Fredin knew that his own grandfather had killed his uncle’s son. Dungins don’t fight or challenge Dungins. It had happened about twenty years ago. Fredin’s grandfather had chosen his father to take over as clan chief. His uncle Crone had accepted that decision, but Fredin’s cousin disputed the ruling and challenged their grandfather on the spot. He had watched as his uncle grabbed his son and turned him around, trying to talk him out of it, but as Crone was about to plead with his son, his father buried a sword into the youth’s back, cutting through his heart and lung. He was dead almost instantly. Fredin had been twenty-two years old when he watched his grandfather kill his own grandson. “Dungins do not challenge Dungins, and Dungins do not kill Dungins.” Those were his grandfather’s last words. He turned the same sword he had just used to kill his grandson on himself. Fredin remembered thinking how steadily he held the sword as he pulled it across his own throat. His point was made. Fredin’s father took over as the clan chief of the Dungins, and his uncle Crone had left the clan to go establish his own clan of Dungins.
The two shared a look. Orcs weren’t normally sentimental. They normally didn’t care much for anyone or anything. They were very primal in nature. But they could be trained, as the Dungins had discovered.
“So you got room for another clan of Dungins in there?” his uncle asked.
“Space is one thing we have,” Fredin answered.
“I won’t give you command. You make the rules for the mountain, but I keep control of my own clan. They answer to me and me alone.”
Fredin thought about this for a minute. “We will give you the upper levels. There is no one in them now. You can reopen one of the entrances that leads down into the mountain, as long as you keep that entrance guarded.”
“Done. Leave me someone who can get us settled in, and we’ll get moved in. I’ll come see you again when we’re settled,” Crone said.
Fredin rejoined the orcs in front of the entrance of Dungin Mountain. “Gescheit, lead my uncle to the upper levels.” He didn’t stop to explain himself. He walked past Hure and Vingaza. The orcs moved out of the way as he passed.
Hure and Vingaza followed him back to his rooms. He knew they were going to have questions; he just wasn’t sure who would ask them first.
“Is he a threat?” Vingaza asked.
At least he didn’t waste time with unimportant details. “No, he is my uncle. My father was placed in charge of the Dungins over him. He went and took another clan. Dungins do not challenge other Dungins. That is why we have ruled for so long. One of the reasons, anyway,” Fredin explained.
“So he has submitted to you,” Hure asked.
“No, he is the clan chief of his own clan of Dungins. They will follow rules set for the mountain, but his clan will answer to him alone. I have given them the upper levels. That will keep them separated. They have another eight thousand orcs. If the dwarves come they will fight. If one of us falls, there will still be a Dungin under the mountain.”
Vingaza and Hure didn’t ask any more questions. They had more questions, Fredin knew, but anything they would ask would have to be more personal in nature, and they were at least smart enough to know that those were answers they would not get.
An hour later there was a knock at the door. Gescheit and Crone walked in. Fredin didn’t get up. He just motioned to the two empty chairs. Vingaza was sitting in a chair over by the wall. Hure was sitting on the end of the bed. “The dwarves come,” Crone said as he sat down.
“You saw them?” Fredin asked.
Crone nodded his head. “I keep scouts in all directions. One night I got word that ten dwarves were wandering through the woods with wagons full of food. The news came from a scouting party of twenty orcs—but they had all died but one. Ten of those dwarves killed almost twenty of my orcs, and not one of them was wounded. I took a thousand orcs and marched back to where my scout said he had seen them. Ten wagons of food can’t be left behind, you know. When we got there we found that ten had become a thousand. We ran the rest of the way here. Three days straight. They will be here in less than a week.”
“You had eight-to-one odds against them. Why didn’t you attack?” Hure asked angrily.
