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  “I have no other direction to go, now.”

  “How are you eating?” I asked.

  “Not well.”

  “Take this,” I said. I pulled out a pack of food from my bag. “I am Aiman Shearer, of Emmervale. To the north of the city you’ll find my father’s farm. Anders Shearer. You can tell him I sent you, and he will put you up.”

  “Obliged,” the man said. “Aiman Shearer, and Anders. Very well. I am Korben. I will call on your family, but I will not stay long. Farewell. And I would take care of myself near these tracks.”

  He nodded to us and then continued east.

  “We seem to have timed this well,” Maghran said.

  “Just in time to stop their train.”

  “Yes, that. But also I mean that we let the dunters spend much energy building this thing. This will be a larger blow to them. Wonderfully timed.”

  After a long walk beneath the stars we came upon the bridge. At this point in the railway a small river, a tributary of the Walsing, cut through the land and formed a ravine. The dunters had built a wooden span across. It was a rough structure, but sturdy and serviceable; typical of them. Or more accurately, typical of their kobolds.

  “And here we are,” Maghran said, setting down the bags. “I’ll take that shovel and set some sticks in this bank, if you can step out and tie a few in among those beams. We’ll twist all the fuses together. A few may be thrown when the first ones blow, but what goes off at the same time will take this down. Here you are.”

  He pulled six sticks of the explosives from a bag and handed them to me. Each had a long fuse coiled.

  “Does it matter where, exactly?” I asked. “I have not done this.”

  “Lower is better,” he said. “But of course the fuses must reach up here to me. Tie the sticks into joints. You have cord, or rope? Good. Press them into cracks as much as possible. Their force should be driven into the wood, and not allowed to dissipate into the air. Do you follow?”

  “Yes.”

  He set to work at the end of the bridge, digging holes among its foundations. His arms seemed as thick as the ties beneath him, and he cut into the ground with that shovel as if he were parting snow. I stepped out a few feet and then climbed over the edge and down, to be able to reach among the supports beneath the rail bed. The fuses were around fifteen feet long, only, so I could not move out very far, but I made sure that the first two large columns were mined. I jammed the blasters into the wooden joints of the columns and their cross supports, and then tied them in place with cord.

  “Those are good placements,” Maghran said to me. I was not aware that he had been checking from above. I climbed back up on the tracks and uncoiled the fuses. Maghran was finishing burying his share of the sticks. The bridge was heavy and formidable, with spikes driven everywhere—the typical overbuilt effort of lashed slaves—but from what I knew of dwarf explosives, it would soon be splinters.

  “The ends of the fuses, please,” he said.

  I handed them to him. He twisted them together with the fuses of the sticks he had buried.

  “It will be a race,” he said, as he knotted them. “A race to see which spark gets to its charge first. We hope it will be a twelve-way tie.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  He set the bound ends of the fuses on the ground.

  “There. All is ready. Let’s eat something before we set it all off. We may find ourselves running for some time, very shortly.”

  “I thought you were confident we were not being watched.”

  “I am. But this explosion here will draw very quick attention from a long way around. We dwarves need ample fuel to move like that.” I thought I saw a slight smile through his beard. “And at any rate, the dawn is coming up. We will call this a very early breakfast.”

  The sky was indeed beginning to fade from deepest blue to daybreak at the horizon. He reached into one of the bags and pulled out wrapped food of his own; it was dried meat. He handed half to me.

  “Since you gave yours to that traveler.”

  “I kept plenty,” I said.

  “I’m sure. You are all eating well, yourselves, in your town, we understand,” he said.

  “We are.”

  “Very good. And I have been told that you are a son of the Marshal himself.”

  “A grandson,” I corrected him.

  “All the same to us,” he said as he chewed. “The Marshal’s plan worked, then, I suppose.”

  “Our town is prospering.”

  “Good. But you might have stayed with us.”

  Our history of indentured servitude to the dwarves was not something we liked to discuss, especially with, of course, the dwarves themselves.

