Plans tumbled over and over in his mind. Training, the best routes south, provisioning, supplies...
These were new and different problems for the former mercenary soldier. Even in the War of the Lance, he had generally followed Tanis’s lead. His brother knew nothing of these matters; Raistlin had informed Caramon coldly that he was on his own in this. Caramon found this challenging and—oddly—refreshing. These were flesh-and-blood problems, driving the dark and shadowy problems with his brother from his mind.
Thinking of his twin, Caramon glanced over to where Raistlin lay huddled near a fire that blazed in a huge stone fireplace. Despite the heat, he was wrapped in his cloak and as many blankets as Crysania had been able to find. Caramon could hear his brothers breath rattle in his lungs, occasionally he coughed in his sleep.
Crysania slept on the other side of the fire. Although exhausted, her sleep was troubled and broken. More than once she cried out and sat up suddenly, pale and trembling. Caramon sighed.
He would have liked to comfort her—to take her in his arms and soothe her to sleep. For the first time, in fact, he realized how much he would like to do this. Perhaps it had been telling the men she was his. Perhaps it was seeing the half-ogre’s hands on her, feeling the same sense of outrage he had seen reflected on his brother’s face.
Whatever the reason, Caramon caught himself watching her that night in a much different way than he had watched her before, thinking thoughts that, even now, made his skin burn and his pulse quicken.
Closing his eyes, he willed images of Tika, his wife, to come to his mind. But he had banished these memories for so long that they were unsatisfying. Tika was a hazy, misty picture and she was far away. Crysania was flesh and blood and she was here! He was very much aware of her soft, even breathing...
Damn! Women! Irritably, Caramon flopped over on his stomach, determined to sweep all thoughts of females beneath the rug of his other problems. It worked. Weariness finally stole over him.
As he drifted into sleep, one thing remained to trouble him, hovering in the back of his mind. It was not logistics, or red-haired warrior women, or even lovely, white-robed clerics.
It was nothing more than a look—the strange look he had seen Raistlin give him when Caramon had said the name “Fistandantilus.”
It had not been a look of anger or irritation, as Caramon might have expected. The last thing Caramon saw before sleep erased the memory was Raistlin’s look of stark, abject terror.
Book 2
The Army of Fistandantilus
As the band of men under Caramon’s command traveled south toward the great dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin, their fame grew—and so did their numbers. The fabled “wealth beneath the mountain” had long been legend among the wretched, half-starved people of Solamnia. That summer, they had seen most of their crops wither and die in the fields. Dread diseases stalked the land,—more feared and deadly than even the savage bands of goblins and ogres who had been driven from their ancient lands by hunger.
Though it was autumn still, the chill of coming winter was in the night air. Faced with nothing but the bleak prospect of watching their children perish through starvation or cold or the illnesses that the clerics of these new gods could not cure, the men and women of Solamnia believed they had nothing to lose. Abandoning their homes, they packed up their families and their meagre possessions to join the army and travel south.
From having to worry about feeding thirty men, Caramon suddenly found himself responsible for several hundred, plus women and children as well. And more came to the camp daily. Some were knights, trained with sword and spear; their nobility apparent even through their rags. Others were farmers, who held the swords Caramon put in their hands as they might have held their hoes. But there was a kind of grim nobility about them, too. After years of helplessly facing Famine and Want, it was an exhilarating thought to be preparing to face an enemy that could be killed and conquered.
Without quite realizing how it happened, Caramon found himself general of what was now being called the “Army of Fistandantilus.”
At first, he had all he could manage to do in acquiring food for the vast numbers of men and their families. But memories of the lean days of mercenary life returned to him. Discovering those who were skilled hunters, he sent them ranging far afield in search of game. The women smoked the meat or dried it, so that what was not immediately used could be stored.
Many of those who came brought what grain and fruit they had managed to harvest. This Caramon pooled, ordering the grain pounded into flour or maize, baking it into the rock-hard but life-sustaining trail bread a traveling army could live on for months. Even the children had their tasks—snaring or shooting small game, fishing, hauling water, chopping wood.
Then he had to undertake the training of his raw recruits drilling them in the use of spear and bow, of sword and shield.
Finally, he had to find those spears and bows, swords and shields.
And, as the army moved relentlessly south, word of their coming spread...
1
Pax Tharkas—a monument to peace. Now it had become a symbol of war.
The history of the great stone fortress of Pax Tharkas has its roots in an unlikely legend—the story of a lost race of dwarves known as the Kal-thax.
As humans cherish steel—the forging of bright weapons, the glitter of bright coin; as elves cherish their woodlands—the bringing forth and nurturing of life; so the dwarves cherish stone—the shaping of the bones of the world.
Before the Age of Dreams was the Age of Twilight when the history of the world is shrouded in the mists of its dawning. There dwelt in the great halls of Thorbardin a race of dwarves whose stonework was so perfect and so remarkable that the god Reorx, Forger of the World, looked upon it and marveled. Knowing in his wisdom that once such perfection had been attained by mortals there was nothing left in life to strive for, Reorx took up the entire Kal-thax race and brought them to live with him near heaven’s forge.
Few examples remain of the ancient craftwork of the Kal-thax. These are kept within the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin and are valued above all other things. After the time of the Kal-thax, it was the lifelong ambition of each dwarf to gain such perfection in his stonework that he, too, might be taken up to live with Reorx.
As time went by, however, this worthy goal became perverted and twisted into an obsession.
Thinking and dreaming of nothing but stone, the lives of the dwarves became as inflexible and unchanging as the medium of their craft. They burrowed deep into their ancient halls beneath the mountain, shunning the outside world. And the outside world shunned them.
Time passed and brought the tragic wars between elves and men. This ended with the signing of the Swordsheath Scroll and the voluntary exile of Kith-Kanan and his followers from the ancient elven homeland of Silvanesti. By the terms of the Swordsheath Scroll, the Qualinesti elves (meaning “freed nation”) were given the lands west of Thorbardin for the establishment of their new homeland.
This was agreeable to both humans and elves. Unfortunately, no one bothered to consult the dwarves. Seeing this influx of elves as a threat to their way of life beneath the mountain, the dwarves attacked. Kith-Kanan found, to his sorrow, that he had walked away from one war only to find himself embroiled in another.
After many long years, the wise elven king managed to convince the stubborn dwarves that the elves had no interest in their stone. They wanted only the living beauty of their wilderness.