dwarf wielded a weapon and a fighting shield. With deadly efficiency, the dwarven war-horses tore through the disarrayed lancers, wheeling to charge again and again.
Armored by plate and chain of dwarven steel and protected by the same shields that protected their riders, each horse was a thundering juggernaut among the lightly armored lancers. Men and their mounts fell right and left as dwarwen blades and hammers lashed out from both sides of each war-horse, slashing and crushing whatever they could reach.
None of the lancers who had breached the dwarven perimeter returned to his ranks. Some, in their final moments, might have thrown down their weapons and surrendered, given the chance. But dwarves had died in the lancers' charge, and Derkin's signal when the trap was sprung was a down-turned thumb. No mercy, and no quarter. It was Derkin's fourth law, pure and simple: if dwarves were attacked, dwarves would retaliate. If dwarves died, their attackers would also die.
Throughout the slaughter of the lancers, Derkin had held back, simply sitting his mount with Helta behind him, watching the combat and hearing the singing of the drums. Now, as the last lancer fell, he looked at the dark sky and tasted the raw, cold wind that came with evening. He knew what he must do next. Hundreds of his people were dead and more were wounded. Through sheer, stubborn courage and wily tactics, they had accounted for three humans for every fallen dwarf, but were still surrounded and badly outnumbered. If the humans pressed their attack again tomorrow, the Chosen Ones would perish. It was inevitable.
'The enemy is withdrawing for the night,' Derkin told Tap Tolec. 'All this day we have defended. Now we must attack. Bring me our master delvers, and ask Vin the Shadow to attend me.'
Tulien Gart drew near, leading a tired horse. The man was battered and bloody, his thigh gouged by a lance tip, but he stood with dignity before the dwarven leader. 'I didn't think you could turn that charge,' he admitted. 'Humans could never have done it. Humans wouldn't have had the courage to fall under those horses, as your people did.'
'They might have,' Derkin said, 'if they had ever been slaves.' He climbed down from his horse and helped Helta down. 'Take Commander Gart to shelter,' he told her. 'Bind his wounds and make a place for him at the fire. There is a cold wind tonight.'
When the delvers were assembled along with Vin the Shadow and several of his Daergar companions, Derkin gathered them around him. 'Is the stone-drilling complete up on the peak?' he asked the chief of delvers.
'It is ready, Lawgiver.' The dwarf nodded, his blond beard bobbing in the firelight. 'It needs only to be pried.'
Derkin turned to Vin. 'We have prepared the face of that peak above the Klanath Pits,' he said, 'to fill the pits with an avalanche. That was to have completed our work here, after the last cut stones were hauled away. But now I need that avalanche to occur tonight. Most of the delvers are of Daewar descent. They cannot climb such slopes at night. Do you have people who can?'
Vin had removed his mask, and his large eyes glowed in the firelight as his foxlike face twisted into a tight grin. 'There's plenty of light for us,' he said. 'Just explain what has to be done.'
'The delvers have drilled pry-holes all along a fault high on that peak.' Derkin pointed. 'They can tell you what to look for, and how to break out the stone. And they can give you their climbing slings and prybars.'
'Will an avalanche help us get back to Kal-Thax?' Vin asked.
'It might.' Derkin shrugged. 'The wind is cold tonight. Our spotters say that some of the humans have made their fires down in the pits, out of the wind. It is possible that their leader, Dreyus, is there. Without him, the rest might decide to turn around and go away, rather than lose more men tomorrow for no reason.'
'Then let's hope Dreyus is warming himself out of the wind,' Vin replied, still grinning. 'If he is, we'll bury him there.'
'Reorx protect you, Vin the Shadow,' Derkin said. 'When you have done your task, take your climbers on up, over the peak. If we survive tomorrow, we will see you at Stoneforge. If we don't come, tell our people there of the four laws.' He clapped the Daergar roughly on the shoulder, then turned and strode away, the Ten following.
