On his ride to the council House, he took the temper of the city as best he could. Here in the wealthier districts some of the folk seemed a bit nervous, gathering in small groups and talking quietly with worried expressions. Others whispered excitedly, anticipating the possibility of some interesting distraction. He imagined that most of them were unaware of the numbers and demeanor of their visitors, knowing only that a dwarven delegation had come. It was interesting and certainly serious, but none of their affair, and they went about their business for the most part as usual.
Upon arriving at the council House, he was accosted by a representative of the trade guilds. “My Lord Albrekk,” the man, one Eggils Cooper, addressed him. “Know you the meaning of this, this incursion by these dwarves? What in the world can they be after, showing up like this? Refusing the hospitality of the city and aggressively fortifying their camp? What is the council going to do about it?”
Albrekk did not so much as break stride, forcing the other man to scurry after him. Eggils was weedy but not unhandsome, given to dressing and acting far above his income and importance. Albrekk loathed the man. The circumstances of his birth and station certainly didn’t recommend him to polite company. But far more important to Albrekk was the fact that the man was weak and corrupt, prone to vices that, beyond being distasteful, left him open to blackmail. If he hadn't been both useful and easily manipulated, Albrekk would have seen him clapped in irons and tried for his offenses long ago. He was still regularly tempted to do so. It was indication of Albrekk's carefully concealed anxiety about the current situation, that he considered calling for Eggils's arrest on the spot.
“Calm yourself,” he told the man“We shall know their purpose soon enough, but until we do, the council will act, as always, in the city's best interest.”
At least so long as that agrees with their perception of their own best interest, he added to himself.
Eggils seemed undiscouraged. “But the people are alarmed at this foreign presence in our midst, and fearful of war!”
Albrekk stopped and regarded the man. “What you mean is that you, personally, are concerned that this will interfere with commerce, and thereby threaten the bribes that you squeeze from the Guilds. Don't think I don't know how much they pay you to insure that their operations run smoothly and profitably. You should instead be grateful that events divert my attention from your own activities and excesses, which I would otherwise, at this moment, be rather inclined to address. Best you stop wasting my time and see to the needs of your constituents… lest I invite you to await my convenience in rather less comfortable accommodations than you are accustomed to.”
The Guild representative paled, and departed hastily with a stammered apology.
Albrekk watched him go. That was pointless. Satisfying though.
Arriving at the council chamber, he unbuckled his sword belt and passed the weapon over to the Sergeant at Arms for safekeeping.
“M’Lord Albrekk,” the Sergeant greeted him. “I’ve ordered the interior guard to arm themselves with their guns today. Thought it might do to remind the dwarven delegation that we aren’t a bunch of backwards poor relations.”
Though they could not replicate the simplicity and utility of the dwarf’s rifles, they were quite capable of producing their own guns using a different mechanism. Unfortunately, these were complicated, absurdly expensive, and too unreliable for field service. The entire guard possessed no more than fifty of the weapons, and they would certainly not justify their expense in an actual battle. Still, they made a brave show on formal occasions. Albrekk nodded his approval. With a sharp tug at the hem of his tunic to settle it, he squared his shoulders and entered the chamber.
The pandemonium he had feared was not evident, though the councilors present were gathered in small, serious groups, talking quietly among themselves. He nodded to those who met his eyes, and calmly went to his usual place at the large table. Representatives of various interests who were not members of the council filled the gallery, for the most part nervously waiting to see what would happen so that they could report back to their people. As the last of the council entered and took their places, the observers began to settle of their own accord.
The council chairman, Lord Councilman Nialle Smittsons, brought the meeting to order as the third bell struck the hour and people settled in to see what was what. Several minor items were quickly dealt with, but no one doubted for a moment that they were just killing time waiting for the dwarven envoy to appear. They did not have long to wait; well before the fourth bell the council Herald entered and signaled the Chairman. They were discussing an insignificant dispute between the Cutler’s and Furbisher’s Guild at the time, but catching the Herald’s eye, Nialle quickly intervened. “We will table the matter at this time to welcome the envoy of dwarves,” he said, then gestured to the herald.
