“Ai! Ai!” Mog shouted in alarm. “Do not crush me, fool. It’s only a rat!”
“Only a rat?” Ogduan shrieked, the hammer still lifted above his head. “Why, that’s our breakfast!”
“Give me the hammer, old one” Mog urged. “Please. Before you do me or yourself a harm.” He held out his hands, palms upward, like a supplicant begging favor from a god.
“Aye, you’re right, lad,” the old dwarf sighed, the light of lucidity momentarily returning to his gray eyes. He pressed the massive weapon into Mog’s eager grasp. “A hammer’s no weapon to be a-hunting rats from under beds. One needs an ax, or tongs! Aye, that’s it! The tongs the thing!”
Ogduan rushed out of the chamber, shouting for his tongs, his tongs, “My kingdom for a tongs!”
Mog gaped in bafflement at the mad dwarfs caperings. Then he turned his attention to the splendid old weapon in his hands. Of marvelous balance, the heavy warhammer was too large for any ordinary dwarf to ever hope to wield. It needed tremendous strength and skill, but ah! what havoc it could wreak in the hands of a skilled warrior. Mog gazed at it lovingly, for this indeed was a weapon worthy of a thane. A king, even. To think it had been so ill used, for hunting rats; it filled his sold with shame.
As he examined the warhammer, Mog noticed a fine etching in the silvered surface of its weighty head. Here were dwarf runes of an ancient style. Mog’s formal education had been less than complete. He could read and write well enough to get along, but only common runes. These ancient letters took some time to puzzle out. He mouthed the sounds, fitting them together like a dwarf child in school, until he was certain he’d got it right.
He nearly dropped the weapon in his surprise. “Kharas!” he exclaimed.
Ogduan rushed into the room, a rusted old spear in his hands, and dove under the bed. “Rats!” he swore, rising up in disappointment. “He got away. Did you see him?”
“Where did you get this?” Mog demanded.
“They’re everywhere. Lucky for you. What do you think you’ve been eating for the last week?”
“Not the rats, you old fool!” Mog shrieked. He grabbed the old dwarf by the tattered collar of his shirt. “The Hammer of Kharas! Where did you get the Hammer of Kharas?”
Ogduan looked at the huge warhammer lying on the bed. “Oh, so that’s what it is,” he said, a smile bunching up the wrinkles around his eyes. “I found it lying around here somewhere.”
“But it wasn’t… it was with… it was lost!” Mog stammered in bewilderment. “How did it even get here?”
“That’s a question I’m sure I can’t answer,” Ogduan said in sudden seriousness. “I’ll thank you to let go of my shirt.”
Mog released his hold on the old dwarf and sank back on the bed. “The Hammer of Kharas!” he sighed longingly. “Returned, and just when it is most needed by the king. I must get to Norbardin. I have to take it to Tarn.”
“Come with me,” Ogduan said, holding out one hand in assistance. As Mog slid from beneath the sheets, he felt a momentary dizziness, but the old dwarfs strong hand was sturdy as a rock. He leaned his weight upon him, still too weak in the legs to walk under his own power. Ogduan led him to the mouth of the chamber and outside onto a small landing high up the rubble-strewn slopes of the Isle of the Dead.
“That way lies Norbardin,” Ogduan said, pointing north into the blackness. “It is a three mile journey through the icy waters of the Urkhan Sea. Can you swim?”
“No,” Mog said hesitantly. “But surely boats must…”
Ogduan shook his head. “No one crosses the sea anymore, except to come here, and then only once a year. But I have a feeling even that tradition might finally have come to an end.”
“But Tarn needs the Hammer of Kharas. It is the symbol of dwarven rulership. With it, all dwarves will acknowledge him as their king and he can end, once and for all, the challenges to his authority by Jungor Stonesinger,” Mog said, the dismayed words spilling out in a rush.
Ogduan nodded his shaggy head. “Aye, he who bears the Hammer wears the Crown,” he quoted. “And yet here it is. The gods are indeed capricious.”
“The gods!” Mog snorted. “There are no gods.”
23
Orchag Bootheel minced past the watchful eyes of the Hylar merchant, his hands carefully tucked into the voluminous pockets of his tattered, baggy trousers, studiously ignoring the piles of doorknob mushrooms piled upon the merchant’s cart. Only when Orchag was well past the cart did the merchant turn his attention to a pair of Hylar goodwives shopping for their family’s supper. Orchag looked back over his shoulder at the merchant, a promise of murder flickering in his eyes.
Zen hated the way the other dwarves of Norbardin treated the gully dwarves. He hated having to take the form of a gully dwarf, but it was the only way to safely move about the city. With the other clans, it was too easy to be recognized. The magic that allowed him to take on the outward appearance of anyone he killed did not grant him their memories or insights into their personality. A relative or close friend might quickly identify him as an imposter. In the first month of his “captivity” in and around the environs of Norbardin, Zen had had three close calls while masquerading as various Daergar. Since then, he’d spent the better part of his time as one or another nearly nameless gully dwarf.
The problem was the same here as in any other large city that he had infiltrated during his long mercenary career. He had to kill his victim to take its place, which meant that sooner or later, the victim would be reported missing or its body discovered. And then, if he were spotted, he was sure to be questioned. Which meant he’d have to flee and find a new victim to mimic, sometimes without being able to take the time necessary to properly study and stalk his victim, which often led to mistakes or accidents that forced him to flee again, and find yet another victim.
With so many gully dwarves living in the city, he was relieved of this burden. No one ever reported a gully dwarf missing, for one thing. And if they found a dead gully dwarf, they didn’t take the time to find out who he was. Gully dwarves died all the time from an infinite variety of maladies. Like the farmer said when he found a dead rat in his cupboard, “now there’s one less rat to eat my cheese.”
Also, to other dwarves, gully dwarves looked as alike as grains of corn. They simply didn’t take the time to study them well enough to discern an imposter among them. The gully dwarves were the soft underbelly of the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin. But Zen was not surprised that no one had ever tried to exploit this weakness. It was a singularly useless weakness, for the gully dwarves were a singularly useless race. One could not recruit spies among them, for they could not relay even the simplest of information. One could not bribe their leaders to fight on your side because they could not follow even the simplest orders. They were inherently cowardly, shy, and devious, utterly untrustworthy even as bribed allies. They had no cultural identity that could be exploited to motivate them, no enemies they hated enough to attack. In a word, useless.
Zen found no pleasure in killing them whenever he needed to assume a new form. It was like killing a cat—a hideous, ugly, noisy affair, that was best gotten over quickly. He even pitied the species a little, which did not ease his conscience whenever he was forced to murder them. He justified the murder by telling himself that he was putting the creature out of its misery. The saddest thing of all was that he was right—a gully dwarf probably was better off dead.