Douglas Niles - Secret of Pax Tharkas

“We’re going to put an end to some irritating mischief,” the captain explained as they reached the lowest level. “This prisoner is proving to be more trouble than he can possibly be worth.”

They advanced into the portcullis room, the square chamber connecting to the deepest dungeon passage, and here Garn came up short as he spotted a ragged little figure sleeping in the corner.

“You again?” he barked, rousing the gully dwarf with a sharp kick. “Didn’t I warn you to get lost?”

“Oh, great prince!” cried the miserable creature, throwing himself on the ground at Garn’s feet and salaaming the Klar. “Thank you for come here!”

“Get out of my way,” the Klar captain growled. “I have work to do!”

“Oh, not with dwarf prisoner, no!” insisted the gully dwarf with startling conviction. He stood defiantly in the path of the mountain dwarves. “My mistake. Go away!”

“What’s this?” muttered Garn, almost amused.

“Move, you,” declared Crank, whipping out his sword and waving the blade at the bold Aghar.

“You move!” declared the runt, dashing forward and biting the armed mountain dwarf on the knee.

“Hey! Ouch!” howled Crank. “You miserable little half-pint!”

He swung his blade, but somehow the gully dwarf, who was almost under his feet, scampered away. Bilious also moved to cut him off, blocking him from fleeing through the door deeper into the dungeon. “Where do you think you’re going?” the menacing warrior demanded.

The two armed dwarves closed in on the Aghar, but the little fellow dived to his belly and scooted right between Crank’s legs.

Garn had been chuckling, but he had had enough. “Cut him down and be done with him!” snapped the Klar captain. “We’ve got more important things to do!”

The mountain dwarves spun and pursued, and the gully dwarf dashed out the door. But Bilious had anticipated the move and leaped to block the Aghar’s escape. The dirty gully dwarf found himself trapped, his back to the corridor wall, one armed mountain dwarf inside the square room, the other blocking his passage down the corridor. Bilious stabbed, aiming low, and the Aghar sprang upward, flailing with his hands, clawing at the mold-slick stone on the dungeon wall. There was nothing to grab there on the surface of the wall itself, but his hand came into contact with a metal lever jutting up from a narrow slot.

The gully dwarf seized the lever with both hands, intending to pull himself up and away from his attacker’s blade. Instead, his weight caused the lever to drop sharply, plunging him onto his rump on the floor. A catch was released and unseen chains made a rattling noise as Bilious charged, stabbing wildly. The frantic gully dwarf tumbled out of the path of the attack, and the three enraged mountain dwarves stumbled over the Aghar, sprawling across the floor of the dungeon.

The chains rattled louder and faster, metal clanging against stone, as the two portcullis gates dropped into their deep sockets on the floor. Two metal grates closed off the chamber, blocking the way into the halls of prisoner cells and also closing the way back up into the East Tower. The small square room was, for all intents and purposes, a cell in its own right.

And Garn Bloodfist, Bilious, and Crank were all trapped inside.

The army of hill dwarves snaked its way through the rugged terrain, skirting the Plains of Dergoth, advancing on Pax Tharkas from the south. At its head marched Harn Poleaxe, hailed as “Lord Poleaxe” by one and all. He sat astride a horse, a mighty sword resting in his lap, while all the rest of his army advanced on foot. The plumed helm rested on his head, and he kept the visor closed-except when he took a drink-because he had seen that his dwarves were shaken by the sight of his increasingly bloody, lumpy face. Still, he barely noticed them, strung out in a column more than a mile long behind him. His eyes, for now and forever, were fixed ahead, on the future.

And the future would be found in Pax Tharkas.

Harn had been pleased and rather surprised when more than three thousand hill dwarves had answered his summons to war. They had come from the farms and villages and towns of the Neidar scattered throughout the valleys and plains below the lofty summits of the High Kharolis. Marching eagerly, singing ancient songs of war, gathering from pairs to platoons to companies as they converged on Hillhome, they had responded to his call with a cheerful eagerness to make war and a seemingly unquenchable thirst for revenge.

Some of the Neidar were grizzled veterans, bearing scars earned during the War of Souls or the Chaos War or, for some of the eldest, even the War of the Lance. They limped and cursed and argued, but they marched and were ready to fight. Far more of them were strapping adults or callow youths, unblooded and unscarred but eager to face the ultimate truth of battle. Some were drunk, others were crazed, but most were hale and hearty.

All of them shared an abiding hatred of the mountain dwarves. That hatred had seethed and simmered for years and, finally, had its fuse lit by Poleaxe’s message. All had seen the damage, felt the injustice, of the Klar raids that had terrorized their lands for the past decade. An assault against Pax Tharkas had been considered a hopeless, quixotic notion. But they had been swayed by the eloquence of Harn’s appeal.

“Aye-uh,” said Axel Carbondale, a legendary captain of axemen through the course of three wars, upon his arrival in Hillhome. “I couldn’t have said it any better myself.”

“I’ve been trying to say it for years!” declared Carpus Castlesmasher, mayor of Bloodford, a hero who had been decorated five times for his company’s doughty defense against draconians and ogres over the past decades. “But you said it in a way that all the Neidar understand,” he admitted, his eyes shining with admiration as he offered Harn Poleaxe his sword and his life.

There were more than four hundred pikemen from the villages around the Plains of Dergoth. Nearly twice that many hill dwarves armed with crossbows and daggers came from small woodland villages. The foothill mines produced five companies of heavy infantry, each dwarf protected to the eyelids by heavy plate armor and bearing axes that could split the shield, or the skull, of any foe with a single blow. Swords were sharpened, spare spears fashioned, and provisions collected from every field, silo, and barnyard.

They had gathered on the slopes around Hillhome, camping in the great square and in the fields just beyond the town, carousing in the inns every night and generally driving the good citizens of the town to cower in their homes, bar their doors and windows, and wait for the scourge to be gone. Fortunately for them, Poleaxe was eager to start the expedition.

He summoned all the captains, and as many of the men who could squeeze there, into the plaza of the town. They crowded in there to hear him with battle lust in their hearts. He wore his helm, seeing that all would come to recognize the lofty plume of black and white feathers. The visor was lifted, and he took frequent sips from the jug he carried.

“I want you to hearken back to the days of the Dwarfgate War, my hill dwarf kinsmen!” he had declared when the last recruits arrived and the volunteer army stretched as far as the eye could see. He stalked back and forth on the raised platform in Hillhome’s square, his voice booming out, ringing across the plaza, carrying even to the ranks of dwarves packed into every side street. His listeners were rapt, absorbing every word. When he turned his blood-spotted face, more than half covered with bloody warts, toward those in the front rows, they stared back at him in a mixture of horror and awe. But they absorbed his words and thumped their chests in response to his commands.