forward and danced as arrows stuck in the soft earth at his feet. At last he found a tributary of the muddy river and followed it upward, away from the battle.
The fog was clearing only slightly as he poked his head up out of the dell. He saw a huge, immobile form laving in the grass. Carefully he approached it and saw that it was the green dragon, its emerald scales now striped with blood, its wings and torso peppered with dragonarmy arrows.
Beside the great beast’s head was the dragonlord, his helmet off, his long face buried in grief in his hands. Brack walked up, put a hand on the dragonlord’s shoulder. The warrior looked up, and Brack was unsure if the dragonlord was crying or if it was only rain washing down his face.
“Our own troops,” the dragonlord said at last, looking at his dead mount. “The gnomes turned our own troops against us. What mysterious power could turn our mighty forces against each other?”
Brack did not say what his first thought was. Instead, he knelt down next to the dragonlord, and said, “Let me tell you about gnomes. . ”
“And that’s my story,” said Brack, setting the empty mug down on the table. A serving gnome made to remove it, but Brack held up his hand-no more for him.
“What did you tell the dragonlord?” asked Brack.
“I told him that Rumtuggle the Rebel Gnome had come up with his greatest invention, a device so powerful that even the dragonarmy could not find him and defeat him. Any attempt would end in frustration if the enemy was lucky, and disaster if he was not.” Brack rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Did he believe it?” wondered Augie, still seated. “Did the dragonlord believe you?”
Brack shrugged. “I don’t know. I tendered my resignation then and there and walked away. Been fighting small-unit engagements ever since, for whoever can pay. Fighting against real opponents, for real reasons.”
“What about the dragonlord?” asked Augie.
“He might have done the same,” said Brack, fishing a sack of coins from his belt, “or he might still be out there, trying to hunt down a gnome that isn’t there, sacrificing more armies to the altar of his own stupidity.”
“What of the gnome’s invention?” said Augie, “the cattle-pult? Where were the gnomes hiding? What was it that spooked the hobgoblin scout?”
Brack shook his head, and said, “You don’t understand.” He handed the sack of coins to the gnome waiter and asked, “Gnome, do you know of one of your race named Rumtuggle?”
The gnome, who had been bringing the drinks all evening, brightened visibly. “Yes! I have a great uncle named Rumtuggle. He was a mighty warrior and gifted inventor and fought in the war! Everyone knows about Rumtuggle!”
Brack smiled, fished out a few more coins, and handed them to the gnome, who scuttled off. “Every family has at least one Rumtuggle in it, nowadays,” said Brack. “That’s the greatest gnomish invention. Rumtuggle-the gnome so powerful that he invented himself! Think about that the next time you fight gnomes.”
Brack disappeared, leaving Augie at the table. The old warrior looked deep into his near-empty mug and began chuckling. The chuckling became laughter, and the laughter became a roaring bellow.
The gnome waiter brought Augie another ale, while the dwarven barkeep counted Brack’s coins.
The Road Home
Nancy Varian Berberick
Listen, I don’t care how many people you ask-you’re not going to get the truth of the matter of Griff Rees from anyone but me. Griff Raven Friend, some call him; others say Griff Red Hand. In the army of the Dark Queen, in the days before the Second Cataclysm, he was known simply as Killer Griff. Those are the names others gave him. He himself took the name Unsouled, but it was a private name, and I only heard him speak it once, a time ago when we were down around Tarsis, when he was very drunk and thought himself alone.
A wild night at the end of the Falling starts this story. On that night Griff was right here in the Swan and Dagger. Long legs stretched out, he sat picking his teeth with a bone-handled dirk, listening to the wind outside and the roar of the tavern around him, maybe to the dark ebb and flow of voices only he could hear. A newly filled jug of ale sat frothing at his elbow. The remains of his supper lay all over the table, the greasy carcass of a whole duck and all the good things that go with it.
The Swan and Dagger was thunderous that night, howling back at the wind. The air hung thick with the smoke of poorly trimmed candles and fumes from the fireplace. Filled to the walls it was, with the usual clientele Baird Taverner gets in the Swan-ne’er-do-wells of all stripes, goblins, humans, hill dwarfs, and even a few mountain dwarfs like me. Everyone there came of the same dangerous tribe: narrow-eyed vengeance-seekers, quick-fingered thieves, and reckless ramblers who’d hire their swords for a good weight of steel coin, no matter whether they were hired for a border skirmish, a private raid, or a swift assassination.
I’m one of those hirelings, only it’s not a sword I let out. It’s Reaper, my hard-headed warhammer. Griff was one, too, and none better in this part of Abanasinia than Killer Griff.
It was wind that blew me into the Swan and Dagger, wind and the breath of winter coming. Griff was looking right at me when I came in. His eyes narrowed a bit and his lip curled in the sneer that was his smile. When he lifted his hand, a lazy wave, I went to join him.
“Sit,” he said as easily as if it had been five days since he’d seen me last and not five months.
I took the warhammer off my hip and set it on the table. When I sat, Griff poured out some ale from the jug and shoved the tankard my way. I drank long and slow, then looked around to see whether anything remaining from his meal seemed worth picking over. Nothing did; Griff had done that duck to the bone.
“Hungry, are you, Broc?”
“Not so much,” I said, looking past him to the bar where Baird Taverner stood listening to a whip-thin goblin whine and wheeze over his woes. He was a shabby thing, that goblin, his clothing naught but patches and rags, and he’d lately been in a fight with someone or something mean enough to rip off half the flesh of his pointy left ear.
“Sniveling about the price of dwarf spirits,” Griff said, squinting into the thick air and looking where I did. “It’s gone up some since last you were here. Baird’s getting twenty-five coppers for it now.”
Twenty-five. You could drown yourself in ale for twenty-five coppers, and I had nothing like that much in my pocket. Still, I might have figured the cost would rise. You don’t get dwarf spirits easily these days, what with Thorbardin shut up tight against the world and my dear mountain kin hoarding most of it for themselves. What Baird got he paid hard for, so he charged a steep price to tap a keg.
“I’ll stand you a drink,” Griff said, leaning back and gesturing to the taverner.
I stopped him. “Don’t. I can’t afford to be in your debt.”
He shrugged, as if to say I must please myself. “Where have you been, Broc? Someone told me you were dead, killed out there in the hills of Darken Wood.”
I’d heard the same tale told of me in several versions. “Did you mourn me, Griff?”
In the uneasy light of candle and hearth the scars on his face shone like cruel silver as he leaned back in his chair and yawned.
“My heart broke,” said the man whose heart sat like a stone in his chest, beating but never moved. “Good to see you again,” he added roughly as he lifted the jug and filled the tankard for me again.
I drank his health with a silent gesture, drained the tankard, and filled it a third time as he leaned across the table. That close to him, most people look away, from the scars and from his eyes. I never looked away, though sometimes when I met his eyes I saw ghosts there, peering out at me. That night, as on other nights, I thought Griff’s eyes held the ghosts of all the people he’d killed.
“Listen,” he said, the word falling heavily between us to let me know he had something to say worth hearing. He tapped Reaper’s head. “Broc, are you looking for work?”
“I’m here,” I said simply. “Me and the season. It’s not a good place when the snow falls, that wild wood yon. I’d rather be under roof.”
He took a long pull of ale and banged the tankard onto the table. “So says the Dwarf of Darken Wood. Well, I
