Элейн Каннингем - Thornhold

Ebenezer burst from the tunnel to emerge in a small cavern. He shot a look over his shoulder and groaned. There were perhaps fifty of the critters behind him now—they must have picked up recruits along the way. That was a bit much, even as wedding presents went. Maybe he should whittle the pack down a mite before making his entrance.

The dwarf considered his options. He could stand and fight, but this many osquips were a bit much even for him. Ahead of him flowed a deep underground river. For the briefest of moments he considered plunging into it. Osquips weren’t much for swimming, even with so many legs to do the paddling. He could count on at least half of them drowning. On the other hand, his own chances were even less optimistic. The clan kept hunting cats that liked water better than Ebenezer did, and they feared it less. It might be that he could swim, but he’d never actually taken to the water to test it out.

“Stones,” he muttered darkly. Still running, he spun on his heel and veered sharply to the right, sprinting down a small, dark side tunnel that led toward the clanhold.

A sudden, sharp hiss on the path before him brought him up short. There, her orange ears flattened back against her head and her fangs bared in her customary welcome, crouched Fluffy, his sister’s ginger cat.

Instinctively, Ebenezer danced back. He was leery of cats, even the sawed-off critters that humans kept as pets and mousers. Four-legged elves, they were, right down to their haughty airs and deft, dangerous paws. Fluffy was easily ten times the size of a surface cat, and she had a disposition to match Tarlamera at her surliest. For once, and for all those reasons, Ebenezer was almost glad to see the beast.

“Rats,” he panted out, stretching the truth a bit as he pointed to the roiling pack of swiftly approaching osquips. “Get ’em!”

Fluffy cast him a supercilious glare, but her tail lashed as she eyed the rodents. With a fearsome yowl, she launched herself into flight and came down in the center of the pack. The creatures fell back, yipping and squealing in surprise. Had they possessed more intelligence, the osquips would have realized that the lot of them were more than a match for a tunnel mouser. But the ancient instincts of their kind stuck with them, and most of the creatures scuttled away like cockroaches at the sight of this rodents-bane.

Some of the osquips recovered quickly enough from the shock, and a score of them abandoned the cat to follow their original quarry. Ebenezer did not stay to help the cat chase down stragglers; she would not have thanked him if he had. Keeping the tunnel free of vermin was her job, and she was every bit as territorial as a dwarf when it came to matters of land held and defended.

As he ran, the dwarf tugged a kerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. He suspected he looked a sight, what with all the running. His reddish brown hair was exceedingly curly at the best of times. At the moment, he was as lathered as a racehorse, and at such times his hair sprung up into wild clusters of small, tight ringlets. Ebenezer’s beard was another matter. Long and full and defiantly red, it had the decency to just hang there. A beard any dwarf would be proud of, it was. For all his odd ways—and according to his clan, his ways were plenty odd—he was a dwarf who appreciated tradition. So what if he hated mining, preferring the sway of a horse to the measured rhythm of the pickax? Whose affair was it if he kept his upper lip clean-shaven, rather than sporting the usual thick mustache? What stone was it engraved on, anyway, that a dwarf had to wear a mustache? All the damn thing did was guarantee that he would keep smelling his dinner, hours after the fact. Thank you, but no.

Ebenezer grimaced with amusement when he realized that he was rehearsing for the arguments to come. Well, no matter. He’d been gone a long time, and with each moon phase that had passed, the measure of his clan’s more annoying tendencies shrank just a bit more. Fact was, he was looking forward to the brand of contentious peace that meant hearth and home.

He wove his way through a henge of statues, a circle of ten-foot stone dwarves that honored heroes of the past, and bolted down the final tunnel toward the clanhold’s cavern. He burst out into the open, to be confronted with the slack-jawed astonishment of his kin.

His Da, a burly, gray-bearded dwarf with a belly the size of a boulder and a heart to match, was the first to recover. “Osquips!” he howled, his eyes gleaming wildly as he took his hammer from his belt. “Didn’t I tell you, Palmara, the boy’d be back in time, and bringing gifts?”

Ebenezer’s mother sniffed and reached for her pick. She buried it deep in the skull of an onrushing rodent and kicked the twitching thing aside. Long years together had blurred the differences between the dwarf pair; except for the feminine cut of her dress tunic, Palmara Stoneshaft was nearly indistinguishable from her mate. She gestured with her bloody pike. “There’s two more over there. You, Gelanna! Back off them critters. I saw ’em first!”

For several moments the ceremony was forgotten as the dwarves busily chased down the invading osquips. Ebenezer edged his way toward the center of the cavern. The stone lectern that served as podium for their contentious clan meetings had been turned into an altar, now abandoned as the priestess of Clangeddin joined gleefully into the sport. Tarlamera and her soon-to-be-husband, a likely little sprout of a dwarf who was not more than fifty and not much more than two hundred pounds, stood with arms folded and eyes filled with mingled amusement and frustration. Osquip-bashing was fun to watch, but no dwarf willingly stood still when there was mayhem to be had. But Tarlamera wore the ceremonial apron, and she would get stomped by every other maiden in the clanhold if she messed it up with rodent guts. Regrettable, but that was tradition for you.

“You’re a lucky dwarf, Frodwinner. You got yourself the prettiest dwarf maid in a hundred caverns,” Ebenezer said and meant it. His sister was a picture, with her normally wild red beard neatly plaited and her hair tamed into bright ringlets. On her, those damned ringlets looked good.

The dwarf maid snorted, but her eyes were fond. “About time you showed. Staying long?”

It was a familiar question, and edged with a sarcasm that predicted Ebenezer’s answer. “Long as I can stand to,” he admitted. He softened the remark with a shrug. “I’m not one to stay put. You know that.”

Tarlamera shook her head in puzzlement and swept her hand toward the clanhold’s vast courtyard. “In all the wandering you’ve done, have you ever seen a place to equal this one?”

Ebenezer shook his head, honestly enough. The Stoneshaft Clanhold was impressive, yet cozy. Ceremonies, celebrations, and mock battles took place in the great hall, a fine cavern with a smooth, level floor and richly carved walls. Over the centuries, Stoneshaft artisans had carved many a frieze depicting dwarf victories and frolics. Several small tunnels led out of the hall, and stairs carved into the walls wound up to higher levels. Some of these openings led to private family homes, others to the forges and gem-working shops that kept the clan happily employed. Miners they were, of course, and smiths, but clan Stoneshaft was also renowned for the fine, bold wearable art they made of gems and metals. A few dwarves served as merchants, trading the finished goods for materials not easily found. Ebenezer worried about this. His kin were too isolated, too clannish and race-proud to understand that some humans posed more of a risk than others.

“Dying down, it looks like,” offered Frodwinner, nodding toward the other dwarves. The osquip-bashing frenzy was over, but for a few final thumps. Already most of the creatures had been dragged away. Most likely, Ebenezer mused, to be thrown into the river. The swift-moving current would bear them away, and whatever the river denizens didn’t eat would wash ashore in the hydra cove. A lot of mouths to feed there, Ebenezer concluded.