They were brought their drinks with bad grace. It might have been pure chance, but when Boïndil’s tankard was set down, beer slopped over and spilled into his lap. Gilspan gave a false smile and an apology and hurried off.
“Bring me a jug of brandy,” Tungdil called out after him, lifting his tankard to his lips and emptying it in a single draught. He started on its successor greedily; the beer ran dark down his beard, staining it.
“How did it happen, Scholar?”
Tungdil wiped his mouth and his beard. “I was drinking too fast.”
“I meant, that you’re tipping it down you as if that old drunkard Bavragor were your baby brother,” Boïndil insisted sharply. “Tell me why you’re like this now. And why Balyndis mourns.”
Tungdil was angry with himself for having let that slip out. “Because of Balodil.”
“Balodil.” The dwarf-twin leaned forward so low toward his friend that his black beard was nearly in his tankard. “And who is Balodil?”
“He’s our son.” Tungdil took a mouthful of brandy. “Was our son.”
Boïndil was careful not to say anything. Gradually Tungdil’s words and his recent behavior merged to form a distressing picture.
Gilspan brought their food. Neither of them touched it despite the delicious smell and despite their hunger after the long journey. The past must first be dealt with.
“He was born four cycles ago and was the crowning of our love: the apple of our eye,” whispered Tungdil from a place far away, as he sat staring at the flicker of the candle flame. “I took him with me on an errand and I’d promised Balyndis I would look after him. But the wooden bridge I always used had been damaged in the flood.” He gulped down the brandy. His face was a single grimace of disgust. “I am Tungdil Goldhand, victor over Nôd’onn and avatars, slaughterer of hundreds of orcs, and a scholar to boot. You’d think I could manage to cross a rickety bridge,” he said caustically, looking his friend in the face. “That old bridge, Boïndil, showed me who was stronger. It collapsed under the cart and we were tipped into the river. My mail shirt pulled me down. I’d have drowned but for an empty barrel bobbing up under me.” The laughter and loud voices in the taproom behind them swallowed his words. “So now here I am, telling you about Balodil. How do you think the story goes for him?” This time he did not even trouble to pour the brandy into his cup, but drank straight from the jug. He set it down, gasped for air and belched. “I never found his body, however long I searched. Since that day I’ve hated myself. Balyndis can never forgive me and I… and I’ve taken to drink. I’m going to drink till it kills me.” He paused. “No, I’m going to drink so it kills me. Should have drowned with my son instead of living on like this. So I’m drowning my sorrows and myself in drink.” Disgusted, he pushed away the plate of stew.
“Scholar, it was an accident. Rotten timber,” objected Boïndil, wanting to wrest away his guilt. “Rotten wood and the curse of the goddess Elria. It was the curse that struck you, dragging you, your son and the cart to the bottom. It was not your fault.”
“That’s what Balyndis says, too.” He lowered his head. “But I see that silent accusation in her eyes all the time. I fear our love went cold that very day. She thinks I don’t notice her feelings—she tries to hide the hatred and disgust. It is so cold now back in our vaults, colder than ever before. The grief in my heart has robbed me of any desire to live.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “So now you know why I’ve changed. I’m off to bed, Boïndil.” He got up, swaying, stumbled off to the stairs and disappeared.
Ireheart wiped the tears away. He must help his friend and restore his love of life. There was only one way to do that.
“Vraccas, have mercy. And send your blessing to Tungdil.” He glanced at Gilspan, expansively welcoming new arrivals and showing off the orc he had dispatched; mine host was clapped heartily on the shoulder for his deeds of daring.
Boïndil got up and plodded up the stairs. He had to speak to Balyndis: he simply could not believe she was harboring the feelings that Tungdil had described.
The night was already far advanced.
Gilspan was at the table entertaining the other guests with yet another story about how he had killed his orc. “And when the Toboribor hordes came through close to our farm, I took up my weapon to defend my house. My father was far away from home, but he’d left me his dagger. I’d sworn on it that I’d protect my mother and all the people on our land.” He laid the dagger on the table as evidence.
