The music — fiddles and pipes — grew louder as I advanced. From the breaking of the light, I could see that there was some sort of hall off to my right, from the foot of the stair. They were small steps and there were a lot of them. I did not bother with stealth, but hurried down to the landing.

When I turned and looked into the hall, I beheld a scene out of some drunken Irishman’s dream. In a smoky, torchlit hall, hordes of meter high people, red-faced and green clad, were dancing to the music or quaffing what appeared to be mugs of ale while stamping their feet, slapping tabletops and each other, grinning, laughing and shouting. Huge kegs lined one wall, and a number of the revelers were queued up before the one which had been tapped. An enormous fire blazed in a pit at the far end of the room, its smoke being sucked back through a crevice in the rock wall, above a pair of cavemouths running anywhere. Star was tethered to a ring in the wall beside that pit, and a husky little man in a leather apron was grinding and honing some suspicious-looking instruments.

Several faces turned in my direction, there were shouts and suddenly the music stopped. The silence was almost complete.

I raised my blade to an overhand, epee en garde position, pointed across the room toward Star. All faces were turned in my direction by then.

“I have come for my horse,” I said. “Either you bring him to me or I come and get him. There will be a lot more blood the second way.”

From off to my right, one of the men, larger and grayer than most of the others, cleared his throat.

“Begging your pardon,” he began, “but how did you get in here?”

“You will be needing a new door,” I said. “Go and look if you care to, if it makes any difference — and it may. I will wait.”