The Half Dwarf Prince Trilogy

by J. M. Fosberg

  Fuhrung came out of nowhere and bent down next to Grundel with a large piece of black fabric. Frau looked at him curiously.

  “It is a shirt out of one of the human wizard’s bags. It’s the cleanest thing we’re going to find right now. Pull the blade out. Do it quickly; there is no reason to prolong this. We have to stop the bleeding of the wound. If something inside is punctured, we’ll know when the wound stops bleeding.”

  Jerrie stepped forward and took the end of the sword. He looked down at Fuhrung, who nodded. Jerrie did his best to pull the blade straight out and not do any more damage than was already done.

  When the blade came out, Fuhrung pressed the shirt onto the wound and held pressure on it for ten minutes before wrapping a belt around it and cinching it down. After an hour he removed the cloth, put his head close to the wound, and smelled it.

  “It doesn’t smell bad—that’s good. Something inside is still bleeding, though.” Frau and Jerrie looked at him suspiciously. Rundo had fallen asleep against the wall.

  Fuhrung shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not a healer, but I been in some fights. It’s a rule. When a stomach wound smells bad, you prolly ain’t gonna make it. This one don’t smell bad, but it’s bleeding in there slowly. He’s gonna need a healer. Right now we need to drain the blood outta there. Help me roll him over.”

  They rolled him over, and blood poured out of the wound. It looked bad at first. It seemed like a lot of blood, but then it stopped. A lot of that had probably been from the cut.

  “We need to keep on eye on how much it bleeds and keep the wound open ’til a healer can look at it.”

  They all looked at the sleeping Rundo. The little halfling was the big dwarf’s best friend, and now he might be Grundel’s only chance.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He Needs a Healer

  Rundo woke up lying on a bed. Across the room he saw Grundel lying on a similar bed. He got up and walked over to him. Grundel was alive, but he was soaked in sweat. He had a fever for sure. The wound seemed to have stopped bleeding. It was on open hole in Grundel’s stomach now. He heard someone talking outside the door. When he opened it he found Frau. Sitting next to the door in a chair was Jerrie.

  “How are you feeling?” Frau asked.

  “Better then I was. How is he?” Rundo asked her.

  “He seems to be okay for now. He is getting sick, though. We don’t know how long he will last,” she answered him honestly.

  Rundo could hear the fear in her voice. “I’ll leave now. It shouldn’t be more then a few days.”

  He was already walking down the tunnel when Jerrie called after him.

  “Rundo!” Rundo turned and looked back at him. “What do you want us to tell him if he wakes up?” Jerrie asked.

  “Stay alive,” he said before taking off back down the tunnel.

  Rundo wasn’t even sure where he was, but he understood the way the tunnels worked. He found the main tunnel and began moving up through the mountain. He walked past dead orcs and through tunnels covered in dried blood. The smell of death hung heavy in the air. He knew it would linger in his nostrils for days. It wasn’t long before he was standing on the landing that he had come through into the mountain. Orc bodies were being carried out and thrown onto a fire on the flat landing next to the entrance.

  He stripped down and bundled his gear and clothing in his belt. He linked with Messah, who had flown to a peak near him when he had emerged from the mountain. He reached out to Bumbo to make sure she understood to stay here, where she’d be safe. He began the shifting. His body was still very sore; he hadn’t realized how much all of this would tax his body, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He was rested enough, and he had to try to save Grundel. Once he had shifted he reached down and took his bundled gear in his beak. He flapped his wings and lifted into the air. He flew hard, riding on the wind. He flew north and east toward the morning sun. It was a week of walking to Freeman, and four or five days on horseback. He would make it in a day on wing.

  The sun was closing on the horizon when Rundo landed. He was about a mile outside the city next to a small grove of trees. The last time he had been here thousands of goblin corpses were being burned in huge piles. That fight had been Anwar’s first real display of his devastating power. He had created huge walls of fire that pushed through the goblin ranks, killing thousands. In just a short time he had won the battle for the people of Freeman. Now Rundo looked over the still-blackened earth of the burnt fields between him and the city. The bodies were gone and so was the smell of burning flesh, but he had the smell of dead orc in his nostrils from another battle to replace it. He quickly dressed and then began walking toward the main gate.

