“That’s the place,” the dwarf noted laconically. “Looks just like it did fifty years ago when the old toad spent most of his time robbing from the mountain dwarves. Of course, maybe Cornel has mellowed in his old age,” he added, before spitting contemptuously.
The human rider, his eyes narrowed, made no reply as he studied the crude fortress. A stout main gate blocked passage to the inner courtyard, and several smaller gates were set in the walls before corrals and other yards to either side. The steep slope rising beyond the stronghold served as a rear barrier. That ground was impassable for a horse, dangerous for a man, and eventually merged into the face of a cliff that formed one of the ramparts of the Garnet Range. There was no chance for attack or stealthy approach from that quarter.
Hooded figures were visible atop each of the two towers flanking the front gate. Others, bristling with speartips, patrolled the ramparts. By now most of the guards were staring at the two riders, and when one turned to speak to his companions, his profile revealed the outline of a long snout.
“Yep, ol’ Cornellus has got plenty of draconians for his guards, now,” the dwarf said in disgust. He chuckled. “Minus a few of ’em that he thinks are guarding his road.”
The horses, as if glad to be done with the long climb, moved forward eagerly, the gelding even trotting a couple of paces until the warrior reined it in. At a steady walk they approached the gate, finally coming to a halt a stone’s throw from the barrier.
“We seek entry to the Stronghold of Cornellus,” the dwarf declared loudly. “Open the gate!”
A bozak draconian appeared above them, standing on a platform on the other side of the wall. He wore a bronze helmet and leather armor with no insignia. His forked tongue flicked in and out of his reptilian jaws.
“Entry is not granted for free,” he called down. “What payment do you have to offer?”
“We offer our custom at the tavern and the inn,” the dwarf replied. “Our coins are steel.”
The draconian on the gate withdrew from sight. The two riders heard muffled voices followed by the clunk of a heavy latch. With a shudder and a creak, the wooden gate rolled inward, swaying precariously.
“That would collapse with the first touch of a battering ram,” the dwarf observed, letting the noisy gate mask his voice.
The horses’ ears pricked upward in alarm as the opened gate revealed a pair of draconians, each carrying a massive spear. These guards stepped forward aggressively and crossed the hafts of their weapons, blocking passage into the muddy courtyard. The two were brutish baaz, crooked fangs bared in leering grins. With deceptively lazy eyes, yellow and hooded, they observed the riders, while chortling contemptuously. The bozak atop the gate stepped off the high platform, wings spread wide, and glided to the ground in front of the two horses. Rearing back with a nervous whinny, the mare fidgeted while the gelding froze, eyes trained on the reptilian creature.
“One steel apiece is today’s entry fee,” the big draconian declared, holding out a talon-studded paw. He wore gold chains around his neck, fat rings of the same metal on his fingers. With a shrug, the dwarf tossed a pair of shiny coins into the leathery palm. The draconian inspected them for a moment, finally nodding to his spear carriers, who shuffled out of the way.
“All right. You can go in,” he hissed, “but behave yourselves, or you’ll forfeit more than your steel.”
If anything, the man looked bored as he nudged the chestnut gelding toward the large building directly opposite the gate. He didn’t seem to be looking around, yet he saw and noted everything in the walled courtyard. There was a stable to the left, where a couple of men with ringed metal collars shoveled dung out of the stalls. A few horses watched the riders listlessly from a small corral, and a few more mounts were lashed to a railing. Just beyond, a swinging gate opened as a small, filthy gully dwarf pulled on a rope, releasing a small flock of sheep that went bleating out to the pasture beside the fortress.
A pair of large catapults stood in the courtyard. Each was cocked and loaded with a basket full of jagged, skull-sized boulders. A glance was enough to determine that the weapons were sighted in the general direction of the road the two riders had just traversed.
To the right was a sprawling structure like a barracks or series of sleeping rooms fronted with long porches. The ground floor had a wall of multicolored stones, clearly laid by indifferent masons, while the wooden walls of the upper floor displayed a patchwork of planking, some vertical, some horizontal. Dark windows broke the walls in varying size and irregular placement.
