Douglas Niles - Secret of Pax Tharkas

“When I tug, you run with me, really, really fast,” he said. “Bluphsplunging Theiwar never catch us!”

“All right,” she said softly, looking at him with an unfamiliar expression. (No one had ever regarded Gus with adoring eyes before.)

“Run!” he barked, jumping to his feet and sprinting around the curving base of the dam… and straight into the arms of a Theiwar dwarf who had been taking a break, sitting on a rock, slurping a drink from a flask that smelled like dwarf spirits.

“Hah!” cried the Theiwar, reaching out a big hand toward Gus’s neck. “Gotcha!”

He spoke just a second too soon. Apparently reluctant to risk losing the precious contents of his flask, he had juggled the bottle and quickly stuffed a cork in the mouth before he made his move. By the time he reached out to grab the Aghar, Gus had dropped down prone and found that his face was right in front of the other dwarf’s knee.

Gus did what instinct has always compelled gully dwarves to do in such dire circumstances: he bit his enemy as fiercely as he could.

Unfortunately, the knee did not prove a remarkably susceptible target for such an attack. The knobby joint was hard and resistant. The Theiwar jerked his leg forward, and Gus tasted blood-his own blood-as the dwarf’s knee smashed his teeth and lips. He tumbled back and, looking up, saw stars twinkling in Thorbardin’s roofed sky.

“Hey!” shrieked Slooshy, closing in and catching the unbalanced Theiwar by surprise. She chomped down on his fleshier thigh, provoking a howl of pain. The big dwarf stumbled backward, cursing as the glass bottle flew from his hands and shattered on the rocks of the hard ground.

“Damn you!” the Theiwar declared, reaching down and seizing Slooshy by her scraggly hair. Gus was sitting up by then, and he pounced to his feet and charged forward, driving the top of his head into his foe’s solar plexus.

“Oof!” grunted the big dwarf, staggering backward and swinging a fist at Gus. The Aghar easily ducked the blow but looked for a chance to close in on the enemy who still held the wriggling female by her hair. “Gagger! Slice!” called the Theiwar loudly. “Help me out, here!”

He was immediately rewarded by cries of alarm and the sounds of boots scraping across the rocks of the ravine slope. They were coming from up the valley but closing fast.

Gus panicked. The tunnel to his house was only a short distance away, and he longingly thought of racing up the slope and diving through the narrow entrance like a cave rat running from pursuing lizard-wolves.

Then Slooshy cried out. Still squirming, she managed to deliver a kick to the Theiwar’s groin that dropped the big dwarf like a toppled stone. Even as he fell, however, the fellow kept his fingers wrapped through the little Aghar’s hair, pulling her down to the ground with him.

Gus knew he couldn’t run away. “You bluphsplunger doofar!” he cursed, leaping on the fallen Theiwar, driving his fist into the fellow’s nose hard enough to produce a spurt of blood. “You let go!” he shouted, drawing back his arm for another punch.

But by then Gagger and Slice were there, sliding down the ravine wall in a shower of rocks. One grabbed Gus by the neck and threw him to the ground with enough force to drive the air from his lungs. The other hoisted the squirming Slooshy, holding her at arm’s length as she kicked and punched and flailed helplessly at the air.

“Let me do it,” growled the first Theiwar, pushing himself to his feet, wiping the blood from his nose as he stared at Gus with cold hatred simmering in his black eyes. “This’ll all be over in a minute,” he sneered, pulling out a wicked-looking black blade.

Gus, still pressed to the ground, wasn’t listening, though. Instead, he was thinking, wondering: why is the ground in front of the dam so wet? It seemed even wetter than it had been a minute earlier, when he and Slooshy had tried to make their escape. There came a sound added to the wetness, a groaning shift in the ground, wet rocks moving against each other, sliding, rearranging, everything going down.

“What in Reorx’s name-?” the Theiwar swordsman demanded, looking up. “Run!” cried out another.

“From what?” demanded the third, who still held the wriggling Slooshy.

The answer came, quickly, with a swift collapse of stone, and a powerful gush of filthy water that, despite its effluent stench, Gus found strangely cleansing.

T he body had decayed to the point where no flesh was visible on the death’s-head skull, though the matted remnant of a once-lush beard lay in a tangle over the shattered breastplate. The right arm was missing, and the splinter of bone distending from the shoulder socket suggested the cut had not been clean-more like the limb had been torn from the warrior at some point in the unknown past. The left arm still wore a shield, but that protective plate was split in two, the wrist beneath broken. The helm, of good Kayolin steel, was dented deeply at the crest, indicating where the mortal wound had fallen.

Despite the signs of violence, the corpse seemed peaceful. As he studied the body that was seated against the cave wall, with its short legs-obviously a dwarf-extended outward, Brandon could imagine that the fellow had simply sat down there for a rest and had perished pleasantly during his deep delving, far under the Garnet range. He held his oil lamp high, letting the flickering illumination play over the grotesque corpse, but he couldn’t suppress a shudder. His involuntary movement only increased the flickering garishness of the spectacle.

“How long d’you think he’s been here?” Brandon asked Nailer, trying for a brawny, carefree tone that somehow turned into a nervous squeak.

“How in Reorx’s name should I know?” His older brother scowled, glaring at Brandon as if irritated by the question, and Brandon knew Nailer had been as deeply spooked by the discovery as he had.

They had come upon the body by accident, almost stumbling over it as they pressed through the trackless caves with only the transient flicker of their precious wick to light their path. For many intervals they had explored with no sign of previous dwarf visitors. Then they had discovered that distinct sign, but it was not a good sign, not at all.

The elder shrugged and uttered a sound almost like a growl. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Shouldn’t we… I don’t know… bury him or something?” Brandon asked softly.

Nailer looked at him angrily but surprisingly did not make a contemptuous retort. Instead, he drew a breath, as if trying to be patient. “Look at his shield. Can you make out the sign?”

Brandon knelt and played the light over the shattered buckler. “No. Something black, some kind of shape. But it could be anything.”

“So it’s not the Bluestone Wedge, right? Right? He’s not from our house?”

The younger brother shook his head as Nailer went on. “And he’s got-he had-black hair. That marks him as maybe a Theiwar or Daergar, maybe a Klar. But he certainly wasn’t a Hylar.”

“No, not a Hylar,” Brandon agreed.

“Then he’s not even a dwarf of our clan. Let’s leave him for his own kin to lay to rest. If it makes you feel better, we can report the finding to someone once we get back to Garnet Thax.”

His brother was right, and in fact, Brandon only then reflected on how hard it would be to dig a grave in the solid bedrock. It could be done, of course-they were delving dwarves by nature-but it would take an awful lot of work. And the sounds of the digging would be sure to attract attention, he realized with a shudder.

“So do you think it’s true? That these caves are haunted down here?” he asked tentatively.