The Covenant of The Forge

12

The smoke of a hundred morning fires hazed the early autumn air above the eastern foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. As far as the eye could see, peering eastward from the slopes beyond, little wisps of smoke rose to the north and south, a solid crescent of smoke that rose skyward, then feathered on the breeze to lie like low clouds in the distance.

For weeks it had been like this. Hardly a day passed without sign of the bands of human wanderers who pressed westward, across the plains of central Ansalon until they came to the rising spires of the Kharolis Mountains. And always, then, they pushed toward the great pass below Cloudseeker Peak, and their camp smoke hazed the foothills below. Slide Tolec had learned to predict when the next numan assault would come simply by the smoke over the foothills.

Except for a few remote camps of ogres and goblins, the people out there were a mix of human-kind. Most of them were refugees and wanderers, bands and whole tribes driven westward by the spread of the dragon wars far to the east. They sought places to rest, places to hide, places to resettle, but they were not welcomed in the hills and plains east of the mountains. That was part of the far-reaching realm of Ergoth, and the Ergothians didn’t want hordes of strangers crowding into their land. Thus the knights and armed bands of wardens from Ergoth pushed the travelers onward, toward the mountains.

Refugees and displaced tribes — many of them he had seen at close quarters, when they came up the slopes only to be driven back by dwarves — appeared harmless enough, except for being human. The dwarves of Kal-Thax had learned long ago what happened when humans were allowed to scatter through these mountains. In certain seasons and in certain places — fertile valleys here and there — they managed to survive, for a time. They would spread and multiply. But then the food supplies and the shelter suitable for humans would be too little. The seasons would change and there would be famine, and then the raiding and the looting of the Einar — the dwarves — would begin.

Slide had thought about the harsh sanctions the dwarves had created. No other races were welcome in Kal-Thax. Kal-Thax was for the Einar. Kal-Thax was for dwarves and no one else. Like every dwarf in Kal-Thax, Slide agreed that it was a necessary law, especially where humans were concerned. If humans could just pass through, some had reasoned, maybe it would not be necessary. But humans did not “pass through.” They would come in, if allowed, and they would spread and colonize, and the old troubles would begin again.

A shadow fell across the ledge where Slide squatted, and a wide-shouldered, bandy-legged figure draped in furs scrambled down from the ledges above to drop lithely — and almost soundlessly — beside him. Slide scowled behind his mesh faceplate. It was only one of the many unnerving habits of Glome the Assassin, this penchant for showing up silently and always unexpected. Slide said nothing, though. Those foolhardy enough to offend Glome the Assassin sometimes wound up dead.

For a second, Glome crouched beside Slide Tolec, studying him with quick, close-set eyes beneath a heavy brow that seemed to radiate the force of his presence and the strength of his arms. Then he turned and peered off into the distance, toward the plains where the smoke mounted from alien fires. Only for a moment did he scan the human camps. Turning to his right, he shaded his eyes to look off southward across the expanse of the high meadows which were the crest of a mighty shoulder of Cloudseeker Mountain. In that direction too, there was smoke — not as much as on the distant plains, but nearer by miles. A camp was there, and there were hints of movement and bright colors.

Glome pointed. “Daewar,” he growled. “They camp on Theiwar territory.”

“They’ve been there for a week.” Slide shrugged. “They are here to help us repel the outsiders. Beyond them are Vog Ironface and the Daergar, as well.”

“Forget about the humans,” Glome growled. “I think it is time we dealt with the Daewar. We have wasted too much time.”

Without another word, Glome turned and disappeared into the caves behind the ledge — silently, as usual.

Slide shivered slightly. Even now, with thousands of human invaders massing at the foot of the mountains, Glome still dwelt on his primary ambition, to wage war against the Daewar.

Or was that his real ambition, Slide wondered, to fight the Daewar? Or was it just a means toward some greater, darker ambition lying within the assassin’s mind?

No one really knew where Glome had come from. Somewhere in Kal-Thax, of course, from one or another of the many little bands or villages of the widespread Einar, but no one knew exactly where. Glome had not been Theiwar originally. He had just appeared one day, shortly before the time the old chieftain, Crouch Redfire, disappeared.

