The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 25

Camber Meld and Fleece Ironhill stood at the center of a ragged, determined line of refugees, watching goblins advance across the ice.

Twenty-eight fighters formed the motley line, dwarves and humans, most of them male but with a few females among them. A few held weapons of recent make, but most were armed with ancient blades, hammers, axes, and shields broken from the smoking ice — weapons that had been dropped or cast aside by those still under the ice. The two chieftains looked each way along their ragged battle line, then glanced at each other. There was nothing more to say, and nothing now to do except wait for the attack and hold the line for as long as possible while the helpless ones — those in the refugee camps — made their escape.

It was all they could do. The refugees were outnumbered four to one, poorly armed and poorly equipped, a handful of herders and planters against a force of goblins. They all knew that the best they might achieve would be a little time.

The refugees had been exploring the ice field when they saw the goblins coming from the south, no more than a mile away. There had been time to do no more than send a runner to warn the camps, and break out as many weapons and shields as they could find under the shallow ice. Wisps of ancient dark smoke, trapped from trees and grasses caught blazing by the ice, had drifted from the breaks with each new crack.

Now they waited as grinning goblins, a hobgoblin leading them, surged across the ice, eager for slaughter. Crossbows were aimed, and a deadly rain of bronze darts lashed out at the defenders. Shields took most of the missiles, but two dwarves and a gray-haired man fell. The goblins shouted as they slung their bows, raised swords and pikes, and charged.

All along the line, blades struck from behind shields as the foes closed, and goblin blood steamed and stank on the ice, mingling here and there with the crimson blood of humans and dwarves.

The little line of defenders took the first assault and turned it back, then closed ranks and retreated slowly, drawing the barely disciplined goblins out of their formation and into single — or more often double or triple — combat. For long minutes, the skill and sheer desperation of the defending line held the field. But the goblins were too many, and the refugee army retreated again… and again. Camber Meld and Fleece Ironhill found themselves fighting side by side, and knew that this would be the final strategy. Hold and retreat, hold and retreat, until none were left to face the goblins. It was, simply, a buying of time.

At the edge of the ice field they retreated yet again, no more than a dozen of them now against at least seventy goblins. The goblins formed another charge, then halted. Goblin mouths dropped open, and goblin eyes stared aloft, beyond and above the line of defenders.

Fleece Ironhill glanced around just as something very fast skimmed over his head and swept upward on wide, pale wings. He didn't see what it was, nor did he try to follow it with his eyes. Instead he stared at the second flying thing, plunging down from above. A huge red dragon, its mouth opened wide and a rush of fire coming from it. The dragon flared its wings and soared over the line of battle.

Without warning, the dragon's fire-breath smote the ice field behind the goblins.

Bobbin was in trouble. For a brief time, he had held his distance ahead of the dragon, the soarwagon diving earthward on rippling wings. But he had waited too long, gone too low, and lost his edge. The dragon had managed to get above him, and now was closing with deadly speed. The gnome heard the long, deep rumble of in-drawn breath and knew what it meant.

"Thermodynamics," the gnome muttered, praying that his final calculation was correct, that the same ground effect that had been his undoing might just this once work to his advantage. How many times since he had gone aloft had the soarwagon abruptly shot skyward in a screaming climb, propelled by the extra buoyancy of the near-ground air?

"Don't change your ways just yet," Bobbin muttered, taking a firm hold on his lateral controls. The ice field sped by just a few yards below.

Closing his eyes, he pulled the strings. Behind and beneath the soarwagon's tail, a torrent of terrible flame seared the air and flowed in waves of heat across the ice field, which seemed to explode in great clouds of steam and soot.

The soarwagon went nearly straight up, a pale sliver flung by its own dynamics and given added speed by uprushing air currents ahead of the rising clouds of steam. Bobbin opened his eyes and looked around. Behind him was a tiny, distant landscape, where finger ridges of mountains lay like furrows in a field. And barely visible, far below, was the red dragon, just coming out of its dive and beginning to circle to the east.

"How did you do that?" The dragon voice in his ears seemed genuinely impressed.

"I bounced off the ground effect," the gnome explained. "It's nothing especially new. I've been bouncing off it for weeks."

"Ground effect?" The voice seemed fainter now.

"That's what I call it. The air near the ground is denser than the air higher up. It's why I can't land."

"You can't land? You mean you can't get down?"

"No, blast it! I can get near the ground, but I can't quite reach it.

Uh… are you coming after me again? I'd rather you didn't. I have enough troubles without you." The diminishing voice in Bobbin's ear seemed to chuckle. "I've heard of gnomes being standoffish, but you're the first one

I've found who was actually stuck up!

