Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) by Thomas Head

mind the wind vain on the river pole.  And we need someone who knows the tongues of the southerly elves.”
    “ He’d make a damn fine guide,” Gilli agreed behind him.  “Knows how to keep that mouth shut!”
    At that, Big Kenzo grunted.  “Remember the bloody elves that guided us the first time—straight to the “lucky” mountain, the home of damned thunderwyrm!”
    Suddenly, someone yelled from the banks, “Fine vessel, my lads!  I hear that the Feisty-Goat could float on a puddle!”
    I looked up from a trout, rising to a crumb I had tossed in. 
    “Oh?  Who is this!”
    Swallows, just out of their winter sleep, swooped across a familiar form. It was Delthal.  He stepped beneath the naked branches of a brake of willows.  Then he came wading out to greet us, crunching through the thinner ice until he waist deep in the frigid water.
    “ Now what’s all this!” Uncle Jickie declared.
    “ I’ll tell you fine fellows what all this is!” Delthal roared back at him.  “This is a deathtrap!  Sometimes you’ll pass a riverside settlement of thatch and timber, and you’ll think it’s an elf village. But the folks inside are fully dwarven, at least by blood.  I tell you, they’ve become like them, and in many parts they are more like elves than dwarves at all!”
    “ Says the dwarf in the skins of the elf!” thundered Jickie.
    “ Nay!  Says the dwarf in the mind of an elf!  Trust at least this much, Master Jickie, I know them as well as any dwarf does!  If you will not make me rich as your guide, then make me satisfied knowing you will not travel by day.  Hide the vessel, lads.  Hide it by day and glide it by night.”
    “ Thieves and vagabond, all of them!  We are warriors !”
    “ Ha!  They have warriors, too,” Delthal said.  “Never mind the wild dwarves.  I’ll admit they are not so lethal as years ago,” he added, “Back then, if you did not want to be a warrior you stayed home in the fatherland. You till the soil, herd sheep, fish the sea, but you do not take to the ships and become a Cutter.  So in the first years here in Yyrkland, most every dwarf was forced to the fight.  But the— ”
    “ But?  What but?  You just proved our point, by thunder!” Kenzo growled.  “These days, only one in twelve dwarves has a belly for the blood of his enemy.  The rest are farmers who fell to wanderlust in their youth, or who were unlucky enough to be born to mountain dwarves—the vagabond southerly dwarves will think they’re approaching dogs, but they’ll find themselves facing bears!”
    “True enough.  But it’s the southerly elves you’ll have to worry about.  They’ll come at you by the score, Master Kenzo, each one more naked, hungry and fierce than the last!”
    Big Kenzo laughed. “Lad, you’re amusing, I will grant you that.  But elves?  I think only one in twelve is a real warrior, and sometimes—nay most times—not even that many.  But in our company, Young Delthal, every blade is wielded by a warrior!”
    One or two of the oars dipped and the Feisty-Goat glided backwards.
    “Aye, you’ll be as bears, my lads.  Bears, growling and yelping, crying like a damned cub when you face the thunderwyrm!”
    The vessel slowed.
    “I saw the elves try to take it once.  They brought a force a hundred times this size.  They had blocked the mouth of its lair with felled trees.  There were about a hundred naked elvish warriors.  They had a score of bowmen and spear-throwers waiting by the blockage, ready to skewer the beast.”
    For once , my kinsman fell silent.
    “ That was something else I learned about the elves, the joy with which they faced it.  And the utter failure they were at it;  I saw them whooping with joy as they leaned down to stab it, only to have teeth the size of those oars chomp them in twain.  But that was not all I learned.  At least it’s not all I think I learned: there might be a way to kill it with but a handful of stout