The Revenge of the Dwarves (5 page)

When the three stepped into the room, conversations ebbed away and all those present got to their feet. Knees were bent in homage, swords held aloft, heads bowed. It was the silent pledge, a promise to give life and limb for the high king. “Rise and eat,” spoke Gandogar, taking his place at the end of the table. “Let us enjoy our meal. I am hungry from our walk. Thirsty, too. Let us talk later.” Tungdil sat at his left side, Glaïmbar at his right. The meal began and the musicians struck up.

Tungdil partook of the feast with delight, his palate enchanted by the variety of tastes: spiced root jelly, roast
goat meat, kimpa mushrooms, sour cheese with herbs, and steaming hot dumplings made of root flour. The feast was such a contrast to the simple fare of his life in the mines—neither he nor Balyndis were accomplished cooks—the other thing was that he liked the food of humans, but she preferred a more traditional diet. The compromises usually tasted rather disappointing.

He wiped his fingers on his dirty beard. So enthusiastically was he attacking his food that he missed the horrified glances of the clan leaders. They were disturbed at his lack of grooming.

Gandogar passed him a tankard of beer. “Here, taste this. You don’t have stuff like that back home, do you?”

It won’t have been meant unkindly, but it made its mark through the wafer-thin mental armor. His expression clouded over. “I am content with what I have.” He took a helping of the roast, sinking his teeth into the goat flesh; brownish-red gravy dripped through his matted beard as if it were blood trickling down. His abrupt movements were at odds with his words.

“Do you have any children yet?” asked Glaïmbar, not knowing that this was another sensitive area. “Who knows when we will need the next heroes, and if your children—”

Tungdil threw down the piece of meat, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his mail shirt and gulped down his beer. Then he motioned to a dwarf standing by to bring him more. “Please, tell me why you have summoned me, King Gandogar,” he said, changing the subject so emphatically that even the simplest of minds got the point.

Glaïmbar and the high king exchanged looks. “As I said
before, it is all very quiet now, Tungdil,” said the king, continuing to eat. “This makes me uneasy.”

“Rightly so,” agreed the other. “For a whole cycle now we’ve been seeing a lot of orc activity in the Brown Ranges; they’re all surging over the pass as if the forces of goodness were pursuing them.” He was served dessert. “But at the Stone Gate it’s as quiet as the grave.”

“These last four cycles we could have safely left the gates open and nothing would have happened,” added Glaïmbar.

Tungdil recognized the pudding at once and took some. It was a light sweet cream that he’d had before, back with the freelings of Trovegold—in the house of the dwarf Myr, who had betrayed him and paid for it with her life. The woman he had loved.

The choice of dessert was a mistake. The first spoonful brought back the bitter-tasting memories that wrecked his appetite. He reached for the beer again.

“That is strange indeed,” he grunted rather than said. He cleared his throat and swallowed down the images of the past. A lot of beer would be needed to keep those pictures in their place. “Have you sent out scouts?”

“No,” answered Glaïmbar. “We didn’t want to waken any sleeping ogres until we had completed and extended our defenses.”

“That’s why you are here. We thought of sending out a small party and we thought of you, Tungdil Goldhand, to lead it.” Gandogar took over. “You’ve been to the Outer Lands, I hear.” He pointed to the hero’s ax, resting next to his chair. “You have the ax Keenfire to overcome all adversaries. You are the best choice for such an undertaking.”

Tungdil pushed his full plate away and asked for a third tankard of beer. He was stilling his hunger with the barley now. As so often in the recent past. “Yes, Your Majesty. I have been to the Outer Lands. I stayed about the length of an orbit. It was foggy; I lost three men to the orcs and in one of the caves I discovered a rune that I couldn’t decipher. It wasn’t worth going.” He poured the beer down his throat, clanged the tankard down and suppressed a belch. “You must admit, it’s not a lot of experience.”

“Nevertheless, we need to find out what’s happening there.” The high king did not sound as if he would accept a refusal on Tungdil’s part, not even an implied one. “I want you to set off tomorrow for the Stone Gate. You’ll take a group of our best warriors with you to the Outer Lands, and you’ll see what’s what.”

