‘We are lively today, aren’t we?’ roared the dwarf, smashing his hammer against its teeth. The impact resulted in a metallic sounding echo, but that that was the extent of the blow’s effect.
Ahren looked over pleadingly at Falk but his master only shook his head. Then the apprentice glanced at Uldini, but he looked equally nonplussed.
‘The thing is made from massive iron or some other similar ore. I wouldn’t know where to start’, he shouted over the sound of the fighting.
Jelninolan too looked dumbfounded.
‘It has practically no reason, and all it can think of is eating. My magic is useless here, as is that of Tanentan’, she called out over the rhythmical hammering of the dwarf.
He was humming quietly to himself and hammering away at the enormous worm. His blows didn’t seem to be having much effect other than keeping the enemy at bay. Anytime the worm would contract, the warrior would hammer with all his might and direct the thing a little way back down the tunnel. When the worm expanded again, it would be back up at its original location.
Ahren found it hard to imagine that the dwarf stood there every day in the semi-light and on his own, waiting for the appearance of this creature, and that he’d been doing it for five summers already! Even if the dwarf didn’t follow them later, Ahren just couldn’t, in good conscience, imagine leaving him here to battle it out for another ninety-five years in this ever-repeating combat.
Even as he was thinking this, the worm pushed itself dramatically forward, its mouth circled itself around the figure with the hammer and then closed around the dwarf!
Ahren was dumb-struck, and Falk stormed forward with his broadsword to come to his friend’s assistance. His strikes left minimal dents on the worm’s surface, and apart from that, didn’t seem to have any effect on the monster. Horrific sounds could be heard coming from the creature’s innards and Ahren’s mind was filled with terrifying images as he imagined the dwarf being choked before being corroded away by the monster’s gastric acids. Feeling nauseous, he tried desperately to cast out the images.
Jelninolan looked the picture of misery, and Falk roared in rage as he laid into the beast, which was now pushing back at the Paladin.
Uldini had never had such a helpless look on his face, Khara was hiding her face behind her hands and Ahren stood there in shock, digging his fingers into Culhen’s fur to stop the wolf from doing anything reckless.
Then they heard an almighty, hollow smash coming from the inside of the worm. Its mouth shot open and the dwarf was spat out. The sharp smell that Ahren had got from the warrior’s clothes earlier was now filling the air in its intensity and steam was rising up from the squat figure, who, wet through, picked himself up and began smashing his hammer again against the worm’s head. The monster withstood three more blows before pulling its massive body backwards without warning and disappearing into the darkness.
‘You seem to have excited him, he was particularly grumpy today’, said the dwarf lightly and wiped the acids from his face.
The others stared at him in disbelief. His skin was slightly redder than before and his clothing looked even more dishevelled, but he was uninjured.
‘How did you manage that?’ asked Falk in disbelief.
The nameless dwarf shrugged his shoulders.
‘The first time was pretty frightening, I’ll give you that. That time I hit and kicked all around me until I was out of breath, but just before I lost consciousness, I found a slightly softer spot at the top of the gums. I hit that spot and the creature spat me out. Seems to be some sort of reflex. And my tough skin helps of course. And with every spittle bath, it gets tougher. Luckily, the thing isn’t capable of chewing. That would be too much of a good thing.’
As he spoke, he wiped his hands clean before finally running them along the walls of the tunnel. Ahren heard a low hissing sound and saw how the surface of the rock became smoother with the effect of the saliva.
So these round tunnels must have been dug by the worm. Now some of the occurrences were beginning to make more sense to Ahren, but he still had so many questions. ‘Why do you confront him every day at this spot? Why does he come back? What dangers does he present to the dwarves? And can we not just drive him away without killing him.’ The questions tumbled out of him. What he had just seen had put the young man into a frenzy of excitement, and the result was this torrent of questions.
‘My goodness, you certainly can’t be accused of not being curious’, laughed the dwarf before looking over at Falk. ‘Does he always ask so many questions?’
