scampered away a hundred feet and turned to call once more. The huge worm increased its speed, its gray, banded body rippling as it flowed across the uneven floor of the cavern. It was faster than it had seemed, and Gem backpedaled, staying a good distance from it. Its pace was that of a walking dwarf.
“He has its attention, all right,” Olim noted to the others watching. “Now I wonder what he intends to do with it.”
“Or how he will get rid of it,” the old master delver Slate Coldsheet added. “The captain should have read these scrolls. Urkhan’s party reported that the worms tend to become … uh … attached to people. They follow and try to get close. The danger is that they might actually crush a person by their weight. Some of the explorers were nearly exhausted by the time they managed to elude their pets.”
“I could use some help here, I think!” Gem Bluesleeve called, walking briskly in the distance while the giant worm chugged along behind him. “I don’t know how to make this thing stop!”
“Some of you drillers,” Olim said, gesturing, “see if you can get some grapples on that thing.”
Gem was quite some distance away now, coming around in a long circle, trying to head back to the others. Behind him, the worm followed happily, its banded length rippling in the subdued light, its tentacled face waving merrily.
Carrying chains, throw-lines, and rock-harness, several dozen drillers and delvers fanned out to approach the monster from its flanks. It seemed not to mind them at all. Its full attention was focused on Gem Bluesleeve, and it seemed to desire nothing else in life than to reach him. Gem kept walking, trying to keep that from happening.
Flanking the worm, teams of dwarves managed to get sling-harness attached to it at various places and grasped the halter-lines, setting their heels. The worm neither slowed nor turned. It continued its methodical pace, following Gem Bluesleeve. Behind and along its flanks dozens of sturdy dwarves were dragged along, their steel soles carving ruts in the hard floor.
“Tie off those lines!” Olim Goldbuckle roared. Gem was approaching now, looking very worried, and the worm wasn’t far behind him.
Scrambling, the delvers spread and raced outward, carrying their cables. Two modest stalagmites were within reach, and they snugged the lines there, then watched in awe as the cables came taught, strained, and hummed, and the stone of the stalagmites began to crumble. The worm slowed, but surged forward again as one of the restraints burst in a shower of limestone dust. But other cables held the monster now, attached to sturdier uprights, and it tugged futilely at its bonds for a moment, then subsided.
“Tractor worm,” the old delvemaster remarked, shaking his head. “We should have a few of those things hauling our ore-carts.”
Behind Olim there was a clatter as something fell to the stone floor. Out in the cavern the tractor worm, which had been resting quietly on its tethers, suddenly raised the front half of its huge body upright, whistled a sound that might have been either a scream or a roar, and surged against the lines. Cables parted, and the worm shot free to roll over on the floor.
More quickly than seemed possible, it turned, raised itself, and dived straight at a group of drillers trying to back away. The great creature’s body smashed down on them, then it roared and raised itself again, flailing about like a creature gone berserk.
“The bat-bells!” the delvemaster shouted. “Someone dropped the bat-bells. That’s what it hears!”
Dwarves scurried about, collecting the spilled silver bells and thrusting them into clothing to muffle their sound. Out in the cavern, Gem Bluesleeve brandished his sword and shouted. “Ho! Worm! To me!”
Again the worm turned, away from the drillers, heading for Gem. Other drillers and several guardsmen raced toward it, throwing cables and stone-nets.
Then, as abruptly as it had reacted, the creature subsided. All the bat-bells had been muffled, and it no longer heard their clamor. Racing around the thing, delvers and guards bound it in a thick mesh of steel cables and ran anchor lines to several large stands of stone.
Where it had attacked, two delvers lay dead, smashed into the stone floor by the mass of the monster. Several others limped away, injured but still able to move.
“Keep those delving bells silent!” Olim Goldbuckle ordered. “Get them out of here. Take them back into the tunnel.” Then he swung around to face the delvemaster. “You still think those worms might be useful, Slate?”
“If they can be controlled,” Slate said. “They react to sound, and if there are some sounds that … I don’t know. We’ll have to work at it.”
Gem Bluesleeve approached, visibly shaken. It had been on impulse that he had distracted the raving worm from the delvers, calling its attention to himself. Now he was wondering just what he — sword and all — could have done had the thing not stopped.
Olim Goldbuckle looked at his captain and frowned, then sighed, shaking his head. It would do no good to admonish the guardsman for risking his own life. It was just the way he was.
Gem approached, started to speak, then simply shrugged.
“If you are through playing with your worm,” Olim Goldbuckle told him, “I believe we should get on with exploring these caverns.”
Slate Coldsheet glanced at his chart and pointed. “Straight south, Sire. A mile or so, then the cavern narrows for another mile, past which is some kind of crevice. Beyond should be another cavern — not quite as wide as this, but longer. From there should be a tunnel to Urkhan’s sea.”
18
By the double light of Krynn’s moons the raiders converged upon the nighttime slopes of Sky’s End, and Glome the Assassin stood atop a ridge, watching in satisfaction.
As chieftain of the Theiwar of Theibardin, now that Twist Cutshank was dead, he had been able to assemble the tribes of Theiwar to council. Once gathered, it had been an easy accession for Glome. No subtlety had been involved in his becoming chieftain of the Theiwar. A few beatings, a few assassinations, and now he was the undisputed leader of thousands of dwarves who must do his bidding. He had summarily repealed the rights of contest and of challenge.
More than that, his army of invasion now included a thousand or more Daergar from the Thunder Peaks, and a sizeable group — no one knew how many — of wild Klar, erratic and unpredictable but as determined as the rest to have a share in the treasures of the Daewar. It was the reward that Glome promised, in return for their support in the invasion of Daebardin, the stronghold beneath Sky’s End that none of them had ever seen. They had never seen it because no spy had ever managed to get past the Daewar guards. But the growing fan of rubble on the mountainside beneath the Daewar citadel told them that it was by now an extensive delve, and where Daewar delved, there were treasures.
All the clans knew of the wealth of the Daewar. The proud, arrogant gold-molders did more than display their wealth throughout Kal-Thax. They flaunted it. It was in the bright finery of their apparel, the burnished sheen of their armor, the adornment of their ox-carts, in the very way they carried themselves when they walked.
Many Theiwar and Daergar had seen the insides of Daewar pavilions at trade camps, and it was a joke among the other tribes that the Daewar so enjoyed their comforts that no Daewar would travel a mile without a ton or so of carpets, crystal-wear, and gold-inlaid furniture for his comfort while roughing it in the wilderness. A joke, it was, but not one told with laughter. It was one of the reasons that so many of the other dwarves hated the Daewar.
The Daewar were rich, and flaunted their wealth.
For that reason — and because he had convinced many of them that the Daewar intended to conquer them, it had been easy for Glome the Assassin to recruit an army to invade Daebardin. The opportunity to loot the Daewar was promise enough for most of them.
The Daewar had made a fatal error by delving into Sky’s End. Their old citadel on the shoulder of the mountain was small, but it was also well-placed and difficult to attack. Now, though, the Daewar were under the mountain — with only one way out. It was a perfect situation for a successful siege. Their subterranean city would
