“We’re not going in that way,” Mornik assured them in a whisper.
“We’d have to be fools to try,” Kaldr muttered, staring up the staircase. The approach was a defender’s dream: all it lacked were enclosing walls to make it all but unassailable.
The two days of waiting dragged out until they felt more like two weeks, but at last Brandir had matters arranged to his satisfaction. The eight of them would be the only ones to venture into the Mount, while a rather sizable number of dvergr caused a distraction in Nilthiad proper. Read more…
Grim-faced, Jorir drove the butt of his axe into the solar plexus of the man he had just disarmed. He fell to the ground and did not get up.
From the corner of his eye, Einarr saw one of the black-blooded dvergr coming up on Gheldram from behind. He lunged and embedded Sinmora in its chest. That didn’t drop it, but it did give Gheldram the time he needed to face his new attacker. Read more…
There was, on the outskirts of Nilthiad as on the outskirts of most cities, a rough part of town, where most people weren’t going to ask too many questions so long as you didn’t go making a big deal out of yourself. It was to a small, apparently abandoned house in a neighborhood such as this that Brandir led them all. Not one of them breathed easily until the doors and window had been covered with furs and a single oil lamp lit. Read more…
Without another word, the eight men – four dvergr, four humans – slipped out into the hall to follow Gheldram. In silence they crept through the halls of the dungeon until they reached the storeroom, where they set to searching for the belongings of the humans.
“I had half expected you to have… company by the time we got there,” Jorir admitted to Einarr. Read more…
Einarr kept his eyes locked on Jorir as he was marched to the front of the Hall, and Jorir could feel the weight of their disappointment heavy on his shoulders.
Soggvar stood. Despite his sickly appearance, his legs were just as strong as Jorir remembered, and his hands steady. “So,” he said, walking to the front of the dais to examine his prisoner. “This is the leader of the barbarians I was told wandered our paths. I don’t know why you came here, human, but your kind has no place in these lands.” Read more…
Jorir took a little of his remaining coin, small though it was, to visit the bathhouse that night. He would give Thane Soggvar no excuse to abuse him that he could avoid. The next morning he put formal braids in his beard and – for the first time in many a year – wore the chain of his Guild. Read more…
Jorir sat on a large block in Brandir’s smithy, pressing his hands against his knees to keep from pacing. As he had feared, the situation now was far worse than when he had left.
Consciousness returned slowly to Einarr, and when it did it was made more uncertain by the dearth of light. But, he could feel his body again. Everything ached, except his head. His head felt like someone had driven spikes into his temples. Even still, he was aware of the hair that felt plastered across his forehead. Read more…
Einarr and his companions awake to find themselves chained in the dark of a dungeon, captured by the dwarves of Myrkheimr for the sin of trespassing down the Paths of Stone. Meanwhile, Jorir still awaits the pleasure of his Thane, …Read more…
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