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Chapter Seventeen
"Let's take a walk, Longshanks."
Bahzell looked up from his book and quirked an eyebrow. Kilthandahknarthas dihna'Harkanath stood in the doorway of the comfortable (if low-ceilinged) room the Horse Stealer had been assigned and propped his fists impatiently upon his hips.
"Well, come along!"
"Ah?" Bahzell closed his book on the index finger of his left hand and used his right to tug at the fob dangling from his breeches pocket. He pressed the crown of the handsome—and expensive—watch attached to the fob and squinted at the golden hands sweeping about its painted ivory face. "Why, it's naught but eleven of the morning," he remarked. "Sure and you seem in a tearing rush about something, Kilthan. Are you sure it can't be waiting while I'm after finishing my chapter?"
"No, it can't," the dwarf said tartly. His topaz eyes twinkled wryly as they rested on the watch, but then he shook himself and glared at his towering guest. "And we don't have all day, you know."
"And why not?" Bahzell asked pleasantly. "From all accounts, it's snowing fit to bury a mountain whole outside. That being so, I'm not so all-fired eager as all that to be on my way, and I've naught else pla
"Good! In that case you won't mind coming with me. And I'm still waiting."
The dwarf was barely half Bahzell's height but with shoulders as broad as he was tall. He was also bald as a polished brown egg, with brilliant eyes under bushy tufts of eyebrows, and a magnificent forked beard streamed down over his belt buckle. From conversations with some of the other members of Clan Harkanath, Bahzell had discovered that Kilthan was considerably older than he'd first assumed. In fact, the clan lord merchant-prince was well into his third century, although the massive muscles characteristic of his race were only now begi
But for the last century and a half Kilthan's most deadly weapons had been trade wagons, merchant ships, letters of credit, and investment funds, not battle axes. He favored plain clothing—well tailored and of good, serviceable fabric, but without the silks or velvets or the jewels or gold bullion embroidery others might choose—and he scarcely looked the part of one of Norfressa's wealthiest men. In fact, he looked more like an irascible tutor, standing there with his fists on his hips. But that was only true until you saw his eyes. Those strange, topaz eyes from which a core of burnished steel looked out upon the world.
"And what's after being so Phrobus-taken important?" The Horse Stealer demanded... but he also marked his place and set his book aside with the air of a small boy obeying an order to wash up for supper before things got still worse.
"We need to talk—and I want to show you something. Come on with you now!"
Kilthan turned and stumped away, and Bahzell shrugged, climbed out of his chair, patted his belt out of long habit to be certain he had his dagger, and followed him.
Someone else was waiting in the passageway, and Bahzell smiled and held out his hand to another friend. Rianthus of Sindor was a human, once a major in the Royal and Imperial Army, who had risen to command the private army which protected Clan Harkanath's merchant empire outside the Empire of the Axe, and both Bahzell and Brandark had developed a deep respect for him during their time under his orders.
"Is he always after being like this?" Bahzell asked him, jerking his head at Kilthan as the two of them followed the dwarf down the passage.
"Like what?" Rianthus replied. "You mean pushy, pompous, and a little arrogant?"
A loud snort came back from ahead of them, and Bahzell gri
"Aye—except that I was thinking more of a lot arrogant."
"Only when he's awake," Rianthus assured him.
"I might as well be 'arrogant' with you lot," Kilthan said without turning his head. "After all, there's no point wasting anything else on you, since neither of you seem to notice anyone else until they kick you in the arse."
"Are you saying we're just a mite dense?" Bahzell asked i
"I'm saying I've met boulders with more brains than either of you," Kilthan told him tartly, and Bahzell laughed.
"Here now! That's no way to be talking to a man as has gone and signed on with Tomanāk !"
"Ha! I've never met a champion of Tomanāk yet who didn't need a little boy with a lantern to lead him around anywhere but on a battlefield!" Kilthan shot back, and Bahzell laughed again.
