Hammer and Axe

1 The Rage-Seekers

The scene was like the others that the Neidar had reported. What had been a tiny village, deep within a little valley among the Horn’s Echo Peaks west of the Windweavers, now was a scene of wreckage and devastation. Damon Omenborn stood on a low ledge, brow-shadowed eyes narrowed and cold as he turned slowly, scanning the surrounding slopes for any sign they might give. Beside him his uncle, the Neidar leader Cale Greeneye, cursed quietly and methodically, shaking his head. Below them, Neidar scouts mingled with Mace Hammerstand’s grim warriors from Thorbardin as they poked through the debris, gray-faced and shaken at what they found.

A few of the low, thatch-roofed cabins had burned, though most were simply demolished and ransacked as though by something gone berserk. Tables, chairs, stools, and cots lay broken and splintered. Bits of fabric, once clothing, towels, and even tapestries, now lay sodden or fluttered in the breeze like little shredded flags. Damaged tools lay scattered on the ground, and even humble cooking pots were strewn about, bent and dented.

Some of the houses and outbuildings had doors smashed inward and stood empty and deserted. But other cabins had been literally torn apart, ripped asunder log from lintel, their heavy plank doors and shutters torn from their hinges, their roofs smashed as though by rockslides. Within these, which had been the soundest and strongest of the village structures, lay most of the dead. The people had known that something fearful was upon them and had tried to protect themselves. But their efforts had failed. Whatever had wanted in had gotten in, one way or another.

Everywhere there was spattered blood, drying in the high mountain air, and the bodies of the dead brought a pallor to even the hardiest dwarves. These people had not been merely killed. They had been violated, their bodies ripped and torn apart. They had been mutilated as horribly as the carcasses of their flocks in the surrounding pastures, as the devastated crops left ruined and flattened in their fields.

Cale said it was like the other villages where this had happened—three times now, that the Neidar knew about—except for two things. The other tragedies had occurred in distant border villages far to the northwest in the shadows of the Iron Wall Peaks. This was much deeper into Kal-Thax and much closer to the undermountain fortress of Thorbardin. There had been no survivors the other two times. This time there were. Damon gazed down at the little group huddled around a tiny fire and felt a stab of pity. There were only four of them there, being attended and questioned by Cale’s Neidar followers and a handful of Thorbardin warriors, Mace Hammerstand’s Roving Guard, with whom Damon had come from the great fortress beneath the Windweavers.

Four survivors. Out of a hundred or more peaceful, harmless Einar dwarves minding their own business in their little settlement, only four had survived! A gray-bearded ancient with blood on his shirt, a young woman with auburn hair whose haunted eyes looked out from a face covered with smudges and grime, and two young, orphaned children were all that remained of the village of Windhollow. They had escaped the fury of—whatever it was—by hiding in a root cellar.

“No one here had a chance,” Damon muttered, his cold gray eyes wintry and fierce. Wind-whipped and tight with barely controlled emotions, he tensed hard shoulders and turned his eyes away from the carnage below. Though at five feet, four inches, Damon was taller than most of his kind, and ninety years had brought him to full maturity, still at this moment he seemed—to his uncle—to be very young. Nothing in Damon’s life so far, in and around the great subterranean realm of Thorbardin, had prepared him for such savagery as was displayed here. Damon had known grief, of course. Cale wondered if his nephew had ever really recovered from the loss of his wife to the waters of the Urkhan Sea. But no one was ever prepared for a spectacle like this.

Cale Greeneye shook his head, grim anger narrowing his own eyes as the thin, cold mountain breeze rippled his full snow-touched beard. For three hundred years these Einar had kept to their little valley, tending their herds and their crops, supporting their families, hurting no one. Yet something deadly had come, and now—in one night—everything was destroyed.

But by what?

“No chance at all,” the Neidar leader rumbled, agreeing with his nephew.

