Then he stared into the haze of the distance, and it was as though his vision were more keen than it had ever been before. He swept closer until he stood in the middle of a battle, untouched by enemy blade, laying waste to all sides. He saw a host of foes, dead and dying all around him. He saw an army of Neidar, charging at his command, sweeping toward a high fortress.
Yes, he, Harn Poleaxe, was a great leader of dwarves!
He recognized the fortress even as his consciousness slipping away: the two towers, the long connecting wall, and the gate-the gate standing open to admit him, to admit his army.
Finally, the towers and walls came crashing down, and Harn Poleaxe stood victorious upon the wreckage of Pax Tharkas.
The minion soared over the town of hill dwarves, flying low since the lights were dimmed with most of the citizens retired for the night. The red and white moons had set, leaving the black moon master of the skies-for those, like the minion, who could sense its presence. The creature watched from the air as the dwarf maid who had burned it with her horrible staff stalked into the street, accompanied by her dog and the gully dwarf that was the creature’s quarry. But she still walked with that pole in her hand, swinging it easily at her side, and the minion dared not approach, for fear of that searing brightness.
Snarling like a rasp of wind through dry branches, the monster banked, hovering above the two dwarves and the dog. Its nostrils flared and its red eyes glowed as it sought the spoor of the treasure that the gully dwarf carried, the flask of potion that he had stolen from the wizard in Thorbardin. The minion’s keen senses probed, seeking, looking, smelling. Its master had commanded it to retrieve that elixir, and it had to find it.
But to its great surprise, its senses told it that the potion was no longer carried by either the gully dwarf or the female.
Once again the gaunt creature veered, curling through the skies over the town, circling, roaming, seeking. It found itself in a quandary, one of conflicting goals: the wizard had charged it with killing the Aghar and returning to Thorbardin with the missing potion. No longer was the potion in the possession of the gully dwarf, though.
The minion stared at the dwarves as they strode rapidly down the road and out of town, thinking of that tall, magical staff.
The dwarves could go, for the time being. The minion would circle in the skies over the town and try to figure out what had happened to the potion.
NINETEEN
B randon awakened with the loud opening of the brig’s door. Several dwarves entered the building and stood near the entrance while the jailer, together with the bullying Neidar called Rune, came swaggering all the way back to the mountain dwarf’s cell. Rune flourished a sword while the turnkey unlocked the barrier and pulled it open. Brandon wondered what the bullying Neidar had done with his venerable axe.
“Time to come out and play,” Rune sneered. “You get to be the center of attention!”
Pushing himself to his feet, Brandon emerged from the cell. But they didn’t know his hands were no longer tied. He owed the dwarf maid historian a favor, he reckoned.
Abruptly he jabbed his elbow into the jailer so hard, he knocked the dwarf into one of the barred doors. With a curse and a clatter of metal, the filthy turnkey tumbled to the floor.
“Watch yourself!” Rune declared, jabbing the tip of his sword against Brandon’s side until the prisoner swiftly twisted out of the way and grabbed the hill dwarf by the wrist, pinning his sword hand against the bars of an adjacent cell.
“Hey-how’d you get your hands untied?” Rune demanded, squirming. The jailer scrambled to his feet and moved toward Brandon, but he froze at the glare from the burly Hylar.
The other dwarves at the door, swords drawn, edged closer, and Brandon could see there was no escape. Releasing Rune’s wrist and brushing past the jailer, Brandon shrugged and continued toward the outer door and the painfully bright daylight outside.
“Good luck,” he heard the Theiwar prisoner say loudly, and he grunted an acknowledgment.
It was morning, he saw as he emerged, and Hillhome was bustling with pedestrians. At first he guessed that the moderately crowded street was busy with hill dwarves making their way to work. Only most of them weren’t going to jobs. They were going to his trial.
Rune prodded him down the steps and toward the middle of town. The gathered hill dwarves watched him with barely concealed hostility, and the bulk of the crowd followed along as the Neidar led his prisoner toward a small square in the center of Hillhome.
A raised platform occupied one end of the open area. A pair of hill dwarf guards, each carrying a long-hafted battle axe, stood to either side of a large, thronelike chair-which was unoccupied. To the left, a wooden rack had been erected, and judging from the manacles attached to the upper and lower supports, Brandon deduced that the contraption was a means of immobilizing, while undoubtedly torturing, a spread-eagled prisoner. He felt a twinge of fear but resolved not to give his captors the satisfaction of seeing him squirm. Instead, he swaggered into the plaza with all the bravado he could muster.
The edges of the square were crowded with muttering hill dwarves, mostly males conspicuously armed with a variety of weapons. They glared at Brandon as he was pushed into the center of the square. Rune stood right behind the prisoner, his sharp blade prodding the mountain dwarf at intervals. The dwarf from Kayolin tried to scan the crowd, looking for a glimpse of blonde hair, of that pretty, oval face with the small, upturned nose. He felt surprisingly dejected when he realized Gretchan Pax wasn’t here to record his fate.
“All set for the festivities, are you?”
He turned to see Slate Fireforge eyeing him. The hill dwarf had ambled up behind him, and while his expression wasn’t exactly friendly, nor was it as hostile as so many others in the crowd.
“Don’t see that I have much choice,” Brandon replied with a shrug, trying to appear nonchalant. He squinted at Fireforge. “Why’d you stop him from killing me that morning up in the hills? You don’t believe him, do you? You know I’m not really a spy, don’t you?”
Fireforge made a face, half bemused, half grimace. “Can’t say one way or the other, to tell the truth. But I believe there’s a proper way to do things, and slicing your head off on a rock up there just didn’t seem, well, proper. And Harn Poleaxe knew that too, or he wouldn’t have listened to me.”
“He seems to be a pretty important fellow around here. Why is everyone so anxious to do anything he says?”
The hill dwarf pondered the question for a while but finally answered. “He comes from money-his father was the richest goldsmith in the north hills. And he’s always been a leader. Quite handy with a sword… and with the ladies.”
“And with a bottle,” Brandon noted, his bitterness showing.
“Aye-uh, that too. But mainly it was when that old woman, whom they call the Mother Oracle, came to town, ’bout ten years ago. She took him under her wing, so to speak, and he’s been on a run of good luck and prosperity since then. I hear it was her sent him to Kayolin, to look for that stone you brought down here.”
“Who’s this Mother Oracle?” Brandon asked.
“An old, blind dwarf woman, is all,” Fireforge replied. “Claims to have some mystical powers. I guess she’s given Harn Poleaxe some good advice, though.” He nodded at the other side of the plaza, where the crowd was starting to stir. “Looks like the show’s about to start. Good luck to you,” he said, apparently sincere.
“I’ll need it,” Brandon muttered. “But I don’t think I’m going to get it.”
He stared at the platform with its lofty chair, a veritable throne, and was not surprised to see Harn Poleaxe swagger into view, pushing his way through the crowd that parted for him. He was dressed in a fur cape and shiny black boots, looking for all the world as if he were the lord of the place.