“So we’re going right to the docks when we get there?” he asked hopefully.
“Nah,” Harn said breezily. “There’s an inn I know in the castle district. Friendly folk, even some dwarves. Like as not we’ll be able to rustle up a game or two of knucklebones. You know, a little social activity before we head out on the water.”
Harn gave an involuntary shiver at the word water, and Brandon sympathized. The idea of travel by sea held little appeal for any dwarf. They were traveling by ship because there was no other way to get back to Harn’s hill country, in the rugged foothills of the Kharolis Mountains, which wasn’t too far from fabled Thorbardin itself.
Yet despite his reluctance to leave dry land behind, Brandon was even more reluctant to stay in the Solamnic city any longer than was strictly necessary.
“Remember what happened in Garnet?” he prodded, noticing that Harn had produced his flask of dwarf spirits and was leaning back to swizzle a long gulp. Brandon glumly shook his head when his companion generously extended the bottle toward him.
“Of course I do,” the Neidar declared irritably. “I told you, it was vital that we buy horses! And it was. Sore as your ass is right now, trust me, you didn’t want to walk that long road on foot. We’d still be coming up on the Kingsbridge, fifty miles back!”
“It took two hours to buy horses,” Brandon pointed out. “We were in Garnet for four days!”
Although he was complaining, Brandon had to admit that the days-and, especially, the nights-in the bustling city at the foot of the Garnet range had been an eye-opening experience and not without its share of good times. Three days after walking out of Kayolin’s main gate, the two dwarves had emerged from the foothills and entered the first city, other than Garnet Thax, that Brandon had ever visited in his life.
The sights and sounds and smells had been overwhelming-tantalizing and thrilling, even. The population was mostly human, but the people were very amenable to dwarves-and dwarven coin. Harn had led his young companion immediately to his favorite inn, where the Neidar had proceeded to get drunk and make friends with everyone in the place. Brandon had been preoccupied taking in the sights, talking to the first humans he had ever met-the women, in particular, seemed taken by his broad shoulders and friendly, easygoing grin-and sampling some of the meat and bread and cheese that wasn’t available in sunless Kayolin. Besides he couldn’t keep up with Poleaxe on a drink-for-drink basis.
That was just as well because the Neidar overdrank and needed Brandon’s help just to walk from the first inn to another of his favorite places, where Harn got even drunker. In his third favorite inn, Brandon had pulled his companion out just before a fight erupted, and in the fourth, when the fisticuffs inevitably commenced, Brandon had simply joined in the fun, and the two dwarves had triumphed over all comers in an exhilarating brawl.
But when the same pattern repeated itself the following night, and the night after that, Brandon began to feel a little concerned and restless. Harn kept assuring him he was shopping for the right horses, but the young dwarf grew increasingly skeptical, mainly because they never visited any stables or farms. Finally, on the fourth morning, he had let Harn sleep it off in their boardinghouse room, and Brandon himself had gone in search of a livery stable. Since there seemed to be one on about every other block of Garnet, his search hadn’t taken long. He had purchased a pair of serviceable, if not spectacular mounts, and tipped the stable boy enough that the lad cheerfully showed him how to saddle and bridle the horses, how to stay balanced on said saddle, plus a few tips on food and water requirements for the mounts. The transaction cost him ten of the eighty coins his father had sent with him, but he deemed the investment worth it. By the time Harn had woken up, groggy and hungover, Brandon was waiting outside their lodgings with the horses raring to go and all their possessions packed into their saddlebags-except for the Bluestone, which Brandon always kept wrapped and bound in a secret bundle he tucked into the small of his back.
Brandon shrugged and decided not to argue the point. If truth be told, he was hungry and thirsty, and the inn below Caergoth Castle proved to be a convivial place. Brandon was pleased to get a hot meal into his companion before Harn started on his second bottle of dwarf spirits. The young Hylar, by comparison, decided that he would stick with beer, which-much to his surprise-the humans had proved capable of brewing with commendable quality.
As Caergoth was the second human city he had visited, Brandon felt almost like a sophisticate as they wolfed down a hearty meal and listened to a pair of minstrels playing their exotic lutes over in a corner. The two dwarves struck up a conversation with a quartet of pikemen, in uniform but unarmed, who were eating and drinking at the next table.
“Do you serve in the army of the king of Solamnia?” asked Brandon. He was buzzing enough with the effects of his beers that he took no offense when the men reacted with laughter.
“We have no king in Solamnia,” one scoffed. “Haven’t for years.”
“Yeah that’s right, Bennett,” said his companion. “We got something better: an emperor!”
“Guess you ain’t heard,” the one called Bennett said to the dwarves. “We’re an empire again! Why, me and my blokes here, we helped to make it so. Didn’t, we boys?”
“Aye,” said another. “We fought the horde of Ankhar the half-giant when Jaymes Markham was our lord marshal, and we fought him again after he was made emperor! If Ankhar wasn’t dead, I’d be ready to go to war with him and fight with the emperor a third time tomorrow.”
“Aye, and me too,” pledged the fourth pikeman, who looked morosely into his empty glass. “There’s not been a merry war for nigh on a year now!”
“Here, let me buy you lads a round,” said Harn Poleaxe, waving a barmaid over and securing a pitcher of beer for each table. Brandon was quietly glad his companion was eschewing the stronger dwarf spirits, at least for the time being. “Tell us about this war.”
Brandon knew a little something about the campaigns of the Solamnics against the barbarian horde of the half-giant, Ankhar. Regar Smashfingers had sent several companies of dwarves to the emperor’s aid, and his forgers made quite a profit, so it was said, selling strong spring steel to the humans so they could build some newfangled kind of weapon, a bombard it was called, that had proved a decisive factor in the wars. Of course, that highly profitable activity had been limited to the king’s inner circle; the Bluestones hadn’t been involved. Still, since many of the goblins and ogres of Ankhar’s army had been drawn from the valleys of the Garnet Range and had perished in the war, the outcome of the conflict had had a beneficial effect on the dwarven kingdom.
“So how big is this empire?” Brandon wondered, thinking about how much ground he and Poleaxe had covered since they left home. It was a big world, he was beginning to realize, but it was startling to think they had been traveling in one nation that whole time.
“Why, Garnet and Caergoth are just the far south,” Bennett explained. “We got Solanthus and Vingaard and Thelgaard. The empire goes all the way to Palanthas, way in the north. That’s where the emperor has his palace.”
“Say, you fellows wouldn’t be interested in a little wagering, would you?” Harn said casually, pulling out the small bag holding his knucklebones. He rolled the shaped ivories onto the table, smiling as each settled with three points turned up. “I have a few steel coins been burning a hole in my money pouch.”
Before Brandon knew what was happening, the two tables had been pushed together and each of the four men and two dwarves had a small pile of coins stacked before him. Ever mindful of his family’s luck, the young mountain dwarf decided to limit his gambling to twenty steel pieces. They took turns rolling the bones, making bets, passing their steel pieces back and forth, and drinking from the never-ending stream of pitchers that Harn Poleaxe kept ordering.