Fate of Thorbardin

SIXTEEN

General Darkstone finally emerged from the damp, constricted drainage tunnel. The drain pipe from the ancient sewer had brought him there, but just as the tube began to drop vertically into the depths below Thorbardin, he was able to wrench aside a rusty iron grate and escape. Squirming through the narrow aperture, he rolled onto his back and breathed deeply of the city’s dank but comparatively fresh air.

Mud and slime covered him from his boots to the gummy strands of his hair and beard, but he pushed himself to his feet and gave himself a shake, not unlike a dog emerging from a swamp. He stood on a narrow street, at the edge of a sewer drain. The ceiling was low overhead, filmy with mold and dripping water, and the buildings along either side of the twisting road were packed close together. Each was protected by a stout door. He didn’t see any windows.

Taking stock of his surroundings, he realized he had come into Anvil’s Echo, the lowest of Norbardin’s hierarchy of levels. It was a place where the poorest dwarves lived, the slums where a careless drunk could easily get his throat slit or his pocket picked, in no particular order. He was startled as a voice, firm but not hostile, emerged from the mouth of a narrow alley.

“Here, stranger, you look like you got down here the hard way. Any idea what’s going on up there?”

He turned with surprise to see a small platoon of Theiwar warriors, dressed in the black leather of Willim’s forces. They were a mixed lot, armed with crossbows, swords, and a few axes, and they gathered behind the dwarf, wearing a sergeant’s epaulets, who had addressed him. That one had an ancient scar slanting across his face, and his beard was long, gray, and wildly untamed.

“Thorbardin is attacked from without,” Darkstone said bluntly. “Invaders have cracked open the great gate. Their troops are pouring into the city as we speak.”

“Damn!” the sergeant replied. “It’s worse than I thought.”

“What word has filtered down here?” Darkstone asked.

“Well, we heard that a whole company has been burned to death, not two hundred feet over our head. My orders are to stay down here and watch for trouble in the Echo, but I’ve a mind to take my men up to the main level and put them to good work.” He squinted, plainly appraising the mud-slicked stranger. “I’ll go ahead and volunteer you into my band; you look like you could swing a sword rightly.”

Darkstone almost chuckled. He found himself liking the grizzled, scarred sergeant; the fact that the fellow was willing to march headlong toward the center of the fight was the first encouraging sign he’d noted that day. He straightened up, threw back his shoulders, and mustered all the force of his command into his voice.

“Sergeant!” he barked. “What’s your name?”

The dwarf blinked but then snapped to attention. “Chap Bitters, sir!” he shot back. “First Sergeant of the Third Theibardin Regiment!”

“Good man. I am General Darkstone.” He looked around as the name registered. Chap Bitters blinked in astonishment. “You are hereby promoted to captain. Bring as many of your men as you can gather in five minutes; we’re moving to the plaza!”

“Aye, General. Yes, sir!” Bitters turned and shouted at the dozen men in his small platoon. “You heard the honorable general! Fetch your fellows from whatever holes they’re hiding in. Report to the north shaft in five minutes!”

The dwarves scattered with commendable alacrity, and by the time they’d rejoined the captain and the general at the entrance to the north shaft-which was a wide, spiraling stairway leading up to the rest of Norbardin’s levels-they had collected more than a hundred other dwarves.

“Half the regiment, I’d say, sir,” Bitters reported with not a little pride.

“Good,” Darkstone acknowledged. “Now fall in and move up!”

They tromped up to the plaza in a serpentine column and a few minutes later emerged into a warehouse quarter where wide, straight streets passed between square buildings. The structures were two stories high, and the stone ceiling covered each street at the same height as the top of the warehouses.

In peacetime, it would have been a district bustling with pedestrians and commerce, but they found a city changed in ways that the Daergar general found hard to imagine.

Most notable was the lingering smoke and the many charred, burned bodies of soldiers they found scattered in the streets. Some of the corpses were still smoking, though it seemed as though the main fight had moved on. They heard some sounds of a clash coming from somewhere up ahead, but there was no sign of the major force that must have inflicted such terrible casualties.

“Keep your men here; have them hide in one of these warehouses,” Darkstone ordered Captain Bitters. “Then come with me. We’ll do a little reconnaissance.”

“Aye, sir,” agreed the Theiwar with the old scar. “You heard the general,” he barked to his men. “Find one of these places where there’s room for the whole lot of you to stay out of sight.”

