here?'
'Uh…' Sunbright groaned. The abrupt question flustered the shaman. 'I seek the Sons of Baltar. I have- something to give Drigor.'
He was never sure if his sincerity or the promise of a gift turned the tide, but the dwarven woman muttered to her companion in a voice like grinding rocks. The other growled back, then the first said, 'Follow me.'
Blinking against snow and exhaustion, Sunbright nodded gratefully. The two dwarves, no higher than his belt buckle, stumped up the slick path, and the barbarian picked after, hoping he didn't faint and tumble a thousand feet.
The trail got worse for the suffering Sunbright toting Knucklebones, for eventually the dwarves turned from the path and mounted steep steps hacked from stone, then entered a pass no wider than his shoulders. The narrow chasm was dozens of feet high. Silhouetted against falling snow were crouched sentries with crossbows. Stumbling and slipping, Sunbright kept up with the sturdy, sure-footed dwarves, and eventually passed into a black slot where warm air gushed into the barbarian's face.
After that he saw little, for he had to hunch over. The ceiling was so low, and stretches were entirely black, though all the caves were gloriously warm. After a while he saw torchlight, and a faint glow from rough paint splashed here and there on the walls, paint infused with some magic luminosity. The dwarven woman turned once to say, 'Go in there and stay put,' then marched off after the rest.
Ducking double, Sunbright blundered into a rough-cut room. There was no furniture, just a single iron pipe with a spigot running along the craggy wall and daubed with glowing paint. He thanked the gods he could stand upright. Cradling Knucklebones, he shucked off his heavy coat and made a bed for her on a crude stone shelf. Testing the rusty spigot singed his hand, for it was scalding hot. He guessed all the caves were heated by boiling water springing from the earth. He used his sleeve to turn the spigot, soaked a rag, and cleaned Knucklebones's scalp wound and face and hands. He drank some of the water, flat and reeking of iron, then cleaned and bandaged his neck wound. Sitting, he straightened his tackle, honed his sword back to razor sharpness, and-ordered to stay put-sat beside the sleeping Knucklebones. Lulled by the delicious heat, he nodded off.
He awoke to heavy stamping and jumped off the shelf with sword in hand, quick and lithe as a panther, but groggy in mind. So, weaving and clutching a sword, he greeted his frowning hosts.
The dwarf was old. His wrinkled face was framed by a bushy white beard and eyebrows, with six silver rings braided into his drooping mustache. He wore a tunic of rough-out gray leather with a shaggy hump behind his neck, and Sunbright supposed the hide came from a yak-man. A kilt of goat hide, much stained by rust and pitted by burn marks, hung to battered boots stiff with tar. Somehow, he looked familiar.
'I am Drigor,' stated the dwarf. Of course, Dorlas's father resembled him. 'What have you to give me?'
'I am Sunbright Steelshanks, of the Raven Clan of the Rengarth Barbarians.' If they still exist, he thought dismally. 'I bring you-bring you-'
But the old dwarf's deep brown eyes had already spotted the warhammer holstered on the barbarian's belt. Without words, Sunbright pulled the weapon and handed it over.
With hands marked by crooked fingers, inch-thick callouses, and burn scars, the dwarf cradled the hammer as gently as a baby. The hammer had always looked and felt big enough to slay an ox, but in those hands it looked like a toy. Without any visible emotion, Drigor said, 'We heard. But you were there? Tell me how it came to pass.'
A little civility would be nice, Sunbright thought, a please and thank you for risking his and Knucklebones's life to visit these mountains to deliver a hammer. But the old man-if dwarves were men-had just been reminded that his son was dead, so Sunbright could stifle his irritation.
