Archmage

CHAPTER 19

Oretheo Spikes harrumphed repeatedly as he paced across the bridge over the small pond in Gauntlgrym’s entry cavern. The veteran Wilddwarf had grown quite fond of Connerad and missed the young king, but even worse, in Connerad’s absence Oretheo had been given control of the finishing touches for the defenses of the vital cavern.

Oretheo Spikes was a fighter, as fine a warrior as Adbar had ever produced, and not a yard boss!

And there was a battle soon to begin, he knew, if it hadn’t already, for the whispers said that Connerad and his boys-almost all from Mithral Hall and Felbarr-had pushed into the final reaches of the upper level of the complex and expected to breach the lower caverns in short order. By all expectations, there would be dark elves waiting for them.

And Oretheo wouldn’t be there. He looked around as he moved across the bridge yet again, this time heading back for Gauntlgrym’s castle-like wall. He noted the many engineers, masons, and blacksmiths hard at work, finalizing the triggers and springs that could drop the bridge from a single command point.

He turned his gaze wider about the huge cavern, where a thousand dwarves worked or watched from the stalagmite towers that had been hollowed and set up as guard posts. Even out in the hallway, the dwarves labored with defensible positions-anyone coming in here would fight for every inch of ground.

That thought bolstered him, but he couldn’t shake off the notion that almost all of the dwarves in this rear guard area were from Citadel Adbar. As were almost all of the dwarves working in the throne room and adjacent chambers. Because of King Harnoth.

Despite his earlier protestations to the contrary, Oretheo Spikes truly wanted to blame king Emerus and King Bruenor, and even King Connerad. He wanted to pretend that this was Mithral Hall’s fault, or Citadel Felbarr’s. But he could not, because he understood the truth and the way of dwarves.

He and all his boys had participated in the call of Kith’n Kin with all their hearts, had given their fealty wholly to their Delzoun heritage and the rebuilding of Gauntlgrym, and he knew that their pledge had been accepted honestly and with open hearts, open arms, and a mug of magical ale courtesy of Bruenor’s marvelous shield.

But this snubbing of the Adbar dwarves was not an emotional decision by the kings of the other clans, as was proven by the fact that the thousand dwarves who had joined in from Mirabar were also here in this cavern, or scattered about at other tasks in securing the ground they had gained. The decision to take the dwarves of Felbarr and Mithral Hall was purely a practical one. In any expedition to the as-yet unconquered reaches of Gauntlgrym, the mission would be led by a dwarf king. And no king would spearhead his battle group with the boys of another clan when his own trusted warriors- in Connerad’s case, the famed Gutbuster Brigade-were readily available.

If King Harnoth had come to Gauntlgrym, Oretheo Spikes would be at the front of the column pushing into the lower chambers. Two thousand of the five thousand dwarves who had come into Gauntlgrym were Adbarrim, easily the largest of the four contingents. King Harnoth would have stood at the end of that reception line in the Rite of Kith’n Kin, instead of Bruenor. Despite his youth, he, Harnoth, would have determined the place for the Adbar dwarves.

He might have even made a play to wear the first crown of Gauntlgrym, and wouldn’t that have warmed the bones of King Harbromm in his cold grave?

“And wouldn’t that’ve avenged the death o’ his brother, King Bromm?” Oretheo Spikes remarked as he stepped off the bridge onto the beach in front of the castle wall. He turned a sharp left, moving along the bank to check on some fellows arguing about the placement height of their side-slinger catapult.

“Aligned to the top o’ the bridge!” roared one yellow-bearded dwarf, who looked very much like Oretheo, though with a much more modest beard.

“Bah! But if we’re needin’ to shoot the durned thing, the bridge’ll be turned and the enemy’ll be in the water, ye dolt!” his orange-bearded opponent countered.

Oretheo Spikes shook his head, certain that this disagreement, like all of the foul moods he had witnessed in the cavern this day, stemmed from the same frustration that twisted his own belly. Heading over to arbitrate, he was about to shout out to the two to shut their traps, when suddenly they went quiet of their own accord, both turning to the dark waters of the pond. The young yellow-bearded dwarf scratched his head and the other looked at him and shrugged, clearly at a loss.