‘Welcome to my world’, said Falk drily. ‘You gave me a real fright there’, he added seriously.
‘Not my intention. He was a lot more stubborn today than usual. Maybe, because I have reinforcements now’, suggested the dwarf.
This was the first time Ahren had seen the warrior not in his normally exuberant mood. The serious thoughtfulness that he was now displaying showed the young man that there was more to the dwarf than a wicked tongue and an unbridled toughness.
‘First, come with me. We won’t see him again until tomorrow’, said the nameless dwarf thoughtfully. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know when we have something to eat. Maybe you can think of a way of breaking the deadlock.’
He led them a few paces into the tunnel, where an opening appeared to the left, hewn roughly into the rock and so small that the dwarf could barely fit through. On account of his substantial body build, the opening was wide enough for the others too. On the other side was a craggy cave with a woollen blanket and an enormous bundle.
‘Someone brings me provisions once a month. I’m so far off the beaten track that even the most stubborn dwarf has to acknowledge that I’d starve if it weren’t for the deliveries. But they never look at me when they come, and they don’t talk to me. At the end of the day, the old traditions have to be respected.’ His voice was dripping with irony.
‘You really haven’t changed a bit. Even in those days you had no time for orders or rules’, scolded Falk but in a soft tone.
The nameless one laughed aloud.
‘There’s just too much vitality in me. Do you know why I want the Ancestry Name? So nobody can tell me what to do anymore. My name will be Trogadon and finally the orders will stop.’
Ahren had heard that name somewhere before. Then the penny dropped.
‘Didn’t we want to collect this Trogadon’s shield to use it for my Naming Ritual?’, he asked eagerly.
The dwarf pricked up his ears and looked impishly over at Falk.
‘What do you want with that old piece of metal? And what kind of a ritual is your apprentice talking about? I’m slowly beginning to think that you didn’t just come here to say hello and to help me eliminate an Ore Worm.’ His eyes twinkled humorously, but his tone of voice had become serious.
Falk’s look became sober. ‘We need your help, my friend. Much as I value being with you, if you couldn’t help us, we wouldn’t have come here.’
Ahren gasped, but the dwarf seemed untroubled by the unvarnished truth. On the contrary, his mischievous demeanour returned, and he spread out his arms demonstratively.
‘Then make yourselves at home. My shabby cave is your shabby cave. There’s fresh water back there that runs down from the roof, and in the ground is a fissure where it runs off. You can follow the call of nature there too, so that the smell doesn’t last too long for those with a sensitive nose.’ He bowed before Jelninolan, who struggled to keep a straight face and to maintain her dignity as she looked down at him with a superior look.
‘I think before we discuss our request, we should deal with this worm, which shouldn’t in fact, exist at all anymore’, said Uldini aloofly.
The travellers laid down their belongings and found a spot for themselves and their sleeping mats, while the nameless dwarf walked up and down at the cave opening and began telling his story.
‘It was the Elder Fulretedurkolok who gave me the task of slaying this Ore Worm that time. It had turne
d up just ten years ago at the outer reaches of the mines and had started eating up the deposits we had just been mining. Hammers, axes, pickaxes, Deep Fire, and even a damned Dragon Bow – nothing would stop it. Finally, we had to seal up the lower levels of the northern mine even though there’s still plenty to be mined there. The Clan Board in Thousand Halls was called on for advice, but nobody could think of a way of dealing with the thing. The old texts only say to use the essence of nature against it, but they don’t say how. It was just too long ago. Some of the archives were submerged during an earthquake and nobody has yet gone to the trouble of digging them up again. I was presenting my head on a silver tablet when I requested an Ancestry Name. It didn’t take them fifty heartbeats and I found myself on my way here with the order to kill the worm, or to hold him back until the old library has been exposed again, which they reckoned would take a hundred summers.’
He drew breath and then continued while the others lay down and listened eagerly.