They had spoken to the survivors, but learned almost nothing. Whatever it was that came had come unseen. Mists had rolled in that evening, and a heavy fog. The destroyer had been in the cloaking mists. They had heard its roar, and had glimpses of. . . of something very evil and very large that seemed to wrap itself in fog and darkness. Then the terror had begun. The old dwarf’s hands shook as he tried to describe the sounds and scents of rampaging death. The children had cringed, wide-eyed and pale, remembering. Of them all, only the young woman, Willow Summercloud, had not wept. She had seemed to feel no emotion at all. . . until one met her eyes and saw there a determination so deep and cold that it was like mountain snow.

Cale Greeneye gritted his teeth and looked away. In a hundred and thirty years of life he had fought many things, many times—hordes of human mercenaries, ogres and goblins on the border slopes of Kal-Thax, great cats in the hidden valley southwest of Tharkas. Like most dwarves in these lands, he had seen death and had known grief. He had seen the great pit beneath which lay the remains of his brother, Handil the Drum. He had seen the lifeless body of his own father, Colin Stonetooth, after the old chieftain was felled by treachery so long ago—ninety years or more—in the caverns beneath the Windweavers. And, like Damon, he had known the worst grief. He had lost his own beloved Spring, wife and best friend of nearly seventy years, to an avalanche.

Through the years, many a grief had touched the dwarf known once as Cale Cloudwalker of the Calnar, later Cale Chieftain’s-Son of the Hylar, and now as Cale Greeneye of the Neidar.

But never had anything touched him more deeply than the sight of these four desolate dwarves staring at what was left of their homes. The old one sat with dull eyes that saw nothing and shut out everything. The two children seemed to be in a trance, and the young woman —Willow Summercloud—wandered aimlessly here and there, poking through wreckage.

“We must find the thing that did this,” Cale told Damon. “The Neidar know these mountains best. We will search.”

At the scrape of steel soles on stone, they turned. Mace Hammerstand, captain of the Roving Guard and leader of the Thorbardin expedition, had completed his questioning of the survivors and was climbing up to join the two on the ledge. Like the other two, the young captain was of Hylar stock, with the dark, back-swept beard, chiseled features, and intense, thoughtful eyes of his ancestors. Polished steel armor glinted beneath his short cape of gray velvet, and the hammer and shield at his back were carried as casually as a stonemason would carry a wedge-maul. Like all of the Roving Guard of Thorbardin, Mace Hammerstand—at three inches over five feet in stature, nearly as tall as Damon himself—was a formidable warrior. But the eyes he turned upon Cale and Damon now were full of distress.

“They’ve told us all they can,” the captain said. “Maybe they had a glimpse of the thing in the fog, but they aren’t sure. They heard it, though. They heard it”—he gestured futilely, indicating the strewn devastation of the little valley—”doing that.”

“Nothing more?” Cale frowned. “There must be something they can tell us.”

“It was large.” Mace shrugged. “It came in low, beneath the mists on the fields, but when it raised itself upright, it stood above the roofs of the cabins. The fog seemed to follow it, as though it were draped and wrapped in swirling mist. And its roar was like winter wind that rattled the walls. The old one has an impression of great fangs—as long, he says, as he is tall—and of huge, rending claws. But he saw only a glimpse and isn’t sure even of that.” Mace sighed. “Now he sees nothing at all. He says he doesn’t care to see any more.”

“No tracks?” Cale pressed. “Nothing?”

“We have found marks.” The Hylar nodded. “Your scouts found them. But they are indistinct. How do you look for the tracks of something that might have anything for feet? Or might not even walk?”

“What does that mean?” Cale glanced at him.

“I don’t know. It’s something one of the children said. The littlest one. He said the cellar door rattled when the fog beat its wings.”

“Wings,” Cale mused. “Like a dragon?”

“Who knows?” Mace shook his head. “Have you ever seen a dragon, Cale?”

“No,” the Neidar admitted. “I never have.”

