Dan Parkinson - The Gates of Thorbardin

"She oversteps," the voice whispered, distant and dry. "She will pay when the time is right. It must be so."

"Another time, we can discuss it," she said. "But now, do you agree?"

"How can we fight as two?" the ancient voice insinuated. "When I am at rest her armor hides me, and hides all from me except her. When I am in use, she must hold me in contact with her; she can do nothing else."

"Do you agree?" Kolanda demanded.

"I agree," the distant, evil voice said. "For now. But how?"

"Like this," she said. Reaching behind her, the Commander loosed the lacings on her breastplate, then pulled it off and threw it aside for the slaves to pick up and place in the cart. The blouse beneath it she tore from neck to waist, exposing her breasts. Caliban hung now in the cleft between them, and his voice was no longer distant.

"I can draw from her heart to fight, as well as from her head," it admitted.

Immediately, Kolanda felt the tingling again, this time through her chest, and the surrounding air seemed to sizzle. "My way," she reminded.

"You can have the wizard, but not at risk of the man and the thing he carries." The distant vision came again, but only vaguely now that Caliban was not at her eyes. Still, it was enough.

The wizard was mounting the horse, swinging up behind its rider.

Kolanda beckoned a hobgoblin. "Noll," she commanded, "take the platoon at double-time and go to the bridge. Take those you find there. Kill them if they resist." She motioned the troops forward, and they lined out at a run, followed by the cart drawn by slaves and by the swamp goblins searing them with whips to get more speed from them.

Only Kolanda and her personal guard of six selected fighting goblins remained. With them at her heels, she set off at a steady trot toward the edge of the breaks. Where the trail emerged, she would wait for the two riders coming from the hills. Caliban could have his revenge on the wizard. He could have the other man, too, as far as she was concerned, but intuition told her that the thing he carried with him must not reach the dwarf at the bridge. It must not reach Thorbardin, of course, but more than that she herself must have it.

Whatever it was, it had the power to punish Caliban.

The two men on the horse were still nearly a mile away when Kolanda

Darkmoor and her guards took up ambush positions along the trail, just where it entered the broken lands.

Half a mile to the west, Noll and his platoon of goblin warriors crept through narrow ways among heaped boulders, approaching the abutment of

Sky's End Bridge. Behind them came the cart, pulled by slaves. In the same cart Kolanda Darkmoor's lacquered steel breastplate lay atop bundles of lathed bronze darts, foraged weapons and supplies, and bits of booty picked up along the trail. Where it lay, it almost hid a sleek longbow of elven design and a single arrow… the last arrow of Garon Wendesthalas.

Weak and battered, beaten and mutilated, the elf clung to the side of the cart for support as swamp goblins harried the slaves along. He clung, and his hand was never far from the bow and the single arrow.

Wingover was long since out of sight by the time Chane and the others had crossed the arched bridge, and they settled in to wait between a pair of pillars that might once have been guard towers, flanking the east end of the bridge. Guard towers or, Chane thought, possibly counting towers for inspection of wares in transit. Idly, the dwarf found himself thinking: this might once have been a trade road. Wingover had spoken of trade roads. Probably there had been such a road, going out from

Thorbardin to points north by way of Pax Tharkas. Obviously there had once been a lot of trade between the undermountain kingdom and other realms — far more than the modest efforts of Rogar Goldbuckle and other traders produced now.

Thorbardin itself was full of things not dwarven. Elvenwares of great beauty were treasured under the mountains, as were tapestries and feather arrangements, cunning table services of carved wood made by humans somewhere, toys and folding screens, vine-laced frames for paintings, small bits of treasured ivory. Chane had seen such things all his life in

Thorbardin, but had never thought much about them. Now he realized that they were relics of some long-ago time when the gates had been open and roads had been in use for caravans to come and go upon them. Chane thought of it, and felt as though some grand thing had been lost along the way.

Wars and hostilities and conflicts among peoples had destroyed the roads, and put an end to the commerce they had represented.

This very bridge, this soaring arch across a misted gorge, might have been part of that same old route from Thorbardin to Pax Tharkas to the lands of Abanasinia…destroyed in the Dwarfgate Wars. The bridge might have been a point of registry for dwarven goods outbound, and a point of inspection for the treasures of other places, coming to the dwarven realm.

The broken lands beyond would have made ideal trading grounds. A hundred camps could be set up within a half-mile, each in its private corner, and all interconnected by the maze of stone-walled paths. It would have been a trading bazaar like nothing ever seen in Thorbardin, even in the great centers of the Daewar city.

It was a pity, that such things no longer were.

"If ever there is peace," Chane muttered, "real peace and cooperation, it will be warriors and fighters who bring it. For they are the ones who have seen the most of chaos."

Chess glanced around at him. 'You sound like an elf."

"Or a human," Jilian observed. "That does sound awfully human, Chane."

"I wonder," he said. "I wonder if there's that much difference."

"I think I'll take a look around," Chess said. "Things are getting dull around here."

Before he could turn away, though, the kender looked up and grinned.

'Things may perk up a little, I guess. Bobbin's back."

Like a speck against the mountainside, rapidly growing, the soarwagon dipped and tumbled toward Chane, Jilian, and Chess. The kender's supply pole dangled below it, horizontal, attached to the hook on Bobbin's lifeline. They walked a few steps out on the bridge to watch its approach, and Chane's foot bumped something protruding from the bridge rail. He knelt for a better look. It was a metal ring the size of the palm of his hand, just inches above the bridge's floor. He raised his eyes, searching along the rail. There was another a few yards away, and another beyond that… and the same along the base of the south rail. Metal rings were set in the stone at intervals, as far up the bridge as Chane could see. He knew what they were. Every cable-cart tunnel in Thorbardin had such rings at every change in grade. Such winch rings were used for the hoisting and lowering of laden carts along slopes, by use of pulleys.

Just like in Thorbardin.

But why equip an open-road bridge with winch-rings? Unless…

Chane stood, gazing past the rising bridge, across the gorge at the sheer face of Sky's End. They had come down from a high ledge, along a narrow switchback trail that approached the bridge from a sharp angle. No straight approach from the west was possible, because the bridge footings ran nearly to the sheer, clifflike face of the cutaway mountain. It had, now that Chane thought of it, seemed odd that a bridge should end at right angles to the foot.of a diff, but he had other things on his mind when they'd first encountered it.

Chane took a deep breath and nodded. Intuition so strong it was beyond question poured through him.

"I know where it is," he muttered.

Beyond the west end of the bridge, at the foot of Sky's End's towering cliff, was a rockfall. And behind the rockfall… it had to be. An ancient tradeway, under the mountain. A tradeway that would lead to the warrens.