A Feather on the Breath of Ellulianaen

by Robert Denethon

  Chapter Seven

  Mynowelechw Sedad

  Duke Maddon Udvéwynn

  Hartog Maddon Udvéwynn

  Zhallad had been living at his brother’s castle for the past three months in one of the many spare rooms. He was sitting in the library, reading about gryphons, when his brother the Duke came in with a slight limp, but Zhallad had seen little evidence otherwise of the illness that affected him.

  “Gryphons again, is it brother?” said the Duke, “Aye, ever have our family been Glyfim-Chadulin – Gryphon-Friends. We know the old ways, we still read the glyphs of the lion-eagle and trust that the Hwellwellyn Elves will return one day! Come, leave your books now, though, for we have a job to do.”

  Zhallad put his book down and stood up quickly, and picked up his sword, for he knew now that “a job” in his brother’s parlance meant ‘there are some Imperial soldiers in the area causing trouble and what are we going to do about it?’

  “Are you sure you’re up to it, brother?” Zhallad asked him and the Duke frowned and growled, “I don’t need you to be my nursemaid.”

  They ran down the stone stairs, to the stable, where they saddled their horses, and donned their chain mail shirts and helmets.

  The Duke said, “This is not a job for armour, I think. It is a small force, who have been going to each farm in turn looking for dwarves. They are a mean bunch, though – they told the farmers they’d already burned down a whole forest in the east, and they’d be happy to burn down a few farmhouses if they find out anyone is harbouring dwarves. You know, I wonder if Rhaglan is behind this. It sounds like him. Nasty piece of work.”

  “He is not Emperor yet. His father has neither abdicated nor wyrded the three worlds – and I think Rhaglan has not the power at the court to enforce his will yet… Or has he?”

  “No, word is at the courts that his father has been meditating in the mountains again. Whenever there was trouble in the last five years it happened when the Emperor was away. See how they start with the dwarves? Out of sight, out of mind. Rhaglan thinks the rest of us will not notice.”

  They mounted their horses, and met a small army of mounted knights and farmers at the drawbridge.

  One of the farmers said, “The scoundrels’ve just been to my farm askin’ a lot of questions. The Grodrich’s farm would be the next one on their list, and after that, the Frithawynn’s. The soldiers’re not ridin’ fast though, for they’re all the time lookin’ for holes in the ground and dark caverns and caves, to see if they can find anywhere where dwarfs might be hidin’. But I think they be foolin’ themselves! Dwarfs can be mighty invisible when they want to, and aint no Noomoi knight nor soldier going to find ‘em if they don’t want to be found.”

  The Duke said, “Well, something disturbed the Zwaegwyr a few days ago! Maybe the dwarves strayed further south, to get out of the Nomoi knights’ way. We’ll ride first to the Grodrich’s, then.”

  And they galloped into the forest, swords at the ready.

  Halfway there, they heard a voice cry out “Halth’r!” and the sound of it echoed throughout the forest, though none saw who had spoken.

  Recognising the word “Halt” in the old tongue, the Duke replied, “Kerofae thuun-mirun ‘ume thuyr bij thurys ‘e Mnsiostrida Orfae” which means, “Show yourself if ye be friend of the Old Ways!” And a dwarf stepped out of the shadow of the trees, dressed in rich attire, armoured and shielded, with his hammer upon his shoulder.

  “I am King Haldar,” he said in the tongue of men, “I seek news of my brother, King Klaer, for he was travelling to my kingdom in the Under-earth for an important meeting and did not arrive. Some of us went east to seek him, and I have come south. I desire greatly to find him, or to get news of him, for he is missing.”

