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the middle of the path, holding the bridle of a milk-white horse, was a young man with long golden hair. He was dressed in green velvet, with a red cloak and shiny black boots, and there was a sword hanging from his belt. It wasn’t exactly clear what he was doing. He had a little rectangular black and silver box nestled in the palm of his hand, and he was prodding at it with his thumb and frowning. She’d never seen him before, needless to say, but there was absolutely no doubt in her mind about his identity.
    One day, they kept telling her, your prince will come. Well, he just had.

I n the vast, echoing space of the Halls of Udrear, half a mile underground and lit by the wild flickerings of a thousand pine-resin torches, two mighty armies confronted each other in dead silence. On one side, the grim dwarf-host of Drain son of Dror son of Druin stood motionless in serried, geometrically perfect ranks and files; on the other, the goblin horde of King Mordak seethed like a cesspool in an earthquake. The thick, damp, smoky air felt heavy with the miasma of five hundred years of war, a physical presence that lay like a crushing weight on the shoulders and neck of every warrior present. For a long time they stood, their eyes full of the enemy. Then Mordak took a step forward–one step, but everyone present would have sworn the earth shook. Opposite him, Drain clenched his empty hands until his knuckles showed white, and advanced precisely one step to meet him.
    Iron-clad toe to iron-clad toe; they were so close that the tip of the dwarf’s beard was almost touching the goblin’s sixth chin. Their eyes met; the hatred, the disgust and the hope—
    “Well?” Drain said.
    Mordak’s deep voice seemed to rumble up out of the mine shafts under their feet. “It’s time.”
    “Bags I go first.”
    Mordak drew in breath for a great shout of refusal; but all he did was nod his enormous head. “Fine,” he said. “You can go first.”
    Drain hesitated. In his mind’s eye he could see ninety-seven generations of his ancestors, looking down at him from the gates of Nargoprong, waiting for him to screw up. The entire future of dwarfkind rested on the choice he was about to make. And if he should fail—He steeled his heart, lifted his head and in a loud, clear voice said, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with F.”
    Mordak blinked. “Eff?”
    “You heard me.”
    Mordak breathed out slowly through the three slits just above his upper jaw that served him as nostrils. Eff, he thought, for crying out loud. “Fire.”
    “No.”
    Eff. Apart from fire, what was there in the Great Hall that began with F? Soldiers, lots of soldiers, in armour, holding weapons. And that was about it. He racked his brains for abstruse military terminology. “Phalanx?”
    “Phalanx,” Drain said smugly, “begins with a P.”
    Mordak’s eyes widened; two of them, anyway. “Does it?”
    “Yes. Look it up.”
    Which left just one more guess; and if he guessed wrong, the five hundred year war would be over and he’d have lost. By the terms of the armistice (which he’d proposed, argued passionately for in the teeth, the yellow, split-ended teeth, of furious opposition from every single goblin clan chieftain under the Mountain) the dwarves would then be entitled to vacant possession of the entire network of mines, from Drubin’s Gate to the Nazerbul. It didn’t bear thinking about.
    Eff, for pity’s sake. By the rules of the contest, thrashed out over the course of two years by five hundred negotiatorsfrom each side, he wasn’t allowed to look round, to see what Drain could see. He had to rely on his memory and, Thun preserve us, his imagination.
    Flames? Fighters? Wasn’t there some sort of rare, obsolete throwing-axe whose name began with F? No, howled a little voice inside him, it’s nothing like that, it can’t be. Remember, Drain’s a dwarf. Dwarves are
devious
.
    The dwarf-lord cleared his throat. Time was passing. If