“He works like a Deepcarver,” Vrengarl replied. “You know, slow and clumsy.”
Hrothgar suppressed a smile at the jibe and hefted his bulky stonehammer.
“Did we come here to work,” Vrengarl asked, “or to stare at humans?”
Hrothgar shrugged then swung his hammer down onto a steel wedge. The wedge split a block of stone and Hrothgar kept his eyes off Devorast long enough to appraise the cut. It was straight and true-worthy of a Deepcarver.
“Judging by the shape of your blocks,” Hrothgar taunted his cousin in return, “it looks like you’ve come here to work like a human.”
Vrengarl laughed heartily-as if a dwarf from the Great Rift could laugh any other way-and bent his back to his work, and his blocks were as straight as Hrothgar’s.
The rest of the morning was spent cutting blocks from boulders dug from the limestone quarries north of Innarlith. Hrothgar paid attention to his work, but for a dwarf of his skill and experience, cutting blocks was the simplest of tasks. As he worked he continued to sneak glances at Devorast, who worked as hard as any of the stonemasons, dwarf and human alike. He’d pause only to answer the odd question or to set smaller crews to specific tasks as he saw fit. He gave every order with the same simple confidence he exhibited in his stone cutting.
When he and Vrengarl were done, Hrothgar waved to Devorast who came to examine their work. All morning the dwarf had watched Devorast pick and choose from the blocks cut by the human masons, accepting only the few that met his exacting eye and ignoring the baleful stares of the stonecutters who obviously didn’t share his high standards.
Hrothgar stepped back and watched Devorast examine his blocks. Vrengarl took the opportunity to sit on a rock and take a deep draught of ale from an earthenware jug he’d carried with him from home. Hrothgar’s cousin grimaced at the taste of the human-brewed ale-he’d long since finished the stout dwarven brew that filled the jug when they’d left the Rift-but he drank just as deeply as he always had.
When Devorast finished examining every side of every one of Hrothgar’s stone blocks he stood and locked eyes with the dwarf.
“Fine work,” the human said.
Hrothgar nodded once and stood his ground.
Devorast smiled and said, “Finally, someone who isn’t wasting any of my-”
A shrill scream ripped the air between the nearby riverbank and the startled stonecutters.
Hrothgar turned, instinctively lifting his hammer into a defensive posture while Vrengarl stood and did the same without hesitation. The dwarf saw Devorast bring his own hammer to the ready, but unlike the two dwarves, the human was already running toward the riverbank, covering ground fast with those long, long strides.
“He can cut stone,” Hrothgar growled under his breath, “and he’s got guts too.”
The dwarf shook his head and found himself running after Devorast before he could talk himself out of it. Vrengarl called after him, as angry as he was confused, but Hrothgar ran on even as he wondered himself what he was thinking-or if he was thinking at all.
The stretch of river where the ransar of Innarlith had decided to construct a keep was a wild place. The humans among the crew tended toward the jittery side, and none of them wandered too far off from the crowd. Word of strange water monsters in the river, stranger monsters hiding in the tall grass, and even stranger monsters burrowing up from under the ground were traded back and forth among the men on an almost continuous basis. Hrothgar had been around long enough to believe half of them, and half of them were enough to scare the wits out of anyone with a pinch of brain between his ears.
The scream sounded again, even more desperate. When they came over the crest of a low hill, their legs pushing through the tall brown grass as if wading through waist-deep water, Hrothgar and Devorast saw the source of the terrified screams.
Human boys no more than ten years of age or so, employed by the work crew to fetch water, always went down to the riverbank in groups of two. Hrothgar could only see one of them. The boy was running as fast as he could up the steep hill toward them, struggling with the tall grass and uneven footing.
A frog the size of an ox gained ground on the boy with every step. The creature ran on its tiptoes, and if the thing were any smaller, any less grotesque, and any less hungry, it might have been comical. Instead, it was all Hrothgar could do to force himself onward at Devorast’s side.
The human never broke stride and went tearing down the hill, holding his hammer up and behind him so he could swing it down hard the second he came close enough to the frog-thing. Hrothgar was barely able to keep up.
A great splash in the river revealed a second of the bulbous green frog creatures. Its wide mouth opened, and Hrothgar had to blink a few times fast before he could be sure he saw the little human hand reaching out from inside the horrid monster’s wide, yellow-lipped mouth. The boy was still alive in there. The thought of it made Hrothgar dizzy, but he ran on.
Devorast passed the running boy, who had the good sense to keep running, and the pursuing giant frog’s attention was drawn to the man. It didn’t take more than a few more of his long, human strides before Devorast was close enough to strike. Hrothgar, still at least a few steps behind, watched the hammer come down-only to be snatched out of Devorast’s strong grip by a long, thick rope of slime-glistening tissue that snapped out of the frog’s cavernous mouth like a bolt from a crossbow.
Devorast looked less surprised than annoyed and only ran faster at the frog-thing, chasing his hammer as the creature drew its tongue-the tool-turned-weapon still wrapped in it-back into its open mouth.
Hrothgar watched what happened next with only half his attention, the other half focusing on the second giant frog splashing out of the river and beginning to come at him. Its still squirming meal seemed to slow the second frog down, and Hrothgar hoped its tongue would move slower too.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Devorast grab hold of the shaft of his hammer just as it passed the giant frog’s straining lips. Only then did he see the knife in Devorast’s hands.
The dwarf brought his hammer down hard at the second frog’s head even as Devorast let his feet come off the ground and allowed himself to be pulled almost into the giant frog’s mouth. A thick ridge of razor-sharp bone sufficed for teeth, which might have bitten Devorast in half if its jaws were fast enough. Devorast kicked the thing’s sensitive yellow lips, one foot on the top lip, one on the bottom, with force enough to make it recoil. Its tongue whipped around like a sling, releasing the hammer.
At that moment, Hrothgar’s own hammer burst the left eye of the second giant frog, eliciting a deep, rumbling croak from the beast. The hammerhead bounced off the thing’s rubbery hide, and Hrothgar almost lost his grip on the leather-wrapped handle.
Devorast fell to the ground, the hammer up in front of him between him and the giant frog, and the monster loomed over him. He pulled the hammer over his head and lifted his feet from the ground, ready to smash the giant frog in the face, but the bloated green thing hopped back so fast it almost appeared to have teleported five feet backward. Hrothgar wondered at how so rotund a creature could move so fast.
The rubbery bounce of the frog’s flesh gave the dwarf an advantage as it helped bring the heavy hammer back into play faster. Taking full advantage of the opening, Hrothgar spun his weapon to the side and brought it back in for a hard smash into the side of the monster’s jaws. He was treated to a loud, echoing snap, the sound reverberating in the thing’s mouth while eliciting a yelp from the boy still trapped within.
Devorast scrambled to his feet, and the frog that had almost swallowed him burst forward, its tongue again shooting from its open mouth. Not as surprised by the second appearance of the slimy appendage, Devorast dodged to one side but wasn’t quick enough to hit the tongue with his hammer before it rolled back into the frog’s gullet.