“You were splendid last night,” Crystal told him. “I don’t think we’d have mustered half this many volunteers without your testimony.”
“Well, sure ’nuf,” he agreed, stuffing a crusty piece of bread, heavily slathered with butter, into his mouth. Of course, he wasn’t certain what splendid or volunteer or testimony meant, but he trusted it was all good. He looked around hopefully.
“Nuther party today?” he asked.
She smiled, though once again he detected that hint of sadness in her eyes and her manner. “Not today,” she said. “We’re all busy getting ready to go help Tarn-and Gretchan Pax. We thought you’d want to come along with us.”
“Go Thorbardin? Why, sure,” he said. “Me ready. Girls ready!”
The rest of the day he lolled about Hillhome while the Neidar busied themselves with preparations. Curious children came around to talk to them, asking him with wide eyes, “Are you the one who saved Crystal Heathstone?”
“That me,” Gus replied before asking, “Got any beer?”
The children proved to be a woefully inadequate source of strong drink, and perhaps that was a good thing. In any event, the Neidar under Slate Fireforge left Hillhome the very next morning, with a force of some four hundred doughty warriors. Criers had been sent to the outlying towns and villages, and all day long more bands of warriors, coming those from places south of Hillhome where the column passed through, or from other villages that didn’t have time to muster in the town itself, joined the streaming column as it marched toward Thorbardin.
The bigger towns each sent sixty or eighty men, while the smaller villages might dispatch only a dozen or so, but every one of the volunteers was welcomed, and the force grew hourly as it steadily proceeded southward. Unlike the Kayolin Army and the Dwarf Home Army, the Neidar troops didn’t march with any wagons or carts in which the Aghar could ride, but Gus was surprised to realize as he strode along that his legs seemed to feel stronger than ever before. The same was true of his girls, so they had no difficulty keeping up with the steadily marching hill dwarves. Crystal even allowed the gully dwarves to keep her company for a while, right near the front of the column!
“I think you toughened up, walking all that way from Pax Tharkas,” Crystal suggested.
“Hmm, yeah?” Gus said, liking the sound of that. “Gus plenty tough!”
Slate was an easygoing commander, and Gus found that the Neidar captain was even willing to talk to him when the gully dwarf made his way to the very lead position of the long, sinuous marching formation.
“You lotta times make war?” Gus asked, impressed with the way Slate’s men followed his orders and seemed so willing to help him out.
“Not so much,” Slate said. “The only other time was a mistake, when Harn Poleaxe convinced us to march on Pax Tharkas. Still, this kind of business sort of runs in the family.”
“Runs? You runs to war alla time?”
“No,” Slate laughed. “I mean my ancestors have always sort of been the adventuring type. My great-uncle was Flint Fireforge. Maybe you heard of him? He was one of the Heroes of the Lance. He went all the way to Palanthas and even rode a dragon in the war against the Dark Queen.”
Gus shuddered. He didn’t know which sounded worse: riding a dragon or making war against a Dark Queen. Either way, he was sort of relieved they were merely marching under the mountain and going to fight against a fearsome, spell-casting wizard. But he sensed that Slate was proud of his uncle, so he didn’t say anything insulting.
They were interrupted by a large cheer that rose from the dwarves behind them, and they turned to see Axel Carbondale marching out of a side valley, leading a force of, well, more than two dwarves. (Gus heard Axel boast that he had brought “four hundred swords” to join the expedition. Since he didn’t see any swords marching by themselves, he figured that each sword had also brought along a dwarf to wield itself.)
By late afternoon it was a weary band of hill dwarves who finally paused to make camp after the sun had set behind the western mountains. The Neidar made bivouac in the forested valley beside a mirror-still lake. Archers had been preceding the army all day, and they had already fanned out along the marshy shore. A steady supply of geese was being carried to the cookfires that started to blaze all over.
Gus sent his girls to find a good place for him to sleep. “No big rock to hide us this time!” he warned direly, well remembering the first night of the march, when his companions’ incompetence had caused them to become separated from the Dwarf Home Army.
Then he settled down to enjoy the evening. He was pleased when Crystal Heathstone came by to see how he had handled the long march.
“Plenty good,” Gus replied honestly. Before she wandered back to the army commanders, he remembered something he’d been planning to tell her.
“You know, new king gonna put Aghar back on thanes,” Gus boasted. “Get a real big stone chair and everything.”
“It’s a nice idea, and it should happen. But who told you that?” the Neidar female wondered.
The very memory provoked a blissful sigh from Gus. “Gretchan Pax say so.” He frowned, trying to recall details. “Well, she say she talk to king, want king to give Aghar a thane. Or big new highbulp at least.”
“I used to live in Thorbardin,” Crystal noted. “The Aghar always used to have a seat on the council of thanes.”
“Yeah, but bad King Stonespringer, he take away. Him kill Aghar thane; want kill all Aghar.”
“Well, it just so happens that I know King Bellowgranite,” Crystal said with a sly smile. “And if my word has any weight with him-together with Gretchan’s-you can be sure that the Aghar will once again be seated at that council.”
Gus drifted off to a blissful sleep, dreaming of a crown and a very big chair and all the food he could possibly eat. Of course, at the army camp, there wasn’t nearly as much beer to drink as there had been in Hillhome, but even that had its advantages as, the next morning, the Neidar and their Aghar companions awakened early. Free of any headaches or churning stomachs and eager to resume the march, they didn’t even take the time for cookfires as they prepared to set out again upon the road to Thorbardin.
The North Gate, Gus heard someone say, was only two days’ march away.
Brandon had been able only to stare in horror and awe as the fire dragon had swept toward Gretchan, exposed as she had been in the cage on the lofty palace spire. He called her name, but with the monster’s sudden appearance, his voice froze in his throat. His fingers clenched around the hilt of his axe so tightly that they grew numb, but there was nothing he, nor even his epic weapon, could do against the impossibly mighty beast.
All around him the dwarves of his own army, as well as Willim’s defenders within the palace, had been paralyzed by fear at the monster’s appearance. Warriors who had stared death in the face on a dozen battlefields, who had led charges against unassailable ramparts, who had stood and faced enemy armies numbering ten or twenty times their own, had quailed and wailed and dropped facedown onto the ground, desperately crawling under anything remotely resembling cover.
The Kayolin general stood alone, watching in awful fascination as the beast first threatened then recoiled from the brave dwarf maid and her mighty staff. He sensed the wyrm’s struggles against the immortal power of Reorx and held his breath as the monster slowly dissolved into the black vapor that, obviously, was sucked into the staff itself by the Master of the Forge.
And he howled in triumph when the serpent finally disappeared. His elation surging, he raced along the parapet atop the palace wall, seeking a way across to the keep. But his elation lasted mere seconds-until he had seen Willim the Black return. He watched as the wizard snatched the staff away from the stunned, exhausted priestess.