By late afternoon the next day, a snowy one, the road curved into a narrow valley and began climbing steeply. Flint and Basalt wondered at the difficulty of maneuvering heavy wagons up and down these switchbacks, but the rutted state of the road proved that it did carry steady traffic.
They were closer to the heart of the Kharolis Mountains now, and the surrounding hills had gained sharp definition. The slopes towered thousands of feet in the air, with jagged precipices of bare rock exposed to the wind.
Flint groaned and struggled up the heights made all the more arduous by heavy snow. He cursed the sedentary life that had led him into this physical decline. He knew—or at least convinced himself—that this would have been no trouble for him a short twenty years ago.
But the hills brought him a sense of exhilaration as well. The view of jagged crests stretching for a hundred miles, capped by the snows of autumn; the sweeping grandeur of the valleys and the inexorable crushing force of the mountain rivers—all of these returned a joy to his old heart that he hadn’t even been aware he was missing.
The sun was dropping over their right shoulders when the road abruptly ended at a shallow stream, as if a giant broom had descended and swept the rutted trail away. The bank rose steeply on the opposite side, unmarked by a single rut or hoofprint, while the two-foot-deep stream, so clear and cold Flint could see the gravel bottom, teemed across their path. Big, fluffy snowflakes plopped into the stream and melted into the steady current. Flint smiled to himself; hiding a trail in a riverbed was one of the oldest tricks in an adventurer’s book.
Flint looked downstream, then upstream to the right. Kneeling near the edge of the water, he saw an almost imperceptible curve to the right in the tracks leading to the stream. “See these, Bas?” he said, pointing to the ruts. “I think the wagons are turning off right here, where they enter the water. They follow it upstream.”
Basalt peered closely, then smacked his thigh in astonishment. “Why, you’re right! Let’s go!” The young dwarf took a step toward the stream. Flint’s hand flew out to stop him.
Water. Water that was over half as tall as Flint’s four-foot frame. Flint shivered involuntarily, considering the rapid icy flow. The stream had no bank to speak of, what with the severe pitch of the canyon walls that shaped it. It was twenty or thirty feet at its widest point.
“What’s wrong, Flint?” Basalt asked. “Aren’t we going to follow the stream?”
Flint struggled to keep the color from draining from his face. He couldn’t let Basalt learn that his uncle’s aversion to water went beyond normal dwarven distaste, to cold, blinding fear. Flint didn’t even like admitting it to himself. It wasn’t his fault, after all. It was that damned lummox, Caramon Majere.
One fine day not many years before, when Flint had been waiting in Solace for Tanis to return from a trip to Qualinesti, Tasslehoff Burrfoot proposed that Sturm, Raistlin, Caramon, and Flint take a ride on Crystalmir Lake in a boat the kender had “found.” They set out on the lake, and everyone was having a grand time until Caramon tried to catch a fish by hand. He leaned out too far, tilting the boat and sending everyone into the water.
Raistlin, always the clever one, had bobbed up beneath the overturned boat and was quite safe in the air pocket it formed. His oafish twin brother did not fare so well, sinking like a stone. Sturm and Tas, both fearless, strong swimmers, soon righted the boat and Raistlin with it, while it was left to Flint to try to rescue Caramon.
The three in the boat waited eagerly for Flint and Caramon, but all they saw was a immense amount of splashing and gurgling, and then the water became ominously silent. Frightened, both Tas and Sturm plunged back into the water; the knight hauled Caramon, coughing, into the boat. It was Tas who found the dwarf, half-drowned and hysterical; all four of his friends had to help drag him into the boat, where he lay shivering, vowing to never set foot on water again.
“Uncle Flint?”
“What? Oh, yes. I’m thinking!” he snapped. If he wanted to avenge Aylmar, he had no choice but to venture into the stream.
“Oh, all right!” he snarled at last, hitching up his belt, willing his right foot to take a step into the stream. Only it would not move.
“What’s the matter, are you afraid of water?” Basalt asked incredulously.
