Warriors [4] Theros Ironfield (36 page)

Hederick didn’t get the joke. “Yes, yes,” he snapped. “Steel to Mister Ironfeld’s smithy by tomorrow.”

The guard appeared baffled. “Where are we to obtain the steel, sir?”

Hederick glared at the man. “There is, as I recall, a shipment bound for Thorbardin. Confiscate it.”

“The dwarves won’t be happy about that, my lord,” said the guard dubiously.

“It is not my life’s work to make dwarves happy!” Hederick roared. “Tell them it is the will of the Seekers and the new gods!”

The guard left to carry out his orders. Another took his place in the office.

“Thank you, sir. If I get the required steel by tomorrow, I will have the weapons ready in time. A good day to you, sir.” Theros bowed. Two more guards escorted him out.

According to Hederick, the High Theocrat was a position of spiritual leadership within the community. In fact, he was a bureaucrat with power, and the will to use it for his own personal gain. He ruled Solace with a mailed fist, his hobgoblins keeping the townsfolk in line, and the mercenaries under his command keeping the peace according to Hederick’s rules.

The weapons that Theros was making weren’t going to be used to protect the people of Solace. They weren’t meant for the Seeker guard. No humans and few hobgoblins could effectively wield a weapon of the size called for by the specifications. The only soldiers whose strength and sheer size allowed them to wield such weapons were those in the armies of the Supreme Circle of the Minotaurs. However, minotaur warriors usually preferred axes. So who could be needing such weapons, and why this far south?

Ogres, maybe, but Theros doubted the swords were meant for ogres. The hilts of the weapons were specifically designed to be used by someone—or some
thing
—with a clawed hand. Claws, not fingers.

Hederick was selling these weapons for a profit, a personal profit. The temple would see little of the money. No one would question the matter. No one dared. Several people who had been foolish enough to defy Hederick were either languishing in prison or had simply disappeared.

Bad times were coming for Solace. Theros could feel the tension mount in the town from day to day. It was the same sort of atmosphere that he remembered from living in Sanction and near Neraka. There was a taint of evil in the air, like smoke drifting in from a nearby fire.

War was coming, though the people of Solace were
doing their best to try to deny it. Theros was engaged in his own personal, internal struggle. War would catch up with him again; there was no place he could go to avoid it. Already, he’d been discreetly approached by the emissaries of the Dragon Highlord Verminaard. Theros’s reputation as a fine weapons-smith had spread far. Theros had turned them down flat.

He wondered at himself, wondered at his reasons.

Theros was familiar with evil. He had served in armies led by evil commanders, and lived in places that were sinkholes of evil. Still, he could not reconcile evil with honor, the guiding principle of his life.

And what was the nature of evil? Theros had often asked himself that question. He had finally decided that, for himself, evil was denying the rights of other people. It was the determination that what you believed was right and that everyone else was wrong. And because they were wrong, they no longer mattered.

The minotaurs had raised Theros to believe that because he was human, he was inferior. He had even come to think that himself. Now that he was older, he realized that he had truly admired minotaurs like Hran and Huluk because they made him feel that he had worth. They made him feel almost equal.

Almost. And then only because Theros had gone out of his way to prove himself to them.

Now the minotaur army was on the march again, delighting in conquering, enslaving, subjugating. Sargas wanted Theros to be a part of this evil army. But Sargas also demanded that Theros be honorable. How could one maintain honor by denying another the right to live in freedom? The minotaurs did not seem to have any problem with this dichotomy, but Theros did.

Theros wished he could find someone to advise him on this. Someone to share his doubts and feelings with. But no one in Solace knew of Sargas, the minotaur god, or of any other of the “old” gods, for that matter. According to the High Theocrat, the old gods had abandoned the people at the time of the Cataclysm, some three hundred or more years ago. Now new gods ruled Krynn, gods who didn’t
appear to have much interest in good, evil or honor. All these new gods seemed to care about was money.

Theros couldn’t see how a money-grubbing bureaucrat would know anything about gods. Then again, how would a weapons-smith know anything more? Sargas had come to Theros twice. The second time—when Theros had just left the army of Baron Dargon Moorgoth—was when Theros first began to have doubts. Sargas may have been a god of honor, but he was also a god of vengeance, retribution, and cruelty.

Since seeing Sargas last, Theros had decided to go his own way. He did not abandon his faith. He did not believe in these “new” gods. He still believed in Sargas, but he no longer prayed to Sargas for assistance. And Theros dreaded the day he had to face Sargas again.

He walked back to his shop, taking the overhead walkways. When he could look down upon the smithy, he climbed down the spiraling staircase to the ground. He was headed over to his smithy, when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the underbrush near several outlying trees. Odd. People in Solace didn’t usually spend time on the ground if they could help it. He stopped and looked, thinking perhaps it was children, who sometimes liked to hang about the forge. Theros didn’t like having children around. The forge was a dangerous place and he was always afraid one of them would get burned.

He peered intently into the trees, saw nothing.

He entered the forge to find that he had customers. A hobgoblin was stomping about impatiently, waiting for Theros to return. It was truly a bother not having an assistant to deal with such matters. Theros had come to know himself, however. He knew that he didn’t have the patience needed to train an apprentice. He would always feel guilty for the way he had abused Yuri first in Sanction and then in the army of Dargon Moorgoth. Theros’s temper ran away with him when he tried to work with someone else in his smithy. He could not give up the control that he needed to trust and work with an assistant. The bother of not having an assistant was the price he had to pay for remaining in control. It was a compromise that he could live with.

