The Sceptre of Samnos

New Friends Part 8

     The journey north to the Copper Mountains took two days. The trogs rode on mountain ponies, which were small but stocky and had great strength and endurance. Jerry had an ordinary pony, and Thomas and Lirenna rode on ordinary horses, hired for them by the trogs in the town, the cost being deducted from their wages. During the journey they chatted to the two smaller trogs whose names, they learned, were Jherek Tellerak and Rogil Firesteel. They were cousins of Shale, also descended from Redeye, but from his second and third sons respectively. Neither of them sported the prominent brow ridge that characterised the Granore direct line of descent, but they were prominent and wealthy nonetheless.

     They told the wizards some of the history of Dermakarak, about how it had been founded two hundred years before when Redeye had been on a prospecting trip and spotted a vein of gold bearing quartz, a rare find in a mountain range that had been mined and exploited for thousands for years by humans and trogs, and by other races before them. He had rushed back to Alka-Zarum to register his claim and had fought terrific battles with claim jumpers from another clan, the Stonedelvers. Both legal battles, as their rivals contested Redeye's right to that particular stretch of land in the complicated and interminable trog judicial system, and actual battles in which warriors of the two clans had met in the valley below the find. The Granores had won every battle and forced the Stonedelvers into a grudging retreat, but hostilities had never entirely ceased between them and plots and intrigues went on as the Stonedelvers sought various ways to weaken their rivals' hold on the valuable find.

     Redeye had died seventy nine years before, at the age of two hundred and eighty nine, young for a trog, whereupon his eldest son, Shale's father, had succeeded him as Manir. He was laid to rest in a crypt hollowed out of the solid rock of one of the village's corridor streets. The crypt was open to public viewing, so that friends and relatives could come and pay their respects, and the Proof of Mantellor, a family heirloom of great value and symbolic significance, was put on display in an alcove above Redeye's coffin, behind a sheet of unbreakable glass. For a while after the village's abandonment trogs had continued to visit, to pay homage to the great man, but when the goblins had begun moving in the place had become too dangerous and the visits had dried up. Old Redeye and the Proof of Mantellor were still there, though, waiting for the trogs to come and reclaim it.

     The mountains grew on the horizon ahead of them as they journeyed north, and the air grew steadily colder as the land steadily rose. They stopped for the night in the mining village of Clarrin's Claim, at an inn where Shale had rented rooms, and there they met the other members of the mercenary force they were joining. Most of them were trogs, about twenty of them, grim and battle hardened and with doubtful looks of faint hostility in their eyes as they regarded the three wizards, as if resentful of their intrusion into trog business. Fortunately, though, there were also seven humans among the mercenaries, and the graduates went to stand among them, hoping they'd give them a friendlier reception.

     Three of them were tough looking swordsmen, scarred and grim. Their clothes were ragged and worn, they clearly didn't care how they looked, but their scabbards had clearly been well looked after, greased and supple, and contained short stabbing ironwood swords that still had the vivid blue colouration of new wood, not yet darkened by years of regular oiling and sharpening. Thomas guessed that they had recently worn their previous swords out from heavy use, since ironwood blades rarely survived more than a couple of years of frequent use. Two of the men also had bows and quivers of arrows slung over their shoulders, and the third had a light crossbow strapped to his back, its metal parts oiled and shiny. The three were obviously members of a team that had been together for a long time and they sneered as the three wizards entered the room. One of them, his eyes on Lirenna, whispered something to the other two, who sniggered nastily, an exchange that the demi shae very pointedly pretended not to see.