Ritual Combat by Willmarth Dave

Author:Willmarth, Dave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The priest watched as wagon after wagon departed the main gate of Rondshire. He’d been watching for a quarter hour, and they were still coming. Elder Stonestriker and his clan were leading a mass exodus from the town, accompanied by nearly a quarter of its citizens. Most of them were dwarves from the various clans, all of them loosely allied or related by blood to Stonestriker or his ancestors. But the priest spotted human, elven, and gnomish merchants and crafters among the wagons in the caravan as well.

A new opportunity had opened up. If the rumors were true, an ancient dwarven citadel, abandoned after the orc wars, long before the cataclysmic end of the town of Riva, had been discovered. There were opportunities to purchase homes and shops within the citadel, and many of Rondshire’s merchant families were sending second sons or daughters to take advantage of the opportunity to expand their holdings. More than a few retirees who’d passed their original businesses on to their heirs were making the move as well, looking to use their knowledge and experience to start again.

Dwarven citadels were centers for trade, in addition to being military strongholds in times of war. The priest had visited one in his youth, accompanying his father, who was a merchant, as part of a caravan very similar to the one he was currently observing. His youthful imaginings of a structure with high walls and a force of warriors inside hadn’t even come close to the reality. The structure had been carved right into the stone under a mountain, with oversized doors serving as its gate. Once past all the defensive structures, he and his father had emerged into an underground complex larger than most towns he’d visited. There were a dozen cross streets branching off the main avenue that ran from the gate to the central keep. He’d found out later that he’d only seen about half of the citadel, which was built in the rough shape of a wheel, with the keep as the hub.

The priest blinked a few times, bringing his thoughts from the past back to the current migration. With this many people relocating to the citadel, Fluke and his fellow Contenders, if he managed to gather them for an attack on the village, would be facing hundreds of warriors, not just a few dozen.

Shaking his head, he turned and headed back to the temple. He was suffering a crisis of faith now. On the one hand, it was his duty as a servant of his God, to serve and advise the Contenders who shared his faith. To protect them, when necessary, with his own life. On the other hand, Fluke was widely known to be short-tempered and irrational, and was rumored to have already killed one priest in a fit of rage. The church had admonished him, of course, but compared to the value of a tame Contender with twenty victories under his belt, the loss of a priest or two was considered inconsequential.

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