Stormblade

21

Stanach lifted his right hand with his left. Beneath its bandaging, the broken fingers lay as heavy and senseless as steel bars in his palm. His knees watery and weak, still he waved off the support Kem offered and took one, then two faltering steps. Drawing a deep breath, he walked to the cave’s mouth. The ranger had assured him that he’d find his strength soon enough.

Stanach leaned against the cave’s stone wall and looked out to the water. He hoped Kem was right. Smoke, like dark fog, drifted upriver, shepherded by the cold, heavy wind. The sky throbbed red, high above the top of the forest. Kelida, Stormblade still at her hip, ran a short distance along the bank to meet Lavim. The kender fairly danced with excitement. Kelida snatched his arms, holding him still enough to hear what she had to tell him. Then, pouches jouncing, Lavim scrambled downriver to where Tyorl ranged the water’s edge.

As Stanach watched, two other rangers broke from the forest’s cover and joined the elf at the water. One, Finn, pointed north. Stanach turned back to the cave. “What is it?”

Kem, his face sculpted of shadows and finely drawn with worry, looked up from packing his healer’s kit. “Forest fire, they say. We’re getting out of here, Stanach. Are you all right to walk? Finn wants to ford the river here and put it between us and the fire as soon as we can.”

“Aye, does he? Then I’d better be all right to walk.” Stanach softened his growl with a shrug.

Lehr, shaggy hair tumbling in the wind, stepped into the cave. He and his lord had been well into the forest, and Lehr smelled of smoke and burning. He eyed Stanach sharply, then slapped his shoulder hard enough to make the dwarf grateful for the wall behind him. “Aye, you’ll do it on your own legs, eh? Good. Kem, let’s get moving.”

Kembal threw his healer’s pack over his shoulder. “How far north is the fire? Damn, Lehr! What started it?”

“Not very far, and it’s moving fast.” The ranger checked the cave, saw that nothing had been left behind, and cast a quick look back to the river.

“We figure the leading edge is between us and the rest of the company, but we don’t know where the flanks are and we didn’t have time to look. Finn says the only place we’ll find the company—or them us—is on the eastern bank.”

The ranger was gone before either Stanach or Kembal realized that he hadn’t answered the question of what started the fire. Kem grimaced impatiently.

Stanach left the cave carrying his sword on his back and a hard lump of dread in his belly.

“It’s not much of a river here,” Tyorl said, “and maybe only waist high. Can you do it, Stanach?”

Whether his returning strength was a result of the healer’s draught or the impetus of the distant, whispering growl of advancing fire, Stanach knew that he would be able to keep up with his companions in the river. He cast an eye skyward. The moons had set. The crimson glow over the forest looked like vengeful dawn.

“Aye, I’ll do it.”

Though the elf nodded, Stanach saw doubt like shadows in his eyes.

“I’ll be right behind you. Kem says you’d better keep your hand dry if you can.”

Finn entered the water first, longbow high over his head. The smoke channeling upriver hid him from sight before he’d waded very far. Bandaged hand well out of the water, trusting to his well-oiled leather scabbard to protect the sword slung across his back, Stanach followed Finn into the river.

He gasped as the icy water caught him, tugging with insistent strength at his knees, then swirling high and clawing at his chest. The cold ached in his bones and muscles and quickly numbed his feet as though they were not stoutly booted.

Tyorl and Kelida waded in next. Taking her cue from Finn, the girl brandished Stormblade, wrapped in her cloak, high over her head both for balance and to keep the sword dry. Kem cut out to the side, flanking the crossing and ready to assist any who needed help negotiating the quickening current. Lehr kept close to Kelida, offering a hand to steady her when she needed it. Once, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close when the current tangled her feet.

Lehr laughed aloud as he set Kelida on her feet again. The ranger clearly did not mind a pretty girl in soaked hunting leathers clinging to his neck. Tyorl looked as though he minded greatly. Surprised to hear himself wondering if the flat of his sword would teach the impudent young ranger some manners, Tyorl passed Stanach, who readily dropped back to let him by.

Lavim held no place in the line. Giving himself up to the inevitable, he plunged into the icy river, cutting through the black water with all the enthusiasm of a fish and none of that creature’s grace.

When Stanach finally stumbled onto the rocky eastern shore, clumsy with cold, heavily awkward and bound to the ground again, he turned to look back the way he’d come. Like the breath of ghosts, wavering and dark, the smoke veiled the far bank. Kelida dropped light hands onto his shoulders.

“Are you all right?”

“Aye” Stanach said, though he wasn’t sure. The river crossing had sucked the warmth out of him.

Finn jerked a thumb toward the low, stony hills. Kem took the right point, and Tyorl insisted that Lehr accompany him on the left. Lavim, shaking himself like a soaked hound, scurried on ahead and quickly left the rangers behind.

