wall was flat and several feet wide, and she remembered that she had seen guards patrolling here on occasion. The four dwarves stayed low, pulling the ladder upward, then carefully lowering it down the far side.
It seemed to take forever to the dwarfmaid, but she judged it only to be a minute or so that they remained atop the wall. Even so, she was certain that a searching beacon would illuminate them or that some wandering guard would spot their silhouettes against the city’s lights. As soon as the ladder was in place, they descended into a rank alley, with dark, shabby buildings pressing close, leaving a passage only five or six feet wide. Konnor suggested that they lower the ladder and hide it in the shadows at the base of the wall, which they quickly did.
“Which way?” Borand asked, keeping his voice hushed.
Darann had been looking around, wondering that herself. She saw a suggestion of movement, a flash of a bright eye, and bent over. There was something there, crouched in the shadows at the base of the wall, regarding them with wide-open eyes.
“Hi,” she said, “I am the Lady Darann of clan Houseguard, goblin friend. Can you tell me where Hiyram is?”
“Hello, Lady,” said a goblin, rising from his hiding place, squinting at the four dwarves. “I know of you-and trust you, for you sneak into ghetto, not smash gate.”
“Good,” she said. “And thank you. What do you know about Hiyram?”
“This way,” said the goblin. “We see if he still lives, okay?”
Lord Nayfal was nervous. How could this be taking so long? The filthy goblins were unarmed, half-starved, and notoriously cowardly. How in the Underworld could they resist his elite companies? This should have been a simple matter of herding them into the plazas in the center of their ghetto, then wading in with unsheathed weapons, giving the wretches what they deserved.
“Captain Brackmark,” he called. The lord’s ferr’ell bucked under him, and he cursed, then slid down from the saddle to stand on the ground. He had been riding the beasts for fifty years, but this was one of those times when it seemed that he was simply unable to control his stubborn and willful mount.
The officer of the guard clomped up to him, saluting. “Yes, m’lord?” he asked.
“What’s the problem? Why aren’t your men pushing through to the central plaza yet?”
“Begging your lordship’s pardon, but we’re making good progress,” Brackmark insisted. “We got ’em cleared out of the near buildings, and we’re taking it street by street, pushing toward the center.”
“That’s not good enough. Send in the rest of the reserve battalion! I want this matter cleaned up by the end of the interval!”
“I will send them, sir, of course,” replied the veteran footman, sidling away from the ferr’ell as the creature snapped and growled at Nayfal’s liveryman when that dwarf took the trailing reins. “But it might still take another interval, maybe two, before we can round up all the males.”
“Bah,” snapped Nayfal. “What makes the pathetic wretches so hard to catch? If they’re hiding behind the females, then catch-or kill-the wenches, too!”
“Not that we haven’t tried, lord. But they seem to have a million hiding places in there. We chase ’em into what looks like a dead-end alley, and-poof-the whole bunch slips out through some narrow crack no dwarf could fit his head through. They got tunnels down under the streets, and they climb all over the roofs. I lost a good man, broken neck, ’cause he chased a gob onto some cursed trellis, couldn’t nearly hold his weight!”
“Casualties are acceptable,” retorted Nayfal pointedly. “The important thing is to round up all the goblins that might ever take up arms against us. I want to remove this threat from the city for once and for all!”
“Right, and we will, like I said, m’lord. It just might take a wee bit longer than we thought.”
“Well, do as I command and send in the reserves!” snapped the nobleman, angrily snatching the reins from his servant. “And I will personally lead them in the charge!”
He kicked his foot into the stirrup and hoisted himself up, praying that the beast would remain still long enough for him to get settled. Surprisingly enough, it did, and with another jerk on the reins, he turned the sleek head toward the ghetto gate. Prodded by a single kick, the animal bolted forward, carrying his rider toward the fight.
The goblin dropped from sight before Darann, and she thought, for a moment, that he had run away. “Down here!” came the hissing instructions. “Safe way to Hiyram!”
