The Swordsheath Scroll

13

From the tower of his fortress, Sakar Kane matched his Third Horse Battalion fan out along the road toward Redrock Cleft, as dawn flagged the sky ahead of them. It had taken all night to reach the battalion and recall them from their outpost stronghold south of Tharkas Pass, and Lord Kane was not pleased that he had to do so. Still, the signal from Redrock had been clear and authoritative. Wild tribesmen had ambushed the emperor's reinforcement column in the foothills beyond the cleft, then had withdrawn to their camp.

Only a few miles north, the signals said. Mounted troops could overtake them there, surely within a day or two. The Prince of Klanath had hesitated only a moment. The Third Battalion was growing restive and sullen after long seasons of fruitless patrol in the brutal mountains south of Tharkas. A bit of action now would be good for them. Besides, if he caught and punished the wild tribesmen, General Giarna would owe him a favor. Sakar Kane had no love for the so-called "boy general," but it was well known that Giarna was a favorite of the emperor. Even the sinister Dreyus, the man they said was Quivalin Soth's closest advisor, seemed to find no fault with Giarna. It would be a good thing, Sakar Kane knew, to have Giarna indebted to him.

The eastern sky was bright by the time the trailing elements of the Third Battalion disappeared into the cleft, tiny in the distance. Lord Kane turned away to enter his chambers, then stopped and tipped his head. What was that noise he had heard? Something faint and far away, just a touch of sound on the morning breeze coming down from the mountains.

He listened, and it came again, vague and fitful, as erratic as the cool breeze that carried it. He stepped to the parapet and looked downward. Below was the inner court of the fortress, and beyond it the walled battlements that faced the bustling little city. On the battlements-and on the more distant city wall-guards patrolled in pairs. He could tell by their casual pacing that, unlike him, they had heard nothing unusual.

Then he heard the distant sound again and shook his head in irritation. Thunder, he thought. Echoes of distant thunder, far away in the mountains. Somewhere beyond Tharkas Pass.

Oddly, though, there were no storm clouds in the clear morning sky-at least none that he could see from his tower.

The old mining camp of Tharkas lay shadowed and almost silent as dawn light appeared above the tall peaks around it. Once destroyed by dwarves, at the time of the slaves' revolt, the camp had been rebuilt as an outpost of Klanath. Though austere, it was amply equipped and fortified to serve as the headquarters of Lord Kane's mounted battalion, the Third. But now most of the battalion was gone, recalled through the great pass for maneuvers of some kind. Only cooks, servants, orderlies, and two companies of footmen remained, and most of them were asleep. They had been awake most of the night, helping the mounted forces saddle their beasts, don their armor, prepare their weapons, and pack their gear. It had been past midnight when the battalion trotted away, entering the pass by the light of twin moons.

A single cookfire was beginning to blaze in the compound, and sleepy perimeter guards were making their dawn rounds, stifling yawns, when thunder erupted around them-an intricate, rhythmic, pulsing thunder that seemed to come from everywhere and sent chills into the bones of those who heard it.

At the cookfire, men jumped to their feet, turning this way and that, trying to see where the sound came from. Then one of them shouted, "Look!" and pointed. On the nearest slope, where the old mine shafts stood boarded and blind, hundreds of short, armored figures were on the move. Quick and surefooted on the steep slope, which would have been almost impassable for humans, the horde of figures raced downward, shields and weapons flashing in the dawn.

The men at the fire gawked, then scrambled for their shields as a perimeter guard shouted, "Dwarves! Those are dwarves! We're under attack! To arms!"

As the men spotted them, the dwarves shouted war cries, deep voices rising in bloodcurdling chants, blending with the rhythm of the drums above.

The sleepy camp came abruptly awake as humans struggled into armor and officers dashed about, trying to assemble a defense. The attack was aimed at the northwest wall of the compound, and armed units headed in that direction, then hesitated as their officers shouted contradictory orders. With unbelievable speed, the dwarves had descended the vertiginous slope and raced across the outer clearing. Now they were at the wall and coming over it-a flowing tide of short, burly figures in bright armor. There were hundreds of them, and more coming behind.

