by Helen Gosney
“Did it go right into the water?” an oddly accented voice asked.
Dennel turned and saw a young dwarf lad hurrying up to him.
“What? In the… oh! I dunno. I… I just thought it would’ve…”
“No, not always. Sometimes they land on Finn and Dann’s fishing ledge. Let’s go and have a look and see. We probably won’t see much from the rope, though.”
Dennel found himself following the other boy towards the edge of the chasm. The dwarves were in the process of fencing it off, but with only a few feet left to go they’d run out of timber and now they were busily splitting logs into rough planks to finish the job.
The boys stopped at the rope that marked the edge of the forbidden area and looked around a bit guiltily. It was obvious that they’d see nothing from where they were now.
“Even if it’s on the ledge, it might as well have gone into the bloody water. I’ll never get it back from down there,” Dennel said sadly.
“’Course you will. We’ll help you… well, not us youngsters or our Mas will tan our backsides for us for going over the rope, and then again for going down there, but anyone else will,” the boy smiled at him, “Rowan’s the quickest, and he’s just over there, helping to split the logs. What do you think? Seems a shame to lose a nice new ball like that.” He thought quickly and added, “Oh, and my name’s Sam. What’s yours?” He held out his hand politely, as he’d been taught.
Dennel stared at him in amazement, before offering his own hand.
“I’m Dennel,” he said as they gravely shook hands, “But… but… isn’t Rowan the Champion? Surely he won’t want to be bothered with a ball?” Even if it was the new one he’d got for his birthday last week.
“Of course he will. Why not?”
“Um… well, he’s the Champion…”
Sam nodded.
“Aye, he is, but he’s no different to anyone else. Ha! Maybe a bit bloody taller! But he told us to come and get him if anyone gets stuck in a tree, or anything goes over the edge. Didn’t he say the same to you? He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it, would he?” he said, “Besides, he’s a forester and he can climb anything.”
“Even that cliff?” Dennel asked dubiously.
“Aye, even that cliff. Come on, we’ll go and ask him.”
“But…”
“He doesn’t bite, I promise.”
**********
Dennel found himself looking up… and up… at the tall silver-haired man who’d let them come over here in the first place. Gods, he was tall, damned strong looking too, and his tattoos and scars were simply fascinating.
Rowan smiled at the little contingent of youngsters from the camp and the town as they came up to him. Benji and Josey had joined the original two and a couple of young dwarves were hurrying up as well, their curiosity outweighing any uneasiness around the townsfolk.
“Hello, lads,” he said, “What are you all up to?”
He heard the sad little story in silence, ignoring the fascinated stares that the lads from the town couldn’t hide – they certainly wouldn’t have seen anything like his scars and tattoos before - and then he said, “Well, you’re good lads to come and get me rather than trying to get the ball yourselves. ‘Tis a bloody long way down over there. Would you like me to try and get the thing back for you?”
“Yes, please, Sir,” Dennel said shyly, nearly overcome at actually speaking to the Champion, “It was my birthday present.”
“Was it? Ah, well, you certainly don’t want to lose it now, do you?” he turned to Sam, “Sam, laddie, can you run and get me a nice long piece of rope, please? And can you ask somebody to come and give us an extra hand? The men here are busy trying to finish the fence before anyone falls over the edge, but I think Lenni or Crann aren’t doing much.”
He sheathed his axe, then put his shirt back on so he wouldn’t have to try and carry the ball in his hands, assuming he could rescue it for the boys.
“Aye, Rowan. I’ll be right back,” Sam said and hurried off on his important task.
“Good lad. Now, Dennel, can you show me where your ball is, please, while we wait for the rope?”
Rowan and all of the lads lay on their stomachs and craned their necks to peer over the edge, while keeping their bodies as far back as possible. Yes, the ball was there, wedged into some rocks at the edge of the little ledge the dwarves used to fish from.
Rowan could easily have climbed down to it without a rope, but it wasn’t a good idea to put into the youngsters’ heads and so he waited patiently while Crann tied one end of the rope to a handy tree and the other around his waist, and then stood ready to help with the descent.
