Hammer and Axe

12 Tinker’s Blast

Shaft Redstone, delvemaster of all the Daewar, and Cambit Steelsheath, Thorbardin’s warden of ways, had burned many a candle in their search for a way to obliterate the old Daewar tunnel through Sky’s End but had been unable to come up with any plan that would require less than five years of labor. Surprisingly enough, it was the lorekeeper, Quill Runebrand, who suggested the idea that the regent, Willen Ironmaul, decided to try.

The keeper of scrolls had invited himself to supper at the regent’s quarters on the pretext of wanting to enscroll Willen Ironmaul’s proclamations so that they could be copied and posted in each city and marketplace. Actually, his visit was more because of Tera Sharn than because of Willen Ironmaul. The regent’s wife—Damon Omenborn’s mother—was a lovely, gracious, and wise person, always full of insight about subjects that sometimes puzzled Quill, and in addition she was the daughter of the almost legendary Colin Stonetooth, first chieftain of the Hylar. Much of the lore that Quill had compiled about the origins of his own ancestral people came from chats with Tera Sharn. And, even better than all that, Tera Sharn was an excellent cook.

Now, as Quill sat with Willen Ironmaul and Cable Graypath, First of the Ten, at the plank table in the new regent’s quarters in Hybardin, he gazed around the room thoughtfully. Among most of the other races of Krynn, Quill assumed, a great chieftain would live in lavish style. In the human city of Xak Tsaroth, it was said, the palace of the High Overlord contained a hundred separate rooms, most of them as big as assembly halls. Trading elves had spoken of the tall, beautiful towers of far-off Silvanesti. Even among goblins, he had heard, wherever a settlement of filthy hovels and noxious caves developed, the highest ranking goblin usually claimed a hovel or cave several times as large as any others around it.

But it had never been so with the dwarves, and the Hylar were no exception. Willen Ironmaul was the revered chieftain of the Hylar, and now he was also the regent of all of Thorbardin. But the living quarters that he and Tera Sharn occupied consisted of four simple rooms located in a high delving within the Life Tree stalactite. The partitions were of simple stone-block construction, and the crossed runes of Hylar and leader, carved into the wood of the outer door, was the only indication that anyone important lived here. In size and construction the home of the chieftain was much the same as any other home in Hybardin. Stone ceilings were whitewashed, as were most Hylar ceilings, though Theiwar ceilings tended to be gray or brown, and Daewar ceilings were rampant with bright colors and intricate designs. The walls were hung with subtle, elegant tapestries of Tera Sharn’s selection, and the furniture was simple, tasteful, and sturdy. In addition, each room had lens-and-mirror murals to carry light from the sun-tunnels.

In all, it was a typical Hylar dwelling and—except for varying tastes in ornamentation, coloration, and placement of things—typical of most dwarven quarters in most of the dwarven cities that Quill had seen.

What was not typical was the aroma that floated in from the next room, where Tera Sharn had supper cooking over a grate of glowing coals. Quill’s nostrils twitched with pleasure. The aroma was rich and subtle, laced lightly with a blend of the fine spices the Klar produced in the farm warrens and those traded from human gatherers in the realm of the orders of Ergoth.

“If ever I marry,” Quill commented, “I shall choose a wife who can cook as well as the lady Tera . . . if in fact there are any others who can.” He breathed the tantalizing aroma, and his nose wrinkled as he thought of other, far less pleasant things he had smelled recently.

Then Tera came through the archway, carrying a copper tray laden with her cuisine, and Quill’s eyes widened. “Eggs?” he gulped. “Are those eggs?”

“Of course they are eggs.” Tera smiled at the keeper of scrolls. “Freshly harvested from the pigeon-roosts above the Valley of the Thanes. Some of the women gather them there and trade them at the Daewar market.”

Willen glanced at the lorekeeper. “You seem surprised, Quill. Don’t you eat eggs?”

“Of course I do.” Quill nodded, feeling foolish. “I. . . forgive my absentmindedness, Lady Tera. I was thinking of eggs when you brought those in, but in quite another context.”

“What context is that?” Willen asked.

“I was thinking about that old tinker with his hideous mixtures. The one who keeps trying to find fuel for tin forges and instead belabors the ethers with the smell of rotten eggs.”

“Pack Lodestone,” Cable Graypath reminded him. “I won’t forget that smell soon either.”

“Or the noise.” Quill grinned. “Just a few little buckets of . . . of ‘stuff,’ and he shook the entire north face of Cloudseeker.”

“That’s it!” Willen Ironmaul rumbled. “By Reorx, I believe that is it!”

“What is, dear?” Tera asked.

