High Iron Page 13

  Two mounted men then moved out from behind the barn and stood in my path. One was dressed in the red of Caranniam. The other was in brown, but carried a musket.

  Chapter Ten

  Both of these men were tall, with long noses and black hair. In other words, they both looked like our captive messenger.

  “Baron Laurent,” the first said. He spoke the name slowly. Although I understood the Cranam he spoke, it took me far too long to realize that he was not starting a story about a Baron Laurent but rather was asking me—confirming with me—that this was my name.

  “Yes,” I said. I could hardly deny it and come up with something else. Baron Laurent I was. I hoped this was indeed the name of our captured messenger.

  “We did not expect you. You were in the camp?”

  “Not all the way in, no. I brought a message to be delivered.”

  “You took it to Lord Sterovannar?”

  “I did not. I had no time; have no time.”

  “You did not see Lord Sterovannar?” he exclaimed. Both looked at me queerly, now. “What did you do with the message?”

  “I gave it to that dunter captain,” I said. I turned and pointed toward where he had been, but he was no longer visible. I had no idea if he was a captain, of course, but I decided he could do with a promotion if not. It would sound better than handing the message to a dunter sergeant.

  They looked even more appalled at this. Their faces fell.

  “A dunter?” the first said. “To take responsibility for a message for the Lord?”

  I saw it was time for me to take command:

  “We have no time for protocol,” I said. “This attack is called off, and the attack on Varenlend starts now. That is the content of the message. I must get back myself immediately, and you must of course also complete your work here and then pull out without delay. This exercise here is at an end, and now our real campaign begins, gentlemen.”

  Would they have known of the treachery against Varenlend? I figured that if they did, my knowledge of it would help convince them that I really was the messenger; and if they did not, the shock of it might cause them to forget any suspicion they might have about me.

  They took me seriously, it turned out.

  “Attack on Varenlend?” the first said. “So it is true. The rumor.”

  “Indeed. You understand my haste, then. Good day.”

  Again I spurred the horse, and again rode off with some speed. A speed that was confident—and got me out of there—but not rushed, I hoped.

  I made it back to the outcrop of trees and was congratulated.

  “You dealt with dunters and men from Caranniam?” Britta asked, after I told them what had happened.

  “Both. Had I known that, I would not have gone. But I am back alive.”

  We settled in to keep watch to see if the expeditionary army would indeed pull up its stakes—or gather up its rags, as the case might be—and march back to Red Gorge, and then Caranniam, and then Varenlend.

  I gave the messenger his clothes back, and took mine. I had considered just keeping his red garments—they were very well-made—but it would have felt odd to dress like a Caranniam noble indefinitely.

  “So, Baron Laurent,” Maghran spoke to him. “Now we know your name.”

  Fatigued and hungry as usual, the prisoner did not reply. He stood to dress himself, seemed to sway in the breeze somewhat, and then collapsed again.

  “If the letter works,” Maghran asked me, “I suppose they will not move until the morning.”

  “And perhaps not even tomorrow,” I said. “Although we did try to be clear with the Duchess to give it a sense of urgency, didn’t we? We shall see.”

  “The letter alone does not even have to do the job, now,” Britta said. “If the men you spoke to believed you, as you think they did, they’ll inform the forces of Caranniam themselves. They would not want to wait around for the Varenlend fighters to catch wind of this.”

  “True,” I said. “I wonder how easy it will be for these leaders from Caranniam to order around the dunters. It might be difficult to pull them away, when they were looking forward to an attack and spoils.”

  We prepared to sit tight in that cover for a few days until the army, we hoped, moved away. Jed and Britta and I did not want to risk being run down by a dunter patrol, had we chanced an immediate return to Emmervale, and the dwarves stayed for the same reason.

  That narrow stretch of woods turned out to be a providential location for our wait. In addition to the concealment, the river there had ample fish. (Jed, who usually would have caught some, stayed away from them, after his altercation with Hrond; but Britta took a number out and the three of us all ate them.) I also found more splitleaf roots to eat. We risked fire during the day to cook. We only worried that some dunters or enemy men might come to the river for water, but none did.

  But of course our wait felt like no picnic, as we kept watch for the large army to move west. We guessed they would keep to our north, if and when they marched; but we were wary about them heading toward us, and we stayed ready to flee.

  We waited patiently that night, and the next morning, and into the afternoon. At this point Inman and Hrond grumbled about the lack of progress with our plan. Maghran upbraided them:

  “We don’t know yet that we failed. It will take time for them to get that horde moving.”

  It became time again to eat, and I think Jed and Britta intentionally made a fire which was larger than it should have been, and threw off more smoke, and lasted longer into the twilight, because they half-wished that some dunters would come investigate and they would thereby have something to do. (The dwarves, for their part, for all their strength and weaponry, seemed glad to spend the days unnoticed and eventually return home having done nothing more than lay down some explosives and pick them up again. This adventure, for them, would have then been just an extended hunting trip, and they seemed content with that.) But we were again left to ourselves.

