Lord of the Rose (29 page)

“We come in peace,” Dram said, holding both hands, empty, up before him. “No need for any shooting … Hiya Swig,” he added, his tone of attempted familiarity somewhat inhibited by his clenched teeth and the fixed grimace of his expression.

“Dram Feldspar,” said the dwarf called Swig, the one with his hands planted on his hips. He was grinning now, with an expression that mingled amusement with cruelty. “I never thought you’d have the guts to show yourself in these hills again. I wonder—what’s to keep me from putting an arrow through your heart, right now?”

“Now, that would be a bit of an overreaction, Swig,” Dram argued. “At least let us tell you why we’ve come.”

“And delay the pleasure of watching your blood running onto the ground?”

“That would end up costing you a lot of money,” Jaymes interjected, stepping forward.

Swig stared appraisingly at the warrior, who returned his wary look with a cool, neutral expression. The two gnomes looked around nervously, sidled close together, and held each others’ hand. After giving a good, long impression of a person wrestling with a really difficult decision, Swig finally nodded and made a gesture. The rest of the dwarves in his party raised their weapons so that the arrows were no longer sighted directly on the travelers.

“Money, eh? Ah, you speak to my heart, stranger,” the dwarf said to Jaymes. “Very well—you four will come with me. We’ll share a mug around my hearth. You’ll have ten, maybe fifteen minutes to tell me why I shouldn’t have you killed and your bodies dumped in the garden as fertilizer for next year’s hops.”

Swig Frostmead was a hill dwarf chieftain, every bit as proud and vain as his cousins, the mountain dwarves. Here, north of the Newsea, the traditional rivalry of the two dwarven tribes
was more removed than in Thorbardin. There, at the time of the Cataclysm, the mountain dwarves had sealed the gates of their underground fortress against their hill-dwelling kin. That perceived betrayal was a three-century-old wound that left a still-bleeding scar.

But dwarves are ever stubborn, and there was clearly no affection wasted between the hill dwarves of the Vingaard Range and the mountain dwarves of Garnet, which included Dram—one of the Feldspar clan from Kaolyn. Jaymes took note of the hostile looks exchanged between Swig and Dram as the four travelers were escorted to Swig’s hall, a stone-walled house in the center of a village high in the valley of the Vingaard Mountains.

This was clearly a prosperous community. The buildings were mostly of stone, though they often had ornamental woodwork on the eaves, around the doors and windows. The narrow streets were clean, paved with cobblestones, and the few oxen they noticed in a streamside pasture were fat and sleek, clearly well fed and cared for. The mountainsides beyond the village were dotted with the dark mouths of mines, and several tall chimneys rose from an area of foundries and smelters just beyond the houses. Still, the air was clean, as the mountain wind carried the smoke up and over the adjacent ridge.

Within the hill dwarf’s hall, they seated themselves on benches before a broad hearth, Jaymes made a point of sitting between Dram and Swig. The chieftain clapped his hands, and several young maids—rosy cheeked, smiling, and pleasantly plump—emerged from the kitchen, holding large mugs in each hand.

“Welcome to Meadstone. So, you tell me you have a way for me to make some money,” Swig declared, after the cold mugs of bitter ale had been served to himself, his score of armed guards, and even—surprisingly enough—the four prisoners. “What’s to stop me from just stealing it off your bleeding corpses?”

“Well, we don’t have any money,” Jaymes replied. “Not now, not yet. Of course, you could have the satisfaction of killing us today, but nothing at all after that.”

“And if you live, does all this money appear like magic?”

“We came here to make a proposition. Dram here remembers you as a shrewd businessman and an intrepid miner. If we live, I offer to buy something from you—something that you can mine in great quantity, that you currently have very little use for.”

Swig leaned past Jaymes to glare at Dram. “You brought this fool here? After what you did to my daughter?” he demanded.

“Now, er, Swig,” Dram said, holding up his hands again. “You got the wrong impression. I didn’t actually
do
anything!”

“Liar!” roared the hill dwarf, rising to his feet so quickly the thick ale in his mug almost slopped over the sides. He paused and took a long drink, so that he could gesture with no danger of wastage. “I caught you sneaking out of here with your pants in your hand! Are you claiming she ain’t pretty enough for you?”

“No! She’s lovely—a real treasure! A mountain flower,” Dram protested. “Er, a hillside flower, I mean. But my intentions were honorable. I had split a seam, and she was mending it for me! I know how it looked. Mighty suspicious. But that’s all that happened!”

“Bah—why’d you run away, then?”

“You wouldn’t let me explain it at the time! If you recall, I took an arrow in my hindparts as it was! You were in no mood to listen to reason!”

Swig snorted. Still, he blinked, as if considering Dram’s words. “That’s the same story she gave,” he grunted. “Clever, you mountain dwarf scum—even working out your lies together in advance!”

“I tell you, it’s no lie!” Dram’s face grew red, and his beard was twitching. Jaymes rested a hand on his companion’s shoulder, exerting gentle pressure, until his dwarf companion exhaled very slowly.

Swig took another long pull, draining his mug, and sat down. Jaymes took the opportunity to steer the conversation away from reminiscence.

“I understand that you mine plenty of iron from these hills—a good, pure strain of ore.”

“Aye. You understand right. So what?”

“And you do the smelting and casting, right here?”

“That we do. No sense letting a good raw material get gunked up by a bunch of amateurs.”

“Commendable. Vingaard black iron is famed throughout the lands of Solamnia and beyond.”