Oretheo Spikes, too, turned to that water, and now he noted the first small ripples running toward the bank, and the strange undercurrent of the waves. He continued on his way, and glanced back just as a sizable freshwater fish leaped out of the water and sailed at the yellow-bearded dwarf. That fellow reacted quickly enough to bat the biting thing aside, but another came out, and another.

Oretheo Spikes started to run to the fellows, but skidded to a stop and threw himself back a stride, narrowly avoiding his own leaping fish missile.

“How’re they seein’ us?” the red-bearded dwarf yelled, but before any could even consider the question, they realized that it was moot, and simply coincidence, for the only fish they had noticed were the ones coming at them, but now that they had taken note, all three of the dwarves saw the truth and fell back in shock.

Dozens of fish were leaping out of the pond, flying onto the beach and flapping wildly.

Nay, scores of fish, on both sides of the pond, from one end to the other.

Just off the shore, some dozen feet, the water stirred and broke, and Oretheo Spikes and the rest of the dwarves watching the spectacle quickly came to understand why the fish were fleeing. They knew at first glance the horrible nature of the demons walking toward the shore, walking toward them.

An army of misshapen humanoids, pallid and decrepit and bloated, like ugly little fat men with flaming red eyes. . an army of manes.

“Shields and pointy things!” Oretheo Spikes shouted, and he fell all over himself scrambling from the bank.

He nearly tumbled to the dirt when out in the middle of the pond a swarm of chasme broke the surface, the buzz of their wings filling the cavern with strange echoes.

Whistles sounded at every end of the cavern, along with cries of “Battle groups!”

“Here, Oretheo!” one dwarf by the wall cried, and Oretheo Spikes glanced that way to see a gathering of shield dwarves already forming their line at the base of the castle wall.

Above them, side-slinger catapults cranked back and let fly, clusters of sharp stones spinning over Oretheo’s head, splashing into the water and crashing into the approaching demons. So, too, did the ballistae fire, huge spears whipping away, skewering manes two at a time. But perhaps most damning of all to the demons came the spells of magical light from the many clerics at the wall, illuminating all the beach areas on both sides of the pond.

Oretheo staggered for the shield line, and glanced back, nodding at the holes already punched into the approaching horde. He sucked in his breath, though, for bigger things than manes appeared in the pond. Crawling out the other way, into the main cavern, went a pack of fourarmed-and two of those with fearsome snapping pincers-greater demons. And vulture-like creatures-huge and terrible, and with beaks that seemed as if they could surely punch through a breastplate with ease.

The cranking catapults brought him hope, and before he had ever reached the shield line, which parted to let him in, a second volley of heavy stones flew for the pond and the monsters.

“Ah, good boys!” Oretheo Spikes congratulated. “We’ll hold ’em here and let the wall-sitters thin ’em to nothing, eh!”

The dwarves, their shields hooked together as one solid wall, reached over in unison and banged their hammers, maces, and swords on the strong metal blockers. And those about Oretheo Spikes in the second rank readied their longer weapons, the spears and pikes they would prod above that solid wall of shields.

Oretheo Spikes continued to call out commands, but he knew that he needn’t have bothered. This group knew their jobs and did them well.

Thirty feet up from the floor in the middle of the large entry cavern, in a wide, round room cleverly carved to give optimal views-and thus, optimal lines for shooting-Nigel Thunderstorm leaned on his heavy ballista, thinking of what delicacy he might prepare for his Ma, Nigella, when she arrived in Gauntlgrym. And aye, she would soon enough be here, the dwarf master chef was certain, for Nigella still resided in Citadel Felbarr, whereas Nigel had gone to live in Adbar. King Emerus understood the grandeur of this place, and he’d allow as many from Citadel Felbarr as desired to come here to settle.

“What ho?” cried another of the dwarves in that stalagmite guard station, a strapping young lass named Carrinda Castleduck, who braided her long yellow hair under her chin in a “beard” that would make a grumpy old metal-pounder proud. “Oh, by the hairy-arsed gods!”

“What do ye know?” asked Ogden Nugget, the third in the room, and he and Nigel scrambled over beside Carrinda to gaze out over the battlement.

“Demon beasties! And what a horde!” came a cry from the lower level of the tower even as the three artillery dwarves began to register the monsters crawling out of the pond, so clear to see under the magical illumination of the enchantments thrown about the pond by the dwarf clerics.