The thick odor of burning forest followed them into the foothills. The ground on the eastern side of the river was rocky and rising. Low scrub growth huddled in widely spaced thickets. Hills and then tall fells marched eastward. Kelida, quiet with her own thoughts, matched her pace to Stanach’s. Each time they looked back over their shoulders they saw the crimson stain of fire in the sky.

“Guyll fyr,” Stanach whispered, stopping to watch the fire ignite the brush only a mile from the river cave. Despite the biting wind and the cold pre-dawn air, sweat trickled down the sides of his pale face, glittering along the edges of his moustache and clinging to his thick black beard. Kelida, seeing his need to rest and restore his failing strength, stopped with him.

She silently tried the words he’d used, then looked up and tried it aloud.

“Gueel fire?”

Stanach smiled crookedly. “Close enough. Wildfire.” The dwarf pointed southward along the line of the forest. “The brush is up, but most of the fire is in the treetops. If the wind changes, it will cross the river.”

“That’s wildfire?”

Stanach searched the dark ahead of them. Kembal waited at the foot of the first of a series of fells. “No,” he said, starting out again. “It will be guyll fyr when it hits the Plains of Death about thirty miles from here.”

If the wind’s right, he thought grimly, it will do that tomorrow. He said nothing further, about the fire or anything else. The task of walking needed all his attention now. Kelida went a little ahead of him, her eyes on the dark ground, always finding the rubble in the path, the dips and holes in the stony ground, in time to catch his arm before he stumbled.

His right hand hung at his side like iron stock, feelingless and heavy. Stanach remembered the fire that had burned remorselessly in that hand only hours ago. He didn’t remember it in his hand, he didn’t feel the echoes of recent pain there. He felt it cold in his chest, tightening in his stomach.

When, he wondered, would Kembal’s salves wear off?

Tyorl, on his heels at the top of the fell, searched the sky for signs of the dawn. He found none. The fading stars told him that the horizon should be graying, but the light of the fire had spread across the sky as the forest caught the flames and sent them speeding south and east, overwhelming the whisper of faint dawn.

Had the fire crossed the river yet? Tyorl didn’t think so. He got to his feet and stretched aching muscles. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. He didn’t know when he would sleep next.

Finn, his sharp eyes on the ground at the foot of the hill, nudged Tyorl. Kem jogged back down the slope to help Stanach and Kelida. “The dwarf is going to have to rest soon. Aye, and from the look of him, it’ll be at the foot of the hill, too.”

“We can’t stop here. The fire could jump the river.”

Finn snorted. “It will jump the river.”

They stood silently for a long moment. Tyorl searched west, wondering if the thirty rangers of their company had escaped the flames. He glanced at Finn and saw the same question in the rangerlord’s weathered face. And he saw the answer in his eyes.

They couldn’t have escaped. The river ran foaming in wild, treacherous white water six miles north and could not be forded. The fire looked to have started where Finn said the company had been camped. What had happened?

Gods, Tyorl, who did not do so often, prayed, grant some of them life if you can’t let them all live!

Kerrith. Bartt. Old G’Art. The names and faces of the thirty men and elves who had been his friends for so many years seemed to be written on the smoke. Tyorl shivered. That fast would they die, those friends, and as easily as wind scatters smoke.

Finn paced the top of the fell then returned. “I wonder where the kender’s got to?”

“Keeping out of my way, no doubt,” Tyorl said.

Finn grunted. “Will he return?”

“He’s a night rider, but he always comes back. Worse luck for me.”

“Aye?” Finn eyed the elf shrewdly. “I thought he was a friend of yours. Trouble between you two?”

“One doesn’t cancel out the other,” Tyorl said wearily.

The moons were long set. No starlight remained to cast a shadow. Still, Tyorl suddenly saw the shade of dread and danger in his heart as though he had seen it cutting along the ground.

Finn bellowed a curse. As an echo, Lehr’s cry of shock and alarm sounded from the foot of the hill as he roared a warning to his brother. A piece of midnight, shrieking like a banshee’s war cry, a black dragon arrowed from the sky.

The moment the dragon’s cry sounded was like a fragment separated from the line of time itself. Kelida’s heart crashed against her ribs, sickening her with the force of her fear. Cold to her bones, her muscles frozen, she watched, helpless to move, as the creature’s wings cut back along its glittering ebony sides, watched in horror as it touched the ground, its massive head reared high. With terrifying speed, the dragon’s forelegs shot out as though reaching for something.

Reaching for her!

Stanach’s howl of horror slashed the bonds of Kelida’s terror as though it were a hard-edged sword. She flung herself to the side. Stormblade!