The boys stood behind the fence and gasped as Rowan climbed easily down the almost sheer side of the gorge. A couple of times he jumped off the rock and rappelled over some slippery-looking bits, much to their delight and horror and he reached the little ledge much sooner than they’d expected. He tucked the ball inside his shirt and climbed back up again, surprised to see that there was now quite a good-sized audience.
“There you go, Dennel,” he said, “’Tisn’t damaged at all.”
“Thank you, Sir. Thank you so much,” Dennel said, “I’d hate to have lost it.”
“You’re welcome, laddie. Just ask me if it goes over there again, or it gets stuck up in a tree. So long as it’s not in the water, I’ll try to get it back for you.”
A tallish woman bustled up to him.
“Thank you,” she said, “I’m Dennel’s mother, Trudy. I think you might have met my husband, Gavin Treyne on your, er, first day here. He’s one of the tollkeepers. I’m sorry Dennel bothered you with something silly like that. And it was so dangerous…”
He smiled at her worried face.
‘Tis no trouble, and truly, I like to keep my hand in with climbing things,” he said, “And ‘tis better for me to do it than nearly anyone else here, with all respect to them. Besides, I’d hate to think the poor lad lost his birthday present just because I was too lazy to go and get it for him.”
“Then all I can say is thank you,” Trudy said. Her opinion of these strange folk encamped outside the walls of the town had risen a lot as she’d seen the obvious concern of Rowan and the dwarves for her son’s lost ball, and the effort they’d gone to just to get it back. For the first time in her life she found herself thinking what good people these dwarves truly were.
**********
46. “too bloody proud”
“They’re bloody slow buggers at making up their minds, aren’t they? I thought they’d have given up by now,” Finn said one morning, “Just as well we’ve still got a bit of time before the important business of the Moot starts.”
Almost another week had gone by peacefully enough. Most of the town’s children came and played near the dwarves’ tent town now – not all at once, of course – and their mothers seemed to be getting along well with the g’Hakken women. Several times Rowan had heard mutters about ‘those bloody stupid, stubborn menfolk. It’s just sheer bloody pride with them now’ as he went about his business around the camp and rescued balls, kites and the occasional child from the clutches of the trees.
The protective fence was finished now, but the rope remained on the ground as a warning that the youngsters were getting too close to the edge. As Finn said, they didn’t want some silly lad running along, not looking where he was going, and running into the fence at full speed, perhaps going head over heels over it into the river. Much better for him to trip over the rope and land flat on his face in the dirt, or at least slow his speed so he ended up with a few bruises and splinters from the rough planks rather than drowning or breaking his neck, Finn reasoned.
“Mmm…” Rowan said absently, “Perhaps we should have blocked off the north gate as well. Starved the buggers out…”
Finn stared at him in astonishment.
“You never cease to amaze me, laddie,” he said.
“Good,” Rowan replied, as he usually did to
this comment, no matter who made it. “…Of course it would’ve only got them all riled up, and they’d probably have done something truly damned stupid. Are you getting bored here already?”
“No, not really. ‘Tisn’t that, exactly… I just thought they’d have backed down by now, that’s all.”
“They’re too bloody proud to do that, Finn. Same as we’re too bloody proud to just simply pack up and go on our way. After all, we’re already over the fraggin bridge. We could go on to the Moot now and sort this out on the way home.”
“Oh, Gods, no! All of the dwarves at the Moot would come back with us. It’d be fraggin mayhem.”
Rowan shrugged.
“Aye, you’re right. Not such a good idea, then…”
For a moment Finn seemed to consider the idea further, but then he sighed.
“No, maybe not. But you’re right about the pride thing, I suppose, even if those bastards are the ones in the wrong here.”
“Aye, they are. We could, um, give them a bit of encouragement to get on with it, I suppose…”
“What do you mean ‘encouragement’? If you’re thinking of tossing that cursed mayor into the river, there’ll be lots of us lined up to help you.”