Crone looked over at her and stared hard into her eyes for a few seconds. “You never fought dwarves before. They are not goblins, they are not orcs, they are not humans. They are a race of warriors, every last one. From birth they learn to fight. They all understand tactics. They all understand formations. If you find a dwarf gem cutter and think he is an easy target, remember this: he learned to wield a hammer as a weapon before he learned to use it as a tool. Orcs are wild fighters. We win by overpowering our enemy, by sending greater numbers and fighting like animals. Orcs can be trained to a degree, but the Dungins have spent generations creating thinking orcs. You aren’t completely stupid, which makes you the exception. The best-trained Dungin army is still an orc army. We are still going to run in and attack wildly. Every orc is going to fight on his own. But the dwarves are going to form lines, fight alongside each other, and coordinate their attacks. Eight-to-one odds for orcs, against an armed and armored dwarf army? The odds were even at best. If I’d won that fight I would have been lucky to have enough orcs left to drive those wagons here. Keep your mouth shut, and let us who fought some wars talk about the fighting. You just keep ya pretty little ears open, and ya might just learn something.”
The look Fredin gave her said that he agreed with Crone and she wasn’t going to talk again. She pushed back onto the bed and listened.
“So we wait to open your entrance until after they come,” Fredin said. “The last thing we need is them coming at us from two directions. The close confines of the tunnel will give them the advantage, but do we want to send orcs out onto the field?”
Crone looked at Fredin. “The dwarves will have the advantage in the tunnels, but they will have to fight to gain ground. We will just have to defend. They will tire out and have to fight past the bodies of the fallen. Tired dwarves will fall fighting fresh orcs. I have eight thousand. What are your numbers?”
“I have about nineteen thousand orcs. We lost a few to a kobold raid a couple of days ago.”
“Are they all Dungin orcs?” his uncle asked.
“Not yet. Some are still too new to have been reorganized. The newest ones will defend closest to the entrance. Hure’s orcs will fall into the tunnels behind them. The rest of both our clans will fall in, in opposite directions, behind them. Vingaza, what can you and your wizards offer when the dwarves come?”
Vingaza looked from Crone to Fredin. He realized that if Fredin fell he would still have an ally in Crone. He would rather have Fredin, but if it came down to it, Crone wasn’t stupid, either. “I will put two wizards at the end of the tunnel entrance. When the dwarves have fought their way into the tunnels, they will unleash their spells there. They should be able to eliminate a couple dozen quickly. Then they will travel back down the tunnels to another long tunnel and wait to do the same. After they finish their initial attack it would be best if the orcs behind them went in to retake the entrance. Make the dwarves fight for the ground all over again. Those two should be able to do this one more time from the second location. I will leave the specific place up to you, but the orcs there will need to leave some space open for them to travel to. I have seven wizards total. The other four, I will let you decide where to put them. They will be able to do the same thing. As a pair they can clear a tunnel of dwarves. They can do this twice. One will stay with me. I will stay near you.”
Fredin looked from the human to his uncle. “Put two at the front of Uncle’s force, and two at the front of mine. When the dwarves get past Hure’s forces they will clear those tunnels again and Dungins will fill those tunnels. By that time the dwarves should be mostly finished. Dungins will kill them or force them out. We are going to lose a lot of orcs holding the mountain. But more orcs are coming. We will be twice as big before the dwarves can send another army. That is, if they have the sto
mach for it. Maybe they keep sending them. Let Evermount get weak, then there can be two Dungin Mountains.”
The plan decided, Fredin dismissed everyone. It was time Hure made up for her outburst. Crone was the last to leave. He stopped at the door and looked back. “My nephew has his own wizard.” He smiled and shook his head as he walked out of the room.
Fredin turned to Hure. He had basically just planned to sacrifice all of her orcs. He didn’t need to ask her and she knew it. But it didn’t mean she had to like it. She still wasn’t used to not being in charge.
“You’re angry,” he said more than asked.
Hure didn’t answer.
“Good. This will be exciting, then,” he said as he moved toward the bed.
