"The fires that are evil's reward will be your just end!" The officer shrieked his curse as he tried to whip his horse through a tight turn. But Horgan circled faster, until he once again stood before the narrow bridge.
Furious, the centurion urged his steed to the very brink of the gorge, took a vicious cut at Horgan with his sword. The dwarf dodged underneath the singing steel. Chopping savagely, Horgan hacked his axe into the rider's leg.
The man screamed in pain and terror as he struggled to keep his balance. The horse skipped away from the cliff's edge. The wounded man toppled to the ground, landing heavily at the brink of the precipitous drop.
"You're no better than that ogre!" hissed the centurion. His fingers grasped and tore at the grass as he slipped toward oblivion. "The gods curse all of you who would thwart the Kingpriest's justice!"
Horgan watched the human slide over the lip of the cliff, uprooted grass tufted in his clenched fingers as his feet kicked empty air. The centurion twisted into space, his face a mask of stark terror. Then, his red cloak billowing around him, the man smashed onto the boulders of the stream bed. The dye of the robe blended with his blood, flowing downward through the rapid stream.
(Note, Excellency, if you will forgive my aside, that once again we have this image of blood flowing downhill to Istar. A foretaste of the Bloodsea, rendered in the hand of an adventuring dwarf, nine centuries before the Cataclysm! Oh, poetry and prescience!)
Wearily, Horgan clumped back across the bridge. He remembered with a sense of vague detachment the ogre who had started this fracas.
Here, in his journal, Horgan Oxthrall records that he reached a point of decision in his life. He was filled with disgust and loathing for the humans and their arrogant lord. Considering the ogre, the dwarf found it hard to muster the same kind of antipathy — despite the racial hatred that was so much a part of his being. He wondered if the human had spoken an inadvertent truth in his dying breath. Were dwarves any better, truly, than ogres? Did they not have more in common with ogres, in some ways, than they did with their so-called civilized neighbors in Istar?
He came back to the clearing and found Gobasch standing before the cave mouth and looking at Horgan with an expression of bewilderment on his great, three-tusked face.
"Why you fight for me?" asked the ogre.
Horgan scowled. Why, indeed? So that he would have the honor, the pleasure, of slaying the ogre for himself? There had to be a better reason than that, he told himself.
"No human has been allowed in these mountains for twenty-five years!" he huffed, angrily.
The ogre stood before him, his huge sword held defensively across his chest. Chin jutting in determination, Gobasch regarded the dwarf, the ogre's three tusks bristling in Horgan's eyes.
"And ogres? How long for them?" grunted Gobasch.
Even as his mind grappled with the question, Horgan knew the answer. If he carried out his duty now, he would be no better — in his own mind — than the human bounty hunters he had just confronted.
"Go on," Horgan said to Gobasch. "Get out of here!" He indicated the valley, the ogre's route before Horgan had caught up with him. There, through the foothills, lay wild country — and beyond, the plains of Istar.
The ogre blinked, suspicious.
"Move, by Reorx! Before I change my mind!" shouted Horgan Oxthrall.
Still blinking, Gobasch looked cautiously over his shoulder. He kept looking, all the way down the trail, until he disappeared from sight.
At this point, Horgan sets his journal aside. It is not for another year that he again takes pen to paper, and then it is to record, briefly, the events of the intervening annum.
Horgan Oxthrall, being a dwarf of true honor, reported the incident to his thane. The closing words of his journal are difficult to read, but indicate that his gesture toward the ogre cost him his post in the scouts, and he was banished from the high thane's court.
Nevertheless, as I read his words, penned in the year following his banishment, I see no sign of regret, no desire to change the decision he had made with regard to Gobasch, the ogre. If anything, the words of Horgan Oxthrall fairly swell with pride.
This is the first scroll of the cheesemaker's find. It leads me to believe, Excellency, that the tales of the Last Messenger are true! Somewhere in the heights above me lies the tomb of this hero who preserved the history of the Khalkist dwarves. I go to seek this trove, an opportunity that any historian would seize — though not all, I dare to venture, with as much stoicism as I!
With the coming dawn, Master, I set out for the icy ramparts that have framed my view for these past months. I will send further word with all the haste I can muster, though I doubt that ready accommodation will present itself for the passage of messages.
Until my next word, I remain,
Your Devoted Servant,
Foryth Teel, Scribe of Astinus
My Most Honored Master:
I can only beg the gods of good and neutrality to see that this missive retraces the path I have recently traveled. My own survival I take as proof of divine providence — and should this brief note reach your hands, I shall claim no less than the benevolent intervention of Gilean himself!
Of course, Your Grace, as always I press forward without complaint, but — by the GODS, Excellency! — the summits that have loomed above and below me! The thundering avalanches spewing their deadly weight across my path a dozen times a day! And this, along a route imperiled by monstrous bears — beasts that could tear the limbs from a man without apparent effort, jaws that could snap off a head…
Forgive me, Lord. My nerves are not at their best. Truth to tell, we saw no bears. Still, the knowledge of their presence, you may be sure, robbed me of even a single decent hour of sleep.
Now I have reached this cheesemaker's place, and before me are spread the scrolls of the Khalkist dwarves. As soon as my hands thaw out enough to unroll the parchment, I shall continue my perusal. (In the morning, hopefully, the sun will come out and, by its pale heat, I may manage to save a few of my fingers.)
In the meantime, I await this humble dairyman, for he has ventured out into the night. He promises to bring me something of interest. But until his return, the scrolls around me shall keep my attention. I turn to them now.
Excellency, hours of reading allow me to present a summary of the additional scrolls. Further efforts yield a wealth of material, all relevant to the history of the Khalkist dwarves — but alas, little of it relating to the decade immediately preceding the Cataclysm. The mystery left by their disappearance remains.
I have unearthed a few items of note, mostly gleaned from the tales of dwarven lore. I have endeavored, as always, to cull these legends into the most conclusively indicated facts:
Extensive financial records were saved by the bold messenger, who gave his life to carry these scrolls to safety. It is clear that the dwarves were taxed by their thane at an extreme rate during the years 60 PC through 10 PC. Then the tax records end. Was this massive treasure expended? For what? Is it hidden somewhere? Destroyed in the Cataclysm? Or taken by the Khalkist dwarves when they left… wherever they have gone?
One dwarven record postdates 10 PC, and this is unusual for not only the date, but that once again we encounter our friend, Horgan Oxthrall — though only in a peripheral sense. The record itself is the history of a battle that was fought at Stone Pillar Pass, around 7 PC. It is the last known contact, in human records, with the Khalkist dwarves.
It seems clear, as claimed by Istar, that the Kingpriest's invasion of the mountains in 7 PC was considerably more successful than had been the attempt of a century and a decade before. However, the Istarian tales of great victories and righteous massacre of the "dwarven heathens" are, at best, grotesque exaggerations.