The Swordsheath Scroll

by Dan Parkinson

  The two dwarves passed the hours of daylight in a small, deep cove high on a mountainside. There was a little, crystal-cold spring there, and game trails all around, but Derkin lay in wait beside the spring for more than an hour, festooned in shrubbery and pretending to be a bush, before anything edible showed up. Had he been armed with a sling, or even a throwing-axe or javelin, he would have hunted the trails for a deer, wild hog, or even a small bear. But all he had at hand was a stout stick, so he waited in ambush and settled for a brace of rabbits.

  Calan had a little fire going in a deep glade, and while they cooked their dinner, the old Daewar told Derkin—in exquisite detail—of the habits and routines of the humans who ruled the Tharkas mines. The foot company of soldiers numbered eighteen, the slave masters and warders an even dozen, and only one shaft was being worked. It was worked through the daylight hours, by several hundred dwarves divided into small groups. The shaft entrance was guarded, and only a few dwarves were allowed out at any one time. These carried the best ores outside, for stocking.

  Each night, the shaft was sealed with all the slaves inside, while the soldiers stood guard in three six-man shifts.

  Derkin was astounded that the old dwarf, who had been a slave himself in a distant pit mine until the night before, could know so much detail about this place. But as with all subjects, Calan Silvertoe said just what he intended to say, explained what he intended to explain, and refused to comment on how he knew.

  The longhouse was just what it seemed, Calan said. Once the central hall of a thriving dwarven community, now it served as kitchen and washhouse, and as quarters for the female dwarves who worked in it as slaves.

  By the time the sun was sinking behind the western peaks, Derkin had a clear, detailed picture of the movements and habits of the humans below, and only one remaining question.

  “How do they control the slaves inside the shaft?” he asked. “If only the mine masters enter there, and never the guards, what’s to keep the dwarves below from simply ganging up on the slavers and killing them?”

  “I’m not sure,” Calan admitted. “Maybe it’s the goblins.”

  “What goblins?”

  “Well, when Lord Kane’s troops first came here to take control, there was a company of goblins with them. When the area was secured, and the attack force left, the goblins weren’t with them. And they haven’t been seen since. So maybe they’re in the mine shaft. Goblins are right at home underground. Maybe the humans hired them, and left them there as enforcers.”

  “Wonderful,” Derkin rumbled, suppressing a shiver. If there was one thing most dwarves detested more than magic, it was goblins. “Goblins in the mine,” he muttered. “As if things weren’t complicated enough.”

  By last light of evening, Derkin lay concealed just above the mine camp, watching the closing of the shaft and the positioning of the guards. It was just as Calan had said. Food was brought from the longhouse, then six armed humans remained outside, taking up positions in a wide arc around the mine yards, while the rest retired to a pair of the old dwarven cabins to sleep.

  Those on guard made no fires, and Derkin realized that they would have light enough to see soon. Within an hour, at least one of Krynn’s moons would be in the clear sky, and the humans felt no need of firelight.

  The positioning of the guards indicated that the men did not expect trouble, and certainly not from beyond their perimeter. They had placed themselves to watch the mine and the buildings, not to watch the surrounding wilderness. A slight, cold smile tugged at the Hylar’s whiskered cheeks.

  “How you do this is up to you,” the old Daewar had told him, shrugging as though he hadn’t the slightest interest in what came next.

  “Then how I do it is my way, and mine alone,” he had snapped. He had left Calan dozing beside the little spring, and was glad that he had. He had no need of anyone as unpredictable as Calan Silvertoe.

  His plan was a simple one—take out as many guards as he could, as quietly as he could, then open the mine shaft and somehow free the dwarves within. If there were also goblins in there … well, he didn’t know where they were or what they might do, so there was nothing to be gained by worrying about them.

  He carried one weapon at hand—a stout, hardwood stick four feet long, sharpened at both ends. It was as near to a delver’s javelin as he could improvise. In Thorbardin, Derkin had once prided himself on his skill with the working javelin.

