Moros played with the idea of declaring the innkeep an enemy of the dragonarmies, and having him dragged off to work the mines. On reflection, he chose not to. This whale of a man would not last ten days in the pits. And besides, with the innkeep gone, Moros would have to fetch his own ale. The locals were needed to bring in their crops, and the gnomes . . . He’d just as soon stay away from the gnomes.
His ogre troops, of course, had wanted to go charging into the gnome encampment at once, but cooler heads prevailed. Moros, on Shalebreak’s back, went out to “obtain the gnomes’ surrender,” as he had put it.
The far end of the valley, across the stream, was a greasy smudge on the landscape. As Moros and the dragon neared, he could hear the sound of gnomish industry. Coming closer, he saw between two to three hundred gnomes, all engaged in banging and clattering and ripping and rebuilding and all sorts of other tasks that made Moros tired just watching them.
No-he wanted nothing to do with gnomes.
What cinched matters was the fact that most of the gnomish encampment was built into a set of burrows and caves tunneling into the limestone foothills. Narrow, interlaced passages that a gnome force could use as a redoubt, surviving a siege for weeks or months.
And then there were the devices that littered the ground in front of the burrows-a massive tangle of wood, metal, and rope, broken by open patches used as smithies or assembly areas. Here were the remains of many gnomish inventions. Moros guessed that ninety of them had never worked at all, and nine of the remainder did something totally unexpected. But the one out of a hundred that did work might be enough to give the dragonarmies a fair fight.
And the dragonarmies of Takhisis hadn’t gotten this far relying on fair fights.
Moros’s instincts had been right, however. Shalebreak’s presence was enough to convince the gnomes to surrender. They agreed to stay in their part of the valley. The dragonarmies, for their part, would leave the gnomes alone, and demand only a small tribute. At the time, Moros believed he had won his greatest victory without losing a man.
Now, weeks later, sitting in the inn, half-drained mug in hand, he was less sure. The gnomes had stayed in their burrows. The farmers had brought in the crops. The other units of the dragonarmy had arrived-and passed Moros by. His ogres were stripped from him for a push to the south, and half his human regulars were removed to handle an insurrection farther north. The remainder of his fragmented army was settling down for a long occupation. Discipline was lax and desertion was becoming a problem. Many of the men had helped the farmers get in their harvests, and were now thinking less like soldiers and more like civilians.
Moros had not sworn allegiance to the Dark Queen to become a military governor of some forgotten valley, but his masters refused to reassign him and Shalebreak. Instead, they complained about the amount of tribute and number of prisoners, the frequency of his reports and their content (when nothing happens, and you tell them nothing happens, they get peevish about the lack of progress, Moros mused sullenly). He was already in a bad mood and now this-a gnome.
Another burst of invasive sunlight heralded the sergeant’s return. The most evil gnome in the world trailed in his wake.
Moros had never seen an evil gnome before, and had not even considered it a possibility. To him, and to most of his fellow soldiers, gnomes were like kender-playful, small creatures only two steps up from vermin. They had a nasty tendency to blow things up, but never intentionally. Gnomes were simple creatures, and were harmless if left alone.
The gnome that padded in behind the sergeant, though, was different. Dressed in baggy pants and a linen shirt with a black cotton vest, the creature had a reptilian shuffle in his walk, and a serpentlike glare in his eyes. The gnome rubbed his hands together incessantly. He wore a heavy overcoat draped over his shoulders like a cape, which accentuated the squat gnome’s already-pronounced stoop. It was as if he kept his evil in his deep coat pockets.