Thirty minutes before sunrise Jon started walking down the hill toward the pavilion that had been set up for their conclave. It was closer to Jon’s forces than the other two armies, but that was a meaningless distinction, since he would never reach his own lines before the cavalry ran him down. 

Several people including Elise argued that this was probably a trap and that he should send someone else, but Jon would not be deterred. While a human opponent would have almost certainly tried to betray him, a dwarven one simply couldn’t, and no matter how many times they explained it to those around him, they would never understand that. Dwarves were as bound by their honor as a normal man was by rope, and so long as they were here, they would never let their human lackeys off the leash to do their dirty work either. 

What was almost certainly going to happen was that this meeting would be completely fruitless, and then tomorrow at dawn the dwarves would open up on him with everything they had. While that wasn’t quite what Jon wanted, it was his hope that his position on the high ground would mitigate much of the damage that their terrible weapons could cause. He’d have to be ready for anything.

So, Jon had no problem leaving his weapons behind, in theory at least. In practice though, he did bring a pouch full of crushed coal dust just in case. After all, he was a weapon, and no matter how much he wouldn’t have to defend himself, there was no changing that at this point in his life. 

His mind continued to wander as he walked down the hillside alone to all sorts of topics, which he imagined was his brain’s way of dealing with the level of anxiety he felt as he approached his date with destiny wearing a sweat stained tunic. Once upon a time he might have been a husband and father instead, guiding a small domain like Dalmarin to better times. Now he was just a man with a dream, though, and a lot of people to kill along the way. Such things made it hard to imagine children in his future, as much as he would like to image that he and Elise would have a quiet little future together once all of this was done. 

As Jon approached the tent with its walls rolled up and only a handful of people waiting for him, he feigned a nearly impossible level of confidence, acting completely unintimidated by the armies that surrounded them as he walked into the tent, sat down in the nearest chair, and leaned back like he owned the place.

“Man, what a walk that was,” Jon said, doing his best impression of Rian as his betters only glared at him for his impertinence. “I sure hope that this is worth my time, because the walk back up is going to be killer.”

“Jon Shaw?” the dwarf asked gruffly in Wenlish, which made Jon smile slightly. The man had read his letter, so he knew perfectly well he could speak in stone tongue, but chose to carry on this charade in the common tongue instead for the benefit of the other human at the table. One needed to look no further than the slender golden crown to know exactly who that was. 

“In the flesh,” he agreed, as a number of servants suddenly buzzed around him, placing food and drink in front of him before retreating a respectable distance so as not to be privy to conversation between the three of them unless they were called. As much as Jon would love to drink the chalice of red wine that had been placed in front of him he decided he’d already taken quite enough risks for one day. 

“I have read yer message in full, both about why ye are here this day, and what your grievances are, and even with the most charitable interpretation of the facts, I see no reason to treat with you any further,” the dwarf said simply, cutting out what might have been an hour of flowery words with a human diplomat as he got straight to the point. “I am Rogan, son of Bair and the king’s right hand, and I can see no possible reason for your or your men to rise up against your liege lords in such a disrespectful way.”

“Not going to try to get me to lay down arms, and maybe offer mercy to my men?” Jon asked flipantly to the King. 

King Justenian opened his mouth to speak, but the dwarvish general cut him off instead. 

“There can be no mercy for men such as you, as you well know mister Shaw. I trust you have not forgotten the meaning of the phrase root and branch as it applies to such things,” Rogan spat. “After we put down your rebellion my men will march back through every village you’ve recruited from and end the line of every traitor who thought it a good idea to join with a rogue like you.”

“Very sensible,” Jon answered flatly. He’d accepted no less, which was one of the reasons that he’d insisted that no one else be here as part of the terms. With an audience even a dwarf as blunt as this general might have moderated his words a bit, but with just Jon and the king he saw no need to hold back about what he saw as inevitable. “So you merely agreed to my proposed truce to give you a chance to move your cannons closer.”

“Precisely.” The dwarf gloated. “If an enemy offers me a tactical blunder of such magnitude I would be a fool not to take it.”

“And how do you feel your majesty?” Jon asked, turning away from the dwarf to face his King. “Do you think this is the right way to treat your subjects rather than deal with their legitimate grievances? The land cries out for leadership, and yet you sit in your city by the sea and do nothing!”

