Archmage

CHAPTER 15

The march was methodical and complete, clearing room after room, corridor after corridor. Occasionally, a few of the dwarves and their allies would break free of the lead ranks, bursting through doors, pursuing fleeing kobolds or the avian humanoids called dire corbies, or whatever other monstrous inhabitants they had sent running.

Hoshtar Xorlarrin, magically invisible and magically tiny, watched from afar as a trio of dwarves crashed through one door, careening down a corridor. A pair of dwarf women led the way, swords waving, grabbing each other hand to arm and launching each other along. Oftentimes they fell, but it hardly seemed to matter, for they just bounced or rolled or twisted about, and always came back to their feet, in full speed and ready to chop down the nearest fleeing kobold.

Behind them came a red-bearded dwarf carrying a shining shield with the foaming mug standard of the clan, and banging it with an old battleaxe that had surely seen its share of battles. He laughed wildly, though he kept shouting his discontent, for the two women were tearing the place apart-and tearing apart the monsters, long before he could get near to them.

The powerful Xorlarrin wizard contemplated destroying the three fools as they passed along the corridor below his secret perch. He could summon an earthquake, perhaps, and tumble the walls upon them. Or invoke black tentacles from the floor to grab at them and occupy them, then blast them dead with fireballs and lightning bolts.

Yes, it all seemed perfectly delightful.

More sound from the back put an end to that fantasy, though. These three had broken free, but they had not gone too far in front, clearly, and now another pair of dwarves appeared at the doorway far back up the hallway. Another female came first, carrying a mace that seemed more fitting in the hands of an ogre. She was followed by a sturdy-looking fellow, black-bearded and muscular, with wild eyes and a ready laugh, and spinning a pair of heavy morningstars with practiced ease.

Hoshtar’s eyes widened at the sight of Athrogate, Jarlaxle’s ugly little friend. Hoshtar, who had long served as Matron Mother Zeerith’s liaison to both Bregan D’aerthe and House Melarn, knew who the dwarf was with certainty. But what was the annoying fellow doing here? What was Bregan D’aerthe doing here, in any capacity, unless that capacity served the matron mother? Hadn’t Matron Mother Baenre just effectively enslaved Jarlaxle as a House guard in her ridiculous reincarnation of House Do’Urden?

Hoshtar’s mind leaped in a dozen different directions as he tried to sort it all out. Perhaps when the main forces of Bregan D’aerthe had been recalled to Menzoberranzan, Jarlaxle had set the dwarf free. Jarlaxle would not want Athrogate in the City of Spiders, after all. The rhyming, smelly creature wouldn’t survive a tenday in the city before some aggravated drow laid him low! Or was Athrogate now spying, perhaps on behalf of Jarlaxle-and if that was true, perhaps it might ultimately serve Matron Mother Zeerith.

But no, Hoshtar knew, his first impression seemed the most reasonable, and now he played it to a logical conclusion. These dwarves, this army, had come to Q’Xorlarrin at the behest of the matron mother. She was pressuring House Xorlarrin to plead for her assistance so that she could garner Matron Mother Zeerith’s unwavering fealty.

“Yes, that must be it,” Hoshtar said under his breath, and he found himself disgusted and intrigued all at once.

And worried, for what might Matron Mother Zeerith’s reaction be when he passed along this terrifying information?

That moment was fast approaching, Hoshtar realized, when more sounds followed Athrogate and the woman into the corridor. This entire section of the complex would fall to their small hands in short order, and his escape routes would be few and far between.

The Xorlarrin wizard adjusted his red veil over his face and quietly mouthed a spell. Fortunately for him, Athrogate, who was not so far away, launched loudly into a bawdy song, covering his spellcasting.

Hoshtar became an insubstantial cloud of fog and wafted away.

“No ye don’t, girlie!” Tannabritches Fellhammer yelled as she went skidding on her knees down the hallway past her sister, launching herself at the kobold line.

She almost got the next swing in, but her sister Mallabritches leaped over her, head down, and crashed into the monsters, driving them back.

“Ah, ye cheatin’ daughter of an ugly orc!” Tannabritches howled, putting her feet under her and charging ahead. She shouldered Mallabritches aside and stabbed out with her sword once and then again, dropping a pair of kobolds.

