Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

In front of her the little kender turned and said, “What?”

“We’re too high!” Willow repeated. “I don’t like it up here! You promised me that this bird would fly low and slow!”

“Oh.” Shill grinned. “Well, for Cawe, this is low and slow. He doesn’t fool around when it comes to flying.”

“I certainly hope not,” Willow breathed.

“Of course, if he decides to do flips and rolls and stunts like that, it gets kind of exciting . . .”

“No!” Willow shrieked.

“What?”

“No flips and rolls! No stunts! This is bad enough.”

“I guess you’re not a frequent flier,” Shill decided. “Well, don’t worry, this is just a quick tour so you can see what those wizards have been doing. Oh, look!” She pointed downward, half-standing precariously on the shoulders of the soaring bird. “I see people down there, riding horses. Are those some more dwarves, do you think?”

Carefully clinging to the fragile strap, Willow leaned outward and looked down. A dizzying distance below, three little specks moved slowly down a wide slope.

“Well?” Shill insisted. “Are they dwarves?”

“Who can tell from up here?” Willow snapped. “Sit down before you fall!”

Shill looked puzzled for a moment, then sat. “I thought they might be somebody you know,” she said. “Dwarves know other dwarves, I suppose.”

“Sit still and hang on!” The rear knot in the linen strap slipped, and Willow grabbed it with her free hand. “Who in the world tied this . . . this thing?”

“I did,” Shill said happily. “Pretty neat, huh? When Cawe wanted me to go with him to look for a dwarf, I thought it would be a good idea. Of course, I didn’t have much to work with, but it turned out just fine. Isn’t this fun?”

Bracing herself, Willow quickly retied the knot, then grasped the linen again as Cawe banked to the left, still gaining altitude. The world below was getting smaller and smaller.

“That’s Sheercliff ahead.” The kender girl pointed. “It was named Sheercliff by dwarves. Dwarves aren’t all that imaginative. If it had been me, I’d have called it Verty-Go or Upson Downs or something fancy like that, but I guess Sheercliff is all right. I remember once, my mother caught a weasel, and I named it. . .”

Willow tried to ignore the kender’s prattling, squinting as she gazed at the miles-long cliff that stood like a huge wall of stone facing the eastward slopes. Behind its edge, to the west, were plateau lands sloping gently upward toward the still distant Anviltop Peaks. And on the plateau was an ugly black scar that looked as if it was half a mile across. “What’s that?” she asked.

Shill looked and shook her head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there when we came by before. It looks like there’s been a fire.”

“It certainly does,” the dwarf girl agreed.

“Oh, look! There those people are. See? Right out there on the edge of the cliff. All three of them. They’re the ones who have been doing the flashings and the cracks and thunders and all that.”

Willow could barely see the three men so far below; they were just little specks on the very lip of the cliff. She squinted, then asked, “Do you suppose we could go down for a closer look?”

The kender trilled something in her bird-tongue, and the great bird answered—a single, deep-chested syllable.

“Cawe says no.” Shill shrugged. “He says those people are no friends of his, and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. He says that’s why you’re here. He wants you to figure out what to do about them.”

“He said all that?” Willow’s eyes widened.

“Well, not in so many words, but that’s what he meant.”

“Well, I haven’t the vaguest idea what to do about his wizards, and that’s not why I’m out here anyway. I’m looking for a thing that raided my village and killed almost everybody there.”

Shill turned bright, curious eyes on her passenger, and Willow noticed that the little kender was up again, shifting from one foot to the other as though dancing to the sound of Cawe’s wings.

“Stay still!” the dwarf demanded. “You’re making me nervous!” Willow turned away, then blinked as bright light flashed on a mountain slope far behind them.

Shill had seen it, too, and jumped up and down excitedly, precariously balanced on the back of the soaring bird. “See that?” she asked, pointing. “It’s those wizards. They’re doing it again.”

The flash was gone in an instant, but smoke rolled upward from where it had been.

At that moment, Cawe spread wide wings, tilted his glide, and headed downward. Shill’s feet went out from under her, and she plunged over the side. With a gasp, Willow let go of the linen strap, caught a toe under one of the body straps, and lunged. Her fingers closed around a small wrist, and she heaved backward, lifting the kender back onto the bird.

“I told you to sit down!” Willow shrilled.

“Wow!” Shill chirped. “That was exciting!” She crawled back to her place ahead of the dwarf and crouched there, her eyes shining.

The great bird had circled far past the crest of Sheer-cliff and now was circling downward, toward forested slopes above the plateau. Shill trilled, then turned back. “You said you wanted to get a closer look,” she said. “Cawe is going to let us off in those timbers, so we can do that.”

“Let us off?” Willow frowned. “I hope he intends to land first.”

“Oh, sure. He always lands. That’s where he lets me off when I watch the wizards. I’ve been there several times already. Of course, I try not to let them see me, because they don’t seem very friendly. But they leave interesting things lying around sometimes, that I guess they don’t want anymore. I have a chalice, and a black-stone shiny thing, and a pair of shoes that I don’t have the vaguest idea what to do with because they won’t fit anybody I know. Oh, and I found several carved sticks with little drawings and runes on them. They were just sticking up out of the ground here and there.”

Undisturbed by the chattering, fidgeting pair on his shoulders, Cawe braced great wings and aimed for a wooded cleft in the slopes above the plateau.

Many miles to the east of Sheercliff, late in the evening, a man trudged along the bank of a little mountain stream, heading generally eastward. He was tall, lithe, and muscular, with dark eyes above a full dark beard—eyes that seemed constantly on the move, missing very little of what was around him. The sword at his back, the rawhide shield at his shoulder, and the strung bow in his hand were always ready for use. He was an intruder in the dwarven lands, and he fully understood that to be caught by the reclusive dwarves, wandering in their territory, meant at the very least a quick expulsion from the land called Kal-Thax. At least expulsion, he reminded himself, but more likely death. The dwarves did not appreciate outsiders.

Still, Quist Redfeather had come, pledged to a mission that he detested, but nonetheless meant to complete. Too much hung in the balance for the Cobar to even consider failure.

“If any man can get past the borders of Kal-Thax,” the High Overlord of Xak Tsaroth had told him, “I have no doubt that you are the man. And I have no doubt that, with your family in our, ah, tender custody pending your return, you will make every effort to succeed.”

The “mission” was simple, if not easy. The overlords of Xak Tsaroth had long coveted the wealth of the dwarven clans inhabiting the Kharolis Mountains but had been unable to send troops past the perimeters of Kal-Thax because of the ferocity of the dwarves’ defenses. For decades the idea of conquest had been set aside, but now the High Overlord was plotting again. With the passing of years the extravagance of the rulers of Xak Tsaroth had increased, until the demand for new riches and new revenues was overwhelming. But those very demands now had curtailed much of the city’s income, as more and more of the people of southern Ergoth rebelled against exorbitant taxation and brutal tactics.