With a roar that echoed from the peaks all around, the dwarven ranks surged forward.
As the sun of Krynn rose above the eastern peaks, Derkin Hammerhand and the Ten walked their horses along a line of bright-eyed dwarves and human captives. Fifty-four men of the empire had lived through the assault on Tharkas, fifty-four out of more than three hundred who had been there when it began. None had escaped. Those who tried had been run down and killed by dwarven horsemen.
At the middle of the inspection rank, where the huddled humans stood stripped of their gear and surrounded by armed Daergar warriors in steel masks, Derkin reined in as Calan Silvertoe strode forward to meet him. "Prisoners," the old one-arm growled, indicating the little crowd of humans. "What do you want to do with them?"
"I don't want any prisoners," Derkin said. "Why are they still alive?"
"This bunch wouldn't fight it out," Calan said. "They all threw down their weapons and refused to pick them up again."
"So?"
"Well, when Vin's Daergar moved in on them, they all fell to the ground and started babbling and bawling. They refused to defend themselves."
"So?" Derkin repeated impatiently.
From the dwarves guarding the humans, a sturdy masked figure strode forward. He didn't raise his mask, but Derkin recognized Vin the Shadow. "We didn't know what to do about them," the Daergar said. "I just… well, it isn't much fun to kill people who are groveling at your feet. Even humans. So we waited for you to decide."
"I didn't want any prisoners," Derkin growled.
"No problem." Old Calan Silvertoe grinned. With his one remaining hand he drew a razor-sharp dagger from his boot. "We'll just cut their throats." He turned, happily, and headed for the humans.
"Hold!" Derkin barked. "As long as we have them, let's make some use of them. They can clean up the mess in this compound and bury the dead."
"Oh, all right," Calan agreed. He put away his dagger and turned to face Derkin. "Then can we cut their throats?"
"When everything is cleaned up here, take them up to the main shaft and lock them in," Derkin commanded. "I may think of another use for them later."
"That old shaft?" one of the Ten snorted. "It'll still stink of goblins. Goblin-stench never goes away."
With Tharkas Camp secured, Derkin prowled around for a time, making assignments, detailing guard and patrol plans, and generally putting people to work. And thinking. During his visit to Thorbardin, and in the months afterward while the Chosen Ones camped outside Northgate, trading wares and arming themselves, he had done a lot of thinking… about the ways of the world, and mostly about the ways of his people. Aside from their families and their comforts, he realized now, there were two things that every dwarf loved more than anything else: working and fighting, in that order.
It was their nature… his own and every other dwarf's. Given the chance, a dwarf would work. He would delve caverns, build roads, erect mighty structures, or dig tunnels. He would construct beautiful furniture, forge tools, carve toys, string beads, paint pictures, or carry things to the tops of mountains. He would raise crops, tend herds, and harvest forests. He would hammer and saw, pound and temper, shape and reshape objects. He would taste a stone, then carve it into a pillar, a statue, or a trinket. He would taste metal, then make something useful out of it. He would build monuments or fortresses, or make whistles from reeds. Whatever the work, any typical dwarf would dive into it with energy and enthusiasm… as long as he was doing it because he wanted to.
But dwarves without work turned quickly to their second love. They bickered and argued, and when the arguments became feuds they fought. Thorbardin was evidence of that. The mightiest fortress in the world had become a hotbed of petty bickering and useless feuds, because it had closed itself off from the outside world and gradually diminished its resources to the point that there was not enough ore coming in to keep the smelters running, not enough timber coming in to keep the wood-shops busy, not enough trade with the outside world to have any reason to produce much of anything. And as the work diminished, the fighting grew. It had been a revelation to some of those in the under-mountain fortress, he suspected, that as the forges were fired up to produce the goods the Chosen Ones requested, the feuding and street fighting in Thorbardin's cities had diminished by half. Those months of summer, he thought, with his people camped outside and the forges going inside, were probably the best months Thorbardin had seen in a century or more.
But now he put Thorbardin out of his mind and thought of his own people, the Chosen Ones. They called themselves that, they said, because Hammerhand had chosen them. Actually, Derkin knew as well as they did that it was the other way around. He had not chosen them, he had merely freed them. They had followed him, and others along the way had joined. It was they who had chosen him, as their leader.
Just as Tap Tolec and Vin the Shadow had chosen him so long ago, in the slave cell at Klanath Mines, so these thousands of others had chosen him. They chose to follow him, to do his bidding, because-like working and fighting-it was their nature to follow a leader, as long as he was a leader they had chosen, and as long as they were following because they wanted to.
Working and fighting. It was the nature of these people… of his people. Working or fighting, choosing and following, living and deserving to live in their own land, by their own design, free of intrusion and invasion by the Lord Kanes and the Emperor Quivalin Soths-by all the alien forces that made war, it seemed, throughout every land they touched.
'These are my people, and they deserve to live as they choose!" he muttered, then turned, slightly embarrassed, as a small hand closed on his own. Lost in his thoughts, he had wandered away from the old mine camp with its human-ordered wall. Now he found himself standing on a crested ridge on the mountainside, looking out over the pretty lake that had once served dwarven miners on dwarven soil, but now served no one at all.
Tap Tolec and the rest of the Ten were nearby, of course. They always followed him closely wherever he went. And standing beside him, looking up at him with concerned eyes, was Helta Graywood. Derkin had no idea how long she had been standing there with him, or following along after him.
Still holding his hand, she reached up and brushed his cheek with gentle fingers. "You're worrying about your people, aren't you?" she asked. "You're thinking that none of us might survive tomorrow, or next week, or next year. That we might go back to being slaves, or maybe just all die."
"I wasn't thinking any such thing," he growled, shaking his head stubbornly. "I was thinking that I'd better see that everybody has a job to do. Otherwise we'll never get that pass barricaded."
The girl's eyes held his, unwavering. "If you were just thinking about jobs and barricades," she asked quietly, "then why was there a tear on your cheek just now?"
"There was no tear!" he snapped. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tap Tolec and some others of the Ten look away quickly, as though embarrassed.
Helta nodded. 'They saw it, too," she said.