In that moment he remembered Slooshy and how they, too, had fought over a rat on their first meeting. He had claimed the rat and taken it away from Slooshy then lost it when it slipped out of his hand. Then Slooshy died. The memory made him feel terribly sad.
“Me Gus,” he said, pointing a pudgy thumb at his chest. “You keep rat,” he added graciously.
The female Aghar scowled suspiciously, looking him carefully up and down. “Berta,” she said finally. Reconsidering her first impression, she gave the rat another twist, wrenching the little body into two parts.
“Here,” she said, extending the hindquarters toward Gus.
Wide eyed, he took the morsel, and for two minutes the pair of them sat companionably on the ground, tearing off bits of the still-warm meat, chewing, and spitting as they discarded the larger bones, the feet, and the tail.
“This your big house?” Gus asked after a satisfied belch. He gestured to the yawning caverns, the dungeon passages and the shadowy stairwell around them.
“No,” Berta said. “Me live Agharhome, over there two steps.” She pointed into the distance. “Come into Paxhouse for food sometimes, though.”
“You have Agharhome here?” asked Gus, amazed and delighted. “With highbulp? And clans?”
Berta seemed to think about that before she shrugged. “Got clans,” she said. “But no highbulp right now. Him killed by big bluphsplunging doofar dwarf.”
“Oh,” Gus said, slumping sadly. Life for the gully dwarves seemed to be pretty much the same from one Agharhome to the next.
Berta flashed a grin, pivoting around to kneel on the floor and look him over carefully. She reached out and touched his arm, nodding in satisfaction. “Hey, you be new highbulp?” she asked. “Highbulp Gus!”
Gus gaped at her in astonishment. He couldn’t be a highbulp! Highbulps were smart! Highbulps were powerful! Highbulps were masters of the Aghar, and he wasn’t the master of anything.
“Gus make good highbulp,” Berta pressed. “You brave, but no bully-not take rat from me like old highbulp would.”
The little Aghar’s mind was reeling. His new friend had presented him with an astounding idea, and even though it was unthinkable, she made him feel very strong and brave. Maybe he would make a good highbulp.
Only then did he think of his other friend, Gretchan. Immediately he bounced to his feet, suddenly panicked by the thought she had been gone for a long time. “I gotta go!” he cried. “Now!”
He sprinted away, leaving Berta staring open-mouthed after him. Where was the highbulp going? she must have wondered.
The highbulp was miserable about Gretchan. How could he have been so careless as to lose her? He lost his goddess, best friend, the most beautiful person ever to speak to him or show him an ounce of kindness.
Distraught, he wandered through darkened dungeon halls. He was weary and despairing, but he wouldn’t give up. And finally his efforts were rewarded, as after many miles of walking-at least two, he figured-he came upon Kondike, lying on the floor of the dungeon, his head sleepily resting on his forepaws. At Gus’s approach, the big dog raised his head, and his tail thumped against the floor in greeting.
Gus knew Gretchan wouldn’t be far away from her beloved dog, and indeed, he promptly spotted the historian. She was leaning against the door of a dungeon cell, talking to another dwarf in hushed tones. Then, before the Aghar’s disbelieving-and horrified-eyes she leaned in and kissed the other dwarf full upon the lips.
TWENTY-THREE
A fter another meeting with the Mother Oracle, only two days after the Klar raiders had been repulsed, Harn Poleaxe had taken the next step in his increasingly detailed and ambitious scheme. Following the ancient one’s instructions, he had kindled her fire, brewed her tea, and stood back, drinking from his jug of spirits and scratching at the multiple sores across his face and arms, as she cast the liquid onto the floor to watch it puddle and melt in the midst of the sticky debris. She studied its signs and meditated. When she finally spoke, it was with great authority and conviction.
“You must summon the Neidar warriors from all across the hills,” the Mother Oracle counseled in her blunt fashion. “Bring them to you here, and unite with them for strength. Form an army to destroy the mountain dwarves in Pax Tharkas!”
Harn was thrown by the grandiose idea. How many hill dwarves from towns a hundred miles away would care to follow him, he wondered. How many would even know his name?
“It will take some work, but they all share your goal, and many more than you know will have heard of you!” the Mother Oracle cackled, reading his mind. “The Klar from Pax Tharkas have been raiding these lands for ten years. There is not a Neidar anywhere in the Kharolis range that doesn’t hate and fear that troublemaking clan.”
“Will they come?” Poleaxe asked, feeling intrigued as he began to imagine the possibilities. He took another drink and pondered the glory: a great army, at his command!
“You alone can make them come and unite!” the oracle hissed, her whisper hoarse and dry and like a knife that penetrated to the core of his being. “You have seen the way the dwarves of Hillhome responded to your leadership! Put your orders in writing, and send them with fleet messengers. The Neidar will surely answer your call!”
“I will, Mother Oracle!” he crowed, clenching his bloody fingers into a fist.
She nodded as if pleased. For a long time, she held her white, sightless eyes upon him, and he squirmed, even twitched around to see if someone were behind him. He turned back with the uncanny sensation that the blind, old woman was studying him.
“You must look the part of a commander,” she said. “Find a great war helm-one with a plume of feathers, so that all will see you on the field.”
“A splendid idea!” he agreed.
She reached out a bony finger, touched a bleeding spot on his cheek, and nodded. “And make sure it has a visor,” she added. “A plate of metal that you can lower to protect… and shield your face.”
And so he had done just as advised. Harn spent the next day drafting an eloquent call to action, a rather lengthy missive detailing, with minor exaggeration, the cruelties of the mountain dwarf attack against Hillhome, and the irreplaceable treasures that had been stolen from the hill dwarf coffers. He reminded the Neidar all through the Kharolis range of the long years of injustice, brutality, and violence wreaked upon their peaceful villages by the mountain dwarves of Pax Tharkas. That fortress, his missive read, was chock-full with treasures that the Hylar had stolen from many hill dwarf towns, villages, and homesteads.
He hinted, without claiming so directly, of an ally who would smash the gates of the mighty fortress and allow the Neidar army to charge inside and extract their vengeance. With each word that he wrote, he felt the growing power of his leadership, the compelling force of his will, transferred to the page. Somehow, the strength of his irresistible will would be communicated across the whole of the hill country.
At the same time as he was writing the letter, his lieutenants were gathering volunteers and fleet horses. When the missive was finished, some two dozen riders had assembled. Secretaries made multiple copies of the letter, and each rider took one of those epistles and departed at a gallop. Harn Poleaxe stood proudly in the plaza of Hillhome and watched them go, well satisfied at the momentous events he had put in motion.
Even as the horses thundered away, the town’s best weaponsmith, Kale Sharpsteel, brought him a new helmet. It was tailored to cover his whole head, resting on his breastplate and shoulder pads, and was topped with a great plume of black and white stork feathers. The smith averted his eyes as he handed the metal cap to Lord Poleaxe, and Harn immediately placed it over his head. He lowered the visor with a flick of his finger and found that he could see clearly through the wide eye slits Sharpsteel had perfectly placed. The lone drawback was the fact that he had to raise the visor in order to take another drink of spirits.
Only then did the hulking dwarf swagger back to the private sanctuary of his own house. The hearth there had grown dark and cold, but that didn’t matter to him; increasingly, he had become contemptuous of concerns