She didn’t stop to think that she, untrained and without skill, would likely injure herself with the sword before she could ever wound the dragon. Dagger-sharp claws, black and curved, hung over her like a cage waiting to close. Kelida fumbled with the peace strings, trying to haul the sword from its scabbard. Red-hearted steel and ice blue sapphires, Stormblade’s weight would drag at her wrist muscles as she tried to raise it aloft. It didn’t matter. She had to try.

A hideous cry of triumph shivered the night before she could pull the sword free. The dragon bore a rider! Dark cloaked and hooded, a dwarf sat astride the beast.

Stanach roared, a sound like a wordless curse, and dove between Kelida and the beast. The dragon’s huge wing caught him hard and swept him to the ground. He rolled instinctively, came up staggering, and fell to one knee. Fast as lightning’s strike, the dragon’s long neck whipped to the side, its teeth bared and dripping, eyes murderously bright.

“No!” Kelida screamed. “No! Stanach!”

Heavy as a falling tree, a flying weight caught Kelida from behind. She hit the ground hard, all the breath flown from her, and tried to scream again. There was nothing in her with which to scream, no air, no voice. A hand clamped roughly on her arm, dragging, dragging, and Kelida came to her knees, sobbing and gasping. Lehr, unruly dark hair tangling in the wind from the dragon’s wings, stood between the beast and Kelida. Sword high, the ranger lunged, though he must have known that his blade would never pierce the dragon’s scaly armor.

Lehr’s steel struck and turned on ebony hide. The dragon rumbled deep in its great chest. The low thundering sounded horribly like amused laughter.

With a careless stroke of dagger claws, it’s eyes already on Kelida, the black tore heart and life from the ranger. Lehr’s blood, like hot rain, spattered Kelida’s face and hands. She screamed and heard only a moan. She tried to run and only fell.

Like a cage, she’d thought when she first saw the dragon’s claws. Like a cage they closed around her now, and then drew tight, scraping against each other as they captured her and dragged, then lifted her high. No! her mind screamed. No!

The dragonrider reached for her arm, yanked hard, and dragged her over the beast’s neck. Her head snapped back and her stomach lurched with sickening force.

Kelida had nothing of sense left, only the need to free herself. She kicked back hard, heaved herself to sitting, and clawed at the dwarf’s face.

Her fingers dragged the hood away and she saw that he had only one eye. As the dragon thrust hard against the ground and leaped for the sky, wings wide to catch the wind, Kelida struck at that eye with a mountain cat’s instinct. Dimly, she felt a hand close quickly, with desperate strength, on her ankle, then just as quickly loose her. Thick and strong, two arms wrapped around her waist. The right hand, wrapped in bandaging torn from her green cloak, slipped and then pressed hard against her ribs. Stanach!

Blood streamed down the dragonrider’s face, caught in his grizzled beard. He flung himself away from her hands. Kelida hardly recognized the high triumphant cry ringing in her ears as her own. The sky dove for her, then turned sickeningly at the wild thunder of wind under the dragon’s black wings.

Slim and light, still she was a farmer’s girl and stronger than she looked. Kelida balanced across the dragon’s slick, scaly neck the way she would on a horse. Again she lunged at the dragonrider and didn’t see his dagger until a forge-scarred hand clamped on the dwarf’s wrist. Stanach!

Kelida looked around wildly and found him clinging to the dragon’s ridged back behind the dark-cloaked dwarf.

Bones snapped, the dragonrider screamed. The dragon’s powerful muscles rippled under Kelida’s knees as it leaped high and wheeled again. As in a dream where there is no sound and everything moves slowly, Kelida felt her balance slip, saw the dragonrider slide down the long black slope of the beast’s shoulder, and saw his mouth stretch wide in a futile scream as he found no grip. Clawing at nothing but air, he fell away in a sprawl of rigid arms and legs to the ground far below.

Her hands were nerveless with reaction to the horror, her legs too weak now to keep their grip. Kelida doubled over the dragon’s neck and waited, helpless to move against the force of the rushing air. The dun-colored sweep of hills and stone would rush up at her, snatch her the way it had snatched the one-eyed dwarf.

It never did.

Stanach caught Kelida quickly around the waist, his arms shaking, his breath thin clouds in the icy air of the heights. He dragged her back and held her tightly against him. She felt his beard against her back, thick and warm. She watched, as from a distance, as he reached around her with his left hand and grasped the dragon’s spiny crest.

The beast thundered and soared high, cutting through the wispy, gray clouds of dawn. Kelida felt Stanach’s sigh ragged in his chest, heard him whisper something in a choked voice.

Lyt chwaer, it sounded like. Little sister.

She sagged a little, closed her eyes against the sickening pressure of the dragon’s speed, and marshaled all her strength to hold on until they reached whatever destination the dragon chose.

Lehr’s blood still stained Kelida’s gray hunting leathers, still speckled her hands and arms. She shuddered deeply. The shudder became a wrenching sob and she wept, her tears freezing to ice on her cheeks. Darknight roared, stretching for the sky. Far below it, Realgar’s mageling, called the Gray Herald, dropped like a stone from the cold blue height.

