A few yards back of the main swarm, he spotted Thayla Mesinda, trim and beautiful even here in these noisome surroundings. Small of stature though she was, she stood head and shoulders taller than most of the milling, blundering little creatures around her.
Scattering gully dwarves ahead of him, the warrior strode across the cavern toward the girl. As he approached her he held out a beckoning hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll take you away from all this-” his voice broke abruptly into a grunt of surprise as a quick movement beside him warned him of attack. With a curse Graywing leaped straight up, drawing his feet up as a wide broadsword whistled past just below him, just where his shins had been.
Bron the Hero lost his balance as his mighty slash met nothing but thin air. Trying to keep his grip on the heavy weapon, he spun half around, tripped and fell on his face. The broadsword clanged against the stone of the cavern floor, and Bron’s big iron shield teetered for a moment on edge, then fell over on top of him.
Cursing and furious, Graywing stepped over the struggling gully dwarf, pinned the broadsword beneath a soft-booted foot and leaned down. “Don’t ever do that again!” he ordered.
“Oops, sorry,” Bron said, freeing himself from the weight of the shield. “Didn’ rec’nize you. Thought mebbe you a enemy.”
“Didn’t recognize me?” Graywing snapped. “You’ve seen me a dozen times!”
Bron got his feet under him, dusted himself off with grimy hands and glanced up at the human. “So what? Seen one Tall, seen ’em all.” The little hero got his shield upright and arranged its straps on his arm and shoulder. He reached for his broadsword, tugged on its grip, then noticed the human’s foot planted on the blade. “Pardon,” he said. When the foot didn’t move, Bron heaved the heavy shield around and smacked Graywing on the knee with it. The human hissed, jumped back and hopped around on one foot, cursing.
Bron retrieved his broadsword, squinted for a moment as he tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing, then resumed his position in front of Thayla. He was guarding her.
Thayla shook her head, her eyebrows arched in a pretty frown as she watched Graywing shuffle about, testing his sore knee. “You really shouldn’t be so rough with these little people,” she scolded the dour warrior. “They don’t mean any harm.”
“That little twit tried to cut off my feet!” the plainsman growled.
“Bron? He’s a hero,” Thayla reminded the man. “That’s what heroes do.”
“Right,” Bron agreed, “cut off folks’ feet.”
Graywing tried again, this time staying just out of range of the gully dwarf’s weapon. “Let’s get out of here, girl,” he urged. “This place will be overrun by Tarmites any minute now … and that dragon is still around here someplace.”
“No, it isn’t,” Thayla assured him. “Bron chased it away.”
“He did not!”
“Did, too!” The voice almost directly below his chin startled Graywing. He looked straight down, into the stubborn, serious eyes of a little female gully dwarf who stood almost toe to toe with him. Her head was at about the level of his belt, her hands were little fists planted on her hips and she looked ready to take him on in either debate or combat, whichever he chose.
“Bron say dragon go ’way,” Pert told him, “So dragon go ’way. Ever’body know that. Tall blind?”
Graywing took a deep breath and shook his head. The only thing dumber than a gully dwarf, he had heard, is the fool who tries to argue with one. If he wasn’t careful, he realized, he was going to find himself doing just that.
“Get out of the way,” he snapped, then stepped around Pert, who scurried to confront him again.
“Bron chase dragon away!” the little creature insisted. She glanced around. “Isn’ that right, Bron?”
Bron peered over the top of the legendary Great Stew Bowl, looking puzzled. “Yes, dear.”
“Pert’s right,” Thayla Mesinda said emphatically. “He did.”
“Nobody just … just orders a green dragon around,” Graywing told the girl, his voice thin with exasperation. “Green dragons are-”
“It wasn’t exactly green,” Thayla pointed out. “It was more brown, or maybe like gold and wild honey.”
“Bron’s dragon!” Pert insisted. “Does what Bron says!”
“She’s right,” Thayla said, nodding. “It was a bronze dragon.”
“Alright!” Graywing snapped. “Whatever you say! Now come with me, girl! We’ve got to get-”
From somewhere behind him came the ironic voice of Dartimien the Cat. “Will you all shut up over there? And stop aggravating those gully dwarves, barbarian! I’m trying to read.”
The Cat was over by the main pillar, squinting in the dim light, running a finger down rows of glyphs on a metallic plate attached to the stone. Gully dwarves crowded around him, some of them clambering up his back, hauling themselves up by his shoulder straps for a better view. One chattering little oaf was actually sitting on the assassin’s shoulders, peering over his head.
Graywing swore a muttered oath and headed that way. The distant sounds of battle, filtering in through cracks and grates, had risen in volume until it was a song of chaos. Then, abruptly, the world outside the cavernous cellars had gone silent. Any moment now, Graywing was sure, hordes of Gelnians, Tarmites, mercenary soldiers and who knew what else would be flooding into these recesses. And Dartimien was reading labels on posts.
Pushing through packed mobs of gully dwarves, the plainsman reached Dartimien and squinted at the bronze plaque. “What is it?”
“Sign,” the gully dwarf on Dartimien’s shoulders chattered happily. “Got runes on it. Say this place fulla crumbs an’ shiny rocks.”
“That’s fulcrum!” Dartimien growled. “The fulcrum on the shining stone!”
“Yeah,” the gully dwarf agreed. “Right.”
The explanation was lost on most of the crowd of gully dwarves. Several dozen of them stared around, thoughtfully, then wandered off in search of crumbs and shiny rocks. Within moments some of them had found a vein of quartz leading upward, ridged with imbedments of gleaming pyrite. Forgetting everything else around them, these intrepid explorers dug out various tools and began climbing the cavern wall, mining pyrite as they went.
“Shiny rocks,” some of them called. “Jus’ like dragon said.”
“That dragon kinda like Highbulp’s dragon,” a gully dwarf proclaimed, “Maybe same dragon?” Almost upsetting Graywing, he pushed forward between the tall man’s legs. He was a portly little individual with a curly, iron-gray beard and puffy little eyes set close above a protruding nose. He wore a crown of rat’s teeth on his unkempt head. “Yep, same dragon,” he decided. “Same dragon as before, long time ago.”
Beside Graywing, Pert bristled. “Bron’s dragon,” she insisted. “Not Highbulp’s.”
Ignoring all of them, Dartimien studied the runes on the metal plaque, then peered closely at the stone around it. Where the mildew was rubbed away, the stone glowed with a soft, pearl-white luster. “Interesting,” the Cat mused. “I think we’ve found something of value here. Something about the high and the low-”
Fifty yards away, at the mouth of a dark, jagged hole in the cavern wall, torchlight flared and suddenly there were armed men there, dozens of them.
Dartimien straightened, daggers flashing in his hands. “Tarmites,” he hissed. “They’ve found us.”
“Ever’body run like crazy!” the Highbulp screeched. The crowd of gully dwarves roaming the cavern floor dissolved into a tumbling tangle of panicked little people as his subjects tried to respond, bouncing one another right and left in their haste. Several of them bounced off a wall and set off a chain reaction of tumbling bodies. The Highbulp was swept off his feet and buried in the turmoil. The lady Lidda dug him out, cuffing gully dwarves right and left. “Glitch a real nuisance,” she observed. Gripping her husband’s ear, she dragged him free and propelled him toward a wall. “Climb!” she ordered.