‘I followed the worm into his tunnel and watched him for a while. He digs the quickest route to the deposits and he weighs up the amount of deposits against its quality. Low quality ore just keeps him alive, but ore of a higher quality helps him to grow and makes his armour stronger. There’s a profitable copper vein nearby and when he made his way there, I was waiting for him. A few dozen hammer-blows later and he retreated to strengthen himself on some copper, and then he came back the next day. It took me a while to find the perfect point, so that the beast wouldn’t try to dodge into another tunnel. There were two or three close shaves and he almost escaped. So long as I stop him here, his instinct is to come back this way again, day after day. He isn’t intelligent enough to dig his way around me. And so we fight every day, and then he retires to his copper in order to replenish himself. I can’t move forwards because it would influence his route, and he can’t get past me. It seems he only eats enough to attack me again, so our stand-off could last quite some time yet. All in all, I think I’m doing quite well.’
The dwarf looked with self-satisfaction at the travellers, then raised his eyebrows.
‘Now tell me your story’, he commanded.
Falk drew breath to prepare himself to speak, but Uldini was quicker.
‘The young lad there is the future Thirteenth Paladin. HE, WHO FORCES is gradually waking up day by day and we have to carry out Ahren’s Naming before the Adversary gets the chance to suck the blessing of the gods out of our apprentice’s body. And for this we need an artefact and a representative of each of the god’s three folks. Human and elf are present here, we’re just missing a dwarf. Falk had recommended you and so here we are’, he explained quickly and in a droning, almost bored tone of voice. Then he folded his arms.
‘We have little more than a moon to carry out the ritual and so we don’t have much wriggle room to be scrapping every day with an Ore Worm.’ His last words were not only aimed at the dwarf, but also at Falk, but the Forest Guardian looked away and remained silent.
‘So, the Thirteenth Paladin? And isn’t it about bloody well time. I know over a hundred dwarves who, ever since the end of the Dark Days, have been standing in torpidity, waiting for the return of the Adversary. But they’re all in Thousand Halls and the way there is far too long or you could have asked one of them instead. Tough luck for you, but good luck for me’, he exclaimed.
Falk cleared his throat and the nameless one grew serious.
‘Of course, I’ll help you, you can be sure of that. But without my name, there is no way I can never get to an artefact of the dwarves. And anyway, this Ore Worm is a real danger. When they get to a certain size, they divide. Then we’re dealing with pairs of them and in a few years, there will be no ore anymore. No ore, no weapons, no weapons, no half-way decent war against Dark Ones.’
It seemed to Ahren as if the dwarf found it impossible to suppress his exuberant style for any length of time and, although the apprentice liked him, he wondered if the squat figure he was looking at really was the right choice for this post of responsibility. On the other hand, Uldini hadn’t exactly been over the moon at the thought of Ahren being a Paladin aspirant, and so the young man decided to reserve judgement for the time being.
Uldini seemed concentrated for the first time since they had seen the worm. He wasn’t going to abandon his hostility towards the dwarf in the immediate future it seemed, but nonetheless he understood the importance of stopping the creature.
‘Right then’, he mumbled, ‘we have an enormous worm that likes eating ore and that we have to prevent from reaching platinum, or our problems will multiply. The only thing that drives him is his hunger, and so we can only manipulate him in a very restricted way.’
‘What about magic?’ asked Falk. Can you not melt him down, or something?’
Uldini shook his head. ‘Much too big and solid. Anything powerful enough to damage the worm would collapse the walls around us. His body is metallic and generally magic doesn’t work very well against him. The denser the material, the less penetrable it is. That applies to magic too’.
A brooding silence descended on the group and the rest of the day was spent exchanging ideas and then dismissing them. Finally they all retired, irritated, to bed.