  The Duke said, “My greetings to you, King Haldar. I am Duke Maddon Udvéwynn, the ruler of this principality. It is surely the design of providence that we meet today, for we are even at this very moment tracking a battalion of Imperial Nomoi knights and soldiers who are asking at the farms in this borough if any have seen dwarves, and threatening any who might be thinking of harbouring them. Fear not, for we are partisans, and we are not willing that any harm should come to you! We only seek to hamper the Imperial forces in any way that we can in this kingdom. Oh, we pay our tithes to the Emperor, but I will not tolerate this intrusion upon my sovereignty, particularly when we can leave the soldiers’ bodies to the Zwaegwyr and it will be thought by those who sent them that the wolf-men took them in the night.”

  At a signal from King Haldar a small army of dwarves appeared among the trees, each one stepping out from behind a rock or a stone or a bush or a tree-trunk. The men marvelled, for they had seen no sign of them before - they had been completely hidden in the forest.

  Each of the dwarves wore armour like King Haldar’s, and carried a shield and a hammer as well.

  “We would fight beside you, if we may, Duke Udvéwynn, friend of the Old Ways, for I see that you are from the glyphs upon your shield, and from the words upon your tongue, which are sweet to hear in this day of treachery and deceit.”

  The Duke said, “With gladness we accept your proffered help, sir-dwarf. What would you say to this plan – that we, who are swifter on our horses than you can be on foot, ride to the farm, in order to be there before they arrive? And you, who are far better at hiding among the trees and the hollows of the ground, come on them from the forest, surrounding them on the sides and the flank when we attack them as they advance along the road?”

  “We dwarves may well be swifter on foot than you may think!” said King Haldar. “Be that as it may, we would gladly do as you say, for we will have the advantage of surprise, being well hidden as you have said. Indeed, we will be well pleased to knock a few Nomoi heads together when we leap out of the forest, be they man or elf!” And King Haldar and the Duke shook hands, and thus was their compact formed.

  The men rode to the farm and waited at the gates.

  The road before the gate of the farm stretched to the northeast, and was surrounded by tall poplars. The sound of birds singing in the trees seemed to mock their bloodthirsty battle-readiness as they waited.

  Finally they saw the Nomoi approaching on the road in the distance. It was a mixed battalion with two companies of infantry, a mage, and six knights on horseback. “Ellulianaen grant that that mage is a human,” said the Duke. “Elves are so hard to be rid of.”

  They readied themselves for battle.

  It took such a very long time for the battalion to make its way down the road, with the soldiers’ armour clanking with every footstep, that the Duke thought they would never arrive. It was like waiting at the altar at one’s wedding, for the arrival of the bride, only in this, it was no bride, but an ugly Nomoi mage that he awaited.

  Finally the mage stood before them, and the Duke saw that it was a man. “Thank Ellulianaen.”

  “What?” said the mage. “What do you mean, thank Ellulianaen?”

  The Duke said, “Thank Ellulianaen that you are a man.”

  “What?” the mage said, “So you are the Duke of this fiefdom, are you? Tell us now if you have seen any dwarves in the forest roundabouts. We seek dwarves, tell us if you have seen any.”

  “And why do you seek them, sir-mage?” said the Duke, in respectful words with a tone that did not hide his contempt for the Nomoi.

  The mage said, “I do not answer to you, dog, but to my superiors. Out of my way.”

  “Hmmm. In ages past, no man alive would have dared to speak to a Duke of the realm in such a fashion. See what a pretty pass the world has come to? Under the rule of the Nomoi Emperor elf, manners are a dying art. Ask nicely, and we will see what we can do.” The Duke feigned nonchalance as he stood before them, but Zhallad could see that his sore leg was troubling him.

  “Your own manners will be the death of you, dog. Out of my way!” said the mage.

  The Duke replied, “Now that is not quite a polite way of asking, sir-mage, is it? But I will gi
ve you a third opportunity to show the quality of your upbringing. Ask me nicely.”

  The mage hissed, “Move, dog, or face the consequences of my wrath!” And he raised his hand to wyrd the Duke, but the Duke merely moved a single finger. The mage’s eyes opened widely in surprise, and he clutched at his throat with a claw-like hand. “Ahhh,” croaked the mage, like a dying crow, “What is that?” And he died right there upon his horse, still sitting upright. And the horse scraped the ground with his hoof and turned and fled, as though death itself was at his heels, with the corpse of the mage still seated upon his back.

