Guthah grafts the final rune onto his spear. He steps back and paces around the anvil, examining all angles of his craft. He picks it up and leans it against the wall. He looks up and down it. He grimaces. His grimace deepens. It isn't quite right. This isn't quite what he imagined. It's not quite pointy enough, for one. The angles of the head don't match up with what he saw in his mind, nor with what he drew out on paper.

As for the poem, well, he supposes it must be having some effect. This spear looks sharper, at least, than any jeweler's chisel he's ever worked with, and a stray blow with one of those will drive an inch of metal right through your hand so cleanly it's painless.

But this would never pierce through Zathar's armor.

Just a few minutes later, in the forge in the next chamber along, Pellas grafts the final rune onto her armor. She steps back, and lets out a long breath. It's done. A full suit of steel, shining with bright silver runes. They're poems of strength.

Her father used to tell her that protection was everything. That you were no use in a battle if you could be felled in one stroke. Well, where did that advice get him? Nowhere. In a sickbed, with a gray, wispy beard, dying.

As his only child, he left all his money to her. The last of it is gone now, spent on this armor of strength. From now on she will earn and advance by her own efforts, and she believes that if she fights hard enough, takes on the strongest enemies, runs forward and throws caution to the howling surface wind, she can advance just like Zathar has.

Faltast hefts his shield from the anvil. He's decided a buckler just isn't going to do it for this quest. Like he told Zathar, he's not drunk on anything. He's sober—he takes care of himself.

Jerat roars with laughter as he holds his weapon up to the forge's red-reflecting roof. It's brilliant! Magnificent! Brilliant! Every rune is perfectly formed and in its perfect place, though they probably won't look that way to the other runeknights—they're misshapen, uneven, the lines crook one way and the other—yet their runic flows are perfect.

Braztak runs one final stroke of the whetstone across the blade of his axe—its second blade. Common knowledge has it that putting two blades on your axe is pointless, just makes it heavy, yet Braztak knows the rules well enough to break them. Knows them well enough to break them clean in half and stomp on them.

A calm dwarf with a kind heart within. That's how most in the guild see him. But that's not quite right: within him is rage, and each time he crafts, he pours that storm of emotion into every rune and hammer-stroke.

This axe symbolizes recovery through brutality.

He will slay the dragon and finally heal the gaping wound in his heart.

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The sixty-two dwarves—more than Braztak expected, less than he hoped—leave the guildhall. Some of those who'll remain wish them luck. Others turn away and shake their heads bitterly, and Guildmaster Wharoth is nowhere to be seen. Along the gray road they walk. Commoners hurry out their way—there's a sense of violence about them. There always is, around runeknights, but this troop, with Braztak at their head, exudes the feeling that to get in their way means quick death.

Braztak raises his hand for a halt. They've reached the door to Zathar's forge. They line up in ranks before it, as they've planned. Some believe he's not in there, that he's run away. Others suspect he's in there but won't come out.

“Shall I do the honors?” Jerat asks.

“No,” says Braztak. “Guthah, you knock. You're his favored. You bring him out. Let's see if he's ready to fulfill his oath.”

“I doubt it,” says Mulkath. His mercury runes ripple; they look more liquid than ever—he's polished them, or by some secret method improved their quality. That's possible with certain rare metals.

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“He'll come out,” Guthah says proudly. “Zathar won't let us down.”

He strides up to the door and knocks loudly. There's no answer.

“Zathar!” Guthah shouts. “You in there? We're leaving! Are you finished?”

For a few more moments, silence. Then the door opens.

Guthah stumbles back gasping. A cold wind has blasted him. He can see a figure in white-silver in the door. It's not recognizable as Zathar. No one expected him to craft armor quite like this.

“Zathar?” says Faltast. “Is that you?”

Braztak steps forward. He ignores the dreadful cold and looks into the dwarf's visor. It's not a visor, he realizes. The metal is transparent.

“It's me,” says Zathar, voice clear and cold and convicted.

The helmet is a death's head. The transparent sections for his eyes are the shape of skull's sockets, and below is the triangular shape of a nose, and below that, jagged runes, vaguely bluish, are like grinning teeth. It fits closely.