The dwarf preened a bit, warmed by the praise. “We sell it to the Solamnics at a good price. They take all we can dig and pay premium. So if that’s what you’re after, you might as well stop talking right now. We already got our customers.”

Jaymes shook his head. “No. I have no need of iron and couldn’t match prices paid by the dukes even if I did. But Dram tells me that there is another material, a waste rock of dusty yellow, that you have to cart out of the way in order to get at the iron. Is that true?”

“Sulfir?” Swig shook his head in disgust. “Oh, we haul a bit of that stinking junk off to the cities—some of the metalsmiths use it in their smelting. Most of it we pile up just to get it out of the way.” Suddenly the chieftain narrowed his eyes. “You don’t mean to suggest that you’d be wanting some of that useless chalk?”

“It might have a use for me, yes,” Jaymes said. “I would be willing to negotiate a fee. To start, I want to arrange for the purchase of five tons.”

“Five tons, eh?” Swig looked bored. “Hmm. That’s a lot, that would add up. That might be possible. When do you want it?”

“I will need it in three months’ time. Delivered to a place I will specify one month before delivery—some place in Solamnia.”

“Delivery? Well, of course, delivery is one of our specialties, but that will cost extra.”

“Of course,” Jaymes agreed. “I have no desire to cheat you. If this works, it might be the start of a whole new business for you—something you’ll be able to sell as fast as you can dig it out of the ground.”

“What do you intend to pay for this …” Swig seemed to realize that “junk” was the wrong word to use in describing his
newfound and apparently valuable commodity. “…   this sulfir ore?”

“What do the dukes pay for iron?” Jaymes asked.

Swig’s eyes narrowed, and he made a great show of scratching his bearded chin. “Well, that depends, depends. The finest grades fetch a thousand steel per ton, paid in gems, usually. Rough ore makes me in the neighborhood of four hundred.”

“I’ll match the price of low grade iron,” Jaymes offered. “Say four hundred steel per ton of sulfir. But I only want the pure yellow rock—your miners will have to chop out the waste.”

Now the hill dwarf looked indignant. “Of course they’ll get rid of the waste! How long do you think I’d stay in business if I was selling impure product?”

“Not long—not with me, in any event. I just want to make sure we understand each other.”

“I understand,” Swig said. He mused for a moment then looked up at Dram, his face locked in a scowl that slowly cracked into something resembling a smile. “She was really just mending your trousers?” he asked.

“I tore ’em on a snag coming up from the south,” the mountain dwarf said with a glower. “And your daughter, bless her kindness—and Reorx knows where she gets it from!—was good enough to see that I could pass on from here without the chill winds of winter blowing up my … well, you get the picture.”

Swig tossed back his head and laughed. The two gnomes joined in, as did the other hill dwarves standing around. Even Jaymes cracked a smile, the warrior winking at the sulking Dram.

“Enough with business!” roared the Vingaard chieftain. “Brewer—bring us a fresh keg. We’ll seal this suitable arrangement over a fine ale—as sacred a bond as a pledge to any god!”

The resulting feast was one of those parties that could be called the stuff of legend. Pilsy Frostmead, lovely and cherished daughter of the chieftain, emerged with several other young lasses, carrying pitchers of Special Reserve Ale, and they proceeded to see that all became better acquainted. Pilsy was
a beauty by the standards of the race, with rosy cheeks and a plentitude of toothsome curves.

Dram Feldspar and Swig Frostmead, of course, proceeded to get roaring drunk. The inevitable fistfight erupted shortly after midnight and lasted for slightly less than an hour. In the end they clinched as wrestlers and, after staggering around the room with increasing unsteadiness, collapsed, utterly exhausted.

They fell asleep in each other’s arms, lying in the cold ashes outside the hearth, brothers in dwarfdom …

And mortal proof of Reorx’s blessing.

“You the fellow that drove the Duke of Thelgaard into the Vingaard River?”

The speaker was a human knight dressed in dark armor. He wore no emblem on his breast and carried no weapon—otherwise the guards would not have allowed him to approach Ankhar. The dark-armored knight had a companion, a man dressed in supple black leather, including gloves and a riding cape as long as a robe. The camp guards, naturally, had searched beneath that voluminous garment and pronounced the man unarmed.

These two were courageous, for they did not flinch as the half giant rose to his full height and looked down at the visitors.

“My gobs and hobs did it,” Ankhar replied flatly. “Attack plan all mine.”

“Nice piece of work. That bastard drove me right out of my own city. I’d like to see him spitted on a sword, myself.”

“Your city? Thelgaard?”

“Well, it was for a time, a while back,” the man said. “I got no place now.”

“Well, duke drowned. Or swam away.” Ankhar had been a trifle disappointed that his warriors had not been able to bring him the head of the enemy commander. “His army pretty much broken up. Nine out of ten men fell on field.”

The half giant was more than pleased with the result of his first battle against a large force of trained knights, but it had
not sated him. He hungered for more victories. That aim would not be served by fighting this man or his force of some two thousand men—including hundreds of knights in dark armor. Ankhar’s scouts had reported the humans encamped just over the horizon.

The half-giant gazed at the human, sizing him up. He was handsome, by the standards of humankind, with a dueling scar on his cheek.

“You warriors? Captains of men?” Ankhar said.

The armored knight replied. “I am the leader of this brigade. My companion here is a knight of a different kind—he commands legions of magic.”

The leather-clad fighter clicked his heels and bowed his head. “Sir Hoarst, Knight of the Thorn, at your service, my lord.”

Ankhar chuckled, and looked back at the captain. “Why you come here, all alone and pitiful? Because I broke Thelgaard’s army? I not give you his city back.”