“Line her level!” Nigel cried, running to the missile rack set against the opposite end of the chamber. He first lifted a thick-ended bolt, the shaft filled with oil that could be set aflame, but put it back and pulled forth a black metal tri-spear instead.

Carrinda and Ogden had already turned the ballista, which was set on a circular base that could swing it in a full circle, before Nigel had the tri-spear in place.

“Put ’er down a fat fist,” Nigel instructed, one eye closed, the other looking through the crosshair sight set atop the weapon. He held up a hand when the tip lowered just enough, accounting for the expected drop to the pond-one they had measured many times-and nodded.

“Ah, but just a pinky-finger to me left,” he begged, for he had a particular target in mind. This was their first shot, after all, and Nigel wanted it to count. Staring through the sight, the dwarf gave a rather eager chuckle and nod, noting the top crown of an avian behemoth.

Nigel yanked the lever and the ballista let fly, the spear arcing out beautifully and breaking into three separate missiles.

The spear on the right disappeared into the water with a splash, and perhaps hit something just below the surface, given the strange way it didn’t immediately sink. The missile on the left drove into the hip of a vrock, drawing a great screech from the beast. And the third, the center spear, impaled the target, another vrock, right through its massive chest.

Unlike its counterpart, that one didn’t cry out, but simply flew over backward into the water.

“Huzzah!” Carrinda cried, turning back to Nigel-and finding him already back at the caisson, drawing forth another tri-spear.

“Find another group!” she told her partner, and she grabbed the crank at the side of the ballista and began drawing the heavy wire once more.

The stalagmite shook then, as the side-slinger catapult mounted in the lower level let fly, and then again as the conventional catapult out on the balcony joined in.

“Find the biggest!” Carrinda ordered. “Aye, but we’re the prime bombers, so let’s make ’em count!”

The barrage pounded the lake and the demons coming forth, spears and stones and burning pitch flying in from many guard towers, while those artillery batteries set in the castle wall focused their devastation on the back of the horde pressing the shield dwarves.

How wonderful the light was, Oretheo Spikes realized, seeing that it clearly marked out the targets.

But with that thought, the Wilddwarf leader saw a bigger problem. Across the way there was no such clarity, and there, into the wider cavern, went the biggest of the monsters coming forth-the biggest and the smartest, no doubt.

And from those shadows, he saw a group strike, huge four-armed glabrezu demons appearing as if out of nowhere to assault one of the stalagmite guard positions. That tower was lost in short order. The demons had been clever in their assault, using the mound to shield themselves from any other batteries that might have struck out at them.

The focusing mirrors were not yet in place in the stalactite and stalagmite towers, and without them, the shadows would greatly limit the artillery.

The dwarf shook his head. Though this side of the pond already seemed as if it would hold, and so this monstrous horde would find no easy entrance into Gauntlgrym, he had no desire to surrender the rest of this cavern, particularly not with nearly eight hundred of his fellows out there across the pond.

“All right, boys,” he told the spear-wielding dwarves at his side, dwarves furiously stabbing as monsters tried to reach over the shield line, “our brothers’ll be pouring out o’ the throne room in a heartbeat, not to doubt. Ye gather ’em and make yerself a wedge and push to the bridge. Ye take the pond bank, one wall to th’ other, and nothing gets out on this side!”

“Ye goin’ somewhere?” one of the dwarves asked, and Oretheo Spikes smiled with resignation.

“Aye,” he replied. “And don’t ye let none forget me!”

He hopped up and tapped the two shield dwarves directly in front of him on the shoulder. “On me word,” he instructed, and they grunted, shoulder-blocked back the press of manes, and nodded.

Oretheo turned to the wall and called up to the nearby batteries. “Ye open me a line to the bridge!”

“The bridge?” one dwarf yelled back. “Bah, but th’ other side’s crawlin’ with the damned things.”

“Aye,” Oretheo Spikes agreed, and he hunched up his shoulders, shook his head wildly, banged his axe against his shield, and laughed boisterously.

“Open it!” he roared.

That command echoed up and down the line on the wall and many of the batteries concentrated their fire then on the monsters between Oretheo’s position and the entrance to the bridge.

“Clear the closest,” he told the spear-wielders, and as soon as they began to drive the most immediate monsters off, he yelled, “Shields!”

