“So it is,” she agreed. “But there is much to do here if Thorbardin as my father envisioned it — and as each of you envision it — is to be built. Old differences among the clans must be recognized, and different ways respected, but the Council of Thanes must act as one on matters of the future. To do things which have never been done before, all must work together. This Council alone can make that occur. Therefore I ask your approval before I say to my people that my husband, Willen Ironmaul, should be their chief.”
Behind her, Willen’s mouth dropped open. “Me? Tera, I am no chief! I’m just a soldier. I wouldn’t know how to …”
Tera looked around at him and slipped her hand into his. “No one is a chief until the time comes to lead,” she said.
Slowly, a grin spread across Olim Goldbuckle’s wide face, parting his golden whiskers. “You are your father’s daughter,” he said. “I wonder if your Hylar suspect how fortunate they are.”
“I would welcome Willen Ironmaul to this table,” Slide Tolec said solemnly. “I know as well as anyone that being chief comes of necessity more than by design.”
Vog Ironface hesitated, then raised his mask. Glinting ferret eyes in a face that sloped like a fox’s studied the big Hylar guardsman, and he nodded. “I have seen you fight,” Vog said. “There is more to your strategies than strength and precision. There is something unseen. What is it?”
“It is order.” Willen shrugged. “The teacher who taught us how to fight also taught us why and when. He said that skills without honor — which I think is nothing more than order of the heart — are like a forge without fire.”
“Honor is order?” the Daergar mused. “Order of the heart. Interesting. Wisdom” — he glanced at Tera — “and honor. Willen Ironmaul, Vog Ironface will welcome you to this table.”
“As will I,” Olim Goldbuckle chuckled. “Maybe some order of the heart is what is needed to get us all moving forward again.”
At the far side, Bole Trune rose to his feet, drew his cudgel, and placed it on the table before him. Then he turned to Willen Ironmaul. “Klar have trusted Hylar,” he rumbled. “Bole Trune trusts you.”
A few days later the muffled drums said that Willen Ironmaul had been named chieftain of Thane Hylar of Thorbardin. And in the song of the drums was a resonance that echoed in the hearts of dwarves of all the thanes, quickening their steps as they worked. Purpose, they felt, had been restored.
26
Through the final weeks of winter forges rang beneath Cloudseeker Peak, and the vapors rising above the Windweavers were warm from the fires far below. Though the clans of Kal-Thax had acted in unison for centuries to defend against intrusion into their lands, this was the first time in history that they had actually worked together to achieve something positive, and deep in the heart of the mountain, their combined skills began to show visible results.
To the Daewar’s genius at delving were added the Hylar arts of stonecutting and masonry, and the delves were no longer limited in their expanse. With the introduction of lift platforms, like those invented by Handil Farsight, the difficulty of working from level to level in a dig was almost eliminated. The dark steel of the Daergar proved excellent for the making of rails and cables, and the dwarves began construction of a series of subterranean roads to connect the centers of all the separate towns of Thorbardin and to accommodate cable carts to and from the warrens.
Boats were crafted from lumber brought by the Neidar or traded from the region’s independent Einar, and wharves were chiseled into the slopes of the lakeshore. From there, cables were strung out to the base of the great, living stalactite above the water and fixed there. From here would begin the construction of the Hylar’s delves, working upward through the stone and — eventually — downward from the mountain’s peak through shafts that would later accommodate sun-tunnels.
Most of what would someday exist here was still in the minds and on the scrolls of the crafters, but it was begun and there would be no stopping it.
The thane leaders envisioned Thorbardin as a fortress, a stronghold from which the dwarves could issue forth at will to protect their fields and valleys. No longer could all of Kal-Thax be, simply, closed. It was far too large, and too accessible, for the growing press of outsiders to be entirely kept out. In times long past, when intruders were few, that might have been possible. But now it was not a practical option, and the dwarven people were nothing if not practical. Still, the realm could be held against settlement, and this was the intention of the new covenant.
Some outsiders would get in. Some might journey across Kal-Thax. But with the fortress of Thorbardin dominating the realm, none would take root there.
An option of a different sort was proposed by Tera Sharn and presented by Willen Ironmaul. If the tide of outsiders could not be stopped, they suggested, then why not turn it, as a shield turns a lance?
They puzzled over the idea and how it might be accomplished, and it was Olim Goldbuckle who came up with the answer. “Since we don’t want all those people coming here,” he suggested, “maybe we could give them somewhere else to go instead. Most people — humans in particular — are more likely to follow a road than to cross it.”
Thus, even before the first thaw of spring was felt in the valleys, Cale Greeneye rode out from Kal-Thax with a company of Neidar volunteers to scout the internal ranges, and Willen Ironmaul rode eastward with a hundred mounted Hylar warriors led by his new guard captain, Sand Sakor, and accompanied by Gem Bluesleeve and his Golden Hammer footmen. On behalf of the Council of Thanes, Willen intended to have a talk with whoever was in charge in southeastern Ergoth. The humans who lived there were as beset by the flood of refugees from the east as the dwarves of Kal-Thax were.
During the Hylar migration, they had seen human citadels scattered here and there across the countryside. Homes and fiefdoms to the knights of the lords that governed the land, some of these were no more than manor houses perched atop ridges and rocky hills overlooking the fields and herds of their supplicants. But there was one that Cale Greeneye had seen from a distance and reported. It was a great, walled keep atop a high bluff and was obviously the home of someone important. It sat several miles north of the field where the Hylar had defeated the Cobar raiders, and Willen suspected that the place was the seat of that gray knight who had spoken warning to him on that day — the one Glendon Hawke called Lord Charon. For Calnar horses and sturdy Daewar footmen, the place was not too far away, and the man had seemed to be in charge. Willen decided he would be the one to see.
Two days out from the lower slopes, the dwarf troop entered tilled fields and meadows, with little villages visible here and there among them. A few miles farther and the great citadel was in sight. It was as Cale had described it — a tall fortification of gray stone, with ramparts and parapets where banners flew. It was not a great structure by Hylar standards, but better than most things Willen had seen built by humans.
He wasn’t sure what protocols were involved in approaching a human stronghold to discuss business, but he had observed back in Thoradin that humans were very much like dwarves in their thinking, except for their inability to really concentrate on anything for very long. So he took the direct approach. With his troops at his back, the new chieftain of the Hylar of Thorbardin simply headed for the place and assumed he would be noticed soon.
The first to notice the dwarves were villagers at a little place where thatch-roofed huts crowded along what seemed to be the beginning of a road. At first glance there were no people visible, either in the village or thereabouts in the crusted fields where the melting snows had left gray-white patterns atop the dark mud beneath. No one was stirring, but there was smoke above the huts, so Willen had a trumpeter blow salute, then led his troops right into the center of the place. Here and there shutters parted, and doors opened a crack. Shadowed eyes stared out at the short, armored creatures perched on the tall horses, then shutters slammed and doors echoed to the sounds of bolts being dropped into place. From somewhere a flimsy arrow — like a quarrel from a badly strung crossbow — arced in the sunlight and glanced off Willen’s helm.
He raised his shield and quartered around in his high saddle. “Here, now!” he roared. “There’s no call for that!”
Somewhere nearby, a great squawking and flailing erupted. It sounded like foxes in a chicken coop. At one
