BECMI Chapter 130 – A Call to Battle

1,393 dead beast-men, 62 urs.

The dwarves, to their credit, were productive and wanted their Regent of the Halls free. The 82,050 coins to free him and his guards were gathered, assembled, and deposited on the dais upon which the Regent and his guards waited, still manacled, petrified, yet completely aware of time passing and the efforts being taken to free them… and the numbers of dead going up and down.

It was very noteworthy that they went up much more often and farther than they had come down. Darkmoor troops overseeing the whole process looked upon both sides with disdain, but it was the dwarves who could not meet the eyes of Elgress Grun, the Flying Monk, a priest and famous hero of Darkmoor, who could not believe the dwarves were not disciplined enough to hold to a peace-bond.

Pointedly, the Curse would not break until the blood-price was paid and taken away safely, and then not until the following morning. Smirking beast-men sauntered up, daring the dwarves to shoot, and took away the coin in sacks and hides and boxes, traipsing away with it as their watching hordes in the distance hooted and shouted and jeered at the gritting dwarves… and as soon as they had their gold, they melted rapidly away.

Behind the scenes, a great deal of political maneuvering was going on.

Regent Karrackheim’s conduct had thrown a pall of dishonor over all the dwarves in the North, and his standing with them had suffered a critical blow. While his valor as a warrior and skill as a leader were not in question, the fact he’d been one to so casually break a treaty he himself had forged had cast aspersions upon not just his own character, but the character of all dwarves.

A scrupulously honorable race with a proud tradition of avenging promises others broke to them, and upholding promises they had made, his conduct was a deed that was going to force a change in the dwarves of the north.

He had acted like a King, above the rules and judgments of others, as if the honor of dwarves was what he declared it to be, and not a thing of its own.

His critics were even calling him the ‘fake King of the Dwarves of the North’, a searing insult to the clans who had come together to find a way that did not need a King Under the Mountain.

If the royal family of the Halls had possessed more personal ability and prowess, it might have been a moment where they could have recouped their loss of standing and made a play for power once more.

Alas, neither the elders nor their children had proved ambitious and driven enough to become the leaders the dwarves needed, looked down on for their lineage instead of praised for it. Indeed, most of the royal family’s younger generations had married off to distant clans and left the North entirely, wanting nothing to do with the clans that looked down upon them.

Such was the way of things. Now that the single biggest impediment to them was being removed, they still didn’t have the influence to reign in their fiercely independent former subjects.

The counter clicked down to zero on all fronts as the last of the octagonal holed coins of red gold were dropped upon the dais. The beast-folk, spread in sizes from two feet to ten feet tall, in every shade of skin color from red to violet, hides that were smooth, rubbery, chitinous, scaled, furred, hide, even feathered, chuckled in their own bestial language that somehow conveyed both their excitement and their appreciation for the shame the dwarves were feeling.

Probably nothing had united the beast-folk clans and tribes together like the promise of this blood gold. Even knowing how badly the dwarves burned to strike at them, it was not happening, which gave the savages a rather over-developed sense of invulnerability… as long as they didn’t fight, either.

Of course, the humans that were looking on weren’t so protected, and so the anthroids in all their variety prudently determined not to test them. If they died, the numbers did not go up!

I wasn’t there because I wasn’t all that popular with the dwarves there, what with forcing them to make this sacrifice and take this step to satisfy and ameliorate their dishonor, both in their eyes and those of others. They hadn’t wanted to do it, they would rather have just killed and been killed rather than let the news out, and lo, I had spoiled everything, in their eyes.

So, they should be thanking me, but they were too proud and pissed to do so.

Prince Ukker naturally had no such view, and was quite happy with how I’d handled it. Gold for honor was crude, especially in the wrong direction, but the pain and hurt it caused made material an abstract and forced the dwarves to confront their failure.

So when the last of the coins were hauled off by grinning beast-folk, the long night passed as the anthroids ran back urgently to their tunnels, and the dawn came.

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Stony skin crinkled, cracked, and split, falling to pieces that vanished as they hit the dais below. Flesh began to move, color replacing grays and blacks. A first breath was painfully taken, rasping as lungs began to move air after months of not breathing, eyes blinked, and manacles rattled and rasped as their owners were finally able to move after months of imprisonment under the moon and stars…

A cautious cheer went up from the dwarves as they converged on those released from the Curse of the Blood Peace, and the Regent of the Halls was free.

Dwarven beards grew slowly. Their hair was thicker and stiffer than those of men, and there was no magic to replace what had been hacked off from them. It was a shame the four of them would have to bear for many, many years, decades behind the full beard of an adult dwarf of age and wisdom, their shame visible to any dwarf who saw them for the first time.

