Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

They had come up there specifically to get away from prying eyes and ears, to escape the celebration that was rising to a frenzy in the great hall, to share a private embrace, to express how delighted they were to once again be together. But soon their talk had turned to the task before them, and Gretchan had broken the news about the Neidar.

“But the pact we signed-the one that Tarn Bellowgranite himself signed!” Brandon declared, clenching his fists. “It was a pledge of peace and cooperation, forged by the blood of Neidar and mountain dwarves both. Why won’t he honor it, now that we actually have a means of returning to Thorbardin?”

“You try talking to him,” Gretchan said. “But I warn you, even his wife can’t change his mind. I think he’d rather break her heart than soften his position on that old prejudice. Besides, Tarn is convinced the hill dwarves aren’t necessary to this campaign. He thinks that your troops, plus about a thousand of his own from right here in Pax Tharkas, will be enough to retake Thorbardin.”

Brandon shook his head. “I wish I could believe that. But we have no way of knowing what kind of enemy we’ll face under the mountain. How can he not see that we’ll need all the troops we can raise, even to have the slightest chance of success?”

Gretchan came close to her beloved, placing her hands on his shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes. Immediately the tension flowed out of Brandon’s body, and he reached for her and pulled her close.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a whisper. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I know you did what you could.”

“You’re right-on both counts,” she chided gently. “But look at the positives: we were able to forge the three stones into the hammer of legend. Tarn’s own master smith accomplished that. Bardic Stonehammer is an amazing dwarf. I suggest you think about asking him to wield the hammer as we approach Thorbardin. And you were able to bring the army here in very good time. If we move at once, we should be able to breach the gates of Thorbardin before Willim the Black guesses what’s happening.”

“Still, he must suspect something, don’t you think?”

Gretchan had told Brandon about the attack on her camp, when the apprentice magic-user and Mother Oracle had ambushed her and tried to steal the Redstone. Neither of them was willing to underestimate the powerful wizard who they believed was behind that attempt.

She could only nod somberly in reply.

“Perhaps we’d better get back down to the celebration,” Brandon said quietly. “There’s a lot to think about and a lot to do before tomorrow.”

Finally the long night of counsel and feasting and prayer and celebration was winding down to a natural ending. Brandon was exhausted by the ordeal, more exhausted than he had been, he thought wryly, from a long day of marching on the trail.

“It’s the old bastard’s stupidity that gets me most of all,” he admitted to Gretchan as they climbed the stairs from the great hall, where he would join her in her chambers at last. He shrugged out of the ceremonial robe he had borrowed for the feast and sat down on the large, inviting bed. “But that’s something to worry about tomorrow.”

He arched an eyebrow as he watched her light several candles, kindling each with a word of magic and a touch from the anvil head of her staff. The room was suffused by a soft glow as she crossed to the window, set her staff against the wall, and knelt on a brown bearskin rug stretched across the floor. The head of her staff glowed with a golden light, slightly brighter than any of the candles, illuminating her skin and her hair in a gilded sheen.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” Brandon asked. He smiled slyly. “Or do you want me to join you over there?”

She shook her head, her golden hair cascading around her shoulders, which were bared as she shrugged out of her robe, remaining clad only in a filmy shift of white gauze. “You know I have a few things I have to do first,” she chided him as she sat tall, crossing her short legs before her.

“I thought, tonight, under the circumstances-” he began, but she silenced him with the wave of a finger.

So instead, Brandon watched Gretchan as she tended to every little detail of her evening ritual. She closed her eyes and moved her lips in a silent prayer. After a time she seemed to relax, her posture easing, her hands resting in her lap. She breathed easily, drawing air slowly in through her nostrils then exhaling the same way. Finally, she opened her eyes and began a vocal prayer, a melodic recitation in a language so ancient that Brandon didn’t recognize a single word.

So intense was his staring that she finally looked up from her musical chant, flashed him a secret smile, and told him to look at something else for the next few minutes.

“I can’t,” he admitted with complete candor. “And aren’t you finished yet?”

She sighed and rose to her feet. The light from the head of her sacred staff faded until only the thin candles illuminated the room. She crossed on bare feet toward the bed, where Brandon sat, still watching, hardly daring to breathe.

The gauzy shift slipped from her shoulders, pooling like a liquid thing on the floor around her feet.

“I think Reorx will understand,” she whispered.

Then she fell into his arms.

Somehow the dwarves providing the food and drink and music for the festive welcome party in Pax Tharkas neglected to include the three gully dwarves who had proudly ridden into the fortress on the wagons hauled by the Kayolin Army. While kegs were tapped, mugs filled to overflowing and generously passed around, and platters laden with sumptuous mountains of food were displayed to every one of the many more than two tables in the place, not one dwarf thought to invite the Aghar to join in the festivities.

No matter: Gus and his girls quickly found themselves a comfortable space beneath a spacious banquet table, and by dint of furtive expeditions, both Slooshy and Berta were able to pluck up juicy, warm tidbits of meat; large pieces of sharp, fresh cheese; bread and fruit; and enough half-empty tankards of ale and spirits that all three Aghar were able to wind up comfortably and happily drunk.

The next morning, of course, they had been rudely rousted by a cleaning crew of dwarf maids who battered the gully dwarves with their brooms and brushes until the trio had to make a hasty escape from the great hall. They fled through a side door into the cellars and dungeons that were quite familiar to Gus and Berta and represented a whole new world of wonder to Slooshy.

In those stinking sewers and dungeons beneath Pax Tharkas, Gus quickly reestablished himself as the highbulp of the small but thriving Aghar community. That exalted position had become his to boast, mainly because of Berta’s advocacy when he had first come to the mountain fortress. Of course, the position was mainly honorary and, for the most part, unacknowledged. The other gully dwarves took little notice of the newcomers, occupied as they were with the usual Aghar concerns of survival and avoiding discovery and harassment by the larger dwarves who were their near neighbors. Slooshy, who had joined Gus and Berta in the dank lair, quickly and inevitably resumed her jealous bickering with her gully dwarf rival for Gus’s affections.

In part to get away from that constant caterwauling, but mainly because he had been anxious to steal a moment or two alone with Gretchan, Gus waited only two days before he ventured up the stairs and into the main halls of the fortress. There he saw the training of new companies of infantry, the ranges where row after row of crossbow troops took target practice, and the forges where new weapons were cast and older weapons were sharpened, repaired, and readied for war. Everywhere dwarves were marching and drilling and working, but fortunately they were too busy to take note of the little Aghar huddled behind a stack of shields, his bright eyes constantly alert for a sight of his beloved Gretchan.