Margaret Weis - Dragons of The Dwarven Depths

Sturm was also staring out the window. “We could handle the guards at the door. Tanis. There are only two of them.”

“Then what?” Raistlin demanded caustically. “How do we slip through Thorbardin unnoticed? Pass ourselves off as dwarves? The kender might do it, but the rest of us would have to put on false beards and walk on our knees.”

Sturm’s face flushed at the mage’s sarcasm. “We could at least speak to Hornfel. Tell him of our concern for our friend. He might reconsider.”

“I suppose we could request an audience,” said Tanis, “but I doubt we’d succeed. He made it very clear that only dwarves can enter the sacred tomb.”

Sturm continued to stare gloomily out the window.

“Flint is on his way to the Valley of Thanes,” said Tanis, “the Kingdom of the Dead, with a mad dwarf to watch his back and the spirit of a dead prince to guide him. Fretting over him won’t help.”

“Praying for him will,” said Sturm, and the knight went down on his knees. Raistlin shrugged. “I’m going back to bed.”

“At least ’til breakfast comes,” said Caramon.

There was nothing else to do. Tanis went to his bed, lay down and stared at the ceiling. Sturm began to pray silently. “I know what I did was wrong, but I did it for the greater good,” he told Paladine. He closed his hands and clenched his hands. “As I have always done…”

Tasslehoff stopped kicking the rungs of the chair. He waited until Sturm was caught up in the rapture of his communion with the god, waited until Tanis’s eyes closed and his breathing evened out, waited until he heard Caramon’s loud snore and Raistlin’s rasping coughing cease.

“Flint promised I could go,” Tas muttered. “‘I’d sooner take the kender.’ That’s what he said. Tanis is worried about him, and he wouldn’t worry half so much if I was with him.” Tasslehoff divested himself of his pouches. Leaving them behind was a wrench. He felt positively naked without them, but he would make this sacrifice for his friend. Sliding off the chair, moving silently as only a kender can move when he puts his mind to it, Tas opened the door and slipped quietly outside.

The two soldiers had their backs to him. They were talking and didn’t hear him.

“Hullo!” Tas said loudly.

The guards drew their swords and whipped around a lot faster than Tas would have given dwarves credit for. He did not know dwarves were so agile, especially decked out in all the metal.

“What do you want?” snarled the soldier.

“Get back in there!” said his friend, and pointed at the inn.

Tas spoke a few words in Dwarvish. He spoke a few words of many languages, since it’s always handy to be able to say, “But you dropped it!” to strangers you might meet along the way.

“I want my hoopak,” said Tas politely.

The dwarves stared at him and one made a threatening gesture with his blade.

“Not ‘sword’,” said Tas, misunderstanding the nature of the gesture. “Hoopak. That’s spelled ‘hoo’ and ‘pak’ and in kender it means ‘hoopak’.”

The soldiers still didn’t get it. They were starting to grow annoyed, but then so was Tasslehoff.

“Hoopak!” he repeated loudly. “That’s it, standing there beside you.” He pointed to Sturm’s sword. The soldiers turned to look.

“Oops! My mistake,” said Tasslehoff. “This is what I meant.” A leap, a bound, and a grab, and he had hold of his hoopak. A leap and a thwack, and he’d cracked one of the guards in the face with the butt end of the staff, then used the pronged end to jab the other guard in his gut. Tas rapped each of them over the head, just to make sure they weren’t going to be getting up too soon and be a bother. Choosing the smaller of the two, he plucked the helm off the dwarf.

“That was a good idea Raistlin had. I’ll disguise myself as a dwarf!” The helm was too big and wobbled around on his head. The dwarf’s chain mail nearly swallowed the kender, and it weighed at least six tons. He ditched the chain mail and put on the dwarf’s leather vest instead. He considered the false beard idea a good one, and he gazed thoughtfully at the dwarf’s beard, but he didn’t have anything to use to cut it. Tas took off the helm, shook out his top knot, dragged his hair in front of his face, and put on the helm again. His long hair flowed out from underneath.

Unfortunately, all the hair that was bunched up in front of his eyes was a little troublesome because he couldn’t see through it all that well, and it kept tickling his nose, so that he had to stop every so often to sneeze. Any sacrifice for a friend, however.

Tasslehoff paused to admire himself in a cracked window. He was quite taken with the results. He didn’t see how any one could possibly tell the difference between him and a dwarf. He set off quickly down the street. Flint and Arman Kharas had a pretty good head start, but Tas was confident he’d catch up.

After all, Flint had promised.

Flint had hoped to be able to make his way to the Kalil S’rith, the Valley of the Thanes, quietly and quickly, avoiding fuss, bother and gawking crowds. But the Thanes had not kept quiet. Word had spread throughout the dwarven realms that a Neidar was going to seek the Hammer of Kharas.

Flint, Arman, and their escorts left the city of the Talls and walked into a hostile mob. At the sight of Flint, dwarves shook their fists and shouted insults, yelling at him to go back to his hills or take himself off to other places not so nice. Arman came in for his share of abuse, the dwarves calling him traitor and the old insulting nickname, “Mad Arman.”

Flint’s ears burned, and so did his hatred. He was suddenly glad Raistlin had come up with the idea of sneaking the true Hammer out of Thorbardin and leaving the dwarves the false. He would take the Hammer with him and let his loathsome cousins remained sealed up inside their mountain forever.

The mob was so incensed that Flint and Arman might have ended up in the Valley of the Thanes as permanent residents, but Hornfel, receiving word of the near riot, sent his soldiers out in force. The soldiers ordered the crowds to disperse and used their spears and the flats of their swords to enforce their commands. They closed and sealed off the Eighth Road that led to the Valley. This took some time. Arman and Flint had to wait while the soldiers cleared the road of pedestrians and ordered passengers out of the wagons. If Flint had been paying attention, he would have noticed a very odd-looking dwarf pushing and shoving his way through the crowd: a dwarf of slender (one might say anemic) build, whose helm wobbled about on his head and whose beard poked out of the helm’s eye slits. Flint was nearly blind with rage, however. He held the hammer in his hand, longing to use it to bash in a few mountain dwarf heads.

Just when the odd-looking dwarf had almost caught up with them, the soldiers announced that the Eighth Road was clear. Arman Kharas and Flint climbed inside the lead wagon. Flint was taking his seat when he thought he heard a familiar voice cry out in shrill tones, “Hey, Flint! Wait for me!”

Flint’s head jerked up. He turned around, but the wagon rattled away before he could see anything.

Tasslehoff fought, pushed, shoved, kicked, and slithered his way through the angry crowds of dwarves. He had just managed to get near enough to Flint to yell at him to wait up, when the wagon carrying his friend gave a lurch and began to roll down the rails. Tas thought he’d failed. Then Tas remembered he was on a Mission. His friends were all worried about Flint going off alone. Sturm was even praying over it. They would be sorely disappointed in him—Tasslehoff—if he let a small thing like a regiment of dwarves armed with spears stop him. Arman and Flint had entered the first wagon in a series of six wagons hooked together; the soldiers in Arman’s escort had been going to accompany him. Arman ordered them to stay behind, however, which left the other five wagons empty.