The Best of Tales Volume 2 by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

Author:Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman [Weis, Margaret & Hickman, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-1567-5
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

The Highbulp Gorge III was not happy. First to be snatched up by armed Talls and herded cross-country with a rope around his neck, lashed with whips and insulted at every stumble, then to be thrown into a cage with the rest of his followers and dozens of Tall captives as well—Gorge was almost certain that his dignity had been offended, among other things.

“This intoler … outra … unforgiv … this stink!” he grumbled, pacing back and forth in the comer of the roofed pen where the gully dwarves were huddled. “Slave, Talls say. Not slave. I Highbulp!”

“Not slave either,” several of his subjects agreed.

A voice growled, “You gully dwarves pipe down or you’ll feel the lash.”

“Hmph!” Gorge muttered, but lowered his voice. “Maybe dig out? Skitt? Where Skitt?”

“Here,” a sleepy voice said. “What Highbulp want?”

“Skitt, you dig hole.”

“Tried it,” Skitt said in the gloom. “Rock underneath. Need tools, no tools. G’night.”

“Might cut through bars,” another suggested. “Bars are wood.”

“Cut with what?” still another pointed out. “Same thing. Got no tools. If had anything for cut, could—”

“Shut up over there!” a human whispered from the other side of the pen. “You’ll get us all in trouble!”

“Hmph!” Gorge said, feeling helpless and hopeless.

Armed guards patrolled around the pen. Nearby, the fires of the slavers’ camp burned bright. They had been coming in all day, groups of four to eight at a time, most of them bringing captives, and now there were at least thirty in the camp, and dozens of slaves in the pen.

A guard passed near the wood-barred enclosure, and a human voice inside said, “If only I could get my hands on a sword, I’d …”

The guard laughed. “You’d what, slave? Fight? By the time we sell you, we’ll have beaten all the fight out of you. Now shut up.”

Another guard strolled past on the gully dwarves’ side, and the Highbulp and his followers cringed away from the bars. They didn’t like the way these Talls talked, at all.

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