No one knew what had become of Crouch Redfire, but Glome had walked into the home lairs of the Theiwar and established himself immediately as a leader, through bullying, threats, and — many suspected — outright murder in several cases. He had an uncanny knack for seeking out all the malcontents in the tribe and getting them to accept his lead. Within a very short time, Glome had a substantial following among the Theiwar. Some had thought that Glome intended to take over as chieftain, but the succession had already been claimed by Twist Cutshank and — surprisingly — Glome had backed him against challengers. Twist Cutshank was a strong, brutal person — not overly smart, but crafty in his way. Now Twist was chieftain, and Glome was his chief advisor, and Slide Tolec wondered what Glome’s ambitions really were. He had the feeling that they went far beyond merely being chieftain of the thane of Theiwar.

Slide turned his gaze eastward again, toward the distant smoke. Always, outsiders had come in the warm seasons — humans and others — trying to enter the closed land of Kal-Thax. But never had he seen so many.

Refugees from distant wars — yet among them would be the raiders and the looters, humans who found in the chaos of war the excuse and the opportunity to take what they could get.

And there were other camps out there, too, other smoke apart from the human crescent facing the pass. Far north, barely visible, was smoke from the dark, oily fires of what might be a goblin encampment. And nearer at hand, on high ridges aside from the human camps, were the little tendrils of what might be ogre fires.

Slide Tolec felt little sympathy for any of them. They did not belong in Kal-Thax.

Squatting beneath the stone overhang that shaded the Theiwar outpost caves, Slide peered outward, estimating the fires, and idly fingered the blade at his side. The numbers were increasing out there. Soon they would come, some of them at least, trying once again to penetrate the mountain lands.

There were so many this year! Slide felt that maybe it was well that the Daewar had come — from their own lairs far north on the hidden face of Sky’s End Mountain — to aid in the defense. Slide had no more use for the arrogant, jovial “gold-molders” than did any other Theiwar. The Daewar were upstarts — only within the past century had they formed a thane — and yet they seemed to thrive. And they didn’t hesitate to display their success. Every Daewar he had ever seen wore a fortune in the finest of armor and the gaudiest of attire.

And they could fight! While the Theiwar were expert at sabotage and ambush, and while none could match the dark-sighted Daergar in a night attack, few would dare to challenge the gold-molders in direct battle. The old Theiwar chief, Crouch Redfire, had badly weakened the Theiwar when he tested them by sending them into Daewar territory. The Daewar captain, Gem Bluesleeve, and his “Golden Hammer” elite troops had decimated the Theiwar raiders.

The term “gold-molder” was intended as an insult — implying that the Daewar were as soft and malleable as the bright metal that was the color of their hair and beards, and which they favored for ornamentation. But only an idiot or a suicide would so insult a Daewar to his face.

Though Slide resented the brightly clad sun people, now, seeing the smoke of the human campfires above the foothills, he was glad that the Daewar were here, and that they were part of the treaty of exclusion which kept Kal-Thax closed to aliens.

From the shadows behind him a deep voice rasped, “Slide! Have you gone to sleep there? What do you see?”

Scowling, Slide turned slightly to glance back into the depths. “I’m looking at what you told me to look at, … Sire. The outsiders are massing more and more in the foothills. They will be coming soon.”

“Soon?” Twist Cutshank’s voice mocked him. “Soon? What does ‘soon’ mean? This morning? Today? Next month?”

Slide stifled a sigh of disgust. How did the chieftain of the Theiwar expect him to read the minds of humans? “Today, maybe,” he answered. “There are at least a hundred fires out there now. They’ll have to move soon or starve.”

“A hundred fires?” He heard the stomp of heavy boots and knew that the chieftain and others wanted to see for themselves. “All together?”

“No, they’re scattered over many miles. But they’ve discovered now that they can’t pass the gorge, and the cliffs of Shalomar block them to the south, so they are massing below the pass. Like they always do, except now there are many more.”

As Twist Cutshank emerged onto the shelf, adjusting his mesh faceplate over craggy, sullen features, Slide moved aside for him, as people usually did. Twist Cutshank was not tall — he stood barely more than four feet high — but he was massive, with huge shoulders and almost no neck at all. His arms were as thick and knotty as the boles of mountain pines, and at least as long as his stubby, powerful legs.

“Fugitives,” he rumbled, then shielded his eyes against the morning sun to peer into the distance. “Rust!” he said. “There must be thousands of them!”

“I told you,” Slide Tolec muttered, then raised his voice. “They’ll be coming soon, up the valley.”

