Secret of Pax Tharkas

NINETEEN

B randon awakened with the loud opening of the brig’s door. Several dwarves entered the building and stood near the entrance while the jailer, together with the bullying Neidar called Rune, came swaggering all the way back to the mountain dwarf’s cell. Rune flourished a sword while the turnkey unlocked the barrier and pulled it open. Brandon wondered what the bullying Neidar had done with his venerable axe.

“Time to come out and play,” Rune sneered. “You get to be the center of attention!”

Pushing himself to his feet, Brandon emerged from the cell. But they didn’t know his hands were no longer tied. He owed the dwarf maid historian a favor, he reckoned.

Abruptly he jabbed his elbow into the jailer so hard, he knocked the dwarf into one of the barred doors. With a curse and a clatter of metal, the filthy turnkey tumbled to the floor.

“Watch yourself!” Rune declared, jabbing the tip of his sword against Brandon’s side until the prisoner swiftly twisted out of the way and grabbed the hill dwarf by the wrist, pinning his sword hand against the bars of an adjacent cell.

“Hey-how’d you get your hands untied?” Rune demanded, squirming. The jailer scrambled to his feet and moved toward Brandon, but he froze at the glare from the burly Hylar.

The other dwarves at the door, swords drawn, edged closer, and Brandon could see there was no escape. Releasing Rune’s wrist and brushing past the jailer, Brandon shrugged and continued toward the outer door and the painfully bright daylight outside.

“Good luck,” he heard the Theiwar prisoner say loudly, and he grunted an acknowledgment.

It was morning, he saw as he emerged, and Hillhome was bustling with pedestrians. At first he guessed that the moderately crowded street was busy with hill dwarves making their way to work. Only most of them weren’t going to jobs. They were going to his trial.

Rune prodded him down the steps and toward the middle of town. The gathered hill dwarves watched him with barely concealed hostility, and the bulk of the crowd followed along as the Neidar led his prisoner toward a small square in the center of Hillhome.

A raised platform occupied one end of the open area. A pair of hill dwarf guards, each carrying a long-hafted battle axe, stood to either side of a large, thronelike chair-which was unoccupied. To the left, a wooden rack had been erected, and judging from the manacles attached to the upper and lower supports, Brandon deduced that the contraption was a means of immobilizing, while undoubtedly torturing, a spread-eagled prisoner. He felt a twinge of fear but resolved not to give his captors the satisfaction of seeing him squirm. Instead, he swaggered into the plaza with all the bravado he could muster.

The edges of the square were crowded with muttering hill dwarves, mostly males conspicuously armed with a variety of weapons. They glared at Brandon as he was pushed into the center of the square. Rune stood right behind the prisoner, his sharp blade prodding the mountain dwarf at intervals. The dwarf from Kayolin tried to scan the crowd, looking for a glimpse of blonde hair, of that pretty, oval face with the small, upturned nose. He felt surprisingly dejected when he realized Gretchan Pax wasn’t here to record his fate.

“All set for the festivities, are you?”

He turned to see Slate Fireforge eyeing him. The hill dwarf had ambled up behind him, and while his expression wasn’t exactly friendly, nor was it as hostile as so many others in the crowd.

“Don’t see that I have much choice,” Brandon replied with a shrug, trying to appear nonchalant. He squinted at Fireforge. “Why’d you stop him from killing me that morning up in the hills? You don’t believe him, do you? You know I’m not really a spy, don’t you?”

Fireforge made a face, half bemused, half grimace. “Can’t say one way or the other, to tell the truth. But I believe there’s a proper way to do things, and slicing your head off on a rock up there just didn’t seem, well, proper. And Harn Poleaxe knew that too, or he wouldn’t have listened to me.”

“He seems to be a pretty important fellow around here. Why is everyone so anxious to do anything he says?”

The hill dwarf pondered the question for a while but finally answered. “He comes from money-his father was the richest goldsmith in the north hills. And he’s always been a leader. Quite handy with a sword… and with the ladies.”

