The Half Dwarf Prince: 02 - The Dwarf War

by J. M. Fosberg

  The bodies of the dwarves of Tiefes Loch hadn’t been touched. Grizzle went to the first dwarf he came across and pulled back his armor. He had the swirling black lines on his chest. He went to the next dwarf and he had the tattoos also. The others were checking the bodies of the other dwarves.

  “All of them,” Grizzle said.

  “You know what this means,” Kraft said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Frau said. “We need to go talk to the ones who are still alive.”

  They walked between the walls and out onto the main road, over to the edge of the pit. It was forty feet deep, so many of the dwarves who hadn’t died when they were thrown into the pits by the violent wind had died when other dwarves and weapons had come down on top of them. There were still hundreds of dwarves alive in the pits, though. Grizzle went to the edge of the pit and looked down. Some of the dwarves had obviously tried to climb out and been shot by the dwarves of Shinestone. He looked around and saw a fallen tree across the road.

  “Hey you,” he said, getting the attention of the nearest dwarf.

  “Yes, King Grizzle,” the dwarf answered.

  “Grab the others and bring that fallen tree over here. We need to talk to some of these dwarves,” Grizzle said.

  “Yes, King Grizzle,” the dwarf said, and then ran off to follow the order. A few minutes later, two dozen dwarves were carrying a tree that was nearly a hundred feet tall. After ten minutes of hacking the branches off, it was just one long log about four feet wide.

  “Once we roll that in there you make sure that none of them come out of there except the ones we let come up,” Frau said to the dwarves.

  “Yes, Queen Gemcutter,” one of them answered.

  She looked down into the trench, and then over at the dwarves. “Roll it in.”

  The tree rolled into the pit. About sixty feet of it was at an angle in the trench, and the rest of it stuck out into the air. The second it fell into the trench, dwarves started climbing up it with weapons in hand. The dwarves standing around the trench started firing their crossbows.

  “Let one through!” Grizzle yelled, and the dwarves let the one of the dwarves climbing up past, while continuing to fire at the other dwarves who were coming up the tree.

  The dwarf that was let through clambered up the tree and leapt out of the hole to the side. He swung his sword at Grundel, but Grundel blocked the attack with one axe and lopped off the dwarf’s arm with the other. The dwarf just reached down and tried to grab his sword with his other hand. Grundel kicked him in the chest, knocking him back. A couple of other dwarves ran over and held the dwarf down. Grundel reached down, pressing Firebringer against the bleeding stump and cauterizing the wound. The dwarf screamed in pain. Grundel pulled down the dwarf’s armor, exposing the tattoos on his chest.

  “Why do you have the mark of chaos on you?” Grizzle asked the obvious question.

  “I am a Delvidge dwarf,” the dwarf answered defiantly. He knew he was beaten, and now he would be defiant until death.

  “All of the dwarves who came with Bergmann were Delvidge dwarves?” Grizzle asked.

  “All of the dwarves of Tiefes Loch are Delvidge dwarves. Bordin has grown weak. The dwarves of Bordin are growing weaker and weaker. Bordin is the god of a dying race. Delvidge is leading the dwarves back to power. We are the superior race and we will rule over all. You cannot defeat us,” the dwarf said, and then spit on Grizzle.

  “Says the dwarf of a defeated army,” Kraft said.

  “Tiefes Loch will send more. You can’t defeat us all,” the dwarf said.

  “They are all going to be like this,” Kraft said.

  Grizzle nodded. “These are not Bordin dwarves. These dwarves are evil and devout. There is no hope for them,” he said, looking to Frau.

  Frau nodded, then she pulled her sword out and slid it into the dwarf’s chest. Within seconds the dwarf was dead and his skin was blue, all heat sucked from his body. She looked at the dwarves who had been holding the dwarf.

  “You heard what he said. These dwarves are not of Bordin. They are children of chaos. Push the tree into the pit. I will send more dwarves down with oil. Pour the oil into the trench and burn them all. Once they are all dead, I want all of these bodies thrown in and burned with them.”

