Hammer and Axe

6 The Shadows of the Anviltops

For a long time, all was still on the sloping meadow that led down toward the breaks beyond which stood Sheercliff. An oval area the size of a small village had been burned and scorched as though by instant fire. Within it, a few blackened brush-stumps thrust up from the ashes, and in its center lay three still, smoke-dark forms. As the sun sank beyond the Anviltops, one of the forms stirred, moaned, and stirred again. After a time it sat upright, solemn eyes blinking in a smoke-blackened face capped by a seared helmet and framed by wisps of what had once been a thick beard.

Damon Omenborn had no idea what had happened. One moment he and his two escorts had been riding down a long slope with Sheercliff looming a few miles ahead; the next moment there had been searing light and intense heat, and then nothing. His throat was parched, and the exposed skin on his face, arms, and legs felt as though he had crawled across a working forge.

Slowly, gritting his teeth, he got to his feet, turning at the sound of a moan nearby. Someone else was still alive. He knelt beside the fallen figure, wondering who it was, then saw the ruined mesh faceplate still clinging to its strap even though the dwarf’s helmet had fallen away. “Tag,” he rasped, his voice as hoarse and rough as an anvil-crafter’s file. “Tag, wake up.”

The figure stirred, moaned, and muttered, “What happened? Did lightning hit us? Who . . . Damon? Are you hurt?”

“Not too much,” Damon said. “And you?”

“I’ve had better days,” the Theiwar allowed. He struggled to a sitting position, staring around through the mesh that had probably saved his light-sensitive eyes. “Where’s . . . where’s that grinning Daewar?”

“Copper,” Damon muttered. He stood and looked around, then ran to where the third body lay. He knelt over it, then stood, turning away. Copper Blueboot was dead, his chest armor crushed. If he had survived the fire, he had not survived the fall. It looked as though his horse had rolled on him. And there was no sign of their horses anywhere.

“Dead,” Damon said. “He’s dead, and all the horses are gone, along with our packs and most of our gear.” Wiping soot from his eyes, he looked at the sky and at the world around him. “How could it have been lightning?” he wondered. “There were no clouds.”

“I remember something else,” Tag Salan said, getting to his feet. “Just before . . . before whatever happened. It seemed as though the world turned around. We had been going west, and suddenly we were—we seemed to be—going south. What had been ahead was to our right.”

“But it wasn’t,” Damon corrected him. “It looked as though we had turned, but we hadn’t. And the terrain seemed odd. It didn’t look quite right, as though just beyond the turned-around view was another view, one that hadn’t changed.”

“That’s right.” Tag nodded. “I noticed that, too. And you insisted we go on, and when we did the turned-around view faded away, and things were as they had been. What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Damon admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He went and knelt again beside the body of Copper Blueboot. He closed the staring, lifeless eyes and crossed the Daewar’s arms over his mashed chest.

“Traveler,” the big Hylar murmured, “your travels are through. Everbardin opens its gates to you.”

Beside him, Tag Salan asked, “What was that?”

“Just something Hylar say.” Damon shrugged. “It comes from the old times, I guess, when some of us were Calnar, in a place far away.”

“He would want to be buried,” Tag said.

“Yes.” Damon stood again and prowled around the area, with Tag joining him. Not far from Copper’s body they found a few tools and a coil of hemp cable, probably thrown from a pack when the horses bolted. The tools, like the weapons and gear they carried on them, were scorched but usable—a stone chisel, a pick, and a prybar. Damon chose the chisel for himself and unslung his hammer and shield. He handed the pick to Tag. “Here, where he fell,” he said. “The stone is thin, and there are soft layers below where we can dig with our shields. “We’ll bury him here.”

They worked into the night, burying the Daewar youth, then shared the remaining water in Damon’s sling-pouch and sat down to rest. Suddenly Tag Salan pointed and jumped to his feet. “There!” he shouted. “There it is again.”

Damon stood, squinting. Moments passed, and a brief light blazed in the distance, atop the towering wall of Sheercliff. More moments passed, then there was another flash. After that, there was only darkness.

“Someone or something is up there,” Damon said. “Those are the same flashes we saw earlier. Three of them, like before, then nothing.”

“Three different colors,” Tag added. “I didn’t notice it before, but one flash—the first one—had a hint of red in it. The second was white, and the third more blue. Did you see that?”

