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  At the end of this third hall the passage gave way into a large chamber. We could not see much of it, and I would have liked to peer in before charging. But Maghran and Hrond did not slow down, and neither did Britta and I.

  The four of us entered this large room, and stopped. It was well-lighted by torches, and held dozens of kobolds. The chief stood to our left on a sort of stone stage. Next to him were the Caranniam prisoner and a clutch of other relatively large warrior kobolds. Around the hall were many others, standing amid tables.

  The prisoner was on his knees, next to the chief. He was looking more and more like a pile of wet wool with each new leg of this sad journey of his.

  The hall was loud. As soon as we had entered, the kobolds had begun yowling at us. It was a fearsome racket, and the commotion seemed to shake the walls themselves. Kobolds jumped up and down and shook furred fists at us. A few young ones darted back and forth and barked.

  The only calm ones were the chief and his guards, up on the stage. The chief held a knife to the prisoner, and watched his people with seeming pride. Hrond had leveled his musketoon at the group, again, and I feared that might prod the chief to give an order to overwhelm us. But he said nothing, and I think he was enjoying this show of force from his tribe. At some point between our first view of him outdoors, and now down here, he had donned a sort of crown. It was a simple black circlet that seemed to be made of stone. It came down as far as the tops of his ears.

  Behind him I noticed a standard leaning against the wall. It was a black pole with spikes at angles, at the top, looking like dunter teeth. Above the spikes was a small platform capped with a large iridescent stone. It was indeed a dunter standard. I was amazed. As loose and chaotic as the Red Gorge hordes were, it still would have been quite a feat to capture this from them. I wondered if the kobolds had really done so.

  Britta had noticed it too.

  “These little ones captured a dunter prize?” she asked me.

  “It looks that way.”

  “That’s astounding.”

  “Perhaps they just found it?”

  “How would anyone just find a standard like that?”

  The chief and his chattering tribe were making no effort to communicate with us, yet, so I leaned forward to ask Maghran:

  “Are these tunnels dwarf-built? Do you have relations down here? Or did you?”

  “No,” he said. “We would have made everything larger. I suppose these beasts dug all this.” He seemed to speak with grudging respect.

  Now their chief raised his hand, and the ruckus quieted somewhat. He lifted the knife he held and waved it. The kobolds holding the prisoner shook him and pushed him toward us a foot or two, I suppose just in case we had not noticed that they had him. The chief now spoke to us in his own language, and jerked the knife back and forth again.

  “He overestimates our interest in that man’s safety,” Maghran growled.

  Then one of the larger kobolds next to the chief translated:

  “Chief Korf says this man is now our prisoner. You can either leave now, or we shall dispatch him.”

  The chief barked a few more words.

  “Chief Korf says you should back away carefully and lift your gun.”

  More barking.

  “Chief Korf says you should do a better job guarding your prisoner.”

  Then the laughter started up again. It sounded like a group of curs fighting over a sheep carcass. They did not stop even as the last of our party, Inman, now ran up behind us and joined our little group.

  Britta spoke to us:

  “Should we just leave him with them? We could do without the burden. And he seems to have nothing to tell us.”

  We considered this. It was true that we were fatigued of hauling him around.

  “But do you think they could hold him?” Maghran said, quietly so that the translator could not follow. “Beyond their hall here I don’t believe they are demonstrating much competence. They should have cut us down one by one as we came into their clearing up there, for one thing. He might well find a way to flee. And he needs to be held until that army is long gone. After that, they could trade him for a side of bacon for all we care. But I think we need him back.”

  “Do you think that army of Caranniam would really turn back toward Stenhall if he were to escape and tell them what had happened?” Inman asked.

  “I don’t want to risk it,” Maghran said. “There’s no sense in doing so. We can drag him along behind us like a sledge if we have to.”

  “Very well,” I said. “This man should be grateful to us. How do we extract him? We need to hurry.”

  “Sir,” Maghran said, more loudly now, to the translator. “We will pay you for this prisoner. He is worth something to us.”

  Once again I watched Maghran shift his pack to his side to pull out a gem. I knew what he was doing, but of course the kobolds did not. Several stepped forward menacingly, and Chief Korf waved his knife again.

  Maghran held out one hand, palm open, at this, and said:

  “I have a jewel to exchange for that man. As much as you will get from his city, or his family.” He nodded to the translator, who repeated it in their language.

  “You have another?” I asked him.

  “Small wealth, as I said. Easy to carry.”

  He pulled out a second stone of arovis and held it up.

  “You know what this is?”

  “That is arovis, the rose-stone,” the translator said. He nodded, and suddenly he looked bitter, and weary somehow. Up until then I had not noted his face at all, but now he struck me. He seemed a bit older than the others standing next to the chief, and his eyelids dropped down to narrow his gaze.

  “I,” he added, “dug those stones for you in White Mount.”

  “Not for me,” Maghran said. “Not us. That is not our home. But this is arovis I have, and I will give this to you for that man.”

  The chief promptly lowered his knife, dropped down off the podium, walked up to Maghran, and snatched the stone. He raised it up to a torch on the wall and peered at it.

