Fate of Thorbardin

EIGHTEEN

The night in Hillhome was one of the finest nights in Gus Fishbiter’s long and eventful life. Not only did he have enough to eat and drink-so much, in fact, that necessity required him to slip away from the party occasionally so that he could throw up the contents of his full stomach, simply to make room for the next course-but he was actually privy to the council of high and mighty dwarves. They never asked his opinion about anything, of course, but they let him listen to their important debate. And if they didn’t exactly seek his advice, neither did anybody clobber him on those occasions when he did dare to speak!

Even his girls were happy, both of them at the same time! That was not something he could remember ever happening before, and he made the most of it. First Slooshy fawned over him, boasting to everyone who would listen (which was, essentially, nobody but Gus) how brave he had been in Thorbardin, when the two of them had first met. She described their fight with the Theiwar bounty hunters, the flight that had caused them to plunge into a flooded, rapid underground pipe of water, and how Gus had helped her keep her head above water until he had been swept away and, she assumed, drowned like a rat.

Then Berta bragged about how Gus had been the mightiest highbulp in Pax Tharkas, and how he had taken advantage of the magical blue door that had appeared in their dungeon throne room, leading to all sorts of new adventures. Nobody could run away from danger better than Gus, according to the Aghar females.

Finally, both girls took turns flattering him about his courageous rescue of Crystal Heathstone and his slaying of the vile, mad Klar. Apparently, since Crystal was surrounded by her own people-and clearly those people were delighted to have her back-the two Aghar girls had concluded that she was not really a rival for Gus’s affections. Furthermore, since it was Crystal who was more or less directly responsible for all the good food and drink that had come their way over the past day, they were inclined to view the Neidar female as rather more of a good friend than a bitter rival for the highbulp’s affections.

They all got kind of drunk as the evening progressed. Still, as he paid partial attention to the earnest counsels going on around him, Gus became vaguely aware that the hill dwarves seemed to consider it a matter of pride that they go to the aid of the mountain dwarves of Pax Tharkas. They were, if anything, insulted by the fact that Tarn Bellowgranite had not called upon their assistance, as they had (rather grudgingly) agreed to provide it in the treaty signed at the end of the Tharkadan War.

Encouraged by Crystal and Slate, and inflamed by the tales of corruption and villainy running rampant in Thorbardin, the Neidar became more and more determined to take forceful, assertive action. The cause was one that the Neidar could enthusiastically support.

“Thorbardin for all!” one hill dwarf proclaimed.

“Thorbardin for all!” was the cry that echoed around the great town square of Hillhome and was embraced by seemingly every newcomer who arrived in the town, and all day and all night, there continued to be a steady stream of newcomers.

“What’s behind this civil war?” Slate asked Crystal at one point. “We’ve heard rumors, but you seem to know more than we do.”

“It dates back to our exile. The fanatic pretender, Jungor Stonespringer, kidnapped my son, Tor, and used him as leverage to get Tarn to abdicate the throne. Jungor was wildly unpopular; he issued edict after edict, banning everything from gully dwarves to music, to females owning their own businesses or going about without a male escort. More recently, a powerful wizard named Willim the Black has made a move to claim the nation.”

“And how fares the war in the undermountain?” pressed the Neidar leader. “Does it still rage?”

“Well, the most recent witness is right here,” Crystal said, looking skeptically at the nodding, groggy Aghar. “Gus, what did you see in Thorbardin the last time you were there?”

“Black wizard kill ’em all,” Gus proclaimed. It was late in the evening, and he was thoroughly drunk but more than happy to expound. “Bunty hunters hunt Aghar. Big King Stonespringer hunt Aghar. Black wizard hunt everybody. And him got big magic. Scare Gus outta there, right one, two … one, two …”

His voice trailed off. What came after two again? He shrugged, remembering that it was really not ever necessary to count higher than that. As the dwarves resumed their debating, he reached for his mug. It had been filled again by a friendly barmaid.

“This make … two drinks!” he said, draining the contents of the mug into his mouth and across his chin and down his chest. It splashed right onto the boards of the high platform upon which he and his girlfriends had been invited to sit.

Many more times that night, he quaffed his second drink until, finally, he tilted the mug back and leaned back to finish it and toppled right off the back of the bench. He rolled over the edge of the platform and onto the ground. There, his fall was fortunately broken by the soft, plump bodies of his two girlfriends who, he vaguely recalled, had made similarly elegant departures from the party sometime earlier in the night.

Thus cushioned, Gus spent a blissful two hours sleeping. When he dreamed, it was of bountiful tables, foaming kegs, and willing girlfriends, and when he didn’t dream, his body rested, recovered, and regained its strength.

