Others doing cage duty took up the catcalls. “Lackey.” “Traitor.” They thought he was in close with Stonefist-even liked the forge master. The very thought gagged him. It was true that Stonefist gave him the run of the place, within reason. Ravon provided entertainment for Stonefist-and banter the forge master had come to relish.
The thought festered that he was also a model slave, dependably doing what he was told. Once, he would have called such a man a craven coward. Well. Perhaps one day Stonefist would push him too far, and he’d show himself a man, after all.
Snapping whips in the air, the goblin guards silenced the rat pen outburst, ignoring Ravon as he passed through.
Arriving at the third level, Ravon found Stonefist waiting for him. The gnoll was seated next to a wall of the forge proper. The ten-story heart of the edifice sweated out a putrescent goo in spots. This was the bowel room, slave talk for the place where the forge shat out its weapons. Or would, come the word from on-high. Some high lord or other, but such things mattered little in the end. What mattered to Ravon was a decent death. He’d put more than his share of thought into choosing a good one.
Seeing Ravon approach, Stonefist kicked at the cringing slave filing the gnoll’s toenails. “Enough!” he roared. She fled the room. At Stonefist’s side stood an elf, the ever-watchful, the ever-grim Nastra, a bulging ring of colorful keys at her belt.
Noting Stonefist’s daggerlike toenails, Ravon said appreciatively, “Nice job. Except for the stink. Need to wash those feet sometime, boss.” Over the weeks he and Stonefist had fallen into an exchange of insults. The gnoll was doubtless stirred by verbal abuse from a man he could torture to death at a whim.
Stonefist grinned. “Maybe you lick feet?” He turned his foot to one side, then the other. “Lick clean?”
Ravon gave an elaborate sigh. “A slave’s work is never done.”
“No slaves!” Stonefist blared. “Slaves against the law.”
“Well, if not slaves, how about happy workers?”
Stonefist roared a laugh. “Happy workers!” He socked his fist against the forge wall, leaving a dent. “Happy workers!” Even Nastra smirked. “Big boss will like happy workers,” the gnoll said, his good mood growing.
“You never said who the big boss is, Stonefist.”
“Hah! Big boss is…” His grin fell away. “But Stonefist don’t tell.”
A flicker of interest flamed high in Ravon. It would be good to know one’s real enemy. But it was a soldier’s instinct, and he was no longer a soldier.
“I save you from shovels, Captain,” the gnoll said. “Not die of too much work. Stonefist save Captain for commmmbaaat,” he said, as his eyes grew rapturous.
Nastra made a distorted smile.
“Maybe I won’t do your combat,” Ravon said lightly. He’d been wondering what he would do when Stonefist ordered him to fight. It might not be a bad way to die: Ravon against a few orcs and goblins. But then again, it would mean contributing to Stonefist’s sadistic pleasures.
The forge master frowned. “Then Captain die. I cut your heart out.”
No heart in there, Ravon thought, but have at it, you sack of pus.
The pleasantries concluded, Stonefist heaved himself from his chair. Ravon was a big man, but the forge master stood a foot taller.
“Stonefist show you a thing, yah?” Waving Ravon to follow, he lumbered toward one of the forge portals.
“Foul bitch,” Ravon muttered to Nastra as she walked at his side. Skinnier even than most elves, she still possessed a fluidity that might be called grace, if she hadn’t been a sadistic freak of a gnoll’s minion.
“I pissed on your bed this morning,” Nastra crooned. “Think of me tonight as you dream.” As she walked, her hundred keys clinked like bells.
“I do think of you. You perform all my delights, lady elf. Think of that.”
She hissed in response. Oh, how the vile creature would love to carve him up a little with the handy knife on her belt. It was one of Ravon’s few remaining pleasures to provoke her. Even Stonefist liked to see her taken down a notch.
They came to the egress gate in the forge wall, the place where the weaponry would soon pour forth. To Ravon’s surprise, the process had begun.
A great, burnished sword blade, edges honed and glittering, protruded from a portal. The blade was emerging from the door so slowly that Ravon could barely tell it was moving. A tendril of smoke slipped out as well, as though the forge was passing intestinal gas at the effort. But it was still in testing mode. Ravon tried and failed to imagine the hellish environs of a fully enlivened genesis forge.
Stonefist eyed Ravon. “You fight my goblins with sword, yah? Kill and kill, to see if sharp?”
Stonefist had long promised Ravon a good fight with the forge’s first product. A little celebration, as it were. With this weapon, by the look of the sword’s ensorcelled iron, Ravon might last a few minutes even if out-numbered. But he said, “I’d rather fight you, Stonefist. Someone easy.” He shrugged. “If it were up to me.”
Stonefist’s expression darkened. He bent over Ravon, pointing a meaty finger at his chest, his breath fit to knock Ravon flat. “You kill goblins. You kill what I say you kill.” His voice boomed. “You kill lady elf. You kill halfling Finner. Whoever Stonefist say!”
Lightly bringing the gnoll’s attention back to the sword, Ravon asked, “When will it be ready?”
“Soon,” the gnoll muttered. Then, regaining his mood, he said, “How you like sword?”
“Good so far,” Ravon said.
Stonefist nodded over and over, muttering half to himself, “Took much dragonshards. Two years of dragonshards to make. Big pile. Now out come good-so-far sword! Ha!” Stonefist threw wide his massive arms. “Soon come big important visitor. He watch forge get born!”
That was news. The high lord coming. Ravon flicked a glance at Nastra, whose long and almost handsome face showed no sign of surprise, only a patient, cold longing to watch a captain of Karrnath fight to the death. Well, she hadn’t overseen the killing of any slaves for a couple of days.
Ravon wondered who the big visitor would be. Wondered if he would live to see it. Hoped he wouldn’t. “You’ll need a bath, then, Stonefist,” Ravon said. “With company coming.”
Stonefist grinned, showing an impressive rack of teeth. “By Dolurrh, Stonefist miss you when you dead!” That brought on a fit of barking laughter. Even Nastra joined in, as ugly a mewling sound as Ravon had ever heard.
He heard Stonefist’s guffaws all the way up to the fourth level, the slave barracks. Just before he turned into his quarters-by the grace of the Sovereign Host, a private cell-he heard keys jangling and turned to see Nastra slinking around the corner and down the crabbed and steep north stairs. Had she followed him, spying? He wondered where the creature was going. Nowhere to go, surely. This lovely forge was the end of the line.
Deep in the night, ear-splitting yowls erupted down the fortress corridor. Instantly awake, Ravon sprang from his pallet. From cell block eleven, he heard the rasping shouts of goblins and slaves chanting “Finner, Finner!”
Cursing, Ravon stalked down to the slave barracks in time to see a dozen goblins surrounding a bloodied Finner. One of them yanked a fistful of hair from Finner’s head and, grinning, raised it aloft like a captured flag. The slaves stomped and hollered as Finner fell to his knees in a coughing fit.
In the tumult, no one saw Ravon stride in until he grabbed a goblin by his leather belt, holding him a foot off the floor, kicking and growling. He swung the creature around, slamming him into another goblin and clearing a wide swath.
His fit ended, Finner stared at the palm of his hand and a few bloody teeth he’d coughed up. By the Devourer, here was a fine mess. Ravon had promised Finner’s lieutenant that he’d keep an eye on the young halfling. Finner had served tirelessly as the officer’s steward despite a set of bad lungs that would have kept lesser men from service. Ravon owed it to the lieutenant, he supposed. The man had died in his arms on the battlefield.