A perimeter guard flung his pike at them in terror, then turned and tried to run, but the dwarves were already all around him. One dodged beneath the guard's sword and lashed out with his own, a whirling, roundhouse swing. The guard screamed and fell, his feet cut out from under him. Another dwarf paused to raise a warhammer and strike downward with it, then ran on.

"Spread and retreat!" a human officer shouted. "Back to the far wall!"

As one, the packed human troops spread out, sword-arm's reach apart, in defense mode. In the field, the tactic was sound. It gave each man room to use his blade and shield, and presented a broader front against the enemy. Within seconds, the human soldiers were spread in a thin double line across the camp compound, retreating slowly as the tide of dwarves bore down on them.

Fighters clashed all along the line. Steel rang against steel. For a few seconds the charge of the dwarves was slowed, but then their deep-voiced chanting rose again, and they pressed forward, shields high, heavy weapons lashing out like snakes' tongues. Blood gushed and flowed in the growing dawn light, and the nearest men could hear the syllables of the roaring chant. "Hammer-hand!" they were saying. "Hammer-hand! Hammer-hand! Hammer-hand!"

Overpowered by the ferocity of the charge, the human line swayed, then broke. "Retreat!" an officer wailed. "Retreat to the wall!"

The human rush to the far wall was barely a retreat. It was more like a scramble, and everywhere around and behind them, fighting dwarves struck and struck again.

"Over the wall!" an officer barked. "This is a trap in here! Get outside! We'll fight them there!"

Of the more than three hundred men in Tharkas Camp that dawning, less than two hundred made it to the south wall of the compound, and still fewer made it to the top of the wall. And those who did stopped there in terror and confusion, some toppling the eight feet to the hard ground as those coming up behind shoved them aside.

There was no refuge outside the wall. At its foot, several guards lay dead. And beyond them were dwarves- long ranks of stubby fighters waiting with raised blades. And beyond these were mounted companies, dwarves perched on short-stirruped saddles atop armored war-horses. For every dwarf within the compound, there looked to be ten or twenty more outside the wall. It was as though the entire dwarven race had come to Tharkas- and come to kill.

As the bleeding, terrified human mob packed the narrow walkway on top of the wall, a dwarven rider stepped his horse ahead of his company. His armor gleamed mirror-bright in the morning light, and a bright, blood-red cloak flowed from his burly shoulders.

Without hesitation, he unslung a great hammer from his shoulder and raised it high over his head. The drums began to sing again, as though speaking the language of that hammer. With a fierce frown, the dwarf swept his arm downward, pointing his hammer at the humans on the wall. Along the front rank of the dwarven army, dozens of dwarves paced forward by twos. Three steps, then they stopped in unison. In each pair, one dwarf knelt and aimed a crossbow. The second set a stone in a webbed sling and began its spin. The drums crescendoed, then went silent. Slings hummed and spat. Crossbows twanged. Fist-sized stones and bronze bolts with steel tips whistled through the air, slammed into flesh, and where there had been many human soldiers jostling one another atop a stone wall, now there were only a few.

With a roar that echoed from the peaks all around, the dwarven ranks surged forward.

As the sun of Krynn rose above the eastern peaks, Derkin Hammerhand and the Ten walked their horses along a line of bright-eyed dwarves and human captives. Fifty-four men of the empire had lived through the assault on Tharkas, fifty-four out of more than three hundred who had been there when it began. None had escaped. Those who tried had been run down and killed by dwarven horsemen.

At the middle of the inspection rank, where the huddled humans stood stripped of their gear and surrounded by armed Daergar warriors in steel masks, Derkin reined in as Calan Silvertoe strode forward to meet him. "Prisoners," the old one-arm growled, indicating the little crowd of humans. "What do you want to do with them?"

