The Covenant of The Forge

1

Sledge Two-Fires eased back on the reins as the patrol entered Crevice Pass, and Piquin responded. The big horse slowed his mile-eating trot to a fast walk, then slowed again as the silver bit on his tongue retained its slight pressure. The oiled saddle on his back creaked softly, and the fine steel mesh of his skirt whispered with the shift.

Behind Sledge Two-Fires, the others also slowed, turning bright-helmed heads as they studied the rising slopes on either side of the trail. Just ahead, the slopes closed in and became the steep, brushy cliffs that gave the pass its name. Sledge Two-Fires glanced back the way they had come. Late sunlight slanted into the pass, and shadows were climbing the backtrail as the sun lowered toward the jagged peaks of the Suncradles in the distance.

Two hours of daylight remained, time enough to make it through Crevice Pass and make night camp on the far side, where the sugar fields began. From there, in evening, the lights of Thorin would be visible across the Hammersong Valley. Enough daylight remained, providing the ride through the narrow pass was uneventful. But Sledge Two-Fires felt the hackles rising beneath his helmet and raised himself high in his tall saddle to peer around, squinting and frowning. Something seemed out of place — something that for a long moment he could not identify, then did. It was too quiet. On a bright midsummer evening like this, with the sun above the Suncradles by the width of a fist, there should be sounds in the mountain wilds. There should be eve-hawks wheeling and whistling above and cliff pigeons homing from the fields. There should be squirrels a-chatter and rabbits scurrying through the brush — a whole chorus of muted wilderness sounds.

But there was nothing. It was as though the world had gone silent, and the silence gave the closing cliffs ahead an ominous feeling.

Sledge had never cared for Crevice Pass. The place was perfect for ambush, a narrow defile where enemies could lurk unseen above the trail and attack at will. Once, long ago, the Calnar themselves had used it so. Still, not since those long-ago times had such a thing as ambush ever happened to a Thorin border patrol.

After all, Sledge thought, who was there now to make an ambush? Ogres? One or two of the brutes might conceive of such a thing, but despite their size and ferocity, no one or two ogres would be a match for a mounted, armored dwarven patrol, and even the most vicious-tempered ogre would realize that. Humans, then? There were humans everywhere these days, more all the time, it seemed. Thorin was flanked by human realms north and south, but not in the memory of anyone had there been serious conflict with Golash and Chandera. The people of those regions depended upon the dwarves of Thorin for many of their commodities, just as the dwarves depended upon the humans for trade.

Wild humans? There were those, too, of course — traveling bands of nomads, occasional clots of fugitives from some distant conflict or another. Sledge and his patrol had seen bands of humans in the distance during the weeks of their patrol — more, it seemed, than ever before. But the wanderers had kept their distance, and none seemed to pose any real threat. It was following and observing one such group that had caused the patrol to be here now, miles north of the usual route. Normally, returning patrols crossed the ridge at Chandera Road, not Crevice Pass.

Elves, then? All the elves that Sledge knew about were far away to the southeast, beyond the Khalkists. In times past, a few of them had visited Thorin for Balladine, but not in recent years. The elves had their hands full, it was said, fighting dragons for control of their beloved forests. Besides, there had never been conflict between the elves and the Calnar. They were both intelligent races and had no reason to fight.

Still, a sense of foreboding hung about Sledge, seeming to come from the cleft ahead. It made his beard twitch.

Agate Coalglow and Pierce Shard had eased their mounts forward to flank their leader. Now Agate noticed the same thing that Sledge had noted a moment before. “It’s quiet,” the split-bearded dwarf said. “No birds.”

“None,” Sledge agreed. “There may be someone in the Crevice.”

“No sign of anyone,” Pierce said, studying the rising banks.

“Probably nothing,” the leader admitted. “I’m just feeling hunchy. If there were trouble, our scout would have seen it and reported back.”

“Not much that quick-eyed Dalin’s likely to miss,” Agate nodded. “He’s probably waiting for us right now at the sugar fields. You have travel nerves, Sledge. It’ll do us all good to get back home. Let somebody else do border patrol next shift.”

Sledge took one more hard look at the crevice ahead and shrugged. “You’re right. Travel nerves.” He raised his hand and swept it forward. “By twos!” he called. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Thorin Keep!”

Piquin needed only the lightest heel-tap to pick up his long-legged gate, and the patrol trotted up the incline as the crevice walls grew around them. The sun now was directly behind, and their long shadows stretched out ahead, into the silent pass.

A mile went by, silently except for the echoes of their horses’ shod hooves and the occasional rattle of swords in their bucklers. Another mile, and the crest of the trail was in sight — the narrowest part of the defile, where stepped stone walls stood above the strewn floor like ramparts, and clear sky shone between them. From there, the pass would widen again, and the trail would be downhill all the way to the outer ford, just above the roaring canyon where the Bone River joined the Hammersong.

