Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories Page 9

  “I see,” Marcipor said in a way that made Marcus doubt very much that he did. “So what is the meaning, then?”

  “The meaning of the event of his taking the elf sword and subsequent bearing of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t any idea at all. I may not even be correct. Perhaps Lord Fáelán simply wishes to see his nephew revenged. Although I doubt that. Familial relationships aren’t quite as close among the elves, I understand. One can see how living several hundreds of years might encourage a certain amount of distance between the various members of a family. It’s bad enough having to listen to Sexto tell the same five jokes over and over again. After one hundred years of them, I think I’d have to take vows with the Quiricusians before I murdered him.”

  “Don’t you think he would have made for a better travel companion than the one we’ve got?” Marcipor asked softly.

  Marcus glanced back at Lodi. The dwarf still sat his mule heavily, but when they’d changed his bandage upon arrival at the monastery, there hadn’t been any ill-hued stains indicating infection. And if the dwarf didn’t take much away from the tedium of the road, he also didn’t add to it. Sextus, like a sword, could easily cut either way. While Marcus knew he’d eventually miss his cousin, at this early hour the dour silence of the dwarf was much to be preferred over what would have been a long and energetic listing of grievances.

  Neither Zephanus nor Claudius Serranus rode near them this morning. In fact, as the morning wore on, it became apparent that the Michaelines had been commanded to stay away from the two elves—and anyone else who didn’t belong to their order. Marcus couldn’t blame Captain Hezekius for the change, in light of yesterday’s disastrous near-altercation. But he regretted it all the same. Riding a horse could be a great pleasure when one was galloping through open fields, but this slow, monotonous walk over mile after mile of unchanging road was about as tedious as anything Marcus had ever encountered in his life.

  The scenery was little changed from the day before. The mountains in the distance seemed no closer, and the scrub brush harbored little in the way of interesting fauna. Fortunately, the promised clouds made their appearance and shielded their necks and faces from the worst of the mid-morning sun. Marcus hoped they would not burn away before the oppressive heat of the afternoon.

  He found it hard to imagine what it must be like for the legionaries, marching along these roads for days at a stretch, scorched by the sun while carrying all of their supplies, armor, and possessions on their backs. No wonder they were so fearless in battle! Facing an army of howling orcs and shrieking goblins would almost seem like paradise after weeks on the unforgiving road, especially if one could wait in the comfort of the shade for their attack.

  He found himself wondering why the legions didn’t march at night and sleep during the day. Why didn’t they ride at night themselves, come to think of it? Surely that would make more sense than to subject themselves to this brutal regimen. His saddle creaked as he shifted in it trying to find a spot on his thighs that had not been rubbed nearly raw the day before. But why bother? It wasn’t midday yet and they had at least six more hours to ride today, so by the time they were permitted to dismount for the evening, whatever spot he’d managed to miss yesterday would be thoroughly chafed.

  Marcipor rode along beside him, his head cast down and his eyes half-closed. He’d made a game attempt to keep up the conversation at first, but now he too rode in a shell of silent contemplation of his own misery. Ahead of them, a few of the Michaelines began to sing, but their voices faltered when an older warrior glared at them, and soon the column was silent again except for the interminable clop-clop-clop of the horses’ hooves on the flattened stone-and-mortar crusta.

  A gravelly voice interrupted his morose moss-gatherings.

  “Forget what the priest told you.”

  “About what?” He was too surprised to hear the dwarf address him to say anything else.

  “The elves. Yesterday.”

  “You don’t think Cladius Serranus killed the elf lord? If not, then where did he get that sword? That Lord Fáelán doesn’t seem inclined to doubt him.”

  “I meant his idea that the elves are dying because they want to die. Nonsense.”

  “Quite possibly. But Serranus does seem to have some experience of them. And you must consider that they’ve lost half their kingdoms too, more than half, actually, and five of their seven royal lines have failed. There aren’t anywhere near so many elves as there used to be. Perhaps they exhausted themselves in their war against the Witchkings. They never really recovered from that.”