“My Lords and Ladies,” the Herald bellowed, “Lord Engvyr Gunnarson, Lord Warder of the North, Voice of the King, and Envoy of the kingdom of Dvaergatil Baeg.”
Albrekk did not bother to conceal his curiosity as the short, stocky figure entered. Unusually for a dwarf of high station, his blond beard was short and neatly trimmed along his jawline. He did not wear courtly dress, either, and while the materials and crafting of his clothing mimicked the uniform of a soldier, they were conspicuously better in quality and in the colors of his household. The seax-knife at his belt was old and of no more than usual ornateness for a dwarf’s blade and scabbard. He bore no long arm, but a large handgun was suspended under his greet cote, which he took no pains to conceal. He brought but a single retainer with him into the chamber, a sharp-eyed dwarf with gray in his beard wearing the house colors. The gray-beard bore a long rifle and wore a broad-bladed sword at his side. He was alert, yet relaxed; a veteran, Albrekk guessed. The council Chamber grew so quiet enough that you could have heard a pin drop as the assembled rulers of the city waited to hear the visitor's message.
Chapter Nineteen
“Ideally, war should be a simple thing: meet the enemy and defeat them. But the reality of it never achieves that ideal, largely because enemies tend to be uncooperative. “
From the Diaries of Engvyr Gunnarson
Prince Istvaar Dvalinson looked out over the massive scar in the earth and frowned. “If they aren’t here, then where the hell are they?”
The dwarven forces had at last located the vast open-air mine the braell called ‘"The Pit." The terraced excavations ran for leagues through the mountains, all along the valleys. Or perhaps, over the ages, they had created those valleys. Some of them, at least. The scale of the digs was almost beyond imagining. dwarves mined for metals and precious stones, but they followed the lines of ore, sensitive to the earth around them, working with the rock as much as boring through it. This, though… for centuries, perhaps thousands of years, the baasgarta, or rather the braell at their master’s direction, had simply torn at the world, clawing what they wanted from the open wounds. Where once rivers ran through lush growth and ancient trees, stagnant water choked with rubble and run-off from the scarred mountains now lay. The oldest portions of the workings were blurred by erosion and time; the newest were still sharp and raw as a razor-cut. Dwarven miners coaxed, cajoled and seduced the stone like lovers. This? This was rape.
Captain Kollyr shrugged. “It appears that they simply picked up and left. No telling how long it’s been, but I’m guessing not too long after the Battle at Skappensgrippe. I reckon they were gone before the snow flew last fall. The winter storms and spring run-off have wiped out any traces they might have left when they fled.”
The prince shook his head. “We’ve found barracks for perhaps ten thousand baasgarta, and from what the braell have told us there were four to five times as many dwarves. They can’t have just vanished. They would never have made it through the winter without some sort of shelter, and all of those slaves would need to be fed.”
The Captain shrugged again. “At first, maybe. Fewer and fewer as the winter went by, a’cour
se.”
Istvaar shuddered. Yes, we don’t need to guess how the baasgarta fed themselves through the season. Throughout the excavations they had found pits full of dwarven bones bearing the marks of teeth and cutlery. Once they'd been worked to death, the slave's bodies had not gone to waste.
The Pit simply repeated a pattern they had seen ever since the thaw; as the dwarven regiments advanced, they found isolated farms where the braell were yet held in thrall by the baasgarta. But the towns, mills and garrisons? Empty and deserted, stripped of food, clothing, and weapons, but otherwise left as they were. Warehouses full of iron ingots, precious metals, crates of raw gemstones, just left, abandoned to the advancing armies. Abattoirs where livestock had been hurriedly butchered, the offal and remains left for scavengers but tons of meat carried away. The farmers they questioned were as baffled as the dwarves at the disappearance of their fellow Bassgarta.