“That was all you had?” breathed a girl of sixteen summers, traveling in the company of her parents and of her betrothed.
“Yes. And the orcs were not stopping! They arrived in the evening, a whole troop of them on the scavenge for provisions.” Gilspan sprang up. “I went up to their leader and challenged him to a duel. He had his sword and I attacked him with my dagger…”
“Oh, you’re so brave!” The girl clapped her hands and was lost in admiration.
“I thought the Blood of Girdlegard was supposed to render them immortal,” objected her fiancé.
“It didn’t help him,” said Gilspan, waving his dagger in the air. “I got everywhere, stabbing away and slitting at him till I’d plunged the blade right into his heart and he fell dead at my feet.” He posed with one foot on a chair. “The others fled and the farm was saved. Because he died before the time of the Judgment Star the cadaver has survived all this time.”
The men gave him a round of applause, the women gave him some coins and the girl gave him a small silken square embroidered with her monogram.
“But how were you able to cut off its head with a dagger?” The jealous fiancé was not giving up.
“A knife-thrust to the heart was enough, sir.”
The girl’s betrothed looked over at the orc. “Excuse me, Gilspan, but the soldiers I’ve talked to always say you’ve got to cut the creatures’ heads off to properly do away with them.”
It went very quiet. Everyone was staring at the stuffed creature posed in the corner with its bared fangs, a remarkably lifelike figure in the dim light.
“Wasn’t it standing a bit differently when we came in?” whispered the damsel fearfully, sliding nearer to Gilspan. Her betrothed took her arm and pulled her back to his side.
“Yes, you’re right.” Her father went pale. “I swear by Palandiell he had his sword held upright before, not down in front of him.”
“What’s this? A horror story to frighten little children? I pulled his innards out through his doublet myself,” said the landlord. He went up to the creature.
There was a loud creaking noise and the upper torso of the orc turned in Gilspan’s direction.
The women screamed. The men drew their swords. “You idiot of a man! You’ve brought the evil one right into your own house!”
Gilspan was completely bewildered. He wanted to reply but the orc started making its way over, raising its sword arm and lunging at him.
The man disappeared screaming under the monster. He dropped his dagger, crawled out from beneath his attacker, slid under the nearest table and cried for help like an old spinster.
Upstairs, doors were opening, boots came clattering down the stairs and lanterns were brought to give a better light.
The orc lay motionless on the floor and laughed. And laughed and laughed… As more and more lamps came on the scene they saw it was not the monster, but a dwarf lying there, helpless with laughter. He got up and stood by the bar counter, slapping himself on the thigh.
His laughter infected the room, not least because of the relief everyone felt, and then because of Gilspan the hero quivering underneath the table.
Boïndil had played a joke on them all and had made the monster come to life by groaning a bit, pushing it and rocking it where it stood. “Now, my little linnet,” he said, bending down to look under the table. “Where is your bold courage now? Where did you get the orc?”
“I…” Gilspan was obviously thinking up a new lie.
“Think hard w
ho you’re trying to trick here,” warned Ireheart, shaking a fist in his face.
“Bought it. I bought it, four cycles ago,” he admitted ruefully. “Like all the other stuff on the walls.” The guests laughed at him as he crawled out from his hiding place.
“Rotten stinking dwarf! You’ve ruined everything!”
“Me? It’s you who’ve ruined everything by your cowardice. If you’d been the man you pretend to be and had launched yourself at your attacker, everyone would be admiring you.” Boïndil nodded to the girl’s fiancé. “Well spotted. You do have to cut off their heads so that evil doesn’t restore their powers.” He raised his crow’s beak hammer and slung it through the creature’s head, severing the dried vertebrae so that the skull was caught on the weapon’s long spike. “It’d be really dead now.” He smashed the bone on the counter and fragments scattered far and wide. “Best to be on the safe side,” he grinned, shouldering his hammer.
