The road we're taking, Lopak explains to me, one mealtime a long-hour or so after telling him of my runeforging, is a fast one yet shunned in recent times for its extreme danger. They are taking it because their guild's client—to my surprise, a human—is typically impatient and has paid a high premium for speed. Humans have more coin on them than most dwarves assume, apparently. Food and alcohol are exported downward in great quantities, and this brings up far more gold and silver for far less effort than mining does.

  The reason for the road's desertion? Troll gangs. Iron trolls, specifically. The full downward half of Runethane Ytith's realm is a wasteland of banded iron ore: rusty and sedimentary stone sheets are layered on top of each other like so many alternating pieces of crimson and beige paper. Sometimes rust-water streaming from a purer band of iron will have turned a section of the wall completely blood red, but most of the iron ore here is too low-yield to be worth mining, thus few dwarves ever bothered settling here.

  But for the iron trolls, it is a perfect home. Crops of mushrooms with scarlet ribs and gray-silver caps provide food for boar, all-eating troglodytes, axe-tooth rodents, and various other furred, scaled, and slimy fungus-eaters. Amphidons, salamanders, white crocodiles, running crocodiles, and even the occasional deep-bear prey on these.

  In turn, the trolls prey on everything. They are grouped into savage clans, and are said to be more intelligent than usual, wielding not only clubs and rocks, but slings, spears, and bladed discs formed from the cured hides of slain rivals.

  This trip is a high risk, high reward venture. The surface-scraping insurance costs for the cargo would have wiped out any potential profit, and so none was bought. Only the most committed, glory-hungry, and gold-greedy guildmembers volunteered to take on the job.

  My first sighting of the iron trolls is only a glimpse. I am staring out the rear of the carriage when a shadow emerges from a side-tunnel. It is big, probably a good half the weight again of the lava troll I killed in Vanerak's realm. Its iron plates are angular and jagged, like plate armor forged by a particularly vicious smith. Its yellow eyes, filled with monstrous hunger, meet my gaze and hold for half a second. Then it disappears back into the shadows as our train thunders onward.

  “Did you see it?” I ask Volka.

  “See what?”

  “The iron troll.”

  “No. Shit, you better tell the captain. Was there just one?”

  “Just one that I saw. Only for an instant. It looked big.”

  “Iron trolls. Fuck, they might have our scent.”

  She sounds terrified. Well, she should be, if only stone trolls managed to devastate half their number—they pulled an uncharacteristic ambush, rolling a boulder in front of the train to bring it to a halt. These iron trolls might pull something even more cunning.

  “I'll go up and tell him.”

  “We're traveling too fast. You'll fall. It'd be better to wait for our next stop.”

  “All right.” I nod. “You're right. As soon as we stop, I'll tell him.”

  Maybe if my armor was undamaged, I'd risk climbing up and walking along the carriage roofs. But most of the slow, steady rolling power of magma has gone from my boots, and the road is not particularly smooth here, due to how the different kinds of sedimentary stone and ore erode at varying rates.

  A few hours later, we halt to rest the blindboars. I hurry toward the beasts—thinner than most I've seen—where Lopak is directing their feeding.

  “There was a troll,” I tell him, without preamble.

  He nods. “I saw a couple too. They have our scent.”

  “You don't sound particularly worried.”

  “We'll beat them if they come at us.” He is speaking loudly, so everyone can hear. “Once the blindboar have rested a few minutes, we'll have them drag the carriages to make a wall. That's where we'll defend from. No sleep for anyone for the next two short-hours, I'm afraid. But you may take double rations.”

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  Once the blindboar have been given their massive nose-bags, filled with pungent gruel spiced with stupefying powder, they are made to drag the carriages across the front of the rest-stop hollow, then detached and led to the back. It is interesting to watch how, after each blindboar's ear is covered with thick muffs, its legs bend and it slumps down asleep within but a few seconds.

  “Up onto the carriages,” Lopak orders. “Zathar, you take the right and I will take the left. If a gang comes, we will pivot our forces to the corresponding direction. If they come from either side, we will retreat from the wall and group in the center, in front of the blindboars. Wheels can be repaired—pigs cannot, and I think the iron trolls know this.”

  We take our positions quickly. These runeknights are a mix of degrees, but each one's discipline is well-honed no matter their rank.

  Upon the carriages we stand, listening to the wind for any iron-clatters that it may carry. I hear none, though, just the air's howling. Something will come soon, I'm sure. Lopak said they have our scent, and he is more experienced with troll attacks than I am. It's only a matter of time before they come thundering out of the darkness.