The inn itself was a huge structure. The riders pulled up and dismounted, approaching the railing where two dozen mounts were already tethered. A pair of large warhorses tacked with magnificent saddles snorted, but eventually shifted to make room for the new arrivals. The man lashed the bridles of both their horses to the railing with a quick loop.
The front door of the inn opened, and a young woman dressed in a filmy gown stumbled out, looking around wildly as she was trailed by a burst of raucous laughter. She appeared to be crying but stopped when she saw the dwarf and human. Quickly she turned her face away and started along the front porch toward the barracks. More laughter, roaring peals, came from the great room as a huge brute of a warrior came bursting through the door.
“Where’d she go?” he demanded, as the dwarf started toward the doors.
He was a monstrous fellow, perhaps six and a half feet tall, solid as a bear with arms that dangled well below his waist. His lower jaw jutted in an ugly sneer, a visage that looked to be shaped by more than a fraction of ogre blood.
“Who?” asked the dwarf innocently.
By then, the big fellow had glanced around and spotted the woman, who had been jolted into action by the sight of him and was fleeing. “Hold, there, wench!” he roared, chasing after her with a startling burst of speed.
It was no contest-after two dozen strides he wrapped a big paw around her waist, then snatched her up and, with a bellowed guffaw, tossed her over his shoulder. He swaggered back to the tavern doors, grinning broadly at the dwarf and the human.
“Loosen th’ leash a bit and they run right off on ya!” he noted, before pushing through the doors, bearing his squirming prisoner into the room. He was greeted with whistles, whoops, and heavy stomping. The revelry overwhelmed the uneven notes of a flute, tones that wavered between sharp and flat.
“Just a second,” said the human rider to his dwarf companion. He looked around the corral, his eyes alighting on the gully dwarf.
The dwarf scowled but stood still and waited while the man crossed the courtyard toward the scruffy fellow, who, after opening the gate for the sheep, had promptly sat down in the mud and apparently gone to sleep.
“Hey, you,” the rider said, kicking the pudgy, rounded figure, slumped next to a clean-picked turkey carcass. The gully dwarf was already snoring loudly. “Wake up.”
“Huh?” The gully dwarf, of indeterminate gender and age, glared up at the man. “You not Highbulp, order me around! Me sleep!” the creature declared.
“How’d you like a job?” asked the stranger. He withdrew two steel coins from his pocket, handing one to the suddenly slack-jawed Aghar.
“Sure, a job!” declared the gully dwarf, chomping on the coin and promptly breaking a tooth, then scowling suspiciously. “What I gotta do?”
“It’s simple, little guy. I know this gate opens when that rope gets pulled. When my friend and I come out of the tavern and get on our horses, open the gate for us. I’ll give you the other coin on our way out.”
“Sure!” beamed the Aghar, before another dramatic mood swing brought a glower to his rounded, grimy face. “How I know you pay me?”
“If I don’t pay you,” the man said, patting the creature on the shoulder before turning back to the tavern, “I will owe you double next time I see you.”
The Aghar grinned, a grin that turned to a frown, as he scratched his head and watched the human ambling back to his companion. With
a contented sigh, he returned to his nap.
The two travelers pushed open the front doors of the tavern. The setting sun spilled in behind them, brightening the cavernous chamber and turning the room’s collective attention to the new arrivals. The warrior walked as if he was alone and at his ease, barely glancing at anything, but the dwarf studied the room carefully. He glared at a quartet of baaz draconians leering from the table nearest the door, puffed out his chest and strutted as he passed a table of scowling hill dwarves, met the steady, appraising gaze of a pair of Solamnic Knights who stood at the bar, and finally stared down a drunken half-ogre who stumbled into his path. After that, there was a general shifting around, and space cleared for them at the bar.
“Dwarf spirits, a double shot!” the dwarf barked at the harried old barmaid.
