use it or lose it.”
“One of the horses did get away, Grak,” a man said. “The one out in front when we attacked. I put an arrow into its saddle but missed the next shot. It was gone before anybody could catch it.”
“As long as its rider didn’t go with it.” Grak shrugged, scowling. “I wouldn’t want to have to tell Grayfen that we let a dwarf slip through.”
“No dwarves,” Calik assured him. “I counted them myself. Counting the first one — the scout — we killed fifteen stinking dwarves and fourteen of those big horses. Wouldn’t have minded keeping one of those beasts, though. Wouldn’t I like to have a horse like that!”
Grak gazed at him, leering. “The day you can ride a dwarf’s horse, Calik, will be the day snails learn to fly.” He turned, looking around. “Do you hear that?”
Several of them raised their heads, scowling. “I hear
As they listened, the sound seemed to grow, not so much in volume as in clarity. It was a continuous, rolling throb that seemed to have a texture of its own. It thrummed in the high sunlight and echoed weirdly off the chasm walls.
“It’s the drums,” Grak decided. “The dinks and their drums, like Grayfen told us. That fair of theirs, it’s beginning.”
Calik stood with his face upturned, his eyes wide. “I never in my life heard anything like that,” he muttered. “It almost sounds like they’re singing. How can drums sing?”
Grak shook his head, as though to rid himself of the haunting, distant sounds. “It doesn’t matter,” he growled. “Except it means we have to hurry. Grayfen wants us at the main camp. Clear up here, and let’s move.”
“Some of our wounded aren’t going to make it a mile, the shape they’re in.”
“Things are tough all over,” Grak snapped. “Pack up! Any who can’t keep up, cut their throats and leave them.”
Grayfen was not pleased with his ambushers. He stalked among them, his wolfskin cape swaying and flowing behind him, and they cringed as his eyes pinned them one by one — eyes as cold and bright as the rubies they resembled.
“Forty-two men lost?” he hissed. “You paid forty-two lives for a puny patrol of fifteen dinks?”
“They fought,” Grak said, then recoiled as Grayfen turned and speared him with those ruby eyes — eyes like no eyes he had ever seen in a human face. “I mean — ” he swallowed and added lamely “- I mean, they surprised us, sir. Some of them got through to us, and … and they fought like … like demons. And those slings of theirs … and their steel blades …” He shook his head, gesturing at the pile of weapons and armor on the ground nearby, salvaged from the bodies of the dwarf patrol.
“They fought,” Grayfen snarled, his voice like a snake’s hiss. “Of course they fought, idiot! Whatever else they are, the dinks are fighters! I may just send you” — he looked from one to another of them — “I may send all of you into Thorin with the first assault. You think you’ve seen the little misers fight, maybe you should see what they do when they’re defending their homes!”
“Yes, sir,” Grak muttered, keeping his eyes downward. “Only …”
“Not me,” a man behind him whispered. “By the moons, I won’t go in there with the first wave! I’m not that kind of fool.”
Grak turned, wanting to silence the man, but it was too late. Grayfen had heard. Wolf-hide cape flaring, he straightened to his full height, seeming to tower above even the tall Grak. The ruby eyes glowed with an evil light from beneath arched brows the color of his silvery mane. He raised an imperious finger, pointing past Grak. “You!” he hissed. “Who are you?”
The man didn’t answer. Paling, he started to turn away, then froze in place as Grayfen commanded, “Hold!”
Grayfen glanced at Grak. “That man,” he said, still pointing. “Tell me his name.”
“Sir, that’s only Porge. He meant no disre — ”
“Enough!” Grayfen cut him off. “Porge. Face me, Porge.”
Ashen-faced, Porge turned to face Grayfen. Cold sweat formed on his brow as the ruby eyes bored into him. The stiff finger was still extended, pointing at him.
“What kind of fool are you, you wonder?” Grayfen’s voice turned silky. “The kind who questions my command, it seems. A shame, Porge. You might have survived assault on Thorin … if you had held your tongue.”
Beneath the constant throbbing of the distant drums, another sound grew. As though the air were charged with lightning, a sizzling, crackling sputter emerged among them. Grayfen’s pointing finger and ruby eyes didn’t waver, but, as the sound grew, a slow, smoky light seemed to extend from the finger, a lazy beam that approached Porge languidly, then sprang at him and wrapped itself around his throat. Porge gagged, struggling to breathe. His hands clawed at the constriction on his throat, but there was nothing there to grip … only the smoky band of dull light. Porge gasped one last time, and his breathing stopped. His eyes bulged, his mouth gaped, and he seemed to hang from the light as his legs went limp.
For a long moment, Grayfen held him there, letting all the others see. Then he snapped his fingers, and a louder snap echoed it, the crack of Porge’s neck breaking. Grayfen lowered his hand, and the body sprawled on the ground like a tattered doll.
“Get rid of that,” Grayfen said contemptuously. He turned to Grak. “I accept that the dinks surprised you,” he said. “You had not faced them before. Now you have. Remember what you’ve learned. Rest your men now. The drums are speaking. Tomorrow we move into Golash. From there, we go to Thorin.”
Men were lifting Porge’s body to carry him away. Grayfen glanced at them, then at the pile of dwarven armament nearby. “Get rid of those, too,” he said. “We don’t want to be seen with dink steels. They would be recognized.”
Grak cleared his throat and nodded, glancing down at the fine dwarven sword hanging at his hip. It was of Thorin steel, exquisitely burnished, point-heavy in the dwarven fashion but razor-edged and beautiful. It was the kind of sword a man might spend a lifetime acquiring, a sword worth a small fortune anywhere else in the world.
As though reading his mind, Grayfen said, “The dinks have fine wares, Grak. Far better than they deserve. But we will change that. The treasures of Thorin will buy a thousand such swords. The treasures of Thorin …” As he spoke, Grayfen’s ruby eyes went distant. It seemed to Grak that the magic-man was speaking not to him at all, but only to himself. “The dinks!” The soft voice became a hiss of purest hatred. “The scheming, selfish, arrogant dinks! We shall see soon enough who deserves the treasures those little misers hide in that dwarf-lair of theirs.”
Grak was a callous and brutal man, but something in the mage’s words and in his tone made the raider’s flesh creep. Never in a long, cruel life had he heard such pure, malevolent hatred in a voice as when Grayfen spoke the name he had given the dwarves. “Dinks!”
Others beyond Grak had heard it, too. When Grayfen was gone, striding toward the main encampment of raiders in the hidden cove above the Bone River, some of the men gathered around their captain.
“What … what do you suppose made him that way?” Calik whispered, awed.
“I don’t know.” Grak shook his head. “He hates the dwarves.”
“So? Who doesn’t? Misers and thieves … why should they have all the best things?”
“He hates them more than anyone.” Grak shook his head again. “Something happened, between him and them. I don’t know what it was, but I think it was at the same time that he gained his magic.”
“I noticed that you didn’t tell him about the dwarven horse that got away.”
“I told
*
The camp of the intruders was large, sprawled across the bottom of a huge, washed-out cove above the east bank of the Bone River. It was separated by broken lands and by a rugged, seldom-traveled rock crest from the tribal lands of Golash, south of Thorin’s outer fields. A hidden place, it held little comfort for the hundreds of humans assembled there.
And now, in the evening when the distant drums of Thorin could be heard like deep, chanting voices in the still mountain air, the camp was a dark, cold place. No fires were lit, nor would be again. That was Grayfen’s