“Don’t think the idea hasn’t crossed my mind, Finn!” Rowan laughed, “But if I did that, we’d only have to try and fish him out again and that current’s very damned strong. We’d likely end up drowning the bugger.”
“Well, that’d be no great loss, would it?”
“No, it truly wouldn’t. But it might not help our cause much either. And we might drown ourselves as well.”
Finn sighed again and shook his head.
“So what sort of encouragement did you have in mind, then?”
“Well, I’ve had a few ideas, Finn. We could go through the town and block up the other gate and give anyone who objects a bit of roughing up to make them mind their damned manners more,” he smiled at the sudden interest in the dwarf’s face, “Or we could go and kidnap that old bastard - Lester, I mean - one night and we could keep him somewhere nice and uncomfortable until he sees sense. I’m not sure where that’d be, offhand, unless of course you happen to know of a lovely dank dungeon somewhere handy. Still, I’m sure we could find somewhere good and nasty for him if we really tried. Maybe down on that little sort of outcrop near your fishing ledge,” he smiled at his old friend, “Or we could blow up the bridge.”
“Great Beldar’s bloody breeks!” Finn said reverently. Obviously Rowan’s time in the Wirran Guard hadn’t been wasted, had in fact only improved his already-fertile imagination.
“Or perhaps I might just go and have a little chat with His Fraggin Worship, man to man.”
“But…”
“He did say that I could go through the town, remember. Of course he might have changed his mind about that, I suppose. Anyway, Finn, seriously, who do you think will be stopping me? Not Saul, with all respect to him, and I think my bloody reputation will put the rest of the townsfolk off too,” Rowan grinned at his old friend, “At last it’s of some damned use.”
“And when were you planning on going for this, um, ‘little chat’, laddie?”
“Well, I was thinking of going now, but no… I think I’ll wait until dark, when no damned town heroes will be about.”
“Good idea,” Finn said, thinking of the sheer mayhem Rowan could cause if he felt like it, or more likely, if he was provoked enough. He was a very calm man usually, but the dwarf knew he was very angry about this situation and even the calmest of men has his breaking point… and if Rowan did lose his temper it could be quietly spectacular.
**********
Rowan had an interesting discussion with the women after this exchange.
“Those bloody men need a bomb under them,” Trudy said after she’d thanked him for getting Dennel’s ball out of a big pine tree for the third time, “If they’d just come over here and meet everyone like we have, there’d be no damned problem. Look how well the children get on, and us women too.”
The children had arranged an impromptu game of scrambleball to celebrate the finishing of the fence. Some of the town children might have been a bit taller than the dwarves, but they were quickly finding out that their opponents were surprisingly speedy and damned good tacklers into the bargain. It’d be a close game.
“Well, I suppose we could do that easily enough,” Rowan said with a smile. It sort of tied in with the earlier conversation he’d had with Finn.
“I don’t think so, Rowan,” Becca said. She was learning a new and fascinating embroidery stitch from the g’Hakken women. “Saul’s been trying to get them over here, but they threw him out of the inn just for suggesting it. Just as well he’s got some of the dwarven ale at home now. He says it makes the town stuff taste like cat’s piss… er…” she glanced down at a little toddler playing near her feet, “… um, cat’s, er, paws.”
Rowan laughed.
“A bit better than that, I hope!” he said, “But I was thinking more along the lines of a bomb under them…”
All of the women gaped at him in amazement and horror.
“Gods! Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t mean ‘under THEM’, exactly. What do you think I am?” he said, trying not to laugh at their appalled faces as the germ of an idea began to grow in his mind. “Tell me, who’s that particularly ugly statue of? The one in the town square, I mean. Fellow with a bald head and a paunch, looks like there’s something disgusting right under his nose.”
“Him? He’s that fellow Claude Emder, who was Mayor here for ages. What would it be, now? Fifty or so years ago? A right dirty old man he was, too, so my Grandmam always said,” a young woman named Klara said dismissively.
