Captain Loren Razorbraid rubbed the stubble on her two-day beard, and once again contemplated letting it grow out fully.  It would never grow more than a half-inch in length, but shaving it was a chore she had little luxury for since the war had started.

Loren was head of the Baron-and-the-Bishop's personal guard, and had also taken on the additional duty of being the head of the immense Lok Giran household.

Before the war, Lok Giran had held close to five-hundred dwarves, mainly from the Wirebeard and Rubynose clans.  All had gathered at Lok Giran and sworn fealty to the Baron-and-the-Bishop Nodrom Fistforger because of his strength of purpose, practical acceptance of magic, and ruthless warrior's abilities.  The Baron-and-the-Bishop -- or just plain Dwarfendale as most of the dwarves called him -- had even been touched by the hand of the Forge God himself.  The experience had left Dwarfendale with snowy-white hair that belied his relative youth.

Loren and many others had fought by Dwarfendale's side, in the fifteen years they had known him.  She fully expected to fight by his side for another century or more, before finally falling in battle.  She was a warrior, and even her taken name showed it.  Like most western dwarves born outside of holy wedlock, Loren could not take her clan name.  She had, instead, earned it under the general onus given to such bastards as herself.  The name 'razorbraid' came from the six swing-blade razors braided into her long hair.  She had killed before with the braids, and she knew she would kill again with them -- even though she preferred her trusted short sword, forged by the Baron-and-the-Bishop himself.

When the ograns invaded, Fortress of the Soul had shifted from making tailored weapons and armor of highest quality, to mass-producing the highest-quality armor they could.  The forges had been opened up to full, to take advantage of the winds that assailed the western side of Mount Rilan.  The captain did not approve of the change from quality to quantity, but she understood the reasoning.  Lok Giran had also begun making preparations to evacuate the town of Rilan, at the base of the mountain.

The head of the guard growled at the security precautions that were being thrown off a cliff.

The guards she was overseeing were doing a fair job of checking wagons bearing supplies and coal and raw metal, without slowing down the traffic considerably.  What bothered her was the sheer number of wagons, people, and equipment going in and out of the fortress.  Little of it was above ground -- no more than two huge towers to oversea the practice grounds, and a carved-out wall of the mountain with arrow slits and accommodations for less-dwarven visitors.  Besides that, only the forges and wind-funnels were not buried beneath tons of solid rock.

Even as she thought it, she saw something that caught her eye.  A human female strode up to the guards, clad in plate-over-leather armor, with a large composite bow slung over her back beneath a pack, and two quivers of arrows on either thigh.  The woman had brown hair cropped short at her shoulders and bound back in a tiny pony-tail, and a strong, manly build.  The metal of the partial-plate armor was a dark-blued metal that made it black, and when coupled with the darker leathers of the human, it reminded Loren of poor camouflage:  noisy, smelly camouflage.

Loren shook her head at the silliness of combining partial plate armor with archery.  The woman turned in her bow, quivers, and two large knives, and subjected willingly-enough to a search.  The guards spoke with her, and scowled.  That scowl, in turn, brought Loren moving towards the guard point in a huff.

When she was close enough, she asked in the dwarven tongue, "What's the problem, Torner?"

One of the dwarven guards with a scowl turned to her, and said, "She saw a roc with a ballistae bolt in it, down in the woods."  The dwarf turned back to the human that towered over him, and said in the traders' tongue, "This is Loren Razorbraid.  Tell her whot ye told us."

The human nodded, and pointed off towards the south.  "I was on my way up to the mages' academy, and saw a huge bird sort of falling and gliding down into the forest.  It crashed into the trees, and when I went to see what had happened, it turns out that it had a ballistae bolt in its gut.  There was also a saddle on it, though there was no sign of orcs."  She had a nice timbre to her voice that the captain instantly liked, and because she liked it, she instantly hated it.

The head of the guard merely nodded to the human, and then turned to one side and put her fingers to her lips.  She whistle shrilly, and waved people over three times in a dwarven signal for cavalry.  Two dozen hippotaun riders began saddling up their beasts, herding them towards mounting platforms, or gathering up infantry.