That was the one certainty, here in the eastern border lands of Kal-Thax. Intruders, when they came, would push westward across the foothills and into the wide, climbing valley that pointed toward the crest of Cloudseeker Mountain. It was the route they always followed. The way to Kal-Thax from the east was like a funnel. Across the plains of eastern Ergoth, migrants held to the narrowing “corridor” of wild lands, avoiding the northerly routes which led to the human city of Xak Tsaroth, where thieves and slavers waited to take their toll, and avoiding the ice barrens to the south. From the wilds, they slipped into the settled regions and were harried there by knights and companies of armed wardens, protecting the villages.

Reaching the foothills, the wanderers quickly found that the Grand Gorge was impassable to humans, and the Cliffs of Shalomar were unscalable by humans. So they set their eyes on the three crags atop Cloudseeker — those massive, upright fangs of stone that the dwarves called the Windweavers — and entered the narrowing valley that was their only route. And there, for more years than even the dwarves could remember, they were attacked and driven away or killed.

It was the only thing that every thane, tribe, and band of dwarves in Kal-Thax agreed on: Kal-Thax was closed to outside races and must remain so.

The “funnel” led directly into the territory of the Theiwar and was the reason that the Theiwar had become the first thane — or organized, land-holding nation — in Kal-Thax. Originally just small tribes of Einar, the Theiwar were cliff-dwelling people and had found fine profits in waylaying the humans and others who occasionally wandered into these mountains. Ambush, slaughter, and looting of outsiders had become a major industry in times past, and Thane Theiwar had profited from it.

Most travelers from the bog-lands and the plains never realized they had entered Kal-Thax until they were many miles up the rugged path among the foothills, and none realized that the path toward the three crags was a trap. Just below Galefang, the largest of the Windweavers, the path veered southward between high walls, directly into the canyon below the Theiwar caves. By the dozens and the hundreds, strangers had died there, and the Theiwar had looted and disposed of their bodies.

But it was different now. This time the intruders were a massive force, and the Theiwar did not have the field to themselves. The Daewar had come, arrogant as always, bypassing the Theiwar encampment without so much as a by-your-leave for trespassing on Theiwar grounds, and now were encamped right out on the promontory — a shoulder of the mountain, in the middle of the pass — as though to take charge of all defenses. A few miles beyond the Daewar camp, Slide knew, were hordes of grim, squinting Daergar, hiding their faces from the bright sunlight that hurt their dark-seeker eyes. They had come from their dimly lit tunnels and their precious mines to join in the defense of Kal-Thax. Here and there also were bands of the wild, erratic Klar, brandishing their bludgeons and waiting for the chance to bash a few human skulls.

In all, it was a grim and deadly array of dwarven fighters, none of the groups on very good terms with any of the others, but all determined that outsiders would not enter the mountain realm.

Slide wondered, though silently, what kind of fighting force they all might be if they could for once get together and act in unison. It was a foolish notion. Never in all the centuries since the Theiwar — and then the Daewar and Daergar and, to some extent, even the Klar — had become organized thanes, never had they acted in unison on any issue except the pact to keep aliens out.

In the distance to the east, the smoke of the human camps was trailing away on the breeze, and Slide, peering through his mesh faceplate, saw the beginnings of movement there. It was what he had expected. Someone in the foothills had taken charge, and now the humans — some of them at least — were on the move, heading up the pass.

He squinted, and Brule Vaportongue edged up beside him, his face hidden by the Daergar mask he wore. Brule was half Daergar and shunned the daylight.

“What do you see?” Brule asked. “Are they coming?”

“They’re coming.” Slide nodded. “By evening, the Daewar out there will be up to their eyeballs in humans.”

“The gold-molders have placed themselves to take the first assault,” Brule rasped. “So let them take it. We can attack from the flank, after they’ve slowed them down.”

To one side, Glome the Assassin turned and spat, “Shut up over there. We have better things to think about than fighting humans.” He turned back to Twist Cutshank, and all the rest turned to listen.

“The time is here to deal with the Daewar,” Glome told the chieftain. “My spies have been on the slopes of Sky’s End, as I told you. The citadel there is poorly guarded. The gold-molders are spending all their time delving into the mountain behind their fortifications. The spies believe they are expanding their city, deeper into the mountain.”

“They can still fight,” Twist Cutshank rumbled. “Don’t forget the beating we took last time we tried an attack, Glome.”

“That?” Glome growled. “That was no attack. That was a fiasco. Your old chieftain, Crouch Redfire, was an idiot, trying to raid Daebardin when Olim Goldbuckle and all his troops were there.”