  But they are intelligent, for trolls. They might have wrapped their feet in soft fungus to approach us silently. We should have placed some lamps further down each end of the tunnel, I think, so we could see them from further off. Too late now—it would be stupid to venture out alone, or even in a small group.

  Or they might try a ranged assault, with small boulders launched from slings, or those metal discs I've heard the others whisper about. Apparently it's not just a wild rumor—these trolls really have developed such a weapon.

  There's a multitude of things they might try. I think back to my fourth degree examination, where we were tasked with slaying a tribe of them atop a rocky slope. They laid a trap for us then, a trench into which they dropped stones to crush us.

  We cannot underestimate them.

  The hours pass slowly. I feel no impatience, however, no frustration. I just watch and wait. Life-Ripper feels light in my hands, through which the ruby's bloodlust-born strength is flowing in time with my heartbeats. Weapon and amulet both are eager to kill.

  Their enthusiasm begins to affect me. Visions of crimson fill the darkness. Crystal-blooms of bone and blood and savaged flesh appear. Impatience begins to creep into my calmness. Where are our enemies? Where are they hiding?

  They must be slain!

  “Get the blindboars up, Khatek,” Lopak orders once the two short-hours have passed. “Quickly now.”

  Strength recedes from my limbs back into the ruby and I feel myself slump slightly. My armor becomes heavy, and Life-Ripper heavier. It seems there will be no fight this time.

  I curse under my breath. What am I thinking, being disappointed? If we fight, many of the dwarves beside me now will die. Do I really wish for this to happen? Of course I don't. That no trolls came upon us is a good thing.

  The carriages are made ready without trouble, and off we go again. Lopak orders me to sleep, which I attempt to do, but my dreams are all of blood and death. I wake soon—at least, I don't think much time has passed, and return to staring out the view-slit.

  “Aren't you going to sleep?” I ask Volka.

  “Not with you next to me.”

  I scowl “I'm not going to slit your throat, you know.”

  “I know. But I just know that if I shut my eyes, no peace is going to come into my mind with you next to me.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe it's your weapon. But being here beside you feels like sitting by the shore of a lake of blood.”

  “Oh.”

  “No offense meant. I know reaching second isn't easy. I can't fathom how hard you've worked. I'm sure you've got more than ten thousand long-hours of blood behind you.”

  “I don't think I'm even forty, actually. But you're right that I've seen plenty of blood. Though mostly it was the blood of my friends, not my enemies.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that.”

  A few silent moments pass.

  “Not even forty?” she repeats. “Forty whats?”

  “Forty years.”

  “How many long-hours is that? Not that many, right?”

  “Five thousand or so. I'm not sure.”

  “Not long at all. Maybe you really are the runeforger reborn. Or just lying again.”

  Reborn? I wonder about that. I don't think that's entirely the case: part of him might be inside me, inside the sphere that directs the power of the world's blood through me, but I'm not him. That face, whose etched malice seems to deepen each time I recall it, is not my face. His shadow is upon me, but I am not him.

  At least, I hope I'm not.

  “We'll see,” I say guardedly. I still regret telling them everything a little. “But I really do think you ought to sleep.”

  “So do I, but—”

  We're both shunted back as the carriage suddenly begins to slow. My head clanks against the wooden crate behind. The deceleration increases, then we're thrown back forward as the carriage halts.

  “Out! Out!” Lopak is shouting, but we're already leaping out the door with weapons at the ready.

  I turn and make my way around to the back of the carriage, for that is where I am to guard. I see nothing but darkness, though. I can hear nothing but the wind either. No clanking footsteps.

  “Volka, you stay at the back,” Lopak orders. “Zathar, come here and look at this—Yulalf, replace him.”

  “Stay ready,” I say to Volka, then I run to the front of the caravan.

  Out of the blackness looms a tall, heavy barricade of jagged shadow. The blindboars are in disarray, straining at their harnesses to try and get away from it. I hurry past them to Captain Lopak, looking up at the wall in horror.

  In the light of his lamp, the shadows are revealed to be splintered sections of wood. Some of them are round—wheels. I also recognize beams still with bits of leather harness attached, and long white pig bones. The stench of rot is pouring from it—the stench of death.

  “The Runeking save us, Zathar,” Lopak whispers.

  He is focused on a white object in the center of the barricade. I look closer. My eyes widen.

  It is a dwarven skull, staring emptily at us from its enruned steel helmet.

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