The next day they continued their journey to landur.
Tungdil had slept through the tumultuous doings of the night. He got up in the morning, woken by Boïndil, and got ready for the journey in silence. Without stopping for breakfast they set off in a southwesterly direction.
The ponies trotted tirelessly on, following the road. They were surrounded by a richly varied landscape: it was still mountainous here, although a dwarf would call it hilly; sometimes they rode along the side of a ravine, sometimes through wide valleys, and then again across uplands from where they had a view over the wilder North Gauragar. They saw no thick forests: for that the soil was too poor.
Ireheart at the head of the column had some food on the way; Tungdil had bought a bottle of brandy from the innkeeper. He continued where he had left off the previous evening.
His friend looked back at him, shaking his head. “Do you really think drinking makes it better? You could have learned a lesson from Bavragor.”
Tungdil paid no attention and lifted the bottle once more to his cracked lips.
“That’s enough! It’s not going to bring Balodil back, Scholar!” Boïndil turned his pony round and rode back. “Make use of your life and respect his memory instead of wallowing in self-pity and making a fool of yourself.”
“No, it won’t bring Balodil back,” murmured Tungdil. “I told you, I’m drinking myself to death.” He belched, spat, and drank again.
“You want to die?” Ireheart jumped down out of the saddle, grabbed the startled dwarf by the collar of his leather doublet under the mail shirt and pulled him to the ground. He dragged him over to the edge of the precipice they were on. “You really want to die?” In a fury he wrested the brandy bottle out of his grasp and hurled it down the cliff. After a long fall it shattered, leaving a dark stain on the rock. “Then go after it!” he thundered. “Put an end to your miserable existence. Do it right now. But stop the self-pity. The lowliest of creatures has more dignity than you.”
Tungdil could not escape from Boïndil’s steel-hard grip. Without mercy the dwarf-twin pressed his face down over the drop.
A warm breath of wind came up from below, playing gently around his face as if inviting him to jump.
“Well, Scholar?” fumed Ireheart. “You say you want to die. Get on with it!” He grabbed the mail shirt and pulled with all his amazing strength. From somewhere deep inside, Tungdil’s instinct to resist awoke. It was a boundless urge, knowing neither rhyme nor reason. There was nothing to live for and yet still he held back and refused to take his place in the Eternal Smithy—if indeed there was a place for him there. He grasped the stunted grass, scraping his fingertips open on the stone. The pain cleared his alcohol-befuddled head.
“LET GO!” yelled Boïndil in his ear. “I’m making it easy for you and stopping you from wasting yet more money on brandy and beer.” He gave Tungdil a mighty kick in the side.
Tungdil cowered in pain, losing his grip. The top half of his body now lay over the cliff edge. “No, no!” he called out in desperation. “You…”
“I’ll tell them you were protecting me from bandits,” Ireheart continued relentlessly. “People will think of you as a hero who died in time to salvage the meager remains of his reputation.”
Another kick met Tungdil’s ribs. Yelling, he slid forward. Stones broke away and rolled down the steep slope, raising small clouds of dust on the way.
“NO!” Gathering the last of his strength, Tungdil pushed himself up off the ground, throwing his weight backwards. He hurled himself back, dragging Boïndil with him, and together they fell onto safer ground. “I’ve… changed… my mind,” he panted.
“Oh, and where does this sudden change of heart come from?”
Tungdil took a deep breath. “I can’t say. There’s a voice inside that won’t let me.”
“A voice called fear?”
Tungdil shrugged his shoulders. “No. No, it was something else. Life itself, I expect.”
“The voice of Vraccas,” replied Boïndil, getting up and proffering his hand. “He will need you and your Keenfire blade soon enough. New enemies are threatening your race. Perhaps it is your destiny to defeat them.”
Tungdil let himself be helped up, then he went over to the cliff edge and looked over. Only one small step and his troubles would be gone. He raised his foot… and again he felt the inner barrier.
“Still got a death wish?” growled his friend.