That did it. Setting his chin firmly, Flint clomped two steps into the swiftly flowing stream, barely suppressing a scream as melted mountain snow flowed over the tops of his leather climbing boots. He bit his lip until it nearly bled. Suddenly a strong eddy grabbed his legs and sent him sliding off the uneven, slimy rocks under his feet.
“Whoa!” Basalt’s strong arm reached out; he caught his uncle by the collar and held tight before the dwarf fell face-first into the frigid water. Flint’s axe clattered against the rocks on the narrow bank, and he nonchalantly wiped water droplets from the weapon’s shiny surface while he gathered the courage to make another move.
“Let go of me—I mean, you can let go of me now, Bas,” he finished more calmly, twisting his damp tunic back into place. He had one goal now that overshadowed all others: he wanted only to get to the end of this stream-road as quickly as possible without falling. And if he should fall, he prayed that Reorx would take him quickly.
Flint set off slowly, concentrating so intently on his feet that his head began to ache with the strain. His toes were numb, as were his legs beneath his soaked leather pants. Sharp rocks jabbed at the souls of his feet through his boots.
They had progressed perhaps one hundred feet upstream when Flint heard the sound, though at first he thought it was only the blood banging through his temples. No, he decided, it sounds like wagon wheels. But why would a wagon be coming through now? It was only early evening, just heading toward dusk. The hill dwarf held up a hand to warn Basalt, and he concentrated on the approaching noise. It was coming from behind them, he determined, probably an empty wagon returning after a run through Hillhome to Newsea.
The hill dwarves couldn’t backtrack and they couldn’t outrun the wagon. They had to hide! But where? Flint tore his gaze from his feet and spotted some aspen branches hanging over the stream from the right side of the tiny bank. They would just have to duck low and hope the branches covered them.
Quickly he slogged the ten feet to the branches, waving Basalt to follow. Flint instinctively held his breath before dropping to his knees on the rocky stream bed, letting the cold mountain water lap at his shoulders and tear at his jangled nerve endings till he thought he could endure it no more. He felt Basalt stiffen at his side.
Hurry, damn you! he screamed inwardly at the approaching wagon. Oh, how I wish I were on that dry wagon and the derro were in this wretched water, thought Flint. That image gave him an idea.
“Bas,” he whispered, no louder than a breath, “Wait for me in the brush back where the road turns to river. Two days, no more. Then go home.”
“What? I’m going with you!” Basalt hissed quickly, then he saw the determined look on his uncle’s gray-bearded face. “You need me—”
“Look, Bas, I’m not even sure I can get in this way,” Flint began almost apologetically, “but two of us are sure to get nailed. Two days, no more! I’ll be OK!”
The wagon was almost upon them. Approaching their home base, the guards obviously did not fear an attack and were asleep on the buckboard, and the driver nearly dozed from the tedium, too. The four horses pulled the wagon steadily up the stream bed through the knee-high water. Flint mentally measured the distance and timed the rotation of the huge wooden wheels with their iron spokes.
Flint broke his concentration just long enough to hold Basalt’s gaze. “Watch yourself, son.”
The wagon was smack in front of them now, the four horses churning the water with their big hooves. Flint launched himself between the bone-crushing wheels and caught the bottom of the cargo box with just three of the thick fingers of his right hand. He quickly swung himself monkey-style until his left hand connected with the axle brace of the right fro
nt wheel. Wrapping his arms and legs around it, he held on for dear life and dangled beneath the wagon and just above the water, waiting for some large, pointed rock to impale him from below.
The wagon stopped abruptly, and he heard animated conversation.
“You clear the tunnel,” someone said.
“It’s your turn!” another said in a sleepy voice. “I had to clear those boulders out of the way by that ridge a few days ago.”
“Oh, all right!” the first one said.
The front end of the wagon bounced slightly as one of the derro sprang to the ground and landed in the water with a splash.
Flint hugged the axle and made himself as small as possible. Lowering his head just slightly, he looked under the front of the wagon and saw that thick brush blocked the bank of the stream beside them. The hill dwarf saw only branches, water, and the mountain dwarf’s waist at water level until the fellow moved the tree limbs to either side of the wagon, forming an opening in the steep stream bed.
