Dwarven Steel

by D. L. Harrison

  I asked in mock innocence with widened eyes, “Would I do that?”

  Gerard snorted, “Behave love.”

  “It seems I don’t have a choice, since we’ll be sleeping apart. Don’t worry, I’ll behave, but I might have to vent in private to my husband.”

  The baron had already rubbed me the wrong way, now it was going to be intolerable.

  He replied, “We won’t have much private time.”

  I smirked, and sent telepathically, “So, when has that ever been able to stop me?”

  His eyes widened, and he laughed, “Good point.”

  He added, “And no, it wasn’t revenge. I believe the king trusts you enough to put his kingdom in your care. Quiet guard or not, it’s essential to protect our charges, or Trelin could fall.”

  I sighed, I knew he was right.

  I might be a telepath, but I couldn’t feel magic, or cast spells to identify it. I had the magical device, but that would work on magic imbued in an object or something alive, I didn’t think it would work to pick up old traces of magical energy from last week. Even if it could, it wouldn’t help me track it down. No, I might have been able to help, but it will be the mages that track down the murderer. I wondered what it could be. None of the races I knew or have heard about had water magic.

  He was also right about the war, right now the numbers said it could go either way. Defending gave us a slight advantage, but this was a world of magic and fortifications would only go so far, even ones protected from other magic would fail under the strain of constant magical attack.

  I almost smiled at Lynn when our charges came out along with the dwarves. It wasn’t until I crushed the impulse that I realized how hard this would really be. I wasn’t exactly a superhero or supervillain on this world, but I’d been raised to be in plain sight. I wasn’t sure how successfully I’d be able to fade into the background.

  I sighed, when they didn’t even say hello. Thinking about it I understood, guards were invisible and ignored, and I’d better damned well get used to it…

  All the villages and cities were on the north-south line, straight up and down the height of Trelin, and the same went for Jendas for that matter. That didn’t mean the rest of the kingdom was unoccupied however. As we left on the eastern road, the rocky hills turned into flatter land, and farms started to show up on the side of the road.

  Gerard and I had split the duty, we’d swap back and forth during the ride between scouting out front, and watching our rear. Right then, I was about a hundred feet behind the horseless magical carriage, which admittedly was moving along fairly quickly and we were making good time.

  In addition to the farms, I found out there were small trading outposts as we passed the first one. Not a village by any stretch, but there were a few buildings grouped together. One was a large general store where a farmer could find most anything they’d need, including replacement parts for farming equipment and other things from swords to knitting needles. That way they wouldn’t have to go all the way to the city every time they needed something. Gerard told me when I asked via telepathy, and read his public mind with his permission, that the outposts were all over the place off the main north-south road between the villages and cities.

  There was also a business that would buy and haul crops to the city if the farmer didn’t have enough wagons. Lastly, there was a small tavern with just a few rooms for the night, since not many travelers would come this way or even need an inn. The main point of the tavern of course, was the tap room, where farmers could come mingle with their neighbors and drink their profits.

  My new telekinetic scan was easy for me now, I didn’t have to concentrate much at all to send out all three at once every thirty seconds or so as we rode. Telepathy, empathy, and telekinesis. The latter was only good for about a hundred yards, but that was good enough to find a shielded mage before they attacked. The former two were good out to about a quarter mile, and would catch anything else that meant us harm long before we got there, even from the rear.

  It was a long and boring afternoon and early evening.

  We made it to the second trading post as the sun sat on the horizon, and we followed the carriage off the road. I took care of my horse quickly, since the nobles were waiting on us to finish before exiting the carriage.

  Bryce and Lynn, I could call them whatever I wanted in my head, left the carriage, and we fell in behind them silently and followed them into the tavern. The place was crowded with farmers, and I took in the emotions, and the place felt right. That relaxed me a little bit, but I didn’t let my guard down too much. Last thing I needed to do was to fail on my first day as a guard.