Kilthan said no more, even when the Horse Stealer deliberately gave him a few fresh openings, and Bahzell shrugged. Kilthandahknarthas of Silver Cavern was accustomed to doing things his own way, and he wasn't the sort to waste his time or anyone else's on frivolous concerns. Whatever he wanted to discuss was probably important, and Bahzell was willing to let him get to it in his own good time.
In the meanwhile, the Horse Stealer and Rianthus chatted amiably, bringing one another up to date on all that had passed since Bahzell and Brandark had left Kilthan's employ in Riverside. The hradani enjoyed the conversation—it was good to catch up on the affairs of the men who had been his companions in arms—and the walk also gave him a chance to see a bit more of Silver Cavern than he had upon his arrival yesterday.
Unlike Mountain Heart, Silver Cavern had been built exclusively by and for dwarves. With the exception of a few thousand humans like Rianthus and his men, who had become almost adoptive members of one of the great clans, only dwarves lived in Silver Cavern, and there were none of the surface homes which had covered the approaches to Mountain Heart.
Silver Cavern was also the better part of five hundred years older than Mountain Heart, and much larger. The original silver veins from which the city took its name had played out within two centuries of its founding, but there were other ores under the East Wall Mountains. More importantly, perhaps, there were also at least two powerful subterranean rivers, and the Silver Cavern dwarves made full use of them.
The city proper sprawled over half a dozen main levels, and an entire host of secondary and tertiary ones meandered off on their own. Bahzell was privately certain no one had the least idea where all the tu
Oddly enough, those laborers seemed to cherish little resentment of the wealthy compared to other places Bahzell had visited since leaving Hurgrum. Not that dwarves weren't ambitious, for very few people were more ambitious. No doubt there was a great deal of not-too-deeply-buried envy in the stereotype of the greedy, avaricious dwarf cherished by many members of the other Races of Man. Like most stereotypes, it was a gross exaggeration in many respects, yet a remarkable percentage of the world's wealth did end up in dwarvish hands somehow. By the standards of peasants in places like Navahk or the Land of the Purple Lords, even the poorest of Silver Cavern's dwarves were unbelievably rich, but they didn't compare themselves to outlanders. They compared themselves to their own wealthy, and every single one of them aspired to amass the fortune which would let him move to the High Quarter.
But that was the point—and, no doubt, the reason for much of their reputed avarice. They wanted to acquire wealth and the things that went with it, and they both believed they could and were completely willing to work like a lake full of beavers to attain that goal. When others talked of how dwarves were eternally on the lookout for opportunities to squeeze another kormak out of someone, they were absolutely accurate. There were exceptions, of course, as there were in all things, but the average dwarf was constantly working, thinking, and looking for opportunities. As a people, they didn't waste time sitting around envying others; they got on with improving their own lots, or those of their children, at least, and they had two- or three-hundred-year life spans in which to do it.
Small wonder there was a sense of bustling energy about Silver Cavern, even in the winter, Bahzell mused, and at least there was always room for upward mobility—in every sense of the word.
The underground city was liberally supplied with spiral ramps and staircases between levels, and some busier, heavily traveled sections also boasted moving cars which Kilthan called "elevators" to move people even more efficiently. Now the dwarf led Bahzell and Rianthus down one of the more secluded stairs, winding steadily deeper and deeper into the living rock of the mountains. The stairwell was on the cramped side for Bahzell, and the risers' height had been pla
He kept a careful eye on his surroundings, as much to take his attention off those increasingly insistent calf muscles as anything else. Like Mountain Heart and, to a lesser extent, Tu
Bahzell hadn't seen it, of course, but Tharanal had pointed out the peak beyond which the city's main reservoir lay as they approached Silver Cavern yesterday, and pipes from it fed not only public buildings and private dwellings but also the fountains which danced and splashed at major intersections. The springs and freshets which had been loosed in the course of the city's excavation had also been trained, and streams ran cheerfully down rough, natural-looking beds carefully inset into the smooth floors of passages and halls. Here and there, those streams ran together into deep pools where huge, exotic goldfish and carp nudged up against stepping stones or swam their slow, endless dances under the arches of delicate bridges.