small room in the thick of the night, he, too, wondered if he were being deceived.
But no, that was impossible. The man must be trustworthy. Blayne’s concealed visitor had known too much about Hoarst and the Black Army. It was Hoarst who had guided him to Archer Billings, and Billings who had put him in touch with the legion. The only explanation was that his nocturnal visitor was in league with Hoarst.
“I believe it’s reliable,” Blayne said. “I got it from a source connected to the man who sent me here.”
He had expected that explanation to be sufficient, but Ballard seemed surprisingly unmoved. “We’ll have to watch and wait, to be sure,” the legionnaire said. “But at the same time we’ll get ready to move at a moment’s notice.” He turned to Sir Jorde. “Can you send a man up there to check it out-as fast as possible?”
The dark-skinned knight nodded. “I’ll send my fastest rider at once.” He rose and, without a second look at Blayne, headed out through a door at the back of the room.
Ballard took a drink from his mug and changed the subject. “With the emperor’s legion out in the plains, there are only a few places in Palanthas that we need to infiltrate and control in order to effectively seize the city,” he said. “The palace on the central plaza, of course. The headquarters of the city guard, in the mayor’s office-the guard will not offer resistance if their commanders order them to stand down-and of course, the three gates leading through the Old City wall. We’ll be stretched pretty thin.”
“I have good news there too. The rebels in the High Clerist’s Tower have sent a number of men, something like a thousand, down the road to the city. They should be here in a matter of days, and they’ll augment our numbers and help us.”
Ballard nodded. He didn’t seem to take the news of reinforcements with as much enthusiasm as Blayne would have expected. Instead, he cleared his throat, looking at the lord from the corner of his eye.
“Then there’s the lord regent’s palace, outside of the walls,” he said. “Have you considered whether or not du Chagne will ally himself with us or stand against us?”
“I had intended to ask him to be our spokesman,” Blayne said. “That is, if you agree. His differences with the emperor are well known. He’s the only one with the authority to inspire the people to support our…” He hesitated, groping for the right word. “Coup,” he concluded, realizing he had to accept the fact.
“I agree,” Ballard said. “He was our leader until the emperor took control a few years back. He’s not really a military man, but he’s always had the sense to leave that department to others.”
“For better or worse,” one knight muttered. “Remember his dukes?”
Ballard shrugged. “Aye, but the people will respect him. Still, the emperor married du Chagne’s daughter. Will that complicate matters?”
“No,” Blayne replied with certainty. “If anything, it’s a point in our favor. I have it on good authority that the two men hate each other, and that the daughter is much the sticking point.”
“Well good, then. I’d heard rumors of that myself but couldn’t be certain whether or not they were true. A fellow of noble blood such as yourself no doubt has better contacts for courtly gossip,” Ballard added dryly.
“I suppose so,” Blayne said, embarrassed in spite of the fact it was probably true. “In any event, I suggest we go to see the lord regent at once and bring him in on our conspiracy.”
“Once again, I agree,” Ballard said. He nodded at the younger man’s half-full mug. “Now, drink up. We’ve got work to do.”
As a mountain dwarf, Dram should have been right at home in the dark, crowded tunnel of the mine shaft. After all, he hadn’t even seen the sun for the first decade of his life and had spent most of his youth in the great, subterranean, halls of Kayolin. Many mountain dwarves lived their entire lives underground as the natural course of things.
But he was surprised to realize he actually missed the daylight. For the past three days, as some thousand of his townsfolk had huddled with him in the narrow, sunless tunnels, he had come to realize how much he had fully embraced life on the surface. He didn’t feel claustrophobia or fear, but he had really come to cherish the world of fresh air, sunlight, stars, wind, and sky.