  I expected trouble at some point, if any of Jendas’s spies survived the king’s purge, I didn’t doubt they’d want to ambush us at some point before we left Trelin. So far so good, but I wouldn’t depend on it.

  “The Dwarves?” I asked silently.

  Gerard thought, “They’ll stay in the carriage.”

  I supposed that made sense, I didn’t think the tavern had four rooms to rent, and they probably didn’t want to hang around a bunch of drunk humans anyway. I wasn’t looking forward to being alone with Lynn later either, I had no idea how to act. I couldn’t help but notice Lynn’s annoyance, at Bryce’s tone when he demanded two rooms, with an extra cot each, though she didn’t show it on her face. Oh good, at least I won’t have to sleep on the floor.

  That’s when I realized it could have been worse, I could’ve been stuck in the carriage with him all afternoon. Poor Lynn.

  I suppressed a giggle as we sat down.

  Bryce called out demandingly, “Four meals, and ales!”

  The barmaid ran over with ales a few seconds later, and then went for the food. The food as usual was amazing on this world, no processed food or chemicals, all very fresh, but I politely requested more of it, as one helping wouldn’t be nearly enough. It wasn’t as good as the castle’s fare, but that came down to spices and the cook’s talents more than the quality of the meats and veggies.

  Lynn looked at me and asked, “You saved the king’s life last night?”

  I replied, “Yes Marchioness Darish, any paladin could have saved him from the poison, I was just the first on scene.”

  Bryce frowned at Lynn, probably for speaking with the help, and because a baron outranked a marchioness and should set the tone, but she ignored it and asked me another question.

  “Perhaps, but none of the others knew there was a problem, and the guard reports said you just appeared a few seconds after it all started. How did you know which guard was the poisoner?”

  I explained empathy, and that the guard that did it wasn’t feeling the emotions a guard worried about his king should be feeling.

  Lynn asked, “So you can feel my emotions?”

  I nodded, “Anyone unshielded. It comes in handy for picking out what doesn’t fit, like an assassin on the prowl.”

  Lynn asked, “Unshielded?”

  “Yes, the general protection mage shields, I can’t read the emotions of a mage with those protections. In fact, if the mage advisor had lived twenty seconds longer I wouldn’t have known there was a problem until it was too late.”

  I also left out, that if the young queen hadn’t truly loved the king, and been truly distraught, I’d have missed it as well. I tried not to share things like that, empaths with loose tongues quickly lost their friends.

  Bryce, being an asshat, immediately cast a spell and shielded himself. I didn’t mind, his arrogance was grating, now it was just a blank spot.

  Lynn bit her lip and turned away, obviously wanting to laugh at the man, but he was her superior and she didn’t dare. Gerard also looked amused, but only to those who knew him well.

  Then she said, “I feel lucky to have you guarding me then.”

  It wasn’t a question, so after a moment I decided a subtle nod of acknowledgment would do. Bryce gave her a more pointed look, and this time she desisted and stopped asking questions.


  We finished our dinner, and then retired to the back hallway next to the kitchen, where there were three rooms. I sent Gerard a mental hug and a surge of emotions, as we went into separate rooms. It was the first time I’d not be sleeping in the same bed with him since we got married. It felt… wrong.

  I took off my sword, dagger, and boots, and then got on the cot. I’ll admit, I was a bit disappointed when Lynn remained quiet. I don’t know what I’d expected, and I could feel her curiosity, and that she even liked me. But sometimes, humans didn’t act on their feelings, which I’d learned long ago. She was a noble, and I wasn’t. In private or not, that separation didn’t come down.

  I’d have to add Lynn to the list of people that could have been friends, but never would be. Like Caroline. It just seemed so stupid, but this world was different, there were no nobles where I came from. Perhaps there was even a good reason for it, politically I mean. If there was, I wasn’t sure what it would be. Except… paladins were supposed to stay out of politics, and if we were friends I could more easily be sucked into a bad situation if I had loyalties or a friendship toward one Marchioness, or I could be targeted by another noble to send Lynn a message, or… Okay, there were lots of good reasons.