The shield wall parted and out leaped Oretheo Spikes, chopping and twirling, and sprinting for the bridge. Others wanted to follow, of course, but the shield dwarves knew their place and immediately sealed the line once more, leaving Oretheo Spikes out there alone.

“Cover him! Oretheo!” dwarves yelled and from above came a volley of crossbow bolts, ballista spears, and a pair of beautifully placed catapult throws that blew free the ground in front of the running Wilddwarf leader.

Oretheo Spikes made the base of the bridge, but monsters rushed around the large buttresses in close pursuit.

And so many more hulking monsters loomed in the shadows across the way.

“Clangeddin’s strength to ye,” more than one of the dwarves at the wall muttered, and there was little more to say.

“Nothing clear to hit!” Ogden Nugget cried, leaning out the long window and looking down from their position.

Carrinda and Nigel shared his frustration, for they could hear the raucous battle not far from their tower, where a large square of dwarves, a brigade or more, had begun a sweep toward the pond. But demons had come from the shadows in a coordinated manner, and the square found itself surrounded on all four sides, with nearly two hundred battle dwarves fighting for their lives.

But the line was too tight and too mingled for ballistae and catapults to help.

Ogden pounded his fist on the stone sill and turned back.

“Let it go, friend,” Nigel offered. “Take what we can. .” He stopped short as Ogden’s eyes popped open wide in shock. Nigel figured it out and spun to see the ugly, bloated human face of a chasme only a hand’s breadth away as the monster landed on the sill.

Nigel cried out and threw his hands up and threw himself back, thinking he was surely doomed.

But even as he retreated, a spear flew past him and drove right into that ugly demon’s face.

“Bah! But who’s needin’ a ballista, what?” Carrinda Castleduck proclaimed, shaking a fist at the chasme as it fell away.

“Well flung!” a relieved Nigel congratulated her. “Now, ye find me something big to skewer!”

“I’m seein’ naught but the little ones,” Ogden replied, collecting his wits and spinning about. “Big ones’re all skippin’ about the shadows.”

“Bah!” Nigel roared. “Then shoot for the pond!”

He set another spear and Carrinda began to turn the swiveling ballista once more.

That frustration was exactly what Oretheo Spikes understood and expected. They weren’t going to win this fight by battling the coordinated efforts of the small demons. There were simply too many of the ugly things. And the big ones, the smart ones who were coordinating it all, weren’t about to make targets of themselves until most of the stalagmite and stalactite batteries had been shut down.

Those artillery batteries needed a spotter.

The Wilddwarf sprinted across the bridge and threw himself into a horde of manes that had clustered there at the far end, his wild sweeps with his vicious axe driving them back or gutting them where they stood. The dwarf leaped and spun sidelong, a downward swing splattering a manes’s misshapen head.

He tore his axe free and used the momentum of the pull to sweep it across again, gutting another, then brought the weapon up and into a tight spin and let its weight carry him around to take the face from the nearest manes that had pursued him across the bridge.

Pure fury drove him-shield bashing, shield rushing, axe sweeping- and that same fury nearly got him killed, for only at the last moment did he note another horrible demon, a pile of goo slithering across the floor. With a desperate yelp, Oretheo threw himself over the monster, landing with a thud. He rolled frantically, not daring to stop, and as he came around and looked back, he blanched with horror.

A few of the manes had chased him but had not leaped, and now they tried to wade through the jelly-like demonic creature, and smoke wafted up from their dissolving legs.

“Oh, but lovely,” Oretheo said with a sigh, and he hopped up and ran off to the base of the nearest guard tower. All of them had been stocked for exactly this purpose, with torches and with a pile of burning embers glowing under a stone hood.

He drove the torch into the orange-glowing pile and pulled it back, the end igniting and flaring to life. He took it in his shield hand, hoisted his axe once more, and ran off, waving the flaming torch to gather attention.

“We got ourselves a marker!” Ogden Nugget called, pointing to the running dwarf with the waving torch.

“Aye, and it’s Oretheo Spikes hisself!” Carrinda said. She punched her fist into the air again. “Just stay at the window and guide me turns!” she instructed Ogden even as she leaped back to the ballista and grabbed the handles.

“Just stay with him,” she added, as Nigel pointed left and up, then down and back to the right, accurately following the movements of Oretheo Spikes. Powerful Carrinda and Nigel turned the ballista in line.

