“Who are you?” he asked.
“An enemy of your enemy!” gasped Brandon. “How about a chop against these brackets?”
With a wicked grin, the mountain dwarf brought his bloody axe blade down, splitting the beam holding his ankle bracelets. Another sideways whack broke the side support, and the square rack tumbled apart, falling to the ground and taking Brandon with it.
“All right. But now you’re on your own, pal,” cried his rescuer, joining his companions as the attack moved on, spreading across the plaza.
Despite being burdened with armor and shields, the Klar moved swiftly. The Neidar had fallen back but were once again rallying around Harn Poleaxe. However, they were scattered by the Klar’s charge, and even their hulking commander stumbled back-though not before Poleaxe felled a pair of Klar with crushing, well-aimed blows.
Meanwhile Brandon was kicking his feet, sliding the loop of chain free from the splintered board. Twisting and pulling with his muscular arms, he broke the rest of the frame apart. He was still secured by four manacles, each with a thick chain attached, but no longer were those cuffs anchored by heavy wood. He jumped free of the pile of debris and firewood, albeit hung with chains and attached brackets and manacles on his wrists and ankles.
He couldn’t get very far that way, he realized. He needed the key.
Rune! He remembered that his old tormentor had locked him into those brackets, and perhaps the hill dwarf still possessed the key. Stumbling forward, dragging his chains, Brandon lunged across the square toward where his foe had fallen. Rune was still there, bleeding from the hard blow to his head but struggling to rise, pushing himself to his hands and knees.
Brandon fell on him with the full pent-up fury of his betrayal. He swung his arm, heavily smacking the hill dwarf on the side of the head with a wildly lashing length of heavy chain. When Rune went down again, Brandon climbed on top of him, reaching under his tunic for the key he wore on the thong around his neck. The Neidar barely twitched, groaning and resisting only feebly as Brandon pulled the key out.
Twisting around and sitting on the immobilized Rune, Brandon quickly worked the bit of metal into the locks on his right and left wrists, freeing his hands. Next came the locks on his ankles, and finally he was able to shed all of his trappings and stand on his feet, once again a free dwarf. Maybe, finally, his luck was changing for the better! Almost as an afterthought, he reached down and smacked Rune one more time. Then he snatched Rune’s sword off the ground, looking to take his place in the fight.
But he quickly saw that, while he had been busily freeing himself, the tide had turned. More and more hill dwarves, some fully equipped with battle gear, had continued to pour into the square, and the reinforcements outnumbered the attackers by at least two to one. The mountain dwarves were gradually falling back, following with discipline the lead of their commander, whom Brandon spotted in the thick of the action shouting out orders-a handsome, blond male with exotic eyes and long, free-flowing hair.
Brandon groaned as the blond Klar, passing the platform where he had just undergone his “trial,” stopped and stared at something. Eyes widening, the Klar leader snatched up the pouches containing the two stones. He opened one, and his teeth flashed a grin.
“Fall back!” the Klar captain brayed. “Tight ranks! Retreat!”
“No!” shouted Brandon, but his voice was drowned out in the melee.
The Klar had secured the pouch around his waist. The mountain dwarves, forming a tight rank, backed out of the square and down the street from which the attack had burst. The Neidar pursued them, but the Klar force was like a bristling hedgehog, spears and swords pointing out from behind shields, lethal to any pursuer who dared to draw close.
“They take the stones! Fall on them! Kill them!” Harn Poleaxe cried, cursing frenziedly. Spittle flew from his lips and his face, distorted by rage, seemed to erupt in several more grotesque warts. Brandon could only stare as the Neidar mob, led by his nemesis, raced past him, mere yards away, without taking the slightest notice of one dwarf rooted in place.
Behind the Neidar fighters, villagers were swiftly moving through the suddenly quiet, abandoned areas, tending to the wounded, pulling cloaks over the faces of the dead. Several Neidar approached Rune, and Brandon stepped quietly away, averting his face. He was not dressed in black armor, so the hill dwarves paid him little attention. He took one longing glance at his axe, where it lay on the table beside Harn’s throne, but there were at least a dozen hill dwarves up there. He didn’t dare try to retrieve it at that moment.
So he watched the diminishing battle as it moved away from him and realized with a surge of emotion that he was alive, no worse for the wear; he had been unusually lucky, even if the Bluestone was once again gone from his hands. He thrust his captured sword through his belt, trotted down a side street, and made his way down a lane up and away from town.
From there, he would follow the progress of the retreating mountain dwarves and, Reorx willing, recover his family stone.
TWENTY
H arn Poleaxe led his hill dwarves in another frantic charge, but again and again the Neidar hurled themselves against a solid shield wall of Klar. Poleaxe himself cut down his share of the enemy dwarves, stabbing one laggard then splintering another Klar’s shield, helmet, and skull with a single downward smash of his great sword. Unfortunately, that last blow also snapped off the blade of his weapon, and the huge Neidar finally had to drop back.
Gasping for breath, he felt as demoralized as his town mates. They had pursued the Klar for more than a mile out of town, at first along the road, then into the narrow side valley. Here and there the mountain dwarves had paused to form up a rearguard. The enemy captain was, cleverly, leading the retreating company through a narrow niche in a rocky ridge. The mountain dwarves were able to bar the entrance to the pass with just ten or a dozen of their number while the rest of the column made good their escape.
The number of pursuing Neidar had swelled to more than five hundred, but they were defeated finally by the narrow confines. At least two dozen of Poleaxe’s followers had fallen, and the shoulder-to-shoulder press of mountain dwarves holding the gap showed no signs of weakening. Whenever they found an opportunity, the manic Klar even lunged forward, cutting down a couple of hill dwarves who were too slow to jump out of the way.
The panting, exhausted Neidar were nearing the end of their endurance. Several burly warriors looked at Poleaxe nervously, fingering their weapons and eyeing the impermeable barrier of Klar shields. The dwarves of Hillhome, though they had successfully driven the enemy from their town, were not as well equipped, nor mentally prepared, for a pitched battle on such a steep and rocky slope.
Rage seethed through Poleaxe’s veins, muscles, flesh, but he understood that rage alone would not carry the day.
“Fall back,” Harn ordered, his voice tight through clenched jaws. “We’ll take the war to them soon enough.”
Slowly the Neidar backed away from the line of Klar, ignoring the taunts-“Run away, old women! Go back to your nursemaids’ teats!”-hurled by the victorious raiders. Most infuriating of all, to Harn, was the knowledge that the mountain dwarves had borne away not just the Bluestone, but the Greenstone as well, from the town.
He blamed himself for forgetting all about the precious artifacts when the fight started. The stupid Klar probably didn’t even know what they had in their possession. The Mother Oracle would be very angry. And Harn was suffering from an almost unbearable thirst. His parched throat seemed barely to allow the passage of breath, and his tongue felt swollen in his mouth.