The Fate of the Dwarves - By Markus Heitz Page 0,60

see!”

Behind him all was quiet.

Boïndil turned round, but Tungdil had disappeared. “What, by Vraccas, is happening now?” he thundered, catching a noise at his back. He whirled round, crow’s beak raised high. “Scholar?”

He moved carefully into the room, one step at a time.

He checked the fireplace for ashes, the wooden floor for footprints. Not a single trace.

“It’s the spirits of the mountain haunting us,” he told himself silently. His gaze fell on a lonely dried sausage hanging above the stove. “Scholar? Tell me where you are? I don’t want to clobber you by mistake.”

Ireheart moved cautiously around the corner to the cooking stove. There was a thick layer of grease on it. No meals had been cooked there recently.

The string the sausage hung on, suspended from a rafter, made a rustling noise. The dwarf, surprised, noted there was no obvious draft in the cabin, but the string swung forward and backwards.

If he looked closely he could see the ceiling boards move slightly, and he grinned. That’s where the rat is hiding! Whoever was waiting for them had crept up to the hayloft, to give the dwarves a false sense of security.

“Scholar?” he called again, before leaping onto the stove and hacking through the ceiling boards with his crow’s beak. He jumped up and pulled at the handle with all his strength until the planks gave way.

Dried grass fell into the room, showering Boïndil; dust blurred his vision. But he thought he spied a movement in the hay. Certain that Tungdil would have made himself known if it were him, he struck out without mercy.

His blow was parried, metal hitting metal. Suddenly the crow’s beak was wrenched aside and Ireheart needed all his strength to hang on to his weapon.

Surrounded by showers of drizzling hay and dust he tried another attack on his opponent, who still was only visible as a silhouette. Judging from the size it must be—a dwarf!

“Scholar, is it you?” he asked, to be on the safe side, holding back for a second.

A mistake.

A very narrow blade, more like a finger-slim iron rod, appeared in front of him and Boïndil was only just able to swivel his torso to the right to avoid being stabbed through the chest with the sharpened point. But it found its way through the material of his padded tunic, hitting his collarbone. Intense pain flashed through him.

Ireheart growled in rage, and the weapon was withdrawn. He felt his blood trickling warm from the wound, but realized the injury was relatively harmless. His shoulder and arm still worked and he could breathe without difficulty.

Angrily he grabbed the handle of his crow’s beak again and jumped through the hay to attack. He circled round, waving the weapon; some time soon he was bound to hit something. “Don’t hide, you coward!” he shouted, stepping out of the cloud of straw and dust. He coughed, his eyes streaming, then saw a figure by the door.

“Halt! Stay where you are!” He raced after it, following the unknown figure into the open air.

But once outside in the snow he saw that the attacker had completely vanished.

“How, by Tion’s ghastly—” and then something struck him on the back of the head. His helmet took most of the force of the blow, but it was enough to make him giddy. “Yes, sneak up on me from behind; you can do that, can’t you?” he raged, and a red veil laid itself over his already restricted sight. “Ho, stand and fight!” Battle-fury was about to overwhelm him.

The enemy was back at the door. He wore a close-fitting leather helmet with decorations of rivets and silver wire. His body was protected by dark leather armor with ornate tionium plates and his legs were concealed behind a skirt of iron discs. It looked like the kind of armor a thirdling would make.

“What do you know: A dwarf-hater! So what brings you here?” Boïndil wiped his eyes, then saw his pipe under the enemy’s feet. Trampled and broken. “Look at that! You moron! How am I going to smoke now?” He clenched his teeth and snorted with fury. “It doesn’t matter. I know who’s going to smash you.”

Tungdil appeared above them on the roof, Bloodthirster in his right hand. An impressive figure, Ireheart had to admit. “Something much more important,” Tungdil called down. “How did he get through the Brown Mountains and past the fourthlings? We’ll have to find out and stop the gap before others find it.”

“Wait, Scholar. I’ll put a few sharp questions