Yet thoughts of her lingered, interspersed once more with Vara and Cattrine, tormenting him, robbing him of sleep, causing him agonizing bouts that did not subside quickly or without pain. By the time the gates of Scylax were in sight he was grateful and deeply considering Terian’s advice, wondering if by a simple exchange of coins he could somehow purge the poison from his system, even if only for a few days or a week, and be done with it, clear-headed once more and ready for battle. I don’t remember it being this bad after Imina. But then, Imina never did anything quite like what Cattrine did, and certainly not with as much enthusiasm … nor as often …
They came around a bend in the road to see Scylax laid out before them. It was carved into the mountainside like villages he had seen when visiting the Dwarven Alliance but larger in scale than anything he could imagine dwarves building and less reliant on caves. There were multiple streets built into the mountain, some fifteen or twenty levels that were joined by stair-like rises in place of cross streets. It was as though someone had laid out a city map into the side of a mountain and turned the houses and notched the buildings into the mountain’s side. Cyrus could see houses exposed to the elements out front, on the face of the cliff, but they were carved into the rock toward the back of each level. There was even some greenery on the streets, from trees that could weather dry, frigid winters. Farther around the sheer surface of the mountain were paddocks for animals, huge numbers of them, and granaries carved into place on one of the levels.
Above it all, toward the peak, was the castle Scylax, squat and constructed on the edge of a plateau that looked down upon the city and up to the mountain behind it. It lacked the towering spires of Vernadam, instead using rounded construction for the masonry, bending with the curves of the cliff, the half dozen or so structures within the massive curtain wall being broad and circular, reminding Cyrus just slightly of a temple he had visited years earlier in the bandit land southeast of the Endless Bridge, back in Arkaria.
“You got something against building on level ground?” Terian asked Briyce Unger as they took in the city.
“Too easy to attack on flat ground, as our ancestors discovered,” Unger said with a wide grin. “When we Syloreans make an enemy, we tend to make it a good one. This town and castle can be defended by our women and children while the men are away, if need be, and can be held against a siege of ten thousand by only a few hundred.”
“Great, so why are we here to help you again?” Terian asked with a smirk. “Get all your people together, crowd them inside the damned castle and keep killing these creatures until they stop coming.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” Unger said with a shake of the head. “We could hold off a siege here for a few years, maybe, if need be, but not with the whole city in our gates. If it were men at our gates, I would consider it. Men can be beaten back, they weary, they fall to death and eventually wisen to the notion that holding a siege in a place like this is a poor idea. It’s not as though there’s an abundance of food or water to feed an army just lying about in the hills, especially not over a long period. But these things …” He shook his head. “I don’t know that they need food and water, they don’t seem to weary or fatigue, they just keep coming-relentless-when you kill them by the hundred. Lock ourselves in tight, even if we lasted five years, I think they’d still be waiting when we came back out. They’re beasts, not men.”
The road straightened along the cliff’s edge until they eventually reached the gates of the city. The path led them through into the middle of the town, where they were greeted by curious children, clapping at the approach of their King, and joined by washerwomen and men with pickaxes, covered in dust. Cyrus watched the men, and realized that whatever they were doing must involve digging into the mountain, as they were, every one of them, caked in earth.
“Miners,” Partus said, drawing Cyrus’s startled attention to the dwarf, whom he had not realized was by his side. “I didn’t know you humans had it in you before I came here.”
“There aren’t a lot of men who do it, that’s for certain,” Cyrus agreed. “Not many have a taste for rooting about in the guts of the earth the way dwarves do.”
“Not me,” Partus proclaimed. “I left Fertiss when I came of age, happy to get out of the dark. Never would have liked to go back to anything like it, if I could have avoided it.”
“What brought you here?” Cyrus asked. “To Scylax? Your hammer is more powerful than almost any I’ve fought, able to stand up to my blade. You know how to fight, at least well enough to get into one of the big three. So why Luukessia?”
“Because I didn’t want to be in Arkaria anymore,” Partus said with a grim shrug. “Shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. After all, you loaded up your horses and traveled for months on a roundabout course to get here-why wouldn’t somebody else do the same? And for money, no less, rather than the simple nobility you preach.”
“There were plenty of places to make money in Arkaria,” Cyrus said. “A dwarf with your skills could have had a place in any army-the Elven Kingdom, the Human Confederation, the Dark Elven Sovereignty, even your people in the Dwarven Alliance would have fallen over themselves to add your power to their cause, and they would have paid, too.” Cyrus waved vaguely toward Briyce Unger. “More than you’d know you were getting out of Unger, wandering blindly over here.”
“Who said anything about blindly or wandering?” Partus asked with a scowl. “One of my associates, one of the ones your lot killed, he was from here originally, came to Arkaria on a trading expedition a few years ago. He knew that Unger would pay good gold for help from Western mercenaries, so I came.”
“Mercenaries,” Cyrus said. “You used to be the leader of the Daring. They had ideals, beliefs, at least the ones of them I knew-Erith, Cass, Elisabeth-you’re telling me you wanted to give that up for mercenary work in another land?” Cyrus shook his head. “Smells like bullshit to me, Partus. What happened with you and Goliath that sent you scrambling? Did you get caught up in the exile?”
“I was gone long before that,” he said with a shake of his craggy head. “I heard about it, though. I was in the Gnomish Dominions, gathering moss on a garrison detail that had gotten quite a bit easier once your crew,” he waved at the Sanctuary force around them, “wiped out the Goblin Imperium. My busy guard duty, escorting convoys and whatnot, got pretty simple after that.” The dwarf seemed almost upset about it. “Only got to kill a few highwaymen, and that got old quickly.”
“So why leave Goliath?” Cyrus watched the dwarf for his reaction.
Partus played it cool, returning Cyrus a grin. “I had something of a … personality conflict with Malpravus and another of his officers. Caused us to go our separate ways not long after that clash in the Mountains of Nartanis with the Dragonlord.”
“You were there for that?” Cyrus asked.
“Hah! I was, but I’m not surprised you didn’t see me, covered as you were in the glory of the kill. I was there the day you killed Kalam, too, and the day you went into the Realm of Death with the allies and we all got caught up by the skeleton.” Partus smirked. “Course you wouldn’t notice, would you? I’m not exactly of a height that’d catch your eye. Besides,” he said, slightly surly, “I’m told all my people look alike to you tallfolk. Same gripe the gnomes got.”
“My best friend was a dwarf,” Cyrus said. “I’ve got no problem telling one dwarf from another. Besides, you’re bald, kind of fat, and you’ve got a braided beard.” He shrugged. “Hard to miss.”
“You had a friend who was a dwarf?” Partus watched him. “All right, I’ll bite. Who was it?”