on the buckboard. Each held a shiny steel-bladed battle-axe casu ally in his hands.
'Since when do derro claim rights over Hillhome's pass?'
Flint was not the least bit frightened. He watched the armed guards, whose eyes were focused on the axe hanging from
Flint's belt. The two derro wore dark metal breastplates and heavy leather gauntlets. They carried themselves with the cocksure attitude of veteran warriors. The driver, who was unarmed and unarmored, held the reins and watched.
'You hill dwarves know the agreement,' the driver growled deep in his throat. 'Now get back to the village be fore we are forced to report you as a spy… or worse,' he added. The guards took a step toward Flint, gripping their weapons with purpose.
'Spy!' sputtered Flint, almost amused, and yet his hand moved to his axe. 'Great Reorx, why would I be doing that?
Speak up, dwarf!'
The horses pranced impatiently on the Passroad, snorting misty breath into the chilly night air. The driver stilled them with a jerk on the reins, then clenched his fists at Flint. 'I'm warning you — get out of the way and go back to the vil lage,' the driver hissed.
Flint knew he would get no answers from these derro. He forced his voice to remain level. 'You've already caused me to burn my bacon with your nonsensical questions, so pass if you must and I'll return to my charred dinner.'
Flint saw the two armed derro separate as they neared him. Each held his battle-axe at the ready, and Flint looked at the weapons with momentary envy, thinking of his own, trail-worn blade.
With growing annoyance, Flint hefted his axe. His body tingled with energy, anticipating battle. Though he did not seek a fight with these mountain dwarves, he would be cursed by Reorx before he'd back down from his hereditary enemies.
'Can you prove you're not a spy?' asked one, taunting.
Flint stepped to the side, away from the fire. 'I could if I thought enough of such wide-eyed derro scum to be both ered with it,' he snapped, his patience gone.
The nearest derro flung himself at Flint, his axe whistling through the air. The hill dwarf darted backward in time to also avoid the second derro, who charged in low. The two mountain dwarves' axes met with a sharp clang of steel.
A sublime sense of heightened awareness possessed Flint as he turned to parry a blow from his first attacker, then sent the second derro reeling back with a series of sharp blows.
Hacking viciously, he knocked the fellow's weapon to the ground just as the other one leaped back toward him.
Whirling away, Flint raised his own axe in a sharp parry.
The two blades clashed together, but the hill dwarf stared in dismay as the haft of his axe cracked, carrying the head to the ground. Suddenly Flint was holding only the haft of his battle-axe. He stood there, defenseless, as if naked.
The second guard's pale, blue-tinged face split into a gro tesque grin at Flint's predicament. A sinister light entered his eyes as he raised his axe, ready to crush the hill dwarf's skull.
Flint moved with all the quickness his years of battle expe rience could muster. He thrust the axe handle forward, us ing it to stab like a sword. The splintered ends of wood struck the derro's nose, and the Theiwar dwarf cried out in agony, blinking away blood.
Flint struck again, smashing the wooden stick over the derro's knuckles, which gripped his axe. Crying out again, the guard dropped his weapon, stumbling blindly from his bloody nose and eyes. Flint quickly snatched the axe up and swung menacingly at the suddenly retreating derro. He turned on the one who was sprawled on the ground, urging him along as well.
The two disarmed Theiwar sprang onto the wagon as the driver lashed the horses. Whinnying with fear and snorting white clouds of breath into the night air, the massive beasts struggled to get the heavy wagon rolling. In moments it lurched through the pass and started on the downhill trek to the east and Newsea. As they rumbled away, the hill dwarf got a good look at their pale, wide eyes staring back at him around the side of the wagon, their glares full of hatred, and not a little fear.
Thoroughly disgusted with the needless fight, Flint stomped back to his fire and snatched the pan of burned ba con, tossing the blackened remains into the scrub. No longer hungry, he sat with his back to the flames and pon dered the strange encounter.
His mind was a jumble of burning questions. What sort of
'agreement' with these evil dwarves could have caused the hill dwarves to forget centuries of hatred and forced poverty because of the Great Betrayal? And what did the derro have to hide that they were concerned about spies?
Thorbardin, ancient home of the mountain dwarves, lay some twenty miles to the southwest, past Stonehammer
Lake. Flint knew that the derro belonged to the Theiwar, one of five clans in the politically divided underground dwarven city. Mountain dwarves as a whole were notori ously clannish, concerned only with their mining and their metalcraft. So of all the clans, why would the derro come to the surface, since they were ones the most sensitive to light?
Flint examined the axe his attacker had left behind. It was a weapon of exceptional workmanship, hard steel with a sil ver shine and a razor-honed edge. He would have guessed the axe to be of dwarven origin, except that the customary engraving that marked every dwarven blade was missing from the steel.
Flint shivered, whether from cold or apprehension, he could not be sure. Still, it reminded him the fire needed stok ing. Tossing two small logs onto the coals, he stared into the flames until the fire's mesmerizing effects made his eyelids heavy.
These mysteries he would take to sleep, unresolved. He moved away from the fire to where he could keep an eye on the camp yet remain concealed. But nothing disturbed him again that night. -
Flint awoke at first light and at once headed east through the pass toward Hillhome. He stayed with the rutted, mud slick road until he came to the last low ridge before the vil lage, just a quarter-mile away. There he stopped to relish the view.
He had made the journey in less than two weeks, a re freshing enough adventure until the derro skirmish the pre vious night. But now he felt a peculiar emotion choke his heart as he looked down at the winding, paved road, the ex panse of stone buildings, the blockhouse that was the forge in the village of his youth.
The rugged valley stretched east to the pass and west to
Stonehammer Lake, broadening into a grassy vale around
Hillhome. Several side canyons twisted back into the hills to the north and south.
Flint's warm feeling chilled somewhat when he realized that a low haze hung in the valley where before the air had been impeccably clear. Of course, there had always been a little smoke from the town forge…
The town forge! Flint realized the barn beside it was three times or more the size it had been twenty years ago. A great, muddy yard surrounded it, containing several parked wag ons. The wagons, Flint realized with a jolt, were just like the one he had encountered the previous night at the pass.
And where once a single stack had emitted the smoke of the small forge, now four squat chimneys belched black clouds into the sky. The town itself seemed to have doubled in proportion, stretching farther to the west toward Stone hammer Lake. Indeed, the sleepy village of Flint's memory now bustled with a size and energy the dwarf found unnerv ing. Main Street, which once had been paved with sturdy stone, was now practically churned to mud by the traffic of crowds and vehicles.
Flint anxiously made his way down the Passroad until it became Main Street. He slowed his steps to search for famil iar faces — familiar anything! — but he recognized not a one, nor did any of the busy dwarves look up from their hurried pace. He paused to get his bearings.
For a moment he wondered if he had come to the right place. Up close, Hillhome looked even less like the town in his memory than it had from the ridge. The same large buildings — the mayor's mansion, the trading barn, the brewery — still dominated the central area. But around them clustered a mass of lesser structures,
