Some of the osquips recovered quickly enough from the shock, and a score of them abandoned the cat to follow their original quarry. Ebenezer did not stay to help the cat chase down stragglers; she would not have thanked him if he had. Keeping the tunnel free of vermin was her job, and she was every bit as territorial as a dwarf when it came to matters of land held and defended.
As he ran, the dwarf tugged a kerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. He suspected he looked a sight, what with all the running. His reddish brown hair was exceedingly curly at the best of times. At the moment, he was as lathered as a racehorse, and at such times his hair sprung up into wild clusters of small, tight ringlets. Ebenezer’s beard was another matter. Long and full and defiantly red, it had the decency to just hang there. A beard any dwarf would be proud of; it was. For all his odd ways—and according to his clan, his ways were plenty odd—he was a dwarf who appreciated tradition. So what if he hated mining, preferring the sway of a horse to the measured rhythm of the pickax? Whose affair was it if he kept his upper lip clean-shaven, rather than sporting the usual thick mustache? What stone was it engraved on, anyway, that a dwarf had to wear a mustache? All the damn thing did was guarantee that he would keep smelling his dinner, hours after the fact. Thank you, but no.
Ebenezer grimaced with amusement when he realized that he was rehearsing for the arguments to come. Well, no matter. He’d been gone a long time, and with each moon phase that had passed, the measure of his clan’s more annoying tendencies shrank just a bit more. Fact was, he was looking forward to the brand of contentious peace that meant hearth and home.
He wove his way through a henge of statues, a circle of ten-foot stone dwarves that honored heroes of the past, and bolted down the final tunnel toward the clanhold’s cavern. He burst out into the open, to be confronted with the slack-jawed astonishment of his kin.
His Da, a buriy, gray-bearded dwarf with a belly the size of a boulder and a heart to match, was the first to recover. “Osquips!” he howled, his eyes gleaming wildly as he took his hammer from his belt. “Didn’t I tell you, Palmara, the boy’d be back in time, and bringing gifts?”
Ebenezer’s mother sniffed and reached for her pick. She buried it deep in the skull of an onrushing rodent and kicked the twitching thing aside. Long years together had blurred the differences between the dwarf pair; except for the feminine cut of her dress tunic, Palmara Stoneshaft was nearly indistinguishable from her mate. She gestured with her bloody pike. “There’s two more over there. You, Gelanna! Back off them critters. I saw ‘em first!”
For several moments the ceremony was forgotten as the dwarves busily chased down the invading osquips. Ebenezer edged his way toward the center of the cavern. The stone lectern that served as podium for their contentious clan meetings had been turned into an altar, now abandoned as the priestess of Clangeddin joined gleefully into the sport. Tarlamera and her soon-to-be-husband, a likely little sprout of a dwarf who was not more than fifty and not much more than two hundred pounds, stood with arms folded and eyes filled with mingled amusement and frustration. Osquipbashing was fun to watch, but no dwarf willingly stood still when there was mayhem to be had. But Tarlamera wore the ceremonial apron, and she would get stomped by every other maiden in the clanhold if she messed it up with rodent guts. Regrettable, but that was tradition for you.
“You’re a lucky dwarf; Frodwinner. You got yourself the prettiest dwarf maid in a hundred caverns,” Ebenezer said and meant it. His sister was a picture, with her normally wild red beard neatly plaited and her hair tamed into bright ringlets. On her, those damned ringlets looked good.
The dwarf maid snorted, but her eyes were fond. “About time you showed. Staying long?”
It was a familiar question, and edged with a sarcasm that predicted Ebenezer’s answer. “Long as I can stand to,” he admitted. He softened the remark with a shrug. “I’m not one to stay put. You know that.”
Tarlamera shook her head in puzzlement and swept her hand toward the elanhold’s vast courtyard. “In all the wandering you’ve done, have you ever seen a place to equal this one?”
Ebenezer shook his head, honestly enough. The Stone-shaft Clanhold was impressive, yet cozy. Ceremonies, celebrations, and mock battles took place in the great hall, a fine cavern with a smooth, level floor and richly carved walls. Over the centuries, Stoneshaft artisans had carved many a frieze depicting dwarf victories and frolics. Several small tunnels led out of the ball, and stairs carved into the walls wound up to higher levels. Some of these openings led to private family homes, others to the forges and gemworking shops that kept the clan happily employed. Miners they were, of course, and smiths, but clan Stoneshaft was also renowned for the fine, bold wearable art they made of gems and metals. A few dwarves served as merchants, trading the finished goods for materials not easily found. Ebenezer worried about this. His kin were too isolated, too clannish and race-proud to understand that some humans posed more of a risk than others.
“Dying down, it looks like,” offered Frodwinner, nodding toward the other dwarves. The osquip-bashing frenzy was over, but for a few final thumps. Already most of the creatures had been dragged away. Most likely, Ebenezer mused, to be thrown into the river. The swift-moving current would bear them away, and whatever the river denizens didn’t eat would wash ashore in the hydra cove. A lot of mouths to feed there, Ebenezer concluded.
A few minutes more and the cavern was clear. Some of the dwarves cranked up buckets of water from the wells and sluiced the stone floor, sending the last traces of the battle down several small openings in the floor that were covered with finely crafted iron grates.
“Can we get on with this?” demanded Palmara Stone-shaft, fists planted on her ample hips. “Got me a daughter to wed, a son to welcome back. And lookit!” she added, pointing toward the festive board that stood waiting over to one side of the cavern. “The stew’s getting cold, and the ale warm!”
These practical considerations marshaled the wedding guests and sent the priestess scurrying back to the altar. Ebenezer fell back and swept his gray-bearded mother into a fierce hug that had her bellowing in happy protest.
The ceremony was brief, solemn. The celebration that followed was anything but. All of Clan Stoneshaft gathered at tables, telling tall tales and exchanging extravagant insults until the last stew pot was wiped clean and more than half the kegs of wedding ale drained dry. At a sign from Palmara—who as mother of the bride was master of the festivities—a score of musicians leaped onto the tables and set up a merry din with their horns and pipes and drums. The dwarves fell to dancing with a zest and vigor that rivaled their battlefield exploits.
A rare sense of contentment swept Ebenezer as he watched his kin leap and whirl and thunder their way through the intricate patterns of a circle dance. He was glad to be home. The knowledge that he’d be nearly as glad to leave in a tenday or so did nothing to diminish the moment’s pleasure.
But even now his feet got to twitching. He reached for his bag and removed from it pipe and weed before he remembered that Palmara Stoneshaft would have nothing of that in her cavern. Ebenezer had picked up the habit in his travels, and he liked a good pipe now and again. But the Stone-shaft dwarves frowned upon such vices and had made loud complaints about the smoke last time he’d visited. Ebenezer had pointed out—reasonably enough, it seemed to him— that in a clanhold warmed and scented with the smoke of forges and hearth fires, a wisp or two more made no never mind at all. But they couldn’t see it. With a resigned sigh, Ebenezer pocketed his pipe and headed for the nearest river tunnel.