Tungdil had started on the fourth tankard, but put it back down on the table. “It’ll be foggy, king, that’s what. You know what fog is like. How many shades of gray do you want me to describe when I get back?”

“Hang on, Goldhand,” warned Glaïmbar, delicately eating his dessert. “You may have to offer the high king an apology if you see hordes of monsters assembling there to attack us.”

Tungdil turned back to his beer and then looked at Glaïmbar. So he was keen to send him to the Outer Lands, was he? Perhaps the mooted reconciliation hadn’t been so genuine, after all? He was ashamed of harboring this uncharitable thought. He was as suspicious as a gnome.

Cursing, he put down his beer. “Excuse my surly tone, King Gandogar,” he said quietly. “Of course I will go to
the Northern Pass.” Turning to Glaïmbar, “I’ll be happy to encounter Tion’s creatures. And if I die in battle, I don’t care! Because…” He pressed his lips together. “Forgive me. I am too tired to be good company.” He got up, bowed to the two rulers, grabbed the tankard and left the dining hall.

The dwarves all followed him with their eyes, chewing their food in silence. No one spoke. No one wanted to voice the growing doubts about their hero.

Gandogar regarded Tungdil’s uneaten food with concern. “Something has changed him.”

“Changed him?” echoed Glaïmbar. “I’m sure it’s to do with Balyndis.”

“He will find someone at the Stone Gate he can talk to about it. Someone that’s closer to him than we are.” Gandogar took a mouthful of beer, while Glaïmbar stared at him.

“
He
is coming?”

“No,” the king’s answer rang hollow in the tankard. Gandogar blinked over the rim, set the tankard down, swirled the remaining liquid round the sides to clear the froth and downed the rest of the beer in one. “He is already here, my good Glaïmbar.”

Girdlegard
,

In the Red Mountains on the Eastern Border of the Firstling Kingdom

Spring, 6241st Solar Cycle

F
idelgar Strikefast, a well-built dwarf with a bright yellow beard, sat down, took the small metal box out of his rucksack
and placed it in front of him on the stone table. He had completed his first round and was granting himself a rest in the extensive cavern whose high roof rested on stone pillars. In the old days there had been wagons running here on the rails, but in recent cycles there had been little call for them. His task was to check out the passages, and they were all long.

Baigar Fourhand, working away with a hammer and a hook at an upturned wagon, turned to look at him. He had draped the braids of his brown beard over his shoulder to keep them out of the way of the red-hot forge. Next to him there was a portable smithy as used by traveling craftsmen. It was large enough to let him carry out minor repairs. “Everything nice and quiet?” he asked and looked at the box with curiosity.

“Now that I’ve killed four orcs and wiped out a troll, yes,” he joked, taking out two beakers and a flask engraved with the sign for gold. “No, it’s all quiet.”

Now Baigar put his tools on one side and nosed his way forward. “What have you got there?”

“A Trovegold novelty.” Fidelgar stroked the edges of the little box, opened the clasps and lifted the lid with care. The smell of spices and brandy wafted out. Baigar saw some brown objects inside that were about the size and shape of a finger. “Smoke rolls.”

“From Trovegold? The city where the freelings live?”

“Exactly. One of their traders passed through. I just had to buy some.” He took a smoke roll out and held it out to Baigar. “Rolled tobacco leaves stored in spices. Or maybe they put the spices in.”

As Baigar sniffed at the smoke roll his beard braids slid back down over his chest. “So you cut a bit off and stick it in your pipe?”

“No. You don’t need a pipe. The freelings have thought up something to save time.” Fidelgar stood up, went over to the forge and used the tongs to extract a red-hot coal. He put one end of the smoke roll in his mouth and held the other end to the glowing coal. There was a hissing sound as the tobacco caught. “Then you drag on it like with a pipe,” he explained indistinctly. Several quick puffs and he was closing his eyes in pleasure. It smelled good, like vanilla and honey and some other aromas he could not name.

“That looks like a great idea.” Baigar took a roll out and copied what the other dwarf had done. The smoke was stronger-tasting, and hotter, than what he was used to from his pipe. And the effect was more powerful. His head was spinning. “I would never have thought that trading with the freelings would bring us so many advantages.” He waved the glowing smoke roll in the air. “And I don’t just mean this thing here. What about gugul meat? And then their herbs are really useful, I’m told.”

