Lord of the Rose (28 page)

The duke came up gasping, heading for deeper water. Men were casting aside their armor, seizing the manes and tails of fleeing horses, starting to swim. Those who couldn’t swim, couldn’t grasp some form of support, soon drowned.

Sobbing in fury and dismay, Thelgaard wriggled his way out of his heavy breastplate, the crown-emblazoned piece of armor
that had been in his family for a dozen generations. It vanished into the muddy waters as the duke swam toward the far bank, strong strokes carrying him away from the deadly shore.

Behind him, the howls of thousands of triumphant goblins sang in his ears, a chorus of humiliation and shame that would echo in his memory, he knew, for every day of the rest of his life.

Despite the down mattress and sturdy bed that was a part of his army’s equipment every time it took to the field, the Duke of Caergoth had spent an extremely restless night. Every time he drifted off to sleep, it seemed as though secret voices were whispering in his ear, warning him of dangers before, behind, to every side. Some of the whispers were lies, he knew—but others were truths!

How to tell them apart?

He awoke in a sweat, breathing hard, staring wildly around the large tent. Despite the four bright lanterns his aides kept burning through the night, it seemed terribly dark, dangerous, with unseen menace hovering in every shadowy alcove. At dawn he had a terribly upset stomach and sent immediately for his breakfast. As it arrived he had learned that two messengers had arrived from the Duke of Solanthus, but he wasn’t ready to meet them, not at first. Instead, he sent even his trusted aides away and paced nervously on the lush carpets that lined the floor of his tent, leaving the two messengers from Solanthus cooling their heels outside in the rain.

Finally, he let one of his aides in and asked about the messages carried from Duke Rathskell. “They appeared most inconveniently, you know,” Duke Walker sniffed, picking at his crepes and fresh oranges. “Now they disrupt my breakfast!”

“Excellency, it does seem to be a matter of some urgency,” said the aide. “Captain Marckus has suggested that we muster immediately, cross the river in support. There is word of a massive goblin flanking maneuver, the horde reportedly far inland
of the duke’s army, coming into position to threaten the city of Luinstat.”

Duke Walker had already given initial orders, and his army was gradually coming to life around him—though he would not yet authorize the striking of his grand tent. No, he needed to keep the rain off of himself while he pondered this important decision.

Where to go? Of course, to Marckus it was all so simple: just march right up to the enemy and engage in battle! The duke had to be aware of more subtle concerns—feints and deceptions, concealed intentions, even false information. Indeed, any move to cross the river, now, would inevitably expose his army to a whole host of unknown counter-moves. It seemed best to wait here, patiently awaiting word on further developments.

A half hour later, a thoroughly soaked, bloodied, and chastened Duke of Thelgaard appeared, with report of an attack on his own camp, his army routed, driven through the river. Thousands of gobs and hobs, Thelgaard said. They were too many, too disciplined, led by a canny half-giant who had struck at the knights’ weaknesses.

“See!” declared Caergoth accusingly, addressing the messengers from Solanthus. “This is why I don’t make hasty decisions! No, far better for us to remain here, on our side of the river and wait to see what’s going to happen next!”

“Aye, Excellency,” said the men.

“Now, duke, why don’t you dry yourself off and get that wound looked at by one of my healers. Have some hot tea. Take a good nap. Things will look better tomorrow.”

T
he ridge cresting the Vingaard Mountains rose like an inverted sawblade across the horizon, dramatically marking the end of hundreds of miles of tabletop-flat plain. The four travelers were headed for a certain valley, where, in the middle of the range, a pair of anvil-shaped summits stood like watchtowers.

“Ah, I can smell the pines,” Dram Feldspar said, drawing a luxurious breath through his ample nose. “All these weeks of trekking across the flatland is a foreign thing to a mountain dwarf. When we get into the high valleys, I’m going to take my boots off and soak my feet in an icy stream until they turn blue.”

“Why would you want blue feet?” asked Sulfie. She tried to act cross, but it was obvious even the literal-minded gnome was pleased at the prospect of leaving the plains for forests and high ground.

Dram broke into a trot, with the two gnomes hastening behind. Jaymes’s long strides meant he had no trouble keeping up. Of the four, he was the only one who wasn’t staring in awe at the mountains. Instead, his eyes, squinting and suspicious, swept across the flatlands to the right, the left, and behind them.

They hadn’t seen any other goblins or humans for the past
three weeks. The goblin raiders and the human armies apparently remained behind in the area of the Upper Vingaard River and the plains lying directly below the Garnet Mountains. The travelers had avoided small towns and farmsteads and in more than a score of days and several hundred miles had come upon no other travelers.

Nor, in the weeks since their crossing of Mason’s Ford, had they seen any group of trees larger than a small copse of cottonwoods, no elevation more pronounced than the eroded bank of a stream or gully. The rains, thankfully, had finally dwindled, though that meant the landscape became a swath of dusty brown soil, scored by greenery only where the infrequent streams cut sluggishly across the featureless land. Just this morning they had skirted a small verdant grove centered around a pond, on the grounds of an abandoned and collapsing manor house, which they decided not to investigate.

