“This is all?” he asked, glowering at her.
“Well, it was only food for the day,” Crystal explained. “I’d planned to stay at another inn tonight and to eat the fare of their kitchen. You know, I’m sure there’s an inn not far away! If you take me there, we can both have a hot meal. I’ll pay for yours, happily. Imagine a roast duck! Or perhaps a ham or even a beef stew. Wouldn’t that be good?”
She kept her voice light and cheerful but was surprised to feel her own stomach rumbling with hunger. Desperately, she watched the Klar, hoping for some sign that her tempting suggestions had penetrated the layer of his madness.
But he shrugged and laughed. “This is fine. I don’t need more. Don’t need any hill dwarf inn, that’s for sure!”
“But, Garn,” she continued while she had his attention momentarily, “why are you doing this? Why did you follow me? Why are you holding me captive?”
“Oh, you know,” he said with a sly grin. “You remember.”
“Remember? Remember what? Please! I don’t understand!”
“Ah, what a coy game you play!” he said with a sound like a giggle. “All those nights in the dungeon, when you were talking to me … I could hear the sounds in your voice. You knew that I desired you. And I knew that you desired me. Now we can be together.”
She almost gagged at the memory but bit back a rebuke. She had only meant to be kind, visiting him in prison. But as he continued to talk almost nonstop, Crystal was appalled to learn how much time he had spent thinking about her, desiring her, imagining things about her.
“I know, when you sleep, that you dream of me,” he confided. “But know that I dream of you as well!”
She didn’t try to dissuade him from his wilder fantasies-such as his belief that she desired him as much as he desired her-for she feared his rage if she made him angry. Still, she tried to reason with him.
“You know, you really don’t have to tie me up,” she repeated as sweetly as she could muster.
At that, his eyes narrowed, and he uttered a short cackle of laughter. But he made no move to remove her cords, and he frightened her too much for her to try and make an argument out of it. So she watched him and watched him, and finally he fell asleep. Only then did she begin to work on her tight bonds in earnest.
And finally, she was rewarded by a loosening; she felt the strands of the rope parting.
She pulled her hands apart and looked up to see her worst nightmare: Garn Bloodfist was awake and watching her. She tried to stand, but he sprang right over the mound of coals. His rough hands grasped her shoulders, pressing her back to the ground.
And his grotesque mouth, wide open and panting, pressed over her own.
“I knew you’d try to leave!” he crowed, his vile breath making her gag. “Don’t you dare! We’re just getting started!”
Brandon caught up to the Redshirts at the interior fortification of the gatehouse. General Watchler’s men had secured a foothold in what looked to be a barracks room. Tankard’s first companies still fought at the two tunnels leading out of the gatehouse, while more and more of the Kayolin troops filed up the trail and into the breached entry to Thorbardin.
“The bastards have forted up in both guardhouses,” Watchler reported. “We can’t get to them without passing through a hail of crossbows. Hacksaw and I have already lost a score of men each.”
“Is there any other way around?” Brandon asked, dismayed at the thought that they might have broken through Thorbardin’s main gate only to be blocked a few hundred yards farther on.
“We’re checking it out, but I don’t think so. This place was made for defense, after all. Anyone coming in the main gate is channeled through one of these two halls, and they’re both pretty much the same. There’s a long, open passageway before you get to the interior doors, and the defenders have firing platforms above the floor and inside the city where they can shoot from cover and pick off our warriors almost at will.”
“All right,” Brandon said with a grimace. “I’ll go have a look. Stay here and keep the men formed up as they come through the outer gate. If we can carry one of these doors, I want to be able to pour a thousand troops into the city in the first wave.”
“All right. Good luck,” the veteran campaigner said.
“You stay with Watchler,” Brandon said to Gretchan, who hadn’t left his side since they had breached the outer gate. “Get the troops ready for the main attack.”
“You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you?” she asked with just the hint of a twinkle in her eye.
He knew better than to waste time arguing, so he muttered a curse and started forward, carrying his axe, jogging fast enough to stay a step or two in front of the cleric. He crossed through a wide room that looked like a barracks mess hall, though the tables and benches had been overturned by combat. Some dwarves of Tankard’s legion were dragging the bodies of slain defenders into a large pile off to the side, while other dead fighters, wearing the blue and black of Kayolin, were laid out in neat rows. A quick glance suggested that more than two dozen of his troops had been slain in that chamber alone.
The knowledge made him sick to his stomach and more determined than ever to break through the next obstacle. Crossing to the far side of the mess hall, he found Tankard himself and a hundred of his dwarves warily looking through a wide double doorway into a long, open hallway. More Kayolin dwarves had been killed there, and their bodies-most pierced by lethal crossbow quarrels-still lay where they had fallen.
“Hullo, General,” Tankard said grimly as Brandon knelt beside him to study the constricted approach. He could see the balconies near the far end, well above the floor of the hall, where the enemy archers obviously lurked.
“You can see it’s a tough nut,” Hacksaw continued. “They have probably fifty crossbowmen up there, back in the shadows. Even if we bring our shooters up for cover, we can only squeeze ten or a dozen around this doorway. Meanwhile, they have shots at every dwarf that tries to charge down that hall.”
Brandon could see that the doors at the far end of the hall were tall, double doors of solid stone. “I assume they’re barricaded?” he asked.
Tankard nodded grimly. “Pretty damned solid too. We hit them with two score men and we just bounced off, like we were slamming into a cliff wall.”
“What about a ram?”
“That’s the next attempt. I sent a platoon back to find something big and heavy that we could use. Ah, here they come now.”
The general turned to see two dozen dwarves approaching across the debris-strewn mess hall. They had a portion of a sturdy stone column hoisted onto their shoulders and held the makeshift ram ready as they reached the officers at the entryway of the hall.
“Perfect,” Tankard Hacksaw said. “Why don’t you stay here and watch us work?” he suggested to Brandon.
“Forget it. I’m coming with you on the charge!” the Kayolin commander protested.
“That’s not your job!” Gretchan barked before Tankard could voice his own objections. But as Brandon rounded on the priestess, his subordinate chimed in.
“She’s a smart one, General,” Hacksaw said. “Your axe will do a lot of good once we get through that door. But until then, you’d just be making yourself a target, and a high-value one for the enemy at that.”
Though it went against every instinct he possessed, Brandon was forced to agree that the captain was right and he should be cautious. “All right,” he agreed through clenched teeth. “But I’m coming up with the rest of your legion the moment you bust through that door.”
“And a welcome sight you’ll be,” Tankard agreed cheerfully. He raised his voice to address his men. “Now I need all the bowmen right here,” he commanded, gesturing to the door. “We’re charging down there with that ram, and I want you to do everything you can to pick off those bastard Theiwar who try to shoot at us from the balconies!”