near-naked flesh.
“If you need washing,” Billigan said. “You’ll have to wait for them to finish.”
Angus turned toward Billigan and nodded. “They need bathing more than I do.”
“So do I!” Billigan laughed and gestured toward a wagon in the center of the tent. Its sides had been removed and reassembled as benches, and its bed served as a table on which several loaves of bread and a large, half-eaten wheel of yellow-green cheese were waiting for them. “Help yourself,” Billigan finished, turning to the boy and working the ties of his tunic.
As Angus approached the table, the faint smell of honey mixed with maple smoke greeted him. A smoldering brazier was on the cobblestones on the other side of the wagon-table, and strips of meat were draped on a spit over the coals.
“If you want one,” Billigan called as he went to join his crew at the wash barrel, “now’s the time to get it. There won’t be any left once they get their hands on it.”
Angus shook his head. “I’m not all that hungry,” he said. “A bit of bread and cheese will do for me.”
“And beer to wash it down,” Billigan added, gesturing to another barrel near the wagon.
Angus broke off a bit of bread and cheese, and half-filled one of the mugs. The beer was a dark, heavy brew and had a bit of a tart flavor and smoky aftertaste. But it helped him swallow the not-quite-stale bread and clingy, rough-textured cheese. He was nearly finished by the time Billigan sat down opposite Angus and cut off a piece of meat. He began gnawing on it, his left cheek puffing out as he jostled it around over what few teeth he had left.
“How’d you lose them?” Angus asked. “The teeth?”
Billigan shrugged and waited until he swallowed before he answered. “I had just started out,” he said. “It was a new crew, and most of us were inexperienced. I was holding on to the chisel at the wrong angle. The supervisor didn’t notice, and neither did the mallet man. When the mallet hit the chisel, it shot up off the granite and knocked most of them out. The rest just rotted away.”
“It must have been painful,” Angus said, trying to sound sympathetic but not really caring.
Billigan nodded vigorously. “It still hurts once in a while,” he said. “The teeth broke off and left the roots behind. Sometimes they ache.”
Angus finished the last of his beer, stood up, and removed his backpack. “Would you mind if I bring a lantern over?”
“What for?” Billigan asked around the half-mauled chunk of cheese flopping around in his mouth.
“I have a map,” Angus said. “I’d like to know where The Tween is on it.”
Billigan swallowed, shrugged, and ripped off another mouthful of bread.
Angus went to the water barrel and rinsed the crumbs from his fingers and splashed water on his face. There were towels draped over the lip of the barrel, and he rubbed one over his face. It was too damp to dry his face effectively; it only pushed around the wetness into more convenient places. Then he moved to the nearest lantern, glanced at the simple knots in the leather strap securing it to the pole, and quickly untied them. He adjusted the wick to make a brighter light and moved back to the table. He opened the flap of his backpack and took out his map. As he began to unroll it, Billigan swallowed, licked the grease on his fingers, and reached for it. “No,” Angus said, waving him off. “I’d rather not get it greasy. He set one corner under the lamp and took the dagger from his belt to hold down the opposite corner. Then he peeled it open and pointed to a spot on the road.
“Here is about where we are,” he said. “Based on how long I’ve traveled from Apple Vale.”
Billigan nodded. “Apple Vale is the last town south of Wyrmwood until Hellsbreath.”
“Good,” Angus said. “Where’s The Tween?”
Billigan studied the map without touching it. After a few seconds, he gestured at the mountains north and west of Wyrmwood. “Them’s the mountain dwarves place,” he said. “Stout folk, them dwarves. I got a good crew, but if I had half as many dwarves, they’d have turned that stone to dust by now.” He traced the road heading west of Wyrmwood and added, “That’s the trade route King Tyr uses when he trades with them. It’s a safe enough route for caravans, but I wouldn’t risk going there alone.”
“Why not?”
“There’s things there that eat people, and other things that eat them.”
“Such as?”
Billigan shrugged. “Nobody knows but the ones who got eaten.”
“Go on,” Angus said.
“The Tween runs along this way,” he said, making a sweeping gesture that began south of the east-west road through Wyrmwood and looped around until it passed by where they were and nearly reached Hellsbreath. He hovered close to Hellsbreath for a moment and then made a gesture that started west before curving a short distance north into the mountains. When he finished, he nodded and said, “That’s The Tween, too.”