“The old Daewar tunnel,” Willen said. “Rust! I should have thought of it myself!”

“Thought of what?” Quill stared at his leader.

“That’s the problem with being chief of chiefs,” Willen proclaimed. “When a person has too many things on his mind, he can’t think through any of them. Wizards running loose in our mountains. And some thing out there killing people for the sheer joy of killing. . . .” He glanced at Cable. “Have we heard anything yet from Cale or the Roving Guard?”

“Nothing yet.” The First of the Ten shook his head.

“And Damon’s out there somewhere, with no regard for how worried his mother is. . .

“I’m not really worried about Damon, dear,” Tera reassured him. “After all, he is his father’s son. He can take care of himself.”

“You’re worried half-sick!” Willen snapped.

“Well,” Tera said, “someone here is, certainly.”

“. . . and trying to get Northgate usable, and then there is Gem Bluesleeve’s idea about the left side of the Shaft of Reorx . . .”

“What idea?”

“Never mind. I’m still thinking about it. Anyway, with all this on my mind, I’ve also been worrying about the old Daewar tunnel. Gran Stonemill is right, you know. It is a weakness in our defenses. Magic might penetrate it.

But I couldn’t come up with any idea what to do about it until just now when Quill suggested the answer.”

“What answer?” Quill asked, mystified.

“It just might work,” Willen muttered to himself. “Cable, get a message to Olim Goldbuckle. Tell him to round up his ancient tinker. . . What’s his name?”

“Pack Lodestone?”

“Yes, him. Tell him to bring Pack Lodestone and a team of delvers and meet me at Northgate. Oh, and tell him to bring as many buckets of that ‘stuff’ the oldster plays with as can be had. We’ll need a lot of it. Tell him to meet me right away.”

“Aye.” The First of the Ten was on his feet, looking puzzled but ready to obey. Willen pushed back his stool and stood, glancing around for his helmet, shield, and hammer.

“Willen!” Tera snapped. “Whatever it is, you can at least finish your dinner!”

“Oh. Yes.” The chief of chiefs sat again. “I suppose you’re right. Quill, pass the eggs.” To Cable, he said, “And have horses ready below Northgate, with carts and supply packs. We have a long way to go.”

“Where?” Quill wondered,

“To Sky’s End!” Willen snapped. “To the old tunnel! What do you think I’ve been talking about?”

“I’m not sure I have any real idea,” Quill admitted.

“Willen, you can’t go!” Tera said sternly. “You’re regent of Thorbardin now. You can’t go off on missions outside. You’re needed here.”

“Oh, rust!” Willen subsided, realizing that she was right. “Life was much simpler when I was just a soldier,” he muttered, “even when I was an ordinary chief. And Olim can’t go, either, because he’s meeting with the wardens. Well. . .” He turned to gaze at Quill Runebrand. “Since it was your idea, Quill, I appoint you chief of the project. You’ll be in charge; I suggest you leave immediately. It’s more than fifty miles from Northgate to the old citadel, and there’s no time to lose.”

Quill stared at his leader, wide-eyed. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Just what you suggested! Go to the citadel and seal that tunnel so that not even mages can get in. Make it a tunnel that never was. Obliterate it.”

“But I don’t know . . .”

“I have a hunch your idea will work very well.” Willen nodded. “We’ll discuss it while you eat your eggs.”

Thus it was that, when the drums spoke of the massacre of Mace Hammerstand and his hundred at the old citadel in front of the Daewar tunnel, Quill Runebrand, keeper of scrolls, was well on his way toward that place, leading a strange procession. In addition to armed guards and flankers, his company included dozens of Daewar delvers with tool-carts piled high, three wagons loaded with pots and casks of such substances as leached ash, powdered brimstone, cave salts, free soot, and finely ground graphite, and an ancient white-haired Daewar putterer riding guard over an assemblage of mixing vats, dry-forges, and strange tools.

Through a moonlit night they traveled as fast as their Daergar night-guides could trot, and when the dawn brought the sound of drums they were high on the eastern slopes of Sky’s End, heading around the bulge of the great peak by precipitous trails, heading for the northeast crests.

First light brought a dizzying vista of enormous distances—the lesser promontories of the giant mountain rising beyond their shallow coves, and beyond them, miles away and thousands of feet lower, the winding ribbon of the Road of Passage coming up from human Ergoth toward the Great Gorge where old Kal-Thax began. In the far distance were the spreading, vast plains of southern Ergoth—the realm of humans.

But few among the hurrying travelers on this morning paused to marvel at the view. The drums had told them of the massacre—by some creature that seemed to be pure rage—of Mace Hammerstand and his hundred guards.

