The Gully Dwarves

Chapter 20

Drained of his strength by the demands of his spells, Clonogh lay alone in the tower of Tarmish, cursing the fates. Hatred coursed through him as he remembered that dim-witted little Aghar who had been so close at hand-almost seeming to offer him the magical relic he so desperately needed-then had run away with it. To Clonogh it had seemed almost that the gully dwarf was taunting him, though he knew that gully dwarves lacked the subtlety to taunt. Taunting was cruelty, and gully dwarves had no cruelty in them. Cruelty was a form of evil, and gully dwarves simply had no capacity for evil. They could no more do an intentional wrong than do an intentional right.

“Gully dwarves just happen,” so the common saying went among other races. Gully dwarves were just gully dwarves. There was little more to say. The creatures operated on simple inertia. Once started, on anything, they were difficult to stop. And once stopped, they were reluctant to start.

A bit of insight presented itself to Clonogh, though he was too weak and tired to give it thought. Gully dwarves were innocent. They were innocence personified. They could never be anything else.

Clonogh shoved thoughts of gully dwarves aside and concentrated on someone who was truly evil-the power-mad tyrant, Lord Vulpin. Clonogh’s loathing of the man raged within him. Vulpin held Clonogh’s life in his hand. And Vulpin did taunt him, constantly.

The man was half of a double evil. The other half was Vulpin’s sister, Chatara Kral. Clonogh knew their origins. Both Vulpin and Chatara Kral were spawn of the Dragon Highlord Verminaard, archenemy of the Dragonlance War.

They were like their sire, those two-both crazed by an insatiable thirst for conquest. It was their manipulations-both of them, that had brought Clonogh to the state he found himself in now.

As always, when cataloging his enemies, the mage cursed old Piraeus, that long-dead sorcerer who had yielded up the secrets of magic to him so long ago, yielded them all but one! Somehow Piraeus had withheld from Clonogh the power to resist the ravages of his own spells. Just in a matter of months now, Clonogh had become old, incredibly old, old beyond death but unable to die.

Piraeus, before he died, had tricked him. Magic always demands a price, and Piraeus had known that. It was a necessary part of any spell, a secret inflection, a directing code to cause the spell to draw its energies from elsewhere, other than from its user. But in Piraeus’s revelations the shielding magic had been withheld. Instead, in each spell the old trickster had substituted a different sort of inflection-the shield-code of a dragon spell.

The code worked … but only for dragons. It was useless to anyone else, except in the presence of dragon magic.

Clonogh wished he could see Chatara Kral beheaded. He wished he could see Vulpin disemboweled. He wished the sky would fall on all gully dwarves. He wished that the ancient mage Piraeus might burn forever in the torments beyond death.

Mostly, he wished that he could wish. If only he could have captured that bumbling Aghar who carried the Fang of Orm in its grimy hand, he could have forced a wish from it. The Wishmaker responded to innocence. And nothing, he realized now, was more innocent than a gully dwarf. The creatures were detestable, despicable and deplorable, of course, but more than anything else they were innocent! They fairly reeked of innocence. They simply weren’t smart enough to be otherwise.

One wish! A single wish, made by an innocent, could have saved him! It would have been enough. That wish would have restored his own youth and delivered his enemies to him for his amusement.

But wishing without the Wishmaker did no good.

Beyond the tower, all around him, he heard the sounds of battle. Chatara Kral and the Gelnian hordes were not settling in for a long siege. That would have required patience. No, they were attacking the Tarmish stronghold in force. The air was filled with the crashing of hurled stones, the clatter of weapons and the voices of men striving in mortal combat.

Unable to do anything about his plight, so weak and frail he was hardly able even to move his fingers, Clonogh closed his eyes in resignation. Then he opened them abruptly. Somewhere, around him, arcane forces were brewing. He could sense them, feel them in his bones, forces nearby, near enough that their power wafted over him.

Magic! But not his magic. Not the sorceries that he could command or had known when he had the strength to exercise spells. The magic here was not human magic. It was a powerful, alien magic as different from his own as iron bonds differ from silk threads. Dragon magic! Somewhere within his mind’s hearing, a dragon had cast a spell.

With the last of his will, Clonogh focused his thoughts, concentrating on the sorcery he sensed, drawing its tuned vibrations into himself, willing its shield powers to fill the holes in his own magic, to mend him and brace him and make him complete.

