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  “Make sure that no one finds out about the castle, but go and gather information on what is happening in the outside world.” Claire’s eyes thinned as she remembered parts of the foreign memories.

  “It looks like the battle of divine will is returning again,” Claire said.

  Damien looked as if he were about to ask a question before he bowed. “Yes, mistress.”

  Claire turned, not watching him leave, her mind on new thoughts.

  Just where is he? Will he trace my will back? Will he remember? I’ll need to prepare.

  Chapter: New Life, Similar Situations

  Krosem pulled his cloak tighter against the wind.

  All of this running around for a trade deal. Why couldn’t the gnomes come to Kanwuhr? At least there the forges never stop and the air is always hot! None of this snow and blasted cold wind. He looked around.

  “Captain.” The young dwarven driver held out a flask.

  “Remember—no ranks,” Krosem grumbled, his tone lighter as he got his hands on the flask.

  The younger dwarf shrunk backward and nodded as Krosem took a big draw from the flask. The heated and spiced alcohol brought some warmth back to his body, tickling his throat on the way down.

  He let out a slight gasp of appreciation and sealed it back up. “Good stuff.” He passed it back.

  “Do you know how long negotiations will take?” the young dwarf asked.

  “However long it takes the traders, young Krazzack.” Krosem wrapped himself up again and sat back in his seat, looking out from his frozen helmet.

  He could tell the young dwarf was starving for conversation and without anyone around and the next stop being the gnome city where they were supposed to conduct the trade, he lightened up a bit.

  “Have you heard about those steam engines?” Krosem asked.

  “Machines that heat up, use water to move? I thought that they were just another strange gnome machine.”

  Krosem snorted, automatically replacing Krazzack’s strange for dumb.

  “Well, it looks like the gnomes have had another flash of brilliance. The steam engine only needs to be heated and then it can move things like mining carts, or it can lower and pull up heavy items, replace the working beasts and they only take metal to make and heat to function, unlike the beasts that have to be rested and fed regularly. If we can get the gnomes to work with us, then we can sell this steam engine to others.”

  “Why don’t they just make more of them?” Krazzack asked.

  “The creator is a bit strange and she is hard to talk to. She doesn’t have the backing from the gnomes, who think that she’s odd—don’t even believe in her steam engine.”

  “And we trust her?” Krazzack asked.

  “We wouldn’t but Raelynn, the lord’s daughter, is friends with the gnome and she was able to bring back a smaller working model. She got accolades for making a powerful tool; we take on production and build them for the rest of the world,” Krosem said.

  Krazzack grunted in acknowledgement, impressed. Krazzack’s voice dropped low, into an almost whisper. “Why all the secrecy?”

  “We don’t want the gnomes to find out about the steam engine and if someone else was able to get the design, then they could get ahead of us and we would have direct competition as soon as we start,” Krosem said.

  There was a cracking noise ahead as the caravan started to slow.

  Krosem looked at the front of the caravan. A tree crashed down right in front of the lead carriage. The towing beasts let out scared growls as they forced the carriage to stop. The others behind braked and moved to either side so they didn’t run into their rear.

  Another tree crashed down behind the group as Krosem grabbed his blunderbuss tighter.

  “Defensive formation!” he yelled. Moments later, he heard war cries coming from the snow-covered forest on the left side, and from the boulder-covered right side as bandits crested the hill and charged forward.

  Human mountain bandits, Krosem thought in anger as he saw familiars running among the humans, who wore war paint on their faces.

  “Move it!” Krosem yelled as he stood up, pulling out a pistol from his belt. It went off in an explosion of smoke and noise.

  A barbarian was struck and flew back; their familiar, a gray bird, let out a cry and rushed forward. Its body became more ethereal as the power that had sustained it slowly leaked away with the death of its contractor.

  “Begone, apparition!” Krosem yelled, storing away his empty pistol and drawing out another from his belt. A blade with fine runescript lay under the barrel, meeting the familiar. It let out a cry as it ran into Krosem’s blade, making him stumble back as it disappeared into a gray fog.

