The Hammer of Fire (13 page)

“I’m an old hand at flattering people to get
what I want,” said Milli as she turned to the boys with a smile and
squeezed the old woman’s arm, “so don’t try that with me.”

Old Petra guffawed out loud and put her arm
all the way around the little Halfling girl, “I’ll make a witchy
woman out of you, pretty or not. Come over here and let’s talk. You
boys get some more firewood, stoke that blaze. I’ve got cooking
gear in the wagon, get that and bring it out. I know dwarves, yes I
do. You just might find a keg of hard cider in there as well. Tie
your mules up next to Harpus there and get to work.” With that
proclamation the woman led Milli over to the boiling kettle and
left Brogus and Dol to carry out her orders.

Three hours later the four sat before a low
fire with half a dozen pots and pans scattered around the clearing,
a jug on its side near Brogus, empty plates on their laps, and full
bellies.

“You’re quite a cook, Old Petra,” said Brogus
leaning back and patting his belly. “I haven’t eaten that well in
almost two weeks, since we ….” He suddenly stopped and clamped his
mouth shut.

The old woman glanced towards Brogus with a
flicker of her eyes but then continued on as if she didn’t notice
the sudden end to the sentence. She put one last forkful of food in
her mouth and then smiled broadly at him, “I guess you don’t want
any pie then?”

“Pie?” said Brogus with a huge grin. “I never
said I was full. By the way, how did you know my family is the
Horncalls?”

Petra smiled, “I’ve met quite a few traveling
dwarf caravans over the years. You have the jaw line of the
Horncalls and you certainly don’t have the demeanor of a Firefist,
Blackiron, or Drawhammer. Even if you were an apprentice fleeing
your indemnity you’d have the arrogance of one of the three
families.”

“What do you know about the three families?”
said Dol as he stood and began the cleaning process. He didn’t wait
for the woman to answer but immediately started gathering up pots,
pans, and plates.

Petra nodded her head and gave off a short
little snort like laugh, “You dwarfs and your hidden citadel. Do
you really think no one knows about Craggen Steep? It’s been up in
the mountains for a thousand years at least and times are changing
out here in the world. Corancil tamed the north, brought down the
Fist of Stav’rol, the Iron Gates of Das’von; he’s negotiated a
peace with the sea kings of Sea’cra, and now he’s planning to
invade the southern realms. It’s only a matter of time before he
turns his eye towards the gold in those mountains. If I know about
it, then you can bet he does as well.”

Dol looked at Brogus, Brogus looked at Milli,
and Milli looked at Dol. “She has a point,” said Brogus with a
shrug of his shoulders. “Now that I think about it, it does seem
rather silly to think people don’t know about us. We send out
trading caravans. There’s that road leading right up to the
mountain.”

“Do you know where Corancil is right now?”
said Milli. “We hoped to join his army and head south with the
invasion.”

The old woman watched as Dol carefully
cleaned each plate of debris, putting the scraps in a little paper
sack which, when full, he tossed well away from the camp, “I can
take you there if you’d like. I’ll need payment of course,” she
said with a little shrug.

“How much,” said Milli with a sideways glance
at the old woman.

“A gold coin a day seems reasonable,” she
said with a frown. “It is out of my way and I’d be losing all the
clients who come to me here for their potions and such.”

“That’s no problem,” said Brogus with a smile
and immediately began to reach for the pouch hidden away deep in
his jerkin.

“We should talk about this,” said Milli and
tried to stop Brogus.

Brogus ignored the girl, stood up, rummaged
around under his thick fur coat, pulled out a sack that made a loud
chink, extracted a dozen heavy gold coins, and then handed them to
the old woman, “That’s good for a couple of weeks, right?”

Petra blinked rapidly for a few seconds and
then held out her own hand to take the offering, “Yes, maybe a
little more than that.”

Brogus gave her the coins, which she lifted
up and down for a few seconds unable to keep a wide smile off her
face, “Did you say something about pie?” he asked with a broad
smile and tucked the still heavy pouch away.