“And ye’re me twin!” Mallabritches reminded her. “So who’s the orc?”

“Hah!” Tannabritches cried in victory, and started ahead, her sister growling and matching her charge.

But then Tannabritches was flying backward, tugged by a strong hand. She started to question it, but heard a familiar laugh and saw a familiar one-horned helmet atop a mop of wild red hair.

“Bah!” she cried, and Mallabritches grunted and offered a resounding “oof!” as Bruenor bulled past her.

Bruenor’s shield rush drove into the kobold ranks, the dwarf leaning hard, shoulder to buckler, his powerful legs pumping and driving. Every now and then, Bruenor reached his axe up and over his shield, smacking at the beasts, and whenever one managed to get a foothold to slow his press, the dwarf turned and cut low, taking out its legs.

“Duck!” the Fellhammer sisters yelled in unison, and Bruenor reflexively scrunched lower. He felt a boot on his left shoulder, another boot on his right shoulder, and over went the sisters, using him as a springboard to lift them high above the front kobold ranks and drop into the middle of the swarm.

“No!” Bruenor cried. “What’re ye thinkin’?”

His last word came out as a grunt, though, as another boot stomped atop his shoulder, and another on the other side.

“Bwahaha!” he heard, and he knew that Athrogate and Ambergris had come.

The kobolds knew it, too.

Painfully so.

Reconstituted in his corporeal form once more, Hoshtar Xorlarrin glanced back over his shoulder, hearing the approaching battle. He was in the last tunnel now, moving for the large chamber that joined the lower levels with these upper portions of the complex.

The kobolds were running out of room.

The dwarves would be here soon, in this tunnel, and the upper complex would be theirs.

There remained some monsters between them and Hoshtar’s clan, and surely the drow could bring in some more to hinder the progress of these bearded ruffians.

Hinder, but not stop, for it was only a matter of time now, and not much time at that.

Hoshtar reached the end of the corridor, moving through a door to a landing that opened high above the vast chamber and the deep darkness below. With a last glance back up the corridor, the mage touched his House emblem, enacting an enchantment of levitation, and stepped from the ledge, drifting down.

Matron Mother Zeerith would not be pleased, for he had nothing good to tell her. The dwarves had made tremendous progress, securing room after room after tunnel, and fortifying everything in their wake. When Hoshtar had secretly crossed through the front warrior ranks of the enemy, he had found the industrious dwarves behind hard at work, building traps and secure doors of stone and iron, even reshaping corridors in meticulous detail, setting up kill zones with their clever war engines. Even if House Xorlarrin fought off the initial assaults and defeated the front lines of dwarves, claiming these upper tunnels of Q’Xorlarrin would be costly.

And without these upper tunnels secured, Matron Mother Zeerith’s designs on trade with surface-dwelling partners could not be easily realized.

Hoshtar thought of Athrogate, Jarlaxle’s ugly little friend.

“Oh, clever Jarlaxle,” he said, drifting down into the darkness. Might Jarlaxle, and not the matron mother, prove to be the impetus behind the dwarves’ reclamation of the upper halls? Jarlaxle knew these dwarves, obviously, and had spies among them-Athrogate at least. With these devious developments, with an army of dwarves holding fast to the upper complex, only Jarlaxle could facilitate the necessary trade between the city of Q’Xorlarrin and the World Above.

Was this Jarlaxle’s way of ensuring himself a larger profit?

“Or is it truly the work of the matron mother?” he asked himself as he lightly touched down beside the huge spiral staircase that could be, and now was, retracted halfway to the ceiling.

Aware then that many eyes and bows were trained upon him, Hoshtar held up his hands unthreateningly and offered his name.

“Beware falling kobolds,” he warned the drow sentries, moving past into the deeper tunnels, moving toward the unenviable task of informing Matron Mother Zeerith on the successes their enemies had already realized.

“Dwarves,” the delicate and fashionable dark elf muttered repeatedly during that long, long walk to the royal chambers. “Ugly, hairy, filthy dwarves. Oh, why must it be dwarves?”

“Haha, but ye’ve picked yerself a band o’ bluster an’ bustin’!” Athrogate said to Bruenor a bit later, when the five had turned into a series of side passages and found-to their disappointment-a few moments of muchneeded respite. “Don’t know that I’ve e’er seen a one-hander so quick to clobber!” he added, using an old dwarven nickname, “one-hander,” to describe a five-dwarf patrol group.

