are worth testing? You'll be able to tell that to the committee and then ask for the hand of Watchout.'
Standback blinked. 'But you're not afraid to let them use these.. terrible weapons against your people?'
Mara thought about draconian troops setting off the Portapults in the field. 'They are indeed terrible weapons,' she said, 'but letting the draconians have them will only make it a more even battle. It's a matter of honor — something the knights are big on.'
Standback took her hand, pumping it up and down. 'Never have I met a warrior of so much integrity — '
'Oh, I wouldn't say that.'
' — and modest too.' He looked back at the unconscious draconian captain. 'I'll let them escape with the Portapult, the Flying Deathaxe — '
'Um, I don't know that they'll want the Deathaxe. Why don't you let them have the Thunderpack, instead?'
Standback protested. 'This is too much. Won't you take anything for yourself?'
'Sometimes,' Mara said nobly, 'there's a greater joy in giving.' She had a sudden thought. 'If you don't mind, I'll just take the little failed dowser.' She picked it up.
'The one that can't even find water? You want it?'
'Just as a souvenir.'
Standback, tears in his eyes, said, 'You're amazing. Nothing but a trinket for yourself, while you give fullscale gnome weapons to your worst enemies.'
Mara, pocketing the jewel-finder, beamed. 'Well,' she said modestly, 'I'm like that.'
The Promised Place
Dan Parkinson
Once, very recently, this had been a city. Only days before, there had been a tiered castle on the highest point of the hill. Studded battlements overlooked the lands for miles around. In a walled courtyard, throngs gathered.
Below the battlements, spreading down toward the fields, had been a raucous, bustling city — inns and dwellings, shops and markets, public houses, smithies, barns and lofts, weavers' stalls and tanneries, music and noise and life.
Chaldis had been a city. But the dragonarmies of the Dark Queen had come and the city was a city no more. Where battlements had stood was smashed and blackened rubble, and all beneath was scorched, twisted ruin. Of Chaldis, nothing was left. Only the road it had defended was yet intact, and its surface showed the tracks and treads of armies just passed. The people who had been here were gone now — some fleeing, some dead, some led off as slaves. Where there had been herds now were only scorched pastures, and where crops had grown now were ruined fields.
Stillness lived here now. A somber stillness — shadows and silence, broken only by the weeping of the wind.
Yet in the stillness, something lurked. And in the shadows, small shadows moved.
Muffled voices, among the rubble: 'What kind place this? Ever'thing a real mess.' 'Talls been here. Somebody clobber 'em, I guess.' 'This all fresh scorch.' 'Forget scorch! Look for somethin' to eat.'
And another sound, from somewhere in the lead, 'Sh!' A thump and a clatter.
'Sh!' 'Somebody fall down.'
'Sh!'
'Somebody say, 'Sh.' Better hush up.'
Another thump and several clatters.
'Wha' happen?'
'Somebody bump into somebody else. All fall down.'
'Sssh!!'
'What?'
'Shut up an' keep quiet!'
'Oh. Okay.'
Abruptly hushed, the shadows moved on, small figures in a ragged line, wending among fallen stone and burned timbers, making their cautious way through the rubble that once had been a city. For several minutes, they proceeded in silence, then the whispers and muted chatter began again as the effect of exercised authority wore off.
'Wanna stop an' dig? Might be nice stuff under these gravels.'
'Forget dig. Need food first. Look for somethin' make stew.'
'Like what?'
'Who knows. Mos' anything make stew.'
'Hey! Here somethin'… nope, never mind. Just a dead Tall.'
'Rats.'
'What?'
'Oughtta be rats here. Rats okay for stew.'
'Keep lookin'.'
'Ow! Get off a my foot!'
Thump. Clatter.
'Sh!'
'Somebody fall down again.'
'Sh!
They were travelers. They had been travelers since long before any of them could remember, which was not very long unless the thing to remember was truly worth remembering: traveling generally was not. It was just something they did, something they had always done, something their parents and their ancestors had done. Few of them had any idea why they traveled, or why their travels — more often than not — tended to be westward.
For the few among them who might occasionally wonder about such things, the answer was simple and extremely vague. They traveled because they were in search of the Promised Place.
Where was the Promised Place? Nobody had the slightest idea.
Why did they seek the Promised Place? No one really knew that, either. Someone, a long time ago — some Highbulp, probably, since it was usually the Highbulp who initiated unfathomable ventures — had gotten the notion that there was a Promised Place, to the west, and it was their destiny to find it. That had been generations back — an unthinkable time to people who usually recognized only two days other than today: yesterday and tomorrow. But once the pilgrimage was begun, it just kept going.
That was the nature of the Aghar — the people most others called gully dwarves. One of their strongest driving forces was simple inertia.
The size and shape of the group changed constantly as they made their way through the ruins of the city, tending upward toward its center. Here and there, now and then, by ones and threes and fives, various among them lost interest in following along and took off on side expeditions, searching and gawking, usually rejoining the main group somewhere farther along.
There was no way to know whether all of them came back. None among them had any real idea of how many of them there were, except that there were more than two — a lot more than two. Maybe fifty times two, though such concepts were beyond even the wisest of them. Numbers greater than two were seldom considered worth worrying about.
Gradually, the stragglers converged upon the higher levels of the ruined city. Here the fallen building stones were more massive — huge, smoke-darkened blocks that lay aslant against one another, creating tunnels and gullies roofed by shattered rubble. Here they found more dead things — humans and animals, corpses mutilated, stripped and burned, the brutal residue of battle. They crept around these at a distance, their eyes wide with dread. Something fearful had happened here, and the pall of it hung in the silent air of the place like a tangible fear.
At a place where a flanking wall had fallen, some of them paused to stare at a tumble of great, iron-bound timbers that might once have been some piece of giant furniture but now was a shattered ruin. The thing lay as though it had fallen from high above, its members and parts in disarray. Having not the faintest idea of what it might be, most of them crept past and went on. One, though, remained, walking around the huge thing, frowning in thought.