  In deep dusk, he crept to the first of the guard positions and peered around. By last good light, he had seen a human guard seat himself beside a fallen tree, leaning back against the trunk. At that moment, he had selected this one as his first target.

  Derkin came up behind the man, soundless feet sure on the mountain slope. He was almost within arm’s reach when the human heard or sensed something. The man started to turn, started to rise, but it was too late. With a lunge, Derkin flung himself across the tree trunk, thrust his javelin over the man’s head, and snapped it back, under his chin. Gripping the shaft with both hands, Derkin heaved back. The man gurgled; his feet drummed the ground. Then his neck snapped, and he lay limp.

  Derkin relieved the man of a dagger, leaving his other weapons where they lay. The bow and arrows and the awkward, light-bladed human sword weren’t worth carrying around.

  The second guard was harder to get to. This man was in a narrow, upright cleft of rock, hidden from both sides. The dwarf could have charged in on him, and finished him with a thrust of his javelin, but the chance of a silent kill in that manner was nil. The man would have time to shout or scream before he died.

  For a moment, Derkin puzzled over it, then he crept up beside the cleft, remaining just out of sight. When he was near enough to hear the human breathing, he drew his dagger and tossed it onto the sloping ground just outside the cleft. It landed with a little thud, and lay glinting in the starlight.

  In the cleft, the human stirred, muttered something to himself, and stepped forward, squinting. Another step, and he was out of the cleft, bending over, reaching for the dagger. He never heard the quick whir of Derkin’s javelin as it lashed downward, its stout staff colliding with the exposed base of his skull. The man staggered, pitched forward, and Derkin thrust one of the sharpened ends of the staff into his throat, cutting off a strangled scream before it began.

  He retrieved his dagger, relieved the guard of what he had already decided he wanted—a bronze-headed belt mace—and went on. The third guard, he knew, wore no helmet.

  Five of the guards lay dead, and Derkin was stalking number six, when he froze in his tracks. Nearby, someone or something had moved, a slight rustling of brush. Motionless, he waited, and again heard the slightest of sounds. Just off to his left, someone else was creeping stealthily toward the position of the dozing guard.

  A deep scowl lowered Derkin’s brows as he mouthed silent curses. “Calan,” he whispered to himself, “if you mess this up for me, I swear I’ll brain you.”

  In the dark of evening, when the ore slopes were quiet and cool breezes drifted through the mountains, Helta Graywood slipped out of the dusty, suffocating grain loft, down the narrow ladder to the floor of the longhouse, and padded across on small, bare feet to the rear door, staying in shadows in case any human outside might happen to glance through the broken shutters of a window. Around the dimly lit main room, several dwarf women sat on benches or lay on makeshift cots, resting from the day’s labors. Some of them glanced at Helta as she passed, and the nearest one—a gray-haired matron with deep creases around her eyes—said, “Stay close, Helta. There will be bright moonlight tonight.”

  The girl paused. “I’ll be careful, Nadeen,” she said. “But I do need some fresh air.”

  Nadeen nodded, understanding. The grain loft was never a pleasant place to work, even under the best of circumstances. Close and stifling, the little chamber above the kitchen was always dusty, always hot, and always reeked of the acrid odor of decaying grain. And now, with the redoubled supplies the human invader
s had brought in, the place was nearly unbearable.

  Helta Graywood was the youngest of the female slaves kept at the mining compound. She was hardly more than a girl, and strikingly featured, with a face that combined the soft, delicate lines of Daewar ancestry with the wide-set, slightly slanted eyes and dark, lustrous hair of a Hylar grandfather. Generally speaking, human males had little interest in dwarven women, finding them sometimes amusing but rarely attractive. It was the judgment of the women of the longhouse, though, that Helta Graywood might be an exception. And that being the case, it was best to keep her out of sight of the humans in the compound.

  Thus it had become Helta’s lot to be permanent warder of the grain loft, ever since the human invaders had come. It was the one place available to them that no human was likely to go.