Bruenor had a hard time disagreeing with the sentiment. Fist and Fury were truly a rolling disaster from any enemy’s viewpoint, and Bruenor, with his supreme skill, centuries of experience, and mighty gear, knew how to complement them perfectly. And no less devastating were Athrogate and Ambergris, particularly Athrogate. Never in his life had Bruenor witnessed a more capable dwarven catastrophe-indeed, this one was on a par with Thibbledorf Pwent!

“If I didn’t have ye with me, I’d not be out in front o’ the group,” he replied, and dropped a friendly hand on Athrogate’s shoulder.

“Aye, and an added pleasure it is that th’ other three are lasses,” Athrogate said, lowering his voice so that the trio, who were not so far away, couldn’t hear. “I know ye’re me king here, and know that ye’ve got me allegiance, but I’m beggin’ ye to keep yer charms from me girl Ambergris. I’ve ne’er known a sturdier lassie, and oh, but she’s taken me heart in her hands!”

Bruenor just stared at him curiously.

“What?” Athrogate asked when he finally caught on to that expression. “Were ye thinkin’ o’ takin’ her from me, then?”

“I’m yer king?” Bruenor asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

And Athrogate seemed genuinely wounded. He stuttered about for a response for several heartbeats, then whispered, as he had in the Rite of Kith’n Kin, “Ar tariseachd, na daoine de a bheil mise, ar righ.”

“Ye’re here because Jarlaxle sent ye here, and no pretendin’ other,” said Bruenor. “Ye’re not serving me, Athrogate, and I’m not to hold any fancies on it. Ye serve Jarlaxle and his band o’ drow, and ye serve yerself, and so ye have since when first I met ye.”

That statement seemed perfectly logical, given the history, but it clearly caught Athrogate by surprise and rocked him back on his heels, and put on Athrogate’s face an expression caught somewhere between surprise and sadness.

“I’m not judgin’ ye,” Bruenor was quick to add. “I’ve had Jarlaxle aside meself, as well.”

Athrogate winced.

“What, then?” Bruenor asked.

“I came to Nesmé as Jarlaxle’s spy,” Athrogate answered. “I’m not for denyin’ that. Never did.” He paused and looked at Ambergris. “But me spyin’ showed me more than I was thinkin’.”

“Jarlaxle’s band’ll accept yer girl, if that’s yer worry,” Bruenor assured him.

“Nay,” Athrogate said. “Not me worry.”

“Then what?”

“Not a life for a dwarf,” Athrogate said, and he seemed genuinely choked up by then.

“What’re ye sayin’?” Bruenor prompted. “Speak it straight out.”

“I’m hopin’ to call ye me king. So’s Amber Gristle O’Maul o’ the Adbar O’Mauls.”

Now it was Bruenor’s turn to rock back on his heels. Despite the Rite of Kith’n Kin, despite even that the Throne of the Dwarf Gods had accepted Athrogate, Bruenor’s surprise at the level of Athrogate’s intensity and pleading here was genuine, his eyes wide, his jaw hanging slack until he could fumble around in his thoughts enough to find words for his shock. “Ye think Jarlaxle’s to just let ye go?” he said, because he had nothing else to say.

“Why’s it got to be one or th’ other?” Athrogate replied. “I. . we, me and me girl, will be Jarlaxle’s eyes, ears, and mouth in Gauntlgrym.”

“Serving both?” Bruenor asked, his tone showing that he was none too pleased by that prospect. Was Athrogate asking him to willingly accept a spy in Gauntlgrym’s midst?

“Serving the king o’ me clan,” Athrogate replied without hesitation, and with sincere conviction. “Tellin’ Jarlaxle only that what ye’re tellin’ me I can be tellin’ him! And I’ll be lettin’ him know that right up front, what, and if that’s not good enough for him, then good riddance to him!”

Bruenor stared at him hard, and found that he truly believed every word.

The other three came over then, Fist and Fury obviously eager to be on their way.

“More. .” Tannabritches began.

“. . to hit,” Mallabritches finished, and the two punched each other in the shoulder.

“Lot o’ trust, ye’re askin’,” Bruenor remarked.

Athrogate shrugged.