  That didn’t mean I liked it though.

  I did one more scan as far as I could reach, and then just relaxed. My empathy would still pick up an intruder, just from much closer when I wasn’t pushing my power quite so hard. Still, even at rest, my empathy picked up everything in the tavern and outside, so good enough.

  Really, my power had two ranges. Humans leaked thoughts and emotions all the time, and my telepathy and empathy picked it up when I wasn’t even trying out to about a hundred yards. Which was interesting, because that matched my ultimate reach with telekinesis. That’s why I needed mental shields to block and filter outside thoughts and emotions, it was always on.

  However, I also had some control over the powers of telepathy and empathy as well, and could exert more mental power and stretch it out to over twelve hundred feet in all directions, instead of three hundred when my power was at rest. I’ve always considered that a scan ability, because it wasn’t something I could maintain constantly.

  Once my charge settled down to sleep, I summoned the book on dwarven history, and started reading.

  Chapter Five

  It was clear another human had written this, and a lot of the history was speculation, and in some ways, I already knew some of it from reading the other books. Originally the dwarves had settled along the whole mountain range, including inside Chilik. It was when the three races joined for the first and last time to push the evil races south, that they grudgingly moved out of Chilik.

  They didn’t dislike humans exactly, but their temperaments were different. They were of stone and fire, where humans were a balance of all the elements. Stone was steady and stubborn, fire direct and blatant. The dwarves were stubborn, blunt, and direct in their mannerisms and speech.

  The human tendency towards prettying things up and making things politically correct, or sound better, just annoyed the hell out of the dwarves who are brutally honest about everything. They don’t tell white lies, or use innuendo or subtlety. Sarcasm would be completely lost on them as well. They didn’t dislike humans, they simply didn’t trust them.

  We lied, exaggerated, and skirted around things. Well, except for the paladins and clerics. But even we could hold part of the truth to misdirect, something a dwarf would never even consider. Like the fact that I’d avoided talking about telepathy at all in my conversation with Lynn. I hadn’t lied, I just hadn’t mentioned that part of the story. In a lot of ways, humans were much more like the elves, than we’d ever be like the dwarves.

  I still thought it a shame we weren’t at least trading partners with the elves, all because some noble couldn’t keep it in his pants and didn’t know no meant no. But I got a little off subject.

  The dwarves lived to about six hundred years or so, barring accidents or disease, and their intrinsic fire and earth magic was mostly geared toward the environment, and not fighting. In other words, they used it to forge incredibly strong and well-made swords, to hack their enemies up, because they couldn’t throw fireballs, or throw earth, but they could sense the gold and iron easily and know exactly where to mine. They could also control the temperatures in their forges, and by feel knew how much to heat the metal, and when it would be best to pull it out of the fire and shape it.

  Despite their smaller size, the dwarves were stronger than humans, and were very good at physical combat. The only magic they used in combat was what their rune-wrights imbued into their weapons and siege engines. It also meant all dwarves would be an open book to me as far as empathy and telepathy, not that I’d pry with the latter, but I was a lot more open about using empathy.

  Since the banishing of the evil races to the south, the dwarves have bartered with us six different times. All relating to something they couldn’t handle on their own, for a specified amount of swords, shields, and other items made of dwarven steel. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true, there was a black market for dwarven steel in Trelin, and probably in Jendas as well.

  The book even describes dwarven steel in more detail than the king explained, no doubt for my benefit. The secret ingredient was some kind of crystal dust, only found in one place in the mountains. It wasn’t so much a secret, as no one else but the dwarves had access to it. Still, how much to use and when to use it in the forging process wasn’t explained, so there were still some secrets. The dwarves had refused to trade for it every time Trelin or Jendas asked.