Chapter Twelve
End of the Road
After the first night, the day that followed was uneventful. The sun was barely cresting the horizon on the second morning when they heard the dwarves coming down the road. They couldn’t see them yet, but a thousand dwarves with weapons and armor made a lot of noise. It wasn’t long before the advance party came down the road and out into the open. A hundred dwarves led the army. They stopped and greeted Grundel and the others. They took large chunks of cheese and bread before pushing on to the trees at the other end of the field. They had come out of the woods, but there were thinner groves of trees and smaller wooded areas off the side of the road between here and Shinestone. The grove of trees ahead was about a mile away. Shortly after the dwarves reached that tree line, the main body of the dwarves came out onto the field. A couple dozen dwarves pushed into the field before Grundel saw her.
Frau halted the movement and moved off the road to meet them. Fuhrung followed behind her. He might be older, but he wasn’t old and he looked every bit the warrior now in his full plate. He had a small hand axe on each hip and a war axe on his back. The war axe could be carried one- or two-handed. Fuhrung’s had a nice rounded blade that came to a long point at the bottom. The blade curved up over the top just barely. On the backside was a single six-inch spike. Fuhrung wasn’t the biggest or most threatening dwarf, but he wore his armor and carried his weapon with experience. This wouldn’t be the first time he had gone into battle with them.
Grundel hardly noticed him. He had spent most of the previous day going over the rational reasons why nothing could ever come of his crush. He had felt so foolish even thinking about it. She was a queen, and the human blood in him had nearly cost his father his throne. The same problem would occur if anything ever were to happen between him and Frau. That was assuming she would ever want anything to do with him. Even if she ever were interested, she would put her duty first. It couldn’t happen and he understood that. He had felt foolish for even thinking it. After hours of thinking about all the reasons why it couldn’t be, he had finally convinced himself that he was over the whole thing.
But every argument, every rational line of thinking fell from his mind when he saw her. When her eyes met his, she reached inside him and smashed that wall of reason.
“Where is the halfling?” she asked him.
Her voice snapped him out of his trance. He looked around as if trying to find him, and then his mind returned to him. “He had something to take care of. He will catch up before we get there.”
“Or he just got scared and ran away,” said a dwarf who had followed Frau over to them. Grundel recognized him as the angry little dwarf from Tiefes Loch. It was Verrator.
“He is bonded to that pony. You would abandon your sword before he would abandon the pony.” The sword Verrator carried looked very well made and very old. It had likely been handed down through the generations.
“I would die before I abandoned this blade,” he said, putting his hand on the pommel.
“Then you understand that he will be back.” He turned back to Frau. “This is Jerrie. He helped us a lot in Ambar. He saved my life, and gave us information about Shinestone. We will need to come up with a plan,” he told her as he motioned toward Jerrie.
Jerrie stepped forward and bent a knee, putting one fist to his chest. “Your Highness.”
Frau hadn’t even begun to respond when Verrator jumped in. “Or he staged everything so that he could get close to us and sabotage our plans. I say we get rid of him.”
Grundel turned on him but Frau cut him off. “You will not speak again. Go back and get in line with the others.” She didn’t wait for him to comply; she just turned back to Grundel. Grundel kept his eyes on Verrator who stared at the back of Frau’s head for a second, obviously trying to figure out a way to deny her. When he couldn’t think of one he turned and stomped back to the road.
“What happened in Ambar?” she asked when she heard Verrator moving away.
Grundel began his story. He told her about the attack of the Black Dragons first. He told her of his wounds and how Jerrie had jumped in to save them. He left out the part about the magical item, and Jerrie’s personal vendetta with the Black Dragons. He went on to tell her how Jerrie had given them the wagons, how they had been attacked again, and how Rundo had ended up buying a stable with the money the assassins had been paid to kill them. He finished with the attack at the bridge and how Rundo had gone off into the woods to work on his druid abilities.
“It sounds like you have earned our trust, Jerrie. Thank you for helping Grundel. I can’t imagine losing him now.” Jerrie had stood when Grundel began telling the story and he lowered his head in acknowledgment of the queen’s thanks. She nodded her head to Jerrie before turning back to Grundel. “Now, let’s get back on the road. Do you need any help with the wagons?”
“No, they are all set. We hooked them up when we heard you coming,” Grundel answered her, but his eyes darted toward the dwarf running toward them from where the advanced party stood, across the field. He turned back to his queen.
