High Iron Page 20

  Herrar, Maghran, Hostenback, and Inman loosened a board in the wall through their body blows and kicks, but then shots roared from the street. Bullets hit the wall, and splinters flew. The dwarves dropped to the ground.

  “Not enough shots,” Herrar said. She meant that the dunters had been smart enough not to all fire at once. The shooters could reload while the others blasted us in a moment. The dwarves might have risked a hand-to-sword fight against twice their number, but they would not walk into musket fire.

  Hrond fired. The dunters shouted at this, and held up a moment, but it wasn’t clear that any of them had been hit.

  We all ran, then, following Tam and Ferlingas back the way we had come.

  We stayed off the road, which slowed us. We high-stepped through the filth of the ditch. We could hear the screams and even the boots of the dunters on the street.

  More shots boomed, and this time we were hit: Hostenback took a bullet in the back of his left shoulder. He was in front of me, and I saw him yanked forward like a marionette. He stumbled a step, and fell. Herrar and Maghran reached down, barely breaking their short strides, and hauled him up.

  And now another shot, and another. I heard one bullet whistle past me.

  “Alley ahead,” Tam shouted in front of us. He darted up the embankment and we followed. It was not an alley, I saw, but just a gap between two fences. We ran into it nonetheless.

  We hustled perhaps twenty yards into this channel and then crashed into each other as Tam hit the end of it.

  “No outlet!” he yelled back.

  The fence on either side was at least eight feet tall. Britta and I might have been able to jump up and pull ourselves over, but there was no way the dwarves could have.

  “Do we jump?” she asked me.

  “They’re going to shoot us in here like bears in a cave,” Herrar said.

  Hostenback, who was still between her and Maghran, grunted now and leaned back against the wall. He was holding his left arm before him, across his midriff. He tried to stretch the arm backward, and straighten, but shuddered in pain at the attempt.

  The other dwarves again started trying to knock a hole in the wall, somewhere, anywhere. The dunters would be at the entrance in a moment.

  But then a gate between us and the road swung out. I had missed it, running past; it was made of planks just like the rest of the wall.

  A kobold leaned out and looked at us with bright eyes. We saw his white teeth in the night.

  “Aimaaan,” he said.

  I confess it took me a few minutes to tell which one it was—Dororg or Rarakan—in the dark, and the rush, and the confusion, but soon I settled on Dororg. He had the bit of black on his face.

  He beckoned us in the through the gate.

  The dwarves stood stunned for a moment, but Britta and I did not need any more invitation. We squeezed past them, past the kobold, and into an open yard beyond. We then heard the dwarves following behind us.

  Hrond was the last one through, and when he cleared the opening Dororg slammed it shut and threw a bar across it.

  In an instant the dunters on the other side reached the gate and began shaking it and screaming. The entire wall shook.

  The kobold pointed toward the far end of the yard and shouted at us:

  “Kayan!”

  So that meant over there. We ran. Dororg overtook us, running up and stepping in front of me and Britta. He looked back and smiled, with his tongue hanging out.

  “Dunteren,” he said, nodding back behind him. I looked, and saw half a dozen of them topping the wall and beginning to drop down on our side.

  But quickly we rounded a corner, passed a shed, and then took another right. This path led only a few yards before bearing left, and we hustled down another gap between fences. With Dororg as our guide through the maze of back lots we seemed to separate ourselves from the dunters, judging from their dwindling noise.

  Dororg made another right. Here we ran a few more strides, but then he pulled up short. He motioned to a crack in another wooden wall. It was small enough to not be noticed as a passage, but big enough for us to fit through. Dororg reached up to put his furred hands on Britta’s back and push her through the gap.

  “Woondala sala,” he said; who knows what that meant. He was gentle as he guided her, so maybe he was telling her to take care.

  I followed. It was easy for me, but I wondered if all the dwarves would fit. Now they stumbled up to us, ran into Dororg, and took my advice from the other side:

  “Hostenback!” I said. He was first, with Herrar right behind him. “Come through here.”

  He squeezed through, wincing, and one by one the rest followed. Hrond fit easily; some of the others did not. The ones who had been captive just now were thin, from their meager diet, but Inman and Maghran got caught between the fence planks.

  We had a lead on the pursuing dunters, thanks to Dororg, but now we again heard them nearing. They were shouting, and howling, and a few of them were firing off their muskets at who knows what.

  Inman made it through the crack with Ferlingas pulling on his arms as Maghran pushed from the other side. Maghran, last, then began to wiggle through. Dororg helped him with shoves and then a few kicks, into which he may have put more energy than absolutely necessary. One more kick and the dwarf dropped into the darkness with us.

  “Curse that dog, he milked those kicks,” he said; but he turned and watched through the opening, his face held back in shadow, as Dororg shot up the alley to draw the crowd of dunters.

  It worked. We saw them all run past, frenzied. There were perhaps twenty, hurrying in single file. The last two held muskets carefully which were presumably still loaded. They disappeared, and the night became a bit quieter.

  “The hound did it,” Maghran said. “Let’s move north again.”