How long would it be before he sampled any of those joys again, if ever? The ogres had sealed the three tunnel mouths very thoroughly. They hadn’t even attempted to attack the entrenched dwarves, no doubt perceiving their disadvantages: because of their size, one ogre at a time would have had to fight against two or three dwarves at each narrow passage. So Ankhar had shrewdly ordered his ogres to toss large boulders into the mine entrances. The bombardment had seemed like a game to the brutes, as they competed to see who could throw the largest rocks with the most force.
A few dwarves had tried throwing the rocks out as fast as they were coming in, but they had been pummeled. When the third dwarf had fallen with a crushed skull, Dram had ordered the rest to withdraw deeper into the mines. The ogres had wasted little time in sealing off each hole, and even after all evidence of the sun had been blocked off, the dwarves could hear more and more rocks thunking and crashing into the pile. The result was a plug that was probably more than a hundred feet thick-and many, many tons of weight-blocking the mouth of each of the three mine entrances.
“Pop?” asked Mikey, climbing into his lap. Sally and about a hundred others were sitting or lying nearby; the place near the mouth of the center tunnel was one of the widest spaces in the network of tunnels. They had been eating and sleeping there since the siege began.
“Yeah, Mike?” Dram said, forcing a jovial tone into his voice.
“Go outta here?” The little tyke pointed a chubby finger toward the massive pile of rocks blocking the mine tunnel.
“Well, you see Red and Beebus over there? And Damaris? It’s their turn to dig now, and when they’re done, it’ll be my turn again. And sooner or later, we’ll have all those rocks gone and go outta here.”
In truth, the excavation was far more involved. Three diggers worked shoulder to shoulder, sometimes standing, other times kneeling, or even lying down to pull a stubborn piece of debris out of the way. Other dwarves loaded those rocks into mining carts, while still more trucked those carts deeper into the mine, where the excess rock was unceremoniously dumped into plunging, unused shafts. The same work was going on in the other two tunnels, Dram knew; there were side passages connecting all three mines, so in effect the whole town was sheltering in a network of tunnels that formed an underground fortress.
But it was a fortress with very limited food supplies. Originally they had provisioned the mines with enough victuals for the approximately three hundred children and their caretakers to survive for a month. There were four times as many dwarves in there as originally anticipated, with most of them needing significantly more food than a child. Dram had ordered the food to be strictly rationed almost immediately after entering the mines.
At least they had fresh water from several natural streams descending through the interior of the mountain ridge and enough air for them to breathe comfortably, thanks to some long ventilation shafts extending to the top of the ridge. Considering the fact they had no way to get out of there, their fortress was more of a prison-which was all right temporarily, as long as it didn’t prove a tomb.
Easing Mikey down to the floor, Dram got up and went to check on the progress of the work. “How much farther?” he asked Red, who had been one of the miners who originally excavated the tunnel.
“I’d say eighty feet,” the hill dwarf, nicknamed for his long, fire-colored hair and beard, replied. He wiped his brow, studying the chisel marks on the wall that served as calculations. “They really sealed us in.”
“Need more help?” Dram offered.
“Not for now. Sit down, take your rest. There’ll be plenty of work for you later.”
Dram went back to his place and sat down, grateful when Sally slipped her hand into his. Mikey sat between them, slowly drifting off to sleep. Swig Frostmead came over, his face locked in a frown. He was on the verge of some loud complaint when he noticed the sleeping lad.
Glumly, Sally’s father sat beside Dram, watching the workers. Finally, he leaned over and whispered into his son-in-law’s ear.
“Why didn’t you think to store a few kegs of spirits in here?” he wanted to know.
Selinda was aware of voices. She tried to move, to speak, but no noise came from her lips. For a panicky moment, she feared that the hateful Lame Hale had poisoned her with another lotus drink. The sounds around her were vague and indistinct and did nothing to refresh her memory, to enlighten her.
But after a while, straining her ears, the voices started to make sense.
“Ten prime diamonds, and a large bottle of the potion. That’s a fair price for this merchandise, I agree.”
Selinda recognized Lame Hale’s voice, and her throat constricted at the thought that she was the “merchandise” at the heart of the negotiation.
