The Dwarves (26 page)

Leaning back against a tree trunk, he stopped to recover his breath. No amount of marching could have prepared him for sprinting
through a forest, laden with bags. He made a quick check of his things; the pouch with Gorén’s artifacts was still slung from
his shoulder, rattling and jangling as soon as he moved. The bag had been making strange noises ever since his misadventure
with the orc.

Still listening attentively for his pursuers, he took a sip of water.
The brigands are hunting dwarves for a reward.
He could scarcely believe it. Of all the terrible things that had happened, this new revelation shocked him to the core.
Putting gold on dwarven lives ran counter to the laws of Girdlegard and it was hard to see the sense of it: What would anyone
want with a disembodied head?

As soon as he had recovered sufficiently he made a beeline through the forest toward the nearest path. To his astonishment,
Boëndal and Boïndil were coming the other way.

“About time too!” Boïndil called out to him. “You went the wrong way!”

“I went the
right
way,” Tungdil corrected him. “You missed the turn to Porista!”

Boëndal took a closer look at him. “What happened, scholar? Did you run into trouble?”

“Just my luck to miss all the excitement,” his brother grumbled moodily. Then he laughed. “I know, I bet a squirrel was after
his n —”

“Headhunters,” Tungdil cut him off. “They’re decapitating dwarves in return for a reward.”

“What?” screeched Boïndil, eyes rolling wildly. His voluminous beard billowed. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Tungdil told him, “and to be perfectly honest, I’m just glad they’ve stopped chasing me.”

They stopped in a clearing to decide what to do.

“Did they say who was paying them?” Boëndal asked.

“No, but I’ve seen them once before. They didn’t lay a finger on me at the time — too many other people nearby, I suppose.”
Given half a chance, they would have killed me,
he realized with a shudder.

“Sounds like the thirdlings are up to their tricks again. They’re probably paying the bounty hunters to wipe out the rest
of the dwarven race, or it could be a ploy to turn us against the long-uns so we end up feuding with them as well as the elves.”
Boëndal looked at his companions. “There’ll be plenty to talk about when we get back to Ogre’s Death.”

They unpacked their blankets and spent the night under a dense roof of leaves. It seemed prudent to do without a fire: It
was dark enough for the flames to be seen for miles around and the mere snapping of a twig seemed alarmingly noisy in the
stillness. Tungdil snuggled down and put his hands behind his head, only to sit up abruptly and pluck a beetle from his thick
shock of hair. “It’s strange,” he mused out loud, “but the two of you must have left Ogre’s Death at roughly the same time
as the headhunting began.”

Boïndil, who had coiled his long plait into a pillow, frowned. “You mean it’s nothing to do with the thirdlings? You think
they were after us?”

His brother shook his head. “That hardly seems likely, Boïndil. No, our scholar thinks they were after him. Am I right?”

Tungdil sighed. “I’m probably making too much of it, but didn’t you say I had a rival for the throne?”

Boëndal saw what he was getting at. “Gandogar Silver-beard would never do a thing like that,” he said firmly. “He’s an upstanding
dwarf!”

“I don’t know what you’re getting so offended about,” his brother said reproachfully. “He isn’t even a secondling.”

“No, but he’s a dwarf, an honorable dwarf with some funny ideas.” He thought for a moment. “Besides, Gundrabur didn’t tell
anyone about Tungdil until after we’d left. No,” he insisted, “the headhunting is another nasty thirdling ploy. It’s bad enough
that one of our folks has turned against us, but we can’t start suspecting Gandogar. Our race will be doomed if we can’t trust
one another; it mustn’t be true, it can’t be.”

They lay in silence, pondering the matter uneasily until they fell asleep.

Tungdil’s dreams were filled with all kinds of unsettling nonsense. Hordes of orcs and älfar were pursuing him with shaving
soap and razors, determined to cut off his burgeoning beard. In the end they caught him, held him down, and shaved his face;
it was humiliating and infuriating to be lying on the ground with cheeks as naked as a baby.

The thought of it jolted him from his restless sleep and he got up, ate some of his provisions, and offered a fervent prayer
to Vraccas, asking for protection from bounty hunters and safe completion of his mission.

You’re not making it easy for me, Vraccas.
Tungdil longed to be back in Ionandar’s vaults with Frala, Sunja, and Ikana; even the prospect of seeing Jolosin no longer
seemed so bad.