When he awakened, it was with one of the worst headaches he had ever known. But even that couldn’t distract him from the excitement of the preparations. He and his girls, groaning and groggy, crawled up from the mud and back onto the platform, where they found Slate Fireforge seated at the table and a long file of hill dwarves gathered in the plaza before him. They stepped up, one by one, and signed something onto a long scroll of parchment. As they did so, Slate assigned them to the “swords” or the “crossbows” or the “spears.”

Gus was about to elbow the Neidar chief aside with a firm “Hey, that my seat!” when he was accosted by Crystal Heathstone, who took him by the arm and, with his girls following, led him to a new table in the sunlight, just outside of a bakery. A cheerful, young lad brought them a fresh loaf of bread and some milk, and Gus’s headache was instantly forgotten.

“You were splendid last night,” Crystal told him. “I don’t think we’d have mustered half this many volunteers without your testimony.”

“Well, sure ’nuf,” he agreed, stuffing a crusty piece of bread, heavily slathered with butter, into his mouth. Of course, he wasn’t certain what splendid or volunteer or testimony meant, but he trusted it was all good. He looked around hopefully.

“Nuther party today?” he asked.

She smiled, though once again he detected that hint of sadness in her eyes and her manner. “Not today,” she said. “We’re all busy getting ready to go help Tarn-and Gretchan Pax. We thought you’d want to come along with us.”

“Go Thorbardin? Why, sure,” he said. “Me ready. Girls ready!”

The rest of the day he lolled about Hillhome while the Neidar busied themselves with preparations. Curious children came around to talk to them, asking him with wide eyes, “Are you the one who saved Crystal Heathstone?”

“That me,” Gus replied before asking, “Got any beer?”

The children proved to be a woefully inadequate source of strong drink, and perhaps that was a good thing. In any event, the Neidar under Slate Fireforge left Hillhome the very next morning, with a force of some four hundred doughty warriors. Criers had been sent to the outlying towns and villages, and all day long more bands of warriors, coming those from places south of Hillhome where the column passed through, or from other villages that didn’t have time to muster in the town itself, joined the streaming column as it marched toward Thorbardin.

The bigger towns each sent sixty or eighty men, while the smaller villages might dispatch only a dozen or so, but every one of the volunteers was welcomed, and the force grew hourly as it steadily proceeded southward. Unlike the Kayolin Army and the Dwarf Home Army, the Neidar troops didn’t march with any wagons or carts in which the Aghar could ride, but Gus was surprised to realize as he strode along that his legs seemed to feel stronger than ever before. The same was true of his girls, so they had no difficulty keeping up with the steadily marching hill dwarves. Crystal even allowed the gully dwarves to keep her company for a while, right near the front of the column!

“I think you toughened up, walking all that way from Pax Tharkas,” Crystal suggested.

“Hmm, yeah?” Gus said, liking the sound of that. “Gus plenty tough!”

Slate was an easygoing commander, and Gus found that the Neidar captain was even willing to talk to him when the gully dwarf made his way to the very lead position of the long, sinuous marching formation.

“You lotta times make war?” Gus asked, impressed with the way Slate’s men followed his orders and seemed so willing to help him out.

“Not so much,” Slate said. “The only other time was a mistake, when Harn Poleaxe convinced us to march on Pax Tharkas. Still, this kind of business sort of runs in the family.”

“Runs? You runs to war alla time?”

“No,” Slate laughed. “I mean my ancestors have always sort of been the adventuring type. My great-uncle was Flint Fireforge. Maybe you heard of him? He was one of the Heroes of the Lance. He went all the way to Palanthas and even rode a dragon in the war against the Dark Queen.”

Gus shuddered. He didn’t know which sounded worse: riding a dragon or making war against a Dark Queen. Either way, he was sort of relieved they were merely marching under the mountain and going to fight against a fearsome, spell-casting wizard. But he sensed that Slate was proud of his uncle, so he didn’t say anything insulting.

They were interrupted by a large cheer that rose from the dwarves behind them, and they turned to see Axel Carbondale marching out of a side valley, leading a force of, well, more than two dwarves. (Gus heard Axel boast that he had brought “four hundred swords” to join the expedition. Since he didn’t see any swords marching by themselves, he figured that each sword had also brought along a dwarf to wield itself.)

By late afternoon it was a weary band of hill dwarves who finally paused to make camp after the sun had set behind the western mountains. The Neidar made bivouac in the forested valley beside a mirror-still lake. Archers had been preceding the army all day, and they had already fanned out along the marshy shore. A steady supply of geese was being carried to the cookfires that started to blaze all over.