Quill had drummers come forward to respond, to learn who was at the scene and what was happening. Cale Greeneye and a force of Neidar rangers were there, the drum-call answered, along with the remaining companies of the Roving Guard from Thorbardin. Leaderless now, the Thorbardin companies had attached themselves to the Neidar and were awaiting orders.

And where was the thing, the killing beast?

They did not know, except that it seemed to have gone east. Tracks had been found, but not yet followed.

Quill hurried back to the wagons where old Pack Lodestone guarded his arcane barrels and casks. “You can start mixing your concoctions now, revered one,” he said. “We will soon be where they are needed.”

“Concoctions?” Pack fussed. “Failed concoctions, so far. What good is a forge fuel that refuses to burn in a civilized manner? Who wants stuff that does nothing but stink and blow up? Maybe I’ll try something a little different this time.”

“To tarnish with your forge fuel!” Quill snapped. “What we want is exactly what you did last time, outside of Northgate. Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember! What do you think I am? Senile?” The old dwarf cocked his head, raising one bushy eyebrow. “What do you want that stuff for?”

“Never mind what I want it for,” Quill said. “Using it is my job. Making it is yours. Just be sure you make a lot of it.”

By the time the caravan came in sight of the old citadel, downslope on the shoulder of the great mountain, old Pack Lodestone was busily stirring great vats of gray-black, dusty-looking substance atop the rolling wagon, complaining and muttering to himself. “This is no proper way to combine a mixture. Probably be a lot better if I could saturate all of this for blending, then set up drying tables. Better compound, that way. Far more control of consistency. Of course, it would all have to be reground after it dried. But he says do it like last time, so I’ll do it like last time. Quick and dirty and who cares? Rust and corruption! These youngsters! All push and prod, and not a single ounce of patience to the dozen of them. . . .”

While Quill went down to confer with Cale Greeneye, the Daewar delvers went to work high on the slope, half a mile above and behind the old abandoned citadel that guarded the opening of the Daewar tunnel. With chisels and mauls, picks and prybars, scoops and stone drills, they began a wide, narrow cut in the stone of the mountain—a cut that would wedge downward to a distance of at least forty feet. And as they worked, Pack Lodestone fumed and muttered and mixed vat after vat of dry, gray-black dust made of cave salt collected by roaming Klar foragers, yellow brimstone from Einar delvings north of Redrock, and a blend of ground graphite from Daergar mines and powdered soot harvested from the shields of Theiwar furnaces.

Quill Runebrand wandered among the carnage of the beast’s killing field, following Cale Greeneye. The bodies—and pieces of bodies—of the murdered guardsmen had been removed for burial, but the signs of slaughter were everywhere. Bits of armor, broken weapons and implements, shreds of clothing, and ruined field packs were strewn about like rubbish, and everywhere—on the ground, on the walls, even overhead where old timbers still jutted—was drying, congealing blood. The carcasses of several horses, not yet removed, were mute evidence of the awful fury of the thing that had killed them. They were literally torn to pieces.

“What. . . what sort of thing would do this?” Quill asked, stunned and ashen-faced.

“Rage,” the Neidar said. “Its name is Rage.”

“You know its name? How?”

“It could have no other name,” Cale said icily.

At the battered seal of the old tunnel, Quill stared at the broken stone plug and the dark shadows beyond it.

“It did this?”

“It is very strong,” Cale affirmed. “It broke the seal down and went inside, but then it came out again and went eastward. Don’t worry. I had runners with torches search inside. The second seal is still in place.”

“So much for an impregnable seal.” Quill shook his head. “By Reorx, I hope what we are doing here works.”

“Exactly what are you doing?” Cale looked uphill, where delving was in progress.

“We are going to . . . at least we hope to . . . look, I’d just as soon not try to explain. If it works, I’ll tell you about it afterward. Just accept that Willen Ironmaul ordered us to try, and we are trying. But in the meantime—just in case it does work—I’d suggest you and all your people back off until we are finished.”

“Back off? How far?”

“I don’t know.” Quill shrugged. “For safety’s sake, I’d say at least a mile.”

“A mile?” The Neidar gaped at him, then shrugged. “If you say so. But let me know when you’ve finished.”

Quill stroked his beard, gazing thoughtfully up the slope. “Oh, if it works, you’ll know.”

The finest delvers in the known world were the Daewar of Thorbardin. And the delvers with Quill Runebrand were the best of those. Before the sun stood above the Anviltops to the west, their trench was completed. It was a V-shaped trough, cut straight downward into the slope. It ran for a thousand feet straight across the mountainside and was forty-eight feet at its deepest part, in the center.

