tightly shut, turned his head away and pressed himself as tight against
the cliff as he could manage.
Because they are both greedy for treasure, dwarves and dragons are natural
enemies. However like cats and dogs, this is learned behavior. Thorfin had
enough experience to know about dwarves and dragons. The Little Red Dragon
had never even seen a dwarf before. It divided its time between roaming
the programmers’ quarters of the castle and sunning itself on the ledges
on the cliff beneath the castle walls.
The dragon nudged the black-clad figure experimentally. It went “whoof” in
a satisfying fashion.
Little Red Dragon nudged harder. This time he was met by a louder “whoof”
and a string of interesting words.
This was more fun than annoying the castle cats! The dragon braced all
four feet against the rock and pushed with all his strength.
Under the impact of the head butt Thorfin lost his grip on the rock and
went hurtling down toward the river, screaming curses as he fell.
“We chased six of the little buggers out of the castle, Lord,” the guard
captain told Wiz as they made their way back to his quarters that evening.
“Plus a couple more that never made it over the walls. That was all of
them, we think.”
“You think?”
“That’s why we are here, Lord.”
“This is weird,” Wiz said. “I’ve never even met a dwarf, I mean socially,
and now there are a bunch of them trying to kill me. Why?”
“Ask us after we capture one. But by tomorrow this castle will be dwarf
proof.”
Wiz knew that Jerry, Danny and several of the Mighty were already erecting
a dwarf-repellent spell around the Wizard’s Keep. “I just hope it works,”
he said as they came up the back stairs and into the hall that led to his
apartment. “I’ve been jumped, poisoned and attacked from the air-or
they’ve tried to do all that anyway. I’m getting tired of it.”
Fear not, mortal, thought Ragnar as he watched the party approach from the
curtained alcove where he lay hidden. You will not be tired of anything
much longer.
With so many mortal soldiers about there was no hope of fighting his way
clear. So be it. He would fulfill his band’s vow at the cost of his own
heart’s blood. They could kill him but not even twice that number of
mortal warriors could protect the strange wizard from a pantherlike spring
from his hiding place.
Ragnar crouched and drew his sword with a flourish that knocked a bucket
off the shelf above him. The humans started at the noise, but Ragnar,
oblivious to the liquid that drenched him, leapt forward with his sword
brandished above his head. The guardsmen went for their weapons, but the
dwarf was already in their midst and his blade was flashing toward his
sworn foe.
His blade was still flashing when his feet shot out from under him and he
went scooting between the startled guardsmen flat on his back with his
arms and legs waving in all directions. His sword made glancing contact
with one guardsman’s mailed thigh and then he was through them and sliding
down the corridor, his passage lubricated by the super-detergent that had
soaked him and his clothes.
Wiz watched stunned as the dwarf whisked down the corridor, trailing
curses, until he reached the stairs, where his cries ended in a bump bump
bump.
One of the guardsmen moved to follow and immediately went to his knees in
the trail of detergent Ragnar had left behind. Two others went more
cautiously, hugging the walls of the corridor. Four others pushed Wiz back
against the wall and stood shoulder to shoulder around him, protecting him
with a wall of living flesh.
“It seems there were seven dwarves, my Lord,” the guard captain said
sheepishly. “Perhaps we had better stay with you until the wizards finish
their spell.”
“Yeah,” Wiz said shakily. “Perhaps you had better.”
It was a battered, dispirited group of dwarves that met in the clearing
that night. Ragnar was the last to return, stripped to his loincloth to
rid himself of the effects of the super-detergent and undwarvishly clean