Robert Salvatore - The Thousand Orcs

"It'll wind back," Nikwillig assured him.

"Bah!" Tred snorted, shaking a fist at his companion.

They were lost and he knew it, and so did Nikwillig, whether he'd admit it or not. They didn't turn back, though. The road along the river had led them down a pair of very difficult descents that promised to be even more difficult climbs. To turn around after having gone so far seemed foolish.

They continued on, and when the stream took another unexpected dive over a waterfall, Tred grunted, grumbled, and climbed down the rocks to the side.

"Might be that it's time to think about going th' other way," Nikwillig offered.

"Bah!" was all that stubborn Tred would reply, and that grunt was exaggerated, for Tred hit an especially slick stone as he had waved his hand in a dismissive manner at Nikwillig.

He got down to the bottom faster at least.

They went on in silence after that and were looking about for a place to set camp when they crested one outcropping of huge cracked boulders to see the land fall away, wide and low before them, a huge valley running east and west.

"Big pass," Nikwillig remarked.

"One caravans might be using to get to Mithral Hall," Tred reasoned. "West it is!"

Nikwillig nodded, standing beside his companion, glad, as was Tred, to see that the going might be much easier the next day.

Of course, neither knew that they were standing on the northern rim of Fell Pass, the site of a great battle of old, where the very real and very dangerous ghosts of the vanquished lingered in great numbers.

The dwarf councilor, Agrathan Hardhammer, shifted uneasily in his seat as the volume around him increased along with the agitation of the others, all human, in the room.

"Perhaps you should have granted him an audience," said Shoudra Stargleam, the sceptrana of the city.

Shoudra's bright blue eyes flashed as she spoke, and she shook her head, as she always seemed to be doing, letting her long dark hair fly wide to either side. Her hair was often the subject of gossip among the women of the city, for though Shoudra was in her thirties and had lived for all her life in the harsh, windblown climate of Mirabar, it held the luster and shine that one might expect on the head of a girl half Shoudra's age. In all respects, the sceptrana was a beautiful creature, tall and lithe, yet with deceptively delicate features. Deceptive, because though she was ultimately feminine, Shoudra Stargleam was possessed of a solidity, a formidability, that rivaled the strongest of Mirabar's men.

The fat man sitting on the cushioned throne, the Marchion of Mirabar, smirked at her and waved his hands in disgust.

"I had, and have, more important matters to attend to than to see to the needs of an unannounced visitor," the marchion said, staring hard at Agrathan as he spoke, "even if that visitor is the King of Mithral Hall.

Besides, is it not your duty, and not mine own, to negotiate trade agreements?"

"King Bruenor did not come here for any such purpose, by any reports," Shoudra protested, drawing another wave of Marchion Elastul 's thick hands.

Elastul shook his head and looked about at his Hammers, his principal attendants, scarred old warriors all.

"Might that she should've met with Bruenor anyway," Djaffar, the leader of the group, remarked. He nudged the marchion's shoulder. "Shoudra's got a trick or two that could soften even a dwarf!"

The other three soldier-advisors and Marchion Elastul burst out in snickers at that. Shoudra Stargleam narrowed her blue eyes and assumed a defiant pose, crossing her arms over her chest.

To the side, Agrathan shifted again. He knew Shoudra could handle herself, and that she, like all the folk of Mirabar who had any access to Elastul, was used to the liberties of protocol often taken by the vulgar Hammers and by the marchion himself. His was an inherited position, unlike the elected councilors and sceptrana.

"He asked to see you, Marchion, not me and not the council," Shoudra reminded curtly, ending the snickers.

"And what am I to do with the likes of Bruenor Battlehammer?" Elastul replied. "Dine with him? Cater to him, and quietly explain to him that he will soon be irrelevant?"

Shoudra looked over at Agrathan plaintively, and the dwarf cleared his throat, drawing the marchion's attention.

"Ye wouldn't be doing well to underestimate Bruenor," Agrathan advised. "His boys're good at what they do."

"Irrelevant," Elastul said again, settling back comfortably. "That curiosity piece Gandalug is dead, may the stones powder his bones, and Bruenor is inheriting a kingdom on the decline."

Again, Shoudra looked over at Agrathan, this time wearing a doubting smirk, for she and the dwarf knew what was coming.

"More than two dozen metallurgists and alchemists." Elastul boasted. "I'm paying them well, and they'll be showing results soon enough!"

Agrathan lowered his eyes so that Elastul wouldn't see his doubting expression as the marchion went on to describe the most recent promises of those folks he had hired in an effort to strengthen the metal produced by Mirabar's mines. The metallurgists had been promising from the day they arrived, several years before, combinations of strength and flexibility beyond anything anyone in all the world could produce. Grand, and as far as Agrathan believed, empty claims all.

Agrathan hadn't worked the mines in over a century — since he had turned to the practice of preaching the word of Dumathoin—but as a priest of that dwarf god, a deity who was known as the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, Agrathan firmly believed that the claims of the hired alchemists and metallurgists were not among those secrets. To Agrathan, if some magical way to enhance any metal wasn't among the secrets of Dumathoin, then it simply didn't exist.

The hired group was very good at what it did. What it did, as far as Agrathan was concerned, was keep the marchion curious and intrigued enough to keep the gold flowing, and that was all that was flowing. Mirabar boasted less than half the dwarves of Mithral Hall, just over two thousand, and several hundred of those were busy serving in the Axe. keeping the mines clear of monsters. The thousand who worked the mines could barely meet the quotas set out by the Council of Sparkling Stones each year and that from existing veins. Little exploration was being done at the deeper levels, where the dangers were greater, but so too were the true promises of better quality in the form of better ore.

The simple fact was that Mirabar couldn't afford to cut production long enough to seek out those better veins, so the marchion had fallen into the scam of these supposed specialists—with not a dwarf among them — who claimed to understand metals so well. Besides, to Agrathan's thinking, if there were such processes as the marchion believed, why hadn't they been put in practice centuries before? Why hadn't these metallurgists and alchemists reduced the dwarves of Mithral Hall, the dwarves of all the world, to positions of providing base material alone? They promised weapons, armor, and other metal goods strong enough to outshine anything Bruenor's folk might produce, and yet, if they knew of such secrets, if there were such secrets, then why weren't there weapons of legend that had been produced through such processes?

"Even if your specialists deliver their promises, we will still be far from making King Bruenor and Mithral Hall 'irrelevant'," Shoudra Stargleam replied, and Agrathan was glad that she was taking the lead. "They are out-producing us in volume more than three-to-two."

The marchion waved his hands at her. "There was nothing for me to say to Bruenor Battlehammer anyway. Why did he come here? Who invited him? Who asked. ." He ended with a derisive snort.