“I hear you, don’t have to shout!” she snapped back. She finished drawing ale into a couple of mugs and set them down in front of the two knights, both of whom wore the emblem of the Rose. A miserable-looking goblin, his mouth gagged with a filthy rag while his wrists and ankles were shackled with stout metal manacles, huddled at the feet of one of the Solamnics. The creature was hunched over, holding something small in its clawed hands.
“All right, dwarf spirits-and you?” She looked at the warrior impatiently.
“Do you have any of that red ale from Coastlund?”
She snorted. “I got mead from Thelgaard and yellow ale from Solanthus.”
“Well then, give me dwarf spirits, too. A double shot.”
She slammed down two small, clay glasses and hoisted a jug from behind the bar. It was clearly heavy, but she held it steadily as she trickled each glass full. When they were topped off, she set down the jug, pushed the glasses across the bar and left to wait on a raucous draconian at the other end of the bar.
“Lively place,” the dwarf remarked. He tossed back half of his glass and smacked his lips.
“Yep,” the warrior replied. He took a sip from his own glass and winced as the fire ran across his tongue and down his gullet. “Cornellus always has a wild bunch around.”
They leaned back and watched the musical entertainment for a few minutes. The minstrel was an elf, dressed in patched leather leggings and a threadbare cloak. He alternated between his flute and a mandolin, but whenever his tune verged on melodious the hill dwarves would jeer him into making a mistake, and then the whole room would erupt in laughter.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.” The speaker was the nearer Knight of Solamnia. He had finished his mug and was pulling on his riding gloves as he stonily addressed the warrior. “This is a long way from any place.”
“Easy enough to find,” the warrior replied.
“You look familiar, though. Ever been through Sanction?” asked the knight, scrutinizing the whiskered, weather-beaten face.
The rider shook his head.
“What about Caergoth? I spend lots of time there, in the Ducal Guard. You one of Duke Crawford’s men?”
“Nope.” The stranger took a sip of his spirits.
“Cleaning out the riff-raff?” the dwarf asked the knight, nudging the shackled goblin with his foot. The wretched creature looked up apathetically then lowered his head. In his shackled hands he held a chip of stone, a greenish quartz, clutching the shard to his breast like it was great treasure.
“A rabble-rouser,” said the second knight from behind the first. “Preaching about Hiddukel to all the gobs in the hills. We’re taking him in for a talk with the duke.” He laughed mirthlessly.
The first knight stared at the human warrior until his companion, also gloved, tapped him on the shoulder. Each of them took hold of the hobgoblin’s wrist cuffs and pulled the creature roughly to his feet. Side by side, one watching to the right and the other left, they walked to the door, yanking the hobgoblin behind them.
“Some nerve, their kind coming up here,” snapped the hag of a barmaid, returning to meet their eyes. She unleashed a toothless grin at the warrior. “Act like they own the place! Still, that Reynaud was looking you over, all right. Like he reckanized you from somewheres…”
The man shrugged.
“Bah, frightened of shadows, them knights,” said the dwarf, extending his glass for a refill.
The crone poured. “Cornel don’t have no use for them knights either, but he tolerates their business. To keep the peace, you know. Still, that hob was a good enough customer. Never bothered no one. Just sat there and rubbed his green stone-sometimes he’d rub it so hard it glowed!”
“Yeah, Cornellus. Now that you mention it, we need to see him,” the warrior said softly.
She blinked and cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard right. Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned over the bar. “Be careful what you ask for. You just might see up him up close and personal.”
“That’s our idea exactly. Can you tell him that we’re here?”
“Who’s here?” she demanded, shaking her head skeptically.
“Dram Feldspar,” said the dwarf, standing and reaching across the bar to shake her hand. “Originally from Kayolin. Tell Cornellus that we’ve brought a bounty he’ll be interested in. He’ll want to see us right quick.”
“It’s your own funeral,” the old woman muttered. “That’ll be two steel,” she said. “I think you better settle up now.”
“Two steel for three drinks?” sputtered the dwarf.
“One steel for the drinks,” she replied, glaring at him. “Another for making me go back there and face Cornellus.”