  “Yes, Queen Gemcutter,” one of them said, and then they went to the tree and started pushing it, following it around the edge of the pit as it tilted up and then fell into the trench, crushing the evil dwarves beneath it.

  Once they were back up in Shinestone and Frau had sent two hundred more dwarves down with a couple dozen barrels of oil, they gathered in the King’s Hall of Shinestone.

  “How could this have happened without any of us knowing?” Kraft asked.

  “It has to have started decades ago,” Grizzle said.

  “Centuries,” Frau said.

  They all looked at her. “Before we killed Verrator, he said that Tiefes Loch had been making their own rules for over three hundred years. He said that they had tripled their population since Bergmann became king. Bergmann has only been king for a little over a century, which means that his father was the one who converted three hundred years ago.”

  “That doesn’t explain how we never found out,” Grizzle said.

  “He killed them,” Kraft said.

  “Who?” Grundel asked.

  “Everyone who wouldn’t convert. Brundel Bergmann was a very clever dwarf. He would have spent years preaching why the dwarves needed to change their ways, then he would have converted the ones he knew for sure would follow him. Once he had them, he would give the rest of Tiefes Loch the opportunity to convert. Dwarves wouldn’t back down. It would have been a war inside Tiefes Loch between those who converted and those who didn’t. When it was done, everyone who was left would be converts. That is why Verrator told you that since Bergmann became king they had tripled their population, because the two hundred years between when they converted Tiefes Loch and when Bergmann took the throne had been spent reestablishing their population,” Kraft said.

  “How could you know that?” Frau said.

  “I knew Brundel. He was always preaching that we were a superior race, and that we were slowly dying. I agreed with some things he said. He could never have convinced me to abandon Bordin, but as the leader of his kingdom I can see how he would have been able to slowly turn enough dwarves to convert or kill the rest. It’s the only way he would have been able to do it without Bordin dwarves telling the rest of us,” Kraft said.

  “So what do we do now?” Grundel asked.

  “There is only one thing we can do,” Kraft said, looking to Grizzle.

  Grizzle looked at Kraft, nodding his agreement, and then turned to Frau. “An entire dwarven kingdom committed to Delvidge is as dangerous to the world as Miskrull, especially if they are as big as we have been led to believe. We have to gather the combined forces of Evermount, Shinestone, and Haufen and purge the world of this threat. We have to take back Tiefes Loch. Delvidge has destroyed one kingdom and is forcing us to destroy another. When this is all done, the dwarves will be very weak. I have to agree with you, Kraft. The way Brundel went about it may have been wrong, but we have to acknowledge that the world is changing, and we will have to change with it. We have been slowly dying, and in a year we will have nearly made our race extinct. We cannot allow the dwarves to ever become this weak again. These are issues to be dealt with after the threat, but we need to start talking with our dwarves and coming up with ideas. We can’t let this be the end of us.”

  “I agree, Grizzle, but for now we must focus on war. We are facing dwarves of Delvidge, and they will have the advantage of defense,” Kraft said.

  Epilogue

  Gruedor Bergmann woke up in his bed in Tiefes Loch. He felt fear like he had never felt. He knew in that instant that he was in the presence of his god. Only Delvidge could impose such an emotion on him. He had never felt this before, but his father had tried to explain it to him once. Being in the prese
nce of the god now, he knew that his father had utterly failed to explain this emotion. There was no way to explain the intensity of it. He rolled out of his bed, hitting the floor. He went to his knees and kept his eyes on the ground.

  “Gruedor Bergmann, your father and his army failed. They were defeated at Shinestone. You are now the king of Tiefes Loch. The other dwarf kingdoms are uniting against you. I will give you the weapon you need to defend against them. Gather your one hundred best fighters in the King’s Hall. Have them in full armor with their weapons in hand. When there are one hundred of them in the room, leave the room and close the door behind you,” the ominous voice told him.