  One of the Nomoi knights asked another, “What happened?”

  The Duke said, “I believe the mage was about to break the law, and arrest me without a warrant. Perhaps he was struck down by Afazel!”

  Waving his sword-arm about as though his sword in its sheath was lighter than a silk glove, the knight replied, “Afazel? He doesn’t care about the law. You did something, didn’t you? He did something! He must be a mage, or a wizard at least! Move back, men!”

  The Duke leaned forward on his horse and said, “A small change in the air inside his lungs, that is all; I am a mage of meagre gifts, I have no great talent for magic. Is that a crime? A tiny change in the air, but it works very efficiently, preventing further breathing when the ability is no longer required. You are now out-matched and outnumbered. You have lost your mage. Lay down your weapons. We will not hold you responsible for the actions of your superiors. Surrender, and your lives will be spared!”

  But the knight unsheathed his sword, held it aloft and cried loudly, “You are a fool who cannot count! The forces of the Nomoi arrayed here against you outnumber your men two to one. Attack!”

  The dwarves melted out from among the trees and swiftly filled the road directly behind the soldiers, and appeared all around them in the forest. Not a few of the footsoldiers simply dropped their weapons and lifted their hands in surrender, for they knew how to do their sums, having seen many battles. The knights and all the rest of the soldiers, however, battle-crazed for fear, turned around, lifted up their swords and began to hack at the bushes and bracken to get at the dwarves, knowing that they are fierce and unrelenting warriors who always fight to the death and therefore wanting to get in first.

  The Duke found himself slashing at one of the Nomoi knights, who had a weapon he had not seen before, a ball of iron with spikes in it, attached to a chain, which he was swinging wildly about his head. The Duke’s limp had stopped troubling him, for the heat of battle was a better medicine than panaceas or potions. He was dancing about on his feet, this way and that way, like a crazed Reindeer bull, avoiding deadly spikes and pikes and blades as they swung past his scalp. For a moment he regretted not wearing his armour, for the third attempt that the Nomoi knight made to swing his ball-and-chain at the Duke made a painful impact upon his back, on his chain mail shirt, and it felt as though his back had been pierced by blunt knives. But the Nomoi knight had not the art to move his weapon as quickly as a broad-sword, and as the knight withdrew his ball and chain to work up to another swing the Duke slashed at the chinks in his armour, lifted his broadsword and caught the chain links of the evil weapon on it as it swung around, and ripped it away from him, slinging it out into the forest where it could do no further harm. The knight’s face paled visibly within his faceplate and he cried out, “Mercy! Have mercy!” The Duke withdrew his broadsword and held his hand out. But, drawing his own dagger, the knight took the Duke’s hand and tried to pull his body down upon it, but the Duke switched his sword instead and it pierced the knight’s heart. The knight fell down and died at the Duke’s feet, a terrible grimace of pain twisting his face.

  In the meantime, the dwarves were attacking the soldiers, their hammers swinging wildly, accurately, with deadly force. The soldiers, shouting aloud, were hacking at the dwarves with their swords and poking them with their pikes, but dwarves are swifter than they look when it comes to swinging weapons and avoiding blades, and few of the men’s swords hit their targets, and many of the dwarves’ hammers hit theirs. The soldiers fell heavily, one after the other, one from a hammer-blow to the ankle, the next from a gentle tap on the knee, the next from a dwarf on his back, battening dents into his helmet and head with the blunt end of his hammer.

  Zhallad, ducking two knights attacking him at once, glanced between their legs to see an enemy soldier at the edge of the battle pausing for a moment to lean on his sword and laugh at one of his comrades, who was struggling with a dwarf riding his back and hitting him on side of his head with his hammer, for it was truly a comic sight, but the lazy soldier’s good humour was short-lived; in the midst of a chortle he was felled by a hammer-blow to the heart from a dwarf who came rocketing at him from the darkness of the forest floor, and Zhallad laughed at the sight – it seemed like a scene from a travelling Grotesquerie, a puppet charade put on by gnomes for the pleasure of lairds and yonglings.