'We were bodyguarding a caravan, and almost to Dalekeva, when the Hunt caught us…' Still groggy, and hungry, Sunbright sat on the stone shelf beside a sleeping Knucklebones and told the tale. How within sight of the city walls, a hunting party of decadent Neth on golden mechanical dragons and birds swooped down. How Dorlas discharged his duty by sending the caravan's merchants ahead while the bodyguards fought from the woods. How, eventually, the forest was ignited, so they ran for the city gates. How Dorlas, wounded, fell behind, and insisted they run on. How a huntsman pierced the dwarf with a golden lance through the belly but, incredibly, Dorlas hung onto the lance, jerked himself up it, yanking the shaft through his own guts, to crush the metal wolf mask of the huntsman and kill him first, before the dwarf died himself. How Sunbright and Greenwillow were saved by Dorlas's sacrifice.
Though he was an excellent storyteller, like all tundra dwellers, Sunbright didn't embellish the story, for Dorlas's deeds needed no exaggeration. All through the tale, the eyes of Drigor never left the shaman's face, and Sunbright felt burned anew, as if he'd been pierced to the guts himself, cut open to expose any untruth.
'A good death, and brave…' The old dwarf talked mostly to himself. 'We own little here in the Iron Mountains, we Sons of Baltar. Scanty food, iron used up, little coal to burn. So, for generations now, our children are our resource. We train our sons and daughters to war, and send them into the world of men to fight as soldiers and bodyguards. Many never return to this, our ancestral home. So with Dorlas.'
Sunbright was quiet at this epitaph, feeling that, rather than floating a coffin down a river, he'd finally helped bury Dorlas, who'd been a friend in the short time the barbarian had known him. He murmured, 'I'm sorry.'
'Sorry is nothing,' pronounced the dwarf, obviously an old mountain adage. Then surprised him with, 'I owe you, Sunbright Steelshanks. I, Drigor, son of Yasur, owe you a favor.' He tipped the warhammer, then left the stone room.
Sunbright sat on the shelf and stared at the empty doorway, wondering what next? A quiet stir made him turn.
'A dwarf owes you a favor. Better than money in the bank.'
Sunbright looked into Knucklebones's single eye and asked, 'How long have you been awake?'
'Long enough. As a child, I learned to wake silently. You make powerful and lasting friends, country mouse.'
'I meet a lot of people, true, though some I must kill. How's your head?'
'It hurts. What are you looking at?' she murmured, almost against his chin as he loomed above her.
'It's a shame you've only the one, because it's a pretty eye,' he whispered, then he planted a big juicy kiss on her eyelid.
'Yick! That's not where they go!'
He kissed her small, firm mouth.
'Better?'
'Much better,' she murmured.
Sunbright and Knucklebones spent the night huddled under two blankets and the glowing iron pipe. The stone was hard, but the warmth wonderful. In dry clothing and with breakfast (their own rations) under their belts, they felt better, if sore.
Drigor walked into the room shouting, 'Are you better?'
Noise made Sunbright's head throb, but he answered civilly, 'Yes, we're better, thank you. This is my friend, Knucklebones, by the way.'
The dwarf only puffed a wisp of ring-braided mustache from his mouth. 'It's well you can travel,' he said, 'for you must leave.'
'Leave?' The word was jerked from Sunbright.
By the glow of luminous paint the dwarf's face looked like old parchment. He nodded glumly, brooking no argument, and said, 'We have nothing to offer you, and you nothing to offer us. Your mission is accomplished and you may go. We conserve food and fighters because of yak-men. What you saw yesterday was another scout party. The yak-men covet our mountains. They push in from the east, and we are busy killing them. This takes food, and we have barely enough to feed ourselves.'
'More folk on the move…' Sunbright pondered aloud. 'Tell me, do you find the animals fewer, and sickly, even plants not thriving?'
Drigor frowned, and said, 'Yes, perhaps. The elk and goats did not climb as high this autumn, and even the high-dwelling chamois have moved to lower meadows to scratch moss. Scouts tell us the lichen and gorse is thin on the highest peaks, and not recovering from their graze. Why ask?'
'The high mountains are another harsh territory, but fragile, like my tundra. I sought my people in traditional