Gus sent his girls to find a good place for him to sleep. “No big rock to hide us this time!” he warned direly, well remembering the first night of the march, when his companions’ incompetence had caused them to become separated from the Dwarf Home Army.

Then he settled down to enjoy the evening. He was pleased when Crystal Heathstone came by to see how he had handled the long march.

“Plenty good,” Gus replied honestly. Before she wandered back to the army commanders, he remembered something he’d been planning to tell her.

“You know, new king gonna put Aghar back on thanes,” Gus boasted. “Get a real big stone chair and everything.”

“It’s a nice idea, and it should happen. But who told you that?” the Neidar female wondered.

The very memory provoked a blissful sigh from Gus. “Gretchan Pax say so.” He frowned, trying to recall details. “Well, she say she talk to king, want king to give Aghar a thane. Or big new highbulp at least.”

“I used to live in Thorbardin,” Crystal noted. “The Aghar always used to have a seat on the council of thanes.”

“Yeah, but bad King Stonespringer, he take away. Him kill Aghar thane; want kill all Aghar.”

“Well, it just so happens that I know King Bellowgranite,” Crystal said with a sly smile. “And if my word has any weight with him-together with Gretchan’s-you can be sure that the Aghar will once again be seated at that council.”

Gus drifted off to a blissful sleep, dreaming of a crown and a very big chair and all the food he could possibly eat. Of course, at the army camp, there wasn’t nearly as much beer to drink as there had been in Hillhome, but even that had its advantages as, the next morning, the Neidar and their Aghar companions awakened early. Free of any headaches or churning stomachs and eager to resume the march, they didn’t even take the time for cookfires as they prepared to set out again upon the road to Thorbardin.

The North Gate, Gus heard someone say, was only two days’ march away.

Brandon had been able only to stare in horror and awe as the fire dragon had swept toward Gretchan, exposed as she had been in the cage on the lofty palace spire. He called her name, but with the monster’s sudden appearance, his voice froze in his throat. His fingers clenched around the hilt of his axe so tightly that they grew numb, but there was nothing he, nor even his epic weapon, could do against the impossibly mighty beast.

All around him the dwarves of his own army, as well as Willim’s defenders within the palace, had been paralyzed by fear at the monster’s appearance. Warriors who had stared death in the face on a dozen battlefields, who had led charges against unassailable ramparts, who had stood and faced enemy armies numbering ten or twenty times their own, had quailed and wailed and dropped facedown onto the ground, desperately crawling under anything remotely resembling cover.

The Kayolin general stood alone, watching in awful fascination as the beast first threatened then recoiled from the brave dwarf maid and her mighty staff. He sensed the wyrm’s struggles against the immortal power of Reorx and held his breath as the monster slowly dissolved into the black vapor that, obviously, was sucked into the staff itself by the Master of the Forge.

And he howled in triumph when the serpent finally disappeared. His elation surging, he raced along the parapet atop the palace wall, seeking a way across to the keep. But his elation lasted mere seconds-until he had seen Willim the Black return. He watched as the wizard snatched the staff away from the stunned, exhausted priestess.

Finally Brandon had cried out in unquenchable rage as the powerful magic-user had placed a hand on the cage and worked a spell of teleportation, removing the cage, the priestess, the staff, and the wizard himself from sight.

“Come back here and fight, you bastard!” howled the Kayolin dwarf. It was a fruitless cry, and the black wizard made no reappearance; so Brandon turned his rage on the enemy troops who were only then starting to emerge from their hiding places. Some clearly had no stomach for further battle and were turning to flee. Others looked around, hesitatingly, seeking an officer or sergeant to issue some sort of command.

Brandon leaped from the rampart down to the floor of the courtyard, a drop of a dozen feet, and he didn’t even feel the impact. Instead, he sprang from his crouch, instantly on the attack. His axe slashed, chopping the heads from two Theiwar who were trying to crawl up from under a slab of rock. He whirled, his senses a blur of hatred and fury, to see more black-clad defenders emerging from the shattered, gaping door of the keep.

He set upon them in a frenzy, his aim unerringly true and lethal. The Bluestone Axe fought like a living thing, hungry for Theiwar blood. He chopped and slashed and spun through a circle, lopping off limbs, slashing faces, splitting skulls. When the axe couldn’t reach an enemy’s flesh, it destroyed his weapon, smashing swords, slicing the heads off of spears, even blocking arrows with lightning-quick parries.

The enemy troops, already shaken by the appearance of the fire dragon and thoroughly outnumbered in their defense of the palace, recoiled in horror from the fury of Brandon’s attack. Some fell before him, stumbling in panic, and he killed them before they could rise. Others, quailing but trying to master their fear, faced him and fought, and those he killed with outright glee.

