longer among them, and when that became clear, the cell was quieter than it had been. For a moment, every dwarf there had envisioned a grand victory-fighting dwarves cutting a path through masses of humans, winning their way to freedom. The way it might have been in the old, great days that the lore spoke of. Dwarven fury overwhelming, overcoming desperate odds… led by a Hylar chief.
But only for a moment had the vision lasted. Now there was only reality. They had-from where or what infernal magic no one knew-arms and some supplies. But they still were only a gang of slaves, trapped in a stone cell, and outside were the slave masters, backed by hundreds, or maybe thousands, of human warriors. They were trapped here like rats in a barrel, and the humans could come for them at their pleasure.
'I guess we'd better do what that bowl said,' Vin the Shadow said bleakly. 'Barricade the cell, hold the gate, and wait for reinforcements.'
4
Despaxas had gone off someplace. One minute he was there, the next he was gone, and when Derkin asked Calan Silvertoe where the elf was, the one-armed Daewar simply shrugged and waved a careless hand. 'He comes and goes as he pleases,' he said. 'I don't try to keep up with him.'
'That shadow thing is gone, too,' Derkin noted.
'Zephyr?' Calan shuddered. 'That thing is hardly ever around, but even now and then is too much.'
'Is it dangerous?'
'Despaxas says it isn't,' Calan said. 'But I don't like it, anyway. I was with him the day he… called it up. He was fooling with little spells, just sort of practicing his magic, and all of a sudden there was that thing, right there with us. Despaxas says it wasn't really there. He says its actual body is in some other plane-whatever that means. He thinks one of his spells got tangled up with somebody else's spell in that other place, and Zephyr wound up stuck halfway between. So the elf made a pet of it… or of the part of it thaf s here. I guess it's harmless. I just don't like magic, and I don't like things that look like bat-fish shadows.'
The two dwarves passed the hours of daylight in a small, deep cove high on a mountainside. There was a little, crystal-cold spring there, and game trails all around, but Derkin lay in wait beside the spring for more than an hour, festooned in shrubbery and pretending to be a bush, before anything edible showed up. Had he been armed with a sling, or even a throwing-axe or javelin, he would have hunted the trails for a deer, wild hog, or even a small bear. But all he had at hand was a stout stick, so he waited in ambush and settled for a brace of rabbits.
Calan had a little fire going in a deep glade, and while they cooked their dinner, the old Daewar told Derkin-in exquisite detail-of the habits and routines of the humans who ruled the Tharkas mines. The foot company of soldiers numbered eighteen, the slave masters and warders an even dozen, and only one shaft was being worked. It was worked through the daylight hours, by several hundred dwarves divided into small groups. The shaft entrance was guarded, and only a few dwarves were allowed out at any one time. These carried the best ores outside, for stocking.
Each night, the shaft was sealed with all the slaves inside, while the soldiers stood guard in three six-man shifts.
Derkin was astounded that the old dwarf, who had been a slave himself in a distant pit mine until the night before, could know so much detail about this place. But as with all subjects, Calan Silvertoe said just what he intended to say, explained what he intended to explain, and refused to comment on how he knew.
The longhouse was just what it seemed, Calan said. Once the central hall of a thriving dwarven community, now it served as kitchen and washhouse, and as quarters for the female dwarves who worked in it as slaves.
By the time the sun was sinking behind the western peaks, Derkin had a clear, detailed picture of the movements and habits of the humans below, and only one remaining question.
'How do they control the slaves inside the shaft?' he asked. 'If only the mine masters enter there, and never the guards, what's to keep the dwarves below from simply ganging up on the slavers and killing them?'
'I'm not sure,' Calan admitted. 'Maybe it's the goblins.'
'What goblins?'
'Well, when Lord Kane's troops first came here to take control, there was a company of goblins with them. When the area was secured, and the attack force left, the goblins weren't with them. And they haven't been seen since. So maybe they're in the mine shaft. Goblins are right at home underground. Maybe the humans hired them, and left them there as enforcers.'
'Wonderful,' Derkin rumbled, suppressing a shiver. If there was one thing most dwarves detested more than magic, it was goblins. 'Goblins in the mine,' he muttered. 'As if things weren't complicated enough.'
By last light of evening, Derkin lay concealed just above the mine camp, watching the closing of the shaft and the positioning of the guards. It was just as Calan had said. Food was brought from the longhouse, then six armed humans remained outside, taking up positions in a wide arc around the mine yards, while the rest retired to a pair of the old dwarven cabins to sleep.
Those on guard made no fires, and Derkin realized that they would have light enough to see soon. Within an hour, at least one of Krynn's moons would be in the clear sky, and the humans felt no need of firelight.
The positioning of the guards indicated that the men did not expect trouble, and certainly not from beyond their perimeter. They had placed themselves to watch the mine and the buildings, not to watch the surrounding wilderness. A slight, cold smile tugged at the Hylar's whiskered cheeks.
'How you do this is up to you,' the old Daewar had told him, shrugging as though he hadn't the slightest interest in what came next.
'Then how I do it is my way, and mine alone,' he had snapped. He had left Calan dozing beside the little spring, and was glad that he had. He had no need of anyone as unpredictable as Calan Silvertoe.
His plan was a simple one-take out as many guards as he could, as quietly as he could, then open the mine shaft and somehow free the dwarves within. If there were also goblins in there… well, he didn't know where they were or what they might do, so there was nothing to be gained by worrying about them.
He carried one weapon at hand-a stout, hardwood stick four feet long, sharpened at both ends. It was as near to a delver's javelin as he could improvise. In Thorbardin, Derkin had once prided himself on his skill with the working javelin.
In deep dusk, he crept to the first of the guard positions and peered around. By last good light, he had seen a human guard seat himself beside a fallen tree, leaning back against the trunk. At that moment, he had selected this one as his first target.
Derkin came up behind the man, soundless feet sure on the mountain slope. He was almost within arm's reach when the human heard or sensed something. The man started to turn, started to rise, but it was too late. With a lunge, Derkin flung himself across the tree trunk, thrust his javelin over the man's head, and snapped it back, under his chin. Gripping the shaft with both hands, Derkin heaved back. The man gurgled; his feet drummed the ground. Then his neck snapped, and he lay limp.
Derkin relieved the man of a dagger, leaving his other weapons where they lay. The bow and arrows and the awkward, light-bladed human sword weren't worth carrying around.
The second guard was harder to get to. This man was in a narrow, upright cleft of rock, hidden from both sides. The dwarf could have charged in on him, and finished him with a thrust of his javelin, but the chance of a silent kill in that manner was nil. The man would have time to shout or scream before he died.
For a moment, Derkin puzzled over it, then he crept up beside the cleft, remaining just out of sight. When he was near enough to hear the human breathing, he drew his dagger and tossed it onto the sloping ground just outside the cleft. It landed with a little thud, and lay glinting in the starlight.
In the cleft, the human stirred, muttered something to himself, and stepped forward, squinting. Another step, and he was out of the cleft, bending over, reaching for the dagger. He never heard the quick whir of Derkin's javelin as it lashed downward, its stout staff colliding with the exposed base of his skull. The man staggered, pitched forward, and Derkin thrust one of the sharpened ends of the staff into his throat, cutting off a strangled scream before it began.