The power of the dragon spell flowed around him and he drew from it as a sponge draws water, absorbing those patterns that he required.

In a moment it was gone, but the moment was enough. Like a leech in stagnant waters, Clonogh had ridden the turbulent energies and sucked from them the sustenance he required. For an instant he marveled that it had come at such a time-in his hour of greatest need, magic had turned for him, and his grasp on it had been sure. It was almost as though some god had intervened, he thought. But the thought did not linger. He had other things to think about now. A glance at his pale, skeletal hands told him that he still appeared incredibly ancient. But now it was only appearance. Within the husking shell of him, he was as powerful as any youth.

Energized and rejuvenated, feeling strong and fit, Clonogh stood and gazed around through renewed eyes. A catapult’s stone crashed against the tower, spraying its interior with shards and dust, but Clonogh cared nothing about it. An energy like steel veils flowed about him, and nothing touched him. He strode to the west wall, pulled down a tattered tapestry there and with strong hands tore it into segments, which he bound around his nakedness with pieces of sash.

Beyond the shattered doorway, at the top of a descending circular stair, he found a dead mercenary clad in the colors of Lord Vulpin’s tower guards. The man seemed to have been trampled by a horse. Clonogh took the man’s boots and put them on his own feet, then paused curiously, gazing down at the corpse. With only the slightest hesitation, the mage pointed a finger and muttered a minor spell. Before his eyes, the guard’s body writhed and shriveled, collapsing inward upon itself until only skeletal remains lay there.

Clonogh took a deep breath, stood thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. “Good,” he muttered. He had made a strong spell, and for the first time, the spell had done him no harm. He was protected now by dragon magic.

A memory presented itself in his mind, the memory of that old mage whose secrets Clonogh had taken from him so long ago. That old mage who, even in death, had avenged himself by tricking his killer.

“I win,” Clonogh said. “Now I truly have the power!”

Beyond the tower, a battle raged. All along the ramparts of Tarmish, men struggled frantically to maintain their defenses. Below, beyond the walls, hordes of Gelnians stormed forward under the cover of their bombarding catapults and trebuchets.

Another great stone impacted the tower, and whole sections of it collapsed, but Clonogh sang a spell and the portion where he stood-the floor beneath his feet, the portal and the stairwell-remained intact. Like a bizarre, misshapen finger pointing at the sky, the wreckage of Lord Vulpin’s tower stood above scenes of chaos. The structure was only a skeleton of itself now, but it remained sturdy. Vaguely, Clonogh marveled at the ancient engineering that had raised such a structure.

Of more immediate interest, though, was the Fang of Orm, somewhere below, probably still in the hands of some detestable gully dwarf scurrying through the rubble. For that relic, Lord Vulpin had robbed Clonogh of his spirit. For that same relic, Chatara Kral had ordered the mage tortured. For the Fang of Orm and the power to use it, a few minutes ago, Clonogh would have given his soul. Now it meant less to him, though he still wanted it. Now he had magic of his own, unburdened by the pain of instant aging.

What he wanted now was revenge. And in the Fang of Orm rested delicious vengeance.

A chorus of screams arose now from below, and Clonogh turned full around, watching with bemused interest as a great dragon swept from the sky to glide across the ramparts of Tarmish. In its wake, on the ground, attacks and defenses collapsed as men by the hundreds ran in all directions, trying to escape. Dragonfear spread and rippled among them. Where Crealic mercenaries manned repelling catapults atop a wall, the dragon swept low, its huge claws ripping downward to destroy the defenses. Spears and javelins bounced harmlessly from its armored scales, and men tumbled from the wall, along with the wreckage of their machines.

Clonogh frowned. Somehow, it seemed, Chatara Kral had induced a dragon to help her. But then the dragon, completing its sweep of the walls, turned its attention outward, trailing wreckage in its wake as it slashed through the Gelnian attack.

Puzzled, the mage watched from his high perch. The dragon veered here and there, smashing into concentrations of troops almost at random. And always, where it went-gliding low on great, flaring wings-it left a widening wake of fleeing men in its path. Spears and arrows arose from the human masses. Many bounced harmlessly off the dragon’s armored scales. Others missed, to fall back among the humans below.

Around and around the attacking fields the huge beast flew, dipping and diving here and there while armed men ran screaming from it. Then with beating wings it rose above the walls and again descended upon Tarmish.