  He approached one of the men guarding the entrance to this small city. This was the first wall of three, Rundo knew. The wall was thirty feet high and had one gate on each side of the city. The entrance was half the height of the wall, with huge oak doors wrapped in steel bands.

  “What is your business in Freeman, little one?” one of the two guards asked.

  “I need to see Jabaal, the paladin of Kalime, or Captain Lamar right away,” Rundo answered. He figured that if he demanded to see the head of the city’s defenses outright, it would speed this along. It seemed he was right. The guard straightened up at the name.

  “What is your business with Captain Lamar?” the guard asked suspiciously.

  Rundo knew he couldn’t give the guard any reason to deny him or he would be delayed.

  “It is just that. My business. He will want to hear it, and if your denying him this information costs his friend his life, I will ensure he knows you are the one responsible. What is your name?”

  The guarded looked to the other guard, who was pretending to be watching the area. He had no intention of being brought into this.

  “Come with me then. Stay close.”

  They walked through the gate and between the first two city walls. On Rundo’s right was the bigger outer wall of the city. On his left was the slightly smaller inner wall, which was still about twenty feet high. A couple hundred feet separated the two walls. Along each wall were little hovels, some made of mud and others of stone, wood, and even canvas—whatever people could build a shelter with. This was the newest and poorest area of this city. As the small community of Freeman had grown over the last couple hundred years it had simply built another wall each time its population outgrew its boundaries.

  They came to a second gate, where the guard spoke with the guard at this post, before continuing through the second gate. The way the city had offset the gates made it much more difficult for this city to be overtaken. There were three gates that would have to be breached, and after the first was won, getting any kind of siege engine through these walls and to the second gate would be hard enough, without being battered by the arrows, stones, and pitch falling on the attackers from the second wall.

  Once inside the second gate they moved off to the right again. The area between the second and final wall was much finer. The hovels became huts and shacks. Everything along these walls was made of wood. There were more guards patrolling these areas. The distance between these two walls was about half the distance as between the others. The innermost wall was twice the size of the middle wall. On top of this forty-foot wall were ramps to the middle wall. Those ramps were connected to the inner wall by chains hooked into cranks. The ramps could be lifted back to the inner wall in the event of a siege. The city’s defenses were well prepared, and they had to be: they were out in the middle of nowhere, and they were the closest city to The Hills—the name given to the long miles of rolling land filled with goblin colonies.

  When the guard spoke with the guard at this gate, he was led to a small building just inside the wall. The original guard was dismissed. The new guard didn’t speak a word to Rundo; he just knocked on the door of the small building. Rundo had been in this building before. This was the command post for the city guards.

  The door opened. After a whispered w
ord from the guard, the man inside looked at Rundo. He was the first person to recognize him.

  “Master Rundo, please come in. Let me see if the Captain is in.”

  The other guard looked at him curiously, wondering who it was he had just escorted in. He turned and walked out without asking. If the officer hadn’t offered him the information, he apparently wasn’t going to ask. Rundo waited as the officer went and knocked on the door of the office that Rundo knew to be Captain Lamar’s.

  There was a response from behind the door that Rundo couldn’t hear from where he stood, but the officer pushed the door open enough to stick his head through. A few seconds later he was stepping out of the way as Captain Lamar came out.

  “Rundo, it is you! How are you? It is good to see you.”

  “It is good to see you as well. I didn’t come to visit, though, I’m afraid. Grundel is hurt badly. I need to see Hellen right away,” Rundo told him honestly.

  The weight of the situation took hold and Captain Lamar took charge. “Come with me. Jabaal is just down the street; he will want to hear this. It’s on the way.”

