“I shall send a note back to the Speaker,” he said, “so that he will know you and the prince arrived safely.”
The lieutenant glanced back at the door flap hanging loosely in the still, cool air. “What shall I do, Master Feldrin? I’m supposed to guard the prince, but it seems you don’t really need me.”
“No, he won’t be any trouble,” muttered the dwarf, finishing his brief missive with a flourish. He shook sand over the wet ink to dry it. “But I may have another use for you.”
Merith drew himself up straight, expecting an official order. “Yes, master builder?”
Stroking his thick beard, Feldrin regarded the tall elf speculatively. “Do you play checkers?” he asked.
Bells and gongs rang through the camp, and all over Pax Tharkas workers set down their tools. The sun had just begun to set behind Mount Thak, which meant only an hour of daylight remained. It was quitting time.
Ulvian dragged along at the rear of the ragged column of laborers known as the grunt gang. His arms and legs ached, his palms were blistered, and despite the cool temperature, the stronger sun at this high elevation had burned his face and arms cherry red. The overseers—the mute, bearded human Ulvian had met his first day in camp and an ill-tempered dwarf named Lugrim—stood on each side of the barracks door, urging the exhausted workers to hurry inside.
The long, ramshackle building was made from slabs of shale and mud, and the rear wall was sunk in the mountainside. There were two windows and only one door. The roof was made of green splits of wood and moss, and the whole barrack was drafty, dusty, and cold, despite the fires kept burning in baked-clay fireplaces at each end.
Inside the dim structure, the grunt gang members headed straight for their rude beds. Ulvian’s was near the center of the single large room, as far from either fire as it could be. Still, he was so tired that he was about to fall on his bunk when he noticed the man who slept on his right was already in bed, where he had apparently lazed all day. Ulvian opened his mouth to protest.
The prince froze two paces from the bed. The human’s head and right leg were swathed in loose, bloodstained bandages. His hands hung limply over the sides of the narrow bunk.
“Poor wretch won’t live the night,” rasped a voice behind the prince. Ulvian whirled. A filthy, rag-clad elf stood close to him, staring at him with burning gray eyes. “He was taking a load of bricks up the tower, and the scaffold broke. Broke his leg and cracked his skull.”
“Aren’t—aren’t there healers to take care of him?” Ulvian exclaimed.
A dry rattle of laughter issued from the throat of the sun-baked elf. He was nearly as tall as Ulvian, and very thin. When he looked down at the human on the bed, dust fell from his blond eyebrows and matted hair. “Healers?” he chortled. “Healers are for the masters. We get a swig of wine, a damp cloth, and a lot of prayers!”
Ulvian recoiled from the loud elf. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Drulethen,” said the elf, “but everyone calls me Dru.”
“That’s a Silvanesti name,” Ulvian said, surprised. “How did you come to be here?”
“I was once a wandering scholar who sought knowledge in the farthest comers of the world. Unfortunately when the war started, I was in Silvanesti, and the Speaker of the Stars needed able-bodied elves for his army. I didn’t want to fight, but they forced me to take up arms. Once out in the wilderness, I ran away.”
“So you’re a deserter,” said Ulvian, understanding dawning.
Dru shrugged. “That’s not a crime in Qualinesti,” he said idly and sat down on the nearest bed. “While I wandered the great plain, I found it was easier to take what I wanted than work for it, so I became a bandit. The Wildrunners caught up to me, and the Speaker of the Sun graciously allowed me to work here rather than rot in a Qualinost dungeon.” He held out his slender hands palms up. “So it goes.”
No one had spoken at such length to Ulvian since his arrival at Pax Tharkas. Dru might be a coward and a thief, but it was obvious he had a certain amount of education, which was as rare as diamonds in the grunt gang. Sitting down on his own bed, the prince asked Dru a question that had been bothering him. “Why can’t we get closer to the fires?” he said in a low voice. Dru laughed nastily.
“Only the strongest ones get a place by the chimneys,” he said. “Weaklings and newcomers get stuck in the middle. Unless you want a beating, I suggest you don’t dispute the order of things.”
Before Ulvian could broach another question, Dru moved to his own bunk. Dropping down on the bed, he turned his back to the prince and in seconds began to snore lightly with each intake of breath. Ulvian threw himself across his own bed, which consisted of strips of cloth nailed to a rough wooden frame. It stank of sweat and dirt even more strongly than the barracks as a whole. The prince locked his hands together behind his head and stared at the crude ceiling overhead. The orange-tinged sunlight filtered in through the chinks in the roof slats. While he pondered his fate, he dozed fitfully.
Something thumped against the prince’s feet, which hung over the end of his short bunk. Ulvian snapped to a sitting position. Dru had bumped him on his way to the injured human’s bed, where he now stood. Skinning back the man’s eyelid with his thumb, Dru shook his head and made clucking sounds in his throat.
“Frell’s gone,” he announced loudly.
An especially tall human came to the dead man’s bed and hoisted the body easily over his shoulder. He strode across the room and kicked the front door open. The red wash of sunset flowed into the gloomy barracks. The tall human dumped the corpse unceremoniously on the ground outside. Before he could close the door again, a dozen gang members were already picking the dead man’s bed clean. They took everything, from his scrap of blanket to the few personal items he’d stowed under the bunk. The press was so great that Ulvian was forced to move away. He spied Dru leaning against the wall near the water barrel. Slipping through the crowd, he finally faced the Silvanesti.
“Is that it?” he asked sharply. “A man dies and he gets dumped outside?”
“That’s it. The dwarves will take the body away,” Dru replied, unconcerned.
“What about his friends? His family?” insisted the prince.
Dru took a small stone from his pocket. It was a four-inch cylinder of onyx the thickness of his thumb. “Nobody has friends here,” he said. “As to family—” He shrugged and didn’t finish. His fingers rubbed back and forth over the piece of black crystal.
Just as night was claiming the mountain pass, the sound of metal against metal sent the grunt gang storming toward the door. Outside was a huge iron cart wheeled by four dwarves. The cart bore a great kettle, and when one of the dwarves removed its lid, steam poured out. Ulvian let the rest of the gang press ahead of him, having no desire to be trampled for a dish of stew.
When he got outside, he shivered. A raw wind whistled down the pass, knifing through the clothing the prince wore. He watched the laborers, clay bowls in hand, mill around the food wagon while the dwarves served the steaming stew and doled out formidable loaves of bread to each worker. The aroma of roasted meat and savory spices drifted to Ulvian’s nose. It drew him toward the wagon.
He was promptly shoved away by a Kagonesti with a shaved head and two scalp locks that hung down his back. Ulvian bristled and started to challenge the wild elf, but the hard muscles in the fellow’s arms and the definite air of danger in his manner held the prince back. Ulvian slinked to the rear of the poorly formed line and waited his turn.
By the time he reached the wagon, the dwarves were scraping the bottom of the kettle. The ladle-bearing dwarf, warmly dressed in fur and leather, squinted down from the cart at Ulvian.
“Where’s your bowl?” he growled.
“I don’t know.”
“Idiot!” He swung the ladle idly at the prince, who ducked. The copper dipper was as big as his hand and stoutly formed. The dwarf barked, “Get back inside and find yourself a bowl!”