  Something like a crack of thunder and lightning woke us well into the night, however. It was not natural lightning—the sky was clear. We darted up from our sleeping rolls and joined Britta and Inman, who had been standing watch. They were on the other side of the stream, looking north.

  “That flash came from there, from the enemy camp,” Britta said. “And there were some others before it, not as great.”

  More silent flashes now lit up the sky to the north. One was blue, a second red; then a larger white flash flared, and a moment later we heard a blast.

  “This could not be an attack on our towns, could it?” Jed asked.

  “I don’t think it can be,” I answered. “Emmervale would be to the east, and Stenhall would be farther north than what we’re looking at. It must be the camp.”

  “I suppose the Caranniam contingent did not get the drop on those from Varenlend, as they would have hoped,” Maghran said. “They must be having it out.”

  Britta shook her head.

  “Just imagine what they could have done to us with that power,” she said. “We’ve escaped a disaster.”

  “We could make plenty of noise of our own if they brought that to our gates,” Maghran said. “But it’s good they waste it on each other.”

  The flashes and bursts continued. Some lights brought explosions, and others did not. They continued for perhaps a quarter hour, and then began to diminish. Some became more quiet, as their frequency dropped off, and then all of it ceased altogether. The night returned to its usual stillness. Some frogs along the river began to strum their calls, and insects chirped.

  “Now we must truly be alert,” Maghran said. “There may be men fleeing that battle, and I would guess the main army will move out soon.”

  We neither saw nor heard anything, for the remainder of the night; of course that does not mean that no one ran across the fields before us. Varenlenders may have fled in the darkness, heading west. All was quiet, apart from the frogs, and I even dozed.

  It was in the
gray dawn that Jed called to us. Inman, Hrond and I stalked up to his position, beneath low-hanging branches of a tree on the edge of the stand. We half-dragged the baron along with us. All the others were already there.

  Jed pointed. I saw tiny figures moving, from our right to our left; from the camp toward Caranniam and Varenlend, just as we had hoped. There were only a few. They seemed to be men, not dunters.

  We saw no more for some time. The light of dawn continued to build, and we could see more clearly when the main force of the army of Caranniam—for that is who they were—passed before us. The riders out in front wore red, and immediately behind these nobles were the standard-bearers. Then came a few dozen more riders, and after them, a score or so of wagons. After the wagons, the soldiers on foot. All were men.

  “Will we see any of the force from Varenlend?”

  “Perhaps they fled at night. Or perhaps there are none of them left to flee.”

  “Where are the dunters?” Jed asked. “We need them to follow along.”

  But there were none. The Caranniam march numbered only a few hundred, much as we would have guessed.

  When the small army had passed, Jed looked at me gravely.

  “A fine force, but nowhere near everyone we hoped to see,” he said.

  “So the dunters remained,” Inman said. “With no allies, and no railway. They must still be bent on taking Stenhall, and your Emmervale, if they don’t intend to starve.”

  “We will have to flush them out,” Jed said.

  “They will be a much easier force to defeat, without the help from the wizards,” Hrond said.

  “We could still use your assistance,” I told him.

  “You must speak to Maghran concerning that,” he said. “Our march back home will begin now, in any event.”

  We walked back to the camp site. The dwarves strolled with little care, not betraying much concern with the dunter army that remained out at the foot of the hills of Stenhall.

  “And now home,” Maghran said. “Hrond, have you kept your powder dry, through all this?”

  “I believe so. It’s a good thing we’ve had fair weather.”

  “Quite.”

  We reached our packs and bedrolls. The dwarves said a few more things I did not hear, but it was obvious to me that they were celebrating the end of their mission—and its several detours—and that they were not readying themselves to follow up on our success. There was none of the grim reticence from Maghran that I had seen during our operation at the tracks, and in our dealings with the Duchess.

  “Maghran,” I said.

  “Yes, Master Shearer.”

  “You all seem to be in good spirits. Aren’t you concerned that we did not see the dunters leave along with the contingent from Caranniam?”

  He shrugged. “The dunters will always plague us, whether they are in their city or camping out beneath our mountains. I can’t say we feel much threat from them. When the wizards were there to guide them, that was different. But now, I don’t believe they’ll dare march up toward Stenhall.”

  “We had spoken of how we might take advantage of this flight of Caranniam.”

  He did not answer.

  “That is,” I said, “how we might gather expeditions of our own to expel the dunters.”

  “We did have a few words about it, yes,” he now said. “Shearer, I must tell you. It will be difficult to convince my people to risk themselves against that swarm. We can wait them out. We have food, and they will be scavenging.”

  “Scavenging from Emmervale, that is.”

  “I believe you can protect yourselves quite well. Truly. The dunters will have to abandon their campaign within a few weeks.”

  “And then next spring, when they come at us again?”