He gave no quarter: If a Theiwar turned his back to run, Brandon sliced open his spine. When three of them cowered together in an alcove, protecting themselves with tall steel shields, Brandon chopped the shields into splinters then hacked the trio of enemy dwarves into bloody cutlets. He charged through the keep’s entry hall, scattering a full platoon of Theiwar pikemen who tried to defend the door to the throne room. Leaving a dozen dead in his wake, he rushed into that great chamber, hoping against all rational hope that he might discover Gretchan or at least Willim within.

Instead, he found himself standing alone in a great, vaulted hall. Rubble and dust lay across the floor, and holes-the detritus of the last war, the conflict between Jungor Stonespringer and Willim the Black-pocked the walls and ceiling. Very slowly, the haze of violence fell away from his eyes, and he slumped, suddenly feeling a great weariness. The floor seemed to tilt, and he dropped to his knees, using the handle of his axe to keep from toppling onto his face.

Leaning over, pressing his face to the cool blade of his mighty weapon, uncaring of the blood that still smeared the steel surface, blood that streaked his cheek and soaked into his beard, he wept.

Vaguely, he was aware that someone was calling his name.

“General! General Bluestone!”

Footsteps clattered nearby. If it had been an enemy, Brandon would have been too dazed, too exhausted to defend himself. Instead, he felt a hand on a shoulder and looked up to see the concerned face of Fister Morewood, commander of the Second Legion.

“The palace is secure, General,” said the loyal officer. “We’ve cleaned out the rest of the garrison.” He looked around, his expression a mixture of awe and wry amusement. “That is, those few that you left for us.”

The captain’s face immediately grew serious again as Brandon pushed himself to his feet and shook off his subordinate’s supporting hand. “Were there any prisoners?” growled the general.

Morewood looked back with a grim expression. “One, sir. He escaped the notice of the first wave, but the follow-up men found him hiding in a closet. We got some information out of him, but … well, he died during the interrogation.”

Brandon nodded, not displeased. “What did you learn?”

“He claims that most of the men of Willim’s defense forces have withdrawn from the city. Apparently they’re going to make a last stand in the widest of the tunnels connecting the city to the shore of the Urkhan Sea. It’s called the Urkhan Road, and it used to be a major trade route, before the Chaos War disrupted all the cities by the sea. We’ve already located the gatehouse leading to that road. It’s well-defended, but I’ve taken the liberty of ordering the Firespitters moved in that direction.”

“Good,” Brandon said. He felt the incredible weariness again, looking around in something like surprise at the sprawl of horribly gashed bodies around him. His axe was still stained with gore, and the sight of that mess disturbed him more than the corpses of his enemy. Quickly he snatched up a piece of dusty but clean linen-apparently once an elegant tablecloth, dating back to some distant time of peace-and used it to wipe his blade to a shining brilliance.

By then, both officers could hear the sounds of loud cheering, coming from the city streets and the plaza beyond the palace wall. They made their way out of the keep to be greeted by several dwarves of the Second Legion, all of them flushed with victory and triumph.

“It’s King Bellowgranite, sir!” one of them proclaimed. “He and the Tharkadan Legion are marching into the plaza. They’re being followed by thousands of dwarves; that’s the cheering you can hear! General, the war is won!”

“It’s not won!” snapped Bluestone, his harsh tone immediately quelling the delight in the soldiers’ faces. “We’ve won a victory, a great victory even, but the enemy army still survives, and our task is not complete until it is destroyed!”

And until I get Gretchan back, or die in the attempt.

“Yes, General! Of course-and, sorry, sir,” replied the chagrined swordsman. “I–I just …”

“You were celebrating the victory, as you should,” Brandon said, much more gently. “You, all you men, have done a splendid job and have every right to be proud. Just remember, this was a battle, not the war.”

“I will, sir. And thank you.”

“Go,” ordered Morewood. “Tell the king that we’ll be out to meet him as soon as possible.”

The men jogged off, and Fister looked Brandon in the eye. He offered him a waterskin, and the general drank greedily, surprised at how thirsty he was.

“Do you need to sit down for a bit, sir? I could find you a bite to eat …”

“No. Thanks anyway, Fister. I’m all right. Let’s go meet the king and then get this whole damned thing over with.”

“Very good, sir. And … I saw Gretchan on the tower, in that cage. But I’m afraid I didn’t see very clearly what happened up there. Did the dragon …?”

Brand’s reply was a sharp bark of laughter. “The dragon died. Gretchan, and her staff, slew it. But then the wizard took her away again. I don’t know where they are now.”