“Nor have I. Nor has anyone else I know. But I don’t believe this was the work of any dragon. Why would a dragon hide itself in mists? And why”—he pointed again, out across the rent fields, the shattered village—“why would a dragon wreak such mindless havoc? They say dragons are mighty, and can be fierce, but I never heard of a dragon as berserk as a bell-taunted tractor worm.”

Cale stroked his beard, thinking. What could be as powerful as a dragon, and as big as a dragon, and maybe even fly like a dragon, but was not a dragon? He shook his head and pulled his heavy, mottled cloak around him, seeming to blend into the mist and stone of the surroundings.

Like an elf, Mace thought. These Neidar become the terrain, as elves become their forests. Yet, glancing at Cale’s troubled face beneath his studded helmet—the dark hair with only traces of gray, the trimmed, backswept beard—reminded him that Cale Greeneye, youngest son of the legendary chieftain Colin Stonetooth, was as much Hylar by origin as he himself was. As Hylar as the big Damon Omenborn and his father, the Hylar chieftain Willen Ironmaul—Cale’s brother-in-law. Cale Greeneye was of Hylar stock and had been Hylar once, before choosing the sun over the stone—the axe over the hammer. Some said that Cale Greeneye had been the first of those who now called themselves Neidar—a bonded thane, and as much a part of Thorbardin as those who lived beneath the mountain peaks.

Yet the Neidar preferred life outside to life inside the great caverns of the subterranean fortress. They numbered in the thousands now and were often present within the cavern walls. But they didn’t really live there. They came to trade and to visit, and sometimes to sit in council with the other thanes. They served Kal-Thax as scouts and observers, as border guards, and as guardians of the great Road of Passage that ran through the dwarven lands from the southern plains of the human realms to the vast lands north of Tharkas.

Many of the Neidar had been simple Einar in times past—the people of valleys and scattered villages like this one had been. But there were also many Neidar who had been of the undermountain thanes. Among them were gold-bearded Daewar, stocky, long-armed Theiwar, and even a few iron-masked Daergar and wild-haired Klar. Like Cale Greeneye, they were Neidar because they chose to be Neidar, because they preferred the outsides of mountains to the insides.

Just as the Holgar—the combined thanes working to complete the great gates and the intricate ventilation systems, which were the final tasks in the building of Fortress Thorbardin—were considered people of the hammer, so the Neidar were considered people of the axe.

Mace Hammerstand shook himself out of his thoughts and turned to look once more across the devastated little valley. “We’ve done all we can do here,” he said. “But for burying the dead and drumming a dirge over them, there’s nothing more that the guards can do except report back to Thorbardin.”

“It’s out there somewhere,” Cale Greeneye muttered, turning slowly as he scanned the immense vistas of the Kharolis Mountains. “First Meadowfair, then the digs at Ironstone, and now here, at Windhollow. Each time, deeper into Kal-Thax. Whatever did this, it’s out there somewhere. It has to be found and destroyed.” With an angry oath he swung his shield to his back, slung his axe at his side, pushed back his cloak, and whistled shrilly. Turning toward his nephew, he said, “I’m glad you came, Damon. My regards to your mother and your father. Tell them . . . say that if this thing can be found, we will find it and destroy it.” Then he headed down from the ledge, into the little valley.

Damon Omenborn did not respond, or watch him go. The big Hylar was gazing westward, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

Cale’s Neidar company met him at the foot of the slope—sixty grim-faced dwarves, some leading their horses, some already mounted. Molt Bronzecap led his chief’s horse, Piquin, forward and handed him the reins. Many generations of fine horses separated this Piquin from the great Calnar steed Cale had ridden so long ago on the great trek of the Hylar exiles from Thoradin to Kal-Thax. This Piquin was not as tall as the great horse who was his ancestor. But he was big enough, sturdy and strong, with both the mountain-bred stamina of those tall Calnar steeds of the past and the quick, precise reflexes of the Ergothian plains horses who were also his ancestors. With treaties and trade had come cross-breeding of stock, and now both the dwarves of Kal-Thax and the humans of southern Ergoth preferred and prized these fine mounts. The knights of the human realms had come to refer to them as “war horses.”