“No,” answered Tungdil slowly. “I wanted to be sure that I really want to live.” He turned away from the edge.
Ireheart held out the reins of his pony to him and Tungdil took them. “That is what you want. I would have pushed you over if you hadn’t fought against me with all your strength.” His voice was earnest. “It’s the only way to find out if someone really wants to die.” A crooked smile crossed his face. “Believe me—I’ve been through the same treatment as you.”
“You were in despair at the death of your brother.” Tungdil understood now and watched the warrior climb back into the saddle.
“Half of me died when he did. Perhaps it was the better half. The other half dissolved into pitiless grief until I was convinced I wanted to die. Someone did to me what I just did to you and that made me see I preferred to be amongst the living rather than the dead. Vraccas knows why.” Grinning, he pointed to the road ahead. “But sending us to the elves is taking it a bit far.” He spurred his pony onwards.
Tungdil laughed quietly. “You’re right. Vraccas knows why.”
The shock of his salvation gave Tungdil now an extreme clarity of thought he had not known since before the death of his son. He had done everything wrong. For the past four cycles he had done everything wrong.
There was only one way out. He vowed to himself that he would return to Balyndis as soon as he could and beg her forgiveness for everything. The bitter words, the constant drinking, the rejection whenever she had tried to touch him. He could not forgive himself. Deep in thought, he stroked his pony’s soft muzzle.
Ireheart was a few paces ahead. “Coming, Scholar?” he called. “Or is the pony giving you some advice?”
“No,” Tungdil called back. “It’s telling me I’m too fat.”
“You should have asked me. I could have told you that.”
Tungdil took the pony by the reins and started to run. “You are a good friend,” he said and it was not clear which of the two he meant. The exercise would not hurt him, and it was a good few miles still to landur. Time to lose a few pounds.
IV
Girdlegard,
Queendom of Weyurn, Mifurdania,
Late Spring, 6241st Solar Cycle
Mind out, Rodario!” He heard Tassia’s warning just in time. He ducked, the slops aimed at his back missing him by inches and hitting the girl instead. She cried out and stumbled backwards into Mifurdania’s floodwaters, which washed the pail’s stinking contents from her dress.
“That’s good luck,” grinned Rodario, punching an injured pursuer full in the face as he was trying to jump onto the walkway from one of the
boats. The thug landed in the water. Then the actor spun around, beaming. “Master Umtaschen? You haven’t forgotten me? Delighted to find you still so lively.”
“You foul seducer!” shouted the older man, who had attacked so suddenly with the bucket. “She was promised to the judge’s son. He would have none of her with your bastard in her belly!” He swung the bucket again. “I’ll have your balls off for that!”
“Master Umtaschen, it was your daughter who seduced me,” retorted Rodario, fending off the pail. “And I wasn’t the first. Believe me, I’d have noticed.” He grabbed the bucket and hurled it at the last of the band of pursuers Nolik’s father had sent after them.
The man, who had been balancing precariously debating his next move, was sent flying into the water to join Tassia and his comrade in thuggery.
“At least the others didn’t make her pregnant!” Umtaschen roared, swinging both fists.
“If that is the case, Master Umtaschen, I’ll be happy to meet with her again and show her a good time. It seems I have your blessing as long as I’m careful where I aim this time,” laughed Rodario as he took a sudden step forward.
Umtaschen sprang back out of range inside his house. “We’re not done yet!” he threatened and disappeared as fast as he could when Rodario gave a warning stamp with his foot.
Someone splashed him. He turned round.
A girl’s hand waved from below the edge of the landing stage. “Help me up before the other two get me,” Tassia called and he hurried over to haul her out. As she stood in front of him soaked to the skin, he could see how the water had made her dress transparent.
The two who had been following them had given up and were swimming back to their three colleagues on the other side of the canal.
“What do we do now?” asked Tassia, smoothing back her wet fair hair. In Rodario’s eyes she was temptation itself. “They’re bound to have gone to the Curiosum.”