AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The fact that they were taking their time about finishing him increased his sense of doom. Dwarfs in doubt about the matter would rush in and start hacking.
Perhaps these weren’t dwarfs after all. He’d never seen dwarfs, who took as much pride in a well-groomed beard as a well-balanced axe or a well-filled purse, in rags and bodily filth like this. Such a combination of pallidness with grime would indicate madness in any other hominid, but dwarfs were as resistant to failings of the brain as they were to hunger, disease, or loneliness.
They’d dragged him into a circular chamber and made sure of the bracing on the circular stone that had rolled along a gutter into a sort of natural stone socket. The rolling, wheel-like closing stone reminded the Copper of the support for a wheelbarrow; it even had a giant handle attached so the dwarfs could drag it back and forth by means of a pulley chain. The stone, bound with iron, would not easily give way, supported as it was by the ironmongery and the stone socket. With all the twists and turns in the passage, even a troll or a dragon couldn’t force it or wield a battering ram that would crack it. Stout miners with picks would take days to break through.
Help would not come from without, at least not before the dwarfs could make stews and pies of his last leftovers. He had to find it within.
Alcoves ringed the circular chamber, with tiny hearths, some vented by metal housings for the air, others burning next to cracks in the walls, with smoke being drawn up into the cracks as though directed. It offered the cave a homey, smokeless warmth, and the burning fuel did much to mask the muscat odor of unwashed dwarfs. Knowing the cleverness of the bearded race, he supposed the smoke probably vented into the outer passage. To poison besiegers, they needed only to build up their fires or burn some sort of poisonous chemical in the fire. Perhaps even now, deadly fumes were dropping that elf’s dozing raven and the rest were fleeing even farther up-tunnel to escape.
He looked about. How many dragons get a chance to examine the site of their own death in detail?
There was a great deal of writing on the wall, both carved into it and written with chalk. A big stretch of marking looked to be a calendar, but there were other testimonials, some in multiple languages such as:Fust died here with his comrades
He killed 11 enemies before falling.
Jospir regrets never having a son.
Old Kuk the blacksmith swears the best ale he ever enjoyed was brewed by Daza Yellow in the House of Yril.
Dwarfs usually had black or red beards, thick and often glowing, thanks to a curious luminescent fungus they cultivated in the thick mats of their beards. These had faded, and their beards were reduced to patchy hair the color of cold ash. Their arms and armor were rusted and bent, with no two suits matching. Those that had shields had tied them on with bits of twine, and there was not a boot to be seen, though some wore sandals of metal and chain or slippers that looked to be fashioned out of dried mushroom. Their ragged pants gaped, especially at the back where he caught glimpses of their frightfully dirty and hairy backsides.
Still, a few had enough care for their appearance that they’d knotted their mustaches and beards, or washed the filth from some jeweled brooch or an ancient family helm. Dwarfs took a good deal of wear and tear without bending their necks—even the Empire at its height had never managed to make thralls out of them, though a few served for pay and grudgingly fulfilled bargains they made to save their lives. The Copper had heard legends of dwarf prisoners surviving on nothing but licked moisture from a cave wall, until they eventually returned to the rock from which they’d sprung—if you believed old tales. Which he didn’t.
A dwarf peeked at him from a slit in a huge oval shield. A blade waggled just below the slit like a taunting tongue. “No wonder they had this one up front. He’s half blind and a cripple to boot.”
The Copper acknowledged his fear. Doing so allowed you to control it. Sometimes it even came to your aid in a critical moment. He’d escaped death many times; if it came here, he’d still done better than any dragon tossed into the world with his injuries could expect. At least a throng of famished dwarfs wouldn’t rejoice and snicker that he’d finally passed up and into the night sky, as they would if the news reached the throne room in the Imperial Rock. He could stand anything, but he particularly disliked being the subject of laughter. It might be better to fall here, unknown and unnamed.
Dwarfs with chains and grappling hooks stood by, ready to throw and snare and drag him over and expose his belly.
“May I ask, Master Dwarf, who finally humbled me?” he asked in Parl. “I am curious to know who it is that finally sends me into the mystery beyond the final veil.”
A dwarf with double-rings on each of his index fingers, matching gems of red and blue, emerald and diamond, waved the others to stillness. “First-rank Seeg, dragon, of the Deep Alliance,” he answered, using the trade-tongue with more facility than the Copper could ever manage. “My fathers were of the Wheel of Fire in its glory, though we’ve dwarfs and dwarf-wives of all four craft-marks in our number. We’re the last survivors of a punitive expedition sent into barbarian lands by the Wheel of Fire. Abandoned by our king and brothers, we counted ourselves clanless and established a new dwarfhold. Others have since joined, those who can’t stand the arrogant Hypatians and their dragon backers, that is. We’re the last of the Free Northern Dwarfs.”
Enemies of my enemies, eh, Master Dwarf? Perhaps they should know his name.
For all the jewels Seeg wore on his finger, the most impressive was a plate-sized white gem ringed with gold joining his thick girdle. The Copper had to stop himself from gazing into it. Though he hadn’t thought about Rayg for years, for some reason the crystal in Seeg’s belt made him think of his old assistant.
“I’m called RuGaard in the Lavadome, though now I’m an exile and at enmity with the new Tyr. If you call yourselves ‘free,’ does that mean others of your kind are slaves?”
“He asks strange questions for one about to be bled and butchered into cuts and roasts,” a dwarf observed.
The Copper tried to answer well. “I entered first in the hope of preventing bloodshed. If it causes all of my own to be spilled, that will make an ironic story for the afterlife. I’m curious about you and how you’ve made enemies willing to hire dragons to destroy you. No ordinary hate burns hot enough to melt that much gold.”
“We’re the holdouts,” said Seeg. “We’re the only ones who don’t tithe headtax to your damn dragons and their blood-drinking demen.”
“Why did you take me alive?”
“We’ve got plenty of sick down here. We heard from some blighter runaways from your Empire—before we decided to distribute their heads and bodies to different caves—that dragon-blood was good for ailing folk. Most of our folk are ailing these days, what with the wet roads and dry passages blocked by the cursed demen.”
“Let’s bleed him a little now—I’m thirsty!” one of the dwarfs with the chain and sharpened, harpoonlike grapnel said.
“Perhaps I can help with other kinds of thirst. Thirst for sunlight, or fresh air, or even revenge.”
“We tried an alliance with a dragon once. It ended in our ruin,” Seeg said. “Though I do find you unusually coolheaded for a cornered dragon. Usually they spit fire and oaths, and leap.”
Another dwarf argued, “If you mean that she-dragon, it was we did her wrong. She came through the barbarians and brought wounded out. How many dwarfs would have died without their last messages, were it not for her?”
“I was Chartered Company. Dragons were a boon for us, until the Empire came. Let’s hear him out.”