In a few moments, several of the Theiwar had pried open a large door to find a mostly empty space inside. Several mounds of coal along the back wall, along with a layer of black dust covering everything, suggested the commodity that was usually stored there. For the moment, fortunately, the stockpile was low, and the hundred-plus dwarves of Bitters’s company were able to make themselves comfortable and, more important, stay out of sight of the street.

The men pulled the door closed as Darkstone and the captain started up the street. The two officers clung to the shadows near the dark buildings, moving stealthily, slowly advancing in the direction of the sounds of battle.

Hearing the approach of a large body of warriors, the pair melted into a shadowy alcove and watched the cross street a dozen paces in front of them. They spied a file of dwarves dressed in red shirts, carrying shiny, unbloodied swords at the ready, double-time past. There were several hundred men, and they moved along one of the main avenues leading from the north gatehouse into the main center of Norbardin.

“It’s clear they’ve come into the city in force,” Dark-stone said in a low voice. However brave his surviving troops at the gatehouse had been, they could not have stood for long against such overwhelming numbers.

The two officers waited a minute or two until the sounds of the marching dwarves had faded into the distance. Then they emerged to continue their scouting. They crossed the main avenue and continued down another side street; like the one where the company had hidden, it too was devoid of traffic or other activity.

“Where are all the dwarves?” Captain Bitters wondered, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“Hiding, most likely,” replied Darkstone. “Probably waiting to see how this all comes out.”

Once more they arrived at a main thoroughfare, and there they found a number of bodies, mostly Theiwar wearing the black tunics of Willim’s troops. Some had been felled with swords and arrows, but in one place there was a wide circle of soot on the pavement with half a dozen charred and blackened bodies captured in the ring of fire.

“Did they come in with a dragon, General?” asked Captain Bitters, more angry than afraid.

“Worse than that, I think,” Darkstone declared, choking on his words.

He couldn’t speak as he walked past the terribly burned dwarves. Most of them were dead, and the few who still managed to open a wild, staring eye or to twitch a charred, stinking limb would perish soon enough.

He heard a groan and found one Theiwar whose legs were charred and ruined. But his eyes were bright and alert, and he uttered a hoarse curse as Darkstone knelt beside him.

“What happened here?” asked the general.

“A machine, sir! They attacked us with a great, fire-breathing machine. They pointed it at us, and it spat the huge fireball that killed half my platoon. It spit fire all the way down the street. I tried to fight them, sir-I–I really did! But I couldn’t!”

“No one could, son. I’m proud of you,” Darkstone said, touching the man’s cheek where his beard had been burned away. Another look at that charred torso and legs confirmed that the soldier was doomed; no one could recover from a wound like that. The general looked at him with frank compassion. “I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“My-my knife, General,” croaked the dying soldier. “Could you put it in my hand?”

The commander found the weapon, which had a blackened, half-melted hilt but a keen, undamaged blade, lying just out of the dwarf’s reach. “Here it is, lad,” he said, handing him the weapon then rising and turning so he didn’t see what the fellow did with the instrument.

Then he heard the sound of the cut and the spurt of arterial blood.

The Daergar general clenched his jaw and stalked onward, deadly resolve churning in his belly, his heart, and his mind. The fire cannon was the most terrible weapon he had ever seen, and the knowledge that it had been designed by dwarves and used against dwarves almost made him physically sick.

The hill dwarves were happy to welcome Gus, Slooshy, and Berta into their village as soon as Crystal explained how the Aghar had saved her from the mad Klar. They were further delighted to find out that Gus himself had been the gully dwarf who had spared them from the lethal barrage of the Tharkadan trap. (Under the circumstances, he decided it was not really necessary to tell them that it had all been a big accident.)

Slate Fireforge had become the leader of the town, and he recognized Crystal and Gus and was quick to declare the afternoon and evening to be the occasion for a great celebration of Crystal Heathstone’s homecoming. He welcomed the esteemed guests.

“Berta not wanta be ‘steemed,” Gus’s girlfriend whispered loudly as the plans were being announced. “But they got food for us?”

Indeed, they did have food: the hill dwarves feted the gully dwarves with fresh bread; a large, smoked ham; and a whole bushel of apples and grapes. The food was placed on a table, and they ate sitting on really comfortable seats. They found themselves looking across a plaza that was growing crowded with hill dwarves as more and more of the Neidar streamed into town from the surrounding villages, almost as if a magical summons had gone out to inform them of the impromptu celebration.

