The Covenant of The Forge dnt-1

by Dan Parkinson

  “I see no guards,” Slide Tolec muttered. “Where are they? There are always guards.”

  “And always lights at night,” someone else noted. “The gold people are night-blind. But I see no lights.”

  It was true. On the slope below, the spired citadel stood in darkness, silhouetted against the moonlit rubble-fields beyond. Only moon-shadows moved on its ramparts, darknesses among the patterns of red and white moonlight, sliding slowly inward as the moons Solinari and Lunitari crept higher in the spangled sky.

  “Is it a trap?” one of the Daergar captains asked. “Do they somehow know we are here?”

  “They know nothing,” Glome snapped. “The Daewar are tricky, but they don’t read minds or see in the dark. We have moved only by night since we assembled at the pits six days ago.”

  “Then where are their guards?” the Daergar growled, his voice muffled by the slitted iron mask he wore. Some of the Daergar removed their masks at night, when the light did not pain them, but some chose to wear them even then, and the effect was disconcerting when they spoke — a voice coming from a faceless ovoid of dark metal whose only feature was a narrow slit in front of the hidden eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter where they are,” Glome said. “Visible or not, they will be dead soon enough. Are the trundles prepared?”

  “They’ve been in place since just after sunset,” Slide Tolec reminded him. “And they have been loaded for an hour. You can see them as well as we can.”

  The trundles were Glome’s own plan — long, pegged-down nets that spanned a quarter mile of slopes above the Daewar citadel. The nets had been carried all the way from Theibardin and were set in place after darkness fell. Once they were in place, teams of dwarves had begun filling them with stones weighing forty to sixty pounds each. Hundreds of tons of stone now bulged the nets, and the keeper cables were as taut as iron bars.

  “Then give the signal,” Glome commanded. “We are ready.”

  “Hold!” someone called. “Look!”

  Below the trundle nets, there was movement on the slope. At first it was furtive, hidden by shadows. Then into the moonlight ran a crowd of dwarves, leaping and shouting, heading downhill toward the silent Daewar citadel. There were a dozen or more of them — ragged, wild-haired creatures waving various weapons as they ran. Their cries were shouts of hatred, wild war cries that echoed from the slopes.

  “Rust and tarnish!” Glome swore. “Those Klar … what do they think they’re doing?”

  “Who knows what Klar think?” a Daergar warrior rumbled from behind his featureless mask. “But they will ruin everything.”

  “No, they won’t,” Glome decided. “Slide! The signal!”

  Slide Tolec put a short trumpet to his lips and blew a blast, then another. All up and down the net line, dwarves raised heavy axes above the keeper cables, and when Slide’s trumpet sounded again, they sliced downward. With a crash that grew like thunder, the nets collapsed and tons of stone plunged down the slope, picking up momentum with each yard. The dust that rose above the landslide was a dense cloud, billowing upward in the garish light of the moons. Beyond it, the thunder of falling, crashing stone drowned out the screams of the dozen or so Klar trapped ahead of the fall.

  Again Slide Tolec sounded his trumpet, and the battle cries of thousands of Theiwar and Daergar rose above the tumult of falling stone crashing down upon the Daewar citadel. A torrent of dark shapes on the mountainside, Glome’s army charged down the rock-scoured slopes, following after the chaos they had unleashed.

  Parts of the citadel still stood, broken spires thrusting skyward in the moonlit dust, but there were great holes in the structure where walls had fallen under the torrent of stone, and the Theiwar, Daergar, and remaining Klar poured through them, fanning out to occupy the old stronghold of the Daewar. Shouts of “Kill the Daewar!” rang and echoed, then died away in confused silence. Somewhere a querulous voice called, “Where are they? There’s no one here!”

  For more than an hour, in angry silence, the invaders searched level after level of the Daewar’s mountainside city. They found nothing. The place was completely deserted. Not so much as a rug or piece of furniture remained.

  It was by tracing the tracks of the ore carts back into the stone of Sky’s End, that they found the sealed gate where the fresh delving of the Daewar had begun. It was a circular slab of solid granite, twelve feet in diameter, set into the neck of a tunnel.

