Hammer and Axe

by Dan Parkinson

  When all that was done, dwarven workers trundled stone cuttings to the trough and dumped them in, burying all but the center five feet of black material under fifteen feet of rubble. Then, carefully, Quill lit a lantern, hung it from a braced wooden frame above the exposed center of the cut, and looped a noose of light cable around the frame’s supporting brace. Like people walking on eggs, the dwarves hurried away uphill, playing out line behind them as they went. Three hundred yards uphill they ran out of line. “This will have to do,” Quill said.

  The delvers and crew dwarves bellied down behind whatever cover they could find, crouching behind boulders and outcroppings, cringing in shallow holes, while the armed guardsmen ringed them, holding shields above themselves and the workers.

  Quill glanced aside at Pack Lodestone. “You’re sure you mixed that stuff just like before?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” the old dwarf snapped. “Do you think I don’t know my business?”

  “If your business is making fuel for tinsmith forges, I’m not sure,” Quill admitted.

  “So it went wrong,” Pack grumped. “At least give me credit for being consistent.”

  “Well, I guess we’re about to find out,” the lorekeeper said. With a muttered reminder to Reorx about dwarves being his best and therefore favored people, Quill tugged at the cable. The long line scratched against the downslope, came taut, and Quill pulled harder. Far below, the bright lantern on its frame jiggled and swayed. Then, abruptly, the frame support pulled free, and the frame sagged. The lantern dropped into the hole.

  For an instant, nothing happened. Then, with a roar like all the thunders ever heard, the cut in the mountainside erupted, spewing a sheer, hurtling wall of stone, dust, and smoke skyward, propelled by a blinding flash of light. Higher and higher the debris flew, rising toward the feathery clouds far above, driven upward by a giant wall of instant fire. The rising clouds caught the late sunlight and flared to brilliant life. The very mountain slope seemed to shiver, and little landslides of gravel and dust swept down in rivulets along a mile or more of mountainside. The thunderous roar was drowned by a deeper, rumbling thunder that grew in volume.

  “Great Reorx’s red rivets!” someone shouted. “Quill, what have you done?”

  The wall of debris blanked out the entire vista to the north and east, seeming to grow higher by the second. Then a pebble bounced off a guardsman’s shield, and a fist-sized rock thumped into the ground an inch from Quill’s knee. More stones fell, and more, a pelting shower of debris pummeling and battering the entire slope like stone rain. And below, lost in the dust and smoke, the ominous roar became a deafening, cascading drumbeat of sound, growing louder and louder.

  Minutes passed, and still it rained stone on the slope of Sky’s End. Then the thunder of falling debris faded, and the roaring, cascading noise became more distant, rumbling away down the mountainside. Here and there, guardsmen tilted their shields, and workers peered out into the haze of dust that was just beginning to clear as winds from above swept down the slope. The near edge of the great, delved cut became visible, but beyond it, there seemed to be nothing. Quill Runebrand and Pack Lodestone crept from their shelter, peered around, then started down the slope, followed by others.

  At the cut, they stopped and gawked. Where there had been a neat, delved cleft across the mountainside, now there was a cliff, forty feet high. Beyond the foot of it was altered terrain. The entire slope below was a sea of gravel and debris slanting downward toward the old citadel … or where the old citadel should have been. There was nothing visible there now. A massive avalanche had buried everything beneath millions of tons of stone rubble. And strong on the evening air was the stench of rotten eggs.

  Carefully, they scaled down the new cliff and made their way to what they guessed was the level where the citadel had been. There was nothing there. The avalanche caused by Pack Lodestone’s mixed powders had carried away everything standing and buried the entire site—in fact, the entire mountainside—fifty to a hundred feet deep.

  “It worked,” Quill breathed. Impulsively, he grabbed Pack Lodestone by the shoulders and danced the old dwarf around in enthusiastic circles. “It worked!” he crowed. “The old tunnel is gone. Gone as though it had never been here! Nothing, not magic nor beasts nor armies nor the passing of ages, will open it again! The tunnel is a tunnel no more! It is a tunnel that never was!”

  “Let go of me!” Pack growled, breaking away to glare at the lorekeeper. “Of course it worked. I made that stuff myself.”