Cale rubbed the horse’s muzzle with strong, gentle fingers and turned to face his company. “We don’t know what manner of beast murdered these people,” he said. “And we don’t know where it went. But it is within Kal-Thax now. I call for volunteers to help me find it.”

Instantly, the entire Neidar company moved forward, volunteering. Cale shook his head, looking from one to another of them. Most of them were young adventurers, all rode with him by choice, and he knew that each would happily follow him anywhere. Here jovial blue eyes glinted above the golden whiskers of a Daewar face; there serious gray eyes above the swept-back beard of Hylar heritage; and just beyond, the somber features, wide shoulders and long arms of one whose parents were Theiwar; side by side with a fierce, grinning youngster whose unruly mane and sparse beard spoke of Klar background.

One, who had stepped his mount closer than most, seemed to have no face at all—only a featureless iron ovoid with an eye-slit, hiding him from helm to chin. Crag Ironface was older than most of the company, nearer to Cale’s own age. The son of old Vog Ironface, chieftain of the Daergar of Thorbardin, Crag had been among the first of the dark-seeking Daergar to venture from that people’s mines and tunnels and seek the outside world of the Neidar.

“You, Crag,” Cale said. “The thing we seek is a thing of darkness and the mist. Maybe your eyes will see what others of us might miss.” He scanned the line. “You, Gem Coppertoe”—he pointed at a Daewar, then at a wide-shouldered Theiwar youth—“and you, Pounce Tambac. And you, Molt, and you . . .” He went on, selecting ten from among them to accompany him in the search. Then he turned to a curly-bearded former Einar and nodded. “Take charge of the rest of the company, Gran. There is still the business of those wizards. Go northeast to where the Road of Passage cuts through the Redrock Peaks. Talk to the guards there, and see what they know. If human magic-users have strayed into these lands, they are trespassing. See if you can find them and prod them on their way.”

“I hope the reports are wrong,” Gran Stonemill said. “I have no use for mages.”

“Nor does anyone else,” Cale assured him. “Just find them and ask them to leave, but take no chances. Be careful.”

“Aye,” Gran rumbled. “The less association with spellmakers, the better. But what if we find them, and they won’t leave?”

“Then get back to Thorbardin and let the Council of Thanes decide what to do about them.” Cale released the little boarding ladder on Piquin’s saddle skirt, clambered up, and resecured the ladder. “We’ll meet back at North-gate,” he told Gran. He raised his arm and swung it downward, spurring Piquin. “Volunteers! With me!”

Mace Hammerstand watched with troubled eyes as the Neidar rode away, Cale and his ten eastward, the rest northward toward the Great Road. Then he signaled his drummers to call assembly. His own company of Thorbardin guards still had work to do here, as unpleasant as it was. There were dead dwarves to be buried and honored.

Other people were on the scene now, too—groups of Einar from the next valley, coming forward to take charge of the four survivors, to care for them. It was some of these—people from the settlement of Underbluff—who had found and reported the destruction of Windhollow.

Damon Omenborn had knelt below the ledge and was scratching patterns in the sand with the point of his dagger. “Meadowfair was first,” he muttered, “then Ironstone. And now here. The path is an arc, first northward and then east. It came from the west then. Beyond Meadowfair.” He stood, straightening his light armor. His great Hylar sword swung at his side, seeming almost a toy against his powerful stature—so like the stature of his father, Willen Ironmaul, chieftain of the Hylar. “It came from the wilderness. Sheercliff and the Anviltops lie beyond Meadowfair.

“I want to backtrack to where this thing came from,” he told Mace. “There may be something to be learned there.”

“I have to return with the Guard and report,” Mace Hammerstand reminded him. “The members of the council will be waiting.”

“You don’t need me to report,” Damon said. “And I don’t need the Guard. I’m going to find where this thing originated.” He waved, and a guardsman brought up his horse, one of Willen Ironmaul’s prize herd.