  “We paid you well,” he continued. “We gave you a share. You were no kobolds.”

  I felt my face grow red, but it was probably still not light enough for him to see it. I chose not to argue.

  “That was before my time,” was all I answered. Then something occurred to me:

  “Did you know the Marshal?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I saw him, you understand. But I did not speak with him. But perhaps I am meeting him here in you. You’re clearly a leader.”

  “I have no ambition to direct anyone the way he did.”

  “Hm,” Maghran said. “New times forge new ambitions. And I like you, Master Shearer. You are good enough setting explosives, and you eat well. We dwarves do not demand much.” Now I saw clearly that he was smiling. He ate the remainder of the meat and wiped his hands on his breeches. “Very well, let’s light this and move.”

  I saw just a glimpse of yellow-white behind him before tight arms slammed around me and pulled me away. I heard blows, and a scuffle, from Maghran as I was lifted off my feet and carried forward a few paces. I tried to match the fight that I could hear Maghran putting up, but it was no use against many strong arms. They planted me down before an elf.

  It was three other elves who held me. One of them breathed down my neck, literally. They pulled my arms behind my back and tied them together as the one before me spoke.

  “Marshalson Shearer,” he said. “You should pick quieter companions. You yourself might have eluded us, but for this one.” He nodded over toward where Maghran was being bound. “But you needed him for the blasting expertise, I know.”

  He looked me over. He was tall, of course. He was dressed in what looked to be a light gray cloak, rather than the usual white; I supposed this was as close as elves ever came to wearing, or needing, a concealing garment. His hair was blond. He was a typical elf but for lines on his face. The lines surprised me: for an elf, he looked much too young to have such wrinkles.

  “You are with Alden Silvermoor,” I said.

  “I am. We are. I am Aladar Silvermoor.”

  “Here to ensure the dunters get to our towns on your steel.”

  The elf shrugged. “We are here to ensure our rails work as they should. What the dunters do with them is not our concern. Is that one bound?” he asked the others.

  He meant Maghran, of course. The flash of white I had seen behind the dwarf was from one of a larger group of elves who had pinned him down and tied him up. This took them time, and half a dozen elves, and much rope. I managed to turn enough to see Maghran, now. He was bound, still struggling, and snarling with anger.

  “You forest dirt,” he said. He jolted his shoulders violently in an effort to throw off the ropes. “If you want to annihilate us, come try to do it yourselves. You should be warriors enough to try, not go through the dunters.”

  “We do not want to annihilate you, my friend. But we do want to sell our steel. It is the finest in the world, you know.”

  “And the dunters would be hobbled without it,” Maghran snapped. “And you provide it to them.”

  “Yes, and we make it from ore which your cousins, the White Mount dwarves, sell to us,” Silvermoor said. “Or which Herrar sold to us, we should say, I suppose—in the past tense.”

  Maghran s
huddered at this.

  “Perhaps you should speak with them,” the elf continued, “before you complain about us. All these parties in a chain thinking of nothing more than their next sale, and the end use be damned, and look where it gets us. Look where it gets you.”

  “You cowards. You—” Maghran started. At the mention of the other dwarves he had lurched forward and nearly broken free from the arms holding him up. Silvermoor interrupted him:

  “Gag him,” he said. “I regret this, Maghran, but I cannot have you drawing more attention than you have already. We have a strong force with us, but yet we must be quiet.”

  I assumed these elves would have their fingers bitten off attempting to gag this dwarf, or any dwarf, but their method was a bit of elven handiwork: one of them took out a long scarf, already tied into a loop, and lowered it over Maghran’s head. The scarf covered his face from the nose down to his chest. There it remained, and the dwarf could no longer be heard. Maghran quivered, and apparently tried to shout. He shook with rage—silent rage.

  Silvermoor addressed me:

  “Our cloth can keep you nearly invisible, and also nearly silent. I don’t suspect we’ll need this with you.”