  He jabbered something, and the translator said:

  “This man is important to you?”

  “Important enough for this,” Maghran answered.

  The chief kobold lowered the stone and looked at Maghran. He spoke to the assembled crowd of other kobolds, and there was some back and forth between them. Then, the issue apparently settled, he spoke to the translator, who told us:

  “Chief Korf will take stone, and also your axe.”

  Maghran shook his head very slightly.

  “I’d sooner part with another stone. This was my father’s.”

  The translator did not bother running that past the chief, but just responded, again with a sober look in his eyes:

  “Chief Korf will also have axe. Or no trade.”

  Maghran sighed.

  “The mongrels,” he muttered. “Well, it was I who wanted to liberate this man of ours. They have their price.”

  He drew the axe from his belt and stepped toward the chief with the handle held out.

  “Use it well, please.”

  The kobolds erupted in a screeching cheer, then. They waved knives in the air, and their whelps danced around. Maghran seemed taken aback. Had he known what a prize the kobolds would consider that axe, I think he would not have given it to them, just out of pride.

  But it was done. Chief Korf grasped the handle of the axe, and then turned to signal to the others by the prisoner. They lifted him to his feet and pushed him toward us. He was the worse for his capture, and for being half-dragged through the woods and along these stone floors. He stumbled, but he did move in our direction. His hands were still bound behind his back, as we had left him.

  Hrond, only now, finally lifted the muzzle of his musketoon. Inman had brought his gun with him but had never bothered to shoulder it.

  “Let’s just back out of here,” I said. Maghran snatched the arm of the prisoner, and the six of us bega
n to move. We stepped to the entrance of the hallway and slipped out. The last image I saw of the kobold mob was many of them approaching the chief to admire the dwarven axe, their tongues lolling out of their mouths.

  Chapter Nine

  One more sign of the power and confidence of that group of free kobolds was the fact that they did not bother trailing us as we left their tunnels. We had the place to ourselves as we picked our way out. We climbed the steps into the stone house, exited, and saw Jed.

  “You all return sound,” he said. “And we have our hero back with us.”

  “They had their price,” I said. “And Maghran had the payment.”

  “We must move,” Britta said. “We need to get that message to Caranniam. Who knows how delayed it is already.”

  We left the little kobold village and continued north, retracing the way of our pursuit. We passed the clearing of the raided house again, with no incident this time. Jed untied the horse, who perhaps had enjoyed the break from the walk. We made our way past the last of the trees, and then crossed a wide stretch of open country.

  “What did I miss down there?” Jed asked.

  “It was impressive,” Britta said. “A very tidy stronghold for the kobolds.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No. They are well-armed, orderly, with a strong leader. They’ve lined the walls down there with their plunder.”

  “You are serious?”

  “I am.”

  “I should have seen it.”

  “You should have.”

  Eventually we neared Emmervale, approaching from its southwest and reaching the Walsing river again. We must have been close to the enemy army.

  “This should be our camp,” I said when we reached the river banks. The land was still basically flat, with just a slight fold downward where the river ran through. It was shallow, and dark with the stones beneath. There were trees along the turf banks. We could smell the water.

  “Yes,” Maghran nodded. “We may not find anything as good until we reach their expedition. Or until you reach it, I should say.”

  “It’s odd hiding here when we’re so close to home,” I said. I remembered how close the dunter encampment was to Emmervale; it had not taken me long to ride out to it, when I had gone to survey it some weeks before.

  “Close to home, indeed,” Maghran said, “but with some very inhospitable neighbors between, now.”

  We dropped packs and set the prisoner on the ground. We tied up the horse to a tree on the south side of the river, with a long lead so it could graze. Maghran, Britta and I then crossed the water to look north from the other side. We were on the edge of the broad prairie that lay between Red Gorge and Emmervale. It stretched to the west and to the east for many miles; land which was good for farming, but poor for concealing our party. There were slight rises here and there, nothing more. The prairie ran uninterrupted as far as I could see, but we knew that to the north, and the east, there were farms not too far away.

  “I will leave in the morning,” I said.

  “And then come back here, and I suppose we wait,” Maghran answered. “If all goes well, we will have a fine show to watch.”

  “And then our next step?” I asked. “On to Red Gorge with our people?”

  “If this works, and the army breaks up? Give me another day to think about that,” he said. “We want to get home. I suppose you can take that prisoner to Emmervale and lock him up as long as you wish. And we can let Caranniam and Varenlend deal with each other. If they all fight a noble war valiantly, and defend their beloved homelands, they should bleed each other pretty well.”

  “We should try to get word to Varenlend just before the attack,” Britta said. “They would last longer, and take more Caranniam forces down with them, if they have some time to prepare.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Maghran said. “You can send a few riders out from Emmervale with that intelligence. You might even drop off our messenger friend along the way so that he can join his comrades and fight the good fight.”

  “But Maghran,” I pressed him again. “That cannot be the end for us. Or we could see this army outside our gates again in a few years time.”

  “Another day to think, Master Shearer,” he repeated.

