Flint took two short steps, his boots crunching softly on the tunnel floor. Then he froze. A second click, following the sound of his own footstep, came from the right. Then another, from higher up, and another even higher. When he heard something snap directly overhead, Flint twisted des perately and threw himself to the left, but it was too late. A cage of iron bars slammed down around him, and he crashed into its side. Furiously Flint grasped the bars with both hands and pushed, pulled, lifted, and rattled them, but the cage was too heavy to budge. He dropped to his knees and scraped at the tunnel floor. Aside from a thin layer of loose gravel, it was solid rock.
The dwarf leaned back against the bars. "Damn!"
Chapter 9
They took his axe immediately — Flint felt naked with out it. Still angered by the ease with which he had been cap tured, the hill dwarf seethed under the watchful eyes of eight guards while a detachment proceeded to alert their commander. The sentries in the tunnel were derro dwarves, white-skinned and wide-eyed. They wore polished black plate armor with long purple plumes trailing from their helms.
Although the cage had been raised so that he was no longer imprisoned by bars, the derro guards made Flint sit in a stone recess in the tunnel wall. As they waited, the derro played some kind of betting game with pebbles on the smooth, stone floor at the mouth of the cramped alcove. Es cape, for the moment anyway, was clearly out of the ques tion. He could only sit and fidget as time crawled by.
"Who's in charge here, anyway?" Flint asked once, after more than an hour had passed.
One of the derro guards looked up from the game with a cold gaze. His large, pale eyes showed almost as much emo tion as the stare of a dead fish, Flint thought. "Shuddup," was the fellow's only reply.
Sometime later Flint heard the step of several pairs of heavy boots. The guards hastily put away their stones and jumped to their feet, standing rigidly. The footsteps tromped closer, but Flint could not see whoever approached through the narrow opening of his niche.
"Column, halt!" The command, spoken in a harsh yet un deniably female voice, brought the march to a stop. "The prisoner?" he heard the same voice inquire.
"In here, Captain."
Two derro hauled Flint roughly to his feet and pulled him from the alcove. He found himself facing a frawl mountain dwarf, leading a fresh detachment of guards. She carried a small hand axe, unlike the battle-axes hoisted by the rest of the guards, and she wore the golden epaulets of command on her shoulders.
Her smooth face and warm hazel eyes set her immediately apart from the others, all of whom were male. She wore the same helmet as her men, with its trailing purple plume, but wild copper curls escaped its confines and danced across her shoulders every time she moved her head. Her chain mail sleeves revealed arms of sinewy muscle, but the steel breast plate she wore suggested an undeniably feminine fullness of shape.
"Why am I being held prisoner?" Flint blurted. "I demand — " He stopped suddenly, cut off by the slap of a guard's meaty hand across his face.
"Prisoners have no rights here," the frawl said coldly. 'You may speak when given permission. Otherwise, keep your tongue still. You'll be given ample opportunity to confess your crimes of spying on the Theiwar. Come along."
The detachment surrounded him. In silence they tromped back the way they had come, deeper into the tunnel, toward
Thorbardin. Flint noted that the passageway had only re cently been widened, or perhaps created anew; jagged out croppings of rock still remained on the walls revealing, in places on the floor, fresh chisel cuts. Wagon tracks were visi ble, but had not yet scarred the rock floor.
Eventually the tunnel swung to the left and before long opened into a vast cavern. A pall of smoke hung in the air, and the clash of heavy iron tools rang constantly, echoing around the stone chamber with a reverberating din. Before Flint stood huge mounds of coal, forming a black ridge some twenty feet high. This pile blocked his view of the rest of the cavern.
"Looks like a pretty big operation," suggested Flint art lessly. "Making some farming tools?"
The businesslike frawl seemed not to hear him at first.
Then she turned and eyed him sarcastically. "It's strange — you don't seem unintelligent…"
"Thank you — " he interrupted.
"… just foolhardy," she finished, as if he had not spoken.
"You would be well advised to curb your curious nature, and your clever tongue, if you don't care to lose both."
He studied her profile curiously. What manner of dwarf was this commander? She did not fit his mental picture of a mountain dwarf, and her eyes and hair did not seem to match the derro around her. Yet she was obviously a leader, and her rank indicated that she'd been recognized and re warded for that ability.
They left the huge cavern and entered a maze of tunnel like streets. Uncountable side streets led away from the ave nue, and mountain dwarves moved quickly and quietly along them. Overhead, perhaps twenty feet above, the street was capped by a stone ceiling. The buildings to either side extended from floor to ceiling. Counting the windows,
Flint guessed that most of them contained three or even four interior floors. Some of these buildings appeared to be built from stone and brick, while others seemed to be carved from the solid mountain. All of them, however, were deco rated with the heavy, brooding stonework that character ized derro cities. All dwarven architecture tended to be in tricately carved and sculpted, but the derro favored a style that seemed almost oppressive, palpably dark, to Flint.
As they wound along the rows of stone buildings, Flint counted mostly shops and houses. He heard the unmistak able noise of rowdy drinking from taverns, the sounds of households preparing for the day, the rumble of manufac turing houses and craft shops — all the bustle of a major city.
"So this is Thorbardin," he said, his wonder almost over shadowing his predicament.
"One of the cities of Thorbardin," his escort corrected him. "City of the Theiwar of Thane Realgar."
They marched down a wide avenue in almost total dark ness, the only light coming from small wall torches, and shed by fires in hearths and cookstoves glowing in the build ings. Flint had no trouble seeing in the dark, and he sus pected that the derro were even more at home in it than he was. This city was as large as any Flint had ever been in, and it was only one of many! For the first time Flint began to grasp the enormity of the mountain dwarf kingdom.
Finally they turned off the avenue into what looked like a side street. A clanking of metal suddenly drew Flint's eyes upward in alarm, fresh with the memory of the cage that had snared him earlier. The noise did come from a cage of sorts, but this one was an enclosure of metal bars suspended from a heavy chain. With a crash the contraption settled into a square frame of metal that stood before them. The frawl stepped forward and opened the cage.
"What's this?" growled Flint. "An underground cell isn't good enough?" A derro prodded him forward sharply while the captain looked at him in surprise. "It's a lift. You really are a barbarian, aren't you? Step in. We're riding to level three, for an… interview." She and two guards joined him in the cage.
"Then what?" Flint scowled, trying to cover his nervous ness as the cage suddenly lurched upward. The mountain dwarves seemed to be indifferent to the gently swaying movement.