Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

“Ah, beautiful, Cruster,” Brandon declared sincerely, taking his plate and inhaling deeply the pleasurable aroma of the perfectly cooked steak. The others mirrored his satisfaction as each, in turn, was presented with a splendid piece of meat.

Understandably, there was little talking for the next few minutes as each of the four carved off and gobbled a series of generous morsels.

Brandon had intended to discuss specific procedures for embarking the army when they arrived at Caergoth, but he and the others were distracted by a raucous squalling and squealing coming from the nearby kitchen tent. He leaped to his feet in alarm and, still holding his beef-blooded knife, raced toward the tent with his co-commanders and a number of soldiers who were similarly drawn by the commotion.

Only as he drew closer to the tent did he slow down and utter a short, surprised yelp of laughter. His reaction caused the other dwarves to stop and regard him with expressions ranging from mingled suspicion to surprise.

“Listen!” Brandon said, holding up his hands.

A shrill voice penetrated the smoke-filled air of the camp. “Put me down, bluphsplunging bully! Who you think are? Me fight two times, tell you dat! You put down me! Hey, that my meat!”

“You rotten, thieving little Aghar!” roared a much deeper voice, one that they recognized as belonging to Cruster Flatiron. “I oughta stick you on a spit and roast you till dawn!”

“You let him go, big doofar cooker dwarf!” squeaked a new combatant, clearly an agitated female. “You gots plenty meats! Share some with hungry army!”

“You’re not in this army, damn your grubby fingers!” the cook retorted. Brandon heard multiple screams and hastily pushed his way into the tent, determined to avoid bloodshed-no matter how richly deserved such bloodshed might be.

He was just in time. Cruster held a little gully dwarf up off the ground, the burly chef’s hand clasped firmly around the fellow’s neck. In his other hand, Flatiron held a large butcher knife, poised as if ready to clean and gut the Aghar in preparation for running him through with the threatened spit. Two other gully dwarves, both female, screamed and pummeled the cook around his waist, but he was, for the moment at least, ignoring them.

“General!” the cook said, looking up to see Brandon entering. “I just caught this little wretch up to his elbows in my prime rib!”

Proof of the crime was visible in the red juices streaking the gully dwarf’s arms and running down his jowls and chin. The culprit was staring at the butcher knife, his eyes wide, while his jaw flapped soundlessly.

“Gus!” Brandon snapped, holding up his hand in wordless command to Cruster. Scowling, the cook held back on the lethal blow, though if his eyes had been daggers, the gully dwarf’s blood would already have been gushing onto the ground.

“What in the name of Reorx are you doing here?” the general finished.

When the gully dwarf’s jaw flapped some more, Brandon gestured again, and Cruster, very reluctantly, released his grip around the thief’s neck, dropping him unceremoniously onto the ground. “Tell me!”

Gus Fishbiter was well known to Brandon, and in fact, the Kayolin general owed more than a small debt of gratitude for accomplishments that the little Aghar, however unwittingly, had made to his and Gretchan’s list of heroic deeds. Still, he was surprised and dismayed to see him.

With a typically stubborn and petulant look, Gus crossed his arms over his skinny chest and glared right back at Brandon. “What you do here?” he demanded.

“Why, you impudent little wretch! I’ll beat some manners into ya-” Tankard Hacksaw stepped forward, his fist raised for a punch.

“Hold on there, Tank,” Brandon said, laying a hand on his captain’s shoulder. “Let’s talk about this. Now, Gus, you need to answer my question first.”

“Me here for same reason you here!”

“I’m here because I’m leading this army south,” Brandon said impatiently. “I don’t see how that-”

“You here cuz for go see Gretchan!” Gus challenged, pointing a stubby and accusing finger until he noticed the shreds of meat caught under his fingernail and popped the digit into his mouth, noisily sucking off the residue of his raid.

Brandon blinked. “Well, that’s just a part-that’s not really-”

He was spared the burden of further explanation as the two female Aghar, who had been watching the exchange warily, suddenly rounded on Gus, meting out a barrage of punches and kicks.

“You big doofus liar!” one screamed, delivering a sharp kick to Gus’s knee.

“Two times big booger liar!” shouted the other, landing a punch in the hapless Aghar’s eye. “No say ‘Gretchan’! Say ‘Go Patharkas’! Highbulp go home!”

By that time several guards had arrived, and they, with expressions ranging from distaste to revulsion, separated the three gully dwarves, each sentry holding one of the outraged, filthy little figures.

“Should we turn ’em out into the night, General?” one asked. “Or would ye like a more, er, permanent solution?” He concluded the question with a decidedly hopeful expression.

“No! We go Patharkas!” shouted Gus insistently. “Gretchan my friend too!”

“Yes, she is,” Brandon admitted. “And I fear she’d never forgive me if I gave you the punishment you deserve. So I take it that you’ve been marching along with us all the way from Kayolin?”

“Right out big gate!” Gus proclaimed proudly. “But you marches too fast. So we ride on fire wagon.”

Brandon laughed in spite of himself and shook his head in defeat. “All right. You can come with us to, er, ‘Patharkas.’ And you can have a scrap or two of beef to eat, but stay away from the prime rib, or I’ll order Cruster to put you on the spit he was talking about. Most important, stay out of trouble. Can you promise me that?”

Gus looked ready to argue, but the ring of looming dwarves, all of them armed and angry, apparently began to sink through even his thick layer of belligerence. “All right. Gus promise. Gus’s girls promise too. Right?”

He glared at the two females, and each of them reluctantly nodded her head. “Now we eat?” one of them asked plaintively.

“Give them something tough to chew on,” Brandon told Cruster. Already the other dwarves were dispersing, heading back to their campfires and their evening meals. Brandon thought of his perfectly grilled steak and hoped it hadn’t gotten too cold.

And he hoped, even more fervently, that he hadn’t just made a very bad decision.

Pax Tharkas loomed before Gretchan like a mountain, a massif straddling the winding road, barring all passage along the canyonlike gorge, except through the great gate itself. Kondike barked in recognition when the huge edifice gradually came into view of the two weary travelers rounding a bend in the rough, ascending trail. The dog bounded forward along the road, his large tail waving.

He finally paused, twenty or thirty paces in front of Gretchan, and turned to look back at her expectantly. As usual, she understood the question “What’s taking you so long?” expressed in the upraised ears, the eager, panting tongue, and the proud flag of the fur-feathered tail.

“Just hold up for a second,” she called cheerfully. “I keep telling you, you’ve got twice as many legs as I do!”

Even so, she shared the dog’s enthusiasm and couldn’t help but pick up her pace as she saw her destination so close in front of her. The great wall that was the fortress’s main feature stood as lofty as a cliff, sheer and smooth, broken only by the massive gate in the center of the vast expanse of chiseled stone. To the right and left rose the high West and East Towers, each a bastion in its own right, which anchored the barrier of the fortification to the precipitous canyon walls that channeled all traffic right to the huge gate. When that gate was closed, nothing could pass from north to south, or vice versa, through that part of the mountain range.