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “With Varenlend and Caranniam fighting one another, there is no one to direct them. And even if this conflict between those cities ends up being only skirmishes, they will not lead a combined force against us again.”

  “But Caranniam will eventually come after us. If they intend to rule with sorcery, they will have to try again, keep us off balance so our progress does not overtake them. And if they intend to adopt industry themselves, they will need your riches.”

  “That’s a supposition.”

  “It was important enough for them to put that horde of monsters on our doorsteps.”

  Maghran thought about this and then said:

  “Master Shearer, you performed a very brave deed, delivering that letter. And you thought to find the duchess yourself, and you stood up to that band of hounds back there and freed this deadweight baron of ours. You have acquitted yourself well. You should enjoy the calm, now, and get back to your farm.”

  “I am not doing this to prove anything to anyone, Maghran. I am not concerned about my place in history. I’m concerned about my town’s future. My children’s future.”

  Again he was silent, as were his companions. Finally he said:

  “We need to get back to our families. I will speak to them of this. I give you my word about that.”

  This did not sound promising. The dwarves packed their belongings. I fumed, silently, but soon the dwarves were again speaking to each other, quietly, apparently about nothing of consequence; I heard an occasional laugh from them. We still had thousands of dunters on our doorsteps but yet these dwarves seemed to content to chat about—who knows what. Perhaps the scenery, and boot repair.

  Eventually we were packed and ready to head north. Britta and I glanced through the trees to see if there were any dunters marauding, or perhaps the Caranniam contingent changing their minds and heading back east; but there was nothing. We untied the horse.

  Then there appeared before us, once more, Aladar Silvermoor. I would say that he materialized from the shadows of the trees like a spirit.

  Many more elves instantly appeared behind him, and then one dwarf. It was an older dwarf, distinguished-looking and dressed in black, and female. She wore a heavy brass circlet. I had never seen anything like it on one of them. It was not ornamented, nor even polished, but it looked to be a sign of power.

  All of us were stunned. Aladar and the other elves said nothing. They seemed to think the dwarf they had along with them would make an impression, and they were correct.

  “Who in the furnace of the earth do you have here with you?” Maghran said.

  “We have brought one you have missed,” the elf said.

  The dwarf nodded, and allowed a thin smile. She was proud, and regal.

  “So this must be Herrar,” Britta said.

  Aladar nodded to her. “The Lady of White Mount.”

  Herrar looked much like the other dwarves, as usual, although her hair was white and she seemed older. Her black clothes reminded me of those of Maghran’s brother Ghranam. She dressed like the male dwarves. She was set apart only by her shoulders, which were narrower—although still just about as broad as mine—and her lack of a beard.

  At her side she wore a battle axe that seemed impossibly heavy and broad. It was shining steel, laced with engravings. She also carried a short spade, strapped to a pack she carried; it was small, and had some ornament to it, with scrolls and other metalwork at the handle. It looked almost ceremonial, but well-used. I wondered if it was something traditional which a dwarf in her position would carry.

  “How long have you held her?” Maghran demanded of the elf.

  “Easy, cousin,” Herrar answered.

  “We recommended,” Aladar said, “that she wait for you to complete your work at that bridge some days ago, and then you might escort her back to White Mount. We were not willing to make that journey, and we thought she would be safer in a group.”

  “So you have been following us, all this time?” Maghran shouted. “Watching us, still? And you knew of those kobolds?”

  Aladar nodded. “It is a fine village they have. We admire them. We don’t believe they know that we are their neighbors. Are their caverns pleasant?”


  “We might have died down there!” Maghran roared.

  “We don’t believe you will end your days in a kobold warren, sir,” Aladar answered.

  “And now, with Herrar,” Maghran snapped; something had occurred to him. “You had her days ago when you ambushed us by that bridge!” he stormed. “Did you not? Anyone with honor would have brought her then!”

  “They had me when they met you at the bridge, yes,” Herrar answered. “I was in Meerglade, and it took us time to get that far east. By the time they took me out this far, you were done with the bridge, and well on your way back to the dunter encampment. They have lost no time, Maghran.”

  Maghran stood silent at this, seeming unwilling to admit that the elves had acted honorably and reasonably. He finally asked Herrar:

  “What of the other three who were with you?”

  “Still imprisoned in Red Gorge.”

  “Imprisoned by dunters?” Maghran asked. He sounded truly shocked.

  Herrar only nodded.

  Aladar added: “We obtained the best price we could. It was part of our deal with them for the steel for their railroad. They would release this dwarf, but not the others. We spoke of it at length, with the dunters, and even canceled the transfer, for two days. But it was clear they would not negotiate further, so we then accepted and took Herrar. And the gold.”

  “They would not agree to pay you less gold in exchange for giving you the prisoners.”

  “No.”

  “So they are still held.”

  “We must go release them,” Herrar said. She sounded very matter-of-fact about it; she and Maghran and the others would simply retrace her steps—apparently into the very heart of Red Gorge—and liberate the imprisoned dwarves.