The Fate of the Dwarves - By Markus Heitz Page 0,51

to show she harbored no resentment. “From now on I ride alone.”

“My lady!” exclaimed Frederik in shock. “No! We don’t want to give up…”

She put her hand on his arm. “It’s all right, Frederik. I can’t have you all taking these risks for the sake of my struggle.”

“Gauragar is our homeland, my lady. We have the same duty as you to fight off the oppressors.” He was not prepared to drop the subject. “We are glad to have you at our side. If the Urgon group were here, they would say the same.”

Zedrik stood up. One of the sentries at Topholiton’s gates, he was a rough man of rough appearance. He was only ever to be seen in armor, as if there were no life for him outside military service. “May the gods and yourself, my lady, forgive me, but I have been wondering about our cause for a long time—whether there’s any point. We steal the tribute, kill a few thirdlings maybe, but does this make anything better for the people here in Gauragar?” Zedrik sounded disconsolate. “The people support us but they are the ones to suffer when the reprisals come.”

“What do you suggest?” Frederik studied him. “Do you want to kowtow to the black-eyes forever and a day? Is that what you want for your children and their children? This oppression?”

“It’s how it used to be, and we managed all right; it’s not a bad life,” replied Zedrik with a sigh. “We pay up and they leave us in peace.”

Mallenia followed the dispute attentively, her decision now reinforced by what she’d heard. They must break up their organization. The butcher did not want to give up, as she had first thought, but some of the others did. Too many. Fear could lead to betrayal, just as a high reward might.

Frederik was disgusted. “Just how stupid are you, Zedrik? What happens when we’ve nothing left to pay them with? When they raze our villages to the ground because they want the land for their preposterous art projects; want to change everything to fit in with their mad ideas of aesthetics?” he cried, exasperated. “Does nobody remember what happened in Tareniaborn?”

Tareniaborn. Mallenia swallowed hard and the thought of the town with its forty thousand men, women and children, filled her with horror. Nothing like that had ever happened before.

It had been eleven cycles ago. One of the älfar princes had decided to turn the town into a work of art: Tareniaborn and all the land surrounding it.

To this day no one knew whether the älf had gone mad or whether each and every town in Idoslane could expect a similar fate.

“You were there, my lady. Think of how cruel our over-lords were,” Frederik demanded grimly. “And bear in mind, they’re not going to shrink from violence on that scale if the fancy takes them again.” All eyes in the cellar were on Mallenia.

“I can’t say how it happened. I arrived when it was all over,” she said. “I came on the town by accident when out riding with some volunteers. We were up on a hill and had a good view of the town and plain.” She felt a fluttering in her stomach and started to feel sick. “We saw patterns in the snow round the walls, and the whole town glistened red. Everything, absolutely everything, was covered in a layer of frozen blood. Red ice, everywhere!” She saw in her mind’s eye the ghastly lanes and alleys of Tareniaborn. “In the marketplace they’d strung up the hearts of the inhabitants, pierced with silver wire and silver rods, twisting them together to make a giant tree, the hearts of the adults on the trunk, those of the children on the twigs. And they’d hung the heads of newborn babes like fruit from the branches.”

She could not go on. The tree and all its gory detail had swamped her imagination. The tiny bunches of different-colored hair, attached to look like leaves, making the whole work so horrendous…

Mallenia saw the disgust in the eyes of those around her. “Be glad you didn’t see it.” She continued softly, “In the fields round about they’d stripped and eviscerated the bodies, using the bones to form huge symbols on the ground, with the town at the center. Maybe it was all dedicated to one of their gods, who knows. But it was so incredibly awful that you actually had to look at it. A terrifying fascination. Bone laid next to bone as if there