T
he long journey made friends of the trio and Boïndil devoted every spare moment to instructing Tungdil in the art of combat.

“So tell me, scholar,” Boëndal said softly one evening when his brother was snoozing by the fire, “what do you make of the
first dwarves you’ve ever been acquainted with?”

Tungdil grinned. “Do you want my honest opinion?”

“Of course.”

“Boïndil has the fierier temper. His fists move faster than his thoughts and he generally acts on impulse, although once he
decides himself on something, no one will convince him otherwise.”

“I didn’t need a scholar to tell me that. Go on!”

“He hates orcs and elves with a vengeance and his life is devoted to warfare. He fights with uncommon zeal.”

“You know my brother well.” His twin laughed. “Just don’t let him hear you say so! And what of me?” he inquired eagerly, passing
him a pipe.

“You have a gentler temperament. Your mind is sharper and you’re willing to listen to other people’s ideas.” Tungdil drew
on the pipe. “Your brown eyes are friendly, whereas your brother’s… I can’t describe the look in his eyes.”

Boëndal clapped his hands softly. “True, all true.”

“Why did the two of you become warriors?”

“Neither of us has any talent for masonry, so we decided to join the guard. The secondlings are custodians of the High Pass,
the steep-sided gorge through the Blue Range. At ground level, the pass is fifty paces wide, but its walls are over a thousand
paces high, and the sides slope inward after eight hundred paces, leaving the path in shadow except for a short span of time
when the sun is directly above.”

“Sounds pretty gloomy to me.”

“Throughout our history a handful of custodians have defended our kingdom against invaders, no matter how powerful their ranks.”

“Don’t you have a portal like the fifthlings’ Stone Gateway?”

“No, our forefathers cut a trench in the path, forty paces long and a hundred paces deep. On our side of the trench they built
a rampart with a mechanical bridge. The engineers worked on the design for almost as long as it took for the masons to hew
the trench.” Boëndal paused, recalling the genius of the engineering. “They made a collapsible walkway from thin slabs of
stone. It’s incredibly light but can bear any load. At full extension, it rests on columns that rise up at the pull of a lever
from the base of the trench, but the bridge can be retracted instantly by means of chains, cogs, and ropes.”

Tungdil was lost for words. “That’s… I’ve never heard anything like it! But what happens when orcs or ogres force their way
onto the bridge?”

“We send them crashing into the trench. Tion’s creatures are forever littering the fosse with their bones.” He laughed softly.
“One lot were so determined that they catapulted each other to the opposite side. Most died on impact; the others felt the
fury of our axes.”

Tungdil joined in his mirth. “If I were trying to cross over,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d fill in the fosse or climb down
and up the other side.”

“They thought of that too, but they didn’t stand a chance. There was only one occasion when our folk came close to going the
same way as poor Giselbert’s dwarves.” Like every secondling, Boëndal knew this episode of his kingdom’s history by heart.
“An army of ogres had the same idea as you. On reaching the trench, they didn’t even try to find a way of bridging it; they
just climbed down carefully, waded through the bones of their ancestors, and appeared before us in their hundreds.”

“But the secondlings managed to stop them?”

“Why do you think it’s called Ogre’s Death?” Boïndil chimed in chippily. “Can’t you keep the noise down when I’m trying to
get some sleep?” He rolled closer and gazed into the fire. “I’m wide-awake now, thanks to you!”

He fetched some cheese from his pack and melted it over the flames. This time Tungdil accepted a morsel. It didn’t taste nearly
as bad as he’d thought.

Boëndal resumed his story. “The ogres had got as far as storming the ramparts when their chieftain was killed. That was our
salvation. Without their leader, the ogres didn’t know what to do and our warriors succeeded in pushing them back to the edge
of the trench. They fell to their deaths. But that was a long time ago, when Boïndil and I were still in nappies. There hasn’t
been a single attack on the High Pass for at least thirty cycles.”

“No wonder.” His twin guffawed. “The beasts are too scared of us. Actually, the High Pass has been so quiet lately that Gundrabur
decided to send us in search of you.” He looked across the fire at Tungdil and his brown eyes glinted. “You were right, of
course. I was born to fight. Combat is my calling; it’s who I am.”