“And with a bottle,” Brandon noted, his bitterness showing.

“Aye-uh, that too. But mainly it was when that old woman, whom they call the Mother Oracle, came to town, ’bout ten years ago. She took him under her wing, so to speak, and he’s been on a run of good luck and prosperity since then. I hear it was her sent him to Kayolin, to look for that stone you brought down here.”

“Who’s this Mother Oracle?” Brandon asked.

“An old, blind dwarf woman, is all,” Fireforge replied. “Claims to have some mystical powers. I guess she’s given Harn Poleaxe some good advice, though.” He nodded at the other side of the plaza, where the crowd was starting to stir. “Looks like the show’s about to start. Good luck to you,” he said, apparently sincere.

“I’ll need it,” Brandon muttered. “But I don’t think I’m going to get it.”

He stared at the platform with its lofty chair, a veritable throne, and was not surprised to see Harn Poleaxe swagger into view, pushing his way through the crowd that parted for him. He was dressed in a fur cape and shiny black boots, looking for all the world as if he were the lord of the place.

But a closer look at the hill dwarf leader did surprise him-just as it apparently surprised the others in the crowd, who whispered to each other or simply stared at the hulking figure of the Neidar.

For Harn Poleaxe had changed considerably from the last time Brandon had laid eyes on him. His already oversized body seemed to have grown bigger, so that he towered over the biggest Neidar of his bodyguards. His head, in particular, looked huge and swollen, with his eyes receding into deep, almost cavernous, sockets. Several warts had sprouted on his cheeks, and the hill dwarf scratched at one of them as if it gave him great pleasure. He twitched in a sudden nervous gesture, looking behind him and glaring. Then, as Poleaxe neared the chair on the platform, those eyes turned menacingly at the Kayolin dwarf. He was a new, strangely transformed, frighteningly different Poleaxe.

Brandon met that glare even as he felt its power. A wickedness lurked in Poleaxe’s presence, an abiding evil that, somehow, hadn’t been obvious before, during his long journey with the hill dwarf. Poleaxe puffed out his barrel chest and strutted back and forth on the raised platform, and some in the crowd audibly gasped at his remarkably strapping presence. His arms, too, seemed to have grown in size and length, and his muscular limbs swung easily, his fists seemingly reaching to his knees.

“We are here to usher in a new dawn of Neidar pride,” Poleaxe proclaimed, even his voice louder and more fearsome than before. “And to rid ourselves of the symbol of an old enemy.” With a flourish, he lifted a leather pouch that Brandon recognized-for he himself had worn it around his waist on the long journey southward from Kayolin. Harn pulled the Bluestone out of that pouch, holding it up so all in the plaza could see.

“This is the stone that the Mother Oracle sent me all the way to Kayolin to find. I return with it now, in triumph!” he declared.

Most of the crowd watched silently, though a few of Poleaxe’s personal guard shouted hurrahs for their leader. With another broad gesture, Harn raised another stone, one he plucked from another pouch at his side. Brandon stared in surprise, realizing the object was nearly identical in shape and size to the Bluestone, except that it was a deep and shimmering green color.

“And this is the stone that our beloved Mother Oracle herself brought to Hillhome, nearly ten years ago,” Harn declared loudly. “She told us then that we needed both of them to work the will of Reorx. See how they match and complement each other! Now we have them both!”

The loud cheers came from all around, all quarters of the Neidar crowd. The big hill dwarf then set the two colored stones down on a small table beside his chair and waved his hand, a gesture for silence that the citizens of Hillhome quickly heeded. It was then that Brandon saw his axe, the weapon of Balric Bluestone, sitting on that same table-it was like a display of Harn’s prizes, all stolen from a betrayed companion. Poleaxe glared about the square, scratching at the wart on his cheek, then abruptly raised his hands in the air, fists clenched. With a sudden twitch, he dropped his right hand, finger extended, to point at Brandon.

