brother,” she said grimly. “The city isn’t a safe place for the Houseguard clan.”
“B OSS Hiyram-wake ups! Wake ups, now!”
The voice penetrated the goblin’s sleep-fogged brain, and he blinked, sniffling a loud inhalation as he tried to understand where he was, what was happening. With the first touch of the air he recognized the ghetto, pungent and unmistakable… and then the other details of his circumstance came to him in a rush. He was hungry and lonely, utterly without hope. Even the Lady was gone, her father slain and Darann perhaps dead as well.
“Listen! Dwarves is comin’!” The voice, in breath sickly sour with malnutrition, hissed urgently at his ear, and he knew that things, bad as they were, could still get worse. He recognized the speaker as Spadrool, a courageous goblin who had been his friend since the Delver Wars.
“What? What you mean?” asked Hiyram, sitting up groggily.
Then he heard it: a deep thrumming that at first reminded him of a basso drumbeat, some kind of ceremonial cadence. But quickly he recognized, felt in his belly, the rhythmic rumble of an army on the march.
Instantly he sprang from his pallet, sniffing the air more carefully as his floppy ears pricked up. He analyzed the sound; it seemed to come from everywhere, but in fact arose in the direction of metal. He sought a trace of smoke scent, felt a moment of relief when he failed to detect that particular menace.
But then he heard the screams.
“They come against ghetto,” Spadrool explained, confirming Hiyram’s deduction. “Breakin’ down gates in Metal Wall.”
“Are the fighter gobs gathering?” Hiyram asked. He groped through the grimy straw of his pallet, clutched the hilt of the dagger, one of the precious weapons smuggled in to him by the Lady. “And the she-gobs and little ones running?”
“Best as can be,” replied Spadrool. “Needs you to tells us.”
“Come!” Hiyram was fully awake by then and raced out the door of his hovel with his comrade, who was armed with a stout pipe of iron, trailing right behind. They sprinted from the alley into the main thoroughfare of the ghetto, a narrow lane leading upward from the waterfront. Goblins were running in every direction, crying, calling, shouting.
“All you men-gobs!” Hiyram shouted as he ran into the middle of the street. “Go to metal way-bring you sticks, stones, bring you blades if you got! Right away!”
He turned and started up the hill, alarmed to realize that he could smell smoke now, that the stink seemed to be getting stronger with each step. At the same time, he was encouraged by the fact that dozens, quickly a hundred or more, goblins were following his lead. Many were unarmed, but some bore makeshift weapons like Spadrool’s. Nowhere else but in his own hand did Hiyram see the gleam of a steel blade.
They came to the top of the hill and saw the wall rising before them. Orange flames were bright at the base, where the gate had once stood. Now dark, armored figures were tromping past that blaze, entering the ghetto in a long, undeniably military file. Another waft of smoke carried past, and Hiyram knew that other gates along this wall were under attack. In the stone maze of the ghetto’s alleys, the fires could not spread into a conflagration, but they could be destructive and frightening where they were used.
“You there, halt! Drop those weapons!” shouted a burly and bearded Seer, lifting up the faceplate of his helm and striding imperiously forward. He was backed by a rank of armored dwarves. “You’ll be coming with us, you lot!”
“Go away!” shouted Hiyram, the first thought that came to his mind. He lifted the knife and brandished it at the officer, who was twenty or thirty paces away.
“They’re armed!” cried the dwarf. “It’s a rebellion! To the attack, men!”
Hiyram had seen dwarven armies before, but he was still surprised at their precise discipline, the quickness with which they obeyed orders. As if they were of one mind, the dwarves tightened ranks and charged the goblins with swords raised and shiny steel shields held across their chests.
The motley group of ghetto denizens turned tail and fled at the first rush of the dwarves. Hiyram held a second, his knife pointed pathetically, but his ears told him that every one of his comrades had run away. Gulping, he spun about, strangely moved to see the redoubtable Spadrool, eyes wide and pipe clutched in trembling hand, had remained at his side.