  Helta spent her days in the loft without complaint. But sometimes, after a day when the sun on the loft roof had made the space inside seem like an oven, it became just too much. Some evenings, she simply had to go outside for a time, just to feel the breezes and breathe the clean, scented mountain air.

  Now the mine shaft had been sealed, the night guards were out on the perimeter, and all of the other humans had gone to their bunks. Helta peered out the back door, looked this way and that, listened carefully, then slipped out and closed the door behind her.

  There would be an early moonrise, but right now it was dark outside, the only light a faint, frosty glow from the stars in the ebony sky. For a time, Helta simply stood and breathed, enjoying the cool, clean air. Then, as was her habit on these forays, she walked. The exercise felt good, and she had long since figured out the limits of the area hidden from the night guards’ positions by the longhouse. Captive dwarves were not allowed outside after sundown, but as long as she remained hidden from view, she felt fairly safe.

  As she walked, pacing back and forth the length of the building, she thought melancholy thoughts of the family she would never see again—her father dead at the hands of human invaders, her mother and sisters led away for sale at some slave market in the human lands. The humans had come through the pass in force, a surprise attack that was cruel and bloody.

  For a time, armies of humans had swept the lands all around. All the able male dwarves had been taken into the main shaft or herded north toward the human mines at Klanath. The old and disabled among the captives had simply disappeared, and most of the women and children had been taken away. Then the armies had gone, but still there were the guards and the overseers.

  Helta dreamed lonely fantasies about sneaking away, breaking free, and getting even. Every day and night for the past two years, she had dreamed such dreams. She dreamed of escape, but more often she dreamed of bashing human skulls, of poisoning human beverages, of somehow—through some elaborate combination of craft and luck—stampeding every human in the region over a cliff, or something equally satisfying.

  The thoughts were only silly fancies, but they gave her something to think about besides the never-ending drudgery and fear of life in bondage.

  And sometimes she dreamed of a hero, of someone who would come marching in and lay waste to the entire human population. She envisioned a sturdy young dwarf brandishing a sword or an axe or something equally lethal, who would challenge the humans, then take them all on at once and kill every last one of them in battle, without ever ruffling his beard. She even imagined how he would look. He would wear exquisite polished armor, his helmet would be studded with gems, and his eyes would glow with strength and courage.

  He would look like those old paintings she had once seen at a Neidar fair, of the magnificent Hylar warriors of the old days—back when the dwarves ruled all of Kal-Thax, and legendary Thorbardin was in its golden era. She had never seen Thorbardin. Nobody she knew ever had. But still there were the legends, of a time when the Hylar came from the east to unite the warring tribes into a great nation and to build a mighty fortress beneath a mountain summit.

  Helta paced, waving her arms back and forth, getting the kinks out of her small, sturdy frame, and letting the cool breeze cleanse her lungs and caress her face. Near the longhouse was the shed where the human masters kept their equipment, and she was tempted to slip in there again—as she had in the past—to look for weapons. But moonrise was near, and she would risk being seen. Besides, she had never found anything useful in the shed, just big coils of rope and cable, racks of heavy planking, and a row of winches and braces.

  A hint of moonrise was touching the sky above the eastern peaks when she decided it was time to go back inside. She turned toward the longhouse door, then paused, listening. It seemed to her that she had heard voices, somewhere near. She listened, then decided it must be some of the humans snoring in the two cabins they used as barracks. She reached for the latch and heard something else—very clearly. A gasp, scuffling sounds, and a thud. Then, again, low masculine voices as though in fierce but quiet argument.

  Curious, she crept to the corner of the longhouse and looked beyond. There in the starlight, in plain sight of the guard posts, stood two shadowy figures—a dwarf and a tall man. And they were obviously arguing.

