Here's Chapter 4. As usual, please review.

This chapter will be longer than the others.

Disclaimer: As always, Eragon belongs to Mr. Christopher Paolini.

The long line of dwarves and their mounts quickly and speedily moved along the Surdan border, as the incredibly tough, sturdy, and fast Feldûnost ran over leagues and leagues of hard, baked ground under the hot, late afternoon sun.

"So who was the dwarf, the one that gave that speech for Hrothgar?" Eragon asked.

"He was Uriah, a close friend of Hrothgar's in his early years. They fought in the Red Dawn campaign together." Orik replied.

"The what?"

Saphira answered that instead of Orik. The Red Dawn Campaign was the response to an attack on the dwarves from urgals, which happened about 200 years ago. In the night, about 30 years before it happened, a large party of dwarves came upon a cave full of urgal warriors, women, and children, then killed everyone in the cave except one child, who grew up to be a kull named Nar Werghar, who then in turn made sure to kill one dwarf warrior, one dwarf woman, and one dwarf child for every single one killed that day. So, the dwarves gathered a band of over a thousand warriors and, in broad daylight, they attacked a huge urgal camp, which contained nearly the entire urgal army. While the dwarves eventually took hundreds of casualties and all the surviving dwarves were captured, the urgal army was crippled by the attack, and didn't openly engage the dwarves in battle for several decades.

I see.

Eragonleaned to the left so he could examine the line. Apart from themselves, everyone was a dwarf, although there were a very small number of mourners in the line, numbering no more than one hundred, which puzzled Eragon.

"Hey Orik, why are there no humans and so few dwarves to mourn Orik?"

"The only ones allowed to attend the funeral of a dwarven king are members of the king's clan and their blood. Eragon is a member of Dûrmgrist Ingietum, and Roran and Saphira are your blood."

"Oh. I see."

The Beor Mountains, a distant line of small dots on the horizon, began to grow slightly bigger and bigger as the day wore on, and by nightfall, the party reached its foot. There, Uriah, the old dwarf who had been Hrothgar's friend, halted them and spoke, while at the same time opening a huge door large enough to fit a dragon. "Now we enter sacred ground. Be silent, for none are to speak inside this hall."

He then entered the Sacred Tunnel, and the rest of the line followed suit. Eragon made sure to keep quiet as his mount trotted in.

The tunnel was perfectly straight, and dimly lit by rows of tall, man-sized candles that burned without actually burning wax. It was a solemn, quiet place, and Eragon wouldn't have spoken if he had been allowed to.

Every ten yards or so, a painting, almost lifelike though clearly not a fairth, was hung above the candles, depicting different dwarf kings and warriors.

While Eragon didn't dare speak for fear of disrespecting Hrothgar, he began to wonder where this tunnel might lead. It probably either led directly to the tombs or to Tronjheim's gate.

It was not long before he had the chance to find out. He guessed it was around midnight, though he was not sure, when he could first see the tunnel's end. It looked like it led out into open air, but he couldn't truly tell from his distance.

Within the next few minutes, Uriah reached the exit, and not too long after, Eragon, Roran, Orik, and Saphira reached the exit as well. The exit did lead to open air, and many stars, shining bright overhead, provided the only light other than the faint, sliver of a crescent moon that shown down.

"We reach the final part of our journey. Now, dismount your Feldûnost, we must complete the final part of the journey on foot."

Everyone followed this order, and formed another column, while the Feldûnost left, most likely headed for Tarnag, where they could reunite with their owners.

The mourners followed Uriah as he led them towards Farthen Dûr, and many of them lit small torches, which cast light onto the ground and illuminated the path. Eragon, looking around, vaguely remembered it as the foot of the mountains that he had once traveled to before, when he was rushing Arya to the Varden for aid. He remembered killing urgals as he charged into the lake, then being choked by the water before meeting Orik, who saved his life and let him inside the mountains.

The party proceeded around to the waterfall, and Eragon remembered futilely banging a rock on the very cliff they now stood by. Uriah stood by the cliff face and touched a particular place on the cliff, and two huge doors, thirty feet high started to open.

As the doors opened, he stepped inside.

There was a quick, nearly inaudible whistle.

Uriah's body tumbled backwards, filled with arrows. Suddenly, arrows flew out of the entryway to the mountain, slaughtering dwarves as they ate through their ranks.

"Stop! We're friendlies! Dwarves! Humans!" Orik yelled. The arrows stopped. Only five mourners remained, not counting Saphira. A figure stepped out of the shadowy entrance.

The figure wasn't a dwarf. An Imperial Sergeant and a twenty-man squad of archers stepped out in the open.

Eragon's mouth fell open in shock for a second. Then he grabbed a sword he had gotten from a dead soldier out of Zar'roc's old sheath, not bothering to question the situation, while Saphira, who had been standing next to Eragon, flew into the air and prepared to incinerate the Imperials.

"Stop, fool! We will kill you! Back up or every single one of you dies!"

Eragon didn't stop.

"Stop! We will kill dwarven citizens!"

Eragon stopped dead in his tracks. "You mean..."

"We have taken over the city!" The Imperial Sergeant smiled. "We have demands! You will leave, now! We will voice our demands at a later time! Right now, you will leave! You will report this back to your leader! And you will tell her that for every hour our demands are not met, one dwarven citizen will be tortured until death! Now go!"

The sergeant stabbed two dwarves right through the chest, and then he and his men slowly backed into Farten Dûr and closed the gates. The only survivors of the incident were Saphira, Roran, Orik, and Eragon, who all stared dumbfounded at the dead bodies lying around them.

What happened? Saphira voiced everyone's thoughts with that one statement.

She rose into the sky, picking up Hrothgar's casket, and, with nothing else to do, flew back to the hellish Burning Plains.

So what happened? Next chapter should be up Saturday.

Sorry, this one wasn't exactly longer, although it broke 1,000 words.

Please review. What did you think of the ending, in particular?