“Go now!” he shouted, and his companion turned with him. Wide feet slapping on the wet stones, they dashed away from the dwarves, sprinting into the tangle of alleys and sewers that was the goblin ghetto.
Darann knew that her brothers had innumerable questions, but she held them at bay as they dismounted and gathered around her. “Let’s not talk here. Come with me, up the hill.”
After they tethered their ferr’ells, she led them on foot, with their companion Konnor, up to the pinnacle of the seaside elevation. Here they sat on a stone bench, one of several which formed a ring on the hilltop.
The summit was a popular destination for dwarven walkers because of the splendid view of Axial. Now, however, Darann paid no attention to the array of coolfyre beacons. The six pillars of stone stood outlined in sparkling brilliance, torches and lamps illuminating the skirts of balconies, the vertical stripes of the lift channels.
“What did you mean, when you said that the city is no longer safe for clan Houseguard?” Borand asked. “Your words send an uncanny chill down my spine.”
“I am sorry to greet with you such news, but I meant just that. My brothers, our father is dead, slain-I am certain-upon the orders of Lord Nayfal.”
“No!” cried Aurand, bouncing to his feet, clenching his short sword so hard his knuckles turned white. Tears came to his eyes, and his mouth worked frantically, though no sound emerged. Finally he choked out a thought: “I will not believe this!”
Borand, the elder brother, watched Darann carefully, finally stepping forward and taking her shoulders in his strong hands, still looking into her eyes. “I hear and sense your pain. It is true, my brother.” He addressed Aurand while still looking at his sister. “And I am sorry, little one, that you were left to deal with that blow by yourself… I wish that I could have been here.”
“Father slain… by murder…” Aurand’s voice was numb, as if he was trying to convince himself by stating the facts. He shook his head, blinked back his tears, and looked around fiercely. “I swear by all the ancestors of Axial-I will avenge him!”
Then his eyes fell upon his sister again, and he wept loudly, staggering to Darann, sweeping her into his arms. She sobbed, too, at last giving vent to her grief. “I am sorry that we were gone… that you were here alone to face such a crisis.”
“Rufus Houseguard murdered?” Konnor said, horror muting his voice to a dull whisper. He looked at Darann, reached out to touch her hand. “And you have fled the city. Did you sense that you were in danger?”
“Yes… more than sensed, I saw.” She told of her flight from the manor, of the dark intruders who broke in and searched the rooms with clear and menacing purpose.
“These are dark days upon us,” Borand said grimly. “And to think, we returned to Axial with a message of hope.”
“What hope can there be?” Darann asked.
Borand told her, patiently, about their discovery of the abandoned city, the indications that the Delvers might be gone from the First Circle entirely. “We were going to tell father, then go with him to see the king! We hoped to persuade him to open up some of the far warrens to food gathering again, even to let the goblins free to help with the work they have always done for us. But Father… I can’t believe he’s gone!”
“How did he die?” Aurand asked grimly, fingering his sword as he looked across the water at the lights of Axial.
Darann described the warning from Hiyram, her detainment by the guards, and the discovery of the shattered lift. “The king suspected nothing but an accident,” she said quietly. “I looked into his eyes, and I believed him. But he told me that Nayfal himself walked Father to the lift, that he was standing right there when it happened. The cable snapped, and the brakes failed, the first time those two systems have ever malfunctioned together.”
“Sabotage. He would have needed help, but that’s a simple thing for a man of Nayfal’s connections.” Borand scratched his beard, his eyes narrowed. “You were wise to leave the city, my sister.”
“It was not so much a decision-I was chased out!” She recounted the tale of the intruders into Manor Houseguard, of her harrowing escape, and her flight over water. “I knew you would return by the Null Causeway, so I waited here, camping beside the shore, until I saw your ferr’ells coming past the outer beacon.”