  Though their voices were only hushed whispers and angry mutterings, their gestures were plain. The dwarf pointed an angry finger at the man and muttered something, and the man threw out his hands in a gesture of exasperation. Then the man pointed his finger at the dwarf, wagging it directly in his face—and abruptly flew off balance as the dwarf grabbed his hand, pivoted, and flung the man sprawling over his shoulder to land on his back with a thud. Before the man could move, the dwarf was on top of him, covering his mouth with one hand, thumping the side of his head with the other. The man stopped struggling, and the dwarf rose to stand over him, still muttering angrily.

  At that moment the rim of the white moon appeared above the eastern peaks, and there was light. The dwarf was out in the open, in plain sight of the guard perimeter.

  “Oh, mercy!” Helta breathed, and ran. On flying bare feet she sprinted the dozen yards to where the dwarf stood over the fallen human. The dwarf was just turning toward her when she dodged around him, grabbed his arm and pulled him as fast as she could, back into the shadows behind the longhouse. There he gaped at her, opened his mouth to speak, and she clamped a hand over it. “Sh!” she whispered urgently. “The guards will catch you.” With sudden decision, she gripped his arm, braced her feet, and propelled him toward the door, opening it and pushing him through into the longhouse.

  Most of the women were asleep, but Nadeen raised her head, glanced up, then sat bolt upright. “Helta!” she whispered, “What …?”

  “Sh!” Helta closed the door quietly, then half-dragged the bearded dwarf toward the ladder, again holding a hand over his mouth. “Here,” she said. “Climb. I’ll hide you in the loft.”

  Here in the candlelight, she could see him better. He wasn’t anyone she knew, but he obviously needed help. His beard and hair were unkempt and filthy, his only garment was a stained, ill-fitting smock of some kind, and there was blood on his hands, on the dagger at his waist, and on the odd, sharpened stick he carried.

  With eyes like saucers, Nadeen stared at him, then at Helta. “Who is this?” she whispered. “What in the name of …”

  Abruptly the back door opened, and they turned toward it. The person who entered was a human, stooping to clear the low frame. He was carrying an armload of weapons of various kinds. He slipped through, closed the door behind him, and stared accusingly at the strange dwarf.

  “You didn’t need to give me a knot on the head,” he growled. “A word of thanks would have sufficed.” For a second he and the dwarf glared at each other, then the man laid his accumulated weapons on the plank table beside the ladder and turned, taking in the big room at a sweeping glance. Satisfied, he looked at Nadeen, then at Helta, and his harsh, cruel-looking human face lighted with a sincere smile. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Tuft Broadland. I’ve been helping your friend here kill empiremen … though he has a strange way of showing his gra
titude.”

  High on a mountainside in a moonlit glade, an elf and a one-armed dwarf knelt beside a shallow bowl, staring into the milky liquid it held.

  “He’s doing well,” the elf said. “All of the night guards are disposed of, and not a trace of any alarm. The other guards and mine masters are sound asleep. But there are others with him, now. The females in the longhouse, and a man.”

  “A man?” Calan Silvertoe’s eyes widened. “A human?”

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Despaxas said softly. “The man isn’t of the empire. I would guess he is one of those nomads from the lakeshore camp.”

  “Well, what’s he doing there, with Derkin?”

  “Arguing, apparently,” the elf said.

  Calan snorted. “Two cabins full of sleeping enemies and a mine shaft full of goblins to take care of, and he dawdles with women and takes time out for debate with a passing nomad? What does he think he’s doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Despaxas said. “But remember, you’re the one who told our chosen ‘leader of dwarven forces’ to do things his own way.”

  5

  The Leader

  “No, I won’t tell you about our mission,” Tuft Broadland said for the third time, ignoring Derkin’s ferocious frown. “Pass the bread, please.”

  Derkin broke a piece from the dark loaf on the table and handed the rest across. “You won’t tell me what you and your friends are doing in these mountains, but still you expect me to let you wander around loose? You expect me to trust you?”

  “After all,” the man said, “I did save your life out there a while ago. That last guard would have killed you.”