At a nod from the wizard, Facet stepped up behind one of the officers.
His eyeless face expressionless, Willim addressed his voice to the throng of troops while directing his words at the first doomed soldier.
“Captain Balfour. Your axemen failed to carry the corner redoubt. Do you deny this charge?”
“No, Master. I failed, and I deserve to be punished.” Balfour’s voice was steady, dispassionate.
Willim nodded at Facet, and her hand moved swiftly, the keen blade slicing through Balfour’s thick beard and the equally thick neck underneath. With the wet gurgle of air and blood mixing in his slashed windpipe, the captain pitched forward and lay still in the midst of a puddle of blood.
Facet’s black eyes gleamed and she licked her crimson lips as she took up position behind the next officer.
“Captain De’Range. Your pikemen broke and fled in the face of an enemy counterattack. Do you deny this charge?”
“No, Master!” croaked De’Range, his eyes wide with terror as Facet stepped up to him. The veteran dwarf’s legs shook, and General Darkstone, one step to his left, flashed him a scornful look. Again the wizard nodded; again the keen dagger slashed, and the captain fell beside his fellow officer. Facet took a step to her left, blood still streaming from the knife blade as her eyes came to rest, almost affectionately, upon the general.
“General Darkstone!” Willim barked. The sturdy Daergar veteran stood at attention, eyes front. “You are my army commander. Yet your army failed to win the battle. Do you accept responsibility for your abject performance?”
“Master, I can only offer my worthless life as penance,” Darkstone said stiffly. Despite himself, his eyes shifted warily to Facet. The female wizard was stroking her bloody blade, careless of the sticky liquid covering her fingers. She seemed nonchalant, even bored. Her alabaster features, chiseled and beautiful and as cold as marble, were a warning to the troops who stood rapt below.
Willim nodded. “That is the honorable answer I expected. Therefore, I decline the offer of your life and instead give you this charge: you will lead the next attack, and you will carry the battle into the king’s palace. Do you accept this task?”
“Yes! Thank you! With all my heart and soul, Master-with all my sinew and steel! I shall prove myself worthy of your trust or die in the attempt.”
“Yes,” declared the wizard loudly. “I believe you will.” Willim stepped close to his general and lowered his voice, speaking into Blade Darkstone’s ear. “And when you enter the palace, you may take revenge for your family, for your daughter. You may take the one called Ragat Kingsaver and exact payment in flesh. But the king you shall save for me.”
“Yes, Master. As you command,” Darkstone pledged grimly.
Willim stalked to the very edge of the platform, stepping up onto the knee-high rampart so his assembled troops could see him from his boots to the top of his head. He turned his eyeless face upward and raised his voice to a shrill yell.
“My brave warriors!” he cried. “We will attack again, and this time, I will send a leader before you, one who will sweep the enemy from his entrenchments and pave the stones with his blood. Facet! Bring me the hearts!”
Immediately the female dwarf bent down over the slain captains. With a word of magic, she touched their metal armor, and the breastplates broke open to reveal the lifeless chests underneath. With quick slices of her keen blade, she cut out first Balfour’s then De’Range’s heart. Reverently she carried the still warm organs to the wall, where she knelt and placed them at her master’s feet.
“Thank you, my dear one,” the wizard said, surprising all the dwarves-none so much as Facet herself-with his tender tone and unusual words of endearment. Then he touched her chin, lifted her face toward his, and absorbed the beauty of her perfect features, her blood red lips, the swelling wonder of her magnificent breasts.
He barked loudly again, his words cutting through the vast cavern like a crack of thunder.
“Now, my warriors. Watch and take courage! I shall summon the one who will lead your attack!”
He shouted words of pure magic, and the two hearts swelled and began to spew black smoke.
Meanwhile, far away and blissfully unaware of all that …
Gus Fishbiter, Highbulp of all the Aghar in Pax Tharkas, was living the good life. He had shelter from the weather, food when he needed it, and affectionate female companionship. Furthermore, no one had tried to kill him for as long as he could remember, a span of at least two days. He tried to count the days: one, two, one two. Yes, two.
He reflected on his wonderful fortune as he leaned back on his mattress-packed with real straw! — and watched Berta massage his large and exceptionally filthy feet.
“You miss that one,” he said, wiggling the large toe on his left foot. “Needs a good rub.”
“All right, Highbulp,” Berta said with a sigh. “But how ’bout then you rub my feet?” she asked hopefully.
Gus snorted and chortled. That was one thing he really liked about her: how funny she was. In truth, he was a pretty lucky gully dwarf.
“Finish two feet; then get highbulp some food,” he declared, stretching out and loudly cracking his joints. He yawned, smacked his lips, and indulged in a long, slow, luxurious excavation of his left nostril. His efforts were so productive that he was about to repeat the procedure on the other side when he was distracted by something.
“What that?” he said, his sparsely whiskered chin dropping in astonishment. Something was happening to his wall!
He stared at the side of his throne room-the throne room that was, in fact, merely an unused cellar chamber in the great fortress of Pax Tharkas. Many Aghar-more, even, than two, which was the highest he could count-lived in that cellar and the surrounding, moldy dungeons. They grubbed and rooted and scavenged, as did gully dwarves everywhere on Krynn, surviving on garbage, bugs, rats, blindfish, and whatever scraps they could steal from the other clans of dwarves who occupied the higher reaches of their ancient fortress. They stayed out of Gus’s way, and he, in turn, didn’t try to give them any orders since that would have tested his authority.
It was a nice, quiet, stinky place to live, lacking the hostile Klar and Theiwar that had made Gus’s former life, in Thorbardin, such a trial. In Agharhome, he had lived with his family, each member of which was larger and meaner than Gus and regularly tried to steal his food. Whenever he had ventured out of the den, he had to worry about feral Klar hunters and Theiwar bunty hunters.
Of course, he would have lived his whole life in that great underground nation except for the unfortunate encounter that had led him into the clutches of a nasty Theiwar black-robed wizard. He never failed to shudder when he remembered that mage’s eyeless face as his captor had studied the hapless gully dwarf in his steel-barred cage. Gus still didn’t understand how he had escaped from that horrible wizard’s lair, but he knew that it had something to do with a strange drink he’d snatched off the wizard’s table. He could still remember the mad dwarf’s rage as Gus had swilled the liquid and suddenly found himself outside of Thorbardin, on a mountaintop, standing in a deep drift of what he had later learned was called “snow.”
And Gus had benefited from more than few lucky breaks since then.
He’d met the most beautiful dwarf maid in the world, the priestess of Reorx called Gretchan, and accompanied her to that wonderful place. He’d eaten fabulous and tasty foods, witnessed majestic objects-most notably the sun-that he would have never seen in Thorbardin, and he’d even learned to value the smell of clean, fresh air.