Markus Heitz - The Revenge of the Dwarves

She lifted the bag. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she answered, pointing her dagger at the soldier. “The same poison is on the blade of this knife. Be off with you and keep quiet about what you’ve seen. You’ve been paid by Deifrich and didn’t have to work for it. Be content with that.”

The men looked at each other. Rodario thought they might try to jump Kea and take the rest of the gold.

The woman’s cold-blooded attitude warned them off taking any such rash action. Hesitatingly and being careful not to turn their backs on her they inched out of the warehouse.

She laughed quietly and gave a second whistle. Five men hurried up to her. “Get up there and see how much corn the bastard was hiding. Get the sacks onto the barge as quickly as you can. And then let’s get out of Mifurdania.” She prodded the dead body with her foot. “Find something heavy to weigh him down with, then chuck him in the water.”

Her people nodded and swarmed out while Kea disappeared to the left out of Rodario’s line of sight. The noise of boots on the steps announced the arrival upstairs of at least two of the men.

Now things were getting uncomfortable for Rodario.

He was just crawling in deeper between the sacks when there was a crackling and a rattling in the dark above him with a winch being set to work. The floor he was lying on descended rapidly. Somehow he’d got himself onto the loading base, while the mechanism was activated, taking himself and ten sacks down to the ground floor.

Though he tried to hide between the sacks it was a lost cause. At the other end of the building he saw four long boxes. Kea was standing in front of one of them. She had opened the lid and was looking at some blocks of iron. To Rodario’s eyes it looked like a mass of casting molds.

“Hey, watch it. There’s a tramp,” yelled one of the men up at the hoist.

“I’m on my way, don’t worry. Just needed a place to sleep.” Rodario coughed and crawled over toward the door. He didn’t want to give up his disguise. Perhaps he would need the element of surprise more urgently.

Kea closed the boxes and stood herself calmly in his path, keeping the dead body of the tradesman from his view. “Not so fast, old man,” she addressed him, not harshly.

Rodario read it as a good sign that she wasn’t brandishing her dagger and that no one was manhandling him. His masquerade seemed to be holding up. “Oh mistress, forgive me. Don’t call the Watch, please don’t,” he begged, dribbling and slobbering to make himself even more unsavory. He didn’t want her to expend any time on him. “They hate me.”

She measured him with a glance. “You know Deifrich?”

Rodario gave it some thought. “No. Does he belong to the Watch?”

One of Kea’s people came over and grabbed him by the arm. “Kea, you know what has to be done! He’s seen us now.”

“I see a lot of people in Mifurdania,” said Rodario in an old man’s falsetto. He laid his hand on the man’s arm. “It’s not a crime, young man,” he announced argumentatively.

“No.” Kea fingered the handle of her dagger. “Seeing us, old fellow, is certainly not a crime. But it is bad luck.” She drew her weapon and stabbed quick as lightning.

Rodario had been expecting the blow, so moved quickly to the side, grabbing the other man and using him as a shield. He hadn’t counted on the old tramp being so strong. He it was that received the stab in his ribs. The dagger did not go through to the internal organs-it did not need to. The poison brought the man down. “Surprised, huh?” Rodario walloped Kea on the nose and she fell back with a scream. He ran off to the nearby door, pursued by shouts from the men and curses from the woman.

Even if it had been a long time since he had been in Mifurdania, he still knew his way about. He shook off his two pursuers in the confusion of the port. But then he made a bee-line for the warehouse again, after first making a wide circle to throw them off the scent. He wanted to see what had been happening following his bold escape. He watched from behind a fishing boat on the other side of the quay.

Swiftly the men loaded the sacks onto the barge, even Kea helping with the task. They must have needed the corn so badly they could not leave it behind despite the incidents with the tradesman and the mercenaries.

One hundred sacks was a lot of corn. You could feed a small army with that. But where could an army be encamped in a land like Weyurn that was mostly water? And what would be the point? Soldiers who had deserted and were trying their hand at piracy and making sure of provisions before setting off? Where did they get so much gold? What was Furgas up to with them?

Questions on top of questions and nobody to give him any answers, of course.

Once the boxes with the iron molds were loaded the barge pushed off, not using any lights. Rodario decided to carry on following them. Water; the goddess Elria’s element, was not going to deter him.

He found a little dinghy tied up at the quayside. Borrowing it, he hopped in and found to his delight it obeyed even his landlubber efforts. Luckily the barge was not moving fast, so it was easy to keep up.

It was heading for the center of the huge body of water that now made up Weyurn. The waves glittered in the light of the stars as if enchanted. Rodario kept his distance and tried to hoist the sail on the small mast. It was difficult but he managed it. Not having a seaman’s training, he was not doing very well about holding to a course.

The barge disappeared behind the cliffs of an island and it took him some time to get his borrowed boat to go in the same direction.

Before rounding the rocks he heard a splashing, hissing, gurgling noise, as if a red-hot shooting-star had fallen from heaven into the waters. The surface of the lake was very rough; small waves rolled over the bow of the boat, threatening to swamp the dinghy.

Rodario rounded the cliffs. He did not have long to wait.

“For heaven’s sake! What in the name of all the bad actors in Girdlegard… where the hell is it?” Rodario stood up, his hands on his hips and stared at the lake before him. Stared at the empty lake.

There was nothing to see and nothing to pursue. The barge had disappeared from one moment to the next.

“How can that be, Palandiell?” he said, trying to keep his balance in the rocking boat. The moonlight showed him that there was nothing but the islands, and they lay over a mile away to his left. “Has Elria drawn them down to the depths because of their dreadful deeds?”

A new shuddering movement disturbed the surface and a mighty wave rolled toward him in the form of a foaming black wall, blotting out the moon and stars.

“O merciful Elria! What have I done to enrage you?” he murmured, motionless with terror, clinging to the mast of his small boat before the craft was seized by several tons of water and he was dragged under.

Girdlegard,

Red Mountain Range,

Kingdom of the Firstlings,

Early Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle

I n these times, when the children of the Smith had to be more watchful than ever as they stood guard at the entrances to Girdlegard, it was harder for wanderers and merchants alike to overcome the suspicion that met them at any of the five gates. That was if anyone dared to turn up at the gates at all. It was not always going to be the evil that wished to come in.

And so it was in the Red Range.

The nine imposing towers and the two mighty ramparts of West Ironhald presented an almost insuperable obstacle even for peaceful visitors. In the area between the defending walls in the chasm that led to the Ironhald gateway and thus to the kingdom of the firstlings, around two hundred people were encamped, waiting for the dwarves to admit them.