“Oh,” said Petra suddenly emerging from her
reverie with a wide smile on her face. “Yes, of course, a pie. No
extra charge!”

The snow covered mountains to the north of
Das’von reflected the blinding winter sunlight into the glacial bay
for only a few hours during the deepest winter months but the city
itself thrived year round. Now, with the army of Corancil gathered
in a ramshackle tent encampment built outside of the city the place
thrummed with the life of not only the huge influx of people but
also from the massive ongoing construction projects that sprang up
at virtually every corner. Dol, Milli, Brogus, and Petra spent
their first two days after arriving at the city simply trying to
get into the center of town but utterly failed in that endeavor.
The ancient city was being transformed from wood to brick and stone
at a frenetic pace and much of the central region that housed the
bustling expanded government of Corancil was off limits to anyone
accept workers and diplomats.

It didn’t take long for the three mountain
dwellers to learn the value of the gold coins that they carried.
Petra steadfastly refused to give them a return on their original
and vast overpayment for services. “Consider it an expensive
lesson,” she said once and then refused to take up the subject
again. Eventually they settled outside of the city in a ramshackle
zone used by soldiers, hangers-on, and other never-do-wells that
always seem to accumulate around conquerors. It was dirty,
unpleasant, and overcrowded but there was no denying the buzz of
energy all over the city. Despite the conditions people almost
universally wore smiles on their faces and went about their
business in a cheerful fashion.

On this bright and sunny day, Dol and Brogus
climbed out of the ramshackle hut a quarter mile outside of town
that had served as their domicile since they arrived at the city
almost two weeks before. “It’s impossible,” said Brogus as he
looked around with bleary, morning eyes despite the fact that it
was already noon. To their north lay the city where a thousand
workers scrambled over the old walls tearing them down stone by
stone as they expanded the outer perimeter. “We’ve been here two
weeks and we can’t even get near the palace. There are ten thousand
soldiers in tents and twice that many petitioners trying to get to
see Corancil. This was a mistake from the beginning. We’ll never
get to see anyone in power.”

“What do you propose,” said Dol as he also
rubbed his eyes and took in the hustle and bustle of the city. It
wasn’t as big as he originally expected although clearly the new
ruler had plans for massive expansion. On their first day in the
city they wandered around and found the proposed Grand Plaza at the
center of the city. For now it was merely a dug up patch of earth
and dirt that was once a great slum a mile in diameter. The old
buildings and poor people now took up residence either outside the
city walls or in some of the new housing districts still under
construction. According to rumor, Corancil planned some sort of
permanent art exhibition in the dug up territory and that, in
addition to the expansion of the city walls, the building of grand
new structures, and the influx of countless soldiers made the place
hum with excitement. “We’re here now. I will return to Craggen
Steep with my head low.”

A young boy, of perhaps seven or eight,
wearing a ragged overcoat that dragged the ground around his ankles
stopped and looked up at the two for the briefest of instants as he
heard the name of the hidden citadel and then dashed off dodging a
pair of tall warriors as they emerged from around a corner.

“No, no,” said Brogus shaking his head.
“You’re right about that. We can’t go back to Craggen Steep like
this, but there is no way we can get an audience with Corancil. The
best we can hope for here is to be recruited as common soldiers.
That’s the plan as far as I can tell. What do you want to do?”

Dol shook his head at that suggestion but did
not reply.

“The girls will figure out something,” said
Brogus as he turned and looked towards the hundreds of other little
half-built wood shacks that lined the muddy thoroughfares that made
up the city outside the city. “This place stinks, I haven’t bathed
in weeks, I stink.”

Dol scratched his head through heavily matted
hair and nodded, “We need to find our own way south.” He looked to
the icy bay where hundreds of ships docked and unloaded goods from
the southern lands to feed the throngs in the city. “We should find
a ship heading south, join up with them.”

Brogus turned back from their little shack,
kept moderately tidy but still a hovel at best, and looked towards
the clear blue water of the bay. “I’ve never been aboard a ship.
I’ve heard the motion will make you sick.”

