A fight, then. That was fine with Ebenezer. He pulled from his belt the hammer he’d taken from Frodwinner’s cold, clenched fist.
“You’re wrong. I didn’t attack you,” the woman stated as she began to circle around him.
He turned with her, rubbing his aching belly. “Yeah? What would you call it?”
“Falling.”
Despite his anger, Ebenezer had to admit that there was something to that. When humans wanted to bombard someone, they didn’t generally use their own bodies as missiles. Ebenezer granted that this human might not have deliberately halted his process up to the fortress, but he still had ample justification for wrath. His clanmates had been slain or captured. Ebenezer would kill any Zhent he saw in Stoneshaft tunnels, starting with this one.
“Falling, eh?” Ebenezer echoed bitterly. “Get ready to fall a mite further. I’m-a gonna send you and all your kind straight to the Abyss.”
He circled her, measuring her height and balance and stance. Humans, in his experience, were fairly predictable. When they saw a hammer or axe coming at them,! most of them instinctively ducked. But it seemed that their instincts didn’t take into reckoning the measure of a dwarf’s height and reach. Ebenezer noticed that oftentimes all they managed to do was lean into the coming blow. Aim at the shoulder, and he’d get the head. A good deal, by his measure.
He lashed out, swinging the hammer in a high, side-sweeping blow.
But this human didn’t respond as Ebenezer had anticipated. She dropped flat to the cave floor, rolled in the opposite direction of his hammer swing, and came up behind him. Her knife slashed across the seat of his leather breeches.
He whirled at her, one hand clutching at the sudden, stinging breeze. “You’ve fought dwarves before,” he observed coldly. That confirmed his suspicions. Not many humans took on a dwarf, not unless they had a powerful personal grudge or a bunch of Mends close at hand. Judging by the devastation of the clanhold, she had a big bunch of Mends.
The woman danced back a few paces. Her big-eyed gaze darted around the cavern as if searching for a means of escape. “I’ve known some dwarves, that’s all.” She lifted one eyebrow and gave him a small, knowing smile. “One of them, I knew very well.”
Her meaning was unmistakable, but Ebenezer wasn’t buying that. Humans and dwarves did very littie cavorting, and no serious courting to speak of. “Bah!” he scoffed. “What would a dwarf want with the likes of you?”
She proceeded to tell him, in detail so vivid that he was certain his cheeks were as red as his beard. Ebenezer liked a good tall tale as much as the next dwarf; but he was in no mood to swap boasts with a murderous Zhent wench. He cut her off with a quick advance, followed by a series of hammer-swings that kept her dodging and retreating for several long moments.
“You’re quick,” he gave her, when they both paused for breath. “But trying to distract me just ain’t going to work!”
“No?” The woman smirked and lunged forward with a knife feint.
Ebenezer leaned back away from the blade. She sprang at him before he could right himself He did his best to bring the hammer up and around, but she was already in too close.
Her weight slammed into him—a pretty good hit for such a scrawny thing, but Ebenezer was used to harder hits, and he didn’t expect to go down. He wouldn’t have, except for the large stone right behind him. Seems that he had been a mite distracted, after all. Never saw the rock. It hit the back of his knees, which buckled and folded on him. Ebenezer toppled back, much to his mortification.
The woman went down with him, writhing and scratching and spitting mad, impossible to hit in so close and just generally as hard to hold as a trout. Little and puny she might be, but she fought with a fury that would have had Tarlamera’s cats sitting up and taking notice.
Embarrassed now as well as angry Ebenezer wanted nothing more than to be finished with this. He palmed the stone floor in search of his hammer. Nothing. He cast a look to one side—and hollered when the damn female sank her teeth into his exposed ear. The weapon lay well out of reach. Ebenezer swore and shoved the two-legged she-cat away. He scrambled to his feet and then dived for the hammer.
The woman spat blood and leaped after him. Her arms wrapped around his ankles. Down he went, flopping onto his already abused belly. His chin hit the stone with a mind-numbing crack. Worse, his outstretched fingers fell short of the weapon’s handle.
She scrambled over his back and grabbed the hammer, then flung it away as far as she could. Ebenezer heard the crack of mithral on stone, then the slithering, metallic slide down the steep bank into the river.
That was one blow too many for him. Ebenezer bucked once, easily throwing her off. He staggered to his feet and stabbed one stubby finger at her in furious accusation.
“Now you’re starting to get me riled,” he bellowed, with typical dwarven understatement.
The human was already on her feet, circling again, those big eyes all wild looking and wisps of her brown hair sticking up every which way. It occurred to Ebenezer, briefly, that she looked almost as angry and crazed and grief-ravaged as he felt.
“Getting riled, are you?” she gritted out. “Then I suppose it won’t make much difference if I do this—”
She leaped at him, cat-quick, and fisted both her hands in his long red beard. Ebenezer yowled in pain and fury and outraged dwarven dignity.
But the wench wasn’t done with him yet. She leaped up, yanking back hard on his beard as she tucked up her knees and then kicked out, planting her booted feet squarely into his belly. She went down onto her back, dragging Ebenezer down after her. His hands braced out to catch himself when he fell, partly by instinct and partly because he didn’t much like the idea of wiping squashed human off his tunic.
Things didn’t quite work out that way. The woman hit the floor first and kicked her feet up and out. Ebenezer felt the cavern shift weirdly, and his boots described a fast arc over his head. Over he went, flipping like an oat cake on a griddle. He soared over the woman and landed hard on his backside.
Quick hands swept his beard up past his face, crossed, then pulled back down. Before his head crashed to the stone, Ebenezer felt a quick, strangling tug. Disbelief coursed through him, along with a fresh wave of anger. The woman had the stones to try to strangle him with his own beard!
Ebenezer struggled to his feet, dragging the stubborn woman up with him. He twisted this way and that, but she clung to him like a burr on a mule and only tightened her grip. His lungs began to burn, and his vision turned dark around the edges. The pounding of his own heart grew until the roaring in his ears thundered and rolled like the dingblasted sea.
This was not the sort of death that would earn him a place in the hall of heroes. Determined not be brought down in this ignominious fashion, Ebenezer staggered over to the cavern wall. If he could get there before he fell, if he could slam her up against the stone a few times, maybe he could break her grip.
He was almost there when her stranglehold suddenly loosened and her weight slid down his back. Ebenezer dragged in a ragged breath and dug his fingers beneath the suddenly slack strands of his beard. He started to pull, but stopped suddenly when he saw what she had seen.
“Stones,” he muttered in a voice raw from near strangulation.
* * * * *
The conquest of Thornhold was complete. Dag Zoreth walked through the fortress reviewing the work his men had made of the job.
They had certainly been thorough. Only a few of the servants remained alive. The man who kept and butchered the pigs and chickens, for instance, the brewer, a few of the kitchen staff. Most of the fortress’s inhabitants had been too infected by the paladins whom they had served and were even now turning to ash on the massive bier.