“I couldn’t perceive a difference,” Damon admitted. “But then, your Theiwar eyes are better than mine after dark.” He paused. “Blue, you said? The third flash looked blue?”

“A little,” the Theiwar told him.

“Like the light that burned us,” Damon murmured. “In the instant that I saw it, it seemed blue.” Again they sat, and Damon said thoughtfully, “This is where that thing—the killing thing—must have come from. Somewhere over there. But those people in the village said nothing about flashes of light. I wonder what it is.”

“Back there, at Windhollow, your uncle set off with ten Neidar to search for the beast,” Tag said. “The rest of the Neidar went in another direction. Where were they going?”

“To the Road of Passage,” Damon said. “They’d been told about some human wizards getting off the road. But. . he paused, feeling a tingling in his scalp and spine. His gaze fixed on the far-off top of Sheercliff. “Wizards,” he hissed. “Magic! Do you suppose . . . ?”

“Do you suppose that was magic that hit us, Damon?” Tag growled. “Somebody deliberately attacked us . . . with magic?”

“I’ve never seen magic.” Damon shrugged. “But it could have been. If it was, we’d better do something about whoever is using it.” In his voice was no sign of the anger that Tag felt, and the Theiwar wondered again what it would take to arouse the big Hylar’s ire.

“I guess it didn’t kill us,” Tag said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“If someone used magic on us, then whoever used it could see us. And they might see us again, out here on this open slope. How do you feel about night travel?”

“I like it better than you do,” the Theiwar reminded him. “Of course, I’m no Daergar, who can count footprints in a dark mine shaft, but I can see all right by moonlight.”

“Then I think we had better be on our way. By morning, we can be in those breaks below the cliff. We’ll rest then, with cover.”

Wide-eyed with terror, Willow Summercloud clung desperately to the little straps of Cawe’s harness as the great bird soared higher and higher into the sky. The harness was nothing more than tied loops of soft leather, fore and aft of the raptor’s wings, connected by a single strip of what seemed to be discarded linen, casually tied with knots that looked as though they would fail at any moment.

The first takeoff had nearly been a disaster. The kender girl, Shill, hadn’t bothered to explain to the dwarf how one stays on the back of a bird, and Cawe was no more than fifty feet above the ground when Willow’s booted feet slipped on slick feathers, and she fell past a huge wing, only saving herself by grasping and clinging to a huge, taloned toe underneath.

In the landing, she had been rolled, tumbled, and thoroughly aggravated. But she had finally agreed to try it one more time when Shill showed her how to sit just behind the great wings, using the linen strap as a handhold and her legs and feet as braces. Now Willow shook windblown hair out of her eyes, glanced downward, and wished that she had decided to walk. Below, the world was far away and tiny. Peaks and valleys looked like little furrows in poorly plowed fields, and what the dwarf knew to be tall trees on the lower slopes seemed nothing more than bits of brush.

“We’re too high!” she shouted, hearing the wind carry her words away behind her.

In front of her the little kender turned and said, “What?”

“We’re too high!” Willow repeated. “I don’t like it up here! You promised me that this bird would fly low and slow!”

“Oh.” Shill grinned. “Well, for Cawe, this is low and slow. He doesn’t fool around when it comes to flying.”

“I certainly hope not,” Willow breathed.

“Of course, if he decides to do flips and rolls and stunts like that, it gets kind of exciting . . .”

“No!” Willow shrieked.

“What?”

“No flips and rolls! No stunts! This is bad enough.”

“I guess you’re not a frequent flier,” Shill decided. “Well, don’t worry, this is just a quick tour so you can see what those wizards have been doing. Oh, look!” She pointed downward, half-standing precariously on the shoulders of the soaring bird. “I see people down there, riding horses. Are those some more dwarves, do you think?”

Carefully clinging to the fragile strap, Willow leaned outward and looked down. A dizzying distance below, three little specks moved slowly down a wide slope.

“Well?” Shill insisted. “Are they dwarves?”

“Who can tell from up here?” Willow snapped. “Sit down before you fall!”

Shill looked puzzled for a moment, then sat. “I thought they might be somebody you know,” she said. “Dwarves know other dwarves, I suppose.”

“Sit still and hang on!” The rear knot in the linen strap slipped, and Willow grabbed it with her free hand. “Who in the world tied this . . . this thing?”

“I did,” Shill said happily. “Pretty neat, huh? When Cawe wanted me to go with him to look for a dwarf, I thought it would be a good idea. Of course, I didn’t have much to work with, but it turned out just fine. Isn’t this fun?”

