Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) by Robert Brady Page A

morning person.”
         “What would a morning person be?”
         I sighed.  Slang again.  “I have a hard time waking up.”
         “You didn’t get enough sleep is why.  You should have retired earlier.”
         “There were things to do.”
         He looked at me seriously.  “There are always things to do,” he told me.  “Go to sleep at a decent hour and they won’t go anywhere.”
         I shrugged.  “The least of our worries now,” I told him.
         “Say that when your eyes are full of mucus and you can’t aim your arrows,” he scolded me.  “Make mistakes you can live from, Man, and you will live longer.”
         That said, he sat down next to me and we waited for the Dwarf scouts to return.  It didn’t take long before they came back at a run, their faces red.  A shorter, heavier Dwarf whom I knew as Hvarl joined Kvitch and I.  He had seen me practicing with the arrows and, with Kvitch, had fletched me twelve more.  At least I might add to the confusion.
         “They will be here at about dusk,” one Dwarf reported to Hvarl.  “They have three Uman scouts we had to avoid.  The scouts will be here shortly.  There is no place closer for an army that size to camp.”
         Better and better.  We had chosen a bowl-shaped opening from where two large mountains arose.  Centuries of runoff had carved three routes through the mountains.  One trail lead south, where they came from, and two broke north.  The path varied between one and two football fields in width, with an opening wider than two side by side.
         The Dwarves had turned out to be expert engineers, as expected.  They had rigged two mountainsides each to fall with one hammer-blow.  I had wondered at this – it seemed a really big coincidence that the Dwarves of Earth legends should match those of Fovea so precisely. 
         The Dwarves themselves looked pretty much like Kvitch.  They ranged from four to four-and-one-half feet tall, weighing about one hundred fifty pounds of hard bone and thick muscle.  They had thick, bunched foreheads that gave them a constant, frowning appearance.  They seemed to prefer armor of linked chain or thick plates; some of these were “fluted” or corrugated to give them more strength.  They wore steel caps that covered the bridges of their noses and carried maces, twenty-pound hammers and the occasional spear or pike.  Some also had crossbows.
         Their hair ran brown, black, gray or red.  Their skin colored dusky brown, with pointy ears flat against their heads and big, flat noses.  They didn’t sing or make much noise and they each worked like two men under Hvarl’s instruction.  Whether this reflected their nature or Hvarl’s remained to be seen, of course.  I had seen Kvitch fight a little and a few more of them spar the night before, and they were pretty good but not that impressive.  I would have to hope that their strength relied on stamina over prowess.
         We hid in the natural clefts and fissures of the mountain.  Hiding the stallion proved easy once we found a cave.  I insisted on exploring it and found nothing to suggest a surprise for him.  We waited there together, about five hundred feet above the floor of the bowl.  The mountain formed a forty-five-degree slope for about fifty feet before me, then rose about three feet in a natural barricade before it dropped at about seventy-five degrees to the bowl’s floor.  I stroked the stallion’s neck, combing out his long, white mane with my fingers, keeping him quiet.  We waited for the opportunity to spring our trap.
         The Uman scouts came into the valley as expected, just ahead of the army.  They made practically no effort to ensure the safety of the valley – we left an obvious trail leading out through both northern passages.  Plainly, the band had split up to give one or the other a better chance of escaping.  Had they been cautious,