  “Pesky smoke!” Krosem fired his second pistol, and put it away, drawing another with his right again, a cloud of smoke around him as he fired.

  Long rifles that were as long as a dwarf was tall, cracked.

  Blunderbusses fired into the sky, cutting down familiars.

  Krazzack was guiding the carriage-mounted break-buss, firing it as he went. The box-like four-barrel gun shredded whatever lay in its path.

  “Down!” Krosem bellowed as he smacked his forearm. A spring-loaded shield spiraled out from his arm. He covered Krazzack and himself with the shield as arrows pinged off the shield.

  Krosem jammed his pistol through the opening in the shield. Using a small eye slit, he fired at the closing bandits.

  The powder must have shocked them; their people are already here. Unless they want to hit their own people, they won’t be able to fire their useless arrows.

  Krosem put the pistol away. The smoke from it made him cough as he slid it into its empty loop and drew another from the second loop, still holding his shield up.

  A bandit got too close to the carriage; a blunderbuss went off, tearing them and their familiar apart, striking several others with shards of metal.

  “Want a bit of old Raldras, do yah! It’ll take till the forges go cold in Hirn before that!”

  Krosem couldn’t help but grin at the old dwarf’s fighting spirit as the carriage driver got them into a box-like formation. Krosem found himself close to the middle, with three carriages to the front, then two on either side of his carriage, then six more lined up in two rows of three.

  He smacked his shield, but it didn’t go back. It had been dented by the attacks. “Damn useless shield,” he complained, sliding it off his arm and dropping it.

  He looked to Krazzack. The young dwarf cracked his smoking break-buss and was loading more of the shiny brass shells into the still-smoking gun.

  He nodded to Krosem, his face pale but resolute.

  Krosem only had time to pat him on the back as he pulled off his cloak and started moving to the other caravans, jumping on the beasts, having a hard time keeping his balance. But his low center of gravity, with his powerful legs, made it a bit easier. He balanced with a blunderbuss in one hand and a satchel of ammunition in the other as he clambered up a carriage and jumped down beside another, where a dwarf had one leg on her carriage, the other braced on another right beside it as she tracked something.

  The rifle went off in her hands. A wave of smoke covered her as she dropped to the ground, smacking on the massive bolt on the rifle.

  Another explosion sounded out somewhere in the forest a moment later.

  “How’s it going, Millie?” He slung the ammunition satchel over his armor as he tried to see through the stinging clouds of gun smoke.

  “Set up well. Most coming from the forest—more cover there, harder to run fast on the side of the Stoha range,” she said in clipped tones as she took out a bronze round the size of her hand, putting it into the breech and slamming the bolt forward and locking it.

  “You find the commander yet?” Krosem looked between carriages. He fired his blunderbuss, causing several to drop to the ground and others cry out. The mountain barbarians barely had enough to eat and their armor was made from weak animal hide, usually pieced together from
multiple small animals.

  Against dwarven weapons, it’s as if they aren’t even wearing armor.

  He put the blunderbuss on the ground, putting his feet on the end of the barrel as he heaved on the underbarrel foregrip.

  “Come-on-you-bastard!” he yelled as the foregrip clicked backward, sending a bronze shell casing flying out.

  He kicked the foregrip forward as it grabbed a new shell from the side-mounted magazine, only stopping when he heard a clicking noise. He raised the blunderbuss again, finding a new area where the barbarians looked as if they were grouped together.

  Another wave disappeared in a cloud of smoke as he repeated the process of reloading his blunderbuss.

  “There are too many of them and not enough of us,” Millie said in her cold, detached tone.

  “Krazzack, you there?” Krosem yelled.

  There was a loud noise from where Krosem had been, where Krosem left him.

  “What!?” Krazzack yelled.

  “Protect the center!” Krosem yelled.

  “Doing it!” Krazzack yelled back.