Loren turned back to the woman.  "Can you lead some of my people to the bird?"

The human nodded, and said, "Yes."

Just then, a horn blared from one of the towers guarding the practice field.  The ram's horn signal indicated a medical emergency, and by it coming from the south tower, it meant the medical emergency was coming down from Lok Magius.  Loren scowled even further, bunching her dirty-blonde eyebrows almost together over her fierce blue eyes.  Mages would have use a teleport or the like, if they were powerful enough.  The patrols along the roadway up to Lok Magius, though, were another story.

Loren said to the human, "Stay here."  The dwarf pumped her short legs in a hasty march towards the great double-gates that led into Lok Giran.  The doors were made of solid stone, crafted from the mountain itself, and so perfectly balanced that one dwarf could open or close each of the twenty-feet wide doors.

Brother Gawain Rubynose and close to a dozen other clerics were already running up to the great double-doors.  When Gawain saw Loren, he barked in the dwarven tongue, "What is it?"

She answered, "We don't know, yet.  It's likely one of our patrols that engaged a roc-borne raiding party along the road to Lok Magius."

Gawain moved down to a walk, and waited at the massive doors with Loren.  The other healers and clerics began pulling out bindings and litters in preparation for what might come.  A wagon loaded with pig iron rumbled by, pulled by close to eight draft horses.

Gawain was short even for a dwarf, with an over-sized dwarven nose the color of too much mead and ale.  His graying brown hair was thick and unruly, and almost the same color as the chainmail he wore beneath his clerical robes of office.  A medallion with the symbol of the Forge God -- a double-anvil -- shown in mithril between the twin braids of his forked beard.

The cavalry commander rode up to Loren aboard his hippotaun, and they quickly exchanged commands and instructions.  Loren had Gawain give the cavalry five clerics to ride out to meet the injured with, while the rest remained behind.

Minutes after the clerics had ridden out with two dozen hippotauns and close to a hundred dwarven infantry, two hippotauns and their riders returned, escorting between them a patrol mount with an odd crew on its back.  It took Loren a moment to realize what the three dwarves, an elf, and a human on the hippotaun's back were about.  The moment she understood, she signaled to Gawain.

The patrol mount quickly made it to the great entryway, and the driver saluted Loren.

Captain Loren said, "Report."

The driver paused for a moment, as the clerics and priests surrounded the hippotaun mount, upsetting it.  The clerics soon had the human down from the beast's back, and laid him upon a stretcher.  The man's side was soaked in blood, and blood covered the saddle and the sides of the hippotaun.  The driver had to fight against the beast for a moment, before it settled down.  The elf leapt lightly down to the ground, and after a quick nod to Loren, followed the human further into Lok Giran.

Once he was confident his beast wouldn't bolt, the driver said, "We had three rocs an over a dozen orcs tryin tae take apart a chunk o the road, like usual.  We were still linin up tae fire ballistae at the first roc, when the human appeared from nowhere.  We'd seen him an the elf walkin down the road a mite before, an thought them clear of the rocs when we did'nae see them, but..."  He shrugged.  "He killed four hisself, usin a sword an a hammer."  He said the last with proud, and then spit at a change in the story.  "The elf, she killed one, usin magic."

The dwarven race had never been fond of magic, even though they saw the necessity of it.  The Wirebeard clan, from which the driver came, was more against magic than most, but Loren couldn't fault his reasoning.

She asked him, "What of the rest of the patrol?"

He looked grim.  "We lost two.  The rocs bit Rothit Wirebeard in half.  It took eight orcs to bring down Grambit Orcbane."

Loren sighed.  "Would they have died, had not those two gotten involved?"

"I think that, in Galgiran's eyes, the one wit the hammer done good."

The captain nodded, and slapped the hippotaun driver's foot in respect.  "Go get the blood washed off that beast.  Hai!"  She slapped one of the creatures short fore-limbs as it absently grabbed at her hand, and the driver pulled on the reins to turn the hippotaun about.  Loren ducked as the massive tail went over her head.

