The War God's Own

think you'd make a good father, Bahzell.'

'Ha! I've seen what Mother and Father've had to deal with, Kerry my girl, and I've no mind at all, at all, to put up with such myself. And especially not daughters.'

'Oh?' Kaeritha's eyes glinted challengingly. 'And is there something inferior about daughters, Milord Champion?'

'Nothing in this wide world, Milady Champion,' he replied. 'It's naught but that it's always seemed to me that daughters are after being the gods' revenge on a father, y'see.' Kaeritha cocked an eyebrow, and he shrugged. 'He's always all a-twitter lest his little girl be meeting someone just like he was as a lad, and not a bit of sleep does he get thinking of it,' he explained with a slow smile.

'I… never quite thought of it that way.' Kaeritha spoke very carefully, with the air of one suppressing a bubble of laughter. She cleared her throat, then went on in a determinedly normal tone. 'But you do have nieces and nephews, I suppose, don't you?'

'Oh, aye. More than I'd care to be trying to count,' he assured her. 'Wencit's the right of it when he says my folk're after being less fertile than humans, but we live to be as much as two hundred, so we've time for big families even so. Father's past a hundred and twenty now, and my mother only a few years younger. Between them they've brought five sons and six daughters into the world, with nine of 'em still living and me the next to youngest of the lot. Last count, I was up to ten nephews and eight nieces, but my sister Maritha and my sister-in- law Thanis were both after being in the family way again, so I've no doubt the total's gone up since.'

His voice had softened, and he smiled again, this time in memory. Kaeritha returned his smile, but there was an edge of old sorrow in her eyes.

'I'm glad for you,' she said quietly. 'My own brother and sister-' She twitched her shoulders and raised a cupped palm, then made a pouring motion. Bahzell nodded and laid one huge hand on her shoulder as he recalled the brief, bitter history she'd recounted in Axe Hallow. She touched his hand with her own for a moment, then inhaled sharply.

'But at least Tomanak and Kontifrio saw fit to send me to Seldan and Marja,' she said. 'And thanks to them, I've got at least as many brothers and sisters as you do, and a whole crop of nieces and nephews of my own. It's a good thing, isn't it? Knowing the family is there, even if you can't be with them as much as you'd like?'

'Aye, it is that. And I'm thinking it's a good thing another way, too.' Kaeritha looked a question at him, and he flicked his ears at a mother who was hurrying two children out of his path. 'It's knowing how I'd feel were any of mine threatened as makes me patient with people like that,' he told her.

'I can see that,' she said, 'but it's different for me. Partly, I think, because people don't tend to think of me as a 'threat,' I suppose, but even more as a reflection of my own childhood. Because Seldan and Marja gave me a family of my own, I know what my mother endured when Father's death left her alone with three children. And it was knowing that that sent me to Tomanak in the first place, to try and make a difference for some other Kaeritha and her mother.'

She brooded in silence for several seconds, then shook herself and looked around, as if taking her bearings.

'Ah! Here we are,' she said. 'I wanted to show you this place because I know the owners. One of their sons was with a trade caravan that ran into trouble in Rustum last year. He was hurt pretty badly and hauled off to be held for ransom, but the Order caught up with the raiders. I was headed this way on another matter, so I escorted him home afterwards and met his family.' She smiled. 'I think you'll like them. Come on.'

She led the way through an arched doorway between spotless glass shop windows that seemed to glitter and dance in the lantern light. It took Bahzell a moment to realize that the sparkling radiance came from the neat rows of gems laid out on a background of black velvet like fire-hearted stars, and his ears twitched in surprise when he did realize it, for there were no protective iron bars. Nothing lay between those jewels and any potential thief but a fragile layer of glass, which suggested the shop's owner had a far stronger faith in the goodness and honesty of his fellow men than Bahzell did.

But perhaps the shop owner wasn't quite that foolish after all, he reflected. Large as Tunnel's End seemed after so long in the wilderness, the shopkeeper probably knew all of his neighbors by name. Worse, any stranger who tried a smash-and-grab would have only two ways to run-east, or west-and the Dwarvenhame Tunnel offered no convenient side roads or places to lie hidden while the pursuit thundered by.