  A barbarian yelled at them wordlessly; it had gotten on top of the carriage they were fighting behind.

  Millie’s pistol silenced them, causing them to drop between the carriages into the snow below.

  “Lift?” Millie asked.

  Krosem slung his blunderbuss and squatted, cupping his hands.

  She ran at him, a pistol in each hand and her rifle running up her spine. She stepped into his hand as he grunted, tossing her up. She jumped forward, arcing up and onto the top of a carriage. He heard her pistols going off as Krosem grabbed a pistol and started to climb the ladder of the nearest carriage to look out over the fight.

  A human head greeted him, climbing the other side of the carriage.

  His expression changed and he could see the urgency in their eyes as they increased the speed that they climbed.

  Krosem’s pistol went off, blowing the barbarian clean off the carriage.

  “Barbarians these days, no hey, how are you—just raghh, scream, shout!” Krosem complained as he got onto the carriage. The guys and gals were fighting on the carriages or between them, using their small stature to make it hard for the human barbarians to get at them easily.

  Krosem fired his blunderbuss, knocking several humans off the roofs of the carriages.

  He grunted, using his hand to crank on the foregrip. Thankfully, it was just like a hammer and, dwarves, although short, had incredible brute strength, allowing him to eject a smoking shell and fire again in a matter of seconds, clearing a cone space ten meters long.

  “The hell?” he muttered. He saw something black falling from a cliff. It slammed into the ground, smacking boulders along the way and being sent airborne again, actually passing confused-looking barbarians as it got closer.

  “What kind of idiot rolls off a cliff?” Krosem muttered, wondering whether he was losing his mind as the human-looking black object continued to bounce and roll its way forward, its arms flailing around.

  Krosem fired again, unable to look away as he could now see that it was a set of black armor with some colorful design on its back.

  It smacked three bandits in the back, and came to rest on top of them.

  They were groaning as the armor started to move and shake as if possessed.

  “Ants! Damn ants! Get out of my armor!”

  Krosem about curled his toes up and fell over as his eyes went as big as the business end of his smoking blunderbuss.

  “Aghh! Dammit! Bandits, seriously? Come on! Get out of my ARMOR!”

  Everyone looked over as his last word resounded through the forest and the mountain range.

  A barbarian let out a yell and smacked him with a stone axe as another struck him with a rusted axe.

  “Put your weapons down and I’ll let you go,” the armored knight said.

  Another attacked him as he danced, still trying to get the ants out of his armor; he struck the man and sent him flying into a group of three others, dropping them to the ground. He moved through the attackers nearest him, leaving them groaning on the ground in a few short seconds.

  A dancing knight—well, this is a first!

  “It’s just one person!” a barbarian yelled as they piled in to fight the knight, who was out in the open instead of the now-entrenched dwarves in the carriage formation.

  “Dave, I summon you!”

  In contrast to the knight’s words, the air was stirred up. A golden glow appeared around the knight’s arms, growing bigger and more radiant before the light turned into a large head and golden scales that flowed from the knight’s arm.

  “A dragon?” Krosem asked. Seriously, he was not sure what the hell funny mushrooms, numbing leaves, or dizzy herb he had taken this morning for this to happen.

  The familiars started to look at the dragon in awe, not listening to their contractors, looking like subjects meeting an emperor, unsure what to do in such a situation.

  The dragon looked down upon the world as the knight’s arm stopped glowing. The dragon, over one hundred meters long, circled around the knight in the sky.

  It raised its head in the sky, letting out a roar.

  “GROOOOOAAA—” The familiar seemed to catch sight of the dancing knight, who seemed to be putting his right hand forward, its left and then shaking it all about.

  Its roar was cut off as it tilted its head to the side, as if to ask just how he had got such a master.

  “Bandits!” the knight said, shaking and jiving around.

  The mountain barbarians turned bandits seemed to come back to their new and much stranger reality as they sent attacks at the knight, who oddly dodged all of the attacks, while somehow making it look like a dance number. The attacks merely bounced off the golden dragon in the sky.

