Free The Northern Approach by Jim Galford Page B

the ground, but Yoska had cleared up that belief as they approached the entrance to the dwarven lands—at great length, regardless of Raeln’s attempts to put an end to his prattling. He had explained that the dwarves spent a great deal of their time below ground, working on their crafts and mining minerals for them, but their actual cities were always above ground. They had passed one such village earlier that day, smelling of death and seemingly empty. Yoska had steered them wide around it and no one had objected.
    Now they stood before the entrance to the dwarven tunnels, used both for mining and transportation through the mountains. Yoska had told them the dwarves had built vast fortresses underground as precautions against invasion by humans, with the belief that they could fall back from any of their above-ground cities to the closest tunnel network and hide out forever, if needed.
    Judging by what Raeln saw ahead of them, that is exactly what the dwarves had tried to do, not that he blamed them. If he had a hole in the ground available to him during the attack on Lantonne, it would have been very appealing.
    The path the three of them stood on was well-worn from the passing of many wagons and feet over decades. Having lived in a trading village for most of his life, Raeln knew the dwarven people were frequent traders, perhaps more so than Yoska’s family. They would send out wagons on a daily basis to the human and elven cities around the region. Now dried blood marred the path and weeds had begun to fill in the tracks from the wagons. Nothing had come down that path in at least a week, though with the recent rains, the weed and grass growth made estimating difficult.
    The road ran from the village at their backs down to a massive pair of stone doors set into the mountainside, made from the same stones as the mountain itself. Dwarven text covered those doors, telling Raeln all he needed to know. His dwarven was sketchy at best, but two words he could make out roughly translated to “We’re closed, go away.”
    To add emphasis to the blunt statement carved into stone, a pair of twelve-foot polished steel statues stood with one on each side of the doors. At their feet lay the pulverized remains of either people who had tried to get into the tunnels too late or undead…there was too little of them remaining for Raeln to be sure. When the three travelers began toward the doors, both statues had turned their bearded faces toward them and watched them approach.
    “Golems,” On’esquin said, sighing. “Mindless constructs that will perform their given tasks forever. Do you think they will let us pass?”
    “Is only way to know, yes?” noted Yoska, dropping the heavy knapsack he had carried through the foothills with a loud sloshing sound. He put on his best grin and began walking confidently down the path toward the metal men.
    “Yes, I would rather like to see him die,” On’esquin said softly, once Yoska was out of earshot. “I believe he will stop talking after dying.”
    After two days of following the human through the wilderness and on to the roads the dwarves used, Raeln was still not certain he should interfere if the man got himself killed. The first task they had tried entrusting Yoska with was simply to collect and carry water for their journey. Instead, they had learned by halfway through the first night that Yoska had dumped out any water they already had with them and replaced every waterskin with wine and stronger alcohol scavenged from the destroyed village. As one who did not drink anything but water, Raeln had railed against the man’s foolishness, but On’esquin had simply shrugged it off and laughed. Having no appreciable recourse, Raeln had been forced to detour to find a stream when he was thirsty, something that had slowed them down half a day over the journey. In the end, he had stolen a canteen from Yoska and refused to let the man near it after filling it from a creek.
    Raeln