Chapter 20
'Wake up to swords! Wake up to swords!'
The tumbling mass of Aghar spilled into the royal bed chambers, crawling over and clawing at each other with dirty fingernails in their desperation to be the first to inform their king and queen of the news.
'What's going on?' mumbled Flint, his arm encircling
Perian on their mossy bed in the Thrown Room. It was the morning of the fifth day after Pitrick's attack. He and Perian had made their way back from the grotto to the comfort of the moss bed not long before Nomscul arrived. 'Stop that!' the hill dwarf ordered, waking up finally.
For a moment Nomscul ceased his bouncing on the edge of the bed nearest Flint, an act that was sending clumps of dried moss flying. 'Mountain dwarves marching! Two of them! They go to war, take swords and stuff! Gully dwarves great spies! We see all and tell all right soon!'
'OK, Nomscul, I get the point.' Flint was fully awake now. He grabbed the Aghar's bony shoulders to keep him from jumping up and down. 'How many were — are you sure it isn't just a patrol?'
Nomscul slammed his hands on his hip bones and sniffed, tossing his head at the insult to his intelligence.
Flint reluctantly rolled away from Perian and pushed himself off the bed. Turning his back, he yanked his pants up to his stomach, stuffing his long blue-green tunic into the drawstring waist.
The mountain dwarf was waking up more slowly. 'It can't be the Theiwar troops — it's too early,' she protested, stabbing the sleep from her eyes with her fists. 'It's only been a couple of days since the attack in the Big Sky Room;
Pitrick couldn't possibly have organized the troops that quickly!'
'Tell that to Pitrick and his army,' Flint grumbled, stuffing his boots onto his feet. 'I just hope Basalt's had enough time to fortify Hillhome. We're coming, whether they're ready or not.'
'We can march? Can we?' pleaded Nomscul, thrusting his chest out and stomping about the room to demonstrate his readiness.
Flint ignored the shaman as he finished dressing, his mind on the march ahead of them. He strapped on the Tharkan Axe, his gift from Perian the night before. His fingers lin gered over the cool steel blade, while his mind traveled back to the previous evening. Sighing, he slapped some day-old water on his face.
'Tell every gully dwarf in the place that the time has come for the big march. They must get their weapons, their shields, supplies, everything,' the king ordered Nomscul.
'Gather up the sludge bombs and meet Queen Perian in the grotto. I'm going there directly to have a look outside my self.' Nodding furiously, Nomscul dashed from the cavern in the direction of the Big Sky Room.
But Perian shook her head as she crawled over Flint's side of the bed and began to dress hastily. 'I'm coming with you.'
Flint turned to her in exasperation. 'One of us has to stay here and see that they get organized!' he objected. 'How do we know they won't bring their knives and spoons instead of their swords and shields?'
'We don't,' said Perian. 'But you won't know which of the thane's forces we face, or how to combat them. I served in his guard — '
'I remember,' Flint interrupted.
'— I'll recognize the units, their strengths and their weak nesses. I know the thane's officers! If anyone stays back here, it should be you!'
Flint gruffly assented. He led them down the sloping Up per Tubes, finally finding the entrance to the stairway into the grotto.
They scrambled down the stairway, Flint taking the steps two at a time. Both of them paused to look at the bench by the pool, still covered with the containers of food and their plates from the night before.
'Come on,' Flint said at last, following the pool to its far thest corner from the stairway, where a large but low-to the-ground crack in the granite wall allowed access. A deep channel had been cut in the sandy ground there, and pre sumably it and the crack had been formed by an old stream bed; now the water left the pool by another, newer channel ten feet beyond the old one.
'This is it.' Flint took up Perian's hand and slipped into the jagged fissure, leading the way. Before long they had to walk in a crouch, as the top of the crack loomed close over head. Flint counted his steps out of habit from his old dungeon-crawling days, and on step ninety-three, they came abruptly into sunlight on a small crest cloaked in pines. The crack was cut slightly at an angle and surrounded by trees, thus it was almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye.
Accustomed to living underground, Perian squinted in pain at the sudden light, made worse by reflections off of early snow. Even Flint blinked at the brightness, having grown used to the darkness below in less than a week. A cold breeze wafted past his face, and the old, familiar sensa tion invigorated him.
'I have been to the surface less than a dozen times, but it has never looked beautiful to me before today,' Perian con fessed, shielding her eyes with an upraised arm. 'The light hurts my eyes, but I'll grow accustomed soon, because I'm half Hylar.' She laughed. 'After years of Pitrick's threats, I never thought I would be happy about that.'
Flint patted her encouragingly on the shoulder; he had the feeling that a lot of things would change today. The hill dwarf knew that they had emerged in the Kharolis range about a half-day northeast of the tunnel by which he had en tered Thorbardin. Climbing up the crest to get a better view, he looked down at a mountain stream that he presumed had its origins in the grotto. Flint shielded his eyes and looked to the east. The sky was crystal-clear, and he could see the shimmering shore of Stonehammer Lake about a day's march away. Looking down the mountain to the west, he could not locate the Passroad, nor see signs of mountain dwarf troops.
'This stream flows down one of the side valleys toward the lake, which meets up with the Passroad,' Flint said. 'We should come in sight of the road if we follow the stream down.'
They moved through an open forest, following the gentle descent of the valley. In less than ten minutes they came around a shoulder of the ridge; across barren, snow-dotted slopes they saw the Passroad, a thick brown tendril snaking its way through the foothills north of Thorbardin.
The road was empty for as far to the west as the eye could see.
Arms crossed, Flint chewed his lip. 'Have we delayed so long that they've already passed from sight ahead of us?' he asked, his voice ragged with concern.
'I don't think so.' Perian shook her head, not taking her eyes from the general vicinity of the road. 'My guess is that they've camped somewhere for the day, out of the sun. They probably haven't moved too far off the road.' She scanned the horizon, stopping to examine the edge of a thicket of pines just a little to the west. 'See there?' she asked, point ing. 'Under those trees? It's nearly at the edge of my vision — they could almost be ants!' She concentrated. 'No,
I'm sure I saw a red plume waving. It's the Bloody Blades.'
Flint shivered involuntarily at the name. 'What are the Bloody Blades?'
Perian pursed her lips while she thought. 'The House
Guard. The Blades are just one regiment of three, each con taining two hundred soldiers. The other regiments are the
Silver Swords and the Black Bolts. The three regiments al ways fight together as a synchronized force, complementing their strengths and weaknesses. They form units of heavy infantry, light infantry, and crossbows.'
'Could you try not to sound so proud of them?' Flint grumbled.
Perian looked only mildly embarrassed. 'Old habits,' she said.
Flint whistled through his teeth. 'Six hundred dwarves.
And against 'em we have a couple hundred Aghar,' he groaned. 'Why don't we just hand Hillhome over?'
'It could be worse,' Perian said, trying to sound encour aging. 'The thane has thousands of troops at his