Fidelgar moved his smoke roll to the side of his mouth and opened the flask, pouring a clear liquid into the two beakers. “And they have this Trovegold goldwater. It’s a liquor with flakes of gold in it.” He nodded encouragingly. “Tastes great.”

“Flakes of gold? In liquor?” Baigar sipped at it, trying out the thin flakes on his tongue. “Tastes like…” He smacked his lips as he searched for the right word. “Gold… Nothing else can describe that exquisite taste.” He gave a
contented sigh. “Incredible. I can feel it coursing through me; the tiredness is disappearing and my mood is lifting. Seems like a miracle cure.”

“The gold or the alcohol?” Fidelgar grinned. “They can adapt the taste according to which spirits you have and what type of gold you use. You can’t get nearer to gold than that, now can you?” He took another mouthful of it and pulled on the smoke roll again. He took a look around. “Incredible how peaceful everything is.”

Baigar puffed away and tried making smoke rings. “Sure about that? No rock gnomes?”

“Would I be sitting here smoking?” Fidelgar glanced at the broken wagon Baigar had been working at. “Why bother mending the cars if we don’t use the tunnels anymore?”

“You never know,” replied Baigar. “And anyway, we do use them. We send out the building squads in them to do repairs. And why do you do your guard rounds if there are no monsters left in Girdlegard?”

“Because you never know,” laughed Fidelgar. He pointed to the four tunnels the rails ran into. “It’s a shame. Just when our dwarf folks are united, these underground networks are still lying useless. Curse that earthquake the Judgment Star caused.”

“Never fear. Vraccas is on our side.” Baigar shook his head. “We’re getting round to mending the main tracks. Just yesterday one of the gangs managed to clear a good half-mile of tunnel.” He sighed. “The rubble is just the half of it. It’s an enormous job renewing the rails that were damaged in the rockfalls. Some of the rails have to be forged new on site.” He pointed over to the wagon. “If you
have rails that are bent like that then the axles get out of shape. That’s happening all the time when the work squads use them. All means more work for me.”

“Those were the days when you could travel from one dwarf kingdom to another in the blink of an eye,” enthused Fidelgar, sending up a perfect smoke ring. He apparently had had a lot more practice at this than Baigar. “The cars would fly along the rails and the wind would whistle in your hair and beard and tickle your stomach.”

“So you traveled that way?” asked the astonished Baigar.

“Yes, I was there when Queen Xamtys II left for the secondling kingdom and we fought Nôd’onn’s hordes. That was a battle!” He blew at the glowing tip of the smoke roll so that the tobacco would not go out. “I can see it as if it were yesterday, how we—”

Baigar raised his hand abruptly. “Hush!” He listened at the black tunnel entrances. “Thought I heard something.” He removed his smoke roll and put it on the stone table.

“Could be. The work gang must still be out and—”

They heard a terrible scream coming from the furthest left of the four tunnels.

Fidelgar recognized the sound of death. A dwarf had that moment died. Then came the second scream, followed by cries of panic. “Come with me!” He jammed the smoke roll in the side of his mouth. It had been expensive and he did not want to let it go to waste. Hastily he grabbed his shield and ax and strode over to the tunnels.

Baigar took up his bag of tools and two flaming torches and ran after Fidelgar. In the old days he would have
immediately thought of an orc attack, but now he assumed there must have been an accident.

They both ran into the straight passageway meant to let the wagons brake safely before reaching the halls at the end of their journey.

The shouts were getting nearer, and the rattlings and clankings of machinery could be heard. It sounded to Baigar like winding gear running, cogwheels spinning and then the dwarves’ stone-mill grinding. But he had never heard all those sounds at the same time before now.

Ahead they discerned a glow of light, in the middle of which a monstrous creature was rearing up, completely blocking the tunnel. It was whirling its many shining claws and bronze-colored arms, while the dwarves of the work gang were desperately attempting to hold it back. But their picks had not the slightest effect on the skin of this monster, and the handles broke like matchwood.