Dark Thane

Nodding, the draconian extended his large clawed hand in a curiously human gesture, betraying the long years he had spent among them. Ferro reluctantly shook it, inwardly cringing at the scaly texture of the creature's reptilian flesh.

Withdrawing his hand from the draconian's grasp, Ferro closed the chest and pulled a scroll from his leather vest. He unrolled it and laid it atop the chest. It was a map of The Bog, with all its waterways and twisting paths and deathtraps precisely drawn to scale. Down its middle wandered a dark line that was the road. Pressing his finger against a certain spot, he said, "You will be able to ambush the king's party here."

A sudden burst of laughter interrupted his train of thought Lifting the tent flap, he saw that the larger body of draconians had entered the camp and were now passing around a bottle of dwarf spirits that the Theiwar had produced. The brotherhood of mercenaries is universal, he thought.

Ferro turned back to the map and continued, "The road is narrow here, with shallow bogs on either side where your group can hide."

General Zen leaned over and examined the map, nodding. "I will approach the king alone," he said. "After I kill him, the others will attack and destroy their force to the last dwarf."

Ferro intended to ask how Zen proposed to get close enough to the king to kill him, but he froze, his jaws snapping shut, at what happened next. The huge, silver-scaled draconian suddenly began to shrink before his eyes. At the same time, his scales receded into his skin and his reptilian features transformed into the likeness of a dwarf. In moments, the Daewar captain Ilbars Bleakfell stood before him, identical in every way to the dwarf Ferro knew was dead, from the top of his shaggy brown head to the decorative tooling on his boots.

10

The first half of the journey from Pax Tharkas had been uneventful.

An hour or so ahead of their baggage train, Tarn, Otaxx, and Mog had reached an ancient well near the ruined fortress of Zhaman, halfway between Thorbardin and Pax Tharkas. Otaxx had been collecting supplies for Thorbardin for some months, and their train of mules and ox-drawn wagons carried a small fortune in iron ore, Abanasinian grain, timber, and bolts of close-woven woolen cloth.

The dwarves did not approach the ruins any nearer than the well. Zhaman was said to be haunted. Long ago, it had been a fortress of the Conclave of Wizards, one of their places of study and training. Zhaman was far removed from human lands, and so the wizards found it a convenient laboratory for their more arcane and bizarre experiments, ones too dangerous to conduct near populated areas.

In the years before the Cataclysm, the wizards abandoned their fortress as they retreated from the persecution of the Kingpriest of Istar. For a hundred years after the Cataclysm, Zhaman had stood empty, until the archmage Fistandantilus led an army against Thorbardin during a time later known as the Dwarfgate Wars. While hill dwarves and humans battled the armies of Thorbardin on the Plains of Dergoth, Fistandantilus loosed powerful magic that not only destroyed both armies, but also Zhaman, and himself along with it. So mighty was this magical explosion that the plains had sunken and become The Bog, while the towers of Zhaman collapsed upon themselves and melted into the fearful skull-like visage that it now bore.

Tarn and his company had made camp an hour before sundown near the large ancient well in the hills north of The Bog. From their campfire, they could see Zhaman in the middle distance, while some distance behind it loomed the great profile of their mountain home. Even before they had finished setting up tents around the well, a runner arrived with news that the wagon train was under attack. The king and his company of more than a hundred dwarf warriors grabbed their weapons and arrived in time to drive off a party of goblin archers who had pinned down the trains in a narrow defile, killing most of the mules and oxen while the dwarves took cover under their wagons. Mog led a band of Klar into the hills and easily drove the goblins away without further losses, but the attack left them without the means to transport their supplies. Otaxx was loath to leave such valuable goods behind, but Tarn was moody and impatient to hasten his return to Thorbardin. He wouldn't allow the general to send to Pax Tharkas for more beasts of burden, and in the end, the dwarves themselves took the supplies and divided them up to carry on their backs. Only the timber was abandoned, along with the wagons.