"I didn't need a scholar to tell me that. Go on!"
"He hates orcs and elves with a vengeance and his life is devoted to warfare. He fights with uncommon zeal."
"You know my brother well." His twin laughed. "Just don't let him hear you say so! And what of me?" he inquired eagerly, passing him a pipe.
"You have a gentler temperament. Your mind is sharper and you're willing to listen to other people's ideas." Tungdil drew on the pipe. "Your brown eyes are friendly, whereas your brother's… I can't describe the look in his eyes."
Boлndal clapped his hands softly. "True, all true."
"Why did the two of you become warriors?"
"Neither of us has any talent for masonry, so we decided to join the guard. The secondlings are custodians of the High Pass, the steep-sided gorge through the Blue Range. At ground level, the pass is fifty paces wide, but its walls are over a thousand paces high, and the sides slope inward after eight hundred paces, leaving the path in shadow except for a short span of time when the sun is directly above."
"Sounds pretty gloomy to me."
"Throughout our history a handful of custodians have defended our kingdom against invaders, no matter how powerful their ranks."
"Don't you have a portal like the fifthlings' Stone Gateway?"
"No, our forefathers cut a trench in the path, forty paces long and a hundred paces deep. On our side of the trench they built a rampart with a mechanical bridge. The engineers worked on the design for almost as long as it took for the masons to hew the trench." Boлndal paused, recalling the genius of the engineering. "They made a collapsible walkway from thin slabs of stone. It's incredibly light but can bear any load. At full extension, it rests on columns that rise up at the pull of a lever from the base of the trench, but the bridge can be retracted instantly by means of chains, cogs, and ropes."
Tungdil was lost for words. "That's…I've never heard anything like it! But what happens when orcs or ogres force their way onto the bridge?"
"We send them crashing into the trench. Tion's creatures are forever littering the fosse with their bones." He laughed softly. "One lot were so determined that they catapulted each other to the opposite side. Most died on impact; the others felt the fury of our axes."
Tungdil joined in his mirth. "If I were trying to cross over," he said thoughtfully, "I'd fill in the fosse or climb down and up the other side."
"They thought of that too, but they didn't stand a chance. There was only one occasion when our folk came close to going the same way as poor Giselbert's dwarves." Like every secondling, Boлndal knew this episode of his kingdom's history by heart. "An army of ogres had the same idea as you. On reaching the trench, they didn't even try to find a way of bridging it; they just climbed down carefully, waded through the bones of their ancestors, and appeared before us in their hundreds."
"But the secondlings managed to stop them?"
"Why do you think it's called Ogre's Death?" Boпndil chimed in chippily. "Can't you keep the noise down when I'm trying to get some sleep?" He rolled closer and gazed into the fire. "I'm wide-awake now, thanks to you!"
He fetched some cheese from his pack and melted it over the flames. This time Tungdil accepted a morsel. It didn't taste nearly as bad as he'd thought.
Boлndal resumed his story. "The ogres had got as far as storming the ramparts when their chieftain was killed. That was our salvation. Without their leader, the ogres didn't know what to do and our warriors succeeded in pushing them back to the edge of the trench. They fell to their deaths. But that was a long time ago, when Boпndil and I were still in nappies. There hasn't been a single attack on the High Pass for at least thirty cycles."
"No wonder." His twin guffawed. "The beasts are too scared of us. Actually, the High Pass has been so quiet lately that Gundrabur decided to send us in search of you." He looked across the fire at Tungdil and his brown eyes glinted. "You were right, of course. I was born to fight. Combat is my calling; it's who I am."
"And I go where he goes. Twins belong together; find one and you'll find both. It's just the way it is."
"Does every dwarf have a calling, then?" asked Tungdil, wondering what his might be. "Do you think I'll be a stone hauler or a trench digger, or will I be an artisan with a proper talent?"
"Most fourthlings are gem cutters and diamond polishers. Maybe trinkets are your thing?"
Tungdil had never taken much of an interest in precious stones. Lot-Ionan possessed a few items of jewelry and Tungdil had enjoyed looking at the sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and amethysts because of the way in which they caught the light. He had never felt the slightest urge to craft a sparkling jewel from uncut stone, though.
"I don't think so." There was a hint of disappointment in Tungdil's voice. "For as long as I can remember, I've been drawn to the forge. The smell of molten iron, tongues of fire that writhe like living things, the ring of the hammer, the hiss of hot metal as it enters the water-ever since I saw my first anvil, that's what being a dwarf has meant for me."
"You'll be a smith, then," Boпndil said approvingly. "A scholarly smith. Very dwarflike."
Tungdil shuffled closer to the fire and tried to divine the secrets of his inner self. He pictured mountains of diamonds and then a column of dancing orange sparks rising from a furnace. He felt more affinity with the furnace. Gold appealed to him too, though; he loved its soft warm shimmer.
"I like gold as well, you know," he confessed in a whisper. "I pick up any lost gold I can find-gold pieces, gold jewelry, gold dust dropped by prospectors. I collect it all."
The brothers roared with laughter. "He's got himself his own private hoard! If that isn't properly dwarven, I don't know what is. You'll be a warrior soon," Boпndil promised him, reaching for the pipe.
"I don't know," Tungdil said doubtfully. "The way you and Boлndal can fight and win against the odds. I'll never-"
"There's no such thing as having the odds against you," Boпndil broke in. "Some challenges are bigger than others; that's all there is to it."
"All the same, I feel safer at the anvil; a forge is where I belong." Tungdil decided not to dwell on the matter, so he opened his knapsack and pulled out Gorйn's books. The brothers watched as he slid the volumes out of their wax covering and examined them carefully.
"Well, what do they say, scholar?" Boпndil demanded impatiently. "Maybe that's your calling, to be a learned scribe or an engineer. The dwarves are renowned for being prodigious inventors."
"I can't make head or tail of them." To his immense disappointment, even the wording on the spine was written in scholarly script. "They were written for magi." In some ways it was surprising that Gorйn, an ordinary wizard, had been able to read them at all.
Tungdil tapped his forehead and scolded himself for being so slow. He had forgotten that the elf maiden would have been familiar with the workings of high magic. She must have helped Gorйn unlock the secrets of the books.
He stroked the leather binding of the books. Why are their contents so important to the дlfar? Since when have the elves' dark relatives been afraid of parchment and ink?
"We'll find out soon enough from Lot-Ionan," he said, trying to rally their spirits. He was just returning the books to their wrapping when his gaze fell on the bag of artifacts. It had suffered visibly from the journey. In spite of the hard-wearing leather, the pouch was bleached from the sun and scuffed in several places, and there were sweat marks and grease stains where it had come into contact with his food. A faint line stretched across its surface like a scar, an eternal reminder of its run-in with the orcish sword.
The longer Tungdil looked at the pouch, the more he desired to look inside. He had been fighting the urge to undo the colored drawstrings for some time.