“All right,” Angus said. It was a large area covering several mountains. “These mountains are The Tween, the disputed lands?”
“I wouldn’t call them mountains. Them dwarves lay claim to all the mountains. Them’s the volcanoes. Neither man nor dwarf can tame them. Excepting Hellsbreath, of course, and this road.”
“Volcanoes,” Angus began. “They’re the reason for the smoke?”
Billigan nodded. “They spew it out all the time. That and fire and ash and rock.”
Angus frowned. Why would Voltari send him into a volcanic region? It could easily kill him with very little warning.
“According to legend, it wasn’t always volcanic,” Billigan continued. “But that was before the Dwarf Wars. King Urm—he founded King Tyr’s line—had built up his kingdom by subduing the plains folk. They weren’t human, by the way, so nobody complained much. Some say there are still a few of them wandering around, but I don’t believe ’em. They say you can see it in their eyes when you look at them. Anyway, King Urm pacified them and secured the plains for his own people.” He picked up a piece of bread. “Those grasslands are worth their weight in gold; we wouldn’t have this bread without them. Their seeds are ground up into flour, and this bread is made from it.” To emphasize his point, he tore off a small bite and began chewing it, a bit of slobber dripping from the gap in his mouth.
“The Dwarf Wars,” Angus muttered. “They were about a thousand years ago, weren’t they?”
Billigan nodded and drank from his flagon. “King Urm’s son started them,” he said after he swallowed. “King Vir, they called him. He was an ambitious, despised king. He wasn’t happy with the riches of the plains; he wanted the riches of the mountains, too. He tried to take them from the dwarves, and they met in battle here,” he said, pointing at the volcanic region, “in The Tween. But it wasn’t The Tween then; it was normal mountains. The dwarves were living there. They fought fiercely until winter, and then the armies retreated from each other. The next spring, King Vir sent his army back, but the dwarves weren’t there anymore. He waited of course, but they never came out of their holes to fight. Nobody knows why.”
“No one?” Angus asked, frowning. “The dwarves do, don’t they?”
Billigan grinned. “Sure they do, but they ain’t talking.” He laughed and drank more beer.
“Maybe the wrong people are asking them,” Angus mused.
“Now who would want to talk to one of them dwarves?” one of the workmen offered. “All they ever do is dig holes and make metal.”
“Yeah,” one of his fellows agreed. “But it’s ten times better than the metal we make.”
“Now that just ain’t true,” the first one said. “Hellsbreath’s forges are almost as good as theirs, aren’t they?”
“Oh, sure,” the second worker said. “But we can’t work the metal the way they do, and everybody knows it.”
The first one glared and half-stood before Billigan intervened.
“Now boys,” he said. “We have a guest. There’ll be no rough-housing tonight. Besides, the dwarves are better at metalwork tha
n we are—and masonry for that matter—and there’s no shame in admittin’ it. After all, they aren’t worth squat as farmers.”
There were a few chuckles, but the tension did seem to ease up a bit.
“What did King Vir do?” Angus asked.
“Oh, he assumed the dwarves had fled from his army and took control of the land. He built strongholds, villages, temples—all the things you would do if you were expanding your kingdom and wanted to fortify its new boundaries. And it worked well until the first volcano destroyed half the settlements. They say you could hear the eruption all the way to Virag—that’s Tyrag, now.”
“Ah,” Angus said, half-smiling. “That’s why the dwarves left, then.”
Billigan’s brow creased into a curious rippling of wave-like wrinkles. “What is?” he asked.
“Mountain dwarves live deep underground in tunnel complexes carved from the mountain’s heart,” Angus said. “They had to have heard the rumblings and felt the rising temperatures long before they reached the surface. They may even have breached a few magma pockets, for all we know. I’m sure they knew what the increased volcanic activity foretold, and they left for more stable mountains.”
Billigan’s wrinkles flattened out somewhat and he nodded. “You may be right,” he admitted. “It was less than ten years after the Dwarf Wars that the first volcano spat out its innards, and not long after that, the other volcanoes were erupting. They’ve been at it ever since.”
“There’s another