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He felt soed yell
"Naf! Fus pack-par!" a screeching voice called froh the crowd and tossed a lasso around his neck, and even noas trying to haul him to the rails of the corral He heard footsteps behind as the ed the scarecrow, and uncoiled, launching hiap between the upper and lower bars The ht him in the midriff Hross folded like a sheet fallen frorabbed and cut the line around Auron’s neck, stopping Auron fro his teeth into his foe’s throat Hross lay below, arible gasping sounds In the second that cutting the line took, Auron’s furor faded, and he took up Hross’s head in hishis jaws firmly to either side of the man’s skull so that the scarecrow’s eyes looked out at the ax- over the rails
Auron tried to say, "Stop the fight," but saliva and a hissing noise were all that came out of the sides of hisAuron’s snout with his fingernails Auron made ready to crush his skull should the man try for his eyes The ax-man looked at his e’s hed He dropped the ax and went down on one knee, holding his right hand palon," Hross added, to a general cheer The shouts and applause degenerated into a hundred individual arguments over the bets
"It turned into a bad dwarvish joke," Djer said later as he and Auron approached the center tower "Three hundred individual, crisscrossing arguers Most of the dwarves that bet on theinvolved Of course, the ones that bet on you said that you won nevertheless We finally forced Hross to pay the bets he had h up at least a symbolic restitution to the others that bet on you Hross complained at first, but when he saw that every dwarf in the ring would take--or give--either his et ed, he opened his purse I don’t knohy he bothered closing it again--it was as e Decent of you not to eat them after all"
"That man with the ax, err--"
"Naf," Sekyw supplied
Auron tried the naon’s hed and clapped me on the back I didn’t understand a word he said, but he seeood man, and after that I lost my appetite to eat his fellows"
"I don’t know that these , or even care if a couple chunt off They’re not dwarves, after all"
They stood for a ed wheels on the linked-shield rolling road were being oiled and cleaned
"The towers leave to They’ll roll along for a hundred days or more" He took them beneath the tower; the dwarves just had to bow their heads Sekyw rapped on a wooden portal with his walking stick "Toarden, open, our brave drake wants a look inside this donder The Partner Djer wishes to accompany him on a tour"
Sekyw stepped out of the way as the flat surface above dropped down, a stairway supported by ropes Polished brass gleamed at the ends of dwarf-size handrails
"Our ally is welco the stairs to bow Sekyw took the rown to dragon-size A forged web of steel held up the floors above A dwarf or two lounged, giving the ears an occasional rub from a cloth that reeked like la rooms," Sekyw explained "Note how many of the wheels and structural reinforcehter, with only the tiniest loss in supportive strength We’ll ride the cargo verticator fro, the dwarf-lifts aren’t working" He pointed to a vertical belt of leather, with little metal handles, or perhaps footrests, which ran on its own set of wheels, a smaller, vertical version of the treads below
They stepped onto a metal-webbed platfore with bars at the corners, and Sekyw reached for a bell-rope He pulled twice, and the grate on the floor lifted to a gap in the ceiling above Djer gasped and grabbed at one of the handrails running between the corner bars
"First time in a verticator?" Sekyw said
"Ach, no, I used them in the mines We’d ride up in the coal-scuttles You had to juood knock in the head What do you think, Auron?"
"I could have hopped up to the next level easily enough," Auron said