Deep ruts that led out of the stream were revealed where the branches had been. With an oath, the driver coaxed the horses through a turn to the left, and the poor creatures laboriously hauled the heavy wagon out of the stream and onto the concealed portion of the road.
The driver did not stop the wagon as both guards dropped to replace the brush pile, then climbed back onto the rear of the wagon, where Flint could hear them crawl over the hollow wooden cargo hold and take their places at the front again.
They rolled a short distance, and the sounds of the stream fell behind. It suddenly grew dark, and Flint knew they had entered a tunnel. His arms began to ache so that he could no longer hold onto the bouncing axle brace. Unclenching his stiff hands, arms, and legs, he dropped to the sandy ground, being careful to avoid the enormous iron wheels. He crouched in the darkness, waiting until the wagon had rumbled out of earshot. His heat-sensing infravision responded only dimly in the cold tunnel, outlining the walls in faint red.
Flint took two short steps, his boots crunching softly on the tunnel floor. Then he froze. A second click, following the sound of his own footstep, came from the right. Then another, from higher up, and another even higher. When he heard something snap directly overhead, Flint twisted desperately and threw himself to the left, but it was too late. A cage of iron bars slammed down around him, and he crashed into its side. Furiously Flint grasped the bars with both hands and pushed, pulled, lifted, and rattled them, but the cage was too heavy to budge. He dropped to his knees and scraped at the tunnel floor. Aside from a thin layer of loose gravel, it was solid rock.
The dwarf leaned back against the bars. “Damn!”
Chapter 9
A Parting of the Ways
They took his axe immediately—Flint felt naked without it. Still angered by the ease with which he had been captured, the hill dwarf seethed under the watchful eyes of eight guards while a detachment proceeded to alert their commander. The sentries in the tunnel were derro dwarves, white-skinned and wide-eyed. They wore polished black plate armor with long purple plumes trailing from their helms.
Although the cage had been raised so that he was no longer imprisoned by bars, the derro guards made Flint sit in a stone recess in the tunnel wall. As they waited, the derro played some kind of betting game with pebbles on the smooth, stone floor at the mouth of the cramped alcove. Escape, for the moment anyway, was clearly out of the question. He could only sit and fidget as time crawled by.
“Who’s in charge here, anyway?” Flint asked once, after more than an hour had passed.
One of the derro guards looked up from the game with a cold gaze. His large, pale eyes showed almost as much emotion as the stare of a dead fish, Flint thought. “Shuddup,” was the fellow’s only reply.
Sometime later Flint heard the step of several pairs of heavy boots. The guards hastily put away their stones and jumped to their feet, standing rigidly. The footsteps tromped closer, but Flint could not see whoever approached through the narrow opening of his niche.
“Column, halt!” The command, spoken in a harsh yet undeniably female voice, brought the march to a stop. “The prisoner?” he heard the same voice inquire.
“In here, Captain.”
Two derro hauled Flint roughly to his feet and pulled him from the alcove. He found himself facing a frawl mountain dwarf, leading a fresh detachment of guards. She carried a small hand axe, unlike the battle-axes hoisted by the rest of the guards, and she wore the golden epaulets of command on her shoulders.
Her smooth face and warm hazel eyes set her immediately apart from the others, all of whom were male. She wore the same helmet as her men, with its trailing purple plume, but wild copper curls escaped its confines and danced across her shoulders every time she moved her head. Her chain mail sleeves revealed arms of sinewy muscle, but the steel breastplate she wore suggested an undeniably feminine fullness of shape.
“Why am I being held prisoner?” Flint blurted. “I demand—” He stopped suddenly, cut off by the slap of a guard’s meaty hand across his face.
“Prisoners have no rights here,” the frawl said coldly. “You may speak when given permission. Otherwise, keep your tongue still. You’ll be given ample opportunity to confess your crimes of spying on the Theiwar. Come along.”
The detachment surrounded him. In silence they tromped back the way they had come, deeper into the tunnel, toward Thorbardin. Flint noted that the passageway had only recently been widened, or perhaps created anew; jagged outcroppings of rock still remained on the walls revealing, in places on the floor, fresh chisel cuts. Wagon tracks were visible, but had not yet scarred the rock floor.
