Dan Parkinson - The Swordsheath Scroll

"I tripped," Tuft protested. "I'm not used to tilted places. Where I'm from the ground is flat, as the gods intended ground to be. But be that as it may, that last guard would have skewered you like a sausage on a stick if I hadn't put an arrow through his gullet." He glanced around, and said, "Leave the bow and arrows alone, ladies. They're mine. Help yourselves to the rest, though."

All around them dwarven women were tying up their skirts, braiding their hair, choosing weapons from the pile the man had brought in, and generally getting ready to do battle. A clatter erupted as someone dropped a sword on the hard floor, and Tuft Broadland jumped to his feet, narrowly missing banging his still sore head on a low rafter.

"Quiet, please!" he ordered. "Remember, there are still a lot of empiremen out there. If they wake up too soon, we'll have a problem." Tuft picked up the dropped sword, reversed it, and handed it to a scowling female. "Here, let me show you how to hold this," he offered.

At the table, Derkin finished his bread and washed it down with tepid water. Then he noticed that the pretty one, Helta somebody, was staring at him thoughtfully. As he met her eyes, she shook her head and shrugged. "You certainly don't look much like I expected," she explained.

"You expected me?"

"Well, not exactly," she admitted. "But I've been hoping that someone would come along and rescue us. Only, I had a somewhat different picture of who it would be. I expected someone handsome and charming and elegant, all dressed in shining armor and… and… well, what I mean is, you're kind of a mess. And if you have a charming side, I haven't noticed it yet."

With a growl, Derkin shoved himself away from the table and strode across to peer out through the broken shutters of a window. "Those two cabins out there," he said. "I saw men go into them. Are they all in there?"

"All but the six night guards," Helta said, crowding against him to point. "Those are the only two cabins with wood floors. I guess humans like wooden floors. The guardsmen sleep in that farther one-the largest-and the mine overseers sleep in the nearer one. What are we going to do about them?"

"Kill them," he said distractedly. "Be quiet. I'm trying to think." He rubbed his bearded chin, his brow wrinkling. "Be a lot easier if they were all in the same cabin."

"Well, they're not," Helta said. "They always use those two."

"I said, be quiet," he growled. Then, to himself, he said, "Twelve more armed guards, and a dozen slavers. And not a thing to work with but a handful of women."

"And a Cobar warrior," Tuft Broadland proudly reminded him, wandering past. The man was busily instructing dwarf women in the use of swords, spears, and daggers.

"And a blasted human," Derkin corrected himself. "We could charge the door, I guess, at one cabin. But two?"

A hand tapped his shoulder, and he looked around. It was the gray-haired woman, Nadeen. "She said to tell you to look in the shed," she told him. "She says you might find something useful there."

"She? Who?"

"Helta," Nadeen said. "She asked me to tell you that."

'The shed," he muttered. "All right, I'll look. Whaf s in it?"

"She knows," Nadeen said. "She's been in there."

He glanced past her. A few feet away, Helta stood, pointedly looking in another direction. "Why didn't she tell me herself?" Derkin asked.

"You told her to shut up," Nadeen explained. "I think you hurt her feelings."

Derkin stepped past the woman. "Show me the shed," he said. Helta ignored him. "Oh, rust!" he muttered, then, "I'm sorry I snapped at you. Please?"

"All right." She turned. "In the future, I'll just ignore your bad manners. Come on."

As the second moon added its light to the first, brightening the glade high on the slopes, Calan Silvertoe asked Despaxas, "What's he doing now? Can you see?"

"I can see," the elf said. "He has all the females out in the compound, unrolling metal cable. They're winding it around one of the buildings."

"What?" Calan snapped, leaning to peer into the milky bowl before he recalled that only the elf could see things in it. "Why are they doing that?"

"I haven't the vaguest idea," Despaxas said.

Both moons were high when the women of Tharkas Camp finished wrapping the guards' cabin. Silently and grimly, with Derkin directing the work by whisper and gesture, they had carried rolls of steel cable from the shed, straightened and spliced them, and wound the resulting length around and around the cabin. Planking covered the single door and the two windows, and the entire building now was wrapped with cable. Derkin completed the task, tightening and securing the lashing with a hand-winch. Then he stepped back, surveyed the result, and nodded. "Well, nobody is coming out of there," he muttered. He glanced at the smaller cabin nearby, wishing he could treat it the same way. But there was no more cable.

"All right," he told the women quietly. "Go get those jugs now, and bring torches."

They were back in moments, carrying a half dozen large clay vessels, a bundle of wrapped torches, and a shielded fire pot from the kitchen. Derkin pulled the cork from one jug and sniffed it. It was good dwarven lamp oil, probably looted by the humans from some Neidar village. With the women following him, he worked his way around the sealed cabin, emptying jug after jug of the oil, soaking the walls. The dry timbers absorbed the oil thirstily. With one jug left, Derkin backed away and turned. "Light the torches," he said. "If s wake-up time."

As torches flared alight, he raised the last jug of lamp oil and threw it high. The vessel landed on the cabin's sturdy roof and shattered, oil streaming from it. From inside the cabin, they heard the sounds of voices, then thumps and shouts as the awakening guards began to realize that they were trapped.

Derkin picked up a torch, but Helta was ahead of him. "Let me," she said. "I've dreamed about this." With fire-glow radiating her pretty face and glinting in fierce, happy eyes, the dwarf girl trotted around the secured building, igniting the soaked walls.

Derkin snapped his fingers, and Nadeen handed him an axe. He turned toward the human, Tuft Broadland, who had been standing back, watching. Tuft's craggy face was somber, his eyes wide with awe. "Gods," he whispered as the flames along the cabin walls spread, becoming a single, rising blaze.

"Well?" Derkin approached him. "If you haven't the stomach for this…"

"Gods," the man said again. "You people are thorough, aren't you?"

"Are you going to try to stop us? Those are humans in there, like you."

"Not like me," Tuft spat. "Those are empire soldiers. I'm a Cobar."

The cabin blazed, and the shouts inside turned to screams. At the second cabin a door crashed open, and men came rushing out, gaping at the blaze, shouting in confusion. The first two or three never saw the dwarven women waiting in the shadows, until the swords, axes, and clubs hit them. Others tried to fight, and some in the rear had picked up weapons. But it was over with in a minute. Taken completely by surprise, groggy with sleep and half-blinded by the glare of the burning cabin, the slavers had no chance against a dozen angry dwarven women swarming among them, cutting them down without mercy.

Thrown torches routed the last two slavers out of their shelter. One of them ducked aside, started to run, then saw Helta Graywood standing alone, gazing raptly at the blazing cabin. With a roar, the man charged toward her, raising a sword, then toppled as Derkin's axe buried itself in his chest. The last slaver was running for the wilderness when an arrow from Tuft Broadland's bow brought him down.

Derkin wrenched his axe from the dead slaver and snapped at Helta, "Pay attention! You could have been killed." Then he stalked around the grounds, counting dead humans. When he was satisfied that none had gotten away, he looked around for Tuft Broadland. At first there was no sign of him, then he appeared from the shadow of the longhouse. And behind him were other humans, following him in single file.