Bruenor nodded. For some reason he couldn’t quite sort out at that moment, it all seemed to fit. He had thought that Bungalow Thump would become his new Thibbledorf Pwent. Both had headed the Gutbuster Brigade, after all, and both could fight in the manner of a tornado.

But this seemed more appropriate to him. The fit was right. Other than Drizzt, and perhaps Pwent, Bruenor could not think of anyone above Athrogate he would rather have beside him when battle was at hand.

He had no reason to trust Athrogate now. The dwarf had been a fine fighting partner throughout the campaign, and particularly of late in Gauntlgrym, but asking Athrogate to fight well was like asking a fish to swim. If Athrogate’s loyalties remained with Jarlaxle, wouldn’t he have spoken the exact words Bruenor had just heard?

And yet, Bruenor knew better. Perhaps it had been the surprised expression, which appeared so genuine. Perhaps the hours of close-combat battle, joining these two as comrades.

Or perhaps because it just seemed to fit, and just seemed to make sense.

Bruenor silently cautioned himself against overthinking his feelings. He had led his people for centuries by relying on his gut, and his gut’s reaction to Athrogate now was clear.

“Welcome home, me friend,” he said quietly.

Athrogate grinned widely, so widely! But that was just to cover up the moisture that had come to his dark eyes, Bruenor realized. He could see that Athrogate wanted to respond verbally, but that he wouldn’t dare, afraid he would break out in an open sob.

“What’re we missin’?” Ambergris asked.

“Me axe ain’t missing nothing,” Bruenor replied. “So let’s find it something to hit!”

“Aye!” the Fellhammer sisters said together, with such enthusiasm that Bruenor almost expected them to launch into aerial somersaults.

Off went the one-hand catastrophe.

Sometime later, a scratching sound, like a spear tip against stone, alerted them that they were not alone, and a quick survey placed the sound behind a barred door in a perpendicular corridor.

Tannabritches slid past the door on her knees, skidding to a stop just to the far side of the jamb. Mallabritches came right behind, skidding up to the nearer edge.

“Might be a wizard,” Bruenor whispered to Ambergris, the two and Athrogate back at the corridor corner, just a few strides from the kneeling sisters. The priestess nodded and quietly began preparing a spell.

Bruenor motioned to Athrogate and the two moved up to stand in front of the portal and between the sisters. Tannabritches and Mallabritches slowly grasped the locking bar.

Bruenor glanced back to see if Ambergris was ready before he took up his shield and axe and motioned to the pair.

Off went the bar, thrown aside. Athrogate leaped up and kicked in the door.

Then he screamed in shock and fell away, a tumble of thick limbs and bouncing morningstars. Before they could begin to react, before they could properly fill the void left by the diving dwarf, the Fellhammer sisters, too, were knocked aside by a huge living missile. And they, too, screamed, or seemed as if they were crying out, but Bruenor couldn’t hear a sound.

Ambergris’s magical spell of silence filled the area.

So Bruenor’s scream, too, was no more than a facial expression. In front of him, the Fellhammers tumbled, but he hardly noticed, falling instead behind his shield to try to brace-futilely, though, as he was hit hard and sent flying into the wall across from the door, which smashed in and crushed down. He felt the huge claws scraping against him as his attacker set its powerful legs and sprang away.

Bruenor twisted and tried to unwind himself from the awkward position. He saw the blackness flying away, saw, but couldn’t hear, Ambergris crying out in surprise. The priestess fell to the floor as the missile-as Guenhwyvar-twisted and hit the wall beside her and hit it running, going around the corner right above her and speeding off down the hall.

The four dwarves fell all over each other trying to get back down the hall.

“. . th’ elf’s cat?” Bruenor heard Athrogate finish as he, too, came out of the area of silence. Bruenor turned the corner first, in a full run, extending his hand to Ambergris and yanking her upright as he stumbled past.

“Guenhwyvar!” he cried, but the cat was already out of sight, around a right turn up ahead.

The dwarves ran in swift pursuit, turning corners so fast that they rebounded off the far walls of the new passageways.

Guenhwyvar always seemed just ahead of them, enough for them to catch a glimpse of a black tail retreating around another bend.

Bruenor called out to her repeatedly, but she wasn’t slowing to his call. And when they finally caught up to her, a gasping, horrified Bruenor understood why.