“But it is not only good news that I bring you, my friends and fellows,” Poleaxe said, his voice ominously lowered. “Here today we have an enemy in our midst, and he presents a danger not just to our hopes and ambitions, but to our very survival.”

Suddenly, Brandon, seething inside, was keenly aware of hundreds of Neidar eyes turning to regard him with a mingling of accusation, distrust, and anger.

Finally Harn took his seat on the large throne. “I recognize the prisoner,” he cried, his voice booming through the suddenly silent square. “He is a son of the mountain dwarves and came all the way from Kayolin to Hillhome. Who will recite the charges against him?”

“He is accused of being a mountain dwarf spy!” grandiosely declared Rune, stepping forward and turning to regard Brandon with a sneer. “He came hither to infiltrate our lands, to gain intelligence and to purchase agents of sedition!”

“That’s a lie!” Brandon shouted. “I came-”

Rune’s backhand blow caught him across the mouth, knocking him staggering backward.

“Silence!” roared Poleaxe. “How dare you address this court? Gag the prisoner!”

Immediately rough hands pulled on Brandon’s hair, yanking his head back while a cloth was wound across his face. Only when the muzzle was wrapped tight and knotted behind his head was the prisoner allowed to stand again on his own.

“Now what proof can you offer?” demanded Poleaxe of Rune.

“He was taken in the night, on the very border of Hillhome’s lands, captured as he tried to sneak into town!” shouted one of the dwarves Brandon recognized as one of Poleaxe’s gang.

“Yes, he was traveling off the known roads,” cried another, pointing a stubby, accusing finger. “Truly, he was determined to arrive at Hillhome unnoticed.”

“And there is word from Flatrock: there, he pretended to be a hill dwarf, so he could pass in our midst without anyone knowing his true nature,” called a third. “A lie!” the Neidar spit. “What more proof do we need that he is a spy!”

The onlookers shouted and jeered.

Brandon twisted in the grip of his captors, struggling to speak, but the crowd of hill dwarves only laughed at his inarticulate squawking. The gag dug into his cheeks, and he felt his eyes bugging out as he strained. He caught a glimpse of Slate Fireforge, but even that hill dwarf, who had insisted on his trial, turned away, unwilling to meet the prisoner’s eyes. It seemed that whatever vestige of fortune he’d ever possessed had deserted him entirely. He heard his doom as Harn continued to rant.

“Dwarves of Hillhome! My fellow Neidar. We have been blessed by the guidance of the Mother Oracle, who has kept us from disaster these many years. Her wisdom sent me on my quest. We have seen the evidence in the shape of this blue stone that is our destiny. And we have heard how the prisoner tried to deceive and sneak his way into our midst. I suspect his true mission was to steal and abscond with these precious stones!”

He let the charge hang in the air then stood with his fists planted on his hips. “This court has seen enough!” declared Poleaxe, his eyes sweeping the crowd, meeting only nods and muttered encouragement from all present. “We sentence him to death by burning! Secure him to the rack! Bring tinder! And let us watch the spy die!”

“I should kill bad dwarf!” Gus repeated for the hundredth time, as he and Gretchan trudged through the darkness across the rugged landscape away from Hillhome. They encountered neither friend nor foe; no one was about at that hour. The dwarf maid maintained a vigorous pace, and the Aghar had to trot along breathlessly in order to keep up.

“Why you not let me kill him?” he asked forlornly, catching up and tugging on her sleeve.

Gretchan stopped momentarily. She was still shaken by the confrontation with the Mother Oracle and by the aftermath of Harn’s attack. She shook her head, heaving a sigh. “I confess-if there was ever a time I felt inclined to resort to violence, that was the time. But there’s always too much killing among dwarves. I refuse to be a part of it.” She smiled and patted Gus’s head. “Or to let my protectors be a part of it. Still, thank you. You were very brave, rescuing me.”

“I rescue you!” the Aghar said proudly. “Next time I kill!” he added, smacking his fist into his palm.