  In the morning, after we had eaten, we relieved the messenger of his garments. I gave him mine; breeches, a loose shirt that had been white at one point, and the light coat I wore to keep off rain on warm days when I surveyed our sheep. They fit him well, but were clearly several steps down the ladder for him.

  “He looks like someone who might earn an honest living, now,” Maghran remarked.

  “And I look like a noble messenger, ideally,” I said. I had put on his red finery. “I hope to come back soon.”

  “We will help if we can,” Maghran said. This was obligatory of him, but of course there would be nothing they could do if I was taken somehow.

  I mounted the horse and rode out. The gelding seemed glad to have a rider and a purpose, after days of being led, and he moved confidently.

  “You yourself seem a Caranniam noble,” I told it. He had smart and welcoming eyes, I thought. This was the only Caranniam citizen I had ever taken a liking to. (The Duchess, as an exile, did not count as a citizen any longer.)

  I scanned the land before me as far ahead as I could. I was looking for the camp, of course, but also thought I might be able to see the eastern terminus of the ruined railway. I could not make it out; it must have not quite reached this far, or else it was more to the north.

  In a few minutes I approached a farmhouse. It was abandoned, and had been burned by the invaders. Its stone walls still stood, but the roof, shutters, and doors were either blackened remains or missing altogether.

  The house had a barn behind it, also stone and also burned out. A fenced area showed that the family had kept some livestock, but all were long gone. I rounded all this, and came to the other side—with a clear view of the encampment.

  It lay perhaps half a mile before me, and it was far, far larger than I would have guessed. It seemed to have grown since I had seen it last.

  It roiled like an anthill. One small section, at an edge, had white tents; the personnel from Caranniam and Varenlend. Most of the camp, however, was a swarm of dunters in disorder, and an enormous swarm it was. I tried to estimate the number there, but it was not possible at that distance. Perhaps—I said to myself—it was five hundred there, five hundred more there, and so on? But there was no way to count them all. For one thing, there was constant motion. It was, certainly, many more fighting dunters that I had assumed Red Gorge was able to give.

  I had assumed I might see patrols issuing out of the camp from time to time, in formation, but in reality small groups and individuals were continually splitting off, apparently on their own. It looked as though I could put myself in the way of marauders within a few minutes. In fact it surprised me that no dunters had stumbled upon me yet.

  I gently spurred the horse, easily the hardest thing I had done in my life. But I kept on. I took strength somehow from that fine clothing I was wearing, and from the role I was playing. I did not have to give orders and demand respect as Aiman Shearer; I could do it by pretending to be this haughty noble who was at that moment tied to a tree. The handsome horse I rode helped, also. I wondered if a grand mount and grand clothing were in themselves much of what it took to feel the confidence of a ruler.

  I could not spend much time on this reflection because there now appeared before me two figures—dunters. The first was perhaps two hundred yards away; the second was some distance further. Both were coming toward me.

  The second, the farther one, looked larger and showed a glint of armor. I avoided the first and rode to this more imposing character. Perhaps he would have to pass the message through fewer hands to get it to the recipient. The first eyed me as I rode by. He was not tall, dressed only in rags with an iron helmet, but he had a fighting look in his eyes.

  The larger dunter behind him had
wide shoulders that made me think of my dwarf friends, and a steel breast plate that shone. He carried a broadsword slung across his back, and a heavy pistol at his waist. He had the usual protruding lower jaw and sharp teeth reaching up from it. He wore a nose ring, had a thick black tattoo on his neck, and showed a horrific scar over his left eye from some blow that must have nearly torn off his forehead. But for all that, he did not have the defiant sneer of the first one. He did not speak as I approached. Perhaps he had more to lose than the first if he were to disrespect this noble messenger from Caranniam that he saw before him.

  I withdrew the letter from the saddle bag as I rode, and held it out to my side so he could see it, lest he think I had pulled a weapon. I snapped at him as I approached, before he could say anything to me:

  “You there. Take this to Lord Sterovannar. Tell him I was here. I must turn back directly. He will understand why when he reads.”

  I had spoken in Cranam, as the messenger might have, and I had no idea if the beast would understand. But he answered in kind.

  “Your name, sir,” he croaked. He spoke with the usual dunter lisp through all those teeth.

  I finally reached him, now, and thrust the letter at him. He put out a scarred hand and took it.

  “He knows who I am. Be off,” I barked.

  I turned the horse and spurred it. The smaller dunter had been watching me all along, but I did not meet his eyes as I swerved around him again.

  I did not look back as I departed. I kept the horse at some speed; not a gallop, for I did not want to suggest fear, but quick enough to get out of there and discourage anyone from attempting to catch up with me.

  Would it work? Would the dunter take the message where it needed to go, or would he get caught up in some quarrel or brawl along the way? Would he try to read it himself? Few of them could read, so there was little chance of that. Of course it would have been gibberish to him even if here were literate and tried. All in all I thought he was a responsible-looking chap and would deliver the letter directly, if he could. I hoped that it did not need to be handed through some hierarchy of dunter lieutenants and warlords to get to Sterovannar. I kept up my pace as I approached the burned-out farmhouse.