R. Salvatore - Archmage

But no, Hoshtar knew, his first impression seemed the most reasonable, and now he played it to a logical conclusion. These dwarves, this army, had come to Q’Xorlarrin at the behest of the matron mother. She was pressuring House Xorlarrin to plead for her assistance so that she could garner Matron Mother Zeerith’s unwavering fealty.

“Yes, that must be it,” Hoshtar said under his breath, and he found himself disgusted and intrigued all at once.

And worried, for what might Matron Mother Zeerith’s reaction be when he passed along this terrifying information?

That moment was fast approaching, Hoshtar realized, when more sounds followed Athrogate and the woman into the corridor. This entire section of the complex would fall to their small hands in short order, and his escape routes would be few and far between.

The Xorlarrin wizard adjusted his red veil over his face and quietly mouthed a spell. Fortunately for him, Athrogate, who was not so far away, launched loudly into a bawdy song, covering his spellcasting.

Hoshtar became an insubstantial cloud of fog and wafted away.

“No ye don’t, girlie!” Tannabritches Fellhammer yelled as she went skidding on her knees down the hallway past her sister, launching herself at the kobold line.

She almost got the next swing in, but her sister Mallabritches leaped over her, head down, and crashed into the monsters, driving them back.

“Ah, ye cheatin’ daughter of an ugly orc!” Tannabritches howled, putting her feet under her and charging ahead. She shouldered Mallabritches aside and stabbed out with her sword once and then again, dropping a pair of kobolds.

“And ye’re me twin!” Mallabritches reminded her. “So who’s the orc?”

“Hah!” Tannabritches cried in victory, and started ahead, her sister growling and matching her charge.

But then Tannabritches was flying backward, tugged by a strong hand. She started to question it, but heard a familiar laugh and saw a familiar one-horned helmet atop a mop of wild red hair.

“Bah!” she cried, and Mallabritches grunted and offered a resounding “oof!” as Bruenor bulled past her.

Bruenor’s shield rush drove into the kobold ranks, the dwarf leaning hard, shoulder to buckler, his powerful legs pumping and driving. Every now and then, Bruenor reached his axe up and over his shield, smacking at the beasts, and whenever one managed to get a foothold to slow his press, the dwarf turned and cut low, taking out its legs.

“Duck!” the Fellhammer sisters yelled in unison, and Bruenor reflexively scrunched lower. He felt a boot on his left shoulder, another boot on his right shoulder, and over went the sisters, using him as a springboard to lift them high above the front kobold ranks and drop into the middle of the swarm.

“No!” Bruenor cried. “What’re ye thinkin’?”

His last word came out as a grunt, though, as another boot stomped atop his shoulder, and another on the other side.

“Bwahaha!” he heard, and he knew that Athrogate and Ambergris had come.

The kobolds knew it, too.

Painfully so.

Reconstituted in his corporeal form once more, Hoshtar Xorlarrin glanced back over his shoulder, hearing the approaching battle. He was in the last tunnel now, moving for the large chamber that joined the lower levels with these upper portions of the complex.

The kobolds were running out of room.

The dwarves would be here soon, in this tunnel, and the upper complex would be theirs.

There remained some monsters between them and Hoshtar’s clan, and surely the drow could bring in some more to hinder the progress of these bearded ruffians.

Hinder, but not stop, for it was only a matter of time now, and not much time at that.

Hoshtar reached the end of the corridor, moving through a door to a landing that opened high above the vast chamber and the deep darkness below. With a last glance back up the corridor, the mage touched his House emblem, enacting an enchantment of levitation, and stepped from the ledge, drifting down.

Matron Mother Zeerith would not be pleased, for he had nothing good to tell her. The dwarves had made tremendous progress, securing room after room after tunnel, and fortifying everything in their wake. When Hoshtar had secretly crossed through the front warrior ranks of the enemy, he had found the industrious dwarves behind hard at work, building traps and secure doors of stone and iron, even reshaping corridors in meticulous detail, setting up kill zones with their clever war engines. Even if House Xorlarrin fought off the initial assaults and defeated the front lines of dwarves, claiming these upper tunnels of Q’Xorlarrin would be costly.

And without these upper tunnels secured, Matron Mother Zeerith’s designs on trade with surface-dwelling partners could not be easily realized.

Hoshtar thought of Athrogate, Jarlaxle’s ugly little friend.

“Oh, clever Jarlaxle,” he said, drifting down into the darkness. Might Jarlaxle, and not the matron mother, prove to be the impetus behind the dwarves’ reclamation of the upper halls? Jarlaxle knew these dwarves, obviously, and had spies among them-Athrogate at least. With these devious developments, with an army of dwarves holding fast to the upper complex, only Jarlaxle could facilitate the necessary trade between the city of Q’Xorlarrin and the World Above.

Was this Jarlaxle’s way of ensuring himself a larger profit?

“Or is it truly the work of the matron mother?” he asked himself as he lightly touched down beside the huge spiral staircase that could be, and now was, retracted halfway to the ceiling.

Aware then that many eyes and bows were trained upon him, Hoshtar held up his hands unthreateningly and offered his name.

“Beware falling kobolds,” he warned the drow sentries, moving past into the deeper tunnels, moving toward the unenviable task of informing Matron Mother Zeerith on the successes their enemies had already realized.

“Dwarves,” the delicate and fashionable dark elf muttered repeatedly during that long, long walk to the royal chambers. “Ugly, hairy, filthy dwarves. Oh, why must it be dwarves?”

“Haha, but ye’ve picked yerself a band o’ bluster an’ bustin’!” Athrogate said to Bruenor a bit later, when the five had turned into a series of side passages and found-to their disappointment-a few moments of muchneeded respite. “Don’t know that I’ve e’er seen a one-hander so quick to clobber!” he added, using an old dwarven nickname, “one-hander,” to describe a five-dwarf patrol group.

Bruenor had a hard time disagreeing with the sentiment. Fist and Fury were truly a rolling disaster from any enemy’s viewpoint, and Bruenor, with his supreme skill, centuries of experience, and mighty gear, knew how to complement them perfectly. And no less devastating were Athrogate and Ambergris, particularly Athrogate. Never in his life had Bruenor witnessed a more capable dwarven catastrophe-indeed, this one was on a par with Thibbledorf Pwent!

“If I didn’t have ye with me, I’d not be out in front o’ the group,” he replied, and dropped a friendly hand on Athrogate’s shoulder.

“Aye, and an added pleasure it is that th’ other three are lasses,” Athrogate said, lowering his voice so that the trio, who were not so far away, couldn’t hear. “I know ye’re me king here, and know that ye’ve got me allegiance, but I’m beggin’ ye to keep yer charms from me girl Ambergris. I’ve ne’er known a sturdier lassie, and oh, but she’s taken me heart in her hands!”

Bruenor just stared at him curiously.

“What?” Athrogate asked when he finally caught on to that expression. “Were ye thinkin’ o’ takin’ her from me, then?”

“I’m yer king?” Bruenor asked, seeming genuinely surprised.