The shop had been designed to accommodate humans as well as dwarves, and even Vaijon found it a comfortable fit. Bahzell, of course, did not, but then he'd found very few buildings which were a 'comfortable fit' for him since leaving Navahk, and he'd become almost accustomed to it. What he had not grown accustomed to was the sudden ticking sound which surrounded him-a quiet sound, almost hushed, that still managed to be somehow thunderous in the sheer multiplicity of its sources.

Clocks. Scores of clocks, of all shapes and sizes, ticked and tocked about him. Pendulums swung, ornate hands inched around illuminated faces, biting off precise intervals, and cuckoos hovered behind closed doors, poised to burst out and proclaim the hour. Nor were clocks all that ticked, for watches lay on their own beds of velvet in glass cases, and each produced its own tiny part of the all-encompassing harmony.

Bahzell and Brandark stared at all the moving hands, then grinned at one another in delight. They'd known what clocks and watches were long before leaving their homelands, and they'd seen several of each, since, but they'd never imagined seeing so many in one place. Nor had they been prepared for the artistry which had been invested in them or for the sheer fascination of watching the intricacy of their function in action, and Bahzell chuckled as he realized every one of them was set to precisely the same time. Despite his own lack of exposure to them, he doubted that even dwarves could make this many timepieces all keep exactly the same time, and his grin grew as he pictured the proprietor running around his premises every morning resetting his inventory.

'Yes? How can I hel- Kaeritha!'

The deep, pleasant voice pulled Bahzell back from his thoughts, and he turned as quickly as his cramped surroundings allowed. A dwarf, shorter even than Kilthan but with the full head of hair Kilthan lacked, came bustling from someplace in the back. The newcomer stood for a moment, beaming at Kaeritha, and then hurried forward and hopped up onto a footstool to throw his arms about her.

'Kerry! By the Stone, it's wonderful to see you again! Where have you been, girl? And what have you been eating? Not enough, whatever it was, I see! You're thin as a rail! Haynath will skin us both if you don't come home with me for supper!'

'It's good to see you again, Uthmar,' Kaeritha replied, hugging him back, 'and I'd love to have supper with you-if there's time. But I'm traveling with friends, this time, and our business is fairly urgent.'

'Is it, now?' Uthmar leaned back to look up at her, eyes glinting golden in the lamplight as he smiled. 'So urgent that you want to explain to Haynath that you didn't have time to join her for even one meal? Have you gotten that brave since last year?'

'No, but I have gotten cowardly enough to hide and let you explain it!' she said impishly, and he laughed a deep, booming laugh. He let her turn him, still laughing, to view the others, and his laughter stopped suddenly as he saw Bahzell and Brandark.

'My word!' he gasped. He stared at them for several seconds, then hopped down from the stool and walked over to them. He stood with his hands on his hips, leaning well back to peer up at them, then walked around Bahzell in a complete circle, muttering under his breath.

Bahzell shot a glance at Kaeritha and cocked his ears in question, but she only smiled in reply and shrugged, then folded her arms and watched Uthmar patiently. The dwarf came closer to Bahzell and reached up to stroke a mail sleeve, shook his head, and made a small clucking sound.

'Axeman work,' he said. 'Karamon of Belhadan, wasn't it?' He darted a sharp look up at Bahzell. 'I'm right, aren't I? It is Karamon's work, isn't it?'

'Aye, I'm thinking Karamon was his name,' Bahzell agreed. 'A wee short fellow, like yourself, but with hair red as fire.'

'Ha! I knew I was right!' Uthmar crowed, and tapped his prowlike nose. 'I've one of the best eyes in Dwarvenhame, if I do say it myself, and Karamon does good work. Very good work. Not but that we couldn't've done better for you, Milord!'

'No doubt,' Bahzell rumbled. He looked back across at Kaeritha, eyes twinkling with amusement, and she stepped forward to rest a hand on the dwarf's shoulder.

'Bahzell Bahnakson, be known to Uthmardanharknar, the proprietor of this shop, senior partner of the firm