  “Hound” was a respectful dwarf term for a dog, I knew. It was all Dororg would get from Maghran, but remarkable nonetheless.

  We were able to cut through three or four quiet yards before we came to a small alley and cautiously took to the streets again.

  “I think we covered some distance with Dororg,” I told Maghran. “We can’t have far to go, now.”

  “I agree.”

  “Is Hostenback able to keep up?”

  “You’ve seen he is.”

  We clung to shadows off to the side of the street. There was no more movement from dunters or anything else. The city began to dwindle as we forged north. Buildings became—not more modest, exactly, because even in the center they were ramshackle firetraps, but smaller. We moved further away from the street, which out here was becoming just a narrow track, and picked our path between buildings. We passed what I might have called the boundary of the town—the last of the massed shacks—and entered another agricultural area like the one to the south: dark, and stale, and barely populated. We left the road and cut slightly to the east. We did this as soon as we could see we’d no longer be troubled by any ditches or fences.

  And soon we walked out of the last cultivated field. By the time dawn rose we were in untouched open country. It was an enormous relief to be out of the orbit of Red Gorge City. With no sign of the dunters or their filth, the land could have belonged to us just as well as to them. I felt a bit lightheaded walking through that country, overwhelmed by the freedom. And I had been around their city only a few days; I could imagine how glad the White Mount dwarves must have been. Or perhaps they were just longing for their mountains, and anything else was all the same to them.

  They trudged ahead. Hostenback with his shoulder wound tried to move as smoothly as he could, I saw.

  We crossed an expanse of a tall grass, and then one of shorter turf and wildflowers, and came to a stretch of woods. We stepped in and rested beneath the trees.

  Britta and I were the last to sit down, not far in. Hostenback came up to peer behind us.

  “No one trailing us,” he said.

  “No.”

  Maghran asked him:

&nb
sp; “Shall we look at your shoulder?”

  He nodded. I noticed that his arms were free.

  “You got those shackles off, at least.”

  “Early on. I keyed them open on the street as we ran,” he said. “I dropped the ring, then. Maybe that kobold chap will find them. He seemed helpful.”

  “Very,” I said.

  “I’ve had much good luck today.” He said this as Maghran pulled out a knife and cut through his jacket, and then his shirt. It was wet with blood, and beneath it the flesh of his shoulder was red and swollen. The bullet hole was a small black pit.

  Maghran peered at it.

  “Should we reach for the slug?” he asked.

  “With what?”

  “That, I don’t know.”

  “If no one has pliers, or anything else, let’s wait,” Hostenback said. “If your plan is to dig it out with a knife, I fear you’ll just slice me up more.”

  “Can you feel the bullet?”

  “Yes. It’s not stuck in the bone. Perhaps next to a bone, but behaving itself.”

  “Very well.” He lowered his hands.

  “And now, off to Midwall. Do you know the place, Shearer? Do your people know it?”

  “No.”

  “But you think that friend of yours will be able to find it?”

  I rolled my head at this in exasperation.

  “Herrar assured me he would!”

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s the only stretch of such ruins in the area. The ruins don’t stand out, but if he circles around he’ll find the road.

  “The town there,” he continued, “was a way station along the highway centuries ago. It was a highway at the time, I should say. Not much left now. This was before the rise of the dunters and Red Gorge City; the men who used that road did not have to worry about protecting it, but rather just having a bed and a roof and a watering hole. Once Red Gorge grew, it became a garrison town to protect the highway against them. But it was gradually abandoned as the dunters expanded their reach. Then during the plague and then the dragon years it was abandoned altogether when they fell back.”

  “Did dwarves use the road?”

  Hostenback answered this:

  “Seldom. You know we’ve never been much for traveling. But we quarried much of the stone in this stretch. Our White Mount ancestors, I mean, of course. Ancient Nemeya paid them well. They were powerful men, with that road north from Searose and then all the way east almost to your Emmervale.”

  “I’ll look at those stones when we get there,” I said.

  “I believe they’re long buried.”

  Herrar walked up to us.

  “It has been a long night,” she said. “And now the morning already. But we want to push on to Midwall.”

  “Is it far, now?”

  Maghran shook his head. “Not at all. Perhaps two hours. We can spend the day there, and you will meet up with your companion.”

  “That’s our hope,” I said. “And Maghran—once we are reunited, we want to speak with you to determine if the dwarves of White Mount will join us to march on Red Gorge City.”

  “We shall,” Maghran said. “I plight you that. Perhaps it would be possible to stage an attack from Stenhall on the force outside Emmervale. And at the same time have White Mount come down here. I imagine the dunters out near us would flee toward here, and we could crush them in the middle, out on the plains.”

  “That’s an ambitious plan, and adventurous,” Herrar told him. “Two dwarven armies out in the open, and fighting alongside men.”

  “The time may have come,” Maghran answered. “We have seen how busy the dunters are, here. And we have seen the aid from Caranniam. Now might be the time.”

