Kharas gave his lord a pleading look, begging him to consider—or at least negotiate. But Duncan was beyond reasoning, it seemed.
“Get out!” he snarled. “Return to your black-robed wizard! Return to your human friends! Let us see if your wizard is powerful enough to blow down the walls of this fortress, or uproot the stones of our mountain. Let us see how long your human friends remain friends when the winter winds swirl about the campfires and their blood drips on the snow!”
Reghar gave Duncan a final look, filled with such enmity and hatred it might well have been a blow. Then, turning on his heel, he motioned to his followers. They stalked out of the Hall of Thanes and out of Pax Tharkas.
Word spread quickly. By the time the hill dwarves were ready to leave, the battlements were lined with mountain dwarves, shouting and hooting derisively. Reghar and his party rode off, their faces stern and grim, never once looking back.
Kharas, meanwhile, stood in the Hall of Thanes, alone with his king (and the forgotten Highgug).
The six witnesses had all returned to their clans, spreading the news. Kegs of ale and the potent drink known as dwarf spirits were broached that night in celebration. Already, the sounds of singing and raucous laughter could be heard echoing through the great stone monument to peace.
“What would it have hurt to negotiate, Thane?” Kharas asked, his voice heavy with sorrow.
Duncan, his sudden anger apparently vanished, looked at the taller dwarf and shook his head, his graying beard brushing against his robes of state. He was well within his rights to refuse to answer such an impertinent question. Indeed, no one but Kharas would have had the courage to question Duncan’s decision at all.
“Kharas,” Duncan said, putting his hand on his friend’s arm affectionately, “tell me—is there treasure beneath the mountain? Have we robbed our kinsmen? Do we raid their lands, or the lands of the humans, for that matter? Are their accusations just?”
“No,” Kharas answered, his eyes meeting those of his sovereign steadily.
Duncan sighed. “You have seen the harvest. You know that what little money remains in the treasury we will spend to lay in what we can for this winter.”
“Tell them this!” Kharas said earnestly. “Tell them the truth! They are not monsters! They are our kinsmen, they will understand—”
Duncan smiled sadly, wearily. “No, they are not monsters. But, what is worse, they have become like children.” He shrugged. “Oh, we could tell them the truth—show them even. But they would not believe us. They would not believe their own eyes. Why? Because they want to believe otherwise!”
Kharas frowned, but Duncan continued patiently. “They want to believe, my friend. More than that, they have to believe. It is their only hope for survival. They have nothing, nothing except that hope. And so they are willing to fight for it. I understand them.” The old king’s eyes dimmed for a moment, and Kharas—staring at him in amazement—realized then that his anger had been all feigned, all show.
“Now they can return to their wives and their hungry children and they can say, ‘We will fight the usurpers! When we win, you will have full bellies again.’ And that will help them forget their hunger, for awhile.”
Kharas’s face twisted in anguish. “But to go this far! Surely, we can share what little—”
“My friend,” Duncan said softly, “by Reorx’s Hammer, I swear this—if I agree to their terms, we would all perish. Our race would cease to exist.”
Kharas stared at him. “As bad as that?” he asked.
Duncan nodded. “Aye, as bad as that. Few only know this the leaders of the clans, and now you. And I swear you to secrecy. The harvest was disastrous. Our coffers are nearly empty, and now we must hoard what we can to pay for this war. Even for our own people, we will be forced to ration food this winter. With what we have, we calculate that we can make it—barely. Add hundreds of more mouths—” He shook his head.
Kharas stood pondering, then he lifted his head, his dark eyes flashing. “If that is true, then so be it!” he said sternly. “Better we all starve to death, than die fighting each other!”
“Noble words, my friend,” Duncan answered. The beating of drums thrummed through the room and deep voices raised in stirring war chants, older than the rocks of Pax Tharkas, older—perhaps—than the bones of the world itself. “You can’t eat noble words, though, Kharas. You can’t drink them or wrap them around your feet or burn them in your firepit or give them to children crying in hunger.”
“What about the children who will cry when their father leaves, never to return?” Kharas asked sternly.
Duncan raised an eyebrow. “They will cry for a month,” he said simply, “then they will eat his share of the food. And wouldn’t he want it that way?”
With that, he turned and left the Hall of Thanes, heading for the battlements once more.
As Duncan counseled Kharas in the Hall of Thanes, Reghar Fireforge and his party were guiding their short-statured, shaggy hill ponies out of the fortress of Pax Tharkas, the hoots and laughter of their kinsmen ringing in their ears.
Reghar did not speak a word for long hours, until they were well out of sight of the huge double towers of the fortress. Then, when they came to a crossing in the road, the old dwarf reined in his horse.
Turning to the youngest member of the party, he said in a grim, emotionless voice, “Continue north, Darren Ironfist.” The old dwarf drew forth a battered, leather pouch. Reaching inside, he pulled out his last gold piece. For a long moment he stood staring at it, then he pressed it into the hands of the dwarf. “Here. Buy passage across the New Sea. Find this Fistandantilus and tell him... tell him—”
Reghar paused, realizing the enormity of his action. But, he had no choice. This had been decided before he left. Scowling, he snarled, “Tell him that, when he gets here, he’ll have an army waiting to fight for him.”
2
The night was cold and dark over the lands of Solamnia. The stars above gleamed with a sparkling, brittle light. The constellations of the Platinum Dragon, Paladine, and Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, circled each other endlessly around Gilean’s Scales of Balance. It would be two hundred years or more before these same constellations vanished from the skies, as the gods and men waged war over Krynn.
For now, each was content with watching the other.
If either god had happened to glance down, he or she would, perhaps, have been amused to see what appeared to be mankind’s feeble attempts to imitate their celestial glory. On the plains of Solamnia, outside the mountain fortress city of Garnet, campfires dotted the flat grasslands, lighting the night below as the stars lit the night above.
The Army of Fistandantilus.
The flames of the campfires were reflected in shield and breastplate, danced off sword blades and flashed on spear tip. The fires shone on faces bright with hope and new-found pride, they burned in the dark eyes of the camp followers and leaped up to light the merry play of the children.
Around the campfires stood or sat groups of men, talking and laughing, eating and drinking, working over their equipment. The night air was filled with jests and oaths and tall tales. Here and there were groans of pain, as men rubbed shoulders and arms that ached from unaccustomed exercise. Hands calloused from swinging hoes were blistered from wielding spears. But these were accepted with good-natured shrugs. They could watch their children play around the campfires and know that they had eaten, if not well, at least adequately that night. They could face their wives with pride. For the first time in years, these men had a goal, a purpose in their lives.
There were some who knew this goal might well be death, but those who knew this recognized and understood it and made the choice to remain anyway.
“After all,” said Garic to himself as his replacement came to relieve him of his guard duty, “death comes to all. Better a man meet it in the blazing sunlight, his sword flashing in his hand, than to have it come creeping up on him in the night unawares, or clutch at him with foul, diseased hands.”