  13

  A Strange Alliance

  Pack Lodestone’s blast—or, as the scrolls of Thorbardin would record it, Quill Runebrand’s blast—changed for all time the profile of the lower northeast slopes of Sky’s End Peak. Cascading stone was sheared away from the mountain’s face by the explosion, leaving a fresh smoke-blackened precipice along the farthest shoulder, a precipice that tapered downward as it curved around the mountainside. Below, a new feature was added. The great avalanche spread a deep slope of heavy rubble downward and outward, fanning out on the curvature of the mountainside to bury everything in its path. The old citadel, built by Daewar in times long gone, no longer existed. The tunnel which had begun there, leading through Sky’s End to what was now Thorbardin, was buried beneath masses of stone, capped by a huge shelf of granite that had sheared away and fallen with the lesser debris.

  The entire fan of fallen stone extended for more than a mile, and a side quake to the southeast had dumped other stone-fall down a deep cove, almost to the bridge where the Road of Passage crossed the Great Gorge. The rockfall had stopped just short of destroying the bridge. Secondary avalanches above the main shear, high on the face of the peak, had opened deep rifts in the mountainside on each side of a natural prominence, and spilled stone-fall downward to create twin swales below.

  Forever after, the northeast face of Sky’s End—as seen from the human lands across the Gorge, beyond the foothills, and on a clear day from as far away as Xak Tsaroth—would resemble the face of a giant, angry dwarf with deep-set, narrowed eyes, bushy brows, and a pug nose above a wide, downturned mouth beneath which spread a wide, full beard. The side-fall, south and east above the bridge, even resembled a thick, powerful fist raised in challenge. It was a sculpture that, even though accidental, would stand for centuries as the largest piece of statuary in the entire world.

  Quill Runebrand was ecstatic at the success of his venture, and most of those with him were shocked and stunned at what had occurred. Those below, who had waited in the valley, had mixed emotions for a time. Guard units spent most of the night rounding up the horses that had bolted and scattered at the explosion, and a company of dour Neidar set off immediately around the slopes to see what damage might have been done to the road and the bridge. It was bright morning before everyone was reassembled.

  “You’re just lucky that fall stopped short of the bridge,” Cale Greeneye pointed out to the lorekeeper. “I expect the Council of Thanes would have personally drawn and quartered you had the bridge gone down.”

  “I guess we used more mix than was really required,” Quill conceded. “But you’ll have to admit, nothing is going into that tunnel again. It would take a cataclysm to open it.”

  For many miles around, the explosion had various results. The flash was seen as far away as the border posts below the promontory, east of Southgate, where a dwarven trade caravan had just delivered a large supply of weapons to human traders. It was the biggest single order of crafted armaments ever traded outside Kal-Thax. Thousands of fine dwarven steel blades, shields, helms, and various weapons of force were on their way east, into Ergoth. Where they were going was a secret even to the dwarves. Still, the third Lord Charon, whom the dwarves had learned to trust, had given his word to Olim Goldbuckle that the weapons were not for use in any way against Thorbardin.

  Olim had his own ideas, though, about who wanted the weapons and why. The wily Daewar and his merchant-spies kept close watch on the world outside. Ev
en better than the wide-ranging Neidar, Olim Goldbuckle knew the ebbs and flows of the realms beyond the dwarven lands.

  “I suspect they are going to Xak Tsaroth,” he had told Willen Ironmaul when the trade order was first received.

  “To the overlords?” Willen frowned.

  “No, but maybe to those who are tired of the overlords.” Olim replied, grinning.

  At Northgate of Thorbardin, the blast was felt and its echoes heard, and guards were redoubled the length of Anvil’s Echo.

  On the western slopes of Cloudseeker Mountain, a tiny creature, half the height and a fourth the weight of a male dwarf, had just completed the scaling of a great wall to get out of the hole where her bird had left her. It had taken her most of a day to climb from the bottom of what the dwarves called the Valley of the Thanes up to the face of the mountain, and when the shock waves from fifty miles away reached her, they tumbled her backward, flailing and grasping, halfway down the height she had just climbed. For a time she clung there, hanging on to precarious fingerholds, then she took a deep breath and blinked big, lustrous eyes. “Wow!” she breathed. “I wish I’d seen whatever that was!”