  “The delvings.” Glome the Assassin decided. “They have completed their new city under the mountain and withdrawn to it.” He pointed at the granite slab. “Bring it down,” he commanded. “The Daewar are on the other side.”

  They brought out their tools and set to work. Outside, beyond the wrecked walls of the old citadel of Daebardin, daylight came and went and came again as determined dwarves chipped away at the edges of the plug gate. Finally, though, it was loose and they attacked it with prybars. After a moment, the thing teetered outward and fell as dwarves scampered aside, then drew their weapons and poured through the opening.

  Beyond should have been an underground city, a city filled with Daewar and Daewar treasures. Instead, there was only a tunnel — a huge, track-floored tunnel that receded southward toward the heart of Sky’s End.

  A cluster of dark-blade-wielding Daergar turned to stare with blank, iron faces at the leader of the Theiwar. “So they are here?” one of them hissed. “Where, Theiwar?”

  “Deeper,” Glome decided. “The Daewar prince said they were delving deep. We must follow this tunnel. Their new city is ahead somewhere.”

  “It had better be,” a Daergar rumbled.

  Mile after mile the tunnel ran, deeper and deeper into the stone core of the mountain. Almost featureless, except for widened caverns at regular intervals, where the telltale marks of pulled spikes — where cart-track had been pulled up — spread into double pairs. Here, in the Daewar’s delvings, the ore carts had been able to pass, laden carts rumbling outward, empties heading back into the mountain. With something like awe, the Theiwar studied these marks, as they studied the precise chiseling of the walls where stone had been removed a few feet at a time to bore the tunnel.

  The huge tunnel, driving straight into the heart of a mountain, was impressive. It was not a thing beyond their understanding — many Theiwar were fair tunnelers — but it was a feat far larger than anything they had ever attempted, and the farther they went the more they realized the enormity of what the Daewar had done. If this mighty tunnel were no more than a road leading to their underground city, then what must the city be like?

  After a few miles, dome’s army began to shrink as individuals and small groups, mostly Theiwar, held back, waited for the rest to pass, then quietly turned and went back the way they had come. It had occurred to many of them that if there were a city at the end of this road there must be far more Daewar than anyone had thought. The idea of attacking a tribe that outnumbered them, on its own ground, gave many a Theiwar second thoughts about the whole venture.

  Few of the Daergar turned back. Driven by the intense, single-minded stubbornness of natural miners, the Daergar would go on, and some of the wild, erratic Klar with them.

  Far into Sky’s End, Slide Tolec noticed that the Theiwar were far less numerous than they had been, and he edged aside, looking back along the great tunnel. Pretending to adjust his boots, he knelt beside a wall while the mixed army — still several thousand strong — marched past him.

  When they had all gone by, he stood and glanced around. For a second he thought he was alone, then a shadow moved nearby, and a familiar voice said, “You, too, Slide Tolec?”

  Brule Vaportongue stepped from shadows into the dim light of Slide’s oil-wick. “You have realized it, too, then?”

  “Realized what?” Slide snapped the words. The half-Daergar dark-seeker had startled him, and he resented it.

  “That it is time to leave this place.” Brule shrugged. “No Daewar fortune awaits us here. Only death. This road is not the en
trance to a city. It is exactly what it seems. A road. The Daewar built it, and the Daewar have gone where it leads, and Glome the Assassin is going to his death.”

  “You fear the Daewar?” Slide sneered.

  “Not as much as I fear my half-kin.” Brule shrugged again, not reacting to the taunt. “I know the taste of the stubbornness that drives the Daergar. It is what Glome played on to get them to follow him. But I know a thing about that stubbornness that even Glome does not know.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The blood call of the Daewar,” Brule Vaportongue said, “can be opened, but not closed. My half-brothers there” — he waved in the direction the dwarven army had gone — “seek the blood of the Daewar. But if they are denied it, they will find other blood. The Daergar are like their blades. Once drawn, they will not be sheathed again until they have tasted blood.”