  After walking down the street for a block, the road opened into a big square. In the square, dozens of men drilled with wooden swords. The sun was nearly down, turning the horizon a deep orange color, but there was still enough light for the men to see. Rundo picked out Jabaal immediately. He was standing in the middle of the square. An odd-shaped piece of metal stuck out of the bottom of one pant leg. The metal foot was flat for a few inches before curving back up in the front. It was the foot Grizzle had made at the end of his prosthetic so that the peg leg wouldn’t slip on hard surfaces or bury in the soft ground. Jabaal stood next to two teenage boys running them through some kind of sword drill. He had stopped them to correct something when he saw Captain Lamar and then Rundo. He sent the two boys back to their drills and began walking to meet them. He still walked with a limp. He was probably still getting used to the fake leg; it had been only a few months since he lost his. He had been cut badly, and orc blood had infected the wound. That memory made Rundo realize how much more seriously he and Hellen would take this. Not that they would take it lightly. Grundel was Jabaal’s best friend’s son.

  Jabaal had known Rundo long enough that he knew something was wrong when he saw him. “Rundo, what happened?”

  Rundo just looked at his friend. “Grundel is hurt badly. He needs a healer. He needs Hellen.”

  “Let’s go,” Jabaal said as he hurried off in the direction they had been traveling. They made it two blocks before they were at the house Rundo had once brought Anwar to. Hellen’s house.

  Rundo followed Jabaal up the steps and into the house. The last time he had been here the city was under attack by goblins. The front room had been filled with wounded; now there was just one old man sitting on a bed talking to Hellen. She stood there joking with the old man. Hellen was an average woman. She wasn’t extremely attractive, but she wasn’t ugly. She was in pretty good shape for her age, which Rundo put in her late thirties. She did have a crooked nose; it must have been broken at some point in her life. Rundo’s eyes always caught on her nose, but luckily for him that just made it seem like he was looking in her eyes. When she saw them she said something to the old man, patting him on the leg. The man got up and made his way out the door, giving Jabaal a dirty look as he passed by. Rundo looked at Jabaal, who just smiled and shook his head.

  “Rundo, how are you? I didn’t think we would see any of you so soon. How is everyone?” she asked excitedly.

  Rundo looked down at the ground for a second. Jabaal stepped in to explain. “Grundel is hurt badly. Rundo came to ask if you would come look at him.”

  “Of course I will come. What happened? The more you can tell me the better prepared I can be,” she said.

  Rundo looked up into her eyes. “He was stabbed through the stomach. It’s bad. Something inside was bleeding at first, but it seemed to have stopped when I left. He was already getting a fever when I left, though.”

  She looked concerned. “Rundo, of course I will come, but it will take some time to get to Evermount. It will take almost a week, and there is no telling how much worse he might have gotten since you left. I will help if I can, but if he is as bad as you say, he probably won’t last two weeks. I’m not trying to be cold. I just want you to be prepared.”

  Rundo looked into her eyes with determination. “He was stabbed yesterday. I left Shinestone this morning. If we ride hard we can make it back in three days.”

  All eyes looked on him suspiciously. “I don’t have time to explain how I got here so quickly. I can get back on my own as quickly, but there is no way for me to take anyone with me. I can explain on the road, but as you said, Hellen, time is not our friend. When can we leave?”

  Hellen stared at him for a second, then looked up. “Captain Lamar, would you please get Don to ready the horses that Jabaal’s friends left behind? We will be leaving in half of an hour.”

  Captain Lamar nodded and left out the front door.

  Rundo stood in the room, watching as Hellen gathered the things she might need. He watched as she grabbed a bunch of different bottles of powders and liquids and told Jabaal to grab other items. He seemed to have a pretty good knowledge of what everything was. Half an hour later they were at the stable. Don was an older man, likely in his sixties or seventies, but he was still able to take care of the animals in his stable. Don had six horses saddled and ready to go. They loaded the supplies into the saddlebags, and Captain Lamar led them to the gate.