The dwarf maid patted his head again. “Oh dear, I trust there won’t be a next time. Come on,” she said. “I want to make it to the top of this ridge before it’s full daylight. We don’t want anyone in Hillhome to spot us and know where we are… or where we’re going.”

“Good deal. Where are we going?” asked Gus as Kondike bounded up a steep cluster of rocks. The big, black dog paused, his short tail wagging, as he looked back at the two dwarves and impatiently waited for the two to catch up.

“Well now that you mention it, I don’t really know,” Gretchan replied, sitting down on a big rock as she caught her breath. They had been climbing for more than an hour, making their way from the valley to high ground. She decided it was time for a break and pulled out her pipe. Carefully she started to fill the bowl. “Away from here, for sure. There are lots of other towns I have yet to visit,” the dwarf maid noted. “And, too, there’s Pax Tharkas.”

“What Patharkas?” Gus asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. It must have sounded like the name of a dark mage or a dragon, to his ears.

Before Gretchan could reply, they heard a low growl from Kondike. They looked up to see the dog springing down from the ridge top toward them. The dog crouched in the rocks nearby. His hackles bristled as he stared and growled into the dawn light to the east.

“Get down,” Gretchan whispered, quickly tucking her unlit pipe away. Gus immediately hunkered down beside her. Heart pounding, the gully dwarf stared across the rocky ground, wondering what terrible danger would befall them next.

They saw a file of dwarves walking along, just below the crest of the ridge, heading directly toward their hiding place. Each of the dwarves wore a metal breastplate and a helmet. They were armed with an assortment of weapons, including axes, hammers, swords, and spears, and they marched along in a narrow formation. Beards bristling, they looked this way and that with wide, intensely staring eyes.

Gus huddled in the shadows between the rocks as the dwarves marched past, barely a stone’s throw away from them. “Klar!” he whispered in Gretchan’s ear, obviously recognizing them.

She nodded, touching a finger to his lips and silencing him.

The company finally passed them by and continued on down the slope. By the time the sun was up, they had disappeared into a small grove of trees at the bottom of the valley.

“I fear you are right. They are Klar, and they’re on their way to attack Hillhome,” Gretchan said with a heavy heart.

“Why sad? Hillhome bad place!” Gus declared.

“No, it isn’t so bad, really,” she said. “Even if there’s a bad dwarf here and there, or more than a few for that matter, there are many more that live normal lives and try to stay out of trouble. Anyway it just means more killing-dwarves killing dwarves.”

“Where from those killer Klar?” asked Gus, growing more brave once the heavily armed band had disappeared from sight. “Thorbardin?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t see how they can be from under the mountain. Unless things have changed, the gates of Thorbardin are still sealed,” Gretchan explained. “That’s what really bothers me. I think they must have come from Pax Tharkas.”

“Patharkas!” echoed Gus worriedly.

Gretchan sighed heavily, putting her head in her hands. She pushed herself to her feet, her face dry, her expression stony.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

The hill dwarves wasted no time. As soon as Poleaxe pronounced Brandon’s death sentence, a number of burly Neidar grabbed hold of the Kayolin dwarf and carried him over to a square-framed rack. The prisoner struggled but was easily overpowered by the half dozen captors competing for who would punch and drag him. His arms were hoisted so that cuffs could be snapped around his wrists. Next, his legs were pulled apart, each ankle secured by a manacle, until he was helplessly spread-eagled in the middle of the stout, wooden frame. His captors, on a grunted count of one, two, three, hoisted the rack to a vertical position, so the condemned dwarf had a good view of the entire crowd.

No sooner were the braces snapped shut on his limbs than other hill dwarves rushed forward with tinder-bits of twigs and some dry straw-that they hastily spread on the ground around him. More wood was passed forward, stout logs that would burn long and hot. Brandon tugged desperately at his manacles and tried to kick his legs free, but he was firmly trapped. Struggling to speak despite the gag that still choked him, he vowed not to let the barbarous hill dwarves witness his fear. He wished he would die swiftly.