  Thoughtfully, Slide Tolec gazed down the tunnel where the sounds of Glome’s invasion were fading. Then he adjusted his pack, weapons, and belts and turned away. “I’m tired of this,” he said. “I’m going home.”

  “Good choice.” Brule Vaportongue nodded and fell into step with the Theiwar.

  Glome’s dwindling army was twelve miles into the heart of Sky’s End when it reached the second blockade, a grating made of four-inch-thick bars of forged iron, beaten together in hammer welds.

  Glome pounded on the barricade in a rage. “Cart track!” he shouted. “Rust and corrode the Daewar, they’ve made a gate of cart track!” Panting in frustration, he gestured angrily, “Open it!”

  Other Theiwar and several Daergar came forward to peer at the gate, holding up torches. The light shone through the grating, gleaming on metalwork beyond where a pair of cable winches sat, beyond reach as were the spike-locks which sealed the gate to its deep slot in the cavern floor.

  “We can’t open this,” a Daergar said. “It can only be opened from the other side.”

  “Then cut it!” Glome roared.

  “With what?” the Daergar asked, his voice a silky purr as he turned to face the Theiwar leader. “We brought no forging tools. No steel chisels or saws, only delving tools. You said that was all we would need.”

  “Well, I didn’t know about this!”

  “You didn’t know about a lot of things, Theiwar,” the Daergar purred. “You have wasted our time.” The blank iron mask turned slightly away then back, and Glome barely got his shield up in time to catch the dark-steel blade slicing toward his throat.

  “Defend!” Glome shouted, blocking another cut with his own blade. “The Daergar have turned on us!”

  In the blink of an eye, the big tunnel was a tumult of clangs and clatters, shouts and screams as dwarf attacked dwarf, hundreds on each side, their shadows huge on cavern walls in the murky light of fallen torches.

  Glome dodged and parried, hampered by the fighting all around him. He thrust, cut, and spun, shield and sword flashing alternately as weapons and defense. All around him, Theiwar and Daergar were locked in ringing, mortal combat, and bright blood pooled on the tunnel’s stone floor. For long minutes Glome stood his ground, clearing space around him again and again, his booted feet treading the bodies of fallen allies and fallen enemies. Then he was borne down under a concerted rush of Daergar, with Theiwar defenders piling onto them from behind.

  The battle raged before the mute iron gate, then spread back up the tunnel as dwarves fled, and other dwarves pursued. Hundreds lay dead in the howling darkness as blood-washed torches sputtered out, and a time came when the darkness was a silence as well.

  The echoes faded northward as the battle continued there, going away, and in the wide cavern before the Daewar gate, nothing moved except the flickering small flame of a dropped lantern.

  Then there was movement. Fallen bodies piled on the floor shifted, and shifted again, and a head was raised cautiously. For long moments the figure was still except for a blank, featureless face turning this way and that. Then he pushed bodies aside and climbed out. From helmet to boots he was drenched with blood, even the slitted iron mask dripping gore. Across its eye-slit was a deep furrow where it had deflected a sword cut.

  He stood, looked around at the silent death littering the tunnel, then turned to the iron-bar gate and growled deep in his throat. With a curse he pulled away the mask from his face and flung it aside, then stooped to find his shield and blades.

  The Daewar would pay for his humiliation. Someday, they would pay. Let them think — for now — that Glome the Assassin was dead. Let them all think that. They would learn otherwise some day. It was not the way of Glome the Assassin to die. It was his way to kill.

  Through murder and manipulation, Glome the Assassin had become chieftain among the Theiwar of Theibardin, and being chieftain had given him a dream.

  Glome intended to be king of all Kal-Thax, and it didn’t matter to him who he had to kill to get there.

  19

  The Deeps

  The Daewar explorer-spy, Urkhan, had died trying to chart the wonders beneath Cloudseeker Mountain. But in dying, he had given birth to a dream. Now Olim Goldbuckle looked upon the gigantic, dimly lighted cavern that was Urkhan’s legacy, and wondered for the first time whether even he, the prince of all the Daewar, were dwarf enough to make the dream come true.

