Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [154]
The youngster set up a fearful wailing. Ebenezer’s face went grim, and he turned to Bronwyn. “Get what you need.”
She glanced around the dimly lit cave. It was more orderly than she would have expected, with sleeping skins piled neatly to one side, and a cracked barrel that served as a receptacle for bones and other leavings. Small shelves had been carved into the stone wall. These held the ores’ treasures. Bronwyn noted many of the stolen toys. Her gaze swept the cave, looking for the one she wanted: a small, detailed model of a siege tower. It was in the center of the shelf, right over the cowering ore young.
“There,” she said, pointing.
She started forward, but Ebenezer caught her arm. “You go back with the others. Wait by the mouth of the main cave. You don’t need to be seeing what I’m about to do,” he said grimly.
Bronwyn’s heart ached for the necessity facing her friend. She suspected that the pragmatic dwarf could not allow three such potentially deadly enemies to grow into a threat, but Ebenezer’s deep love for kids-be they dwarf or human or even ore-made the hard task even more terrible. She swallowed hard. “You go. I’ll do it.”
“I said git!” Ebenezer roared. He seized the siege tower from the shelf and hurled it into her hands.
Clutching the artifact, she darted from the cave. As she ran, she heard the dwarf tell the ore young to “Stop your damn sniveling.” Harsh words, but with a note in them that prompted Bronwyn to linger at the entrance to the children’s cave.
She peeked around the side as the dwarf took from his pack an intricately carved toy soldier-an ore, if the faint light did not deceive her eyes, and handed it to one of the ore lads. “Take this, in exchange for the tower, and you other two each pick a favorite. Then get some clothes on you, and a knife and a packet of food. There’s a back way out. You three are going to take it.”
They just stared at him. He swore and said a few words in a halting, guttural speech. This time they understood and scurried to do his bidding. “Follow this path out, but don’t wander too far. Your two hearth dames here will wake up and come looking for you. Tell them you’re to travel north, and join a new clan. Go!”
One of them babbled a few words, and Ebenezer, or so Bronwyn surmised, repeated his instructions. The scramble of small feet announced that the ores were only too happy to comply. Bronwyn hurried out to the first cavern. If Ebenezer knew that she had heard all, he would never again be able to look her in the eye.
“Dwarves,” she muttered, then grinned as she realized how much she’d come to sound like her friend.
The battle was long over. Six of the elf fighters stayed at the cave to dispatch any ores who might circle back, and the rest began the walk back to Gladestone.
As they neared the village, they noted that the snares had done their jobs well. Ores dangled upside down from young trees like hideous, wingless bats. Elven arrows bristled from their chests. Only a few ringing clashes, a few grunts, and screams of pain, emanated from the village. When they arrived in Gladestone, it was all but over. A trio of villagers stood at the edge of the triggered pit trap, raining arrows at the trapped ores.
After what she had witnessed in the cave, Bronwyn expected Ebenezer to protest this unchivalrous treatment of an enemy, but the dwarf just nodded with grim approval and joined the villagers in dragging the rest of the slain ores to the pit.
An elf male rolled a barrel of lamp oil over and let it fall into the opening. Another elf dropped a torch. Flames leaped high into the night while Bronwyn and Ebenezer bore silent witness, and the villagers took stock of the price they had paid for this victory.
After the fire had died away, they all pitched in filling the hole. By the time the sun rose, the task was done. A plume of thick, black smoke rising from the south indicated that the rear guard had likewise cleansed the ore den.