And now the grapple lines dangling from the walls, lines placed by the attackers, were alive with panicked soldiers trying to escape from the fortress. As the dragon descended into the central courtyard, the great gate of Tarmish swung open and fleeing defenders by the hundreds streamed outward, a shrieking stampede of men trying to get away from the fear among them. In the receding fields, armies blended-Gelnian and Tarmite fighters fleeing together in their panic.

For Clonogh it was beyond understanding. A dragon had come to Tarmish, and was raging among the combatants, but it seemed not to discriminate. It was attacking both sides with equal enthusiasm.

Clonogh could not identify the dragon. Several times, during the dragon wars, Clonogh had seen dragons. He had always identified them by their color. There had been the beasts in service of the dark lords-brilliantly-colored creatures of crimson or blue or green. And then there had been the others, those whose colors were the colors of fine metal-the silvers, the coppers, the golds. These, he remembered, had fought against the chromatic beasts.

But the dragon he saw now, wreaking havoc on Tarmish, striking attacker and defender with equal enthusiasm, was none of these. Its iridescent scales flashed in the high sunlight with definite hints of brilliant green but equally strong hues of rich umber and warm bronze.

It was a mystery, but it had nothing to do with him. He knew dragon magic had occurred, and that he had been strengthened by it, but he knew also that its purpose had been something else. He had just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Now the far fields were alive with fleeing men, and Clonogh knew who they were. Mercenary soldiers, some wearing the colors of Tarmish and some of Gelnia, mingled in their retreat, and Clonogh smiled a cruel smile. Whatever the dragon’s purpose here, both Lord Vulpin and Chatara Kral had just lost their hired armies.

His eyes roving the scenes around and below the tower, Clonogh saw Lord Vulpin raging along his southern rampart, followed now by only a handful of true Tarmites. And in the field beyond the gate. Chatara Kral stood in the midst of her desolated encampment, screaming orders at fleeing men who did not look back to respond. Only a few of her troops remained with her now, native Gelnians bound to the cause of the Tarmish campaign.

In the devastated footings of one of the great walls, where a jagged opening gaped above the city’s underground, several furtive gully dwarves scurried from the shadows and darted for better cover. They disappeared into the dark hole, where drains led downward to the caverns. All but one. One of the gully dwarves held an ivory stick in its grimy fist-the Fang of Orm. And that one, darting for cover, encountered a Tarmite soldier. With a shriek the gully dwarf turned and fled, back into the base of the tower.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the raging dragon, which had now devastated and scattered the armies both inside and outside of Tarmish, was gone. As though it had never been there, it simply vanished, and once again Clonogh’s magic-honed senses detected the ironlike taste of a dragon spell.

“Transformation,” he muttered, recognizing the pattern of the magic, though he had no clue as to what the beast had become, or where it had gone. Dragon magic had restored him, magic drawn from the dragon’s previous spell, but though his sorcery was now powerful again, he was still only human. The mind of a dragon was not the mind of a human, and the intricacies of its sorcery were beyond him.

Still, it was gone now from view, and whatever the beast’s purpose had been, it did not seem to have any further effect on him. He stood unharmed on the skeletal remains of the tower, and Tarmish Castle lay in shambles around him, gaping and broken first by the missiles of contending armies, then by the wrath of a rampaging dragon.

The place was almost silent now. Here and there injured men cried out among the dead, and as the breeze shifted he could hear the strident, stunned voices of both Lord Vulpin and Chatara Kral, barking curses and orders at the scattered handfuls of Tarmite and Gelnian troops they still commanded.

The jagged hole where the gully dwarves had disappeared gaped dark and silent, like a beckoning cavern. Soldiers of Tarmish were hurrying toward it. On the south wall, several of Lord Vulpin’s lieutenants noticed them and pointed.

Raising a bony fist, Clonogh muttered a small spell. On the south wall Lord Vulpin halted and turned, as though confused. For a moment he gazed around, this way and that, then his gaze fixed on the tower and he started toward it. Beyond the open gate, Chatara Kral also turned, hesitated, then strode toward the gaping portal and the tower beyond. Behind each regent, confused men milled about, some choosing to follow their leaders, others turning away.

With a savage grin, Clonogh paced the great tower, hearing the thud of little feet on the rising stairs. The Fang of Orm was on its way to him, in the hands of an innocent.