“Fourth north pocket!” Ogden called out, and that same shout was echoed in a score of similar towers all across the cavern, and on the lower floor of this one as well. The call was more than a description of a place, it was one of the common marks to which all of the weapons on this side of the cavern had been sighted, and it told every artillery dwarf exactly where to align his weapon.

“Bugs!” Carrinda shouted then, and all three turned and gasped to see a swarm of chasme flying in at them.

But just below them on the balcony, their brethren saw it, too, and they were well prepared. Even as the three in the ballista room braced for the incoming fight, the catapult below let fly, a basket full of small caltrops that tumbled and spread wide as they flew off.

“Bird shot,” the dwarves called it, for such a load could take a flock of geese from the sky.

Or a swarm of chasme, the ugly things sent spinning and tumbling all in a rush.

Carrinda, Nigel, and Ogden went right back to work.

“Fourth north pocket again!” cried Ogden, seeming somewhat surprised that Oretheo Spikes had apparently backtracked.

“Ah, but he found somethin’!” Carrinda said, eyes gleaming in anticipation. “Something big!”

Oh, Oretheo Spikes had indeed!

The dwarf ran faster than he ever had before in his entire life. Only twice in his years had Oretheo Spikes truly known fear: first near a frozen lake when the source of that unseasonable ice, a great white dragon, had exploded through the pack to join in the battle, and now, when in his run, he had nearly tumbled into a pack-a pack! — of gigantic glabrezu.

He just lowered his head and ran for all his life, a dozen of the beasts close behind, and with a flock of giant vrocks right behind them.

“Third pocket!” came the cry from every tower, and as Oretheo Spikes passed that mark, he skidded to a stop and spun, pointing back with his torch. A signal the disciplined Adbar dwarves knew well.

Oretheo saw the demons rushing for him, towering over him. And he heard the creak and whoosh of the great weapons of war.

“Bah, but yer mother’s a bunny!” the Wilddwarf roared, certain that he was doomed, seeing great pincers already coming his way.

A score of ballista spears crashed just in front of him. A score of catapult loads and twice that number of side-slingers-bird shot, larger rocks, burning pitch, and one with a pile of stones soaked in oil of impact-let fly for that sighted area just in front of Oretheo Spikes, the place the dwarves had named “third pocket north.”

The cavern shook under the weight of the barrage, and trembled with the explosion of the magical oil.

Oretheo Spikes was barely aware that he was in the air, but he felt the hard stone when he crashed down.

He felt it because he was, somehow, alive!

Looking back, he saw the jumble of demons and spears and rocks large and small, and the smoking husks of fallen fiends and the cracked wall of the cavern.

Another catapult load smashed in, throwing a vulture beast into the wall.

And more followed, relentless and punishing.

“Bah, but yer mother’s a bunny!” Oretheo Spikes roared once more, pulling himself from the floor. And off he ran, torch waving.

And now, he noted, he wasn’t the only marker, as other dwarves on this end of the large cavern had taken up torches. Far across the cavern, he heard “Second pocket south!” and a few heartbeats later, a similar devastating barrage went out from the southern guard towers.

“Well done, King Connerad,” Oretheo Spikes mumbled under his breath, truly glad that the young dwarf had so brilliantly organized this defense, and blissfully unaware that at that very moment, King Connerad Brawnanvil was being torn in half by the powerful pincers of a glabrezu very much like the beasts Oretheo’s gallant efforts had just destroyed.

He began his run anew, but blowing horns gave him pause.

He looked back to the pond and took heart, for the rest of Adbar’s force had come forth from the throne room, and now more than a thousand battle dwarves had pushed to the far bank of the pond, and no more beasts would get free of that water.

And the Adbarrim were coming across the bridge as well, a great wedge of dwarven fury and dwarven muscle and dwarven metal.

And on the near side, the boys of Mirabar had poured into the chamber from the outer caverns. Dwarven squares had used the support artillery to join up in stronger formations and had begun an irresistible march back toward the pond. Nearly three hundred Mirabarran and Adbarrim would die this day in the entry cavern of Gauntlgrym, but so be it.

When the pond’s water stilled once more, Oretheo Spikes, Nigel Thunderstorm, and all the remaining dwarves looked about at the carnage and knew that Comragh na fo Aster, the Battle of the Cavern, had come to a glorious and victorious end.