Death of a Dwarf

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 5926

Fred had just a few seconds in which to react. He realised that, whatever the rider might be - ghost, zombie, or something more frightening even than those - the noise that the horse's hooves made and the debris it was kicking up indicated that it was a real, solid being. If so then, powerful animal though it was, it would struggle to make any progress through the trees and bushes that thickly lined the path along which it galloped. "Off the path!" Fred shouted to the dwarves, as he dived into the bushes. Dokken and Lem reacted quickly enough, and followed Fred's example, but Baren did not. He raised his battle-axe to try to ward off the descending broadsword, but he never had a chance. The horseman's momentum ensured that the sword smashed aside Baren's axe, before it neatly sliced off the dwarf's head.

Not stopping, the horse and rider continued on down the path until they were out of sight. As Fred and the dwarves emerged from cover, Fred saw that the face of the normally impassive Dokken wore an expression of deep shock; Lem seemed rather less affected. Perhaps Fred's guess that Baren had been Dokken's twin had been correct. The surviving dwarves buried Baren where he had fallen, digging a grave with their axes and then finding rocks with which to build a cairn over the grave. Then they collected their packs from where they had dropped them nearby, dividing the contents of Baren's between the other two, and followed Fred as he led them out of the forest. Not a word was spoken until they had emerged into the open.


Once they had reached what the dwarves considered a safe distance away from the forest, they made camp and tried to get some rest, though the night was now far advanced. Fred brooded for a while about the ghost of Alice de Vere. He had been convinced of her goodness when she had led him out of the forest, and it had been a shock to witness her dark side. What had dwarves once done to her, to make her hate their race so?

Eventually he dozed off. As the first hint of dawn stole into the sky, he woke up again, having slept for only a couple of hours. Dokken and Lem were sitting by the fire. Had they slept at all? He knew that dwarves needed far less sleep than humans did. Unaware that Fred was awake, they continued the conversation they had been having. Perhaps recent events had made them less careful than usual. "I can't help feeling a bit sorry for her," Lem was saying. "After all, she didn't have to join in the fight. And if she hadn't killed their leader, then we'd have had more casualties - maybe even have lost." "You aren't criticising what Tarin did, are you?" asked Dokken, who seemed to have largely recovered from the shock of Baren's death. "No, of course not," said Lem, sounding worried at the suggestion. "You know I'm loyal. And anyway our healers are far better than any the humans have, so she has a better chance this way of not being crippled or scarred for life. I just think the fates have been rather unkind to her." "But she's only a human. And if Tarin can use her to help our cause, then that must be good, surely?" "Of course," said Lem, sounding rather uncomfortable. They lapsed into silence.

A torrent of thoughts and emotions were running through Fred's mind. So Astra was alive after all! Though he could hardly be blamed for having been duped, nevertheless he couldn't help feeling a deep sense of guilt at having let the dwarves take her away, a guilt that largely took away the joy that he would otherwise have felt at learning that she lived. As he saw things, the only way he could ease that guilt and restore his honour was to rescue her. To do that, he had to find her first, of course. He could only think of one way of discovering where she had been taken.

  1. Drawing his sword, he began to creep up behind the two dwarves.

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JH

12/6/1999 2:45:58 PM

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