“At least we’ll have clean water,” said Dol
as he watched a neighbor dispose of a chamber pot by throwing it
into the street. “My sense of smell is gone but my eyes water from
the filth of this place. I will not stay a day more. I’m going down
to the docks to find a ship.”

Brogus watched his friend gather up his
equipment, including the great hammer which he wore around a loop
on his belt so that the head swung free. They’d tried to cover it
up early in their trip for fear dwarf pursuers might see the
distinctive weapon, but a couple of incidents where Dol caught
himself on fire eventually persuaded them to use the current
arrangement. The hammer seemed to be growing more lively each day
Dol handled the thing.

“I’ll wait for the girls,” said Brogus with a
half-hearted yell and waved at his friend. He felt low. They
arrived in the city with such high hopes but their inability to
make any headway in their efforts to see the new conqueror, the
oppressive environment of the tent city, and the general sense of
their impending failure seemed to sap all his strength. He slumped
to a seat on a tree stump near the little shack and began to pick
up little sticks from the ground, break them, and toss them away.
That’s how Milli and Petra found him two hours later when they
returned to the hut.

“Brogus, how long have you been sitting there
and where is Dol?” asked Milli as she stood over the dwarf with a
frown on her face. She had tied her hair back in a bun so tight
that it stretched her face, she wore a thick coat covered with
grime, and she appeared wan with little color in her face.

Brogus simply sat there without answering as
he looked at the twig in his hand.

“Brogus,” she repeated and smacked the dwarf
on the shoulder. “Where’s Dol?

Brogus looked up with a glassy eyed gaze and
shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure.”

Milli looked at Petra, “This place is killing
us. The cold, the inactivity, the filth. We’ll never get to see
Corancil. We need to leave.”

“That’s what Dol said,” said Brogus although
his tongue felt like a thick layer of fur rested on it and the
words seemed to ooze like tree sap.

Milli shook her head and turned to the old
woman, “That’s it. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. We’ll head south
on our own. How far did you say the southern volcanoes are from
here?”

“I’ve never been anywhere near that far
south,” said Petra with a shrug although her own complexion was
pallid and her voice barely carried beyond her two friends. “I know
there are some great lakes in the center of the continent and those
are said to be ten thousand miles from here.”

“If that’s the center of the world then how
much further is the southern tip?”

The old woman shrugged her shoulders and
shook her head. “A lot further than that gold you gave me will take
you.”

“We gave you enough gold to last five years,”
said Milli with a fierce look at the old woman. “You can pretend it
was an expensive lesson but you’ll get nothing more from us. You
can leave anytime you want.”

Petra smiled and patted Milli on the back,
although the Halfling girl turned and stepped away from the
contact. “No, no. I’ll stick with you for a while longer. This is
proving to be a most interesting trip and I’ve seen those little
pouches of gold coins and gemstones you carry. I could do far worse
for travelling companions.”

“Don’t mention the gold,” said Milli in a
hushed voice. “If these cutthroats knew the value of our purses
then our lives wouldn’t be worth the price we paid for this shack.
We need to go find your wagon up in the hills and get out of
here.”

“What about the mules? Do you want to bring
them along as well,” said Petra with a wicked grin as she asked the
question in a toneless voice that belied her amusement.

Milli spun around and started to spit out
something but managed to stifle her anger and just glared at Petra.
After a moment Milli turned back to Brogus, “What did Dol say?”

“He said we need to get out of here. He was
going to hire a ship,” said Brogus with a nod of his head towards
the crystal blue water in the bay.

Milli looked over to the water and the many
ships that bobbed placidly on its surface. A few days after they
arrived, a winter storm blew through the capital and half a dozen
of the small ships crashed on the rocks killing many people. “I
don’t know about ships. I don’t know how to swim and neither do any
of you. That water is cold,” she finished with a shiver and
remembered her one attempt at a bath in a secluded little arm of
the bay.

“A ship would be a faster way to get to the
southern realms,” said Petra. “Although we’d have to leave the
mules behind.”