Dan Parkinson - The Swordsheath Scroll

"I can see them to this day," he would say. "We were up on the slopes, above the shafts, waiting. They took a lot longer than we had expected, and we were worried. That pretty little creature, Helta, had lost patience and was ready to go down there herself and do… whatever she had in mind to do. Then, suddenly, there they were, coming from past the sheds, starting up the slope. And so many of them! Can you picture eight thousand dwarves all coming up a mountainside at once? It looked like the entire mountain was alive.

"Maybe the gods favored Derkin, as they say, or maybe that elf, Despaxas, had something to do with it. In those days he often had that shadow thing with him-Zephyr- and maybe the creature helped somehow. But not an alarm was sounded. Even when those slaves climbed past the shaft mines, no guard saw or heard them.

"I asked Derkin where we were going next, and he just said, 'Past Tharkas, into the wilderness. I have an army to build. But you aren't going on this journey, human. It will be no place for your kind. Here is where we part.'

"Then he stopped suddenly and turned, and right behind him that Zephyr thing appeared in the air, just sort of floating, like a fish in water. It seemed to stare at Derkin, and he stared back. Then it was gone, and Derkin swore it had spoken to him. He said it told him to pay attention to his dreams, for in sleep he would learn the ways of the Calnar. I asked him who the Calnar were, and he said they were the people before the Hylar.

"The dwarves and I parted there… for a time. I made it out of those mountains, then found a horse and got back to my people. We were in an all-out war with the emperor's invaders by then. Within a year I was chief of my tribe, though it was no happy ascension. I became chief because our old chief, Plume Plainswind, died with a Caergothian spear through his heart.

"The war stretched from months into years. We kept thinking it must end soon, and some of the Wildrunner elves we shared fires with thought so, too. But there were others whose predictions proved better than ours. Among the elves, they spoke of a leader called Kith-Kanan. And they spoke of Despaxas sometimes. They said Despaxas had sent Zephyr to look into the heart of the emperor's general, Giarna, across battle lines. They said the soul reader found neither weariness nor any regard for the cost in lives and suffering. And Despaxas had gone farther than that, they said. Somehow the elven mage had reached across half a continent to look into the heart of the emperor himself. He said it was like looking into a black pit that reeked of ambition and the need for power.

"And there was another story, among the elves. They said Despaxas believed that the emperor, Quivalin Soth, had the power to be two people-though the second of the two had no soul at all.

"The elves prophesied that Ullves's War would never end until the emperor controlled all of Ansalon… or until the emperor was dead.

"And the war did go on… and on and on. For a time, we heard strange tales of wild dwarves coming down from the mountains to make lightning raids along the empire's supply lines. They said the dwarves would strike caravans, take what they wanted, and disappear to the south. They took weapons, horses, food supplies… all kinds of things.

"There were rumors everywhere, that Thorbardin would open its gates and the dwarves would march into battle. But then the tales of dwarven raiders died down, and seasons passed without any word of them. It was as though all the dwarves in the Kharolis mountains had simply disappeared. Most who thought about them at all assumed that the wild dwarves had joined their mountain brothers in that fabled fortress of theirs, and simply shut themselves off from the world.

"I never really believed that, myself. I thought often of Derkin, and what he had said when we parted. He had an army to build, he said. And there was something in the way he said it… I always had a hunch that I'd see him again one day. There was something about Derkin, something in his eyes, in the way he stood and the way he spoke. I had a feeling even then that the emperor's warlords had not heard the last of Derkin."

Century of Rain Decade of Cherry, Spring, Year of Tin

Guards at a winter outpost high on the west face of Sky's End Mountain were the first to spot the approach of the strangers. Up there, where the cold season's snowpack still gave teeth to the freshening winds, frost-bearded young volunteers kept watch in relays. For more than a century, the wardens of the great undermountain fortress had maintained these sentinel lairs on the icy crowns of the highest peaks around the mountain called Cloud-seeker, beneath which lay the stronghold of the mountain dwarves.

In good times and bad, through years of dissolution and strife, even in the days when the feuding among thanes in Thorbardin had erupted into full-scale war, the Council of Chiefs and the Council of Wardens had maintained sentinel outposts to guard against intrusion. Thorbardin was impregnable, but not immune, and those within knew it. Even in the midst of fighting among themselves, the thanes paid common tariff to pay for outposts and sentinels, and volunteers were drawn from every tribe.

The volunteers served for one season at a time, and were paid according to the season. The hardiest among them sought the winter duties. A young dwarf tough enough to last out a winter in one of the Sky's End posts, or one of those atop the Thunder Peaks to the south, could earn a full year's easy living in Thorbardin, with coin left over for carousing among the dens and back ways of any of its several cities.

The west sentinel post on Sky's End was at an altitude of nearly twelve thousand feet, and its six lookouts-a Hylar, a Daewar, two Daergar, and two Theiwar-could see what seemed half the world on a clear day… or in the case of the Daergar, a clear night. Now, as the icy winds began to soften just a bit, and the valleys far below grew coats of green, they were all more than ready to go home. They had seen no one all winter-no little groups of migrating Neidar, no far-ranging elven patrols, no smoke of human campfires such as had been common in recent years since the fighting broke out on the eastern plains, not even so much as the occasional wandering ogre. All through the winter, an odd quiet had reigned in the mountain fastness, and the spotters were more than just tired of the ceaseless cold and the singing, mourning winds. They were thoroughly bored as well.

In recent weeks, their off-duty conversations had turned often to the comforts and pleasures of Thorbardin — mugs of heady ale before roaring fires in the countless ale shops of the cities, challenge matches in the pits, the smell of dark bread emanating from the bakeries, the pleasure of lifting fine metal from a cherry-red forge bed to craft upon an anvil, the joy of a leisurely game of bones, the excitement of wagering on worm-pulls… and the girls. Each of them had wonderful memories and exciting anticipations regarding some special female awaiting his return-or of two or three females or, in the case of the gold-bearded young Daewar, at least a dozen.

A camaraderie had grown among them during the long, cold season, and they shared their thoughts and their dreams as they would among close friends, ignoring the fact that, once returned to Thorbardin, they would likely be caught up in the clan feuds there as before, and soon be at one another's throats. Such harsh realities could fade from the mind in the course of a winter season on Sky's End.

Morning, evening, and night, by twos, they stood their watch on the cold mountainside and anticipated the bright coins they would receive beyond Northgate.