There were traces, indistinct and broken trails after the winter passed, indicating large bodies of people moving west. But to where? To what hidden sanctuary, what desperate refuge, were they fleeing?
“Send a report to Eastgrove,” Istvaar told the captain. “Let them know what we have— and haven’t— found. All of these people have to have gone somewhere, and we need to know where… before they show up en-mass in a place we don’t expect them.”
* * *
“Can these numbers be right?” Deandra frowned at the report in her hand. She had taken over her husband's office to keep up on the paperwork in his absence. Ynghildr sat nearby in an over-stuffed chair. Things were well in hand at Makepeace, so she had come in the wake of the departing soldiers to visit with and support her friend. The older woman shrugged.
“Don’t look at me, I’ve been right here in the valley. It’s almost beyond belief though.”
So far, the dwarven advance had found about twenty-thousand baasgarta and maybe five or six times as many braell, mostly in farm-holds and small agricultural communities off the main valleys. Several times they had encountered units of the goblin slavers, but never in more than battalion strength, accounting for a few thousand more. But between the towns, garrisons, and other settlements, all abandoned, there were ten times that number that were simply… gone. Vanished into the mountains as if they had never been.
“There’s little to suggest where they might have gone picked up and left immediately after fall harvest. They’d have had food for themselves and the braell throughout the winter—and braell to carry the food,” Deandra said. “And whatever braell sickened or collapsed along the journey would supplement the baasgarta larders. But where can they have gone? They couldn't have survived in the deep mountains without shelter.”
Ynghildr looked thoughtful. “The baasgarta have been settled in those lands for thousands of years, since the time of the Maker. We have the Hidden Ways; surely, they have had ample time to construct something similar? Maybe they have, quite literally, gone to ground.”
Deandra stared at the older woman, her thoughts racing as she considered the idea. Then she nodded sharply. “That makes sense; given their fanaticism and institutional paranoia it would be surprising if they did not have such. They certainly had the labor to accomplish it, and given how they control information among the braell, we’d have had no word of it from them.”
That was true enough; the dwarven slaves had been kept in ignorance for ages. Most of them thought the world consisted of The Pit and the farms that supplied it. The ones that they had rescued had been shocked to discover that there was more to the world than that, and dwarves other than themselves. They had been raised to believe that their condition was a consequence of having sinned against their god in a past life; the hard labor and the ill treatment at the hands of their masters was penance for those transgressions.
Neither woman felt the need to comment on the fate of the workers that would have excavated the secret tunnels; the baasgarta would simply have eaten them. The dead cannot spread secrets, after all.
“Surely someone at the front will have thought of this, right?” Deandra said.
Ynghilda snorted. “Don’t be too sure of that. Distance may steal details, but it grants perspective that may be lost up close. We need to alert them to the possibility. If it’s already occurred to them, there’s no harm done. If it hasn’t…”
Deandra picked up a fresh quill and began to sharpen it. “They have Battle Mages with them, and some are Stonewrights. If such underground structures exist they'll be able to locate them. Once they know to look.”
“I’d think so,” Ynghildr said. “They also have the Northern Guard Rangers who can scout for the baasgarta by less esoteric means. They must already be frantic to find them.”
Deandra inspected her quill before reapplying the penknife. “The terrain is problematic—all ridges and valleys. Engvyr says you could be a half-league from an entire regiment and never know it.”
“Not to mention it’s riddled with caves. They’ve got their work cut out for them, that’s sure and certain.”
Deandra nodded, scrutinized the quill once more, then pulled a sheet of foolscap from a pile and began to write. “Well, soonest begun, soonest done. I’ll send this out with a rider immediately.”
* * *
“This is seriously not good.”
Gerril lifted an eyebrow at his partner’s understatement before he returned his attention to the view through his spy-glass. He and Horrek had been assigned to scout the territory northeast of Taerneal in the wake of their encounter with the slavers. For the past week they'd had little enough to show for it. They’d found the trail of parties of baasgarta chivying braell towards the city, but the signs were old. Now they looked out over a valley teeming with the baasgarta. It was more of the goblins than they had seen in one place since the siege of Skappensgrippe. Maybe more than that; the valley stretched out of sight around a bend. What other surprises hid beyond the curve?