"I don't want any prisoners," Derkin said. "Why are they still alive?"

"This bunch wouldn't fight it out," Calan said. "They all threw down their weapons and refused to pick them up again."

"So?"

"Well, when Vin's Daergar moved in on them, they all fell to the ground and started babbling and bawling. They refused to defend themselves."

"So?" Derkin repeated impatiently.

From the dwarves guarding the humans, a sturdy masked figure strode forward. He didn't raise his mask, but Derkin recognized Vin the Shadow. "We didn't know what to do about them," the Daergar said. "I just… well, it isn't much fun to kill people who are groveling at your feet. Even humans. So we waited for you to decide."

"I didn't want any prisoners," Derkin growled.

"No problem." Old Calan Silvertoe grinned. With his one remaining hand he drew a razor-sharp dagger from his boot. "We'll just cut their throats." He turned, happily, and headed for the humans.

"Hold!" Derkin barked. "As long as we have them, let's make some use of them. They can clean up the mess in this compound and bury the dead."

"Oh, all right," Calan agreed. He put away his dagger and turned to face Derkin. "Then can we cut their throats?"

"When everything is cleaned up here, take them up to the main shaft and lock them in," Derkin commanded. "I may think of another use for them later."

"That old shaft?" one of the Ten snorted. "It'll still stink of goblins. Goblin-stench never goes away."

With Tharkas Camp secured, Derkin prowled around for a time, making assignments, detailing guard and patrol plans, and generally putting people to work. And thinking. During his visit to Thorbardin, and in the months afterward while the Chosen Ones camped outside Northgate, trading wares and arming themselves, he had done a lot of thinking… about the ways of the world, and mostly about the ways of his people. Aside from their families and their comforts, he realized now, there were two things that every dwarf loved more than anything else: working and fighting, in that order.

It was their nature… his own and every other dwarf's. Given the chance, a dwarf would work. He would delve caverns, build roads, erect mighty structures, or dig tunnels. He would construct beautiful furniture, forge tools, carve toys, string beads, paint pictures, or carry things to the tops of mountains. He would raise crops, tend herds, and harvest forests. He would hammer and saw, pound and temper, shape and reshape objects. He would taste a stone, then carve it into a pillar, a statue, or a trinket. He would taste metal, then make something useful out of it. He would build monuments or fortresses, or make whistles from reeds. Whatever the work, any typical dwarf would dive into it with energy and enthusiasm… as long as he was doing it because he wanted to.

But dwarves without work turned quickly to their second love. They bickered and argued, and when the arguments became feuds they fought. Thorbardin was evidence of that. The mightiest fortress in the world had become a hotbed of petty bickering and useless feuds, because it had closed itself off from the outside world and gradually diminished its resources to the point that there was not enough ore coming in to keep the smelters running, not enough timber coming in to keep the wood-shops busy, not enough trade with the outside world to have any reason to produce much of anything. And as the work diminished, the fighting grew. It had been a revelation to some of those in the under-mountain fortress, he suspected, that as the forges were fired up to produce the goods the Chosen Ones requested, the feuding and street fighting in Thorbardin's cities had diminished by half. Those months of summer, he thought, with his people camped outside and the forges going inside, were probably the best months Thorbardin had seen in a century or more.

But now he put Thorbardin out of his mind and thought of his own people, the Chosen Ones. They called themselves that, they said, because Hammerhand had chosen them. Actually, Derkin knew as well as they did that it was the other way around. He had not chosen them, he had merely freed them. They had followed him, and others along the way had joined. It was they who had chosen him, as their leader.

Just as Tap Tolec and Vin the Shadow had chosen him so long ago, in the slave cell at Klanath Mines, so these thousands of others had chosen him. They chose to follow him, to do his bidding, because-like working and fighting-it was their nature to follow a leader, as long as he was a leader they had chosen, and as long as they were following because they wanted to.

