Shaken from his reverie, Scrib fell on the tottering old Grand Notioner, who cursed loudly, crawled free, got to his unsteady feet and flailed about with his mop handle staff, delivering swats and bruises with enthusiastic abandon. On the walls of the cavern, various gully dwarves looked downward at the melee. Some lost their holds and fell, joining the free-for-all below. Others, though, were absorbed in their tasks. They had found a vein of yellow pyrite above the tumbled portal, and were busily mining it.
All around the great column, the pandemonium spread. In the midst of it, Bron braced himself, his iron shield swaying this way and that. He had lost track of Thayla Mesinda, and without the human girl’s presence to remind him, he was a bit confused as to what he was supposed to be doing. Then he saw a tumbling gully dwarf-one of his closest friends, though the name escaped him for a moment-rolling toward little Pert. Without hesitation he swatted the miscreant with the flat of his broadsword, then placed himself to protect little Pert. As a designated hero, he felt compelled to protect somebody, and Pert was a reasonable choice.
Graywing the barbarian stared around in open-mouthed disbelief. He had never seen such total, all-out confusion, all of it because the pompous little Highbulp-who now was among those on the wall, mining pyrites-had told them to run.
“There’s no place to run to, you little idiots!” Graywing roared. “We’ll have to fight!”
On the wall above, the Highbulp glanced around, almost losing his grip. “What?”
“I said, fight!”
“Okay,” Glitch said. “Ever’body fight!”
All around, agitated Aghar froze, straightened and looked around them. “Okay,” several of them said. “Whatever.” Beside Graywing a husky gully dwarf swung a roundhouse punch that sent another gully dwarf tumbling. Several of them went down, bowled over by the ruckus. The riot became a melee as the entire tribe joined in, gully dwarves pummeling away at other gully dwarves, enthusiastic combatants piling onto those who fell.
Graywing stared around in disbelief. “Oh, for the gods’ sake!” he breathed. Then, brandishing his sword, wading through rioting Aghar, he headed for the human intruders piling through the broken portal. Dartimien was beside him, bounding over clusters of gully dwarves. From a distance, somewhere behind the Tarmite warriors gaping around in the gloom, came the sounds of falling stone. Billows of dust issued from the jagged portal, partially obscuring the invaders. Dartimien’s eyes narrowed, his darting glances scanning the humans in the dust. They were all footmen-tower guards and warders, low soldiers wearing the colors of home guardsmen. Nowhere among them were any officers’ insignias.
Graywing filled his lungs and raised his sword, ready to fight, but suddenly Dartimien wheeled to face him. “Wait!” the Cat rasped. “We can use these dolts!”
Before Graywing could react, Dartimien turned away again, his hands empty of daggers, and strode toward the Tarmites. “Where is the rest of your detail?” he demanded, his tone as imperious as any field commander’s.
The Tarmites huddled in confusion, their weapons lowered. “I don’t know,” one of them said. “Cap’n was right behind us a minute ago, but I don’t see him now.”
“He’s still outside,” another volunteered. “Lord Vulpin himself was … well, I think he sent us in here.”
“Idiots!” Dartimien rasped. “Don’t you see what has happened? The invaders have tricked you. That rockfall, they’ve sealed us up in these cellars. The attack is above, in the courtyards. Not here!”
“It is?” a burly Tarmite tilted his helmet to scratch his head. “Then what do we do now?”
“You can follow your orders!” Dartimien hissed. “You should be up in the main keep, defending against the enemy!”
“Y-yes, sir,” the burly one said. “But how do we get back there?”
“The way you came, obviously. Now get in there and start digging!”
Obediently, most of the Tarmite warriors turned and headed back the way they had come, through the broken portal and up the tunnel. One or two glanced back, gawking at the scene in the catacombs. There seemed to be gully dwarves everywhere. “Wh-what about them, sir?” one asked, pointing.
“What about them?” Dartimien snapped. “They’re only gully dwarves. Ignore them!”
“Yes, sir.”
Within moments, more than a dozen yeomen of Castle Tarmish were at work in the tunnel, digging away fallen stone.
“That should keep them busy for a while,” Dartimien confided to Graywing, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
“They took your commands,” the plainsman said. “Why did they do that?”
“Don’t you know about the Tarmites and the Gelnians?” Dartimien cocked an ironic brow. “The only difference between them is the colors they wear, yet they’ve been at war against each other, off and on, for hundreds of years. Not one in a hundred on either side has any idea what they fight about. They just take orders from whoever’s in charge at the moment. It’s always been like that.”
“So they accepted you as being in charge? Why?”
“Because I acted like I was. Now I think we should see about getting out of this hole.”
“How? The entrance is blocked.”
“You really don’t know anything about cities, do you, barbarian?” The Cat gestured toward a gloomy alcove a hundred yards away, in the recesses of the cavern. There, shadows among the shadows, a troop of female gully dwarves was descending from above, winding their way around a huge pillar. They carried loads of forage, found somewhere above.
“I suggest we use the stairs,” Dartimien said levelly.
Chapter 21
Seething with malignant intent, Clonogh paced the wrecked tower. He had scores to settle, and now, thanks to the intervention of a dragon, he had the power to do so.
He might have gone out to face his enemies, but that was never Clonogh’s way. Here in this tower, he felt aloof, above the turmoil beyond, and he liked the idea of his enemies coming to him-using their own efforts to go to their doom. So, a seething old spider in its chosen lair, he waited.
The skeletal structure of stone that had been the great tower of Tarmish was a twisted ruin now, its precipitous stairway a shambles. But he knew the loft was secure. Where the stones had fallen away, where bombards had blasted outer walls to reveal the winding stairs within, and shattered the dark inner walls beyond them, white stone gleamed-a monolith of pure basalt that descended through the great structure, its foundations deep in the bedrock below. The trappings of mankind might fall away, but this stone was eternal.
Just beyond the sprung portal a wide-shouldered gully dwarf approached, scrambling upward through the ruins. Clonogh smiled faintly. The little creature was bringing him the Fang of Orm.
Shielding himself casually with invisibility, Clonogh waited by the doorway. The gully dwarf would be here in moments. And not far behind, climbing through the wreckage from different sides, were the spawn of a Dragon Highlord-Chatara Kral and Lord Vulpin.
The footsteps on the stairs hesitated, then a tattered Aghar crept out into the ravaged room, peering this way and that with nervous, beady little eyes. The creature was sturdy for a gully dwarf, squat and broad-shouldered. He was well over three feet tall, larger then most of his kind, and there were streaks and tangles of gray in his unkempt hair. Clonogh studied him for a moment, unimpressed. One gully dwarf was pretty much like another, despite slight differences. What did interest the mage was the thing the gully dwarf carried in his grimy hands-the Fang of Orm.
With a muttered spell, Clonogh dropped the cloak of invisibility and stood blocking the doorway. “That talisman is mine,” he said. “Give it to me.”