“In that hole?” Borand demanded, skeptically eyeing the black circle in the ground. It yawned like a lightless well and seemed to emit many questionable odors. “I don’t like the looks of it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” the dwarfmaid retorted. “Just get going!”
Indeed, many fetid smells lingered in the air around them, and Darann felt grimly certain that most of that stink originated from within that pit. But she took a deep breath and knelt on the ground, reaching inside the dark circle until she felt a rung of metal placed in the wall. Leaning forward, she found another a foot below.
“There seems to be a ladder,” she reported. “I’m going to follow him.”
“Count me in.” Aurand, not surprisingly, came right behind, then Konnor, and finally the still-grumbling Borand. Darann, grateful for the loyalty of her comrades, tried not to breathe through her nose as she groped her way down the slippery but solidly mounted rungs. Even so, the air actually tasted of foulness, coating her mouth with a residue that was cloying and choking at the same time. After eight or ten steps, she landed with a wet splash onto a slick floor and moved to the side so that her companions could join her.
Her brother struck another of his ubiquitous matches. They quickly saw that they were in a drainage pipe, brick-walled and tall enough for them to stand without stooping. The water was only a few inches deep, and the air was thick with those foul, albeit unidentifiable, odors. Here the smoke from the match was in fact a blessing, for it obscured those unknown smells. There was a stone arch twenty or thirty feet away, a support for the pipe apparently, and the cylindrical passage seemed to continue into the darkness beyond.
“This way,” said the goblin, selecting one of their two options. In the light of the match his skin was a grayish green, and his mouth visible as a wide gash partially filled with crooked teeth, below those wide, brightly reflective eyes. His big feet slapped across the wet floor as he started off. After a moment’s hesitation, the four dwarves came behind.
The match fizzled and went out, and for a time they slopped along in utter darkness, Borand not wanting to expend his complete supply in this featureless passageway. Once they passed under a shaft leading upward, hearing sounds of marching feet directly overhead. The goblin continued on, and the Seers followed.
Finally their guide stopped, a fact that Darann discovered when she walked into him in the inky darkness. “Go up here,” the goblin declared. “Find Hiyram.”
Now Borand struck another light, revealing a set of iron rungs similar to those they had descended. The goblin led the way, and again Darann was right behind him. At the top of the shaft they had to push a heavy iron cover out of the way, though as soon as they started it moving, willing helpers grabbed on from above and slid it off of the exit.
The goblin quickly popped up. “These good dwarves,” he said. “Lady Darann comin’ up!”
“The Lady!” Immediately hands were extended, and the dwarfmaid allowed them to hoist her onto the ground. Her three companions quickly followed, standing somewhat nervously in the midst of a throng of goblins. Some of this rabble was wounded, and many of them carried makeshift weapons, mostly clubs and stones. More than one cast a glowering look upon the intruders.
“Where’s Hiyram?” she asked. “I need to talk to him!”
“Hiyram!” The shout was carried out from the group. “You waits here, stays quiet. Dwarves not happy in goblin-crowd, not now, not on this interval. Hiyram comes to find you.”
“I understand-and thank you,” Darann said.
A few minutes later, the crowd parted to let someone pass, and Darann practically sobbed with relief as she beheld the familiar, flop-eared visage. The goblin’s face brightened momentarily, then darkened with sudden, intense concern.
“Lady-you get from here!” he urged, his eyes wide. “The ghetto bad place now! You gotta go away! Why you come here now? Why?”
“I know about the danger,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I wish I could help you right away.”
“Metal-shirt dwarves come. They say we kill dwarfmaid with hot oil! No gob do that-was more black ones, dwarves of the ferr’ell marshal! We saw ’em, chased ’em, but no catch. They kill maid, blame us!”
Nayfal! Darann was not surprised to hear that the corrupt lord was behind the current attack. “There’s one
