“Who are you?” demanded one, a grizzled captain with a shiny helmet plumed by bright red feathers.
“Kith-Kanan! Is that you?” cried another gruff voice, one that the elf recognized.
“Dunbarth Ironthumb!” the elf shouted back, waving at the familiar figure. Happy and relieved, he brought the griffon through a long, circling dive. Finally Arcuballis came to rest on the ground, though the griffon pranced and squawked nervously at the troops arrayed before him.
Dunbarth Ironthumb clumped toward him, a wide smile splitting his full, gray-flecked beard. Unlike the other officers of his column, the dwarf wore a plain, unadorned breastplate and a simple steel cap.
Kith sprang from the saddle and seized the stalwart dwarf in a bear hug. “By the gods, you old goat, I thought I’d never find you!” he declared.
“Humph!” snorted Dunbarth. “If we’d wanted to be found, we would have posted signs. Still, what with the storms we’ve been dodging—floods, lightning, even a black funnel cloud!—it’s a lucky thing you did find us. Why were you looking?”
The grizzled dwarf raised his eyebrows in curiosity, waiting for Kith to speak.
“It’s a long story,” the elf explained. “I’ll save it for the campfire tonight!”
“Good enough,” grunted Dunbarth. “We’ll be making camp after another mile.” The dwarven commander paused, then snapped his fingers in sudden decision.
“To the Abyss with it! We’ll make camp here!”
Dunbarth made Kith-Kanan laugh easily. The elf commander ate the hardtack of the dwarves around the fire, and even took a draft of the cool, bitter ale that the dwarves hold so dear but which elves almost universally find to be unpleasant to the palate.
As the fire died into coals, he spoke with Dunbarth and a number of that dwarf’s officers. He told them of the mission to capture the griffons and of the forming of the Windriders. His comrades took heart from the tale of the flying cavalry that would aid them in battle.
He also described, to mutters of indignation and anger, the complicity of Than-Kar and his brother’s plans to arrest the ambassador and return him to King Hal-Waith in chains.
“Typical Theiwar treachery!” growled Dunbarth. “Never turn your back on ’em, I can tell you! He never should have been entrusted with a mission of such importance!”
“Why was he?” Kith inquired. “Don’t let it go to your head, but you were always a splendid representative for your king and your people. Why did Hal-Waith send a replacement?” Dunbarth Ironthumb shook his head and spat into the fire. “Part of it was my own fault, I admit. I wanted to go home. All that talking and diplomacy was getting on my nerves—plus, I’d never spent more than a few months on the surface at a time. I was in Silvanost for a full year, you’ll remember, not counting time on the march.”
“Indeed,” Kith-Kanan said, nodding. He remembered Tamanier Ambrodel’s remarks about that elf’s long months underground. For the first time, he began to understand the adjustment these subterranean warriors must make in order to undertake an aboveground campaign. Growing up, working and training—all their lives were spent underground.
Surprising emotion choked his throat, for suddenly he realized the depth of the commitment that had brought forth the dwarven army. He looked at Dunbarth and hoped that the dwarf understood the strength of his appreciation.
Dunbarth Ironthumb gruffly cleared his throat and continued. “We have a tricky equilibrium in Thorbardin, I’m sure you appreciate. We of the Hylar Clan control the central realms, including the Life-Tree.” Kith-Kanan had heard of that massive structure, a cave city all of its own carved from the living stone of a monstrous stalagmite. He nodded his understanding.
“The other clans of Thorbardin all have their own realms—the Daergar, the Daewar, the Mar, and the Theiwar,” continued Dunbarth. The old dwarf sighed.
“We are a stubborn people, it is well known, and sometimes hasty to anger. In none of us are these traits so prevalent as among the Theiwar. But also there is a level of malevolence, of greed and scheming and ambition, among our paleskinned brethren that is not to be found among the higher dwarven cultures. The Theiwar are much distrusted by the rest of the clans.”
“Then why would the king appoint a Theiwar as ambassador to Silvanesti?” Kith-Kanan asked.
“Alas, they are all those things I said, but so too are the Theiwar numerous and powerful. They make up a large proportion of the kingdom’s population, and they cannot be excluded from its politics. The king must select his ambassadors, his nobles, even his high clerics from the ranks of all the clans, including the Theiwar.”
Dunbarth looked the elf squarely in the eye. “King Hal-Waith thought, mistakenly it would appear, that the crucial negotiations with the elves had been concluded with my departure from your capital. Therefore he took the chance of appointing a Theiwar to replace me, having in mind another important task for me and knowing that the Theiwar Clan would make a considerable disturbance if they were once again bypassed for such a prominent ambassadorship.
“I think you start to get the picture” Dunbarth continued. “But now to matters that lie before us, instead of behind. Do you have plans for a summer campaign?”
“The wheels are already in motion,” Kith explained. “And now that I have caught up with you, we can put the final phase of the strategy into motion.”
“Splendid!” Dunbarth beamed, all but licking his lips in anticipation. Kith-Kanan went on to outline his battle plan, and the dwarven warrior’s eyes lit up as every detail was described.
“If you can pull it off,” he grunted in approval after Kith-Kanan had finished,
“it will be a victory that the bards will sing about for years!” They spent the rest of the evening making less momentous conversation, and around midnight, Kith-Kanan made his camp among the army of his allies. At dawn, he was up and saddling Arcuballis, preparing to leave. The dwarves were awake, too, ready to march.
“Less than three weeks to go,” said Dunbarth, with a wink.
“Don’t be late for the war!” chided Kith. Moments later, the sunlight flickered from the griffon’s wing feathers a hundred feet above the dwarven column. Arcuballis soared into the sky, higher and higher. Yet it was many hours before Kith saw it, a blocklike shape that looked tiny and insignificant from his tremendous height. He would reach it by dark. It was Sithelbec, and for now at least, it was home.
21
Long rows of makeshift litters filled the tent, and upon them, Suzine saw men with ghastly wounds—men who bled and suffered and died even before she could begin to treat them. She saw others with invisible hurts—warriors who lay still and unseeing, though often their eyes remained open and fixed. Oil lanterns sputtered from tent poles, while clerics and nurses moved among the wounded.
Men groaned and shrieked and sobbed pathetically. Others were delirious, madly babbling about pastoral surroundings they would in all likelihood never see again.
And the stench! There were the raw smells of filth, urine, and feces, and the sweltering cloud of too many men in too small an area. And there were the smells of blood, and of rotting meat. Above all, there remained an ever-pervasive odor of death. For months, Suzine had done all that she could for the wounded, nursing them, tending their injuries, providing them what solace she could. For a time, there had been fewer and fewer wounded as those who had been injured in the battles of the winter had been healed or perished or were sent back to Ergoth. But now it was a new season, and it seemed that the war had acquired a new ferocity. Just a few days earlier, Giarna had hurled tens of thousands of men at the walls of Sithelbec in a savage attempt to smash through the barricades. A group of the wild elves had led the way, but the elves within the fortress had fallen upon their kin and the humans who followed with a furious vengeance. More than a thousand had perished in the fight, while these hundreds around her represented just a portion of those who had escaped with varying degrees of injuries.