he were wrong and he revealed himself too soon, she might flee in fear. So instead he contented himself with watching, shifting slowly along the slab of rock as she strolled along the road so far below, gradually making her way around the huge knob of granite.
As she continued on, he saw that the road wound away from him and she was already passing around the curve, vanishing behind the shoulder of the next hill. Garn sprang up, running down the slope so fast that he pitched forward and rolled all the way to the bottom, jarring to a stop in a ditch. Picking himself up, he limped on a bruised knee and wiped streaks of dust and gravel out of his beard but wasted no time in hastening after his quarry.
He jogged awkwardly alon
g the road for several hundred paces until he sensed that he was getting too close to Crystal again. It was still too soon for him to reveal himself, so he jumped in the ditch again then started climbing up through the slope that would again carry him to a level high above the dwarf maid. His knee bothered him enough that he had to pull himself along by grasping tree trunks and outcrops of rocks.
The hill was not as steep nor as rugged as the previous one, and the forest of tall, thin pines extended all the way to the top. Using the woods as cover, he moved along as quickly as he was able and was at last awarded another glimpse of the beautiful white fur cloak worn by the former queen of Thorbardin. He limped along, grunting against the pain that stabbed through his leg, grateful for the thick concealment offered by the trees.
He was well hidden from her. He didn’t have to stay so far away. And as dusk started to settle through the hills, he knew it was time to move closer to her.
Once the army was ready to leave-and there was Gretchan, going away with all the soldiers-Gus was determined not to be left behind. He watched, innocently waving, as the troops packed up their gear, formed into companies, and made ready to march. The two Firespitters, with their accompanying carts of oil, were near the tail of the formation, and the gully dwarf casually made his way toward those ungainly vehicles.
As the great column of dwarves finally started along the southward road leading into the Kharolis Mountains, Gus Fishbiter left the shadows of Pax Tharkas and made his way to the dense center of the columns of the army, swelled by the soldiers of Tarn Bellowgranite’s Tharkadan Legion. He marched along, trying to look inconspicuous. Mindful of Gretchan’s orders instructing him to remain behind, he avoided going anywhere near the cleric, for the moment.
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