  We gathered ourselves and left the woods. Maghran and Herrar led the way, followed by Hostenback, Ferlingas, and Shanter, and then Inman and Hrond, and finally Britta and me. We again checked behind us to confirm that no one was pursuing from Red Gorge City. The land was flat, here, and had no ridges or hilltops from which to scout the countryside, but there was nothing to worry us. Only grass fields stretched away to the south.

  “If they had sent anyone, they would likely be on the road west of here,” Maghran said. “And I assume they would travel as far as Midwall. But we’ll approach from the southeast, and be able to see anything amiss there.”

  We marched over more grassland. Only a few of the party had dozed in the woods, and barely, but I think we were all alert between the new dawn and the possibility that we were being followed.

  I had assumed we were still at some distance from the old fortification, because I saw nothing to speak of ahead of us. But suddenly Herrar spoke:

  “There it is.”

  And then I saw. Midwall was a low jumble of broken-down buildings. Tall grasses and scrub trees had grown up around the remains of an ancient wall, which was more collapsed than whole. Only a few sections still reached up to their original height, topped with crenelations. Inside the wall were a few structures, again mostly fallen.

  “And this was once an outpost of proud Nemeya,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Herrar answered. “A landmark for travelers, at one time. Including my ancestors, on occasion. Not much of a welcome here for anyone now, but we can spend the day. And meet your companion and move on.”

  The ruined town was small, and as we approached we saw the road from Red Gorge City coming in on our left. It was empty.

  Herrar nodded to Britta and me.

  “One of you tall ones should get up on those walls, as high as you can, and tell us if you see anything.”

  We came to one of the sections of wall that remained standing, and stopped at a gateway. The gate, which may have been timber or iron at one time, was long gone. Over the gap a keystone had been placed with the crest of Nemeya: a dragon in profile, its wings upraised. Little did the Nemeyans know that it would be dragons who would largely destroy this outpost, centuries on.

  A voice inside spoke:

  “Welcome to my palace.”

  The White Mount dwarves all startled at this. It was Jed, of course. He walked out from behind a mostly-intact building. It was good to see his prankster face and upraised eyebrows.

  “You arrived,” Britta said.

  “Days ago. I was getting concerned. I actually rode back out of here once, wondering if I had taken the wrong road. But I went quite a distance to the west and saw no other. What happened to you?”

  “We were delayed by some activity in the town,” I told him. “Forces of Caranniam were moving about.”

  Britta snorted at this, but Jed answered:

  “But you made your rescue.” He nodded to the three new dwarves.

  “Indeed,” Herrar said. The others did not acknowledge him.

  “And Aiman ended up among the rescued, also,” Britta said.

  “What?”

  “I was taken by kobolds and thrown in a dungeon,” I said. I reflected on this and added: “But somehow that makes it sound worse than it was. It was the same one where these White Mount dwarves were, fortunately.”

  “So you enjoyed the dunter hospitality?”

  “I’ve had enough for a lifetime, now.”

  “How long ago did you escape?”

  “Just earlier this morning. Or very late last night.”

  “They dug you out? Or did Britta bend bars with her bare hands?”

  “They dug us out.”

  “And then you just marched out of there?”

  “There was some pursuit, but we managed to evade them. Between hiding and running, we made it out.”

  “You haven’t stopped moving since?”

  “Briefly. Under some cover. But we wanted to get here and rest. Then tomorrow, we’ll decide what’s next.”

  The dwarves moved in among the ruins while Britta and I stayed with Jed. I lowered my voice.

  “Supposedly these friends of ours are going to have a serious talk about attacking Red Gorge. Attacking both the expeditionary force and, perhaps, the c
ity itself. Maghran seems to be in favor, now. I don’t know about Herrar, though. She and her dwarves are very close to home, at this point. And they’ve been away for some time. And that railroad was not aimed at them, so I doubt they’ll feel any danger from Red Gorge the way the Stenhall dwarves might. But we shall see.”

  “I wish the dunters would just wander off of their own accord,” Jed said. “But that’s not their way, we know. Speaking of them—should we set a watch?”

  “Yes, we should.”

  “I’ve scouted a bit. This building right here is the sturdiest. We could head up and look out those windows.”

  The building had likely been built as a guard tower, and may have predated the wall. Its four corners were fat columns made of slabs of stone. The walls between them were brick and mortar, with tall and very narrow windows on the bottom level. The building had an upper story as well, quite high and offering a good view.

  We entered through the open doorway. Again any door it once had was gone. Inside, the floor was packed dirt. Perhaps there were paving stones beneath. It was littered with ashes and half-burnt logs and bones from apparent dunter encampments over the years. The ceiling was high above us. Two sets of stairs along the walls led up to the top floor. One of these had crumbled into rubble, but the other looked sound. The beams above—the base of the top floor—also seemed intact.

  The three of us climbed up.

  “So just one day here, and then home tomorrow?” Jed said.

  “That’s the idea. But if the dwarves decide to attack the dunters somehow, we might be extending our excursion once more.”

  We reached the top floor and walked over to its windows. We looked out over the shells of buildings and the fields beyond. The landscape was more or less flat out to the horizons, and nothing moved. The east-west road was obvious even though it was grown over. It was a ribbon of flat turf stretching away in either direction.