  To eyes accustomed to the contours of mountainsides and the limitations of delves, the cavern was mind-boggling. Even after seeing its wonders a hundred times, it was still breathtaking. Miles wide, its lower perimeter was a series of rocky shores running down to a clear-water subterranean lake. From the east shore, where the Daewar had begun the delving of quarters, the far shores were barely visible, even where the quartz light shafts were strong. But rising above the center of the lake was a funnel-like pillar of stone, widening toward the top where it blended into the great, vaulted reaches of the cavern’s ceiling.

  Half a mile high, and wider than that at its top, the stalactite seemed a monumental pillar upon which the entire mountain might rest. In the varying light, the serrated surfaces of the thing glistened wetly, and water dripped from nodules along its sides.

  “It is living stone,” Gem Bluesleeve breathed for the dozenth time, gazing in awe at the huge pillar in the distance. “The waters that created it still nourish it.”

  “No waters created that,” old Slate Coldsheet rumbled. “It is a god’s work. Only Reorx could have managed such a creation.”

  “Reorx had a little help from that big sinkhole between the Windweavers, then,” Olim Goldbuckle said. “Water creates stalactites, and the water must come from there.”

  “Where does the wind come from?” Gem Bluesleeve asked, pointing out at the wave-flecked surface of the lake. “In all the days since we moved Daebardin here, the air has never been still.”

  “The vents,” Olim Goldbuckle said, then glanced at Gem. “Oh, you hadn’t heard the scouts’ reports? It seems there are natural vents around the mountain’s flanks. They don’t know how many, yet, but one of them is south of here, right in the bottom of that walled valley that the Theiwar call Deadfall. And there are high shafts at the crest. Mica Diamondtoe believes there are upward vents around the sinkhole up there, right at the base of Galefang, and that it is the winds on the Windweavers that create the draft down here.”

  “If there are vents that admit the wind,” Gem frowned, “then there are vents that will admit enemies.”

  “As we find them, we will grate them.” Olim nodded. “Just as we did the road from Sky’s End.” He looked upward, where the sounds of delving and building were concentrated. Above the east shoreline of the big lake, the cavern walls rose in a series of stairlike levels, and it was here that the Daewar were digging in. Three separate levels of delvings were under way, and more were planned. Everywhere up the wall were Daewar — thousands of them visible at any time — digging away at the porous levels of stone, piercing into the depths beyond the natural cavern, hollowing out cubicles that connected with other cubicles. Places for people to live, p
laces for exchanging goods, places for councils and gatherings — the beginnings of a city.

  From the delves, along a series of roads and tunnels, ore carts rumbled, carrying select rubble from the delves to other, distant caverns which would be farming warrens when their fields were perfected. It was in those caverns that Daewar daredevils were harnessing the power of the tractor worms to draw sleds to crush the stone that would be the basis of topsoil when it was completed.

  In the meantime, foraging parties were roaming the caverns, gathering tons of edible fungus, various kinds of meat that no one questioned too far, and a dozen varieties of vining fruits which grew naturally in these subterranean realms, wherever there was light from a quartz layer.

  “It is magnificent,” Olim Goldbuckle said, surveying his new realm. “It goes beyond anything that any of us dreamed.”

  Slate Coldsheet shook his grizzled head, frowning. “This place is big, right enough. But I’d feel better if I knew how people are supposed to live here.”

  The others looked at him curiously. “Like people live anywhere else, old one,” Gem said. “By using what we have found.”

  “But what have we found?” the old delvemaster spread his arms, turning. “A place. A place with water and worms.”

  “And fresh air and sunlight,” Gem added.

  “And — Reorx willing — defendable against invasion,” the prince pointed out. “What is bothering you, Delvemaster?”

  “Food and fuel,” Slate said flatly. “Oh, our foragers are feeding us now, but those supplies will run out. And wood. We need timber, Sire. We will always need timber, and no forests grow beneath mountains.”

  Olim scratched his beard, looking up at the delves. Without timber for beams, they would be shallow and unreliable. Doors would be a problem, as well, and furnishings.

  “And rich ores,” the delvemaster continued. “There are no real lodes here, Sire. And no way to reach the rich veins to the south.”