Brandon was having a great time, even though he was down to his last two coins after a couple of hours. He noticed, vaguely, that the four soldiers were also short on coins, while Harn Poleaxe had somehow amassed a rather impressive pile of the valuable steel pieces. Perhaps Brandon was aware that the emperor’s men were not having as much fun as he was, but he was still surprised when the fight erupted.
For some reason, Bennett broke his mug over Harn’s head, an act that did little more than get the big Neidar to freeze, raise his eyebrows irritably, and rise to his feet with a grin and a roar-somehow sliding his coin stack into his purse at the same time. Poleaxe swung a wild punch at the pikeman. The blow failed to connect with its intended target while knocking out the soldier sitting directly to Bennett’s left.
Another of the men lunged at Brandon, who defended himself instinctively, first breaking the fellow’s hold around his neck then clocking him with a punch that smashed his nose into a flat purple bruise. Harn, meanwhile, grasped the necks of both Bennett and the fourth man and pulled, crunching the two heads together and letting the men flop, unconscious, onto the table.
Somehow, however, the two dwarves had failed to notice that the bar was heavily crowded with other humans who were all wearing the same blue tunics as their gambling companions. Those soldiers wasted no time in joining in, lunging after the dwarves, and for a lively ten minutes, the two traveling companions stood back to back, enjoyably defending themselves against thrown chairs and bottles, punches and kicks.
Then a bugle suddenly sounded, and the whole bar cleared out, seemingly in the space of an instant, leaving only the two dwarves and about a dozen pikemen who were unconscious, injured, or simply too stunned to scramble away. The front door-none of the fleeing soldiers had departed that way-burst open, and three tall knights came striding in. Their heavy armor was decorated with the image of a white crown on their chests. The largest marched forward, looming over the dwarves, and glared down at them with his hands on his chest. Brandon, no stranger to facial hair, couldn’t help but be impressed by the fellow’s long, feathered mustaches.
“What in the name of all the gods is going on here?” he demanded.
“Who wants to know?” shot back Harn Poleaxe, trying to step forward and being quickly restrained by Brandon’s strong arm.
“We were fairly defending ourselves, your lordship,” the Hylar said politely.
The knight looked in contempt at the scattered soldiers, some of whom, groaning, were trying to sit up or push themselves to their feet. “Against this rabble?” he asked.
“We were led to believe they were honorable soldiers,” Brandon explained. “But they didn’t take kindly to my companion’s success at knucklebones.”
“What kind of success?” the knight demanded, looming closer.
“None of your-oof!” Harn’s retort was interrupted by Brandon’s elbow to his guts.
“Show him,” the mountain dwarf encouraged in a conversational tone.
Grudgingly, the Neidar pulled out his money purse and displayed the steel coins. The knight reached in and helped himself to a handful, eyeing Poleaxe sternly, while Brandon kept a tight grip on his companion’s arm-partly to hold him back and partly to hold him up, for the Neidar was starting to sway alarmingly.
“How long are you planning to stay in town?” the knight asked when he had taken his share, glaring at them. “Do I need to clear space in my dungeon for you?”
“We’re leaving first thing in the morning,” Brandon said at once.
“Yeah. First thing,” Harn agreed sullenly.
“Very well,” the knight replied, smiling tightly. “We can escort you to a nice room by the waterfront. You don’t want to be late for the morning tide.”
ELEVEN
The High Kharolis is the loftiest, most extensive mountain range upon the continent of Ansalon. The summits are grand and numerous, and while they are not so craggy as some of the Khalkist Mountains and they are not fiery volcanoes like the Lords of Doom, their majesty is apparent to anyone within fifty miles of the foothills of the range. They cap the great subterranean city of Thorbardin and have long been a fastness of the dwarf race. The mountain dwarves preferred to live under the mountains themselves, while the hill dwarves populated the outer valleys, their towns and villages too numerous to count, spreading out over nearly all of the habitable space below the range’s timberline.
Late at night those communities mostly slumbered. Here and there sounds of raucous celebration-punches landing on noses, curses exchanged, crockery smashed over heads, kicks bouncing off kneecaps-indicated not all the hill dwarves had turned in for the night. Mostly those revelries were confined to the village inns and taverns, though in a few cases the sounds arose from private homes, part of the sweet togetherness that was the typical dwarf marriage. In most of the houses, a fire ebbed on the hearth or a candle glimmered in a window, giving a pastoral illumination to the simple villages in the Kharolis valleys.
Of course, in the great undermountain realm, there was no night, no day. Forges smoked and smiths banged away throughout the great city of Norbardin. Farmers worked the great food warrens, some using the mighty Urkhan worms to pull their implements through the moist loam, others harvesting fungus in a hundred varieties or fish from their breeding ponds for hauling the next morning to the city’s famed market. But those activities occurred out of sight of the world and, for most, out of awareness.
The highest summit of the Kharolis was the mountain known as Cloudseeker. Eternally shrouded in snow and glacier, it was a massive peak made even more monumental by the fact it was not completely surrounded by cliffs. Instead, it rose from the bedrock with broad shoulders, long, sinuous ridges connecting to the lower summits, and slopes leading down to the valleys with their forests and lakes. It was one of the loftiest mountains in the world, but because of those long, gradual slopes, it was not impossible to climb. Still, the thin air, cold temperatures, and constant winds made the climb inhospitable.
Right then the summit was occupied by a very solitary, very frightened, and very confused gully dwarf.
Gus huddled on the ground, clutching his knees to his chest, shivering and getting colder by the second. He tried to worm his way deeper into the soft surface, but that didn’t seem to be warming him up. His rump and legs were not only cold, he realized, but wet! With a yelp, he bounced to his feet and took a closer look at the surface under his feet.
“What kind of bluphsplunging rock are you?” he demanded of that surface.
It was not stone, he realized (almost) at once. It was soft and, yes, wet and oddly pale in color, like a cave carp’s belly. He had seen white stone before, but that was just like the black or gray or any other color of stone-hard and bruising. The white stuff under his feet was slushy, more like extremely cold mud, which he sank in up to his knees. He could kick through it, though when it clumped in through the holes in his boots, it made his feet very cold. When he picked some up, it packed into a solid sphere in his hand, cold and wet.
Maybe it was some kind of food, he thought, as his belly rumbled. He tasted it and was surprised when it seemed to turn to water in his mouth.
All in all, the stuff was not very promising. Still, it was more comforting to look down than to look up. When he did turn his face toward the top of the world, he saw those countless specks of light and nothing else. It was as if a multitude of candles burned in the loftiest reaches of that place, but even their light was not enough for him to make out whatever kind of ceiling it was that vaulted over his head. How the many candles could simply float in the air and not light up the roof was a riddle beyond his comprehension.