“No incidents reported overnight, my thane,” Axeblade replied. He had been one of Tarn’s loyal captains during the civil war, and Bellowgranite had welcomed his choice to follow him into exile. “The night workers lifted twelve tons of rock by the time their shift was over.”
“Good,” Tarn replied. “Looks quiet out there this morning as well.”
“I almost wish something would happen around here!” huffed Otaxx. Ever a man of action, he chafed as the long, empty years passed by.
But there was more to his glum nature. Both of the dwarves bore a burden Tarn couldn’t fully appreciate, as they were among the few Daewar who had remained behind in Thorbardin when Severus Stonehand, the Mad Prophet, had marched away with the bulk of the clan on his mad quest to regain ancient Thoradin. None of those dwarves had ever been heard from again, and they had long been given up for lost by those they had left behind.
Axeblade’s parents had gone with Stonehand, but Otaxx had suffered an even more grievous loss. His wife of twenty years, pregnant with their first child, had also departed on the quixotic quest for the lost kingdom. Ever true to his duty-which he vested toward the whole kingdom, not just his Daewar clan-Otaxx Shortbeard had been unable to follow his pregnant wife, for to do so would have betrayed the oath he had sworn to his king, Tarn Bellowgranite. Even though Tarn had given him leave to go, Otaxx had elected to remain behind; he had been a source of great strength to Tarn and all Thorbardin during the dark years after the Chaos War. But Otaxx sorely missed his wife, and pined for the child he had never known-the child that might not even have made it to birth.
He was too old to fight anymore, however, and Tarn knew he spent his days remembering his bride and second-guessing his path in life. Always gruff, Otaxx had become more irascible and more depressed as the years passed. He always hoped to hear word of Severus Stonehand’s fate, but no word ever came. Still, he was one of the few who clung to some hope the Mad Prophet’s expedition might not have met complete disaster.
“Any word from Garn Bloodfist?” the thane asked with some trepidation.
“I sent him another message two days ago; he’s on campaign in the hill country, but I haven’t heard back,” Axeblade said.
Tarn nodded, not surprised. Garn was the captain of the Klar contingent of the Tharkadan garrison. Some three hundred strong, the dwarves of that impetuous, high-strung clan were unsuited to the steady labor of rock-hauling required for work on Pax Tharkas. They craved action, and Tarn had found it impossible to keep them immobile in the fortress; the inevitable fights and fits and brawls were too disruptive to the rest of his band.
So every so often the Klar marched out of Pax Tharkas to raid the hill dwarves who lived in countless small towns throughout the vast foothills of the mountain range. Sometimes they killed some Neidar, and sometimes they lost some Klar. Almost always they returned with plunder and food, which they shared willingly enough with the rest of the garrison. Though Tarn didn’t condone their dubious activities, he knew that the Klar kept the hill dwarves off balance and probably prevented them from marshalling their forces all at once to lay siege to his fortress. Still, Garn Bloodfist was a bit of a loose catapult, and the thane could never be sure exactly what kind of trouble he would make.
“Well, let me know if you get a message,” Tarn said not very hopefully.
“Aye, my thane. I will.”
He left the two Daewar and headed down the stairs, past the ready room, into the many levels of living quarters that filled the lower half of the east tower. On the fourth of those, he left the stairs, walked down a short hall, and opened the door to his open, private treasure room.
“Papa!” Tor cried. The robust ten-year-old raced over to his father, proudly holding up a wooden sword. “Look what I made! Otaxx Shortbeard promised to teach me how to parry once I have a sword! Look what I can do!” He waved the sword wildly.
Tarn chuckled, leaning down to embrace his son. “Why don’t you go show Otaxx; I’m sure he can teach you a trick or two.”
Next he hugged Tara, two years younger than her brother. He let her nuzzle his beard, as she loved to do; then he carried her around the playroom on his shoulders, her whoops and shrieks brightening his day like nothing else. Only when he was out of breath did he put her down, promising to return in a few minutes.
He went into the bedroom, then, and found his wife, Crystal Heathstone, standing at the window, as she often did, as he had known she would be doing. She turned to look at him, the anguish on her face tearing at his heart. She would always be a hill dwarf, daughter of a former clan leader, and her life as the wife of a mountain dwarf ruler had not been easy, he knew.
“Garn Bloodfist has taken the Klar out again, hasn’t he?” she said, and he knew it wasn’t really a question.
He merely nodded.
She sighed and shrugged off his touch when he went over to her. “One of these days, he’s going to stir up a hornet’s nest, and that could be the end for us all,” she declared.
“The hornets are always buzzing,” Tarn pointed out. “Sometimes Garn swats them away.”
“Why can he only do it through war?” she demanded.
He shrugged, wishing they weren’t having that conversation. “It’s always been that way,” he pointed out.
“Not always!” she retorted. “It had a beginning: the Cataclysm. Why can’t there be an end? Why can’t we end it?”
“We’re dwarves,” he replied, not knowing what else to say. “War is in our nature. You might as well try to stop the sun from moving through the sky.”
She looked at him with a strange expression, a look that, to Tarn, was more scathing even than a glare of contempt. When she spoke, it was almost to herself. “Once, I thought you might be the kind of dwarf who would try to do just that, and to the Abyss with the consequences.”
He turned on his heel and went to the door, tense and angry. He would not slam it, not when his daughter was so near, but he looked at Crystal as if he didn’t recognize her.
“Maybe I was that dwarf, once. But I’ve seen too much. I’m not him now. I’m not that Tarn Bellowgranite anyway, not anymore.”
FIFTEEN
B randon’s mouth felt as dry as a bale of cotton and still tasted of bile. His head throbbed inside because of the lingering residue of the dwarf spirits, and it throbbed outside, where it had been bruised by Harn Poleaxe’s powerful blows. Yet for all his physical aches, he felt emotionally worse. It seemed clear that his family’s poor luck had at last found its nadir. For he had allowed the Bluestone, the symbol and the reality of his family’s legacy, to fall into the hands of a treacherous hill dwarf.
And the Neidar were treacherous, Brandon realized-almost incomprehensibly so! His mind reeled as he recalled Harn Poleaxe’s cheerful camaraderie, his friendly advice as he’d escorted the young Hylar across half of Ansalon. By Reorx, he’d been using his victim to carry the treasure that was his true quarry! And all the while, Poleaxe had been responsible for Nailer’s murder-even if he had not actually wielded the fatal sword-and for the betrayal of Brandon’s and Nailer’s claim to the ruthless and avaricious Heelspurs.
The bitterness of the reality made Brandon sick to his stomach. What a cruel irony: the hill dwarf who drank so freely, and so carelessly, had used alcohol-apparently enhanced with some kind of soporific drug-to immobilize his victim.
“Move it!” One of the Neidar prodded him with his own axe, and he stumbled as he tried to balance on feet and legs that were numbed from their bonds. Angrily he shook off the push. Shaking his head, gritting his teeth, he started to walk.