"Absolutely not!" the Cobar snapped. "I'll be hanged if I'll let myself be wrapped in fish wings."

"Then I'll transport us myself." Despaxas shrugged. "Transport is a simple enough spell."

The man glared at him across the fire. "I know about your transport spells," he reminded the elf. "They make people dizzy."

"It only lasts a moment," Despaxas said.

"I'm not going anywhere without a horse under me!" the Cobar growled. "Being afoot is for Sackmen and Ergothians."

Despaxas smiled-an innocent, disarming smile. "Then get your horse," he said.

In the span of a single day, the floor of Tharkas Pass had become a beehive of activity. Thousands of bustling, busy dwarves worked in the shadows of the great, precipitous walls of the pass, barely four miles from Lord Kane's stronghold at Klanath.

At the place where a dwarf named Cale Greeneye had driven a metal spike centuries earlier, marking the boundary of the dwarven land of Kal-Thax, the Chosen Ones worked at building a massive stone wall. By the hundreds, dwarven workmen disassembled the stone walls three miles south at Tharkas Camp, while hundreds of others loaded the great stones onto stone-boats. With teams of oxen, bison, and even a few elk, dwarven teamsters hauled the stones into Tharkas Pass.

Within the pass, at the site Derkin Hammerhand had selected, stonemasons recut, sized, and drilled the great blocks of solid rock, hoisted them with winches and slings, and set them in place while hundreds more scurried about, fitting each joint with "pegs" of iron bar to secure them. Every stone weighed at least a thousand pounds, and some weighed a ton. With blocks of such size, human builders would have settled for mortared joints and relied on the weight of the materials to make the wall secure. But these were not humans. These were dwarves, and they held to the dwarven philosophy of construction: if you can't build it right, don't build it at all.

Nothing short of an earthquake would ever move this wall so much as an inch, once it was completed.

The pass at this point was only sixty feet wide at the bottom, and the growing wall extended from one side to the other, completely closing it off except for a reinforced gap in the center where a narrow gate would be hung. Within the space of a day, the wall was two tiers high-shoulder-high to its builders-and Derkin's masons estimated that it would be at least twenty feet high before they ran out of prequarried stone. Twenty feet was not as high as Derkin envisioned the great wall, but it would be a start. Within a week or a little more, Tharkas Pass would be closed to casual travel. The single gate, made of steel-reinforced timbers, would be four feet wide and nine feet tall. Once the wall was up, and the gate closed and guarded, nothing less than an all-out siege would open northern Kal-Thax to outsiders again. The wall would not be impenetrable-not as Thorbardin was-but it would be a formidable obstacle to any who tried to enter uninvited.

Throughout the day, the dwarves had worked. Now as evening shadows darkened the pass, they changed shifts. Those of Daewar, Theiwar, and Klar ancestry were replaced by dwarves of Daergar ancestry, whose eyes were sensitive in daylight but excellent at night. In this way, the work would continue without stop until the task was finished. Torches were lighted for the day's last caravan of stone-boats, and these were being hauled into place for unloading when, abruptly, chaos broke out in the pass just a few paces south of the rising wall.

Where there had been only empty ground just moments ago, between groves of mountain spruce, suddenly there was a bucking, pitching horse with a man clinging to its light saddle. Dwarves by the hundreds turned to stare at the unexpected sight as the horse spun and danced, rearing and bucking enthusiastically. The man on its back clung grimly, shouting curses and threats as he tried to bring it under control. Dozens of dwarves had grabbed weapons and begun closing in on the spectacle when a second figure appeared out of nowhere-a cloaked, hooded figure that was obviously not a dwarf. The second apparition gazed at the bucking horse and its clinging, swearing rider for a moment, then turned and raised a hand toward the surrounding dwarves.

In the crowd, blades flashed and slings began to hum. Then Derkin Hammerhand strode forward, turned full around, and commanded, "Hold your weapons! These are not enemies!"

"Hello, Derkin," the cloaked figure said. "It has been a long time."

"Despaxas." Derkin nodded. "Calan said he thought you might come." He pointed at the still-pitching horse and its angry rider. "What's going on here?"

"Horses don't like transport spells." The elf shrugged. 'They usually act up a bit upon arrival."

It took more than a minute for the man to bring his horse under control, and when he was once again in charge he swung down from his saddle and pointed an angry finger at Despaxas. "You knew that would happen," he snarled. "Why didn't you warn me?"

Despaxas shrugged eloquently. "You said you wouldn't go anywhere without a horse under you," he purred. "And far be it from me to try to tell a Cobar anything about horses."

For a moment, the man glared as though he were contemplating murder. Then he shook his head. "Crazy elf," he muttered. He turned, his eyes roving the crowds of dwarves all around, then turning upward toward the shadowy stone that climbed skyward on both sides. "Where are we?" he asked.

"In Tharkas Pass," Despaxas said. "At the place where a dwarf once marked the border of his homeland."

"And where is…" His eyes lit on the sturdy, red-cloaked figure of the dwarven leader and blinked. "Derkin? Is that you?"

"Hello, Tuft Broadland," the dwarf said.

"Well! You certainly have changed, these past years. I hardly knew you."

"We all change," Derkin said, then glanced at the elf. "Well, most of us do anyway. Come with me. Our main camp is just at the south end of the pass, where there's water. You two can tell me all the latest news. I understand the war on the plains is still going on?"

"And on, and on," Tuft said bleakly.

"Well, we'll eat, and you can tell me about it. Tomorrow I'll show you what we're doing here."

In the busy, crowded dwarven camp, people stared at the human and the elf with surly suspicion until Derkin made it clear to everyone that they were his guests. Then it seemed the dwarves couldn't do enough for them. They crowded around with platters of roast meat, freshly baked dark bread, and tankards of ale. Tuft marveled at the sumptuous feast that seemed to be ordinary fare for these people. "How do you do it?" he asked Derkin. "I mean, I see an army here, but where does the food come from?"

"You only see about a third of us here," Derkin told him. "We have farms and granaries all over southwest of here and herds in every valley. Armies must have food and provisions, so the Chosen Ones are more than an army. They have become an entire people. The first year after we freed ourselves from the empire's mines-the last time you saw us-we devoted our efforts and time mostly to gathering those Neidar who wanted to go with us and to scouting new trails and territories. The Neidar have been a scattered people, which is why so many of them wound up as slaves in the human mines… that, and the fact that Thorbardin didn't protect them as it was supposed to. But they aren't scattered now. And they aren't slaves, either."

Helta Graywood came from a shelter, carrying blankets for them to sit on while they ate. Tuft grinned at the girl and bowed slightly. "I remember you," he said.

"Everybody always remembers Helta," Derkin said softly.

"But she wears no token," the Cobar noted. "Haven't you married her yet?"