The woman with the dark half-plate armor strode up to Loren.  Her expression was a mix of concern and distance.  "Victims of the party that fought the roc?"

The captain growled.  "Aye.  The fool human nearly threw his life away for nothing.  He's lucky.  Nearly as lucky as those shit-for-brains elves."  Loren appraised the human more closely.  She was tall for a human, and strongly muscled.  Her strong jaw seemed almost dwarven, and her eyes had the tint of one who had seen battle.  The dwarf guessed the human to be no older than thirty, but reasoned that with humans, it was hard to tell.

"You got a name, human?"

The woman smirked, and moved to rest a hand on a long-bladed knife she wasn't wearing.  Instead, she hooked her thumb into her belt, and said, "Anna Helldove.  I'm one of Sir Bridar's people."

Loren grunted.  Sholkhan Bridaraarayus was one of the huge desert elves, long ago bred and magically altered for war by some forgotten empire of elves.  'Sir Bridar' as he was more commonly known was one of the Baron-and-the-Bishop's reeves, as well as Chief of the Guard in Rilan.  The captain figured she had met all of Bridar's people; that she did not know this 'Anna Helldove' raised the hackles of her security-conscious mind.

The captain said, "Kneel," and placed her hand on her short sword's handle, clearing the blade from the scabbard by an inch.  Several nearby guards, perhaps responding to the tone of her voice, or the expression on her face, completely drew their weapons.

The human looked around with a warrior's eyes, and then reluctantly went to one knee.

Loren reached under her chainmail with her other hand, and brought out a medallion with the Forge God's symbol on it.  She spoke softly and reverently in the dwarven tongue.  "And when Nodrom met the duergar in the Hall of Ancestors, he spake with them in the Olde Tongue, and asked them why they came for the skeleton of Thromburgin.  And the duergar answered, 'For the bones of our brother, have we come, for in his life, did he pledge himself to our god.'  And Nodrom asked ye, Oh Lord, to know the truth of what they spake..."

The captain of the Baron-and-the-Bishop's personal guard felt the power of the Forge God's blessing fall upon her, and a hot wind blasted out from the medallion, before stopping at a circle that appeared in the stone of the ground.  The circle writhed with the colors of a hot forge, but was as narrow as the blade of razor -- seen only by a thin line in the afternoon sun.

Loren Razorbraid used her command voice:  "Speak the truth.  Do not lie.  Tell us your name."

The woman's dark eyes went from the circle that encompassed her and the dwarven woman, to the dwarf's blue eyes.  There was menace, in the dwarf's eyes, and an odd sort of compassion.  Swallowing, the human spoke the truth.

"I am Anna Helldove."

Loren commanded, "Name thy master."

Anna opened her mouth to speak, and instantly knew she could not lie.  The area defined by the Forge God's blessing forced all within it to speak the truth -- or be consumed by the heat of the forges.  The human swallowed, again, and began to sweat.  She could not seem to think fast enough, and knew that she was surrounded.  Standing just outside the circle of truth were close to two dozen heavily armed veterans.

The human closed her eyes, and shook her head -- refusing to speak for fear it would be the death of her, either from the dwarves, or from her true master.  She was revealed, and she had not even managed to get inside of the fortress.

Captain Loren kissed the medallion, and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to the Forge God.  The circle of razor-thin fire flared, and then winked out.  Her dwarven warriors advanced, and took hold of the human woman.

Loren said, "Since you kinnae name your master under Galgiran's blessing, you are named as our enemy.  Attempt no magic, human, for within this keep, magic will kill you."  She gestured to the warriors, who began to drag her towards the southern great tower -- and the cells it held there.

One of the dwarves watched them take her away, and then turned to the captain.  "D'ye want her executed?"

The captain shook her head.  "No.  I want to know who her master is."  She looked the guard in the eyes.  "See to it no one harms her, and she doesn't escape, Kaelwin.  Dwarfendale will want to speak with her."

"Aye, Loren."  He saluted with a clenched fist that rang off his master-crafted plate-and-mail.