  “Five of the seven?” Marcipor asked. “I thought there were still three kingdoms?”

  “There are, but the House of Silverspume isn’t royal. King Ithamar’s father succeeded the last Deeptide king after he was killed in a battle with the Tritonian Mer.”

  “The Witchkings wasn’t just their war,” Lodi growled. “The dwarves fought too. So did the orcs and men. But elves aren’t dying out because of the Witchkings, or the fish-lovers, or because they read too much poetry. It’s that cursed elven pride that’ll do for them in the end.”

  “It is written ‘pride goeth before a fall,’” Marcus admitted. “But I find it difficult to imagine that you spent much time immersed in Holy Writ during your employment by the stables of the Reds. Or anywhere you happened to find yourself before your inadvertent visit to our great city.”

  “I wasn’t visiting, I was a slave!”

  “As you say,” Marcus nodded, too interested to hear what the dwarf was saying to bother correcting him. “Do continue.”

  “They’re arrogant beyond all reason, probably arrogant beyond your capacity to believe or understand. They won’t change, they can’t change, because doing so would mean admitting that they’re not a race of demigods superior to dwarf and man alike.”

  “What about orcs and goblins?”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Of course. Why do they have to change, though? What is the problem?”

  “I don’t think your old priest noticed. He was probably too busy just trying to stay alive.That, or he can’t tell one pretty, beardless face from another. But do you know how men say that dwarves are all alike, that there’s no difference between dwarf and dwarva?”

  “Dwarva?”

  “A female dwarf, a dwarf-mother.”

  “Ah, I’ve heard it said that they have beards too, and they fight like the men. Or rather, dwarves.”

  Lodi smiled thinly beneath the orange stubble of his growing beard. He made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a cough. “That’s not true. Few men have ever seen a dwarva, for they seldom leave the safety of the mines and mountains. But it is true of the elves.”

  “I can only assume you are referring to the fighting, and not the beards?”

  “I am that.”

  “The elf maidens fight? Really? I’ve never read a single scholar who made note of that. And Magnus never mentioned it in any of his old stories either. How do you know?”

  Lodi gestured to his bandaged side. “The training master told you I got this during the Iron Mountain spectacle.”

  “Yes, I recall.”

  “I was there.”

  Marcus stared at the dwarf, amazed. He glanced over at Marcipor and saw that he too was surprised by Lodi’s casual statement.

  “You were there, during the great siege?” Marcipor asked. “But that was so long ago!”

  “We may not live as long as elves, slave boy, but we aren’t as short-lived as men either. I was there from the start to the end, seven years all told. I saw the Troll King die, I saw the great duel between Grokthorn and Gorbag, and I couldn’t tell you how many orcs and goblins and spiders and wolves fell before my axe. Could tell you how many trolls, though, that I could tell you.”

  “How many?” Marcus asked.

  “Not a one. Never managed to kill a single rockhead in all that time, if you can believe it.Leastways n
ot by my axe.”

  “What does this have to do with the elves?” Marcipor wanted to know.

  “Not much. But do you want to know about elves, or do you want to know about Iron Mountain?”

  “Both,” Marcus answered. “I want to know about both.”

  So, as they rode beneath the grey shield of the clouds, Lodi told them.

  IA Q. VII A. I CO. I

  Respondeo: De hac quaestione, variae opiniones erat. Imprimis, si anima sua natura absoluta res esset, quae creata fuisset sola, probaretur quod anima neque homo neque aelvus esset. Sed, cum anima natura particeps in forma corporis necesse sit suae creata sit, non separatim, sed in corpore.Siquidem anima res absoluta esset, simillima angelorum. Attamen quod anima particeps in forma corporis, considerandum est, secundum iusta principia, particeps in genere animalium. Ergo non potest illa base statui, sed necesse est considerare praecipuam naturam generis aelvi.