CHAPTER THREE
A Bandit Lord
T he hag had been gone for about five minutes, her absence arousing an increasingly restive thirst along the length of the bar, when a door slammed somewhere in the back of the room. A sudden hush fell over the chamber as a hulking bozak draconian emerged from the shadows, swaggering and sneering. He held his muscular wings half-spread as he advanced, an arrogant gesture that forced customers to back out of his way or get whipped by one of the stiff, leathery pinions.
This draconian was even bigger than the gatekeeper. A least a dozen heavy chains draped his neck, jangling as he walked. A belt of the yellow metal encircled his lean waist, and golden cuffs gleamed from his ankles and wrists. He halted before the dwarf and the warrior, looming over them. Massive, taloned fists rested on his hips, and his forked tongue flickered out insolently, almost brushing the man’s nose. The warrior didn’t flinch, though his eyes narrowed slightly.
“You got the bounty? You show me the bounty,” growled the bozak.
The human glanced sideways at his companion, and the dwarf raised his right hand to show a strand of cord that pierced a number of leathery flaps, like some crude, gigantic necklace.
“A score of goblin ears!” declared Dram Feldspar, tossing the grisly strand toward the draconian-who made a flailing swipe to try and catch it but had to bend over, muttering, to pick it up off the sawdust-covered floor. A growl rumbled within that massive chest, as he squinted at the first ear.
“Huh, real goblin.” He nodded in apparent satisfaction, and starting sliding the dried ears past his fingers on the leathery strand. “Four… eight, ten… twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen. Yep, two more makes a score.”
He looked at the pair with somewhat more interest, filmy lids half-closing over the vertical slit pupils of his snake’s eyes. “Come this way. Cornellus will see you. If he likes you, you might even come back out alive.” The draconian threw back his head and roared with laughter that was echoed by appreciative chuckles from the dozen or so other draconians in the rooms.
The hobgoblins, close relatives of the goblin race, were not laughing. Instead, they glared murderously at the bounty hunters. One burly chieftain put his hand around the hilt of his knife, but-at a sharp glance from the bozak-made no move to draw the weapon.
Still chuckling, the gold-bedecked messenger raised a paw, the sharp talon of his forefinger extended like a stiletto toward the door at the back of the inn. The bozak stood back t
o let the visitors pass in front of him. The man led the way while Dram Feldspar stepped right behind, with a glance at the draconian who followed at a respectful distance.
Two baaz draconians armed with short swords flanked the sturdy, iron-strapped door. At a nod from the bozak, one of them pulled it open and the other drew his weapon, warily studying the dwarf and the human. The two sauntered inside.
Cornellus the Large was seated upon a stout wooden throne, a chair that would have held two normal sized men with room to spare. The bandit lord not only covered the seat, his body seemed to bulge outward over either arm of the massive platform. His half-ogre lineage was clear in the small, round eyes that glared from the folds in his fleshy face and in the twin tusks that jutted upward from his lower jaw. Those tusks were gold plated, an ostentatious display of the bandit lord’s wealth.
Beams hewn from solid pine trunks supported a ceiling dozens of feet overhead. That space was cloaked in shadow, for no windows broke the solid stone walls of the chamber. A massive blaze roared in a cavernous fireplace, shedding light if not much heat. The flaring illumination revealed several other doors leading deeper into the mountain.
A plump human woman stood behind Cornellus, holding a fan. She gaped stupidly at the man and the dwarf as they approached until the bandit lord reached back and cuffed her. Quickly she began waving the huge feathered device.
Not that it was hot in here; it was frigid as a root cellar, half-buried in the bedrock of the mountain. The fire was so far from the throne that it had no effect on the chilly temperature. Still, Cornellus was sweating like a slave laboring in the hot sun. By the time the visitors reached him, another female slave had stepped forward with a towel. Gingerly she mopped the perspiration from his forehead, cheeks, and jowls.
“So, you claim to be brave goblin-slayers? Is this true?” His voice rumbled as though it came from a deep well, gurgling on the last words.
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