  They rode hard for nearly two days straight. The illumination of the moon allowed them to continue pushing well into the night. They would stop only for a couple of hours to sleep. Jabaal and Hellen could feel Rundo’s desperation, and they tried to push with him. Even though they switched horses regularly, by the end of third day all the horses were thoroughly exhausted. Rundo pulled up on his pony shortly after the sun went down.

  “The horses can’t go much farther. We will stop here for tonight. We have pushed them hard, but we are almost there. We’ll make Shinestone tomorrow, and then they can rest.”

  Jabaal stared at Rundo as he piled sticks up for a fire. This was the first night they had even bothered with one. He watched as the wood in front of Rundo caught fire, though Rundo hadn’t seemed to use a flint. He hadn’t even touched the wood.

  “Rundo! How did you . . . What was . . . Are you a . . . ?”

  Rundo just smiled. “No, I am not a wizard. I am a druid. I have a strong connection with the elements.”

  Rundo hadn’t explained how he had made the trip to Freeman in under a day—they had been pushing too hard to get to Shinestone—and now Jabaal was even more curious. Now was as good a time as any to ask, Jabaal thought.

  “How did you get to Freeman so quickly, Rundo?”

  Rundo looked at his friend. “I turned into a hawk and flew there.”

  He said it so nonchalantly that Jabaal wasn’t sure if he was messing with him. Jabaal just stared at him across the fire. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  Jabaal was struggling with this. Rundo was normally very talkative, very lighthearted; he told jokes and played pranks. Now Jabaal was getting very short answers. Rundo must really be worried about Grundel. Rundo and Grundel had been close when Jabaal left Evermount, but the extent of this worry, the pain he saw in Rundo, told him that that relationship had continued to grow after he left. He saw that Rundo cared as much about Grundel as Jabaal did about Grizzle. He was about to ask how he had learned so much about being a druid, but he realized Rundo was giving short answers for a reason. He thought about how he would feel if he thought Grizzle was dying. He didn’t think he would feel like talking, either. He left Rundo to his silence. Talking would just make this harder for him. Rundo might need to open up, talk about his fears, and maybe even break down, eventually, but right now he needed to hold on to hope. They would deal with the rest if things didn’t work out.


  The next morning they were moving again as the sun came up. The sun was directly overhead as they rode into the open fields that surrounded the mountain. Rundo reached out and touched the horses. Through the link he pushed the tired horses into a run. It was the last mile. Then they were at the mountain. They grabbed their gear, and Rundo led them up the path to the new entrance to Shinestone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wait and See

  The dwarves at the top of the hill didn’t even question Rundo. He walked into Shinestone followed by Jabaal and Hellen. Outside they were still burning orc bodies. The floors of the tunnels were still stained with blood. It would be a while before the dwarves were able to attend to that, but it seemed that all the bodies were at least gone now.

  Rundo followed the passage down. He had to stop once to ask one of the dwarves for directions. A few turns later they found Jerrie sitting in a chair outside the room. They hadn’t known each other long, but after only a couple of weeks he trusted this man. They had, after all, been through more in those couple of weeks than most people went through together in a lifetime.

  “How is he?”

  Jerrie looked at Jabaal and Hellen, then back at Rundo. “I don’t know. His fever is bad. The wound looks okay, I think, but he’s got a bad fever. He shakes a lot in his sleep. I don’t know, Rundo.”

  “Rundo,” Hellen said from behind him.

  “Oh yeah. Jerrie, this is Jabaal and Hellen. Jabaal, Hellen, this is Jerrie.”

  Jerrie looked at Jabaal. “The Jabaal?”

  Rundo nodded his head. “The one and only.”

  Hellen looked at Jerrie. “It is nice to meet you, Jerrie, but I would really like to take a look at Grundel now.”

  “Oh, of course,” he said as he stood and opened the door. They all walked into the room and found Frau sitting in the chair next to Grundel’s bed.

  “Frau, meet Hellen and Jabaal. Hellen is the healer I told you about,” Rundo said, walking over to the bed.