“Instructor?” Pellas says quietly. She's unsure of what to think.

“You followed my advice!” Jerat laughs. “I can tell!”

“Have you come to die, Zathar?” Braztak asks quietly.

“No. I've come to deal death. Though, if it's dealt to me, I don't much care. You said so yourself: either way, I'll be fulfilling my oath.”

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“I still think we should go to Hud Valley. The New Dynamium Guild will surely take us that far.”

Xomhryk shakes his head. “Too many trolls.”

“They might prove less formidable than the forces of Tallreach. Their wizards...” Gollor bites his lip.

“Wizards die easy.”

“So they say. We are dragonslayers, not wizardslayers.”

“All the same, I won't risk a horde of trolls, and the humans of Tallreach may be persuaded to let us pass. Humans are not wont to turn down dwarven gold very often.”

“These particular humans are proud.”

“My mind is made up. We will travel by the route I've just described.”

On the quartz map, he traces it again with his finger. Straight up the Blue Shaft, then straight along north to The Mountain of Halajatbast. His guildsdwarves grimace behind their tungsten visors.

They are not looking forward to this journey. Since dragons often like to fly freely through the skies, and steal the treasure of humans and elves as well as that of dwarves, most of the Dragonslayers have experienced the great emptiness above many times, and know well that it's not the kind of place a dwarf should suffer for very long.

“It looks like a long trek, but it's not so bad. We won't be winding through tunnels. Things are closer together up there.”

“We know,” says Gollor. “But we're not equipped to fight humans.”

“We'll be fine. The humans of Tallreach have quarrels with their neighbors. They won't want to divert too much force against us, a neutral force.”

“That's wishful thinking. And what about the dwarves of Runeking Uthrarzak?”

“We're quicker and cleverer than them. We'll get to the dragon first.”

“And after?”

“They won't want to face down those who just took down the black dragon.”

“There'll be a lot more of them than of us. With Runethanes and first degrees.”

“We've been through all this. We'll be fine. Have we yet failed on a hunt, my Dragonslayers? Have we yet failed to pierce a dragon's heart? And have we yet failed to claim a hoard for ourselves, of drained metal to be brought back to life in the forge?”

“No!” they chorus.

“And will we fail this time?”

“No!”

“Will we ever fail?”

“No!”

Xomhryk turns back to Gollor. “Do you still doubt?”

“Yes.”

“Well, fine. You have that right. This is, after all, our most dangerous quest to date.”

“By far.”

“Yes. But the rewards will be well worth it. A mountain of our own! And a mountain of precious metals and more precious runic knowledge within. We will become strong as kings.”

Gollor raises his eyebrows.

“Figure of speech, commander. You know our reason for being is, and always will be, ridding the world of foul monsters. Riches are just a means to further that end. Anyway, is the army gathered?”

“It should be by now.”

“Then let us leave here and look over it. Maybe it'll assauge your doubts some.”

Xomhyrk and Gollor lead the senior commanders up and out the Stadium of the Mind. Just before the dome, a small platform has been constructed. Xomhyrk climbs up and looks down the main street where his army is gathered.

The runeknights' armors gleam brightly in a hundred shades of metallic. About half a thousand have gathered. Most wear swords glowing in different shades of runic light—many glow coldly. Xomhyrk's Icemite has clearly inspired some to create their own weapons of ice. There's armor of ice also, some better than others—one in particular stands out. It has a helmet shaped like a skull.

“How many of the higher degrees do you judge we have?” Gollor asks quietly.

“Maybe twenty thirds and a dozen seconds. A couple firsts. Perhaps fifty fourths.”

“Enough?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“It's always a maybe, Gollor, when it comes to hunting dragons. You know that.”

“True. I still can't help feeling that we're overloading our forge here.”

“It's just a dragon. It's mortal.”

“You might want to convince them of that. I can sense apprehension down there.”

“Then I shall.”

Xomhyrk holds out his hand. One of his commanders passes him an enruned voice-plate. This is a disc of metal that, when spoken into, vibrates the air on its opposite side many times more violently. It's a voice amplifier, a fairly common item in the realms south, but not yet popular in Allabrast.

He speaks into it: