“That’s a small miracle right there,” admitted the captain, wiping his own hand over his face and looking at it in amazement. “Praise be to Reorx!”
“And praise be to you too,” Brandon added sincerely. “That was a masterful job of leading your legion through the barracks.”
“The hardest part was getting over my astonishment, when Bardic Stonehammer broke the mountain open with that three-colored piece of rock! It was the most astounding thing I’ve ever seen!”
“I’ll grant you that,” the Bluestone dwarf replied. “I couldn’t quite believe it myself.”
“Now you both need to get some rest,” clucked Gretchan maternally. “The war will still be going strong when you wake up, I’ll warrant.”
“Only if you agree to get some sleep as well,” Brandon said. His eyes narrowed in concern as he noted the weariness in Gretchan’s face, the glaze of exhaustion that had suddenly seemed to settle over her eyes.
At first, she looked ready to argue, but apparently she took stock of his words and realized that his advice was sensible. She nodded and leaned on her staff as they looked around for a likely place to stretch out for a few hours.
For the moment, there were only the three of them on that high balcony, though hundreds of dwarves-all from their own army-were in sight on the streets and plaza below. The barracks hall connecting to the balcony was already home to dozens of sleeping dwarves, weary survivors of the First Legion, but Brandon reasoned that there’d be an office or storeroom nearby where Gretchan, at least, could have some privacy.
“You’ll be safe here, far behind the battle lines,” Tankard said. “And now that I feel a lot better, I think I’ll go check on my men.”
“Aye, old friend,” Brandon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “And once again, well done.”
“You too, General,” Tankard said. Brandon turned to Gretchan as Tank took a step toward the door into the barracks. That was when the captain abruptly halted and cried out in alarm.
“Look out!”
The words were barely uttered when Tank flew backward and past Brandon, propelled by some unseen force that blasted him right over the railing and toward the street two dozen feet below.
Brandon was already reaching for his axe when another blast of force knocked him over, battering him like a falling wall. He heard Gretchan scream, and he struggled to turn around and go to her aid, battling a great weight that seemed to press him to the floor.
Gretchan cried out again; then he saw her, bound by some kind of web that had simply materialized in the air. But no! There were dwarves there, two of them. They were dressed in black robes. One was a strikingly attractive female, with blood red lips and flowing black hair. The other was a sturdy Theiwar male who had his back to Brandon. The web seemed to be exploding from the Theiwar’s hands, wrapping Gretchan around and around until she might as well have been secured in a cocoon.
“No!” Brandon cried, pushing himself to his knees.
The black-robed Theiwar turned, flashing a wicked smile, and Brandon was shocked by his scarred visage, a hideous face with the eye sockets sewn shut. Even so, as he took in that cruel, gloating expression, he knew that the villainous dwarf could see him!
Then, in a flash of magic, the two black-robed wizards disappeared. With a sickening lurch of fear, Brandon saw that Gretchan had vanished too. They had taken the priestess with them.
“I don’t have any food to speak of,” the rescued dwarf maid admitted to the trio of rapt gully dwarves who had fixated on the word food. “But I’ll take you to some first thing in the morning. Eggs, bacon, milk, cheese … I’ll treat you to a real feast.”
“Sound good,” Gus admitted. “All right. We eat morningtime.” Suddenly he had another thought and turned to glare at the female dwarf he had rescued. “Who you, anyway?” he demanded belligerently, planting his hands on his hips. “Where you go?”
“My name is Crystal Heathstone,” she said. “And I’m going to a town called Hillhome. I was, at least, on my way there, until this Klar attacked me.”
She nudged the lifeless form of Garn Bloodfist with a toe and shuddered. Gus and his girls had checked out the dwarf, determining that the blow to his head had been hard enough to crush the life out of him. Gus had preened and boasted a bit, while Slooshy and Berta had cooed and awed over his bravery-until he had remembered his hunger.
“Hillhome, huh?” he said. “We go Thorbardin instead. Make war on bad wizard!”
“Oh?” Crystal said, frowning. “There was a time when I thought I was going to Thorbardin too. I was going to bring my people there to help wage that war.”
“Why you not come with, then?” Gus asked. “After we eats, I mean. We go to help Gretchan,” he added.
“Huh! I know Gretchan very well,” Crystal said. “Now I know who you are! You must be Gus. You’re quite famous, you know. Even Garn Bloodfist”-she gestured to indicate the dead Klar-“knew enough about you to hate you. You’re the gully dwarf who broke the big trap before he could drop it on all the hill dwarves.”
“Yep. Me do that,” Gus agreed proudly, though even to that day he wasn’t sure exactly what he had done to make everyone so happy with him. But he was pretty famous, that was for sure, and he was content to bask in all the accolades.
“You go Hillhome?” he said again. “Where hill dwarves be?”
“Yes,” Crystal agreed with a laugh that reminded Gus of Gretchan. “Lots of hill dwarves be there.”
“Well,” said Gus, his scrunched-up face indicating that he was doing something rare and perhaps even historic; the little fellow was thinking. “I got idea. Let’s go get and take ’em Thorbardin. We find Gretchan and Brandon and everyone there.”
“You know,” the dwarf maid said with a pensive expression. “You might just have a notion there. Anyway, I agree. Let’s go to Hillhome, and I’ll tell my friends all about you and maybe they’ll decide to follow you and me and all of us to Thorbardin.”
“That be fine!” Gus declared expansively. Then he remembered something with a scowl. “But first we eat, right?”
“Where did she go?” Brandon cried, spinning on his heel, holding the Bluestone Axe in one hand while he reached out to brace himself against a column with the other. He threw back his head and raged. “Where is she, by Reorx?”
Dwarves of the First Legion raced to the rescue from all directions, some stumbling out of their sleep in the adjacent barracks and strapping on weapons and others, dusty and bloody from the fight, rushing up the steps to the landing. By the time the first of his men arrived on the scene, Brandon had calmed enough to realize that they would find neither Gretchan nor any of her attackers in the immediate area.
“What is it, General?” gasped one of the first to arrive, a swordsman who rushed up to Brandon and whirled to position himself as a barrier for any fresh attacker.
“Wizards! Dark magic,” growled Brandon, lowering his weapon only slightly. “They came and took Gretchan Pax away … by sorcery. And,” he added in a choked voice, looking over his shoulder as he suddenly remembered with a stab of guilt, “They might have killed my brave Commander Tankard!”
Even as more dwarves arrived on the landing, calling out in alarm, demanding information, Brandon was reaching the only logical conclusion. “It was Willim the Black himself,” he groaned, stunned and near despair. “She could be a thousand miles away by now! We must find her!”
He had reached the balcony and was looking down into the street below, where several dwarves knelt around the motionless form of Tankard Hacksaw.
“Does he live?” Brandon asked with a catch in his throat.
The slumped shoulders and slowly shaking heads of the witnesses confirmed his worst fears. An overwhelming sense of despair suddenly weighed him down. The Bluestone Axe fell from his fingers, clanging unnoticed on the floor at his feet. His hands gripped the stone railing as if they could crush it, and if it had been Willim’s neck, they would have done so.