Bracing herself, Willow quickly retied the knot, then grasped the linen again as Cawe banked to the left, still gaining altitude. The world below was getting smaller and smaller.

“That’s Sheercliff ahead.” The kender girl pointed. “It was named Sheercliff by dwarves. Dwarves aren’t all that imaginative. If it had been me, I’d have called it Verty-Go or Upson Downs or something fancy like that, but I guess Sheercliff is all right. I remember once, my mother caught a weasel, and I named it. . .”

Willow tried to ignore the kender’s prattling, squinting as she gazed at the miles-long cliff that stood like a huge wall of stone facing the eastward slopes. Behind its edge, to the west, were plateau lands sloping gently upward toward the still distant Anviltop Peaks. And on the plateau was an ugly black scar that looked as if it was half a mile across. “What’s that?” she asked.

Shill looked and shook her head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there when we came by before. It looks like there’s been a fire.”

“It certainly does,” the dwarf girl agreed.

“Oh, look! There those people are. See? Right out there on the edge of the cliff. All three of them. They’re the ones who have been doing the flashings and the cracks and thunders and all that.”

Willow could barely see the three men so far below; they were just little specks on the very lip of the cliff. She squinted, then asked, “Do you suppose we could go down for a closer look?”

The kender trilled something in her bird-tongue, and the great bird answered—a single, deep-chested syllable.

“Cawe says no.” Shill shrugged. “He says those people are no friends of his, and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. He says that’s why you’re here. He wants you to figure out what to do about them.”

“He said all that?” Willow’s eyes widened.

“Well, not in so many words, but that’s what he meant.”

“Well, I haven’t the vaguest idea what to do about his wizards, and that’s not why I’m out here anyway. I’m looking for a thing that raided my village and killed almost everybody there.”

Shill turned bright, curious eyes on her passenger, and Willow noticed that the little kender was up again, shifting from one foot to the other as though dancing to the sound of Cawe’s wings.

“Stay still!” the dwarf demanded. “You’re making me nervous!” Willow turned away, then blinked as bright light flashed on a mountain slope far behind them.

Shill had seen it, too, and jumped up and down excitedly, precariously balanced on the back of the soaring bird. “See that?” she asked, pointing. “It’s those wizards. They’re doing it again.”

The flash was gone in an instant, but smoke rolled upward from where it had been.

At that moment, Cawe spread wide wings, tilted his glide, and headed downward. Shill’s feet went out from under her, and she plunged over the side. With a gasp, Willow let go of the linen strap, caught a toe under one of the body straps, and lunged. Her fingers closed around a small wrist, and she heaved backward, lifting the kender back onto the bird.

“I told you to sit down!” Willow shrilled.

“Wow!” Shill chirped. “That was exciting!” She crawled back to her place ahead of the dwarf and crouched there, her eyes shining.

The great bird had circled far past the crest of Sheer-cliff and now was circling downward, toward forested slopes above the plateau. Shill trilled, then turned back. “You said you wanted to get a closer look,” she said. “Cawe is going to let us off in those timbers, so we can do that.”

“Let us off?” Willow frowned. “I hope he intends to land first.”

“Oh, sure. He always lands. That’s where he lets me off when I watch the wizards. I’ve been there several times already. Of course, I try not to let them see me, because they don’t seem very friendly. But they leave interesting things lying around sometimes, that I guess they don’t want anymore. I have a chalice, and a black-stone shiny thing, and a pair of shoes that I don’t have the vaguest idea what to do with because they won’t fit anybody I know. Oh, and I found several carved sticks with little drawings and runes on them. They were just sticking up out of the ground here and there.”

Undisturbed by the chattering, fidgeting pair on his shoulders, Cawe braced great wings and aimed for a wooded cleft in the slopes above the plateau.

Many miles to the east of Sheercliff, late in the evening, a man trudged along the bank of a little mountain stream, heading generally eastward. He was tall, lithe, and muscular, with dark eyes above a full dark beard—eyes that seemed constantly on the move, missing very little of what was around him. The sword at his back, the rawhide shield at his shoulder, and the strung bow in his hand were always ready for use. He was an intruder in the dwarven lands, and he fully understood that to be caught by the reclusive dwarves, wandering in their territory, meant at the very least a quick expulsion from the land called Kal-Thax. At least expulsion, he reminded himself, but more likely death. The dwarves did not appreciate outsiders.

