The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 30

Because the goblin army was so widely spread, fanned across the plains in three troops, miles apart, Kolanda Darkmoor decided to move against the people at the bridge. Even though the wizard might be with them, the defenders were still only a handful. She ordered Thog to gather the main force on the central plain to await her signal.

Thus, when Wingover made his dash from the breaks to the fork-trail hill, spotters saw him from less than a mile away. The word of his sighting was relayed immediately.

"We got foragers workin' those gully-washes," the runner said. "They'll get him there."

"Groups of four?"

"Like you said," the sprinter noted, "he won' get through. Jus' one man… they'll get him."

Yet, moments later, the rider was seen again, farther away and past the washes, heading for the more distant of the twin hills. Kolanda swore, halted her platoon, and pulled Caliban from beneath her breastplate.

"Caliban!" she snapped. "See for me now." She held the withered heart to her forehead without ceremony.

"She is arrogant," the whispering voice said. "She will require special attention when… ah?" The voice became a hiss. "Glenshadow!"

"See for me!" Kolanda ordered. "The man on the horse, what is he doing?"

The view closed on the distant rider, who was swerving to climb the hill, then shifted to the hilltop, Kolanda stiffened. The wizard there stood immobile, arms outstretched, and shone with a green glare that seemed to burn through her skin. She jerked Caliban away from her forehead. "What is that?"

"She doesn't know what has hurt us," the feathery voice whispered. The heart vibrated in the Commander's hand, the air sizzled and trembled, and

Caliban loosed a bolt of pure energy across the miles, aimed at the wizard on the hill. Then Caliban went cold in Kolanda's palm. "An element protects him," it whispered. "I could not reach him."

"Is his magic more powerful than yours?" the woman snapped.

"She doesn't understand," Caliban whispered. "It is not his magic. It is something else. Wait… ah. The man has taken it. Now Glenshadow is revealed. Now I can fight him. Hold me up. I must draw power from you."

"Wait," Kolanda commanded. "The thing he had, that the rider has now, is that what the dwarf is seeking?"

"She plays at riddles," the dry voice grated. "Hold me up."

Kolanda felt the familiar tingling in her skin as Caliban started to restore his energy for another attack, drawing from her own reserves.

Abruptly she dropped the withered thing, letting it hang on its thong outside her breastplate. 'You will obey me," she commanded. "Obey or find no source for your magic. Without me, you are nothing. We do this my way.

Do you agree?"

"She oversteps," the voice whispered, distant and dry. "She will pay when the time is right. It must be so."

"Another time, we can discuss it," she said. "But now, do you agree?"

"How can we fight as two?" the ancient voice insinuated. "When I am at rest her armor hides me, and hides all from me except her. When I am in use, she must hold me in contact with her; she can do nothing else."

"Do you agree?" Kolanda demanded.

"I agree," the distant, evil voice said. "For now. But how?"

"Like this," she said. Reaching behind her, the Commander loosed the lacings on her breastplate, then pulled it off and threw it aside for the slaves to pick up and place in the cart. The blouse beneath it she tore from neck to waist, exposing her breasts. Caliban hung now in the cleft between them, and his voice was no longer distant.

"I can draw from her heart to fight, as well as from her head," it admitted.

Immediately, Kolanda felt the tingling again, this time through her chest, and the surrounding air seemed to sizzle. "My way," she reminded.

"You can have the wizard, but not at risk of the man and the thing he carries." The distant vision came again, but only vaguely now that Caliban was not at her eyes. Still, it was enough.

The wizard was mounting the horse, swinging up behind its rider.

Kolanda beckoned a hobgoblin. "Noll," she commanded, "take the platoon at double-time and go to the bridge. Take those you find there. Kill them if they resist." She motioned the troops forward, and they lined out at a run, followed by the cart drawn by slaves and by the swamp goblins searing them with whips to get more speed from them.

Only Kolanda and her personal guard of six selected fighting goblins remained. With them at her heels, she set off at a steady trot toward the edge of the breaks. Where the trail emerged, she would wait for the two riders coming from the hills. Caliban could have his revenge on the wizard. He could have the other man, too, as far as she was concerned, but intuition told her that the thing he carried with him must not reach the dwarf at the bridge. It must not reach Thorbardin, of course, but more than that she herself must have it.

Whatever it was, it had the power to punish Caliban.

The two men on the horse were still nearly a mile away when Kolanda

Darkmoor and her guards took up ambush positions along the trail, just where it entered the broken lands.

Half a mile to the west, Noll and his platoon of goblin warriors crept through narrow ways among heaped boulders, approaching the abutment of

Sky's End Bridge. Behind them came the cart, pulled by slaves. In the same cart Kolanda Darkmoor's lacquered steel breastplate lay atop bundles of lathed bronze darts, foraged weapons and supplies, and bits of booty picked up along the trail. Where it lay, it almost hid a sleek longbow of elven design and a single arrow… the last arrow of Garon Wendesthalas.