  “If I am not killed, here, my people will hear of all this,” I said. “I am in no position to make threats, with my town facing obliteration by Red Gorge—but those of us who remain will remember.”

  “I am sure,” the elf said. “I expect no less.”

  He turned and walked up the tracks a few yards. One other elf joined him, and they spoke quietly. No one made any effort to remove the explosives that we had laid. The other half dozen elves merely stood where they were, preventing Maghran from hobbling away and also keeping an eye on me.

  Time passed. Our group was quiet enough that a knot of deer came into view in the ravine and worked their way northward along the riverside. Far, far away I thought I heard the bark of a dog. I fancied it was from Emmervale, but we were much too distant for that.

  The sky was now an early morning blue, and becoming gold at the horizon as the sun rose. Silvermoor walked back and stood next to me. He faced the tracks.

  “Dawn,” he said. “And now, in the heart of Red Gorge, the train will be raising steam.”

  “So that is true,” I said. “A wandering man passed by here a few hours ago and told us.”

  “Korben, the odd fisher,” he said. “Yes, we saw him pass by and speak with you. He was correct. We will be done here any moment.”

  “Any moment? It will take the dunters hours to get here.”

  “Watch closely, Mr. Shearer. The rails.”

  I watched the rail bed; nothing happened. Far to our west, in whatever foul outpost of Red Gorge served as the mustering point of the dunter army, I imagined an engine being loaded with coal, and smoke beginning to belch from a stack. I imagined the loading of troops, and spears, scimitars, muskets, cannons, all intended to kill my people. Soon a stinking engineer would push a throttle forward.

  I heard a tiny metallic crack. It snapped me out of my daydream. There was nothing more. I looked at Silvermoor. He stood motionless, still gazing straight ahead.

  Then another. This one was a creak, again of metal.

  Then many creaks, and cracks. They came from the railway, all up and down its length. The rails were creaking, sounding as if they were buckling—every single one of them. All these hundreds, thousands, of rails which the dunters and their kobolds had emplaced so carefully.

  Then more clear groans cut through; metal being extracted from wood. This was from the spikes, I realized. I saw now that each end of every rail was beginning to turn upward. Each began to warp. As the ends lifted, they pried up the spikes that had held them down. The ends of the rails hauled out spikes like the claw of a hammer pulling a nail.

  And soon the spikes began to pop out. They jumped into the air like fish leaping from water. Dozens and dozens did this, all up and down the railway as far as we could see.

  Now Silvermoor was smiling.

  Free from their spikes the rails continued to curl up, lifting on either end. They bent more and more, until they were nearly half-circles.

  And then they rolled to their left, each one the same direction, all of them now tilting toward their ends. They balanced, impossibly, and at the same time continued to bend.

  It struck me then, and I gasped: The written symbol of Lord Alden Silvermoor in the elvish language was a character, nearly a circle but open on its left, with a short vertical line bisecting the top curve. This is what these rails were forming. Every single one of them, all in unison, in two long, long rows stretching all the way west to Red Gorge and all the way east nearly to Emmervale and the foothills of Stenhall.

  The rails now grew circular, except for that gap on the left of each.

  Then bulges formed at their highest points. These bulges grew, and extended upward and downward, the steel growing like a magic vine until Silvermoor’s symbol was complete.

  The creaks and groans stopped. The rails stood still, silent, and upright; thousands of the signs of Lord Silvermoor stretching to our right and left. They ran like a sort of silver chain from horizon to horizon.

  “Bless them,” Maghran said, in awe. “Bless those cursed pale ghosts.”

  I looked over at him; his scarf had been removed. He was no longer bound, either. The elves were gone, of course. He turned to look for them in the clearing behind us; I did not bother.

  Chapter Five

  Maghran was silent just a moment longer and then seemed to shake himself back to his senses.

  “What a thing we have seen,” he said. I heard the grudge in this compliment to the elves.