“Ironfeld!” The hobgoblin snarled. “I wait an hour. Where the devil—”

“Just a minute, please,” Theros said curtly.

Pushing past the outraged hobgoblin, Theros went through the forge and back into the storage room. There he had a window that looked out over the forest—right where he had seen movement. Theros carefully cracked the shutter and stared out. He waited. Nothing.

The hobgoblin shouted for Theros to hurry. “I want my dagger sharpened. This blade is dull! Hurry up!”

“You’ll wait as long as I want you to wait, or you can come and wrestle me if you like,” Theros shouted back.

The hobgoblin fell into a seething silence. Theros, with his massive chest and muscles well toned from use, could easily best a flabby hobgoblin.

Theros kept watching out the window. Suddenly, he spied the movement again. An elf stood up from a crouching position and glided silently back into the woods. The elf appeared to have been keeping a watch on the forge.

“Elves? In Solace?” Theros muttered to himself.

He thought they had all evacuated to Qualimori on Southern Ergoth.

Very curious. Very curious, indeed.

He went back to his customer. “Now, about that dagger …”

Chapter 31

Curious doings were the theme of the week, it seemed. First, there
was the order for the odd weapons that Theros had accepted from the High Theocrat. Second was the sighting of an elf near Solace, an elf keeping watch on Theros’s forge. And the third curious event was yet to come.

For the time being, Theros had his hands full of hobgoblins. Not for the first time, he wondered who had let these creatures into Solace.

First had been the hobgoblin with the dagger. A few swipes on the sharpening stone had honed the weapon. Theros had been about to tell the creature it could sharpen the weapon itself, when he realized that it probably had been the hobgoblin’s attempt at sharpening that had
dulled the blade.

Next came five hobgoblins hauling with them two large blocks of steel. Theros pointed to the corner of the shop. The hobgoblins shuffled under the strain, then dumped the steel in the area indicated. They just missed dropping the steel on their feet, but only because their commander, a hobgoblin named Glor, reminded them to watch their toes.

“So where did you get this from?” Theros asked.

“Bunch of dwarves. They not like it when we take, but High Theocrat order us to bring it to you. He say that you need it. Now you can finish job. Hey, you make me new sword now?”

The hobgoblin held up a sword. It looked like a dagger in the hobgoblin’s huge hand. Theros took the weapon, a finely crafted piece, and studied it. It was of dwarven make. He carried it with him into the storeroom in the back. He pulled out a long sword that had been made to order, but never claimed. The sword was a good one, but the dwarven-made weapon was a masterpiece. It was easily worth double the long sword.

Theros returned, carrying the long sword.

“Here, Glor, take this one in trade for the other.”

Glor looked at the blade with awe. He had never owned anything like this in his whole life. He had stolen most of what he possessed, but Theros guessed that the hobgoblin wasn’t the most successful of thieves. Glor nodded and babbled his thanks. Then he shooed out his four helpers, following them into the sunshine.

Theros turned back to his work. He felt guilty using the steel, but if he refused, Hederick would send his henchmen over to “convince” Theros that this was the wish of the new gods. Theros didn’t want trouble. He determined that, as soon as he was finished, he’d track the dwarves down and at least pay them for their loss.

He placed a large melting pot on the forge, placed one of the new steel blocks inside it. He began melting the steel, and poured it into prepared molds for the swords.

Hours later, the blades were cool enough and solid enough to be knocked from their molds. Wearing thick leather gloves, wielding a mallet, he broke the steel from
the wood. He plunged the steel into the water barrel that stood near the forge. Steam rose from the water as the liquid absorbed the heat. As it turned out, he wouldn’t need that other block of steel.

“Maybe I can return that to the dwarves,” he said to himself. He went over to the corner, bent down to retrieve the excess block of steel. Happening to glance out the window, he stood up straight at the sight of something curious.

Two barbarians, a man and a woman—humans known as Plainspeople—were walking along the ground beneath the vallenwood trees. Accompanying them was a knight in full armor. Theros stared. He’d heard of the Plainspeople, but he’d never in his life seen them. They kept to themselves, distrusting strangers, and he had never heard of them leaving their own lands. The male barbarian was exceedingly tall; he could have looked eye to eye with a minotaur. The woman was difficult to make out, for she was heavily bundled in a fur cape.

Theros’s gaze passed over the barbarians. After his initial astonishment, he was far more interested—from a professional viewpoint—in the knight.

The armor he wore was extremely well made, but very old-fashioned in design and workmanship. Theros almost wept with pleasure at seeing such fine work, and his hands itched to hold the marvelous sword the knight wore proudly at his side. The armor marked the man as a Solamnic Knight, but he wore no surcoat denoting his order.

Theros was suddenly taken back through the years to the night he had met Sir Richard Strongmail, the same night that honorable man had died from torture at the hands of Dargon Moorgoth’s soldiers. It was the last time that Theros had encountered a Knight of Solamnia. The knights were not welcome in Solace. According to the High Theocrat, the knights were a contributing cause to the Cataclysm and had personally destroyed the ancient holy empire of Istar.