  The dragon let out a snort. Smoke clouds appeared out of its nostrils as it looked at the bandits.

  The bandits all looked at the dragon and the knight.

  Even Krosem felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise.

  A man rushed forward with a yell.

  The others gathered their voices just as the first man went silent; the dragon bit down on them and the man disappeared into their body.

  “You’ll get indigestion from the armor, Dave!” the knight said, sashaying to the side and shaking his shoulders.

  The dragon let out a series of yowls as if impersonating the knight’s words, rolling its eyes. It let out a breath of lightning, which arced between the bandits as if it had eyes of its own, creating a golden circle of light as extra-crispy, well-done bandits fell to the ground, smoking slightly.

  Dave didn’t seem to be in a merciful mood as he yowled and complained. He’d disregarded the bandits and the dwarves already as he berated his master.

  “Run or else we’ll all die!” one of the bandits yelled.

  “Oh, come on! I was asleep as well! It’s not like I wouldn’t have called you out! What do you mean, you’ve been talking to Bruce and Penelope? Why was Wendy asleep?” the knight asked.

  “How does someone have such a powerful familiar? Are they a Knight of the Light?” a bandit asked as they all ran away as fast as their legs could take them.

  “Knight of the Light—what poet bardic ass made up that little rhyme?” the knight complained as he shook his leg. A few bugs fell to the ground and he stopped moving around.

  The dragon continued to answer with yowls and roars as the remaining bandits made a run for it and the dwarves checked on one another.

  Krosem lowered his blunderbuss in stages, looking to his other dwarves. “Tend to the wounded?” he said, just not really sure how to comprehend what he had seen and was seeing.

  “Anthony!” An irate voice came from the boulder-covered plains.

  Krosem looked over to see a dark-gray elf jumping across the boulder nimbly. She didn’t even look at her feet as she jumped from rock to rock.

  Not fair! I have to watch when I walk up stairs because they’re all a blas
ted human’s size or even worse, beast men! He let out a snort, angered at the elves’ nimbleness.

  There was a sound of rock hitting metal. The knight looked around, a rock pinging off his helmet.

  “Hey, sorry—stepped into that ant nest and then went all up my armor,” Anthony said.

  “You—!” She brought herself up short as she finally was able to see all of the dwarves, the caravan, and the trees as well as the barbarians on the ground. “What did you do?”

  “Dave did it,” Anthony said, innocent as can be, not understanding her words, as he pointed up at the golden dragon.

  “Dra—dragon?” the elf said in surprise.

  Dave swam through the air and looked down at the elf, examining her with bright eyes.

  The elf was sweating as Anthony, the knight, looked back to the elves.

  “To the Ancestor’s rest,” he said.

  Krosem stopped. That greeting was ancient, something that was only used by the oldest dwarves who remembered a time after the great war.

  “Are you trying to make fun?” one of the dwarves asked.

  “I did not mean any offense. I am sorry if my words or my speech is a bit rusty. I have not used it in some time.” The man didn’t speak in common, but in ancient, Dwarvish.

  It took even Krosem some time to figure out all he had said.

  “How do you know ancient Dwarvish?” Old Raldras asked in ancient Dwarvish, his words more halted and slower.

  “I learned it from an old friend. I helped him out and he helped to smith my armor and helped me talk to Tairlyn Stone Hammer to forge my blade.” The knight’s tone relaxed a bit, as if following memories.

  “Tairlyn Stone Hammer fell in the great war five hundred years ago!” Raldras’s voice turned angry.

  “Well, I can’t forge a maker’s mark, can I?” The knight pulled out his sword. The dwarves tensed up, but he handed it pommel first to Raldras.

  He took it with an angry snort and took out an inspection stone. The runescript lit up as there was a reaction with the sword. A mark appeared at the bottom of the blade.

  “It’s her mark. How were you able to?” Raldras had a number of questions but the man simply took back his blade.