Fate of Thorbardin

FOURTEEN

For the first time in more than sixteen hours, Brandon allowed himself to relax his grip on the handle of the Bluestone Axe. He heard Fister Morewood barking orders to his dwarves of the Second Legion, while on a lower level of the city-visible from the balcony where he and Gretchan had finally stopped to catch their breath-Otaxx Shortbeard and Mason Axeblade directed the dispersed companies of the Tharkadan Legion to move into the alleys and byways to either side of the road. The whooping sounds of the Klar company had faded into the distance as the berserkers, barely controlled by the roaring bellows of Wildon Dacker, led the charge into the heart of the city of Norbardin.

Sounds of battle rang out from several skirmishes, but the great din of the fighting seemed to have settled down. Brandon found a stone bench that had been toppled in the fray and pulled it upright. Gretchan sat down on it and leaned back against a marble column, closing her eyes and holding her staff across her lap.

“Mind if I join you?” Brandon asked, nudging the rod to the side so there was room for him to sit on the bench beside her.

“Only if you’ll show a lonely girl around a strange town, soldier,” Gretchan said, smiling through her weariness.

“We’ve made a pretty good start, for tourists,” Brandon pointed out with a grin.

And indeed, they had. The initial blast of the Fire-spitter had been enough to shatter the resistance in the gatehouse, and when the First Legion troops had poured through the breached doorway, the wizard’s defenders had been too few, too disorganized, and in many places too fearful to put up a coherent defense. As a result, the attackers had claimed more than half of the great city in the first day of the battle. They were able to concentrate their forces wherever Willim’s fighters had tried to make a stand and overwhelmed each strong point in turn before moving deeper into the legendary kingdom.

For the Tharkadan Legion, the initial victory had been a return to home. To the Kayolin dwarves, each step forward, each intersection and new building and small square or plaza, was part of the discovery of a new world that nonetheless was familiar in their hearts. None of the northern dwarves had ever seen Thorbardin before, but throughout their lives, all of them had heard of it and held the name and the place in a state of reverence and awe.

From their current resting place, Brandon and Gretchan could survey only a small portion of Norbardin, but the sight was enough to convince them both that it was the greatest underground city in all of Krynn. Even Garnet Thax, the jewel of Kayolin, looked like a piddling small town by comparison.

Great edifices rose along one wall of the vast, cavernous space. Brandon counted at least ten levels on that cliff face, each one marked by columned balconies and lofty windows, porches, and other vantages.

Between their current position and that grand facade lay a series of narrow streets and multistoried buildings, some rising far above their line of sight but others low enough that they could spot the splendid architecture beyond. The crowded lanes of the district below them no doubt usually teemed with pedestrians and vendors, but most of the citizens of Thorbardin had been content to lock themselves into their homes when the invasion began. Brandon had received encouraging reports indicating that a great portion of the populace was not enamored of either Willim the Black or his predecessor, Jungor Stonespringer. One tyrant was the same as the other, as far as they were concerned. Word of Tarn Bellowgranite’s return was slowly spreading among the common people, advancing well ahead of the army.

Brandon and Gretchan looked up to see Tankard Hacksaw heading toward them. The legion commander was caked with dirt and sweat and had a bloody cut running across his forehead. But he also carried a decanter of water, and it was the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen.

“Help yourselves,” he said with a tight smile, handing the tall glass vessel to Gretchan.

The priestess took a deep draught and passed it to Brandon before pushing herself to her feet with an effort. “Here, let me have a look at that cut,” she said concernedly.

“Bah!” Tankard waved her away. “It’s nothing. There’s them who’re hurt a lot worse than me. Besides, you already did me more than fine when you plucked that arrow out of my shoulder.”

“Well, it looks like you hurt yourself again. Can’t you be a little more careful?” Gretchan chided good-naturedly. “Rest assured that I’ll do what I can for the rest of your men. But you’re a legion commander. We can’t have you losing blood like that. Sets a bad example.” She smiled lightly. “You’ll scare the recruits.”

“Ah, all right,” Tankard said. His knees nearly buckled as he sank down on the bench, and Brandon saw that he was more seriously injured than he’d been letting on. But the cleric pressed her palm against the bleeding cut and murmured a prayer to Reorx. After several moments she pulled her hand away, and her palm and Tankard’s forehead were both cleansed of blood.

“That’s a small miracle right there,” admitted the captain, wiping his own hand over his face and looking at it in amazement. “Praise be to Reorx!”

“And praise be to you too,” Brandon added sincerely. “That was a masterful job of leading your legion through the barracks.”

“The hardest part was getting over my astonishment, when Bardic Stonehammer broke the mountain open with that three-colored piece of rock! It was the most astounding thing I’ve ever seen!”

“I’ll grant you that,” the Bluestone dwarf replied. “I couldn’t quite believe it myself.”

“Now you both need to get some rest,” clucked Gretchan maternally. “The war will still be going strong when you wake up, I’ll warrant.”

“Only if you agree to get some sleep as well,” Brandon said. His eyes narrowed in concern as he noted the weariness in Gretchan’s face, the glaze of exhaustion that had suddenly seemed to settle over her eyes.