  MARCUS RODE ALONG the dusty road at the back end of what he hoped would turn out to be an important historical expedition. But at the moment the momentous journey was secondary to the every clop and shift of Barat beneath him. He was endlessly grateful that Lodi was suddenly willing to speak more than two sentences at a time. And as the dwarf spoke, the miles passed by and it was as if his words fell away and Marcus could see the events happening in his mind’s eye.

  It was the Savondese knight-errant, Sir Alwys d’Escard, who was responsible for the fame of the seven-year siege spreading throughout the wider world, Lodi said. He was not, as it was sometimes reported, the only man to have fought for the dwarves during the vast and terrible war that was waged between the armies of the Troll King and the dwarves of Iron Mountain. He was, as a matter of fact, merely a royal ambassador from the king of Savondir to what passed for King Guldur Goblinsbane’s court.

  There wasn’t another king in Selenoth so rude or so cruel as to entertain himself by juggling the skulls of courtiers with whom he had grown discontent. Even if there had been, no king would have been capable of doing so with skulls he had personally removed with his bare hands only moments before.

  D’Escard’s version of the great siege, written in a dactylic hexameter worthy of the heroism shown there, was long on vivid details that captured men’s imaginations, such as the terrible climb of The Twenty, who braved orc slings and goblin catapults and troll-thrown boulders to trigger a massive avalanche that buried the proud gates of Iron Mountain beneath masses of stone just as Guldur’s rams were about to shatter them.

  His rendition of the Breaking of the Elves, which recounted the dashing Prince Everbright’s doomed attempt to drive off the besiegers, was known to have brought even the most hard-bitten men-at-arms to tears. And few would forget D’Escard’s telling of the epic brawl between Bergulmor and Oskrug Orceater that followed the Goblinsbane’s sudden death, a titanic battle that not only broke the siege but divided the newly born kingdom of the trolls in twain as well.

  Too bad most of it was hogswallop.

  What it lacked, Lodi said, was the greater part of the story, namely the story as seen through the eyes of the dwarves. It was not merely that D’Escard’s The Siege of Iron Mountain lacked a true dwarven feel, composed as it was in High Savondese. But as a foreign member at the Troll King’s court, D’Escard had simply never been witness to the ugly, bloody struggles that took place within the dark roots of the mountain, the violent battles deep beneath the surface that comprised the greater and more decisive aspects of the lengthy siege.

  And so Lodi made to right that wrong for Marcus and Marcipor.

  Lodi was a young dwarf of fifty-two on the day that the first scouts reported that the rumors of an immense troll-led army massing near the foothills of the Volpiscenes were actually true. This was unthinkable for three reasons. First, the orc tribes weren’t in the habit of following the orders of their own grand chieftans, let alone a goblin or troll. Second, trolls didn’t lead armies.

  And third, only a fool or a madman would attempt to invade the mountainous Dwarflands, where much of the terrain was impassible and there was virtually nothing of value that was accessible to an invading army. There was great wealth throughout the four dwarven kingdoms of the Underdeep, of course, but that was a vast, uncharted, and lightless series of mazes. It was no place for anyone without a reliable source of light and an unerring sense of direction underground—of the sort possessed by nearly every dwarf and hardly any other sentient creature inhabiting Selenoth.

  Lodi had been a miner, he said, a successful one who, despite his youth, owned two silver veins, one of which was possessed of enough promise that he had thought of proposing marriage to a certain dwarva named Geral. Geral’s father owned a shield-factory that supplied King Hammerstone’s Iron Guard.

  Lodi was there paying court to Geral, intending to gift her with a small bit of ore from his most recent shaft, when one of the guardsmen, in full armor, entered the factory and told Geral’s father that all of his spare shields were required immediately, even those still lacking the king’s regalia worked in gold that customarily served as the boss.

  Furthermore, the guardsman said, the factory was to begin working around the clock so that as many shields as dwarvenly possible would be produced, and Geral’s father was to make a list of the materials he required and they would be delivered at the earliest opportunity. A second list would also be required of him, one consisting of the names of his workers, so they could be spared the forthcoming levy so that they might supply not only the Guard, but the militia, the levy, and any other dwarf who might raise a shield in defense of their mountain.

