Geran waited while Grigor carefully opened the case and pulled out the large, yellowed parchment map. He spread it out over the top of his desk; Geran and Hamil stood and gathered around to see it better. The map showed the hills and valleys around Hulburg in exquisite detail, dotted with lakes and bogs and crisscrossed by small streams and old footpaths. Small triangular marks speckled the lands surrounding the Winterspear Vale. “My father hired the mapmaker Wolther to make a survey of the Hulmaster lands,” Grigor explained to Hamil. “It would be more than fifty years ago now, but no one’s ever taken a better measure of the lands around Hulburg.”
“What are the triangles?” the halfling asked.
“Marker cairns,” Geran answered. “You’ve seen a few already-the whitewashed stones out on the Highfells. You’ll see that Jarad’s letters begin by mentioning the cairn nearest to each of the broken barrows. Read them off to me, Hamil.”
The halfling looked back down at Jarad’s letters. “The first is, let me see, ‘Twelve north-northeast, eight hundred yards southeast, right of small rise.’ You can make sense of that?”
“The marker cairn is twelve miles north-northeast of Griffonwatch. From the marker, the barrow is eight hundred yards to the southeast.” Geran found the marker symbol on the old map and carefully marked it with a pin. Hamil read off the rest, and Geran marked each. When he finished, no immediate pattern seemed obvious. Some of the barrows were east of the Winterspear Vale, some were west, and none were particularly close to each other.
“That doesn’t help very much,” Geran said.
“What did you expect to see?” the harmach asked.
Geran sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was hoping that something might seem obvious once we’d looked at all of the locations together.” He looked at Hamil. “How do you feel about sleeping under the stars tonight?”
The halfling grimaced. “It seems likely to rain all day, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“If we leave soon, I imagine we could visit all these sites by midday tomorrow, so it’s only one night out in the Highfells. And there are plenty of herdsmen’s shelters and huts up there, so we’ll probably have a roof over our heads.”
“I think we’d be better off watching the Verunas,” Hamil said sourly. “I propose that we spy out the taverns their armsmen frequent and eavesdrop on them for a few evenings. We’ll have to make ourselves comfortable, eat well, spend coin generously, and feign revelry, but I am willing to make those sacrifices. That seems to offer better prospects than riding around to look at abandoned barrows.”
“We’ll try your suggestion next if the barrows have nothing to say to us.” Geran glanced at his uncle. “Can we borrow paper and ink? I’d like to copy down the locations.”
“Of course.” Grigor found Geran a small journal, and the swordmage carefully copied Jarad’s notes about the barrows that had been found open. He thought he knew at least two of the mounds already, just from Jarad’s descriptions, but distance and direction could be deceptive on the Highfells. Geran did not want to spend hours riding around in circles looking for a marker or a barrow because he hadn’t bothered to write anything down.
When he finished, he tucked the small book into his vest pocket. “Thank you, Uncle,” he said. “We’ll be on our way. I expect we’ll return tomorrow.”
The harmach took his hand. “Be on your guard, Geran. I will see you soon.”
NINE
19 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One
Orange pillars of smoke filled the night sky above the mining town of Glister. It was not much of a town by human standards, of course, little more than a permanent camp and trademeet in the foothills bordering Thar. Few women or children lived there; it was a place where hard and desperate men came to work and wring gold from the ground, gold that they could then carry back to the so-called civilized lands and use to buy better lives. That did not diminish Warchief Mhurren’s pleasure at Glister’s pillage. His nostrils flared wide as he tasted the hot reek-wood, grain, straw, and wool burning in the ruin of the town, and the sweet smell of burning flesh too. That was livestock, of course; the townsfolk had abandoned the town to the Bloody Skulls and their allies. A few screams echoing through the muddy, smoke-filled streets suggested that not all of the town’s inhabitants had fled in time, but that sport wouldn’t keep Mhurren’s warriors entertained for long.
“A good beginning,” Sutha said to him. She stood behind him, dressed in chain mail with the symbol of Luthic, the Cave Mother, hanging on a chain around her neck. The Skull Guards surrounded them both, watching for any danger. Mhurren had reluctantly left Yevelda at Bloodskull Keep. He couldn’t have left the two of them alone while he went off to war, or he was sure that he would have returned home to find one or both of them dead. And Sutha’s priestess-magic was unquestionably useful on the battlefield. “The weaklings fled at the mere sight of us!”
Mhurren shook his head. “They were wise to give up the palisade and the town. We outnumber the humans and filthy dwarves ten to one. We would have slaughtered them all in an hour.”
He pointed to the unconquered stronghold at the top of the steep-sided hill on which the town stood. It was a crude stone fort known as the Anvil. Little more than a thick fieldstone wall enclosing the hilltop, it had a strongly defended gate and a single squat tower. “That is where they will stand and fight. Other tribes before us have plundered the town, but none have taken the Anvil. Glister is not destroyed until it falls.” He grinned at the challenge of it and shook his spear. “Come on, Bloodskulls! I want to hear for myself the bleating of the sheep in their little stone pen.”
He led the way beneath the open gate of the palisade and up through the town’s rough, muddy streets. Glister stood on a rocky prominence in the center of a steep-sided valley in the shadow of the Galena Mountains. The buildings were thick-walled bunkhouses and storehouses of fieldstone and turf, with a few ramshackle wooden buildings scattered here and there. Those accounted for most of the fires, since the stone-and-turf buildings did not burn well at all-one more measure of defense in a town whose location was decided by defense instead of comfort. Mhurren doubted whether there was much worth looting in the parts of the town that had been abandoned to the Bloody Skull horde, but for the moment he was content to let his warriors and their allies have their fun. Soon enough there would be real work at hand.
He heard heavy footsteps and snarling curses approaching from a side street and suppressed a growl of annoyance. The one-eyed priest Tangar stormed up to him, his fangs bared in fury. “We are betrayed!” the servant of Gruumsh roared. “Where are the old, the weak, the women, the children? They have escaped us! The Vaasan warned them of our attack!”
Mhurren scowled, careful not to allow his canines to show. As much as the priest irritated him, he couldn’t risk an open break with Tangar and his followers. “I did not think to surprise them, Tangar,” he answered with more patience than he felt. “We have many spears. Of course the rock-diggers and goat-herders heard of our march. But do not fear-they did not run far.” The scouts told Mhurren that a number of the Glister-folk had fled along the trails leading south to Melvaunt and Hulburg, but Mhurren’s new Red Claw allies were watching those paths. Those humans who hoped to carry their families or their gold to safety would be easy prey for the wolf riders. He pointed up at the fortress with his spear. “Most of the Glister-folk hide behind the walls of the Anvil with their gold and their women. No, they did not run far at all.”
He came to a broken storehouse at the upper end of the town, not more than eighty yards or so from the Anvil’s gatehouse. From there he had a good view of the challenge ahead. A narrow path led up to the sturdy iron-riveted timber gates. The walls of the stronghold were not very tall-twenty feet or so, it seemed-but, other than the path leading to the gatehouse, it was a steep scramble up a bare and open slope to reach the foot of the walls, and Mhurren could see the dark shapes of bowmen and spearmen hiding behind the crenellations, waiting to repel an assault. No doubt the Glister-folk had food and water enough to withstand a siege of a month or more. The humans and dwarves who lived in this remote place had waited out more than one orc or ogre tribe, hiding behind their walls until the besieging forces grew hungry, or bored, or turned against each other.