For a while, Gus was too busy eating to really pay attention to anything else, but after a couple of hours, even his very expandable belly was starting to feel comfortably full. It was then that he started listening to the earnest conversation going on between Crystal Heathstone, Slate Fireforge, and a few other hill dwarf elders.

They were talking about the Big War, the same war that Gretchan was going to. Gus leaned in and tried to understand what the other dwarves were saying.

“Tarn Bellowgranite has marched on Thorbardin?” Slate Fireforge expressed surprise at the news. “Why didn’t he call on our help? Like we pledged in the treaty?”

Crystal shook her head, saddened. “I’m afraid it’s the old fears, the old prejudices again. Brandon Bluestone came down from the north with four thousand dwarves of Kayolin, and apparently Tarn felt that would be enough to get the job done.”

“Aye. And he didn’t want to share the spoils with any Neidar, unless I miss my guess,” said another big hill dwarf-one who Crystal had welcomed by the name of Axel Carbondale. Gus knew that Axel had come from a different town, and in fact he looked vaguely familiar. At last it came to him: Axel had also been with the hill dwarves in the battle of Pax Tharkas.

“Is that the case?” Slate asked bluntly.

“I suppose it is,” Crystal was forced to agree. “My husband is a very stubborn dwarf. And I’m afraid, sometimes, that he’s getting even worse in his old age. In the end, I disagree with him. I think we should all come together. That’s why I decided to come home, on my own. I came to tell you what Tarn is doing and to ask if you’d be willing to help him.”

Suddenly she turned and flashed Gus a smile that, once again, reminded him very much of Gretchan. “I almost didn’t make it back home, and I wouldn’t have if not for Gus here.”

The little gully dwarf beamed and helped himself to another thick slice of ham.

“So the old fool is willing to risk defeat?” Axel growled. “Just because he’s too proud to ask for Neidar help? I say we let him face the defeat he deserves!”

That statement drew a few rumbles of assent from the gathered throng, but Gus saw that Slate, though listening carefully, wore a noncommittal expression on his face.

Crystal apparently noticed that too since she turned and put a hand on the Hillhome leader’s arm. “Slate, is that what you think too? That Tarn and the exiles should go down to defeat because they failed to ask for your help?”

There was a long silence, during which even the conversations among the dwarves at the more distant feasting tables settled down to whispers, waiting for Slate’s reply. Finally, Slate Fireforge shook his head. He stood up, his broad shoulders and lush mane of brown hair making him look larger than life.

“I say we should march to Tarn Bellowgranite’s aid. I say we should ally ourselves with our cousins from Kayolin, cousins who have marched much, much farther than we would have to go in order to join this brave campaign.”

He cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by his strong statements. But he raised his face and looked around the crowded plaza, at all the celebratory dwarves, with an expression of stern determination. He climbed onto his bench, stepped up onto the table, and from there climbed atop a huge keg. From that vantage, he could gaze all across the wide town square.

“Since when do we depend on mountain dwarves for wisdom?” he asked, his voice booming through Hillhome. He turned and addressed the dwarves on the other side of him and all around. “Since when do we depend on mountain dwarves to make our decisions or to decide our future? Hear me, brave Neidar!

“We have here the chance to right ten generations’ worth of wrongs!” Slate Fireforge declared from atop the sturdy keg. “I say we seize that chance, we gird ourselves, and we march to Thorbardin!”

“And I agree!” Axel Carbondale said, pushing himself to his feet. “The time for feuding is done. Let us work together and claim the future for all dwarves!”

His bold statement roused a few cheers, but those cheers quickly swelled into a roar of acclamation as the plan for the campaign swept like wildfire through the large crowd of hill dwarves thronging the central square of Hillhome.

Willim the Black paced back and forth before Gretchan’s cage with his hands crossed behind his back and his scarred lips pressed together in an expression of concentration. Notwithstanding his grotesque visage and hunched posture, for the moment he seemed to have an aura more like a lecturing professor than a megalo-maniacal magic-user.

The priestess watched him warily. She was shackled inside the cage and remained muted by the spell of silence. She had watched the wizard and his two female assistants for a long time, alert for any chance to escape. But no such opportunity had presented itself, and she could do little but listen.

