The two soldiers had their backs to him. They were talking and didn’t hear him.
“Hullo!” Tas said loudly.
The guards drew their swords and whipped around a lot faster than Tas would have given dwarves credit for. He did not know dwarves were so agile, especially decked out in all the metal.
“What do you want?” snarled the soldier.
“Get back in there!” said his friend, and pointed at the inn.
Tas spoke a few words in Dwarvish. He spoke a few words of many languages, since it’s always handy to be able to say, “But you dropped it!” to strangers you might meet along the way.
“I want my hoopak,” said Tas politely.
The dwarves stared at him and one made a threatening gesture with his blade.
“Not ‘sword’,” said Tas, misunderstanding the nature of the gesture. “Hoopak. That’s spelled ‘hoo’ and ‘pak’ and in kender it means ‘hoopak’.”
The soldiers still didn’t get it. They were starting to grow annoyed, but then so was Tasslehoff.
“Hoopak!” he repeated loudly. “That’s it, standing there beside you.” He pointed to Sturm’s sword. The soldiers turned to look.
“Oops! My mistake,” said Tasslehoff. “This is what I meant.” A leap, a bound, and a grab, and he had hold of his hoopak. A leap and a thwack, and he’d cracked one of the guards in the face with the butt end of the staff, then used the pronged end to jab the other guard in his gut. Tas rapped each of them over the head, just to make sure they weren’t going to be getting up too soon and be a bother. Choosing the smaller of the two, he plucked the helm off the dwarf.
“That was a good idea Raistlin had. I’ll disguise myself as a dwarf!” The helm was too big and wobbled around on his head. The dwarf’s chain mail nearly swallowed the kender, and it weighed at least six tons. He ditched the chain mail and put on the dwarf’s leather vest instead. He considered the false beard idea a good one, and he gazed thoughtfully at the dwarf’s beard, but he didn’t have anything to use to cut it. Tas took off the helm, shook out his top knot, dragged his hair in front of his face, and put on the helm again. His long hair flowed out from underneath.
Unfortunately, all the hair that was bunched up in front of his eyes was a little troublesome because he couldn’t see through it all that well, and it kept tickling his nose, so that he had to stop every so often to sneeze. Any sacrifice for a friend, however.
Tasslehoff paused to admire himself in a cracked window. He was quite taken with the results. He didn’t see how any one could possibly tell the difference between him and a dwarf. He set off quickly down the street. Flint and Arman Kharas had a pretty good head start, but Tas was confident he’d catch up.
After all, Flint had promised.
Chapter 14
Three Hundred Years Of Hate. The Valley Of the Thanes.
Flint had hoped to be able to make his way to the Kalil S’rith, the Valley of the Thanes, quietly and quickly, avoiding fuss, bother and gawking crowds. But the Thanes had not kept quiet. Word had spread throughout the dwarven realms that a Neidar was going to seek the Hammer of Kharas.
Flint, Arman, and their escorts left the city of the Talls and walked into a hostile mob. At the sight of Flint, dwarves shook their fists and shouted insults, yelling at him to go back to his hills or take himself off to other places not so nice. Arman came in for his share of abuse, the dwarves calling him traitor and the old insulting nickname, “Mad Arman.”
Flint’s ears burned, and so did his hatred. He was suddenly glad Raistlin had come up with the idea of sneaking the true Hammer out of Thorbardin and leaving the dwarves the false. He would take the Hammer with him and let his loathsome cousins remained sealed up inside their mountain forever.
The mob was so incensed that Flint and Arman might have ended up in the Valley of the Thanes as permanent residents, but Hornfel, receiving word of the near riot, sent his soldiers out in force. The soldiers ordered the crowds to disperse and used their spears and the flats of their swords to enforce their commands. They closed and sealed off the Eighth Road that led to the Valley. This took some time. Arman and Flint had to wait while the soldiers cleared the road of pedestrians and ordered passengers out of the wagons. If Flint had been paying attention, he would have noticed a very odd-looking dwarf pushing and shoving his way through the crowd: a dwarf of slender (one might say anemic) build, whose helm wobbled about on his head and whose beard poked out of the helm’s eye slits. Flint was nearly blind with rage, however. He held the hammer in his hand, longing to use it to bash in a few mountain dwarf heads.
Just when the odd-looking dwarf had almost caught up with them, the soldiers announced that the Eighth Road was clear. Arman Kharas and Flint climbed inside the lead wagon. Flint was taking his seat when he thought he heard a familiar voice cry out in shrill tones, “Hey, Flint! Wait for me!”
Flint’s head jerked up. He turned around, but the wagon rattled away before he could see anything.
Tasslehoff fought, pushed, shoved, kicked, and slithered his way through the angry crowds of dwarves. He had just managed to get near enough to Flint to yell at him to wait up, when the wagon carrying his friend gave a lurch and began to roll down the rails. Tas thought he’d failed. Then Tas remembered he was on a Mission. His friends were all worried about Flint going off alone. Sturm was even praying over it. They would be sorely disappointed in him—Tasslehoff—if he let a small thing like a regiment of dwarves armed with spears stop him. Arman and Flint had entered the first wagon in a series of six wagons hooked together; the soldiers in Arman’s escort had been going to accompany him. Arman ordered them to stay behind, however, which left the other five wagons empty.
The wagons were gathering speed. The dwarven soldiers stood arm-in-arm, their feet planted wide apart, forming a human barricade to keep the mob from rushing the mechanism that controlled the wagons. Tas saw an opening. He dropped down on all fours and crawled between the legs of a guard, who was so preoccupied with forcing back the heaving press of bodies that he never noticed the kender.
Tas sprinted down the rail line and caught up with the last wagon. He threw his hoopak inside, then he leapt onto the back of the wagon and clung there as tight as a tick. After a tense moment when he nearly lost his grip, Tas hoisted one leg up over the side. The rest of him followed, and he tumbled down to join his hoopak at the bottom of the wagon. Tasslehoff lay on his back, admiring the view of passing stalactites on his way to the Valley and thinking how pleased Flint was going to be to see him.
The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Roads led to the Kalil S’rith, the Valley of the Thanes. Each road ended at an entrance known as Guardian Hall, though no dwarves ever stood guard there. There was no need. Reverence and respect were the guardians of the Valley. Dwarves coming to bury their dead were the only ones who ever entered, and they stayed only long enough to pay their homage to the fallen.
It was not like that in the old days, at least so Flint had heard. Before the Cataclysm, the priests of Reorx tended the Valley, keeping all neat and trim. Dwarves came to celebrate family anniversaries with their ancestors. Pilgrims came to visit the resting places of ancient Thanes. After the clerics departed, the dwarves continued to come to the Valley, but without the clerics to tend to it, the grass grew long and wild, the tombs fell into disrepair, and soon the dwarves quit coming. Although dwarves revered their ancestors and thought enough of them to include them in their politics and in their daily lives, asking them for guidance or assistance, the dwarves were now reluctant to disturb the slumbers of the dead. Once a dwarf was laid in tomb or cairn, his family bid farewell and departed, returning to the Valley only when it was time to bury another family member.