But I have no more time for you, so I suppose this is your lucky day.

Goodbye, Bobbin." Again there was a fading chuckle, then the voice was gone.

The gnome had managed to level out his climb, and he looked over the wicker rail. In the distance below, the red dragon was winging for the mountains east of Waykeep. Bobbin circled and watched until the mythical beast cleared the peaks there and descended into the smoky mists beyond.

Then he sighed and tugged on his descent strings. He was cold and hungry, and ready to go down. Apparently the soarwagon was, too. At the slightest pressure on its vanes, it dropped its nose and plummeted straight down, its wings rippling and whining.

"Stress and derailment!" the gnome swore, and began another adjustment on his controls.

When dragonfire rolled over the frozen battlefield, the effects were instantaneous. Ice splintered and fell away, becoming great spreading clouds of steam mixed with ancient smoke. Gray mist roiled outward, obscuring the goblins and the defenders beyond, then drifted upward on heated drafts. A wide, thick cloud shadowed a foreshortened land where everything seemed to writhe and rumble. Goblins retreated, wide-eyed, then turned and retreated again when the blades of the handful of human and dwarf refugees drew blood.

The evil minions fell back, turned again, and stopped in confusion. From the rolling clouds came dwarves, hundreds of dwarves. Dwarves armed and armored. Mountain dwarves and hill dwarves with dead eyes in frozen faces that had not known change in more than two centuries — faces that grimaced and twisted in the exact ways they had when they fought against one another in a burning forest at the instant the spell of ice had been cast by an archmage.

But they were not fighting among themselves now. Mountain dwarves and hill dwarves stood shoulder to shoulder, spread out beneath the dark plume of choking steam. They were silent and relentless, and fell on the panicked goblins without a hesitation or a sound. The hobgoblin leader screamed, turned to run, and fell, his helm pierced by Fleece Ironhill's spiked hammer. Two jibbering goblins following him died under the sword of

Camber Meld. The cooling cloud of dark steam above was descending now, settling as a dense fog streaked with ash, slanting before a wind that came across the old battlefield, carrying the dry scent of ages. For long minutes there was only silence and the blinding mist. Then, slowly, the cloud thinned. Five humans and six hill dwarves, the last of the combined fighting force led by Camber Meld and Fleece Ironhill, stood alone at the edge of a great, blackened plain littered with bodies, dropped arms and ancient burned stumps. Most of the strewn bodies were goblins, many of them still pierced by the weapons that had killed them. And everywhere, among and around them, were little heaps of clothing and armor — all that remained of the dwarves of Waykeep, fighters released from an ancient spell for one last cut, one last thrust, at an enemy.

The refugees looked around in awe. Nothing moved except the wind… the wind, and a sliver of white far to the east, something that flew like a bird with still wings, riding on the air. Something going away.

On a forest-shrouded knoll in the Vale of Respite, some distance south of the encampments of the goblins, a red dragon burrowed into leaf-mold and slept the sleep of exhaustion. Even the most powerful of creatures had its limits, and this one had been in flight for nearly thirty hours and more than five hundred miles. It had flown from a lair deep in the

Khalkist Mountains to a secret place near Sanction, then had spanned the entire width of Newsea, past Pax Tharkas, and now lay in the wilderness ranges between Qualinost and Thorbardin, in the Kharolis Mountains of western Ansalon.

It had chosen the knoll, sent a mind-call northward, then burrowed in and slept. Through the remainder of that day it rested, and through the night and most of the next day. The sleep restored its strength, and the dragon dreamed the comfortable dreams of one who by birthright can be absolute lord over anyone or anything that it cares to dominate… except others like itself, and one beyond, the one the dragon called the Dark

Queen. The dragon slept for twenty-eight hours, then awoke briefly to be aware of its surroundings.

The one it had called was there, waiting. The dragon went back to sleep and dozed for another three hours. Finally, when it was rested, the red dragon stirred, shook away the forest leaves, and lifted its huge head.

Its long, sinuous body moved, and the beast stretched its wings deliciously. The dragon felt renewed, restored. Nearby, a small fire burned, and the person beside it came to her feet. "Have you slept enough?" she asked sourly.

"I always sleep enough," the dragon said. "It is you who should worry about sleep. The Highlord would be displeased if you should fail in your mission."

"I have not failed," the woman said. "All of the lands between Pax

Tharkas and Thorbardin are in my control…or will be by the coming of spring. My goblins are in place, and all that remains is the gathering of slaves to build some decent fortifications."

The dragon's gaze was mocking. "If that is all that remains, why are you aligning your troops to cross over into the Plains of Dergoth beyond the mountains?"

