But when he tried to raise those objections, the king brushed them away with a confident declaration. “The enemy is waiting under the mountain, not lurking about outside the gates! I am quite certain Willim the Black will not bring his troops out in the open, where we could meet and defeat them on an honorable battlefield. Instead, he will make us fight our way into Thorbardin, where he can meet us on his own sneaking terms.”
So it was that, by the king’s order, the army filed over the pass and down into the valley below Cloudseeker Peak. Among the first to arrive at the bivouac area was Tankard Hacksaw. He wasted no time in sending detachments of troops from his First Legion to scramble up the steep slopes and inspect the heights to either side of the trail, ensuring that, as much as possible, they were clear of traps and there were no signs of enemy dwarves.
Brandon and Gretchan, in the meantime, decided to scout the trail leading to the gate, though they both agreed with Otaxx’s wise suggestion that they not approach too close to the actual entryway. But they wanted to get a sense of the difficulties they would face if Willim’s men did attempt to fight outside of Thorbardin.
“It couldn’t have been planned any better for defense,” Brandon admitted when the couple stopped to rest at a switchback, nearly a thousand feet above the valley floor.
“No wonder it’s never been taken by storm, not in more than two thousand years,” Gretchan agreed almost reverentially.
They stared at the narrow trail, with the sheer rock face on one side and the plummeting precipice on the other. The pathway rose at a steep angle and was never wide enough for more than two dwarves to walk side by side. In some places it was even too narrow for a double file without exposing the outer dwarf to a possibly fatal stumble. The trail twisted forward until it met the sheer wall of the mountain, where it simply seemed to end.
“And the gate.” Brandon pointed upward to the terminus of the trail, still five hundred feet above them. “It’s right there, where the path ends at the mountainside. But how sturdy it must be! How much solid rock will the Tricolor Hammer have to split?”
“My father described the mechanism to me. It’s a great screw of stone, carved into a plug in the mountainside. He estimated maybe fifty or sixty feet thick,” Gretchan explained. “It’s designed, of course, so that it can’t be forced open. And if it’s opened by some other means, it still allows only a very narrow point of access to Thorbardin.”
“Fifty feet of stone? That sounds impossible!” Brandon protested, his heart sinking. He had heard those descriptions before, but confronted with the reality of the scene before him, the task seemed hopeless.
“It would be impervious to any normal weapon. But remember, the Tricolor Hammer is an artifact of Reorx, and it was created by our god with this sole purpose in mind. If the three pieces of stone-scattered through Thorbardin, Pax Tharkas, and Kayolin-could be assembled, it is said, then the wielder will be able gain access to the great kingdom under the mountain. I have faith in my god. Do you?”
Brandon sighed and looked at Gretchan. Her golden hair lay plastered to her scalp, sweaty and dirty from the trail. She was breathing hard and sniffling from the cold air. And she had never looked more beautiful to him.
“I have faith in you,” he said. And because of that, he had faith, too, in Gretchan’s knowledge of the hammer and the prophecy of the artifact’s divine might.
She smiled, a trifle wistfully, as he reached out and took her hand. “I have faith in you too,” she admitted almost shyly. “If I didn’t, I guess none of us would be here.”
“But here we are,” he said, conviction and determination growing within him. He felt a surge of optimism. “And here we’ll be tomorrow.”
“Let’s get back down to the camp,” she said. “There’s a lot of preparing to do.”
“What was that? Who’s there?”
Crystal’s voice sounded confident, even demanding, but her heart pounded in her chest as she spun through a full circle. She studied the dark, thick pine forest that seemed to reach out from both sides, several lush boughs extending almost to the middle of the narrow, winding hill road. Dusk had seemed to settle around her very quickly.
How much farther until the next inn?
She longed for the sight of a welcoming sign, the scent of wood smoke from a tavern’s hearth, and the raucous sounds of dwarves relaxing. She knew there were wayfarer’s houses every few miles along the road-she’d stayed in such establishments for the past three nights-but she feared she’d miscalculated that part of the journey. She didn’t relish the thought of continuing down the road after dark, but she didn’t seem to have any choice if she didn’t happen upon any inn or farmhouse.
She tried to tell herself that her misgivings were just foolish fears. Certainly there was no one out there, lurking in the woods, watching her!
Or was there?
The sensation of being spied upon had been growing stronger and stronger throughout the past day of her trek. Often she’d scanned the heights to either side of the road, looking for some stealthy watcher, but she’d never spotted anyone. And even if someone were there, it would be merely some hill dwarf woodcutter or a goatherd tending to his flock.
Of course it would!
Straightening her back and setting her shoulders squarely, she strode along the road, projecting an air of self-confidence that she didn’t really feel. She walked ten steps, ten more, and finally felt better and could chide herself on merely a girlish case of nerves.
Then she heard the sharp snap of a breaking stick, like a brittle branch on the ground that had just been broken by a heavy footfall.
“Hello!” she called, brightly she hoped. “Who’s there?”
“Hello, my sweet Crystal.”
The rasping voice emerged from the shadowy foliage, and she felt a sick feeling growing in her gut. Her first impulse was to flee, to run headlong down the road, but she forced that thought away. Better to be brave, confident … wait, the watcher knew her name!
“Who are you?” she demanded, a hint of royal anger creeping into her voice.
“You know me, my queen,” came the answer, and the pine boughs rustled as someone edged forward.
The first thing she saw was a pair of eyes: wide, bloodshot, and staring, with rims of white surrounding dark pupils. The eyes were centered in a bearded face, a dwarf’s, with bristling hair extending down over his forehead. He was filthy and wearing a tattered cloak and boots that were torn and broken, revealing his blistered, swollen toes.
Only when the breeze shifted slightly, bearing a scent of sweat and damp straw reminiscent of the Tharkadan dungeon, did she recognize the dwarf.
“Garn?” she asked as the ball of sickness churned and thickened in her gut. “What are you doing here?”
“Why, coming with you, of course,” the mad Klar said, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a cackle of delight. “That’s why you let me out of my cell, isn’t it? So that I could follow you home?”
“But-I didn’t-it wasn’t me-” She bit back the denial, not certain what approach to take with her husband’s former captain. It was strange enough that some mysterious person had freed him, but to encounter him on the trail! She knew from her conversations with him that Garn was suspicious to the point of paranoia, and Crystal didn’t want to risk antagonizing him to a state of agitation any more intense than his normal existence. “That is, have you been following me all along? Since I left Pax Tharkas?”