“Ya, my Ma always said that, too,” an older woman said, “Disgusting old bugger, she always said, and she and Papa always kept me well away from him. I was only a little girl then, but I can just remember it, and him. He always gave me the… the shivers, somehow. They used to say he did bad things to little girls and I mustn’t ever go near him…” she put a hand to her mouth in horror, “Oh, dear Gods! Oh, no!”
Finn’s wife, Anna looked at her and put a kindly arm around her shoulders.
“’Tis all right, Tess. You can tell us. You think he might have been one of the ones who raped the g’Tyrren lass, don’t you?” she asked gently.
Tess looked down at Anna and blinked back tears.
“Yes. Yes, I do think he was… I’ve never really realised it before, never really thought about it, even, but I… I truly think he was…”
“Don’t fret yourself, lassie. ‘Twasn’t your fault. You wouldn’t even have been born, then, when it actually happened,” Anna said. She saw that all of the other women from the town were looking equally upset. “Do you think anyone’d miss the old bastard if he were to meet with a… um… an accident?”
There were immediate and vehement shakes of the head from all of the townsfolk there.
“There you are, Rowan lad. Someone for you to put a bomb under. Go and do your worst,” Anna said grimly.
**********
47. “that’s bloody blackmail!”
Lester Figgins and his two guests – his brother-in-law, Kein Bellet, and another man named Ranulf Gelt, both Council members - finished their supper and all sighed happily. Lester was widowed, but he had a housekeeper who was a very good cook, and she’d excelled herself with a very fine chicken and mushroom pie followed by roasted apples and custard and some nice cheese and port that the men had enjoyed by the fire. They’d probably have enjoyed it even more if the conversation hadn’t turned to the situation with the dwarves.
“It’s been more than three weeks now, Lester! How much bloody longer will they be there?” Kein demanded rather querulously.
“I don’t fraggin know! That cursed Siannen must be the most stubborn bloody man in the whole of creation. He listens so damned politely, and then he asks the same old thing about the dwarves crossing the bloody bridge in… what is it now? P
eace and safety?” Lester replied grumpily. “They’re over the damned bridge now, why don’t they just go away?”
“They’ve been very patient, really, you know,” Ranulf said unexpectedly.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” Kein wanted to know.
“Well… young Saul Goff says one of the caravan masters read the plaque on the bridge for him and the story’s true, the bridge really is a dwarven bridge. If that’s so, well… maybe we should…”
“Maybe we should bloody nothing, Ranulf! Have you forgotten what happened the last time we let dwarves come into the town? There was a bloody riot and a lot of folk were killed! One of them was my uncle… my poor mother’s only brother!” Lester said loudly, thumping a fist on the arm of his chair for emphasis.
“A lot of those that died were dwarves too, don’t forget. They were only trying to defend one of their young lasses. Wouldn’t we have done the same? And it was seventy bloody years ago.”
Kein and Lester stared at him as if he’d suddenly gone completely mad.
“What the hell’s got into you, Ranulf? You agreed the dwarves couldn’t come through the town and over the bridge after that damned Siannen tried to trick us!”
Ranulf frowned into his glass of port.
“Ya, I know I did, but… I’ve had more time to think about it now. Maybe he wasn’t trying to trick us, exactly, maybe he was trying to… to make us think about what we’ve been doing…” he said slowly.
“What!”
“Maybe… look, I don’t fraggin know. But I do know that my daughter’s been taking her two little lasses over there to play for the last few days…” Ranulf saw the horrified looks on his friends’ faces and hurried on, “She says they’re just the same as us, but truly they’re not. The dwarf women make her feel welcome, the men are polite and respectful, and their children include the girls in all their games. They… they all played tea parties with their dolls in a little cabin the men have built for them. We wouldn’t have done the same if the roles were reversed, would we? We wouldn’t even let them come through our precious damned town and cross the bloody bridge… we sent them down to that cursed crossing downstream. How the hell were they supposed to get their women and children and ponies over that?”
