Dan Parkinson - The Swordsheath Scroll

The silence lasted only a moment. In the corridor a human voice said, "Here, you two! Wake up! It's time for the… What's this?"

"They're dead," another human voice said. "Both of them. Their throats have been cut! Sound the alarm!"

Weapons rattled, a trumpet blared, and there was the sound of hurrying feet, distant but approaching.

As one, the dwarves in the cell crowded toward the gate. "What nitwit killed the night guards?" Vin the Shadow rasped. "Now they'll all be on us before we can gather our wits."

"Maybe it was whoever brought all this stuff in here," Tap Tolec suggested.

"Nobody 'brought' it here," Vin said. "It came by magic. That bowl proves that."

"I never saw magic," someone else said.

"I don't trust magic," another said.

Beyond the grated gate, a lamp was raised. Its light danced through the bars, a moving pattern on the solid mass of dwarves crowding forward. A human voice shouted, "Here, you dinks! Get back there. Get away from this gate!"

"Nobody in here killed the guards," Tap Tolec told Vin the Shadow. "See, the bar is in place. The gate is still locked."

Those in the fore continued to crowd toward the grating, curious and pressed by those behind them. Beyond the grate, the human shouted again, and a spear flicked through the bars, threatening the mob inside. But before its tip could reach anyone, a muscular hand grasped the shaft, and a short, stout arm lifted and pulled. The human beyond was jerked up against the grating, and froze there as a sword flashed through the bars, skewering him from belly to brisket. The man screamed, hung for a moment where he was, then dropped to the stone floor as the sword was withdrawn.

Within the cell, a dwarf-the one-eyed slave with the deep scars on his back-wiped his sword blade on his tunic and rasped, "Thaf s one."

Then the corridor was full of armed humans and bright lamps, and the dwarves in the cell backed away from the gate.

"Quick!" Vin the Shadow barked. "Don't let them free that bar!"

Spears and narrow pikes licked through the grating of the portal, and human hands grasped the gate bar, starting to slide it aside. It moved only an inch before a hail of arrows and crossbow bolts from within the cell tore into the humans beyond. Men screamed, men fell, and men fled. Crazy shadows danced in the suddenly deserted corridor, where fallen lamps flickered on the floor.

"Well, that's that," Tap Tolec breathed. "But they'll be back. What do we do now?"

"Barricade the gate!" a dozen voices chimed.

"Break it down and attack the pits!" other voices shouted.

"Kill humans!" several suggested.

"Hold it!" someone roared. "Whatever we do, we'd better all do it together. Who's in charge here?"

"Not me," a dozen voices answered together.

"Well," a querulous voice came from the crowd, "somebody's got to take the lead. Who's it going to be?"

"Don't look at me," the one-eyed dwarf snapped at several others around him. "I can fight, but I'm no leader."

"The Hylar!" Tap Tolec said, with sudden inspiration. "Where's that Hylar? He can lead us!"

It took several minutes for all of them to realize that the Hylar, the one they knew only as Derkin, was no longer among them, and when that became clear, the cell was quieter than it had been. For a moment, every dwarf there had envisioned a grand victory-fighting dwarves cutting a path through masses of humans, winning their way to freedom. The way it might have been in the old, great days that the lore spoke of. Dwarven fury overwhelming, overcoming desperate odds… led by a Hylar chief.

But only for a moment had the vision lasted. Now there was only reality. They had-from where or what infernal magic no one knew-arms and some supplies. But they still were only a gang of slaves, trapped in a stone cell, and outside were the slave masters, backed by hundreds, or maybe thousands, of human warriors. They were trapped here like rats in a barrel, and the humans could come for them at their pleasure.

"I guess we'd better do what that bowl said," Vin the Shadow said bleakly. "Barricade the cell, hold the gate, and wait for reinforcements."

Despaxas had gone off someplace. One minute he was there, the next he was gone, and when Derkin asked Calan Silvertoe where the elf was, the one-armed Daewar simply shrugged and waved a careless hand. "He comes and goes as he pleases," he said. "I don't try to keep up with him."

"That shadow thing is gone, too," Derkin noted.

"Zephyr?" Calan shuddered. "That thing is hardly ever around, but even now and then is too much."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Despaxas says it isn't," Calan said. "But I don't like it, anyway. I was with him the day he… called it up. He was fooling with little spells, just sort of practicing his magic, and all of a sudden there was that thing, right there with us. Despaxas says it wasn't really there. He says its actual body is in some other plane-whatever that means. He thinks one of his spells got tangled up with somebody else's spell in that other place, and Zephyr wound up stuck halfway between. So the elf made a pet of it… or of the part of it thaf s here. I guess it's harmless. I just don't like magic, and I don't like things that look like bat-fish shadows."

The two dwarves passed the hours of daylight in a small, deep cove high on a mountainside. There was a little, crystal-cold spring there, and game trails all around, but Derkin lay in wait beside the spring for more than an hour, festooned in shrubbery and pretending to be a bush, before anything edible showed up. Had he been armed with a sling, or even a throwing-axe or javelin, he would have hunted the trails for a deer, wild hog, or even a small bear. But all he had at hand was a stout stick, so he waited in ambush and settled for a brace of rabbits.

Calan had a little fire going in a deep glade, and while they cooked their dinner, the old Daewar told Derkin-in exquisite detail-of the habits and routines of the humans who ruled the Tharkas mines. The foot company of soldiers numbered eighteen, the slave masters and warders an even dozen, and only one shaft was being worked. It was worked through the daylight hours, by several hundred dwarves divided into small groups. The shaft entrance was guarded, and only a few dwarves were allowed out at any one time. These carried the best ores outside, for stocking.

Each night, the shaft was sealed with all the slaves inside, while the soldiers stood guard in three six-man shifts.

Derkin was astounded that the old dwarf, who had been a slave himself in a distant pit mine until the night before, could know so much detail about this place. But as with all subjects, Calan Silvertoe said just what he intended to say, explained what he intended to explain, and refused to comment on how he knew.

The longhouse was just what it seemed, Calan said. Once the central hall of a thriving dwarven community, now it served as kitchen and washhouse, and as quarters for the female dwarves who worked in it as slaves.

By the time the sun was sinking behind the western peaks, Derkin had a clear, detailed picture of the movements and habits of the humans below, and only one remaining question.

"How do they control the slaves inside the shaft?" he asked. "If only the mine masters enter there, and never the guards, what's to keep the dwarves below from simply ganging up on the slavers and killing them?"

"I'm not sure," Calan admitted. "Maybe it's the goblins."

"What goblins?"

"Well, when Lord Kane's troops first came here to take control, there was a company of goblins with them. When the area was secured, and the attack force left, the goblins weren't with them. And they haven't been seen since. So maybe they're in the mine shaft. Goblins are right at home underground. Maybe the humans hired them, and left them there as enforcers."