  “You look like a dwarf who knows how to swing a hammer,” the guard told Lodi. “A warhammer is much the same, except it’s easier to crack a skull than a rock.”

  “I can swing a hammer,” answered Lodi.

  “Then I advise you to come with me. Either you can fight with the King’s Own, or you can fight with young dwarves like yourself who don’t know an orc from a goblin on either side of you.”

  Lodi decided that his chances of surviving an encounter with the enemy were probably higher if he encountered them in the company of experienced warriors rather than fellow neophytes. And he also wanted to impress Geral. So he did as the guard suggested. First, though, he begged a shield from Geral’s father, who gruffly waved away any offer to pay for it, and for his efforts won a kiss on the cheek from a duly-impressed, wet-eyed Geral.

  He found it hard to regret that kiss even now, he said, although he cursed it many a time when the Iron Guard was once more summoned in the dead of the night. Again and again they were called to stand in the gap and cover the retreat of some lesser regiment or sometimes the militia when they’d been beaten back by a mighty troll, an elite force of orcs, or sometimes just the sheer numbers that the Troll King was able to throw at them. More than once he’d marched shoulder to shoulder with his grim-faced companions through a dark tunnel toward the enemy as fleeing dwarves streamed back to safety on either side of them, and he thought that he very well might be among those dwarves—were it not for that kiss.

  Usually, it wasn’t long before the Guard found themselves engaged and pressing forward over the bodies of dead dwarves who hadn’t been fortunate enough to fall back in time. Lodi realized that it was just as likely that he would have been numbered among those unfortunates.

  His training had consisted of a rudimentary fitting that saw his iron armor welded to fit him, more or less, and the receipt of a helm that neither fit him nor quite matched those of his fellow guards. He also received a hammer that had a heavier, broader head and a lighter shaft than the one to which he was accustomed.

  Then he was given a short lecture from a grey-bearded sergeant who informed him that if he ran, he’d better run toward the enemy because they’d treat him a good deal better than the sergeant would. Lodi saw no reason to doubt the dwarf, whose misshapen skull proved that he was very tough indeed. There were few who had survived even a glancing blow from a great orc’s spiked mace, b
ut Sergeant Malvern of the Iron Guard was one of them.

  After a meal and a brief swearing-in ceremony, which involved holding an iron chain and kissing an engraved image of King Hammerstone, Lodi found himself enlisted. In the company of twenty other armored dwarves he stood in the midday sunshine on a ridge that jutted out above the huge gates that were the primary means of entry to Iron Mountain.

  The gates were not the only means of entry, but they were the only ones that were easily spotted, and certainly the only ones that were large enough to permit entry to even a small portion of the great mass of movement that was pouring through the two passes that lay to the east between Mount Bray, Mount Saelenheil, and Toadfall Mountain like a pair of black rivers swollen by the wintermelt.

  The wolf-riders came first: goblin lancers astride the backs of lean, grey killing machines. Lodi stopped counting after he reached five hundred. Then came the boar-riders, foul-tempered orcs on the backs of even fouler-tempered swine. They were about twice the size of the goblins, but they carried swords and maces rather than lances. The stench of them, even from a distance and high above, was incredible, and Lodi found it hard to imagine how unbearable it had to be in their actual vicinity.

  The infantries followed, with regiment after regiment of unarmored goblins followed by countless club-dragging orcs. Thousands, tens of thousands of them trudged into what appeared to be predetermined positions. The large gaps they left caused some discussion among the guards for who, or what, would fill them.

  They soon learned. First came the elite orc regiments, heavily armored great orcs marching with a discipline and elan that had not been seen in any of the preceding regiments. Then came what Sergeant Malvern had said he feared most: a long series of wagons being drawn by powerful horned auchs containing what had to be the Troll King’s artillery, as well as an amount of supplies that would normally have been considerable had they accompanied an army one-tenth the size.