In dim recesses in the bowels of Tarmish, Graywing stared about him in bewildered disgust. The dragon that had been here not half an hour ago, seeming to fill the resonant caverns with its fearful presence, was nowhere to be found. He and Dartimien had searched for it, splitting up to scour the echoing, vaulted chambers in wide sweeps, poking and peering into every tunnel and shadowed niche.

There was no sign of the formidable beast anywhere. Now Graywing stood a few steps into the great chamber in which the castle’s foundations towered like dark monoliths, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. There were gully dwarves everywhere he could see, doltish little creatures bumbling about here and there, more or less centering upon a major concentration of Aghar around the base of a huge pillar. Some sort of conference seemed to be going on there. A dozen or so gully dwarves were engaged in animated debate about something, while uncounted others looked on with dull curiosity.

A few yards back of the main swarm, he spotted Thayla Mesinda, trim and beautiful even here in these noisome surroundings. Small of stature though she was, she stood head and shoulders taller than most of the milling, blundering little creatures around her.

Scattering gully dwarves ahead of him, the warrior strode across the cavern toward the girl. As he approached her he held out a beckoning hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll take you away from all this-” his voice broke abruptly into a grunt of surprise as a quick movement beside him warned him of attack. With a curse Graywing leaped straight up, drawing his feet up as a wide broadsword whistled past just below him, just where his shins had been.

Bron the Hero lost his balance as his mighty slash met nothing but thin air. Trying to keep his grip on the heavy weapon, he spun half around, tripped and fell on his face. The broadsword clanged against the stone of the cavern floor, and Bron’s big iron shield teetered for a moment on edge, then fell over on top of him.

Cursing and furious, Graywing stepped over the struggling gully dwarf, pinned the broadsword beneath a soft-booted foot and leaned down. “Don’t ever do that again!” he ordered.

“Oops, sorry,” Bron said, freeing himself from the weight of the shield. “Didn’ rec’nize you. Thought mebbe you a enemy.”

“Didn’t recognize me?” Graywing snapped. “You’ve seen me a dozen times!”

Bron got his feet under him, dusted himself off with grimy hands and glanced up at the human. “So what? Seen one Tall, seen ’em all.” The little hero got his shield upright and arranged its straps on his arm and shoulder. He reached for his broadsword, tugged on its grip, then noticed the human’s foot planted on the blade. “Pardon,” he said. When the foot didn’t move, Bron heaved the heavy shield around and smacked Graywing on the knee with it. The human hissed, jumped back and hopped around on one foot, cursing.

Bron retrieved his broadsword, squinted for a moment as he tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing, then resumed his position in front of Thayla. He was guarding her.

Thayla shook her head, her eyebrows arched in a pretty frown as she watched Graywing shuffle about, testing his sore knee. “You really shouldn’t be so rough with these little people,” she scolded the dour warrior. “They don’t mean any harm.”

“That little twit tried to cut off my feet!” the plainsman growled.

“Bron? He’s a hero,” Thayla reminded the man. “That’s what heroes do.”

“Right,” Bron agreed, “cut off folks’ feet.”

Graywing tried again, this time staying just out of range of the gully dwarf’s weapon. “Let’s get out of here, girl,” he urged. “This place will be overrun by Tarmites any minute now … and that dragon is still around here someplace.”

“No, it isn’t,” Thayla assured him. “Bron chased it away.”

“He did not!”

“Did, too!” The voice almost directly below his chin startled Graywing. He looked straight down, into the stubborn, serious eyes of a little female gully dwarf who stood almost toe to toe with him. Her head was at about the level of his belt, her hands were little fists planted on her hips and she looked ready to take him on in either debate or combat, whichever he chose.

“Bron say dragon go ’way,” Pert told him, “So dragon go ’way. Ever’body know that. Tall blind?”

Graywing took a deep breath and shook his head. The only thing dumber than a gully dwarf, he had heard, is the fool who tries to argue with one. If he wasn’t careful, he realized, he was going to find himself doing just that.

“Get out of the way,” he snapped, then stepped around Pert, who scurried to confront him again.

“Bron chase dragon away!” the little creature insisted. She glanced around. “Isn’ that right, Bron?”

Bron peered over the top of the legendary Great Stew Bowl, looking puzzled. “Yes, dear.”

“Pert’s right,” Thayla Mesinda said emphatically. “He did.”

“Nobody just … just orders a green dragon around,” Graywing told the girl, his voice thin with exasperation. “Green dragons are-”

“It wasn’t exactly green,” Thayla pointed out. “It was more brown, or maybe like gold and wild honey.”