At first, she looked ready to argue, but apparently she took stock of his words and realized that his advice was sensible. She nodded and leaned on her staff as they looked around for a likely place to stretch out for a few hours.

For the moment, there were only the three of them on that high balcony, though hundreds of dwarves-all from their own army-were in sight on the streets and plaza below. The barracks hall connecting to the balcony was already home to dozens of sleeping dwarves, weary survivors of the First Legion, but Brandon reasoned that there’d be an office or storeroom nearby where Gretchan, at least, could have some privacy.

“You’ll be safe here, far behind the battle lines,” Tankard said. “And now that I feel a lot better, I think I’ll go check on my men.”

“Aye, old friend,” Brandon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “And once again, well done.”

“You too, General,” Tankard said. Brandon turned to Gretchan as Tank took a step toward the door into the barracks. That was when the captain abruptly halted and cried out in alarm.

“Look out!”

The words were barely uttered when Tank flew backward and past Brandon, propelled by some unseen force that blasted him right over the railing and toward the street two dozen feet below.

Brandon was already reaching for his axe when another blast of force knocked him over, battering him like a falling wall. He heard Gretchan scream, and he struggled to turn around and go to her aid, battling a great weight that seemed to press him to the floor.

Gretchan cried out again; then he saw her, bound by some kind of web that had simply materialized in the air. But no! There were dwarves there, two of them. They were dressed in black robes. One was a strikingly attractive female, with blood red lips and flowing black hair. The other was a sturdy Theiwar male who had his back to Brandon. The web seemed to be exploding from the Theiwar’s hands, wrapping Gretchan around and around until she might as well have been secured in a cocoon.

“No!” Brandon cried, pushing himself to his knees.

The black-robed Theiwar turned, flashing a wicked smile, and Brandon was shocked by his scarred visage, a hideous face with the eye sockets sewn shut. Even so, as he took in that cruel, gloating expression, he knew that the villainous dwarf could see him!

Then, in a flash of magic, the two black-robed wizards disappeared. With a sickening lurch of fear, Brandon saw that Gretchan had vanished too. They had taken the priestess with them.

“I don’t have any food to speak of,” the rescued dwarf maid admitted to the trio of rapt gully dwarves who had fixated on the word food. “But I’ll take you to some first thing in the morning. Eggs, bacon, milk, cheese … I’ll treat you to a real feast.”

“Sound good,” Gus admitted. “All right. We eat morningtime.” Suddenly he had another thought and turned to glare at the female dwarf he had rescued. “Who you, anyway?” he demanded belligerently, planting his hands on his hips. “Where you go?”

“My name is Crystal Heathstone,” she said. “And I’m going to a town called Hillhome. I was, at least, on my way there, until this Klar attacked me.”

She nudged the lifeless form of Garn Bloodfist with a toe and shuddered. Gus and his girls had checked out the dwarf, determining that the blow to his head had been hard enough to crush the life out of him. Gus had preened and boasted a bit, while Slooshy and Berta had cooed and awed over his bravery-until he had remembered his hunger.

“Hillhome, huh?” he said. “We go Thorbardin instead. Make war on bad wizard!”

“Oh?” Crystal said, frowning. “There was a time when I thought I was going to Thorbardin too. I was going to bring my people there to help wage that war.”

“Why you not come with, then?” Gus asked. “After we eats, I mean. We go to help Gretchan,” he added.

“Huh! I know Gretchan very well,” Crystal said. “Now I know who you are! You must be Gus. You’re quite famous, you know. Even Garn Bloodfist”-she gestured to indicate the dead Klar-“knew enough about you to hate you. You’re the gully dwarf who broke the big trap before he could drop it on all the hill dwarves.”

“Yep. Me do that,” Gus agreed proudly, though even to that day he wasn’t sure exactly what he had done to make everyone so happy with him. But he was pretty famous, that was for sure, and he was content to bask in all the accolades.

“You go Hillhome?” he said again. “Where hill dwarves be?”

“Yes,” Crystal agreed with a laugh that reminded Gus of Gretchan. “Lots of hill dwarves be there.”

“Well,” said Gus, his scrunched-up face indicating that he was doing something rare and perhaps even historic; the little fellow was thinking. “I got idea. Let’s go get and take ’em Thorbardin. We find Gretchan and Brandon and everyone there.”

“You know,” the dwarf maid said with a pensive expression. “You might just have a notion there. Anyway, I agree. Let’s go to Hillhome, and I’ll tell my friends all about you and maybe they’ll decide to follow you and me and all of us to Thorbardin.”

“That be fine!” Gus declared expansively. Then he remembered something with a scowl. “But first we eat, right?”

“Where did she go?” Brandon cried, spinning on his heel, holding the Bluestone Axe in one hand while he reached out to brace himself against a column with the other. He threw back his head and raged. “Where is she, by Reorx?”