  “Indeed, Maghran.”

  “We have to retrieve the charges. We can’t leave them here.”

  “Should we blow the bridge anyway?” I asked.

  He considered this. “The dunters will not be able to obtain this much track again anytime soon. Given that, I can’t see how this bridge would do them any good, even intact. And I don’t want to draw attention to ourselves if we don’t need to.”

  “Our capture by those elves probably has drawn attention already,” I said.

  “You believe so? From the deer, perhaps. The elves were quiet, even given the noise I tried to make. As they always are. But a detonation here would be noticed. Trust me.”

  “Very well.”

  He started for the bridge, and I followed. I had expected him to speak more about the elves, but he said nothing.

  “Those were many strong arms they needed to hold you,” I said.

  He was silent, and then made just one more comment about them:

  “It is well for Silvermoor and his company that they destroyed their steel.”

  The bridge was not at all affected by the twisting of the rails. Spikes had been pulled from it, and the rails on it were bent into upright characters just like those on the ground, but there was no other damage. I climbed down, cut through the cords I had laid, and lifted out the explosives.

  “Nothing volatile about these?” I asked.

  “No. Or nothing very much,” he added and shrugged. “I suspect my companions will be here soon. The elves must have ambushed them just as they did to us—otherwise they would have come.”

  “How many are you?”

  “Four others. And you?”

  “I have two companions out there. We will be returning to Emmervale. What are your plans?”

  “We must speak of that, my companions and I,” he answered. I recognized this as a non-answer; he probably had firm plans, and just did not want to share them. The camaraderie of dwarves went only so far. I did not press him further.

  I did ask him about Herrar, however:

  “May I ask—what did that elf mean to say when he brought up Herrar, of White Mount?”

  Maghran stopped cold when I said this. He was silent. It was clearly a grave topic with him. I had considered that before bringing it up, but I had hoped he’d be able to speak of it with me
.

  He eventually answered, roughly:

  “She was outside of our territory.”

  “When? What do you mean?”

  “You have not heard? About her disappearance?”

  “No. I barely knew of her, Maghran. And I’d heard nothing recently.”

  “You barely knew of Herrar?”

  “Only that she is the leader of White Mount. She has not ventured out for us to hear much. To my knowledge.”

  “Well,” he said. He paused to consider this. “This was great news among dwarves, but I suppose not so much to others. You may all feel the repercussions, I will say. In fact we have all been feeling them already.” He nodded toward the tracks.

  “Herrar,” he continued, “departed the White Mount to visit us, some ten months ago. We were not aware that she had done so. She left with a small party; three others. She did not send word to us. Our territory well to the west of Stenhall is protected, and secure, but we would have sent an escort out to meet her had we known she was coming. We do not know why they did not inform us of their embassy. But they did not, and they all vanished.”

  “Why were they traveling to speak with you?”

  “To talk about this war. The alliance between Varenlend and Caranniam and Red Gorge. They had heard rumors of it. It concerns them greatly. As long as those parties were at odds with each other—or at least two of the three of them—and of course as long as they did not, could not, unify against Searose, the White Mount dwarves felt secure that they would always have the men as trading partners, and would be able to deal with either Varenlend or Caranniam at any time.”

  “Very pragmatic of them.”

  “It is a dangerous world, Master Shearer. I don’t need to tell you. And no people have ever gone out of their way to advocate for our welfare; we have to do that ourselves. You yourselves have benefitted from your understanding with Varenlend, I believe.”

  “Any ties we can maintain with Varenlend give us, or gave us I should say, an ally on the other side of Caranniam. A potential knife in their back.”

  “Exactly. And our cousins in White Mount were thinking along similar lines. But then Varenlend and Caranniam appear to link up—this alarmed them. Herrar led a party to confer with us. A camp of theirs was found eight days east of White Mount, well into the wilds between our realms, but nothing more. White Mount believes that the party made it into our territory before they disappeared, but we know that is not true.”