  Strange the thoughts that strike one in the heat of battle. Zhallad leapt up again, felling the two attackers with one single thrust and wiping his brow in a single motion.

  Zhallad saw a partisan knight in trouble the same moment as the Duke saw it. A large Nomoi soldier, almost a giant, was pommelling the partisan on the crown of his head with a huge, bulging club.

  Zhallad and the Duke pounced together, but it took all of their combined might to wrestle the club out of the giant’s hands and force him to the ground. Grasping Zhallad’s throat with the thick, muscular fingers of his hand, the giant squeezed, but the Duke pierced the giant’s throat, killing him in one fierce thrust of his broadsword. Zhallad fell down, gasped and spluttered for air for a moment, while the Duke protected him from other attackers, but he recovered quickly, thanked his brother, took a swig from the waterbag at his belt and leaped into the midst of a mighty skirmish between five soldiers and six dwarves, swinging his own broadsword to and fro like the very scythe of Death.

  The remaining Nomoi knights fought bravely, but at the height of the battle their courage began to wane, for they could see that they had been bested by Duke Udvéwynn and his partisans. But they continued fighting, and something of the desperation of those who know they are facing their doom came upon them. The Duke and Zhallad fought side by side, their hardened battle technique and experience giving them everything they needed to lay to rest the last vestiges of hope in the enemy.

  One knight, terribly injured, but still conscious, was lying on the ground. King Haldar held a knife to his throat and asked him, “Did you see a dwarf, a king and his retinue?” The knight said, “The cave. That is where the dwarf-king was attacked by the Zwaegwyr! Perhaps he survived.” Then he laughed bitterly and died.

  King Haldar said, “What does he mean? What cave?” then launched himself back into the battle.

  The end of the battle was fierce and bloody. The partisans won.

  They accounted for their dead and injured. Two dwarves were killed and two more grievously wounded. A farmer’s arm had had the tendon sliced, and one of the partisan knights received a head-wound that incapacitated him; it was many months before that man was able to regain the power of speech and began walking again.

  But the bodies of the Imperial Nomoi knights littered the ground and they gathered them together and threw them onto a cart to be disposed of in the south where the Zwaegwyr scavenge.

  The Nomoi footsoldiers who had the good sense to surrender had their mail shirts, helmets and weapons stripped away and were forced to walk at sword-point to the castle where they were given food and water and told to walk north to join the partisans, for the evil elven rulers do not consider a soldier’s circumstances when he is defeated. Defining all prisoners of war as deserters, they execute them indiscriminately.

  After this King Haldar the dwarf said to the Duke, “Duke Maddon Udvéwynn, I ask a favour of you.”

  The Duke said, “Indeed King Haldar – I owe your people for the help you have given me in squashing these troublesome Nomoi gnats. What
favour, King? If I can help I will.”

  King Haldar said, “I would ask you for help to look for the body of my brother King Klaer and to find the cave the dying Nomoi spoke of.”

  “King Haldar, gladly I would help you, though I hope it is not your brother’s body that we find. We will form a small expeditionary party to explore the forests to the south to find any sign of King Klaer.”

  So the expeditionary party was formed.

  The Duke’s son, Hvars, twelve years old, was already an excellent tracker, and he came along. They brought seven extra ponies, tied to one another, as well, in case they found King Klaer and his retinue.

  Zhallad watched the Duke carefully. After the battle he was very exhausted for a short while and it had taken him some time to catch his breath. He rode his horse quite comfortably, but his face betrayed a twinge of pain every now and then.