In truth Jon wasn’t impressed. The paintings he’d seen of Justenian the Fourth and his father Justenian the Third had made them seem more majestic and regal, even in their robes, but the man before him wearing armor in what Jon supposed was an attempt to be more menacing seemed frail enough that too much sun might be enough to do him in. 

“Excuse me,” the King said, taken aback. He acted for a moment as if Jon had slapped him across the face rather than asked him to act. He obviously wasn’t used to being talked to in this way, at least by a fellow man. “As in all cases, we shall follow dwarven law, and work with the Mithril Throne to see that rogues such like you are put down.”

“So then why did you come?” Jon asked. “Rogan came because of the invitation. He knew that I was dishonorable and that the decision might cost him his life, should I decide to kill everyone here, but he decided the tactical advantage of time was worth the risk, but why did you bother to risk your neck if you aren’t even going to try to understand the concerns of my men?”

“You would not dare strike your King,” the monarch blustered. 

“Well, not without putting it to a vote of your subjects, I agree.” Jon answered blithely, as he was quickly moving to the point where he no longer cared. While he didn’t expect much from this meeting, he still felt disappointed by what he had heard so far. “One final question then, and then I will let you both go and prepare for my inevitable demise.”

“Ye will get no concessions from me, mister Shaw,” the dwarf growled. “Ye sealed your fate a long time ago.”

“That at least I can agree with,” he agreed. “But what I want to know is this: setting aside your lives and my fate for a moment, would you break your sacred laws if it meant saving your people, or even your civilization?”

“Without the law there is no civilization,” the dwarf spat without even thinking the question over. 

The King didn’t even bother to answer, he just shook his head at Jon with eyes full of loathing. 

“Fair enough,” Jon answered rising from the table and regarding them both.

Before he stepped away he switched to the stone tongue and added, “If you take the field against me tomorrow, if you force me to light up the sky and show you the true power of human magic, then none of your men will survive.”

“Dwarven science will never fear human magic,” the dwarf said smugly. “We have such wonders as you will never understand, and we don’t even have to use them to defeat you.”

“Oh? Do you mean the giants?” he asked, feigning naivety. “They are impressive, I agree, and though we haven’t figured out all its secrets I agree that humans have quite a bit to learn from it.”

“You have… How. Dare. You!” the dwarf spat, purpling with rage in a way that Jon hadn’t entirely expected when he’d decided to provoke him. Based on the King’s expression, it was a surprise to him too. 

“It’s true.” Jon smiled. “We’re going to use it to clear the track later, so we can move the train out of the way, so you’d better aim carefully, or you might destroy your masterwork.”

“Even being seen by a creature such as you is enough to justify scrapping it,” the dwarf countered. “We can build more machines, but we can never remove the stain of your dishonor from them.” 

Jon had been expected a different sort of response from the dwarf. He’d thought that he might try to get Jon to surrender it, or at least not reveal it to the humans assembled on the battlefield. Expressing both a willingness and a desire to destroy it though; that hadn’t been on his list of possibilities, and it made him wonder exactly what the significance of those machines was in the larger scheme of things. 

“Well, then I suppose you should prepare to have your whole army stained with my dishonor tomorrow should you persist in fighting when you are so clearly outmatched,” Jon said with a shrug as he started to walk away. 

“Outmatched?!” the dwarf called out after him as he started walking away. “Ye bring a single train of men, and you think ye can stand up to our might? We’ve been bringing dwarven warriors from the deeps for days and the army of yer king is so large that it still stretches almost all the way to the capital still! Forty Seven trainloads of men and weaponry against a jumped up bandit king! You lost the moment you took up a weapon against my kith and kin!”

Jon must have really gotten under Rogan’s skin, because he kept yelling almost until he was unintelligible when Jon was nearly a hundred yards away. The whole encounter had given him no answers, though he hadn’t really expected it to. Instead, in raised new questions as he started walking back up the hill. His conscience had been salved, though, and for all the general’s bluster, he had given Jon ample cause to decide that everything he was about to do was just and right. 

Still, at least he’d gotten this formality over with quickly, he decided as he started to climb up the hill. It was going to be a long night, because they had a lot of things to do before they faced the full fury of the dwarven army at dawn.