Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [10]
CHAPTER 6
Gantor Blackstword
252 AC
Third Mithrik, Dry-Anvil The dwarf had been wandering for weeks, a span of time that seemed like years in the tortured ramblings of his mind. The Plain of Dergoth was a shattered, wounded landscape around him, everywhere waterless, parched into a barren desert by a midsummer sun. He had no destination, but he simply kept plodding along, leaving the tracks of his cleated boots like the trail of an aimless snake coursing through the dust and silt layering the hard, baked ground.
As he had done so many times since the beginning of his exile, he spun about, staring wildly into the distance, seeing the lofty bulk of the High Kharolis rising into the skies. Raising a knotted fist, he shook it at the massif, crying shrill challenges and insults, spitting loudly, stomping his feet, venting his fury against rock and sky. And as always, the mountainous ridge remained silent and impassive, ignoring the dwarf’s railing hysteria.
“I’ll come back there, I will!” Cantor Blacksword shrieked. His hand came to rest on the hilt of the once splendid weapon that had girded his waist. Several times he had drawn the thing with a flourish, waving it at the mountain dwarf stronghold, but even through the feverish agitation of his despair, Gantor had come to see the gesture for the foolish act that it was.
Not foolish because the target of his rage was distant and unassailable, but because the hilt, steel-hard and wrapped with the hide of an ancient ogre, was only that: a handle, with no blade attached. Thane Realgar himself, lord and master of all the Theiwar clan, had snapped the weapon asunder as he had pronounced the sentence upon Gantor Blacksword.
The bearded, perpetually scowling Theiwar had been prepared to face death for his crime, even public execution or a painful demise following a long period of torture. Indeed, both were common fates handed to Theiwar murderers under clan law, and there was no dispute over Cantor’s status as a killer of a fellow Theiwar. The best he had hoped for-and it was a slim hope-had been a forfeiture of his rather extensive personal wealth and a sentence to a lifetime of labor in the food warrens. He could have faced torture and death bravely, and he would have gone willingly into the warrens, even knowing that he might never see the lightless waters of the Urkhan Sea again.
But he had never been prepared, could not have imagined, the utter horror of the sentence that Thane Realgar had pronounced.
Exile, under the naked sky.
The very concept had been so foreign that, upon first hearing the words, Gantor Blacksword had not fully grasped their meaning. Only as the thane had continued his dire pronouncement did the full sense of disbelieving fear seep slowly into Cantor’s wicked and hateful brain.
“Your crimes have extended well beyond the boundaries that will be tolerated by our clan,” declared Realgar, tacitly acknowledging that assassination, robbery, assault, and mayhem were common tactics for the settlement of disputes among the Theiwar.
“It is well known,” Realgar continued, “that your conflict with Dwayal Thack was deep and true; both of you claimed ownership of the stone found between your delv-ings, and had you limited your activities merely to the killing of Dwayal in a fair fight, your presence before this board of judgment would never have been required.”
Gantor had glowered and spat at the time, refusing to accept the words, though now he admitted to wishing that he had handled the problem exactly as the thane had suggested. Dwayal Thack had been a larger dwarf than Gantor, more skilled in the use of sword and axe, but even so the aggrieved miner had not been without recourse. After all, a fair fight among the Theiwar did not disallow the use of ambush or a stab in the back, and even the hiring of a trained assassin would have been acceptable, though in the latter case, Gantor might have been required to a pay a small stipend to the victim’s family.
Instead, however, he had decided to take care of the problem himself.
His plan had been simple but well