Working and fighting. It was the nature of these people… of his people. Working or fighting, choosing and following, living and deserving to live in their own land, by their own design, free of intrusion and invasion by the Lord Kanes and the Emperor Quivalin Soths-by all the alien forces that made war, it seemed, throughout every land they touched.

'These are my people, and they deserve to live as they choose!" he muttered, then turned, slightly embarrassed, as a small hand closed on his own. Lost in his thoughts, he had wandered away from the old mine camp with its human-ordered wall. Now he found himself standing on a crested ridge on the mountainside, looking out over the pretty lake that had once served dwarven miners on dwarven soil, but now served no one at all.

Tap Tolec and the rest of the Ten were nearby, of course. They always followed him closely wherever he went. And standing beside him, looking up at him with concerned eyes, was Helta Graywood. Derkin had no idea how long she had been standing there with him, or following along after him.

Still holding his hand, she reached up and brushed his cheek with gentle fingers. "You're worrying about your people, aren't you?" she asked. "You're thinking that none of us might survive tomorrow, or next week, or next year. That we might go back to being slaves, or maybe just all die."

"I wasn't thinking any such thing," he growled, shaking his head stubbornly. "I was thinking that I'd better see that everybody has a job to do. Otherwise we'll never get that pass barricaded."

The girl's eyes held his, unwavering. "If you were just thinking about jobs and barricades," she asked quietly, "then why was there a tear on your cheek just now?"

"There was no tear!" he snapped. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tap Tolec and some others of the Ten look away quickly, as though embarrassed.

Helta nodded. 'They saw it, too," she said.

With a sniff and an angry cough, Derkin drew himself up harshly. "Well, you won't see another one there," he promised. "Kal-Thax requires sweat, and sometimes it demands blood. But it has no use for tears."

Back at the compound, Derkin found Calan Silvertoe waiting for him. "We'll have at least a week," the old Dae-war said. "But not more than two. Those horse soldiers who left here last night are out chasing barbarians. Des-paxas promises that they'll be…"

"Despaxas?" Derkin stared at him. "Your elf? Is he here?"

"He's not my elf!" Calan snapped. "And he's not here. But sometimes he… ah, sort of talks to me inside my head. I don't know how he does that, but he does."

"I believe it." Derkin nodded. "And what does he say?"

"He says the Cobar will keep the human soldiers occupied for at least a week, and maybe more than that. But he says we'd better hurry, because even if they keep those troops out there longer. Lord Kane's post patrols still use the pass, and the next one will be coming through in about two weeks."

"Then let's get work parties organized," Derkin said. "Break out trowels and prybars, splitting mauls and winches. I'll take the red-and-grays and scout the pass. You get some foresters up on those slopes for timber.

Tomorrow we build stone-boats."

"Aye," Calan agreed. "And where do we go for good stone, then? There isn't time to quarry and cut it."

"We have enough to start with right here." Derkin turned, pointing at the big eight-foot wall encircling Lord Kane's outpost compound. He extended the gesture, pointing at one and then another of the big stone barracks within the area. "We'll begin with these stones," he said. "The humans won't have need of them anymore."

At one end of the compound, human prisoners sweated in the sun, digging a pit to bury the hundreds of dead soldiers stacked there like cordwood. All around them were armed dwarves, watching and guarding. No human from Tharkas Camp had gotten away to carry an alarm to Klanath, and none was going to. At the far end, outside the compound, some dwarves also were digging, burying their own. They would not permit the humans to even touch, much less bury, a fallen comrade. In the background, drummers maintained a soft, mournful tattoo on muffled vibrars.

Derkin gave orders for the red-and-grays to assemble, then strolled to where the dwarven graves were being dug. For a moment he stood watching, his helmet in his hand. First blood, he thought. We have sworn to retake Kal-Thax, with or without anybody's help, and now we have made a beginning.

There weren't many dead dwarves to bury, but there would be more.

Kal-Thax, he thought. Land of the dwarves. Land of my people. Kal-Thax needs sweat… and sometimes it demands blood.