So engrossed was he in his own miserable drama that he didn’t immediately notice the commotion erupting on the other side of the square. The hill dwarves who had been carrying logs toward the rack abruptly dropped their loads and sprinted away from the platform. Neidar began to shout, drawing weapons, surging away from Brandon. Only then did he hear the clash of steel and realize some sort of battle was under way.

A phalanx of armed and armored dwarves was streaming into the plaza, charging in tight lines down the city’s main street. The hill dwarves, utterly taken by surprise, fell back initially before the disciplined attackers. Brandon cheered mutely as he saw the bully Rune go down, felled by an attacker’s hammer blow to the head. The newcomers were wild eyed, Brandon noted, with long beards tucked into their belts. They wore black armor and carried shields of the same color and were armed with a mixture of axes and swords-and a few crossbows too, Brandon saw, as a rank of archers raised their weapons and fired a volley of bolts into the hill dwarves still gathered around the central platform.

“Rally to me, Neidar!” Harn Poleaxe cried, leaping down into their midst. He waved a mighty sword over his head, his roaring voice cutting through the chaos. Hill dwarves cheered, and those who had weapons readied them, coalescing around the big warrior.

“Charge!” Poleaxe cried, and immediately the hill dwarves followed his lead as he rushed toward the armored dwarves who had swarmed into town.

The two forces came together in the middle of the square, blades clanging against breastplates, boots pounding on the pavement. Shouts invoking the name of Reorx rose from throats on both sides. Screaming maids and children fled, while more hill dwarves, some strapping on helmets or breastplates, rushed toward the fight from the surrounding streets.

The attackers maintained their steady advance with impressive discipline, Brandon noted. Shoulder to shoulder, they formed a wedge and used their heavy shields to push the defenders back, sometimes sweeping them right off their feet. They came on with full-throated, almost joyous battle cries, staring with crazed, bulging eyes, swinging their weapons with brutal fury. Brandon recognized the newcomers as members of the clan Klar, but they were more disciplined, more organized, than any Klar he knew of.

The fallen were trampled as the attacking dwarves gradually steamrolled their way across the square. Their shields edge to edge formed a wall of steel that allowed only slight gaps wide enough for a sword or axe to come stabbing out from the phalanx. Many Neidar fell, wounded or killed, and the rest were slowly forced back. Soon the attacking force reached the raised platform, and the last fighting swirled around the dais, hill dwarves standing their ground around Poleaxe’s great chair. Swords and axes bashed against armor, and the cries of the wounded and dying mingled with shouted commands and hoarse battle cries.

On that chair, Brandon remembered with a jolt of excitement-and trepidation-lay the Bluestone and its emerald twin. Desperately he resumed his struggle to move, but the chains fastened to the manacles only allowed him to thrash impotently. Who were those attackers, he wondered? Fellow mountain dwarves, of course. But where did they come from, and why?

He could do nothing to free himself. The battle surrounded the immobilized prisoner, who was ignored by combatants on both sides. A pair of hill dwarves, wielding short swords, fell back until they were planted right in front of him, staunchly contesting a trio of attackers who bashed their sword blades with heavy axes. One Neidar made a lunge, momentarily forcing the trio to retreat, but when the other Neidar tried to slip past Brandon, the captive was able to stretch out his foot a little and trip the hill dwarf into the pile of tinder under the rack.

An attacking dwarf brought his axe down hard, and the fallen Neidar’s head rolled from his shoulders. That Klar suddenly noticed Brandon and pulled off his gag.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“An enemy of your enemy!” gasped Brandon. “How about a chop against these brackets?”

With a wicked grin, the mountain dwarf brought his bloody axe blade down, splitting the beam holding his ankle bracelets. Another sideways whack broke the side support, and the square rack tumbled apart, falling to the ground and taking Brandon with it.

“All right. But now you’re on your own, pal,” cried his rescuer, joining his companions as the attack moved on, spreading across the plaza.

