“Where do all the humans come from?” inquired Sithas. “Surely they haven’t all been sentenced by elven courts.”
“Oh, of course not! These are mostly brigands and villains, nomads who live to the north. They trouble the elves and kender of the settled lands, so we capture them and set them to work here.”
Quimant shook his head, thinking before he continued. “Imagine—a paltry four or five decades to grow up, experience romance, try to make a success of your life, and leave children behind you! It’s amazing they do so well, when you consider what little time they have to work with!”
“Let’s go back to the manor,” said Sithas, suddenly very weary of the harsh spectacle before him. Quimant had arranged for a splendid banquet after dark, and if they remained here any longer, Sithas was certain that he would lose his appetite.
The ride back to Silvanost seemed to Sithas to take much longer than the trip into the country. Still, he felt relieved to leave the Oakleaf estates behind.
The banquet had been a festive affair. Hermathya, the pride of Oakleaf, and her son Vanesti had been the stars of the evening. The affair lasted far into the night, yet Quimant and Sithas made an early start for the city on the following morning. Hermathya and the boy remained behind, intending to visit the clanhold for a month or two.
The first two days of the trip had seemed to drag on forever, and now they had reached the third and final day of the excursion. Sithas and Quimant traveled in the luxurious royal coach. Huge padded couches provided them with room to recline and stretch. Velvet draperies could be closed to block off dust and weather ... or intrusive ears and eyes. Each of the huge wheels rested on its own spring mechanism, smoothing the potholes of the crushed gravel trail. Eight magnificent horses, all large palominos, trotted at the head of the vehicle, their white manes and long fetlocks smoothly combed. Metal trim of pure gold outlined the shape of the enclosed cabin, which was large enough to hold eight passengers.
The two lords traveled with an escort of one hundred elven riders. Four archers, in addition to their driver, rode atop the cabin, out of sight and hearing of the pair of elves within.
Sithas sat shrouded in gloom. His mind would not focus. He considered all the progress that had been made toward a counterattack. The training of the Windriders was nearly complete. In a few days, they would fly west to begin their part in Kith-Kanan’s great attack. The final rank of elven infantry—four thousand elves of Silvanost and the nearby clanholds—had already departed. They should reach the vicinity of Sithelbec at the same time as the Windriders. Even these prospects did not brighten his mood. He imagined the satisfying picture of the dwarven ambassador Than-Kar captured and brought to the Speaker of the Stars in chains, but that prospect only reminded him of the prisoners of the Oakleaf mines.
Slave pits! With elven slaves! He accepted the fact that the mines were necessary. Without them, the Silvanesti wouldn’t be able to produce the vast supply of arms and weapons needed by Kith-Kanan’s army. True, there were good stockpiles of weapons, but a few weeks of intensive fighting could deplete those reserves with shocking speed.
“I wonder,” he said, surprising himself and Quimant by speaking aloud.
“What if we found another source of labor?”
The lord blinked at the Speaker in surprise. “But how? Where?”
“Listen to this.” Sithas began to envision a solution, speaking his thoughts as they occurred to him. “Kith-Kanan still needs reinforcements on the ground. By Gilean, we were only able to send him four thousand troops this summer! And that left the capital practically empty of able-bodied males.”
“If Your Majesty will remember, I cautioned against such a number. The city itself is laid bare. . .”
“I still have my palace guard—a thousand elves of the House Protectorate, their lives pledged to the throne.” Sithas continued. “We will form the slaves—the elven slaves—from your mines into a new company. Swear them to the Wildrunners for the duration of the war, their sentences commuted to military duty.”
“They number a thousand or more,” Quimant admitted cautiously. “They are hardened and tough. It’s perhaps true that they would make a formidable force. But you can’t close down the mines!”
“We will replace them with human prisoners captured on the battlefield!”
“We have no prisoners!”
“But Kith’s counterattack begins in less than two weeks’ time. He’ll break the siege and rout the humans, and he’s bound to take many of them as captives.” Unless Kith’s plan is a failure, he thought. Sithas wouldn’t allow himself to consider that possibility.
“It may just work,” Quimant noted, with a reluctant nod. “Indeed, if his attack is a great success, we might actually increase the number of, ah ... laborers. Production could improve. We could open new mines!” He warmed to the potential of the plan.
“It’s settled, then,” Sithas agreed, feeling a great sense of relief.
“What about Than-Kar, Excellency?” inquired Quimant after several more miles of verdant woodlands slipped by.
“It will be time for retribution soon.” Sithas paused. “You know that we intercepted his spy with a message detailing the formation of the Windriders?”
“True, but we never discovered who the message was intended for.”
“It was being carried west. It was sent to the Ergoth general, I’m certain.” Sithas was convinced that the Theiwar had joined with the humans in a bid for dominance of the dwarven nation. “I’ll keep Than-Kar in suspense until Kith is ready to attack, so he doesn’t find out that we’re onto his treachery until it’s too late for him to send another warning to the west.”
“A fine trap!” Quimant imagined the scene. “Surround the dwarves in their barracks with your guard, disarm them before they can organize, and like magic, you have him as your prisoner.”
“It’s too bad I promised to return him to King Hal-Waith,” noted Sithas. “I’d like nothing better than to send him to your coal mines.” Suddenly they leaned toward the front of the cabin as the coach slowed. They heard the coachman calling out to the horses as he hauled back on the reins.
“Driver? What’s the delay?” inquired the Speaker, leaning out the window. He saw a rider—an elf, wearing the breastplate of the House Protectorate—galloping toward them from the front of the column.
The elf wasn’t a member of the escort, Sithas realized. He saw the foam-flecked state of the horse and the dusty, bedraggled condition of the rider, and knew that the fellow must have come a long way.
“Your Majesty!” cried the elven horseman, reining in and practically falling out of the saddle beside the speaker’s carriage door. “The city—there’s trouble!
It’s the dwarves!”
“What happened?”
“We kept a watch over them as you ordered. This morning, before dawn, they suddenly burst out of the inns where they were quartered. They took the guards by surprise, killed them, and headed for the docks!”
“Killed?” Sithas was appalled—and furious. “How many?”
“Two dozen of the House Protectorate,” replied the messenger. “We’ve thrown every soldier in the city into the fray, but when I left six hours ago they were slowly fighting their way to the riverbank.”
“They need boats,” guessed Quimant. “They’re making a break for the west.”
“They sniffed out my trap,” groaned Sithas. The prospect of Than-Kar escaping the city worried him, mostly because he feared the dwarf would somehow be able to warn the humans about the Windriders.
“Can the house guards hold until we get there?” demanded the Speaker.