Weak and battered, beaten and mutilated, the elf clung to the side of the cart for support as swamp goblins harried the slaves along. He clung, and his hand was never far from the bow and the single arrow.

Wingover was long since out of sight by the time Chane and the others had crossed the arched bridge, and they settled in to wait between a pair of pillars that might once have been guard towers, flanking the east end of the bridge. Guard towers or, Chane thought, possibly counting towers for inspection of wares in transit. Idly, the dwarf found himself thinking: this might once have been a trade road. Wingover had spoken of trade roads. Probably there had been such a road, going out from

Thorbardin to points north by way of Pax Tharkas. Obviously there had once been a lot of trade between the undermountain kingdom and other realms — far more than the modest efforts of Rogar Goldbuckle and other traders produced now.

Thorbardin itself was full of things not dwarven. Elvenwares of great beauty were treasured under the mountains, as were tapestries and feather arrangements, cunning table services of carved wood made by humans somewhere, toys and folding screens, vine-laced frames for paintings, small bits of treasured ivory. Chane had seen such things all his life in

Thorbardin, but had never thought much about them. Now he realized that they were relics of some long-ago time when the gates had been open and roads had been in use for caravans to come and go upon them. Chane thought of it, and felt as though some grand thing had been lost along the way.

Wars and hostilities and conflicts among peoples had destroyed the roads, and put an end to the commerce they had represented.

This very bridge, this soaring arch across a misted gorge, might have been part of that same old route from Thorbardin to Pax Tharkas to the lands of Abanasinia…destroyed in the Dwarfgate Wars. The bridge might have been a point of registry for dwarven goods outbound, and a point of inspection for the treasures of other places, coming to the dwarven realm.

The broken lands beyond would have made ideal trading grounds. A hundred camps could be set up within a half-mile, each in its private corner, and all interconnected by the maze of stone-walled paths. It would have been a trading bazaar like nothing ever seen in Thorbardin, even in the great centers of the Daewar city.

It was a pity, that such things no longer were.

"If ever there is peace," Chane muttered, "real peace and cooperation, it will be warriors and fighters who bring it. For they are the ones who have seen the most of chaos."

Chess glanced around at him. 'You sound like an elf."

"Or a human," Jilian observed. "That does sound awfully human, Chane."

"I wonder," he said. "I wonder if there's that much difference."

"I think I'll take a look around," Chess said. "Things are getting dull around here."

Before he could turn away, though, the kender looked up and grinned.

'Things may perk up a little, I guess. Bobbin's back."

Like a speck against the mountainside, rapidly growing, the soarwagon dipped and tumbled toward Chane, Jilian, and Chess. The kender's supply pole dangled below it, horizontal, attached to the hook on Bobbin's lifeline. They walked a few steps out on the bridge to watch its approach, and Chane's foot bumped something protruding from the bridge rail. He knelt for a better look. It was a metal ring the size of the palm of his hand, just inches above the bridge's floor. He raised his eyes, searching along the rail. There was another a few yards away, and another beyond that… and the same along the base of the south rail. Metal rings were set in the stone at intervals, as far up the bridge as Chane could see. He knew what they were. Every cable-cart tunnel in Thorbardin had such rings at every change in grade. Such winch rings were used for the hoisting and lowering of laden carts along slopes, by use of pulleys.

Just like in Thorbardin.

But why equip an open-road bridge with winch-rings? Unless…

Chane stood, gazing past the rising bridge, across the gorge at the sheer face of Sky's End. They had come down from a high ledge, along a narrow switchback trail that approached the bridge from a sharp angle. No straight approach from the west was possible, because the bridge footings ran nearly to the sheer, clifflike face of the cutaway mountain. It had, now that Chane thought of it, seemed odd that a bridge should end at right angles to the foot.of a diff, but he had other things on his mind when they'd first encountered it.

Chane took a deep breath and nodded. Intuition so strong it was beyond question poured through him.

"I know where it is," he muttered.

Beyond the west end of the bridge, at the foot of Sky's End's towering cliff, was a rockfall. And behind the rockfall… it had to be. An ancient tradeway, under the mountain. A tradeway that would lead to the warrens.

The forgotten entrance to Thorbardin. Forgotten because an old war had brought an end to trade.

"Hello!"

Chane blinked and turned. Just a few yards away, level with the bridge, the soarwagon hovered over the gorge. The gnome waved at them. "Do you want this pole back?" he called. "I don't have any use for it, and it's a clumsy thing to carry around."