'Do you really think Dreyus will be in the pits?' Tap Tolec asked doubtfully as they toured the perimeter, gazing at the hundreds of human fires encircling them.
'Who knows?' Derkin shrugged. 'If Tulien Gart is right, Dreyus may not even feel the wind's chill. But we did set out to bury the Klanath pits, and I wouldn't want to leave that task undone. Besides, it is a matter of law. All this day we have been attacked. Whatever happens tomorrow, we must retaliate tonight. And I know of no better way.'
As evening dragged into the middle hours of night, Derkin's scouts and foragers roamed the field between the dwarven encampment and the surrounding army, searching for weak points, for possible avenues of escape. They found none, and their reports only verified what Derkin already knew. If the humans continued their attack tomorrow, his entire army was doomed. They could not escape, and they could not hold out through another day on this barren, defenseless flat.
Near midnight, the Lawgiver entered the ruined palace one last time. He found Helta Graywood and sat with her for a few moments beside a dwindling fire.
'We would have been married when we returned to Kal-Thax,' he said. 'It is what I was waiting for. I wanted to marry you on dwarven ground, in a land secured for dwarves.'
'Are we going to die tomorrow, Derkin?' she asked quietly.
'There is a chance-just a slight chance-that the humans might withdraw,' he said. 'But if they don't…'
He let his voice trail off, not wanting to finish the statement.
Helta took his hand in both of hers. 'As of this moment, you are my husband,' she said. 'I wish us long life, if that can be. But if it cannot, at least we will end life as one.'
Suddenly the ground seemed to shake, and a rolling thunder sounded through the walls. Still hand in hand, they hurried outside. The cold night wind had shredded the clouds overhead, and there was starlight. Beyond the human encampments to the south, and high above them, an entire mountain slope was in gigantic motion. Down and down, gathering momentum with each foot, millions of tons of shattered stone poured down the steep slope, flattening and burying everything in a half-mile-wide path of utter destruction. Within seconds, the avalanche rolled onto the lower slope, a huge wall of moving, churning stone racing toward the firelit pits of Klanath. Even above the thunder, the dwarves could hear humans screaming.
The bounding stones hit the mine pits, filled and covered them, and rolled on for another hundred yards, tearing through rank after rank of human encampments. And as the thunder died, great clouds of dust arose, riding on the wind.
Vin the Shadow had done his work. He and another fifty or sixty Daergar miners had completed the task the delvers had begun. The pits of Klanath were no more.
But even as he watched the dust clouds rise, Derkin Lawgiver knew that Dreyus had survived. Somehow he sensed that the strange, evil man-who might be another embodiment of the emperor Quivalin Soth V-had not been in the path of the avalanche. Dreyus was still alive, and tomorrow his army would finish what it had begun today.
With eyes as bleak and cold as the night wind, Derkin turned to Tap Tolec. 'Awaken the camp,' he said. 'We move at once.'
'But there's no way out,' Talon Oakbeard muttered. 'We're still surrounded.'
'We go there.' Derkin pointed at the still-billowing dust. 'There, with our backs to the mountain, we can make them pay more dearly for each of us they kill.'
Darkness and speed now were the dwarves' final allies. Before the soldiers east and west of the landslide's fan could close in, Derkin's entire camp had been moved. Leaving the barren clearing around the ruined palace behind them, they transferred themselves and everything they could ride, herd, or carry into the field of tumble- stone beneath the steep, sheared peak.
But as his people dug in there, in the final hour of darkness, Derkin remembered a debt of honor. At the edge of the avalanche fan, Tulien Gart was struggling with a balky horse, trying to follow the dwarves into the maze of scattered stone. Ordering the Ten to stay and organize their defenses, Derkin hurried down the slope toward the man. As he approached, he held out his hand. 'You have done all you can for us, human,' he said. 'Dreyus lives, and if you stay here you will die. Get on that horse and follow the dust cloud. In the darkness and confusion, one rider might get through.'
For an instant, Gart hesitated. Then he nodded. He could do no more here. The dwarf was repaying a debt of