The camp was laid out in typical baasgarta fashion, with rings of smaller tents surrounding central pavilions. If Gerril was any judge, they were looking at better than ten regiments of the goblins. Corrals between the rings of tents held the braell—and answered the question of how the army was feeding itself. As he watched a pair of goblins herded a group of the slaves to an open-air abattoir for butchering. He lowered the glass and looked away, fighting down his gorge.
“Oh, those bastards,” Horrek said through gritted teeth.
Gerril wrenched his mind back to the business at hand. “How the hell did they get here? Our lines are leagues north of here. They can’t have been here long enough to have come in before our folk were in position. The scouts would have cut their trail, if nothing else. And this is a blind valley, yet there’s no sign of them moving anything like those numbers into it. The ground would be torn up for sure.”
“Likely that’s the case. Damned if I can figure how they could have managed this. The question is, now that we’ve found them, what do we do about it? They are behind our lines, but they don’t seem to be doing anything in particular, and they are sure not in position to attack our regiments. All they are really in position to do is march on Taerneal, but why would they?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess, but unless I’m mistaken they can’t stay here long. There’s been signs that they’re working with the slavers somehow, and with the Lord Warden having taken troops there to break the slave ring…” Horrek shook his head in frustration. “There’s something we’re missing, some piece of the picture we just don’t have yet. Still and all, it seems to me folk need to know about this, and sooner rather than later.”
Gerril agreed. It would take two days to get word to Engvyr and his forces at the human city. Getting to the regiments would take the best part of a week, and if the goblins were intent on taking the city, they needed those troops there as fast as possible. It would have been better if the pair of rangers could have stayed together, but with just the two of them they would need to split up.
The ranger not
ed some activity along the fringe of the camp and raised his glass again. After watching for a few minutes he lowered it. “Best we flip a coin then. It looks like they are getting ready to move, and we need to stay ahead of them.”
The other ranger swore, then said, “You head for Taerneal and I’ll go north. If they attack, we’ll just have to hope like hell that the city holds until we bring down the Regiments.”
They backed down the ridge over which they'd been peering and hurried to where they'd picketed the ponies. They divided up their supplies, with the lion’s share and the pack pony accompanying Horrek north. Gerril’s supplies went onto his spare mount. The two had worked together as partners for decades, so when they parted, no words were required. They simply clasped hands and exchanged nods before wheeling their ponies and setting off.
Chapter Twenty
“Diplomacy is like tending a garden. Most times a pruning knife is what’s needed; a nip here, a cut there. But sometimes, when things get out of hand, what’s needed is a good, sharp ax… “
From the Diaries of Engvyr Gunnarson
Engvyr had risen that morning with the sun. He'd eaten a hearty breakfast before reviewing the Battalion’s orders and having his escort assembled for the ride into Taerneal. The bells of the city had been striking the third hour as he set out, with a rifle platoon at his back and Sergeant Hemnir at his side.
The City Guards on duty had passed them through the gate without incident, detaching one of their own to guide them to the Council House. Townsfolk had spontaneously assembled along their route, many of them applauding or cheering. Whatever the council might have known, the populace seemed oblivious to any trouble between his nation and their own. They'd been more than willing to take this visit as an excuse for a bit of spur-of-the-moment celebration and spectacle.
The crowds had thinned out as the party entered the wealthier districts. When they'd arrived in the fore-court of the council House, there were none waiting for them but the grooms, who received their ponies without comment, and a well-dressed man that Engvyr took to be the equivalent of a house carl. This personage had introduced himself, but Engvyr was too distracted to catch his name. The rifle platoon was left in the court with firm instructions to avoid an incident, but to defend themselves from an actual attack or attempt to arrest them.
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