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Mordak didn’t answer in five seconds, he’d lose by default.
    All right, Mordak thought desperately. The rules say it’s got to be something he can see from where he’s standing; but he knows he daren’t lose, so it can’t be anything I might possibly guess. What, within the parameters of the rules and, as a dwarf would define it, the truth, would he know I’d never ever say?
    Suddenly he relaxed, and knew that he’d won. Put like that, there could only be one answer.
    Mordak smiled, revealing all his teeth. “Friend,” he said.
    Drain went white as a sheet. “Sorry. Didn’t quite catch—”
    “Friend,” Mordak repeated, loud and grimly clear. “That’s the answer, isn’t it?”
    “Um,” said Drain. “Best of three?”
    “Friend,” Mordak boomed, and his voice ricocheted off the vaulted roof like catapult shot. “Well?”
    Twenty thousand dwarves and twenty thousand goblins held their breath. Then Drain mumbled something to his shoes. It sounded like
ymblmbl
. “Say again?”
    “Yes.”
    It was one of those trigger moments; when the destiny of the Three Races hung on a tiny detent, like the slim steel spur lodged in the nut of a spanned crossbow that keeps the string from slamming forward and launching the arrow. It would only take the smallest pressure to release it; some fool drawing a sword or nocking an arrow on a bowstring, ordropping a clattering spear on the granite floor. The last time two armies of this size had been this close to each other under the Mountain, the battle had lasted three days and there had been just one survivor, and they’d had to hire in outside contractors to clear away the dead.
    “Just to clarify,” Mordak said. “That means I’ve won.”
    The dwarf didn’t speak. Mordak hadn’t expected him to. As soon as Drain admitted defeat, the dwarves would come out swinging; a fraction of a second later, the goblins would retaliate in kind, and forty thousand sentient beings would set about the congenial task of turning every living thing in the Great Chamber into pastrami. It was probably just as well, Mordak told himself, that I’ve prepared for this moment.
    “Tell you what,” Mordak said, “let’s call it quits.”
    The dwarf’s head snapped up. “You what?”
    “Let’s do a deal,” Mordak said, and his voice seemed like it was coming from a long way away and belonged to someone else. “Your lot can have all the mine workings south of this room, and we’ll have everything to the north. Well?”
    Imagine how you would feel if forty thousand and one people were staring at you, convinced you’d gone off your head. But at least they weren’t shooting. “Just like that?”
    “Yup.”
    “We’d have all the mines
south
of this room, and you’d have all the mines
north
—?”
    Mordak nodded. “That’s the general idea. So?”
    Drain lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “But you won.”
    Mordak nodded. “So I did,” he hissed back. “And in two minutes, unless we can pull this off, these idiots are going to start slaughtering each other. Not to mention,” he added with feeling, “us. But if we do this deal, they’ll all be so bewildered and confused they won’t know what to do, whichmeans you and I can slip away quietly, and maybe just possibly we’ll both still be alive this time tomorrow.”
    “But—”
    The dwarf had spoken automatically, because anything a goblin says to a dwarf has to be contradicted immediately. “Hang on,” Drain said. “That’s not such a dumb idea.”
    “Thank you so much.”
    “But—”
    The inner conflict raging inside the dwarf’s small, round head was fascinating to watch; like a fight to the death between three goldfish. “But that’d mean
peace
.”
    “Good heavens, so it would. There’s a thing. Still—”
    “No,” Drain whispered nervously, “no way. They’ll tear me limb from limb.”
    “Not,” Mordak hissed, “necessarily. Just stop and think, will you? What does peace