“Bron’s dragon!” Pert insisted. “Does what Bron says!”

“She’s right,” Thayla said, nodding. “It was a bronze dragon.”

“Alright!” Graywing snapped. “Whatever you say! Now come with me, girl! We’ve got to get-”

From somewhere behind him came the ironic voice of Dartimien the Cat. “Will you all shut up over there? And stop aggravating those gully dwarves, barbarian! I’m trying to read.”

The Cat was over by the main pillar, squinting in the dim light, running a finger down rows of glyphs on a metallic plate attached to the stone. Gully dwarves crowded around him, some of them clambering up his back, hauling themselves up by his shoulder straps for a better view. One chattering little oaf was actually sitting on the assassin’s shoulders, peering over his head.

Graywing swore a muttered oath and headed that way. The distant sounds of battle, filtering in through cracks and grates, had risen in volume until it was a song of chaos. Then, abruptly, the world outside the cavernous cellars had gone silent. Any moment now, Graywing was sure, hordes of Gelnians, Tarmites, mercenary soldiers and who knew what else would be flooding into these recesses. And Dartimien was reading labels on posts.

Pushing through packed mobs of gully dwarves, the plainsman reached Dartimien and squinted at the bronze plaque. “What is it?”

“Sign,” the gully dwarf on Dartimien’s shoulders chattered happily. “Got runes on it. Say this place fulla crumbs an’ shiny rocks.”

“That’s fulcrum!” Dartimien growled. “The fulcrum on the shining stone!”

“Yeah,” the gully dwarf agreed. “Right.”

The explanation was lost on most of the crowd of gully dwarves. Several dozen of them stared around, thoughtfully, then wandered off in search of crumbs and shiny rocks. Within moments some of them had found a vein of quartz leading upward, ridged with imbedments of gleaming pyrite. Forgetting everything else around them, these intrepid explorers dug out various tools and began climbing the cavern wall, mining pyrite as they went.

“Shiny rocks,” some of them called. “Jus’ like dragon said.”

“That dragon kinda like Highbulp’s dragon,” a gully dwarf proclaimed, “Maybe same dragon?” Almost upsetting Graywing, he pushed forward between the tall man’s legs. He was a portly little individual with a curly, iron-gray beard and puffy little eyes set close above a protruding nose. He wore a crown of rat’s teeth on his unkempt head. “Yep, same dragon,” he decided. “Same dragon as before, long time ago.”

Beside Graywing, Pert bristled. “Bron’s dragon,” she insisted. “Not Highbulp’s.”

Ignoring all of them, Dartimien studied the runes on the metal plaque, then peered closely at the stone around it. Where the mildew was rubbed away, the stone glowed with a soft, pearl-white luster. “Interesting,” the Cat mused. “I think we’ve found something of value here. Something about the high and the low-”

Fifty yards away, at the mouth of a dark, jagged hole in the cavern wall, torchlight flared and suddenly there were armed men there, dozens of them.

Dartimien straightened, daggers flashing in his hands. “Tarmites,” he hissed. “They’ve found us.”

“Ever’body run like crazy!” the Highbulp screeched. The crowd of gully dwarves roaming the cavern floor dissolved into a tumbling tangle of panicked little people as his subjects tried to respond, bouncing one another right and left in their haste. Several of them bounced off a wall and set off a chain reaction of tumbling bodies. The Highbulp was swept off his feet and buried in the turmoil. The lady Lidda dug him out, cuffing gully dwarves right and left. “Glitch a real nuisance,” she observed. Gripping her husband’s ear, she dragged him free and propelled him toward a wall. “Climb!” she ordered.

Shaken from his reverie, Scrib fell on the tottering old Grand Notioner, who cursed loudly, crawled free, got to his unsteady feet and flailed about with his mop handle staff, delivering swats and bruises with enthusiastic abandon. On the walls of the cavern, various gully dwarves looked downward at the melee. Some lost their holds and fell, joining the free-for-all below. Others, though, were absorbed in their tasks. They had found a vein of yellow pyrite above the tumbled portal, and were busily mining it.