“The creature of Chaos will be drawn to many things … to your beauty, perhaps, and even your faith. But most of all, it shall be drawn to your power. That power is the key to all my hopes, so please, take care that you do not disappoint me.”

The priestess leaned forward and strained against the chains binding her wrists. If she had been free, she would have cheerfully fastened her hands around Willim’s neck and throttled the life out of him. For the time being, she could only glare.

He seemed to sense-and enjoy-her fury. He beamed as she glared.

“You are probably thinking that you would rather die than cooperate with me.”

Her eyes widened slightly, the fury and fear in her gaze telling Willim that he was right in his assumption. The wizard shook his head, dismissing her objection. “You alone will not die. You will see: there will be many, many more who will perish.”

The wizard went to his table and raised the Staff of Reorx, which had been laid there following the cleric’s capture. Gretchan’s stomach lurched in revulsion against the blasphemy of Willim’s hands touching that sacred artifact, but she couldn’t turn away as she watched in horror. Holding the staff before him, he made sure that she watched his every move then continued his tutelage in that maddeningly calm voice.

“This is a powerful tool-in some ways more powerful than any other device at my disposal.”

Gretchan shook her chains, trying to stress that the Staff of Reorx was not his to use.

Again, the wizard seemed to read her mind. “Oh,” he said with a deep, wet chuckle. “But it is.”

“General Bluestone! The king is coming with the rest of the Tharkadan Legion.”

Brandon turned to see that Mason Axeblade had reached him. Axeblade was accompanied by a few dozen of his own men, all as sooty and bloodied as any other dwarves-proof that they had seen heavy action during their advance into the city.

The Kayolin commander stood with the front rank of his men, facing a shattered wall in the middle of Norbardin’s central cavern. It was the royal palace, and though Brandon very much doubted that Willim the Black-and his prisoner Gretchan Pax-would be waiting for them in the battered but still formidable edifice, there was no way around the position. He and his captains realized they would have to storm the place.

In his fury and determination, Brandon had almost forgotten about the rest of the army, and he had to shake his head and force himself to think about Tarn Bellowgranite.

“How far away is he?” Brandon asked.

“An hour, maybe less. He got a very warm welcome from the people when he led the legion into the northern quarter of the city. It seems they’re plenty sick of Willim the Black and of Jungor Stonespringer before him.”

Brandon nodded, still distracted, thinking of Gretchan’s dire peril. But he had to admit that Mason’s report was encouraging; if the dwarves of Thorbardin were prepared to cheer for their exiled monarch, that would make the position of Willim the Black even more tenuous.

But what was the wizard doing to Gretchan?

He forced himself to think and act. “All right. You see that building there, the palace?”

Mason nodded, studying the stony edifice. It was surrounded by a stone wall; that wall was broken and cracked in many places, the damage that still remained from the recent civil war that had resulted in Willim’s gaining of the throne. The large gate was barricaded with several large slabs of stone piled in place, blocking access in and out of the courtyard beyond. One tower rose into view behind the wall, but it was a jagged, broken spire. At one time it had apparently risen high above the floor of the underground city, but it looked like the trunk of a tree that had lost its top to a lightning strike.

“There are a hundred or more Theiwar holed up in there. The rest of the enemy army, mostly remnants, has moved beyond, into the widest of the roads leading down to the Urkhan Sea. But we can’t get at them until we fight our way through the palace.”

He looked up the road, in the direction Mason had come from. He was looking for signs of the two Fire-spitters, but the machines still were not moving forward. Both had exhausted their oil and coal in fighting their way into the city, and Brandon knew they were being reloaded. How much longer would that take?

Only vaguely did Brandon realize that Axeblade was waiting for the general to say something.

“I’m sorry,” Brandon said. “I’m worried about this attack. What was it you asked?”

“Where do you want the king to come?” the captain repeated. “Should I ask him to wait in the north quarter or advance here to the city center?”

“Have him come here, if he’s willing,” Brandon replied. “Maybe the clear proof of his return will bring all the people onto our side and we can be done with this fighting sooner than we ever thought.”

“Aye, General. Good idea,” Mason Axeblade replied. Instead of saluting, he placed a hand on Brandon’s shoulder. “And I heard about Gretchan,” he added solemnly. “We’re all praying for her, and I’m willing to bet that she’s more than a match for that devil wizard!”

“From your mouth to Reorx’s ears,” was all Brandon could think of to say.