“I’m sorry, General. But you know we’ll find her! There’s not a man in the army who wouldn’t give his life to bring her back.”

“I know, Fister. And thanks, old friend. I needed your good words. Now let’s go welcome Tarn Bellowgranite back to his palace.”

The two officers emerged from the keep and pushed through the main gate, which had been cleared by the diligent efforts of Kayolin diggers. “We had them ready, you recall, but didn’t need to use the Firespitters here,” Morewood explained. “Once the dragon was gone, our men were in control of the walls, and they were able to come down and clear out the courtyard in quick time. After you set the example, of course.”

Brandon blinked, realizing that he barely remembered the fight, his wild and solitary charge into the palace. For the first time, he imagined that he could understand the fury that seized a Klar when the haze of battle frenzy came over him.

Emerging onto the great plaza of Norbardin, they saw the Tharkadan Legion, with King Bellowgranite and his old general, Otaxx Shortbeard, marching at the head. The column of cheering citizenry swirled around the military formation, with maids rushing up to kiss the soldiers or to throw silken scarves at the feet of the returning monarch.

“Long live King Bellowgranite! Hail to the true king!”

The cheers resounded through the great cavern, and despite his gloom and worry, Brandon couldn’t help but feel a resurgence of hope. Yet when he reached the royal party and spotted Gretchan’s father, he was reminded of her absence again; and everything else seemed to pale to insignificance when compared to her dire peril.

Tarn Bellowgranite and Otaxx Shortbeard led the Tharkadan Legion to a station in the great central plaza of Norbardin, and it was there that Brandon joined them.

“Congratulations, my lad!” Tarn proclaimed expansively. “Your Kayolin troops did a magnificent job! The city is retaken!”

“And what word of Willim the Black?” asked Otaxx Shortbeard, ever more practical than his liege.

“He’s taken Gretchan!” Brandon said, seizing Otaxx by the shoulder, clenching the old soldier tightly. “Willim the Black has taken Gretchan! He’s magicked her away, and they’ve disappeared.”

The veteran general’s face paled. “By Reorx-do you have any idea where they have gone?”

“There’s no way to tell. We’ve learned that his army, such of it as survives, is fortifying the main road to the Urkhan Sea. We’re making ready an attack there.”

“By all means, make haste,” Tarn said, overhearing the conversation and immediately growing serious. “We’ll find that villain-and get Gretchan back, I trust.”

Brandon nodded and turned back to the war. He hoped the king was right. But that was all he could go on …

Hope.

Chap Bitters proved to be an inventive and hardworking captain. Operating under Blade Darkstone’s orders, he had sent out numerous small parties of his men, ordering them to quietly muster any of Willim’s troops they could find. Hour by hour he gathered a steadily expanding force in the concealment of the warehouse district.

The rest of the company had set to work expanding and fortifying their space. By knocking out the walls connecting the coal storage building to several neighboring structures, they had created a large hideaway in which to gather and wait. All the external doors except their initial entrance were fortified and guarded around the clock.

By the time some forty-eight hours had passed, General Darkstone had assembled more than a thousand loyal Theiwar. For the time being, they kept a low profile, concealed in the bank of warehouses along the darkest streets of Norbardin’s industrial quarter.

Most of the citizens in the area had been frightened away, and those who weren’t and could be found were given a quick choice: either join Darkstone’s force or die.

Most of them, of course, volunteered.

At the same time, the general’s spies brought him steady reports about the enemy’s progress. The fall of the palace was reported to him, though it did not come as a surprise: Darkstone knew that the battered structure was ill suited for defense.

More significant were the reports that Willim’s troops were massing to make a stand on the Urkhan Road. Though they had suffered tremendous casualties thus far, the general knew that his troops, added to the black wizard’s, meant they still had a sizable force at their disposal.

Then he looked up to see that, in a breath of magic, his master had come to him.

“Welcome, sire,” Darkstone said, bowing deeply. He didn’t know whether he would be allowed to live through to the end of his report, but he was not ashamed of his recent activities. And when he explained about all the recruiting he had done, boasting of the nearly twelve hundred loyal soldiers collected there in secret, poised on the enemy’s flank and, as yet, undiscovered by the invaders, Willim the Black was not displeased.

“It is as if you have read my mind,” the wizard said with uncharacteristic praise. “I have been preparing a bit of a surprise for our enemies. First, I will lead them away from here, into a perfect trap. I am certain that, flushed with victory as they are, they will follow me …”

Then, Blade Darkstone would have a great ambush ready-an ambush that would either win the war or leave a scar of blood and despair across the breadth of the new king’s realm.