Tomorrow they would cross the two rivers, with Thorin in sight. Tomorrow night they would sleep in their own secure beds.

Nearing the crest, the dwarves felt a surge of relief. Sledge’s mood had touched them all, and there had been tension in the climb. But now the crest was just ahead, and beyond was the open sky where crevice walls slanted away. The sky of Thorin. They were past the worst of the defile, and nothing had happened.

“I’ll pay for a keg of Lobard’s best ale tomorrow evening,” Agate Coalglow offered, turning to glance at those behind him. “As soon as Sledge has given our report to Willen Ironmaul, I promise it. One full keg. After that it’s up to someone else to ease our patrol aches.”

“I’ll buy the second keg,” Pierce Shard offered, “if that’s the sort of ease you have in mind.”

“I doubt if that’s it,” someone in the ranks chuckled. “Agate finds more comfort in the bright eyes of Lona Anvil’s-Cap these days than any of Lobard’s ale can match.”

“Mind your own bright eyes, and keep them sharp,” Agate snapped. “We’re not out of this crack yet.”

At the very top of the trail’s crest, Sledge Two-Fires scanned the towering banks above, then glanced down as Piquin snorted. The dwarf’s eyes went wide, and he hauled on the reins. “Arms!” he bellowed. “Shields up! It’s a trap!”

Just ahead, where the trail began its downward slope, lay two still forms. Dalin Ironbar would scout for no more patrols. He was dead. A few feet away lay the body of his horse, a broken javelin protruding from its ribs.

“Eyes high!” Sledge shouted. “Defend!”

But it was too late. Even as the word “defend” left his lips, an arrow flew from above to thud into his exposed throat and downward into his chest.

In an instant, the air sang with the whines of arrows and bolts, the luffing whisper of thrown spears, and the clatter of flung stones.

Agate Coalglow saw his leader fall and raised his own oval shield just in time to deflect a deadly arrow. He dodged another, and a third buried its ripping head in his thigh just below his buckler. Two arrows protruded from his horse’s neck, and Agate flung himself from the saddle as the big animal began to pitch and dance, blind with pain. He lit hard on the stony trail, rolled, and slid behind a fallen boulder as other arrows sought him, whining down from the steep slopes above.

There were men up there. Where moments ago there had been nothing, now the slopes were alive with humans springing from hiding. A human voice, harsh and commanding, shouted, “Block that trail! Don’t let any of them escape! Kill the dwarves! Kill them all!”

Near at hand, Agate heard a familiar whirring sound and glanced around. Pierce Shard was still in his saddle, his shield dancing here and there as his horse spun and pivoted. Pierce was blocking bolts frantically, spinning his mesh sling while desperate eyes roved the slopes above. He found a target, let the sling fly, and a fist-sized stone whistled upward. Above, someone screamed, and a rough-bearded human pitched outward from the brushy face of the cliff to land in a sprawl not a dozen feet from where Agate huddled.

The pain in his thigh was excruciating, but Agate gritted his teeth, cleared his misted eyes, and drew his steel sword. He broke off the shaft standing from his thigh and got to his feet. Deflecting an arrow with his gauntlet, he staggered slightly and roared a war cry. Then, crouching, his sturdy legs pumping, he headed up the nearest slope, directly into the face of the attack.

His charge caught some of the humans off guard. Arrows whisked past him, and then he was on a narrow ledge in the midst of a gang of them, and his sword flew and danced in silver arcs that abruptly turned bright red. A human fell from the ledge, then another and another as the raging dwarf continued his charge, right into the thick of them.

Six ambushers fell from that ledge, their blood spraying in the light of the setting sun, before one of them got behind Agate Coalglow and put a spear through his heart. Even then, with the spearhead thrusting from his chest, Agate managed one more cut with his dripping sword, and a severed human hand dropped into the shadows below.

He staggered then, dropping his sword and sinking to his knees. Dimly, he heard the sounds of combat echoing back and back in the narrow crevice. Some of the Calnar, somewhere, were still fighting, making the ambush as costly as they could for the humans who had sprung it. But there was no chance, and Agate knew that as his world went dark. Too many humans! Fifty or more of them, at least. Maybe a hundred, and only fourteen dwarves — or whatever number remained now.

“Thorin!” he tried to whisper as blood rushed from his mouth. “Thorin-Dwarfhome! Thorin-Everbardin … hope and comfort, welcome this one home. …”

Below, in the bottom of Crevice Pass, shadows crept across a tumble of carnage. Here a dwarf crouched behind his dead horse, still fending off attackers. There, another — blood dripping from many cuts — used his shield as a weapon of attack in a last effort to regain his fallen sword.

But it was over now, as howling humans boiled into the narrow pass to complete the work of slaughter. The last of the Calnar to die was a fierce young defender named Tap Bronzeplate. As the final arrow pierced him, he tried to say the words that Agate Coalglow had whispered. But only some of them got past his lips.

“Thorin,” he gasped. “Thorin-Everbardin!”