The next morning they all sat together again and finally hammered out a plan. Uldini would use his magic to create lances out of the rocks, which would impale the worm as soon as he came along the tunnel. The two magicians would strengthen the tips of the lances using magic, and that would hopefully prove sufficient to bore through the worm’s body. Bows, wolf’s teeth and swords would be of no help whatsoever and so Ahren, Khara, Falk and Culhen were condemned to doing nothing. A nervousness descended on the whole group as the vibrating walls announced the impending arrival of the worm.
All were at the ready as Ahren peered through the gap in the rock which separated their den from the passageway where the dwarf and the Ore Worm slugged it out every day. Jelninolan and Uldini were both kneeling on the ground and had spent hours carving signs into the rock, which would shoot up a mighty rock spear as soon as the worm broke into the carved magical circle. With a little luck the magically enhanced stone arrow tips would have enough strength to bore into the huge creature.
Khara pushed in beside him and tried to shove him out of the way so she would have a better idea of what was going on outside. Ahren gave her an angry look but reluctantly made room for her, while at the same time ordering Culhen for the twentieth time to lie down and not make a sound. The apprentice had to admit that the role of onlooker no longer suited him very well. He was itching to help and when he glanced at Khara he could see that she too was desperate to get involved. At last the tunnel began to vibrate violently and the whole group was gripped by a wave of anxiety. The worm had arrived and soon they would know if they could leave the tunnel, or if they would fail in their task.
Chapter 19
27 days to the winter solstice
The following days were full of frustrating setbacks.
The worm had effortlessly destroyed the magic rock-lances and had become considerably more aggressive in his efforts to get past the dwarf and his companions. This had been their best plan, and their following efforts only became more desperate.
The Ancients concocted walls of ice, filled a section of tunnel with poisonous gas, threw a potpourri of magic into the gaping mouth of the worm and tried to play with his inferior mind, but all to no avail.
The worm seemed to be a force of nature and nothing or nobody was going to stop him. Nobody apart from the nameless dwarf, who after every failed attempt would lay into the monster, humming to himself and seemingly without a care in the world, until the monster would retreat, leaving his opponents to ponder the next day’s encounter.
Uldini and Jelninolan ventured into more obscure magic, and Falk did his best to help drive the snake away. While all this was going on Ahren and Khara decided to explore the tunnels nearby in the vague hope of finding something that could be useful in the figh
t against the creature. Culhen played his part as a sniffer dog, who could alert them to any other creatures around.
The dwarf had given them the little Deep Fire to use and so they stalked, quietly and carefully, through the underground domains and with the help of the faint red light they could make out unimagined wonders. It seemed that the worm had the ability to detect not only veins of ore but also cavities in the rock, for his tunnels often led through natural caves. Ahren presumed that the creature was able to preserve his energy that way by not boring through more rock than was necessary. That would also explain the stubborn repetition of his movement patterns.
On their reconnaissance trips they came across subterranean rivers full of blind fish, crystal formations in the most marvellous colours and even a current of molten rock winding its way sluggishly to a fissure into the depths.
After a while they had explored everywhere that was in the vicinity without having ventured too far from the safety of their companions. Every evening Ahren would sketch with a piece of coal a crude drawing of where they had explored on the back wall of their cavern and explain to the others about their discoveries. The magicians would listen half-heartedly but were too caught up in their own dilemma to respond to the apprentice’s enthusiastic reports with anything more than a faint smile. Ahren brought pieces of the crystal with him and even caught one of the blind fish in the hope that one of them might be of use in poisoning the monster, but no matter what was thrown into the worm’s mouth, it had no effect whatsoever.
In the end Khara and Ahren just stayed, downhearted, in the cavern and practised each other’s language, or went through various Windblade manoeuvres. And after half a dozen failed attempts the two magicians admitted defeat and they all sat down together to discuss the situation.
‘We can’t think of anything else, and time is against us. We have to get back to the Clan Halls, then go to Kelkor and find one of the Wild Folk, and then on to the Place of Ritual’, complained Uldini.
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