"A minor matter," she snapped. "It would not interest the Highlord."

"It might," the dragon purred. "Or would you rather I just report that you didn't care to discuss it?"

"It's nothing! There is a dwarf who has learned of the invasion gate to

Thorbardin and thinks he can block it. I simply intend to eliminate him."

"Interesting," the dragon said. "As I recall, you told the Highlord that no one except you and your… ah, coinhabitant… knew of the lost gate.

You assured the Highlord that Thorbardin will stand open to him when he comes, and that he can make it his base of operations."

"So I did, and so it will be. Do you doubt me?"

"So many of the best-laid plans," the dragon chuckled.

"Especially those of humans…"

"I will not fail!"

"I wouldn't, if I were you," the dragon whispered. "Is there anything you would like reported to the Highlord?"

"Report what you have seen," Kolanda snarled. "I'm doing my job, so I assume you can do yours."

The woman glared at the dragon, then turned without a word and walked away. The horned mask under her arm stared back at the lizard through hollow eyes. The red dragon watched her go, then stretched luxuriously. It would be time soon to spread great wings and begin the long flight back to the region of Sanction. The Highlord would be waiting for his report. The

Highlord. One of many Highlords in the north now, amassing armies, sending out spies and patrols, plotting and securing lines of march, organizing systems… petty, mortal creatures preparing for the day the Dark Queen would unleash them across Ansalon and beyond. They would then secure for her — once and for all — the world she wanted and was fit to rule. The dragon pondered for a moment whether to report the gnome in the flying thing who had seen him and somehow escaped. He thought about it, but decided that there was nothing to be gained. It was, after all, only a gnome.

Two days' foot-travel to the east of the dragon's resting place, Chane

Feldstone led a tired and dusty little group along a winding ledge.

Mountain winds sang in towering crags above them, and mists hid the depths below.

"Do you know where we are?" Wingover asked the dwarf for the second or third time in an hour.

"Why don't you leave him alone?" Jilian Firestoke snapped. "Can't you see he's tired?"

Wingover nodded. It was obvious the dwarf was tired.

Still weak from his shoulder wound, he sometimes stumbled and rarely spoke, though he pushed on with grim determination. Chane was following — the rest could only assume — the green line that marked the path where

Grallen had gone centuries before.

In fact, Chane's weakened state was why Wingover kept questioning him.

The dwarf was showing signs that to the wilderness man spelled sheer exhaustion — a flateyed stare that never seemed to blink; paleness that came and went; a rolling, almost drunken pace.

Wingover knew that it was time to stop and rest, and for the past day or more the man had been looking for a place to do that. The problem was, except for a pair of wide places on the trail where bitter winds had chilled them and the last of their provisions had run out, there had simply been no place to rest.

Their current trail along the mountainside was one Wingover had never explored. The human marveled at the idea that a dwarven prince had once led armies this way, heading for the final battle of his final war on what most men called the Plains of Dergoth, though dwarves more often called the region the Plains of Death. Wingover snorted as the dwarf in the lead stumbled again. He handed his horse's lead to Jilian and caught

Chane's good shoulder in a firm hand. "Are you all right?" he asked, looking into the dwarf's exhausted eyes.

"I'm all right," Chane growled. 'We have to keep going."

"Do you know where we are?"

"I know where I'm going. The path is clear."

"Yes, but do you know where we are?"

"Not exactly. Where?"

"I didn't think so," the man said gently. "Look off across there… across the gorge, over on the face of the next peak."

Chane looked, his eyes blank. There was a feature over there, tiny in the distance but somehow familiar.

"What is it?"

"I don't suppose you've ever seen it," Wingover said.

"At least not from this side, but I thought you might want to know what you're looking at. That's Northgate."

"North… You mean…?"

"Exactly," the man told him. "That is the Northgate of Thorbardin."

"But the green line doesn't go there," Chane said. "It goes east… I think that's east, anyway. Out there, across those plains. Toward that lone mountain, whatever that is."

"Skullcap," Wingover breathed. "The ruins of what was once the most feared tower of sorcery, Zhaman, lie there."

Chane sighed. "Then that is where Grallen went. But the line… it doesn't seem to go all the way. I can't really see what it does. We have to go on. We have to get closer."

"We have to rest," Wingover said flatly. He shielded his eyes, peering ahead. Somewhere near, there should be a place safe to rest. He squinted, then his eyes widened and breath hissed through his teeth. On the trail ahead, just where it wound out of sight, a large, black cat stood, looking back at them. Even as Wingover saw it, the animal turned languidly and slunk out of sight.