Eventually the tunnel swung to the left and before long opened into a vast cavern. A pall of smoke hung in the air, and the clash of heavy iron tools rang constantly, echoing around the stone chamber with a reverberating din. Before Flint stood huge mounds of coal, forming a black ridge some twenty feet high. This pile blocked his view of the rest of the cavern.
“Looks like a pretty big operation,” suggested Flint artlessly. “Making some farming tools?”
The businesslike frawl seemed not to hear him at first. Then she turned and eyed him sarcastically. “It’s strange—you don’t seem unintelligent …”
“Thank you—” he interrupted.
“… just foolhardy,” she finished, as if he had not spoken. “You would be well advised to curb your curious nature, and your clever tongue, if you don’t care to lose both.”
He studied her profile curiously. What manner of dwarf was this commander? She did not fit his mental picture of a mountain dwarf, and her eyes and hair did not seem to match the derro around her. Yet she was obviously a leader, and her rank indicated that she’d been recognized and rewarded for that ability.
They left the huge cavern and entered a maze of tunnel-like streets. Uncountable side streets led away from the avenue, and mountain dwarves moved quickly and quietly along them. Overhead, perhaps twenty feet above, the street was capped by a stone ceiling. The buildings to either side extended from floor to ceiling. Counting the windows, Flint guessed that most of them contained three or even four interior floors. Some of these buildings appeared to be built from stone and brick, while others seemed to be carved from the solid mountain. All of them, however, were decorated with the heavy, brooding stonework that characterized derro cities. All dwarven architecture tended to be intricately carved and sculpted, but the derro favored a style that seemed almost oppressive, palpably dark, to Flint.
As they wound along the rows of stone buildings, Flint counted mostly shops and houses. He heard the unmistakable noise of rowdy drinking from taverns, the sounds of households preparing for the day, the rumble of manufacturing houses and craft shops—all the bustle of a major city.
“So this is Thorbardin,” he said, his wonder almost overshadowing his predicament.
“One of the cities of Thorbardin,” his escort corrected him. “City of the Theiwar of Thane Realgar.”
They mar
ched down a wide avenue in almost total darkness, the only light coming from small wall torches, and shed by fires in hearths and cookstoves glowing in the buildings. Flint had no trouble seeing in the dark, and he suspected that the derro were even more at home in it than he was. This city was as large as any Flint had ever been in, and it was only one of many! For the first time Flint began to grasp the enormity of the mountain dwarf kingdom.
Finally they turned off the avenue into what looked like a side street. A clanking of metal suddenly drew Flint’s eyes upward in alarm, fresh with the memory of the cage that had snared him earlier. The noise did come from a cage of sorts, but this one was an enclosure of metal bars suspended from a heavy chain. With a crash the contraption settled into a square frame of metal that stood before them. The frawl stepped forward and opened the cage.
“What’s this?” growled Flint. “An underground cell isn’t good enough?” A derro prodded him forward sharply while the captain looked at him in surprise. “It’s a lift. You really are a barbarian, aren’t you? Step in. We’re riding to level three, for an … interview.” She and two guards joined him in the cage.
“Then what?” Flint scowled, trying to cover his nervousness as the cage suddenly lurched upward. The mountain dwarves seemed to be indifferent to the gently swaying movement.
“That’s up to Pitrick.” She looked into his face for the first time. “You should have anticipated the consequences of your actions,” she added angrily.
“Who is ‘Pitrick?’ ”
“Chief adviser to Thane Realgar.”
They rode upward in silence for a few moments. The cage passed into a hollow cylinder in the bedrock, then emerged onto a flat platform, perfectly square and approximately a hundred feet on each side. The ceiling was quite high, nearly at the limit of Flint’s vision in the darkness. It appeared to be a natural cavern roof, not an excavated ceiling, though how it came to be suspended atop four square walls puzzled Flint. Each of the walls held a sturdy gate, and each gate was guarded by a pair of derro wearing the same purple plumage as the sentries in the tunnel.
Flint the King Page 11