  The dwarves were ruled by the royal family, so marked with amber eyes of the yellow light brown variety, while the rest of the race had darker brown eyes. Even within the royal family itself, only some were born with amber eyes, and those were the ones who could be possible heirs, which meant unlike humans the firstborn didn’t count for much if they had the wrong eyes. The author of the history had no idea where their capitol city was, but that’s where the king lived, and where the crystal dust was found.

  Other humans had entered the dwarven kingdom for the other tasks the dwarves needed help with, but never to the center of their culture. I wondered how we’d be welcomed. Well, since they were so blunt and straightforward, I wouldn’t have to wonder for long after we got there.

  The royal family were there to guide the dwarves, but not in the same way a human king was, instead they led by example, and hard work. Often, a dwarven king would be a smith, a rune-wright, or even a mining delver. A mining delver was one who specialized in finding veins of ores or gems deep in the rock, and were often responsible for deciding where to open new mines, or close mines that were played out. All dwarves could do it to a certain extent, but delvers were very good at it.

  In other words, the dwarven kings and queens worked for a living, and didn’t sit on a throne and soak up their subjects’ profits in taxes. A shocking concept for humans, but I kind of found it amusing. Not the dwarves, the amusing part was trying to imagine King Alexander holding a skilled job outside of politics.

  Anyway, that’s what we were heading into. I sent the book back to the bookshelf, ran one more far out scan, and then closed my eyes to fall asleep. It was even harder than I’d expected, without Gerard’s arms around me, and his body close to mine. Enough with my whining, but I would hate every night of this mission I had to spend apart from him. It could have been worse though, at least he was near and not on a separate mission altogether.

  Chapter Six

  We hadn’t gotten very far the next morning, when we ran into trouble. The farms were thick for about an hour’s ride past the trading post. Further than that the farms were broken up by small patches of woods, and the road started to get a little bit hilly. The mountains were still about fifty miles away, but humans were getting scarcer.

  It was midmorning and I was out front when I felt them. Ten men who were full of nervous energy and excitement. It just took me a moment to peek in
to their minds from a quarter mile away. They were cutthroats and thieves that had been hired by a spy for two hundred gold. They already had half of it, and would get the other half when they returned to Magehaven. They’d caught up to us a couple of hours after sunset, and then kept going another hour last night to set up this morning ambush.

  There wasn’t a mage among them. Their plan was to swarm from the side as we passed, with half of them shooting bows from the tree line. It was decent plan and they would have had surprise on their side if not for me, except they’d be in range of telekinesis far before we were alongside.

  I didn’t like killing, but I’d long past gotten over my squeamishness about summarily executing bandits and murderers. As we reached one hundred yards, I simply reached out with telekinesis, and snapped all their necks where they stood waiting. Their bodies fell concealed in the trees and underbrush. I found the sack of a hundred gold on the leader, and pulled it to me, it shot out of the woods and toward my hand.

  I teleported it to my temple room.

  My only regret, was that the spy was safe for now, though I did know what he looked like from the bandit leader’s mind, and could likely find him when we got back to Magehaven if he was still there stirring up mischief.

  I sensed no curiosity or alarm from our charges, or Gerard. They hadn’t even noticed the bandits were there.

  “Gerard, there were bandits in the trees ahead, hired by a Jendas’ spy back in Magehaven to stop us.”

  He thought at me hard, which made me smile, “Were?!”

  “I took care of them, none of them had magic. Should we loot?”

  I know, I was a bit obsessed with loot, especially for a woman that had obsidian pieces worth over a hundred thousand gold, and knew where to get enough to make billions. Still, at the rate we found stuff to loot, I’d never have to dip into that obsidian again as long as I didn’t spend to lavishly, which wasn’t one of my things. Getting lucky once wouldn’t be noticed, but if I kept selling the stuff without being careful, it would probably draw attention of the wrong kind, from disreputable mages, otherwise known as the nobles of the kingdom.