stew he had wished for was here, and he was hungry. Lacking any other utensil, he dipped in with both hands, then stuck his bearded face into the mess to lap at the juices.
He had just come up for air, belching happily, when the great, helmet-framed face of a fire-eyed human filled the broken panel beside him and the man’s voice said, “Ah, there it is.” A large, armor-clad arm reached into Clout’s hiding place, swatted the gully dwarf casually aside, and gauntleted fingers closed around his bashing tool.
“Here, now!” Clout shrieked as the white stick was pulled away from him. With a lunge and leap that almost cleared the stew pot, but not quite, the Chief Basher of Clan Bulp caught his receding bashing tool and hung on. Half-submerged in noisome stew, he grasped the stick with both hands and clung to it. “My bashin’ tool!” he wailed at the top of his lungs. “How come ever’body tryin’ steal my bashin’ tool?”
Chapter 22
“I thought you were watching her!” Graywing’s Feral eyes blazed with fury. He towered over Dartimien the Cat, hovering in rage to confront the smaller man nose-to-nose. “I turn my back for a moment, only for a moment, and you lose her!”
“Back off or you’ll lose that yammering tongue, barbarian!” the Cat snarled, not giving an inch of ground. “Don’t blame me if you can’t keep track of your women. I was busy looking for a way out of this place!”
The stairs Dartimien had found, leading upward from the great catacombs beneath Tarmish, had brought them into a labyrinth of interlaced tunnels-sewers and storm drains for the city above. It was a maze of buried pathways, some wide and some narrow, most dark and winding, many rambling aimlessly, and all ripe with the accumulated refuse of generations of Tarmish history.
A gaggle of gully dwarves had followed the three humans up from the catacombs, it seemed the dim little creatures were everywhere, and these scampered here and there, exploring. Normally, the dim-witted little people were terrified of humans. The gully dwarves were, in fact, terrified of nearly everything, at first sight. But they were as adaptable as they were dense. Once having become accustomed to someone or something, anyone or anything, and accepting its presence, they merely assumed that it had always been there and was simply a part of the mysterious world in which they lived. Gully dwarves had been known to tolerate the presence of humans, goblins, turkeys, an ogre or two and even, now and then, a dragon, once they became accustomed to its presence.
For their part, humans generally paid no more attention to gully dwarves than they would to any other vermin. They were, after all, only gully dwarves-a nuisance, but seldom worth worrying about.
The tunnels wound and intersected, lighted only by occasional small grates, iron-barred and opening into the courtyards below the tower. There in the daylight, beyond the stone-bound slits, armed men marched and scurried, some of them searching for others, some locked in combat with those they had found. Gelnians and Tarmites, the warriors of the Vale of Sunder seemed oblivious to all but their ancient feud. Here and there, the seeps from above were red with fresh-spilled blood. And beneath it all, the sewers wound here and there in reeking gloom.
In such surroundings Graywing the Plainsman-skilled tracker and pathfinder of the wild lands-was hopelessly confused. His was a world of open skies and long winds. The cluster and stench of cities left him disoriented. So the city-born Dartimien, to whom sewers and rancid alleys were second nature, had taken it on himself to chart a path that might lead to an exit.
But at an intersection of several tunnels he had paused to read the markings on a wall (accompanied by an interested gully dwarf or two) trusting to the sound of the plainsman’s boots to lead him to the others. He had followed the sound, and found Graywing. But the plainsman was alone. There was no sign of Thayla Mesinda. They realized simultaneously that the girl was missing, when each discovered that she wasn’t with the other. The two warriors faced each other angrily in the dim light of a sewer channel, while here and there frightened gully dwarves scurried for cover.
“I should put my blade through you, alley cat,” Graywing blustered.
“Shake that fist in my face again and you’ll pull back a bloody stump,” Dartimien purred, razorlike daggers appearing in his hands.
“First you’re hovering around her like a starved hound at a feast, then the minute I turn my back you lose her!”
“Who was hovering? Me?” Dartimien’s tone was scathing. “From the minute you first saw that girl, you haven’t had your wits about you! I never saw anything so pathetic!”
“I told you to look after her!”
“You ordered me to leave her alone!”
Among the nearby shadows, small voices whispered among themselves. “Why Talls hollerin’ on each other? Gonna kill each other?” “Who knows?” “Who cares?”
Growling like feral beasts, the two men glared at each other, then lowered their gazes. “This isn’t doing us any good,” Graywing said. “Where could she have gone?”
“Obviously not where we did,” the Cat admitted. “Back where the tunnels met, when you came this way, was she with you?”
“Of course she was! She … well, I thought she was, anyway. She was chirping about seeing light down one of the corridors, but …”
“But you weren’t listening,” Dartimien sighed, turning away. “You never listen!”
“I was so listening! She has a lovely voice! But I assumed she was talking to some of these Aghar.”
Dartimien sneered. “You were listening to her voice, and paying no attention to her words? Well, she’s gone now, and that’s that. Too bad, but those things happen. I think there’s a main outfall ahead a few hundred yards. We may have to bend some bars, you ought to be useful there, at least, but it’s worth a look.”
“We’re going back,” Graywing said.
“Don’t be ridiculous! That girl could be anywhere by now. She’s probably been caught and killed.” Bits of grit cascaded from the roof of the tunnel, and the paving above thundered with the sound of many running feet. Distantly, there was the clash and clatter of a full-scale battle being waged. “We have to get out of here. Come on, now. Let’s find that main grate.”
“I’m going back,” Graywing repeated, drawing his sword. “Thayla needs me.” Without another glance he strode past Dartimien and headed back down the tunnel.
“Fool,” Dartimien snarled. “Alright, so she’s pretty, but she’s just a woman. The world is full of women. You’ll just get yourself killed.… ” He let the words trail off. Graywing was already out of sight, around a bend. Dartimien shook his head. “Gods,” he muttered. “Why should I have to bend bars by myself? That’s brute work. That big oaf is better at such things than I am.” Cursing under his breath, he set off after Graywing.
Behind him, a gaggle of gully dwarves tagged along, keeping to the shadowed places. They weren’t the least bit interested in tall people’s doings, but it was in their nature to follow whoever happened to lead. Right now the only people doing any leading seemed to be these incomprehensible Talls.
Where tunnels intersected, Dartimien found Graywing crouched, studying patterns in the mud. “She was here,” the plainsman said, not turning. “I knew she was right behind me. But when I went this way”-he gestured back the way they had come-“she went off to the right. Up that rising tunnel over there.”
“Stupid,” Dartimien hissed. “That’s only a storm drain. It leads right up to the inner courtyard, not fifty yards from where we found the opening down into the catacombs.”
“How would she know where it leads?” Graywing snapped. “She followed it because there’s daylight ahead there somewhere. Look. You can see it from here.”
“I can also hear the clash of weapons from here, and smell the stench of fresh-spilled blood.”
Ignoring him, Graywing rose to his feet and headed up the tunnel.
“That barbarian is crazy as a loon,” the Cat muttered. “You’d think he’d never seen a woman before.”
“Sap’s runnin’,” a small voice beside him said.
Dartimien scowled at the grimy little creature. “Butt out,” he snapped. “I don’t need an explanation of the