  When Hvars was out of earshot, looking at some footprints some twenty yards ahead, the Duke turned to Zhallad and snapped, “Stop watching me brother – would you rather I sat at home in the parlour, reading and resting like an accursed invalid? If I am destined to die, then let it be in the heat of a battle! Or if not in the battle, then at least let me fight my last battle without you watching me like a hawk. Or a vulture!” But he said it with a chuckle that told Zhallad that he appreciated his brother’s concern, nonetheless.

  On the southern borders later that day, Hvars found the trail of a dwarf. “But it could be two dwarves,” he said, “I cannot tell for certain, for the footsteps are very light, and it could just be that the one dwarf stepped a little heavier occasionally, or was carrying something heavier. It could even be three, but I think it be one.”

  They followed the tracks through the Mthidthil forest, and it took a day and a half of tracking before they reached the Beaetharmae River. The tracks continued across a rocky part of the forest, towards a cave. King Haldar was riding the pony at the head of the party, next to the Duke’s son, and he stopped, for he had found something on the ground in front of the cave. King Haldar dismounted.

  “Ah, no,” said the dwarf, his voice full of grief. “That cloak, it couldn’t be…” He began weeping, and fell down onto the earth. For, there on the rocky ground in front of the cave was the skeleton of a dwarf, dressed in torn clothes and encloaked in a rich coat, woven of the finest velvet and embroidered in gold.

  Speaking in muted tones so that King Haldar would not hear, said the Duke to his captain, “A victim of the Zwaegwyr, I would warrant. See the marks on the bones – that is from the Zwaegwyr’s teeth, chewing on the bones. Hard to tell how long ago it happened – they eat the flesh off very quickly sometimes, less than a day, but it takes the ants a little longer to... Hmm,” said the Duke, turning the skeleton over carefully, and looking at the markings on the cloak. “The glyphs of Hringarin,” he said more loudly, “A dwarf of rank, perhaps, and a friend of the old ways, it says here. Here is written a name. King Klaer.”

  “Oh no!” said King Haldar, and he began weeping disconsolately.

  Duke Udvéwynn put his hand on King Haldar’s shoulder. King Haldar sobbed, “We cannot leave him here for his bones to be eaten by the wolves.”

  So a guard of honour was made to carry the body back to the keep. “What is to become of the gryphon?” said King Haldar, and Duke Udvéwynn made a mental note to ask him what he meant by that comment at some later time when the Dwarf-King was not weeping.

  The dwarf skeleton was wrapped carefully in the cloak and they strapped it onto one of the ponies that had been brought along for King Klaer to ride upon.

  Back at the castle the Duke had his carpenters make a handsome coffin and provided King Haldar with a carriage and an escort of four knights and ten footsoldiers. They put the skeleton in the coffin, wrapped still in the well-woven dwarven coat in which they had found him, and the whole company took the carriage north to the Underground Realm of UnderNurther where the remains were placed in a tomb with all the ancestors of the Dwarf-Kings, in great pomp and ceremony.

  The next night the Duke took ill, and Zhallad stayed at his bedside for many days. One afternoon he smiled through tears in his eyes and said to Zhallad, “Thankyou for returning home. Thankyou for being beside me for my last battle, brother.”

  That very night the Duke slept the sleep of death and went to the halls of his ancestors.

  After the funeral, Zhallad said to the young Duke, “Duke Hvars, Do you want to come with me on a journey?”

  Hvars said, “Where to, Uncle Zhallad?”

  Zhallad said, “To the mountains in the north. To a tavern, and a wench who knows how to pour a good mug of mead and put on the most excellent lamb roast or goat stew. Hinfane is her name, and she will be as a mother to you, boy, and I will be as a father to you, if you will have us. And I shall teach you what I know of swordsmanship, fighting, the sciences, and letters.”

  “Will we ever come back here?”

  “We will return to the estate of your father, if and when Hinfane is good and ready, or when you are of an age to take the reins of the estate. Your father’s estate will be in good hands – the steward is a capable man and a good organiser. But in the meantime you at least will have your own family, a mother and a father of sorts, though I am sure that I could never replace your own father.”