They had a precise destination since leaving Mason’s Ford. Jaymes wanted to get his hands on the supposedly explosive compound invented by the brilliant dead gnome Brillissander Firesplasher. How he knew about this supposed invention, Jaymes refused to say (even Dram didn’t know)—but Jaymes believed it would be very useful and profitable, if such a thing really existed.

Thus far the compound, with its smoky fizzle, had proved to be a major disappointment, and Carbo and Sulfie had conflicting ideas as to the reasons for the fizzle. Both insisted that it had worked in the past, that their brother, Salty Pete, would know how and why. But Salty Pete was lost to the lizardmen in the Brackens, so it was up to them to recreate their father’s formula. The first step was to find the necessary ingredients.

Sulfie had described the essential ingredient, a yellow and chalky stone that emitted a foul stench when heated, which she called “sulfir.” They needed to find a store of this material; she didn’t know where her father had acquired it. Dram Feldspar thought that he knew such a place, and it was he who had led them westward across the flatland.

“Yep, we’re getting close,” Dram said, studying the twin flat-topped mountains with a critical eye. “When I was here before I heard about this rock. There are dwarves who mine in this area, but the ones we have to keep a lookout for are not so much miners, they’re more like scalawags, outlaws, who will sell anything for a price. They have lots of these yellow rocks just lying around, and as far as I know don’t have any use for ’em.”

Jaymes frowned. “I’m not worried about outlaws, but we’ve come a long way if you’re wrong.”

The female gnome shook her head. “Don’t blame me. I told you we need to get some more of the yellow rock for a new batch of the compound, but I didn’t say anything about walking a thousand miles to get it. And I don’t cotton to outlaws.”

“Hmph!” Dram said sourly. “It wasn’t a step over four hundred miles, and if we need to find a bunch of yellow rock, then here’s a likely place. The only place
I
know of, anyway. Just follow my lead and we’ll get in and out of here without too much trouble.”

By now the dark layer on the foothills was recognizable as lush pines sprouting in a luxuriant blanket over meadows of green grass. Wildflowers popped through the grass, blue and red and purple and white speckles waving back and forth in a cool breeze. Most delightful, clear water—in the form of a rapidly flowing brook spilling out of the narrow valley—offered welcome refreshment, a wonderful change from the brackish, muddy trickles that had marked every sluggish waterway on the whole, vast plain.

That first night in the mountains they made camp in a narrow grotto next to that stream and shared a dinner of fresh fish around a cheery fire. Not only had firewood been generally lacking on the plains, but even when they found pieces of driftwood they had been unwilling to build an evening campfire, for the light would be visible for miles. Here, steep stone walls to either side and tall trees up and down the valley masked the illumination.

As the dwarf and gnomes made themselves comfortable in mossy bowers, even Jaymes allowed himself to relax. The soft
grass soothed his muscles as he lay back. The sky was bright with stars, and when he slept he wasn’t troubled by dreams.

The morning dawned clear and dry. They rose quickly and started up the mountain valley, following a twisting, steeply climbing road that looked impassable to anything like a cart or wagon, and would have provided a challenge to a sure-footed mule. Dram led the way and Jaymes brought up the rear. The two gnomes were more cheerful and talkative than ever:

“This place reminds me of Dungarden,” Sulfie explained. “It was like this in the Garnet Range—cool, and smelling like pines. I like the sound of the water splashing over the rocks. It would be a good place to live.”

“Just be alert,” Dram said, his eyes scanning the rising bluffs to either side of them. “There are those who already live here. It remains to be seen if they’ll be glad to see us.” He fixed Jaymes with a stare. “Are you ready to do this?”

The warrior merely nodded and continued on. Dram’s hand rested on the head of his axe, but—at Jaymes’s insistence—he kept the weapon tucked into his belt, instead of ready in his hand.

As the small party made its way through a narrow bottleneck between two huge boulders rising to either side of the trail, Dram came to an abrupt halt. Sulfie bumped right into him, the dwarf cursing at the impact. His hand clenched around his axe but then, with an almost visible effort, he let his arms drop to the sides.

“We’ve met the locals,” he reported.

They found themselves confronted by a half dozen dwarves, similar in size and whiskers to Dram but wearing soft deerskin trousers and shirts instead of the dark woolens and chain shirt favored by the Kaolyn dwarf. Five of them carried crossbows, and these held their weapons leveled at the four travelers, while the sixth stood belligerently, fists planted firmly on his hips.

Small pebbles clattered down from above. Jaymes looked upward, quickly spotting another dozen or so dwarves coming into view atop the large boulders to either side of the trail. A quick glance behind showed that yet another group of the valley’s
guardians had slipped into position to block their retreat. All told, a good twenty or more arrows were aimed at the four of them.