  Surreptitious wizards, making their way toward Thorbardin from the southeast, dived for cover when the sky lit up from the explosion, and several of them whispered abrupt spells, not well thought out. The resulting havoc was intense. Shielding spells collided with shielding spells, and wizards flew in all directions. Fires blazed up here and there, rain fell in several places, a whirlwind danced among them, and a sprig of thorny adze-brush became a nest of hissing, writhing vipers.

  Days would pass before the wizards got themselves all sorted out and despelled—and before those few who had inadvertently sent themselves on long journeys could be found and brought back.

  In a clearing beyond the Einar fields below Cloudseeker, three pairs of eyes turned abruptly northward when the explosion occurred. One pair of eyes was dwarven, the other two human, and they glanced aside only momentarily before returning to the business at hand. All day the three had been here, in this clearing; the situation was a standoff. Damon Omenborn had contrived the circumstances, then gone off toward Thorbardin with Willow Summercloud tagging after him.

  Those who remained were the dour Theiwar guardsman, Tag Salan, the human Cobar warrior, Quist Redfeather, and the red-strap wizard, Megistal.

  Damon had told them to wait until he returned, and wait they did, because Tag Salan demanded it.

  The wizard was protected from the Cobar only by the fact that Quist Redfeather had given his word to the dwarves that—as long as Megistal behaved himself—he would not put an arrow into him. The Cobar, in turn, was protected from the wizard’s spells by the fact that, at first hint of sorcery, Tag Salan had solemnly promised to bury a heavy axe in the wizard’s skull.

  And the Theiwar was protected from the two humans by their intense dislike for each other, as well as by their curiosity. Damon Omenborn had hinted to each of the men that he had some ideas that might benefit them.

  It was a strange alliance, but one that Damon Omenborn had decided might prove productive. First, though, he had a many-colored stone and an Einar girl to deliver safely to Thorbardin. They had taken the humans’ horses, which—Damon pointed out bluntly—were from the herds of Thorbardin and therefore had never belonged to either of the humans to begin with.

  In the teeming human city of Xak Tsaroth, the flash on Sky’s End Peak was seen as far-off lightning, and the rumble of sound—when it arrived—was like distant thunder. From the grand palaces of the overlords to the filth and stench of the slave pens, from the teeming thieves’ markets to the wall-top barracks of the city’s custodians, from the shacks and hovels of commoners to the lavish lairs of court fops and tariff-takers, the city on that evening was alive with rumors and whispers. Armed companies of custodians were everywhere, roaming the streets and alleys with torches lit and swords in hand, and in every inn and garret people gathered to speculate in hushed tones.

  Darr Bolden was alive, they said. Darr Bolden had escaped the overlords and had emptied the dungeons where many of his followers had been held. Darr Bolden, leader of the secret Society of Freemen, was somewhere in Xak Tsaroth, and his followers were gathering to him by the thousands. The Freemen were arming themselves, and Darr Bolden had promised more arms—a blade and shield for every man willing to follow him against the overlords.

  Where he would get such weapons, no one knew. But the whispers went on and on. Darr Bolden had done the impossible before. Maybe he would do it again. Maybe—just possibly—the Freemen might rid Xak Tsaroth of the tyranny and corruption which for so long had weighed upon its citizens.

  And there was another who heard—and felt—the explosion that changed the visage of Sky’s End. Patiently she had waited, sure that they would come to her—the warm-blooded creatures outside the tunnel. Hidden behind her reset stone gate, she waited, ready to rage and kill. But they did not come. Instead, the mountain shook and rumbled, and the tunnel filled with choking dust. And when she went to see what had happened, she could not get out. Even her great strength was nothing against the mass of solid, fallen stone that sealed the tunnel’s end.

  For a time she raged and stormed, up and down the dark length of the hole in which she was caught. Once before, in ancient times, she had been trapped and buried by those who feared and hated her. Now it had happened again. But she was not frozen in ice this time. She was awake and angry and able to strike back. Cold with a fury that filled the tunnel with thick mists, she went deeper into the mountain. There had been two seals; maybe there were more that she could break. Maybe this tunnel had another end, somewhere. And, if it did, maybe they were there—the pathetic creatures who had trapped her. If so, they would all die horribly. She would see to that. She was Rage, and they could not stop her.