“So what makes it different now?” Twist glared. “A Daewar patrol on the defense line?”

Glome pointed southward, toward the Daewar camp. “Patrol? That is no mere patrol out there. I got close and looked around. That is Goldbuckle himself, with Gem Bluesleeve and most of his army. That isn’t a hundred or so Daewar out there. That is a thousand or more — right out in the open, on Theiwar territory.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Twist stared at Glome. “That we withdraw and go loot Daebardin while their prince is away?”

“More than that,” Glome said. “First let them get bloodied by the humans. Let the Daewar take the brunt of today’s assault — and tomorrow’s, if there is one. Then, when Goldbuckle is weak, we can easily finish him off. After that, nothing stands between us and the treasures of Daebardin.”

“Treasures none of us have ever seen,” Twist pointed out. “We’re not even sure they have treasures.”

“Of course they have treasures!” Glome snapped. “Look at them! Every Daewar you ever saw wears a fortune in armor alone. And if they didn’t have treasure, why would they have been delving all these years over on Sky’s End? The rubble heaps below their citadel are enormous! They must be building an entire city under that mountain. Why would they do that, except to fortify, to protect vast treasures?”

“I’d like to see that undermountain city,” Twist Cutshank admitted. “Treasures, huh? Maybe so.”

“That place must be huge by now,” Glome nodded. “A fortress for a king, possibly?”

“King? There are no kings in Kal-Thax!”

“But maybe Olim Goldbuckle wants to be one,” Glome purred. “Have you thought about that? About the possibility of bowing before a bloody Daewar? Maybe that is why the gold-molders dig. Maybe when they have their fortress completed they intend to conquer all the thanes. Would you enjoy having that rusty gold-molder’s foot on your neck, Twist Cutshank?” Glome turned, looking at the others. There were dozens of Theiwar on the ledge now. “Would any Theiwar willingly bow to a Daewar king?” he asked. “I say Olim Goldbuckle intends to be king of Kal-Thax, and if we want to stop him, we must strike first!”

It was a powerful argument, and none could deny it. Slide Tolec’s brows lowered, though, as another thought crossed his mind. Maybe someone in Kal-Thax did want to become king. But was it the prince of the Daewar? Or was it, just possibly, someone else?

Twist Cutshank was gazing at Glome. “Are you suggesting we betray a defense, Glome?” he asked. “That would be breaking the pact.”

“We won’t let humans in,” Glome explained. “We’ll just let the Daewar do all the fighting.”

“And if the humans get past them?”

“Then we will turn them back. But either way, this may be our chance to be rid of Olim Goldbuckle.”

“What of the Daergar?”

“What of them?” Glome snorted. “Vog Ironface knows the Daewar threat as well as we do. The Daergar will join us when they see what we are doing.”

Slide Tolec had his doubts about that. The treaty of the thanes was a sacred thing, and the Daergar supported it loyally. It was in their best interests. Should outsiders settle within the mountains of Kal-Thax, the first prizes they would seek would be the Daergar mines.

Still, there was a bond of sorts between the Theiwar and the Daergar. Many times in the past, they had fought each other. But the rise of the powerful, populous Daewar to the north, in their stronghold on Sky’s End, had brought a tenuous peace between Theiwar and Daergar. Each recognized a more dangerous enemy, and hostility between the cliff-cave people and the dark-dwellers was set aside for an uneasy alliance, and for trade. The Theiwar mined the steel-hardening black stone of Cloudseeker’s lower slopes, and in return acquired the swift, dark-metal Daergar weapons, which most of them preferred over anything the Theiwar crafters could forge.

Twist Cutshank squinted out across the bright, high lands, toward the climbing foothills to the east. The smoke had diminished in the distance, but now everyone could see the movement of massed humans pouring over the far crests. Even at such a distance, sunlight glinted on the steel and bronze of weapons. After a time, the Theiwar chieftain hissed, “There are horsemen leading them!”

Slide Tolec’s eyes watered as he tried to make out details in the distance. There were horsemen there — hundreds of them, it seemed, and they were of a type he had seen before. “Cobar!” he said. “The raiders from the northern plains.”

“Very well,” Twist Cutshank decided. “It shall be as Glome says. Instead of flanking the Daewar positions, we hold back. Let the gold-molders take the full brunt of the attack. Maybe the humans will deal with the Daewar for us … but if any get through, then we and the Daergar must turn them back.”