Despite being burdened with armor and shields, the Klar moved swiftly. The Neidar had fallen back but were once again rallying around Harn Poleaxe. However, they were scattered by the Klar’s charge, and even their hulking commander stumbled back-though not before Poleaxe felled a pair of Klar with crushing, well-aimed blows.

Meanwhile Brandon was kicking his feet, sliding the loop of chain free from the splintered board. Twisting and pulling with his muscular arms, he broke the rest of the frame apart. He was still secured by four manacles, each with a thick chain attached, but no longer were those cuffs anchored by heavy wood. He jumped free of the pile of debris and firewood, albeit hung with chains and attached brackets and manacles on his wrists and ankles.

He couldn’t get very far that way, he realized. He needed the key.

Rune! He remembered that his old tormentor had locked him into those brackets, and perhaps the hill dwarf still possessed the key. Stumbling forward, dragging his chains, Brandon lunged across the square toward where his foe had fallen. Rune was still there, bleeding from the hard blow to his head but struggling to rise, pushing himself to his hands and knees.

Brandon fell on him with the full pent-up fury of his betrayal. He swung his arm, heavily smacking the hill dwarf on the side of the head with a wildly lashing length of heavy chain. When Rune went down again, Brandon climbed on top of him, reaching under his tunic for the key he wore on the thong around his neck. The Neidar barely twitched, groaning and resisting only feebly as Brandon pulled the key out.

Twisting around and sitting on the immobilized Rune, Brandon quickly worked the bit of metal into the locks on his right and left wrists, freeing his hands. Next came the locks on his ankles, and finally he was able to shed all of his trappings and stand on his feet, once again a free dwarf. Maybe, finally, his luck was changing for the better! Almost as an afterthought, he reached down and smacked Rune one more time. Then he snatched Rune’s sword off the ground, looking to take his place in the fight.

But he quickly saw that, while he had been busily freeing himself, the tide had turned. More and more hill dwarves, some fully equipped with battle gear, had continued to pour into the square, and the reinforcements outnumbered the attackers by at least two to one. The mountain dwarves were gradually falling back, following with discipline the lead of their commander, whom Brandon spotted in the thick of the action shouting out orders-a handsome, blond male with exotic eyes and long, free-flowing hair.

Brandon groaned as the blond Klar, passing the platform where he had just undergone his “trial,” stopped and stared at something. Eyes widening, the Klar leader snatched up the pouches containing the two stones. He opened one, and his teeth flashed a grin.

“Fall back!” the Klar captain brayed. “Tight ranks! Retreat!”

“No!” shouted Brandon, but his voice was drowned out in the melee.

The Klar had secured the pouch around his waist. The mountain dwarves, forming a tight rank, backed out of the square and down the street from which the attack had burst. The Neidar pursued them, but the Klar force was like a bristling hedgehog, spears and swords pointing out from behind shields, lethal to any pursuer who dared to draw close.

“They take the stones! Fall on them! Kill them!” Harn Poleaxe cried, cursing frenziedly. Spittle flew from his lips and his face, distorted by rage, seemed to erupt in several more grotesque warts. Brandon could only stare as the Neidar mob, led by his nemesis, raced past him, mere yards away, without taking the slightest notice of one dwarf rooted in place.

Behind the Neidar fighters, villagers were swiftly moving through the suddenly quiet, abandoned areas, tending to the wounded, pulling cloaks over the faces of the dead. Several Neidar approached Rune, and Brandon stepped quietly away, averting his face. He was not dressed in black armor, so the hill dwarves paid him little attention. He took one longing glance at his axe, where it lay on the table beside Harn’s throne, but there were at least a dozen hill dwarves up there. He didn’t dare try to retrieve it at that moment.

So he watched the diminishing battle as it moved away from him and realized with a surge of emotion that he was alive, no worse for the wear; he had been unusually lucky, even if the Bluestone was once again gone from his hands. He thrust his captured sword through his belt, trotted down a side street, and made his way down a lane up and away from town.

From there, he would follow the progress of the retreating mountain dwarves and, Reorx willing, recover his family stone.