All around the great column, the pandemonium spread. In the midst of it, Bron braced himself, his iron shield swaying this way and that. He had lost track of Thayla Mesinda, and without the human girl’s presence to remind him, he was a bit confused as to what he was supposed to be doing. Then he saw a tumbling gully dwarf-one of his closest friends, though the name escaped him for a moment-rolling toward little Pert. Without hesitation he swatted the miscreant with the flat of his broadsword, then placed himself to protect little Pert. As a designated hero, he felt compelled to protect somebody, and Pert was a reasonable choice.

Graywing the barbarian stared around in open-mouthed disbelief. He had never seen such total, all-out confusion, all of it because the pompous little Highbulp-who now was among those on the wall, mining pyrites-had told them to run.

“There’s no place to run to, you little idiots!” Graywing roared. “We’ll have to fight!”

On the wall above, the Highbulp glanced around, almost losing his grip. “What?”

“I said, fight!”

“Okay,” Glitch said. “Ever’body fight!”

All around, agitated Aghar froze, straightened and looked around them. “Okay,” several of them said. “Whatever.” Beside Graywing a husky gully dwarf swung a roundhouse punch that sent another gully dwarf tumbling. Several of them went down, bowled over by the ruckus. The riot became a melee as the entire tribe joined in, gully dwarves pummeling away at other gully dwarves, enthusiastic combatants piling onto those who fell.

Graywing stared around in disbelief. “Oh, for the gods’ sake!” he breathed. Then, brandishing his sword, wading through rioting Aghar, he headed for the human intruders piling through the broken portal. Dartimien was beside him, bounding over clusters of gully dwarves. From a distance, somewhere behind the Tarmite warriors gaping around in the gloom, came the sounds of falling stone. Billows of dust issued from the jagged portal, partially obscuring the invaders. Dartimien’s eyes narrowed, his darting glances scanning the humans in the dust. They were all footmen-tower guards and warders, low soldiers wearing the colors of home guardsmen. Nowhere among them were any officers’ insignias.

Graywing filled his lungs and raised his sword, ready to fight, but suddenly Dartimien wheeled to face him. “Wait!” the Cat rasped. “We can use these dolts!”

Before Graywing could react, Dartimien turned away again, his hands empty of daggers, and strode toward the Tarmites. “Where is the rest of your detail?” he demanded, his tone as imperious as any field commander’s.

The Tarmites huddled in confusion, their weapons lowered. “I don’t know,” one of them said. “Cap’n was right behind us a minute ago, but I don’t see him now.”

“He’s still outside,” another volunteered. “Lord Vulpin himself was … well, I think he sent us in here.”

“Idiots!” Dartimien rasped. “Don’t you see what has happened? The invaders have tricked you. That rockfall, they’ve sealed us up in these cellars. The attack is above, in the courtyards. Not here!”

“It is?” a burly Tarmite tilted his helmet to scratch his head. “Then what do we do now?”

“You can follow your orders!” Dartimien hissed. “You should be up in the main keep, defending against the enemy!”

“Y-yes, sir,” the burly one said. “But how do we get back there?”

“The way you came, obviously. Now get in there and start digging!”

Obediently, most of the Tarmite warriors turned and headed back the way they had come, through the broken portal and up the tunnel. One or two glanced back, gawking at the scene in the catacombs. There seemed to be gully dwarves everywhere. “Wh-what about them, sir?” one asked, pointing.

“What about them?” Dartimien snapped. “They’re only gully dwarves. Ignore them!”

“Yes, sir.”

Within moments, more than a dozen yeomen of Castle Tarmish were at work in the tunnel, digging away fallen stone.

“That should keep them busy for a while,” Dartimien confided to Graywing, who was shaking his head in disbelief.

“They took your commands,” the plainsman said. “Why did they do that?”

“Don’t you know about the Tarmites and the Gelnians?” Dartimien cocked an ironic brow. “The only difference between them is the colors they wear, yet they’ve been at war against each other, off and on, for hundreds of years. Not one in a hundred on either side has any idea what they fight about. They just take orders from whoever’s in charge at the moment. It’s always been like that.”

“So they accepted you as being in charge? Why?”

“Because I acted like I was. Now I think we should see about getting out of this hole.”

“How? The entrance is blocked.”

“You really don’t know anything about cities, do you, barbarian?” The Cat gestured toward a gloomy alcove a hundred yards away, in the recesses of the cavern. There, shadows among the shadows, a troop of female gully dwarves was descending from above, winding their way around a huge pillar. They carried loads of forage, found somewhere above.

“I suggest we use the stairs,” Dartimien said levelly.