Dwarves of the First Legion raced to the rescue from all directions, some stumbling out of their sleep in the adjacent barracks and strapping on weapons and others, dusty and bloody from the fight, rushing up the steps to the landing. By the time the first of his men arrived on the scene, Brandon had calmed enough to realize that they would find neither Gretchan nor any of her attackers in the immediate area.

“What is it, General?” gasped one of the first to arrive, a swordsman who rushed up to Brandon and whirled to position himself as a barrier for any fresh attacker.

“Wizards! Dark magic,” growled Brandon, lowering his weapon only slightly. “They came and took Gretchan Pax away … by sorcery. And,” he added in a choked voice, looking over his shoulder as he suddenly remembered with a stab of guilt, “They might have killed my brave Commander Tankard!”

Even as more dwarves arrived on the landing, calling out in alarm, demanding information, Brandon was reaching the only logical conclusion. “It was Willim the Black himself,” he groaned, stunned and near despair. “She could be a thousand miles away by now! We must find her!”

He had reached the balcony and was looking down into the street below, where several dwarves knelt around the motionless form of Tankard Hacksaw.

“Does he live?” Brandon asked with a catch in his throat.

The slumped shoulders and slowly shaking heads of the witnesses confirmed his worst fears. An overwhelming sense of despair suddenly weighed him down. The Bluestone Axe fell from his fingers, clanging unnoticed on the floor at his feet. His hands gripped the stone railing as if they could crush it, and if it had been Willim’s neck, they would have done so.

But it wasn’t. Angrily he pushed himself away from the brink. He turned to see two score or more dwarves surrounding him, with more arriving every second. Those who had heard Brandon’s news murmured angrily, informing the newcomers. To a man, the soldiers of the First Legion looked murderous, grim, and determined.

“What are your orders, General?” asked one, a gray-beard who wore the epaulets of sergeant on his shoulder.

“Resume the attack,” Brandon declared. “We’re going to clean out every corner of this rat-infested den. And when we find the black wizard, I’m going to kill him with my bare hands!”

The dwarves moved out immediately, rousting their comrades who still slept and gathering up those who had paused to eat or drink. They vowed to follow Brandon’s orders; they would kill and search and sooner or later they would find the wizard’s lair.

But would Gretchan still be alive by the time they did?

Gretchan Pax, her face encased in gummy strands of web, could barely breathe. She tried to move her arms, but they were pinned to her sides by the same material. Her staff, too, was imprisoned, pressed tightly against her chest, so she couldn’t even wrap a hand around it. The instinctive scream that tried to explode from her throat was muffled by the all-encasing netting.

She felt a sickening sensation, as if she were falling; suddenly there was no floor under her feet, and the dizzying sense of motion caused her stomach to lurch. Darkness enveloped her, and her thrashing only seemed to draw the web around her more tightly. An instant later she found herself standing on a stone floor again, but her struggles unbalanced her, and she fell heavily on her side.

Harsh sounds assailed her ears, and she recognized the sound of a magic spell being cast, spoken in a guttural, male voice. In the next instant, the web was gone, completely evaporated. Her staff clattered to the floor beside her, but before she could grab it, another dwarf, a black-robed female, snatched it away. A hideous-looking Theiwar, eyeless and grotesque and wearing the robes of a black wizard, pointed a finger at her and spit the command to another spell.

Gretchan opened her mouth to voice a spell of protection, a plea to her god for a shield, but the wizard’s casting was too fast. The priestess found that her throat, her lips, her tongue could form the words normally, but no sounds emerged. She thrashed around wildly and tried to sit up, and that movement, too, was completely soundless.

Even as she pushed herself up, a loop of rope, mundane and coarse and very strong, dropped around her neck, and she was pulled roughly up but off balance, teetering in every direction. She realized that a third dwarf was behind her, and it was she who had dropped the noose around her neck. With a heaving lunge, her abductors pushed her through the door of an iron-barred cage. The door slammed shut with a metallic clang, and when Gretchan grabbed the bars and shook them, the thing rattled like a drum. But when she again cried out a challenge, a protest, the sound of her voice was swallowed entirely before it could even escape her lips.

She slumped back, realizing that she had been enchanted by a spell of silence, no doubt in an attempt to make sure that she couldn’t call upon her Reorx-based powers for any help. It was a simple but utterly effective tactic.

Still, she was not about to give up or plead for mercy. Instead, she let go of the bars and backed warily away, taking stock of her captors. The young, beautiful wizard had picked her staff up from the floor and handed it to the grotesque Theiwar with obvious deference. Her gorge rose as the wizard stroked her cherished staff with obvious sensual pleasure, his cracked lips splitting into a smile, his eyeless face turning upward in apparent bliss.

Only after he had set the staff aside did he turn to regard her more closely. The smile disappeared then as his face wrinkled into a mask of pure hate. Even the two females, the old hag and the voluptuous maid, stepped away from him with expressions of wariness. But they might have been far away, for all the notice the wizard gave to them.

Gretchan could feel the full weight of his attention pitilessly focused on her. The wizard might be eyeless, but she felt as though he were stripping her with his gaze. She recoiled in horror, wrapping her arms around her breasts.

And the wizard opened his mouth and uttered a cackle of pure, vicious glee.