“Don’t go alone,” Mace urged. “At least take a few of my guards with you.”

From the ranks, a strapping youngster with the mesh faceplate and long arms of Theiwar stock stepped forward. “I’ll go, Captain,” he told Mace.

“And I,” a gold-bearded Daewar added.

Mace looked at them, then nodded. “Very well, Tag Salan and Copper Blueboot.” He turned to Damon. “Take these two, at least,” he insisted, “though I don’t like the idea of you heading out there, Damon, even with escort.”

“I go where I please in Kal-Thax,” the big dwarf reminded the captain sternly. Horses were already being brought forward for the two escorts. Damon clapped his friend on the shoulder. “If you’re worried about what my mother will say, Mace, tell her you tried to stop me and I bounced a rock off your skull.”

Damon felt someone tugging at his cloak and turned. The Einar girl stood there, looking up at him with large grave eyes. Among the wreckage of the village she had found bits of warm clothing and other things. Now she stood before him, wrapped in furs and woolens and carrying a stained sling-pack. On her feet were sturdy boots, and in one hand she held a forester’s axe. Despite the ordeal she had been through, she was dry-eyed and calm, though in her eyes was a burning anger. “I want to go with you,” she said. “I want to find that. . . that thing’s den. I want to see where it came from, and why.”

Damon stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “Your place is here,” he said softly. “We will be traveling fast and have no time for anyone who might slow us down.”

Her eyes, full of anger and scorn like clouds in a summer sky, blazed at him. They were like her name, Summercloud.

“Fast?” She hissed the word and turned to point where the Neidar had gone. “They travel fast, Holgar. The Neidar. I can keep up with a hole-dweller like you anytime. I demand to go with you! I want to learn what that thing is, so I can help kill it.”

At a loss for words in the face of such scorn and fury, Damon spread his hands, then clenched his jaw and shook his head. “You’ve been through a bad experience,” he said. “I understand your feelings, your loss----”

“Loss!” Willow glared at him. “What would you know of loss, you who live sheltered by mountaintops? My whole family died here, hole-dweller! My father and mother, my sisters, my grandmother. You weren’t here. You didn’t hear the screams, but I did. Maybe the Neidar will find that thing and kill it, and maybe not. But I’m going with you.”

“No, you aren’t,” he said flatly. “You are staying here.” He turned. “Mace, look after this girl. She’s upset and distraught, and not thinking clearly. Take care of her.”

With his two members of the Roving Guard, Damon Omenborn—Damon the Quiet, only son of the chieftain of Thane Hylar of Thorbardin—mounted and headed west, toward the distant, climbing ranges of Kal-Thax. And as the mountain terrain unfolded ahead, he admitted to himself that he shared something in common with his uncle, Cale Greeneye. Damon was not Neidar; he preferred the bustle of Thorbardin to the open spaces outside. But now and then, he admitted, it was good to breathe the open air of the mountains.

Watching them disappear around a bend on the climbing trail westward, Mace Hammerstand whispered a quick prayer to Reorx to protect them. He knew Damon could take care of himself. There wasn’t a tougher fighter in all of Thorbardin. And the others, Tag Salan and Copper Blueboot, though young, were also seasoned fighters. Still, he had a bad feeling about the three taking off like that. It would have been better had they stayed with the main company.

Beside him, the girl stood, still holding her axe in white-knuckled hands and watching where the three had gone. “What does that Hylar know of loss?” Willow Summercloud spat.

“Quite a lot,” Mace said gently. “More than most people would guess.” He turned away. “I hope there is truth in prophecy,” he muttered to himself.

Behind him, Willow said, “What?”

“Nothing.” Mace shook his head. “I was just thinking about an old prophecy, that Damon Omenborn will one day be the ‘father of kings.’ If it’s true, it should protect him against his own foolhardiness, because he isn’t anyone’s father yet.”

Mace was busy for a time, directing the preparation of graves. When again he thought of the girl and went to look for her, Willow was nowhere to be found.