“Go,” she said, understanding his intent. He unhooked the reins of one of the horses tethered to the wagons. He kicked the horse into a sprint. He wasn’t very experienced on horseback, but he had ridden with Anwar and the others, and he had spent the last couple days on horseback. The horses had just been walking or lightly jogging then. Now he had his horse in a full sprint, and he was bouncing around on its back, just barely hanging on. He didn’t slow, though, and it didn’t take long before he reached the dwarf. Jerrie had mounted as well and caught up to him easily.
“Orcs, a couple hundred. They started running east when we spotted them,” the dwarf said to the huge dwarf sitting on the back of a full-grown horse.
Grundel turned his horse around and held on tight as the horse bounced him all the way back to the wagon. He slid down off the horse when he reached Frau. “A couple hundred orcs ahead. They were watching us. They took off to the east when the advance party spotted them.”
Frau thought about it for a minute. “Grundel, go tell the advance party to hold. Fuhrung, I want their numbers increased by a hundred. Then we will move on. If the orcs are already on the run, then we’re not going to catch them. If they saw two hundred, then there is probably a whole clan that ran, too. Make sure we double the watch at night. If we don’t run into them before we reach Shinestone we will clear them out of our halls with the rest.”
Half an hour later the wagons were on the road with a dwarf army in tow. Frau chose to sit on the bench next to Grundel. Being close to her was hard for him. Being so close to her that he could smell her was likely to drive him to insanity. Even after two weeks on the road, the smell of her was maddening.
“Let me see your arm,” she demanded once they were moving and everyone was behind them. Well, everyone but Jerrie, who was riding on the road in front of them. Grundel pulled his sleeve up past his elbow, exposing the six-inch line down the outside of his forearm. He had popped one of his stitches struggling in the water, but the wound was still stitched up well, and it was healing. Frau put her finger at the top of the line and ran it along the stitches. “Looks like it was pretty nasty. It still hurt?”
He was in an arg
ument with himself. Having her touch him was driving him mad. Half of him wanted to confront her about the touch. He wanted it to be more than her just checking on him. The other half of him fought that it was wrong, that it could never be no matter what the meaning of the touch. In the end he held on to duty, at least for the moment.
“It’s not bad, I’m fine,” he said, not looking at her.
She moved back away from him, sitting back on the bench. The next hour seemed very awkward to Grundel. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but he felt like he had upset her. Eventually she began asking him about Ambar again. He explained everything in more detail and answered her questions along the way. Even the dwarves knew about the Black Dragons, and her questions led him to explain his previous experiences with them. That led to him telling her about his trip with Anwar. He spent the rest of the day telling her about their fight with the goblins. He told her about the city of Freeman and his trip into the fairy forest. He told her about their fight with the Black Dragons in Kampar, and he finished with the battle at Evermount. In each of those fights he had played a very minor role in comparison with Anwar, who had been the one to win out in each event. By the time he finished, the sky was already turning shades of pink and orange.
Frau sent a dwarf to call back the advance party. They all pushed off the road. They were in the open now. From here to Shinestone there were only a few small hills and small wooded areas. They dwarves set camp. Watches were established and food was prepared, and it wasn’t long before the songs of dwarves danced around fires and rode on the night air. Grundel heard songs of battles won long before any of these dwarves were born. He heard songs about the battle at Evermount. He listened as the story of his own grandfather’s death was sung. Many of the songs were just drinking songs or songs about women.
After a while Grundel noticed that the dwarves of Tiefes Loch were mostly silent. They had segregated themselves, and they sat around their fires talking quietly amongst themselves. He hadn’t expected them to be cheerful, really, but the level of their disengagement was more then he had expected. He saw Verrator sitting at the Tiefes Loch fire nearest the fire of the queen. Verrator was staring at him with a look of pure hatred. This didn’t disturb Grundel, though. The dwarves of Tiefes Loch had been more and more disengaged over the years. Their prejudices had grown, and they had become more and more isolated. Grundel knew that when the fighting was done none of the dwarves of Tiefes Loch would stick around to serve in a mountain ruled by a queen.
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