  “I will do what you command,” Gruedor said without looking up. The voice did not respond, so Gruedor got to his feet and ran out of his room. He ran as fast as he could down the halls of Tiefes Loch to General Moglin’s room and banged on his door. He didn’t wait for an answer. He burst into the room.

  The general was still rolling out of bed. “Prince Gruedor, what is it?” he asked sleepily.

  “It is King Bergmann now. My father fell at Shinestone. The army was defeated. Delvidge has promised us a way to defeat Bordin’s dwarves. Gather the hundred best warriors in Tiefes Loch and have them in full armor with weapons in hand in the King’s Hall. Remember those were Delvidge’s exact words: in full armor with weapons in hand. I will be waiting in the King’s Hall,” Gruedor said, turning and walking out of the room before the general could even respond. The mention of his father’s death and the command of Delvidge had woken him up, though. The general ran out of the room and headed down the hall in the other direction just a few seconds after him.

  Gruedor stood outside of the King’s Hall, counting the dwarves as they arrived. The first dwarf arrived not even ten minutes after him. It had been twenty minutes since that first dwarf arrived and there were eighty-three dwarves in the hall. Each of the dwarves had come in full armor with their swords, axes, or hammers in their hands. Ten minutes later Gruedor counted ninety-nine dwarves. Finally General Moglin came down the hall in his armor with a sword in each hand.

  “General Moglin, what are you doing?” he asked.

  “You said our hundred best, King Gruedor, and I am definitely among that number. We cannot deny Delvidge one of the best because he is the commander of the army,” the general said.

  “I agree, General. Go into the King’s Hall and prepare to receive Delvidge’s blessing,” Gruedor said. The general saluted him, bringing his gauntleted fist to his chest, and then walked into the King’s Hall. Gruedor closed the door behind the general.

  The door had barely closed when the screaming started. Not just screaming, but ear-piercing screams of pain unlike anything Gruedor had ever heard in his life.

  General Moglin stepped into the King’s Hall and the door closed behind him. He saw the other ninety-nine dwarves he had chosen in their armor with their weapons in hand. Whatever was about to happen, he had chosen the ninety-nine best. The one hundred best when he included himself. Within seconds of that door closing behind him, he felt it. A presence of pure fear unlike anything he had ever felt. He was frozen in place. Nothing could move him. His body wouldn’t respond to him and all his mind could process was fear.

  Then it came. A pain unlike anything he had ever felt. His armor melted and melded with his skin. He wanted to run, to rip the armor from his body before it killed him. He wanted it to kill him, anything to stop the pain. His swords melded with his hands, and soon his entire arm was metal, straight into the sword that was a part of it. His helmet melted around his head melding with his skin and attaching to his skull. It felt like an eternity, but then it was over. The fear was gone. The pain remained, but not in the unbearable way it had come. Now it was just a constant burning pain. Somehow he knew that that pain would be with him until he died. Then he heard it. The voice of his god filled the room.

  “You are my creations. Bordin may have birthed the dwarves, but I created you. You are the dwarves of chaos. You do not need to eat or drink. You are made to fight. You will not grow tired, and you will no longer need sleep. You will be able to outlast your enemies, and your bodies are now your armor. The pain you feel now will be with you always, but when you are injured you will be able to ignore it, because you will no longer fear pain. No pain can ever be greater then what you just felt, and you will become one with your pain. You are my children. Many of Bordin’s children will come to claim what is yours. You will destroy them, and then you will convert or kill all of Bordin’s children.” After that the voice was gone.

  The dwarves in the room looked around at each other. They had just become the most dangerous warriors in the world. Looking around, General Moglin realized that the tattoos that had covered their bodies now showed in black against their steel skin. He turned around and opened the door.

  King Gruedor stared at him in disbelief. “What happened in there?” he asked.

  “King Gruedor, Delvidge has just granted you the most fearsome warriors in Gegend. We do not need food, we will not tire, and we do not need sleep. The Dwarves of Chaos do not fear pain or death; our pain is a part of us and our death is our freedom. Bordin’s children will fall before us.”

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