Along the upper side of the cut a hundred dwarves worked with barrows and spades, dumping layer after layer of the stuff Pack Lodestone had mixed. Like coarse black dust, the mixture cascaded down to bury the bottom of the trench. When all of it had been shoveled in, the entire bottom of the cut was a wide path of black, seven feet deep. By Pack’s estimation, they had deposited three tons of the mixture. Quill Runebrand guessed it was closer to five.

When all that was done, dwarven workers trundled stone cuttings to the trough and dumped them in, burying all but the center five feet of black material under fifteen feet of rubble. Then, carefully, Quill lit a lantern, hung it from a braced wooden frame above the exposed center of the cut, and looped a noose of light cable around the frame’s supporting brace. Like people walking on eggs, the dwarves hurried away uphill, playing out line behind them as they went. Three hundred yards uphill they ran out of line. “This will have to do,” Quill said.

The delvers and crew dwarves bellied down behind whatever cover they could find, crouching behind boulders and outcroppings, cringing in shallow holes, while the armed guardsmen ringed them, holding shields above themselves and the workers.

Quill glanced aside at Pack Lodestone. “You’re sure you mixed that stuff just like before?”

“Of course I’m sure,” the old dwarf snapped. “Do you think I don’t know my business?”

“If your business is making fuel for tinsmith forges, I’m not sure,” Quill admitted.

“So it went wrong,” Pack grumped. “At least give me credit for being consistent.”

“Well, I guess we’re about to find out,” the lorekeeper . said. With a muttered reminder to Reorx about dwarves being his best and therefore favored people, Quill tugged at the cable. The long line scratched against the down-slope, came taut, and Quill pulled harder. Far below, the bright lantern on its frame jiggled and swayed. Then, abruptly, the frame support pulled free, and the frame sagged. The lantern dropped into the hole.

For an instant, nothing happened. Then, with a roar like all the thunders ever heard, the cut in the mountainside erupted, spewing a sheer, hurtling wall of stone, dust, and smoke skyward, propelled by a blinding flash of light. Higher and higher the debris flew, rising toward the feathery clouds far above, driven upward by a giant wall of instant fire. The rising clouds caught the late sunlight and flared to brilliant life. The very mountain slope seemed to shiver, and little landslides of gravel and dust swept down in rivulets along a mile or more of mountainside. The thunderous roar was drowned by a deeper, rumbling thunder that grew in volume.

“Great Reorx’s red rivets!” someone shouted. “Quill, what have you done?”

The wall of debris blanked out the entire vista to the north and east, seeming to grow higher by the second. Then a pebble bounced off a guardsman’s shield, and a fist-sized rock thumped into the ground an inch from Quill’s knee. More stones fell, and more, a pelting shower of debris pummeling and battering the entire slope like stone rain. And below, lost in the dust and smoke, the ominous roar became a deafening, cascading drumbeat of sound, growing louder and louder.

Minutes passed, and still it rained stone on the slope of Sky’s End. Then the thunder of falling debris faded, and the roaring, cascading noise became more distant, rumbling away down the mountainside. Here and there, guardsmen tilted their shields, and workers peered out into the haze of dust that was just beginning to clear as winds from above swept down the slope. The near edge of the great, delved cut became visible, but beyond it, there seemed to be nothing. Quill Runebrand and Pack Lodestone crept from their shelter, peered around, then started down the slope, followed by others.

At the cut, they stopped and gawked. Where there had been a neat, delved cleft across the mountainside, now there was a cliff, forty feet high. Beyond the foot of it was altered terrain. The entire slope below was a sea of gravel and debris slanting downward toward the old citadel. . . or where the old citadel should have been. There was nothing visible there now. A massive avalanche had buried everything beneath millions of tons of stone rubble. And strong on the evening air was the stench of rotten eggs.

Carefully, they scaled down the new cliff and made their way to what they guessed was the level where the citadel had been. There was nothing there. The avalanche caused by Pack Lodestone’s mixed powders had carried away everything standing and buried the entire site—in fact, the entire mountainside—fifty to a hundred feet deep.

“It worked,” Quill breathed. Impulsively, he grabbed Pack Lodestone by the shoulders and danced the old dwarf around in enthusiastic circles. “It worked!” he crowed. “The old tunnel is gone. Gone as though it had never been here! Nothing, not magic nor beasts nor armies nor the passing of ages, will open it again! The tunnel is a tunnel no more! It is a tunnel that never was!”

“Let go of me!” Pack growled, breaking away to glare at the lorekeeper. “Of course it worked. I made that stuff myself.”