They looked like clanless traitors, even if they were acclaimed as heroes.

The fate wasn’t that unusual, it was just that few dwarves ever survived captivity at the hands of the beast-folk.

He was still Regent of the Halls, but he did not know for how long. Himmelstern Karackheim turned over the letter in his hand, delivered to him personally by the Great Jordie himself, the most powerful Cleric in all the North. His severed finger and thumb had been returned to him by the divine magic of the Priest, but his missing hair was not considered an injury, and there was nothing to be done for it, even if his missing teeth, fingernails, many burn scars, and twisted joints and bones had all been made as good as new, along with the injuries of his comrades and bodyguards.

“From the Lady Edge?” he asked, unable to keep a derisive tone out of his voice.

Her Curse had locked him in petrified hell for months, and basically extorted tens of thousands of gold coins from the dwarf clans as ransom to release him! Nobody dared to say aloud that she was collecting the coins for herself, especially after she had basically massacred the Khirifi off the face of the world.

The Korshwa, the Imperials, the Ertobelle… they had all ceased any kind of aggressive moves against the lands claimed by Darkmoor. The fiercely independent Duchy of Elb was even clamoring to join the Kingdom of Darkmoor now!

Peace had settled in an uneasy grip across the north, held in the dainty hands of a ruby-eyed elfin in scarlet and black who rode a giant Bat around.

“Antius has full faith and confidence in her, if you are wary of her,” the ascetic priest informed him calmly, keen eyes studying the dwarven leader. Understandably, the dwarf looked quite tired and weathered after his ordeal, his weight still down and scars of the soul upon him that had not quite healed.

Himmel’s eyes glanced to the side table, where three items lay: a dagger, a helm, and a gauntlet, all forged by his own hand, and all returned to him. All laying out there, to remind him of his shame.

All three humans had returned the gifts, because he had given them as symbols of being dwarf-friends. All of them had firmly reiterated that they would personally call him and name him friend, but that he could not possibly be speaking for all dwarves when he named them dwarf-friends.

Such were their reputations that King Antius, the Azure Knight, and Pious Godfrey had each been acclaimed Dwarf-Friend by the Council of Mountain Halls, one of the very first items put to vote AFTER he had been released.

His own vote had been withheld, by a silent agreement that still stung. Their trust in him had been badly shaken, his deeds had cost them in both coin and honor, and even his most loyal followers paused to think before following him now.

And the elfin who had put this into motion, this slow and gradual fall he could see and feel coming, like an avalanche building up its stones before a collapse, had written a letter to him.

Antius trusted her. Perhaps because she did what she promised, and held true to her words… even though she clearly had the power to ignore the desires of everyone around her as she wished, not needing them to enact her will.

It was a power he thought he’d borne, and now bitterly realized he had not, and indeed, should never have even thought he did.

The Fake King. His whole life, of turning his people from the foolish plans of inherited nobles and royals and to judging people for who they were, not just the deeds of ancestors long dust, and he had ended up acting just like the kings and nobles who held so little power among the clans in the north.

The Immortals were mocking him, surely.

“What does she write me for?” he asked, unable to keep the surliness out of his voice. His life was falling down around him, and she was the one who had kicked the last pebble stopping the avalanche from moving.

The lean and active Priest sat back and sighed. “She talks of genocide,” he admitted candidly, the word enough to earn Himmelstern’s direct gaze. “Of the beast-folk.”

“She… wants to kill them all?” the Regent of the Halls asked, a little shocked. “After giving them dwarven gold?” he almost spluttered, but it came out venomously regardless.

“Giving them?” the Great Jordie asked archly. “She helped the dwarves buy back their honor and prove they could do it. A bitter price, to be sure, but I believe your life was worth it, Regent Karackheim,” he said sternly, and what could the dwarf say to that? “Do you think she profited he inquired, his eyes sharp, and his smile definitely not cheerful in the slightest. “Are you naming her a traitor and enemy so easily, when a dwarven prince and all his companions name her a Dwarf-friend, and you would not even be free of the beast-folk at all without her?”

Himmelstern closed his eyes and breathed deeply, calming his thoughts, trying to turn them from indignation and shame.

He took the letter from its envelope and opened it. He blinked at what first looked like elven script, which he could read, although the irregularity and artistic nonsense of it was a distraction, and instead found this was a flowing and organic style of Denthek rune-script, his own language, that he’d never really seen before, every single character in ink black as jet, with the thinnest line of scarlet within it.

It was like… music to his eyes, seeing the runes interpreted and laid out so, their blockiness and rigidity somehow melting and flowing, and he could even hear an elven melody flowing through the words in some kind of music and pacing as he scanned it.