“And I go where he goes. Twins belong together; find one and you’ll find both. It’s just the way it is.”

“Does every dwarf have a calling, then?” asked Tungdil, wondering what his might be. “Do you think I’ll be a stone hauler
or a trench digger, or will I be an artisan with a proper talent?”

“Most fourthlings are gem cutters and diamond polishers. Maybe trinkets are your thing?”

Tungdil had never taken much of an interest in precious stones. Lot-Ionan possessed a few items of jewelry and Tungdil had
enjoyed looking at the sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and amethysts because of the way in which they caught the light. He had
never felt the slightest urge to craft a sparkling jewel from uncut stone, though.

“I don’t think so.” There was a hint of disappointment in Tungdil’s voice. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn
to the forge. The smell of molten iron, tongues of fire that writhe like living things, the ring of the hammer, the hiss of
hot metal as it enters the water — ever since I saw my first anvil, that’s what being a dwarf has meant for me.”

“You’ll be a smith, then,” Boïndil said approvingly. “A scholarly smith. Very dwarflike.”

Tungdil shuffled closer to the fire and tried to divine the secrets of his inner self. He pictured mountains of diamonds and
then a column of dancing orange sparks rising from a furnace. He felt more affinity with the furnace. Gold appealed to him
too, though; he loved its soft warm shimmer.

“I like gold as well, you know,” he confessed in a whisper. “I pick up any lost gold I can find — gold pieces, gold jewelry,
gold dust dropped by prospectors. I collect it all.”

The brothers roared with laughter. “He’s got himself his own private hoard! If that isn’t properly dwarven, I don’t know what
is. You’ll be a warrior soon,” Boïndil promised him, reaching for the pipe.

“I don’t know,” Tungdil said doubtfully. “The way you and Boëndal can fight and win against the odds. I’ll never —”

“There’s no such thing as having the odds against you,” Boïndil broke in. “Some challenges are bigger than others; that’s
all there is to it.”

“All the same, I feel safer at the anvil; a forge is where I belong.” Tungdil decided not to dwell on the matter, so he opened
his knapsack and pulled out Gorén’s books. The brothers watched as he slid the volumes out of their wax covering and examined
them carefully.

“Well, what do they say, scholar?” Boïndil demanded impatiently. “Maybe that’s your calling, to be a learned scribe or an
engineer. The dwarves are renowned for being prodigious inventors.”

“I can’t make head or tail of them.” To his immense disappointment, even the wording on the spine was written in scholarly
script. “They were written for magi.” In some ways it was surprising that Gorén, an ordinary wizard, had been able to read
them at all.

Tungdil tapped his forehead and scolded himself for being so slow. He had forgotten that the elf maiden would have been familiar
with the workings of high magic.
She must have helped Gorén unlock the secrets of the books.

He stroked the leather binding of the books.
Why are their contents so important to the älfar? Since when have the elves’ dark relatives been afraid of parchment and ink?

“We’ll find out soon enough from Lot-Ionan,” he said, trying to rally their spirits. He was just returning the books to their
wrapping when his gaze fell on the bag of artifacts. It had suffered visibly from the journey. In spite of the hard-wearing
leather, the pouch was bleached from the sun and scuffed in several places, and there were sweat marks and grease stains where
it had come into contact with his food. A faint line stretched across its surface like a scar, an eternal reminder of its
run-in with the orcish sword.

The longer Tungdil looked at the pouch, the more he desired to look inside. He had been fighting the urge to undo the colored
drawstrings for some time.

What harm is there in looking? Surely I’ve got the right to know what I’ve been lugging about all this time. Besides, Gorén
is dead.
Tungdil’s self-control failed him.

Trying to look nonchalant, he reached for the pouch. He didn’t want the others to know that the magus had forbidden him to
look inside. He untied the knot and the drawstrings came open.

At that moment an ear-splitting, bone-shattering bang rent the air. A volley of sparks shot upward and exploded in a blast
of color.

“By the hammer of Vraccas and his fiery furnace!” Leaping to their feet, the twins stood back-to-back, weapons at the ready.

Tungdil swore and tugged at the drawstrings, but the fire-works continued until he tied the knot exactly as it had been before.
Lot-Ionan had booby-trapped the bag. He must have reckoned with his inquisitive nature and decided to teach him a lesson.