Still, Quist Redfeather had come, pledged to a mission that he detested, but nonetheless meant to complete. Too much hung in the balance for the Cobar to even consider failure.

“If any man can get past the borders of Kal-Thax,” the High Overlord of Xak Tsaroth had told him, “I have no doubt that you are the man. And I have no doubt that, with your family in our, ah, tender custody pending your return, you will make every effort to succeed.”

The “mission” was simple, if not easy. The overlords of Xak Tsaroth had long coveted the wealth of the dwarven clans inhabiting the Kharolis Mountains but had been unable to send troops past the perimeters of Kal-Thax because of the ferocity of the dwarves’ defenses. For decades the idea of conquest had been set aside, but now the High Overlord was plotting again. With the passing of years the extravagance of the rulers of Xak Tsaroth had increased, until the demand for new riches and new revenues was overwhelming. But those very demands now had curtailed much of the city’s income, as more and more of the people of southern Ergoth rebelled against exorbitant taxation and brutal tactics.

Even the knightly orders of Ergoth tended more and more to sympathize with the rebels, against the power of the great city-state of Xak Tsaroth. The knights—the strongest unified force in the realm—had not so far actually joined any rebellions, but more and more they worked to thwart the slavers and tariff-takers who went out from the city to loot and plunder from the common people of Ergoth.

Even the High Overlord of Xak Tsaroth was reluctant to denounce the knightly orders, so he looked for other sources of wealth, and there, just to the west, rose the peaks of the dwarven lands, rich in minerals, forests, fields, and commerce. Here again, though, it was commerce in which Xak Tsaroth had no direct part. The only trade treaty between humans and dwarves was the treaty the thanes had made with the orders of knighthood. In all commerce between Ergoth and Kal-Thax—or Thorbardin, as many now called the whole land—the knights were the agents and intermediaries. The dwarves flatly refused to have dealings with Xak Tsaroth and the overlords.

So the High Overlord sought another alliance. Beyond Kal-Thax, to the west, were other human realms, including the western Ergothian lands ruled by the emperor of Daltigoth.

The High Overlord had chosen carefully, in selecting Quist Redfeather. Few humans had the Cobar’s knowledge of the wilderness, his talent for strategy, and his skill with weapons. The High Overlord knew Quist to be one of the leaders of the free Cobar who had almost succeeded in bringing down the overlords themselves.

The attempt had almost succeeded, but at the last moment something had gone wrong. Soldiers of Xak Tsaroth had scattered the invading Cobar, capturing many of their leaders. Most of those now, of course, were dead—beheaded at the pleasure of the overlords. The rest had been sent away as slaves to be bartered in trade as far east as Istar. Only Quist Redfeather and his family had been spared, Quist to undertake a mission for the overlords, and his family to be held hostage as a guarantee of his cooperation.

The mission was simple. Quist was to journey directly across the dwarven realm to the lands beyond and present to the king there the High Overlord’s proposal for a pact between Xak Tsaroth and Daltigoth, on each side of the dwarves, to join forces and conquer them, and then to split the profits.

He could not cross on the dwarven Road of Passage, because he might be searched and the proposals found. It was assumed that something like that had befallen the overlord’s first such emissary several years before. The emissary had simply disappeared, somewhere between Xak Tsaroth and Daltigoth. So Quist must avoid the road. He must go alone, through the lands around Thorbardin and the wilderness beyond.

And he did not even have a horse, because no horseman could have made it unseen through eastern Kal-Thax, where the dwarves were everywhere. It was almost the worst of insults, having to journey on foot. The Cobar were horsemen, probably the finest horsemen in all of Ergoth. A Cobar without his horse, it was said, was only half a Cobar.

Quist had journeyed afoot halfway across Kal-Thax. The settled lands were behind him, but there was still a long way to go.

Then, on this evening, Quist Redfeather had a stroke of luck. Rounding a bend in the streambed he stopped, faded into the underbrush, then stared. Just ahead, in a little clearing, stood three tired and lathered horses that could only be runaways.

His fierce eyes brightened as he studied them. Fine animals, they were saddled and rigged, but not with human gear. The small saddles with their high stirrups were dwarven work, as was the light, oiled mail of their saddle skirts.

But a saddle could be modified.

Through the night, Quist Redfeather kept watch on the stray horses. No one came to collect them; they were alone. With morning he gathered them in, removed their gear, and went to work to outfit one of them for himself.