dwarf.
Flint scrambled backward up the steep chute, struggling to keep his balance in the loose rock. A fall would slide him, helpless, into the slashing maelstrom of tooth and claw below.
'Uncle Flint!' cried Basalt.
Flint did not even stop to see where Basalt was. 'This is no picnic, Basalt! Run, you hare-brained numbskull!' If the troll turned on his inexperienced nephew, the boy would be devoured before he could raise his blade.
'I can help!' Basalt gasped, slipping on loose rock as he scrambled closer. Now the troll did turn.
Powered by fear, Flint sprang forward, hacking the sharp blade of his axe into the monster's back. The blow sent sticky, gelatinous, pea-green blood showering onto Flint, who gagged and spat furiously. Nearly cleaved in two, the monster writhed away as best it could, hissing in pain and rage, giving Basalt enough time to slip past it.
'Stay back!' shouted Flint to his nephew, then bounded forward with another swing of his axe.
But Basalt had a mind of his own, and he delivered a sharp jab with his short sword into the troll's belly. The monster had begun to regenerate again, but the new blows doubled it over, sending it twisting and rolling down the ra vine. Grinning proudly, his right arm covered in green blood, Basalt prepared to leap after it.
'No!' ordered Flint, grasping his nephew's shoulder.
'You've got to learn when to retreat, harrn.'
'But we've got the advantage now!' objected Basalt, looking longingly down the ravine.
Flint jerked on Basalt's collar. 'Only until it grows back together.' He chuckled suddenly, then pretended to frown.
'Never mind that! What are you doing here in the first place? I'd like to know.'
Basalt began a clumsy explanation, but Flint cut him short with a poke in the chest. 'Not now, pup! There's a troll growing below us! You've got a lot to learn about adventuring!'
Flint leading the way, they raced up the ravine as fast as they could, reaching the top of the ridge in a minute. The troll was out of sight below them, having fallen around a bend in the ravine.
Basalt followed the older dwarf at a steady trot. Night closed around them, and still the two dwarves maintained a fast pace. They scrambled down the far side of the troll's ridge and hastened across the valley floor.
Finally they collapsed, exhausted, in a small clearing among the dark pines. Though it was pitch black, they dared not make a fire.
In the dim light, Flint leveled his gaze at his nephew.
'You've got some explaining to do, son. Why don't you start by telling me what you're doing here?'
Basalt fixed him with a sullen glare. 'You've got some ex plaining to do yourself, like where do you think you're going?'
Flint's mouth became a tight-lipped line. 'I owe answers to no one, least of all a smart-mouthed boy of a dwarf like yourself.'
'I'm not a boy anymore! You'd know that if you ever came home, or stayed more than a day!' For a moment Ba salt gave Flint a look that was so belligerent, so full of Fire forge stubbornness, that Flint's hands curled involuntarily into fists. But in another moment the older dwarf laughed out loud, clutching his paunch in mirth.
Puzzled, and a little insulted, Basalt demanded, 'What are you laughing about?'
'You!' said Flint, his laughter slowing to a chuckle. 'Aye, pup — you're a Fireforge, that's for sure! And what a pair we make!'
'What do you mean by that?' Basalt growled, unwilling to be teased out of his bad humor.
'Well, you're stubborn like me, for starters.' Flint crossed his arms and squinted at his nephew, considering him.
'You're not afraid of standing up to your elders either. You even tell 'em off once in a while, though you'd best watch so that doesn't become a habit! And you didn't hesitate one whit before jumping into battle with an honest to goodness troll.'
Flint looked at his nephew with affection. 'And you didn't come out here to spy on me, anyway, did you?'
'No!' Basalt said quickly, sitting up. 'You were right, Un cle Flint,' the young dwarf said softly. 'What you said about me being mad at my dad and at myself was true. I knew it when I threw that punch at Moldoon's — ' He looked away sheepishly '- but I guess I didn't much like you being the one to point it out.'
Basalt plucked nervously at his bootlaces. 'I didn't like leaving things the way they were between us.' He looked up now, clearing his throat gruffly. 'I've done that once before, and it will haunt me for the rest of my days.' Basalt's voice broke, and he hung his head. Flint sat quietly while his nephew composed himself.
'Even Ma doesn't know this,' he began again, his eyes looking far away into the night now, 'but Dad and I had a fight the night he died. She wouldn't be surprised, though — me and Dad argued almost every night. Always about the same thing, too. 'Stop drinking and get a decent job,' he'd say.'
Basalt looked squarely at Flint. 'The thing that always stuck in my craw was that, in addition to apprenticing to him, I had a job. He just didn't like me hauling feed for the derro's horses, that's all.' Basalt heaved a huge sigh and shook his head sadly. 'He tracked me down at Moldoon's that night and started up the old argument again, said the derro were up to no good and he would prove it. I told him to stay out of my business, and then I left him at the bar.' Ba salt's eyes misted over as he looked into the dark distance again, focusing on nothing in particular.
Basalt's expression turned unexpectedly to puzzlement.
'There's just one thing I don't understand. Dad said he hated that the village was working with the mountain dwarves, said he'd never lift a finger to help a derro dying in the street.' Basalt stroked his beard thoughtfully. 'So what was he doing smithing for them the day his heart gave out? Why that day?' Basalt turned his face to the heavens.
Flint heard his nephew's grief and was wracked with inde cision about the secret suspicions he harbored over
Aylmar's death. Basalt's account of the fight with his father only bolstered his hunch. Could he trust Basalt? He squeezed his nephew's shoulder.
'Basalt, I don't think your father's death was an accident,' he said.
Flint's nephew looked at him strangely. 'Are you talking about 'fate' or some such hooey?'
'I wish I were,' Flint said sadly. 'No, I think Aylmar was murdered by a derro mage's spell.'
'That's going too far!' Basalt said angrily. 'I've heard Garth's mutterings, and I know my father thought the derro were evil. But why would they want to kill him? It doesn't make sense!'
'It does if he discovered they were selling and transport ing weapons, not farm implements, and enough to start a war!' When Basalt still looked confused, Flint pressed on, telling Basalt how he had searched a derro wagon and what he had found there. He left nothing out, none of his worst imaginings, and he told him about the derro he killed.
'Seemed like I had no choice,' he added.
Basalt struggled to absorb the news. 'You knew all this and yet you didn't tell anybody'? You just left?' Basalt asked, smoldering.
Flint snorted at the irony. 'As Tybalt aptly put it, 'Who would believe the village idiot?' That's all the proof I have so far, Bas: Garth's 'mutterings' and what I saw with my own eyes in that wagon. And when they tie me into that derro I killed, Mayor Holden won't be likely to order a search of the wagons or a murder investigation on my say-so, either.'
He shrugged. 'Since these derro come from Thorbardin, there was nothing else I could do but go to the mountain dwarves myself and find the derro scum who killed
Aylmar.'
Basalt no longer looked skeptical. 'How are you going to find this one derro, when there must be hundreds of magic using derro there.'
Flint gave a devilish grin. 'Ah, but how many of them are hunchbacked? Garth, bless his simple heart, kept calling the derro he saw 'the humped one.' That's my only clue, but it's a good one.'
Basalt jumped to his feet. 'Well, what are we waiting for?
Let's go find the Reorx-cursed derro who killed my father!'