A flight of a different kind! The black dragon howled its laughter. It’d hated the mageling’s imperious commands, hated the sound of his thoughts, the smell of him. It craned its neck back to see the two who rode now where the Gray Herald had. Another dwarf, light as Agus had been, and a human girl. Sevristh narrowed its eyes against the wind. The dragon’s tongue, long and forked, flickered around dagger fangs. It scented their fear and it smelled sweet indeed.

Nothing was tougher to chew than a muscular, sinewy dwarf. Nothing was more tender than young human flesh. The girl carried the Kingsword, and Darknight looked forward to Realgar’s pleasure, if only for the chance to claim these two as a reward. As, it thought, dinner.

The black dragon made every effort to keep its riders on its back. Its flight was smooth, and it avoided the rougher wind pockets the way a ship’s captain would run his craft through the trough of the sea to keep the waves from broadsiding his hull.

Stanach felt nothing, not the exhaustion, not the terror, not Kelida’s violent sobs, until the dragon swept out across the Plains of Dergoth, the Plains of Death. Then, as the black climbed high to catch a favorable wind current, canted its flight to put the wind at its back and under its broad wings, he saw the carpet of flame advancing east.

Kelida shook against him, an aspen in a windstorm, and he had no words to soothe her.

High in the southeastern sky, the new sun glinted on what seemed a long crimson arrow. A second dragon, a fire-breathing red, shot through the rolling black smoke above the forest and, wings folded, dove for the high, dark spine of the southern mountains and Pax Tharkas. Stanach knew then what had set the forest aflame. He didn’t know why. If Verminaard’s troops and supplies were moving into the mountains, why would he risk firing the forest and destroying the lines of attack he had only recently set in place?

The dragon caught a lower current, dropping with stomach-wrenching speed, and Stanach pulled Kelida hard against him. Off to the side, Stanach saw the answer to his question. Broad, deep fire breaks, looking like plough scars from this height, scored the foothills in a straight, narrow channel right to the plains themselves.

Channels, he thought bitterly, protecting the forests to the north and south and leading the flames right out onto the Plains of Death. From there the fire—guyll fire!—would march on Thorbardin like the savage advance raiders of a raging army.

Stanach groaned aloud. No army’s hungry raiders could do more damage.

A hundred years ago, wildfire had swept across the boggy marshes of the Plains of Death. Then the dwarves had tried to stop it, tried to save the marshlands. Stark and ugly those marshes were, but they were part of the wilds of dwarven lands, the places where birds nested, beasts watered, and fishes dwelt. The marshes formed a large link in Thorbardin’s food chain. A century ago, the marshlands had not been saved. It was true that the farming warrens deep below the mountains were able to feed Thorbardin. True, too, was the real danger that should blight threaten the crops and disease take the stock, famine would result.

We are under siege!

Kelida, limp with exhaustion, half-turned and buried her face in Stanach’s shoulder. He shifted his grip on the dragon’s crest, hitched his bandaged and still nerveless right hand higher to assure his grip on the girl. She said nothing, but her weeping had stilled a few moments ago. Stanach tried to see her face, but could not.

The dragon dropped lower, slowing its speed. Thorbardin was below and to the southeast. The city lay within the high peaks of the mountain just now taking the sun’s gilding. Snow blushed rose on the highest peaks, where it was already winter. As the dragon slid along the currents, Stanach was able to make out the still shadowed defile that led to Northgate, shattered and ruined three hundred years before in the Dwarfgate Wars. Gaping wide, stones silently screaming of pain, the mouth of the gate itself opened onto a thin and treacherous ledge. In three hundred years, that gate had never been closed, its mechanism destroyed in the war. Northgate was guarded more heavily than the still operable Southgate.

Wind thundered around them as the dragon glided still lower, dropping below the defile, below the ledge, and finally descending into the last shadows of night at the mountain’s foot.

Cold fear crept through Stanach. Northgate was guarded, warded by strong and fierce Daewar warriors. However, the caverns below, secret holds the Theiwar called the Deep Warrens, lay far beneath the gate. Realgar had a dragon to do his bidding, likely to call him Highlord. Now, he waited in the Deep Warrens for Stormblade. The Kingsword would make him more than a Highlord; it would make him king regent of the dwarves and ruler of Thorbardin.

Stanach closed his eyes.

He felt the jolt of the dragon’s landing in his bones and heard the scrape of claws on stone. Kelida stirred, then sat away from him.

“Where are we? Do you know?”

Stanach knew. His eyes on the glittering sword at her side, he wanted to say that they had come to the place where they would soon die. He didn’t say that, but only shook his head.

“Home.” The word passed his lips hoarsely, as though it were a lie.

“We are in Thorbardin.”