  When the explosion on Sky’s End occurred, Damon Omenborn was already in Thorbardin making his way toward the Life Tree with a grim, determined Willow Summercloud following after him. Several times he had tried to get rid of her—to leave her in the care of dwarves who would look after her and see that she had quarters and food—but she had refused. With a stubbornness that even the most hardheaded Daergar would have admired, she stuck to the big Hylar, trudging along after him even as her eyes darted here and there, gaping at the wonders of this underground world which she had never seen.

  She knew about Thorbardin, of course. Every Einar did, and many had visited the undermountain fortress. For years Willow had heard stories of the mighty undertaking of the bonded Thanes of Hylar, Daewar, Theiwar, Daergar, and Klar—the tribes that those outside had begun to refer to collectively as Holgar, or mountain dwarves—who were building whole cities beneath a great peak. But hearing the stories was one thing, and seeing the place quite another.

  In all her life, in her little village of Windhollow, she had never seen as many people as she saw now at every glance. By the hundreds and thousands, they thronged the ways and concourses, busy dwarves of all ages and every description going here and there, doing this and that. Anvils rang and forges puffed, the ring of delving seemed to come from everywhere, and the buzz of hundreds of voices was a constant hum of sound. She marveled at mighty lifts, carrying stage after stage of dwarves up and down shafts. She gaped at a long string of cable-carts on rail tracks, disappearing into a side tunnel that was itself larger than the entire village of Windhollow had been. She stared in wonder at people pausing to drink from wall-mounted stone troughs where fresh water flowed, and her nostrils twitched at the delicious odors coming from a bakery where dozens of dwarves worked at ovens, turning out great loaves of dark-meal bread while people lined up to buy the loaves hot and fresh.

  High above, in the soaring ceilings, she saw the sun-tunnels she had heard of and marveled at the massive glass artifacts, gathering and shedding the evening light from outside. She wondered how they would look in the daytime with sunlight coming through.

  And when she caught her first glimp
se of the Urkhan Sea, it so bedazzled her that she dropped her axe. It clattered on smooth stone paving, and she stooped to retrieve it, then gazed again at the marvel before her. She had heard that there was a lake in Thorbardin, but she had never imagined anything so marvelous as her eyes now beheld. The lake was large, its far shores dim and distant, the deep waters catching evening light from above and reflecting it upward from luminous green depths. It was a magnificent sight, but it seemed only a simple setting for what rose above its center. There, standing above the waters, spreading toward the cavern’s ceiling a half mile above, was the mighty stalactite called the Life Tree of the Hylar. Solid, living stone, it shone with dark lusters that reflected themselves in the waters beneath it. And spreading outward from its “base” were busy, bustling wharves and piers, fronting the entrances to the delvings of Hybardin.

  Willow stopped and stared, then hurried to catch up to Damon. “Where are we going?” she panted.

  He looked down at her and shook his head as though in defeat. “I’m going to the Life Tree,” he said. “I have things to do. Why don’t you just … well, relax and look around? Or get yourself a meal. There are all sorts of places to eat around here. You won’t need coin. Just say that you are my guest. Maybe you can find a nice place to sleep and get to know some of the people.”

  “I said,” she repeated, “where are we going?”

  He shook his head again and pointed toward the lake. “Out there,” he said. “That’s where I live.”

  “Hybardin,” she said, testing the word. “How do we get there?”

  “By cable-boat,” he said. “Just like anyone else.”

  The boat was about thirty feet in length, operated by Theiwar boatmen. It had large, chain-driven winches at each end and a boarding plank joining it to the low wooden dock. Willow followed Damon aboard, stepping carefully to avoid the crowd of dwarves already aboard. They were mostly Hylar, all males with the dark, swept-back beards of their kind, though among them were a few golden-haired Daewar, broad-shouldered Theiwar, and two or three masked Daergar. Most of them wore armor, and all of them seemed to know Damon. Several waved at him, some greeted him, and most turned, then, to gaze at Willow.