"Why don't you just drop it?" the kender asked.

"It's a nice pole, and you might want to send over some more raisins some time. Why don't you keep it?"

Chess smiled. "All right. Let it down, and I'll keep it."

"Not here," Bobbin said. "I'm afraid to get too close to that bridge.

But I can let it down just past those towers."

The soarwagon edged upward, dipped, and soared out over the gorge in a wide circle. It settled to a hover again just past the foot of the bridge.

"I'll go get the pole," the kender said.

Bobbin began lowering the horizontal pole, working his winch, then paused, looking toward the breaks. He cupped his hands and shouted, "Did you know there are goblins here?"

In the instant the gnome took his hand from the winch, the pole dropped free. In that same instant a company of armed goblins surged out of hiding just beyond the bridge abutments and charged.

The pole and the lead hobgoblin arrived at the gap between the pillars at exactly the same time. The creature's midsection hit the pole, jamming it against the pillars, and he flipped over it and fell. Several goblins fell over him, and others over them; the pole splintered, and Bobbin's line broke free. The soarwagon bobbed skyward as Chestal Thicketsway turned and ran, back up the rise of the bridge.

"Goblins!" Chess shouted needlessly, for the sprawling, shouting mass of creatures behind him would have been difficult to overlook.

Chane leaped to Jilian's side, grabbed her arm, and pulled her to the nearest vertical riser on the bridge rail. Without a word, he thrust her down behind it.

Chess turned and drew his hoopak sling. As the hobgoblin tried to get to his feet, spilling goblins around him, the kender bounced a rock off his helmet, knocking it askew.

Momentarily blinded, the hobgoblin waved his sword and screeched, "Rush

'em! Cut'm down!"

A goblin free of the rest started to charge, and a whining pebble took him in the eye. He went over backward, screaming.

Jilian Firestoke had no intention of hiding behind a vertical pillar of a bridge rail, when there were things to be done. Holding her sword in launch position she rushed past Chane and headed for the enemy.

Chane started to shout at her, then saw one of the goblins beyond her raise a crossbow. He drew his sword and threw it, as hard as he could. End over end, it flashed in the sunlight… over Jilian's head and downward.

Point first it hit the goblin's breast armor, and the sheer weight of it drove it through. The goblin fell, skewered through the brisket, and his dart sailed out over the gorge.

Jilian swung at the nearest goblin, missed, and spun around, clinging to her centrifugal blade. The creature's laugh was cut short as the sword came around again, this time full across his luring face.

Chane hoisted his hammer and waded in, following Jilian.

"Fall back!" the hobgoblin shouted. "Fall back! Use th' darts!" He sprinted for cover as Jilian whirled toward him. Her blade took the tassel off his helmet, the stock off his crossbow, and the tail off his kilt before he got out of range.

For a moment there was scrambling, fleeing goblins everywhere, then the bridge was clear. Chane dived under Jilian's flashing sword to keep from being beheaded. "Stop now!" he roared, catching her around the waist in a diving tackle. They tumbled across a dead goblin and rolled against the bridge rail.

"I said, stop," Chane panted.

Jilian picked herself up and smoothed her hair. "I was trying to. You didn't have to be so grabby about it. Honestly!"

A bronze dart ricocheted off stone beside the dwarven girl. Chane glanced around, then grabbed her hand and headed up the bridge, seeking cover. Darts zipped around them, and pebbles flew in answer.

The kender was dodging in and out of the cover of stone uprights, stepping out to use his weapon, then darting back to cover to reload. But as the dwarves piled in behind him, he reached into his pouch and his hand came out empty. He was out of pebbles, and there was nothing on the bridge to throw.

Chess dug deeper into the pouch. "I've probably got some things in here that I can shoot."

He searched, found something, and slipped it into the hoopak's sling just as a goblin peered around one of the bridge spires. The kender let fly, and his missile burst and splattered on the creature's face.

"What was that?" Chane called.

"Pigeon egg," the kender admitted. "Not a very good choice, I guess."

Darts continued to fly and zing around the defenders.

"We'd better retreat," Chane rumbled. "Come on. Follow me across the bridge."

Chess glanced around, and his eyes widened. "I don't think so," he said.

"Look."

Above and behind them on the bridge stood an ogre with a huge club in his fist. As the dwarves turned and saw him, the creature grinned. He pointed his club at Chane Feldstone. "You see me, dwarf?" he thundered. "I see you, too. You think Loam don't remember you?"

The darts stopped flying, and goblin cheers sounded below. The ogre stood, gloating, his stance nearly spanning the width of the bridge.

"Maybe I can slice him," Jilian offered, but Chane pushed her back. The dwarf stood, balancing his hammer for combat. In return, the ogre licked its lips, grinned again, and came for him.