Hammer and Axe

by Dan Parkinson

  “Dwarves!” a human voice shouted.

  An arrow hummed along the corridor and buried itself in the throat of a miner. The dwarf fell, thrashing in death, and two more pitched backward as they were hit, one by an arrow and one by a thrown hand-dart.

  Sledge raised his miner’s shield and shouted, “Defend!” In an instant, every standing dwarf had dropped to his knees, with his shield before him. A barrage of arrows, darts, and bolts from the human band whisked over them or clanged against shields.

  “Attack!” Sledge ordered. The dwarves came to their feet, closing ranks even as they charged into the ditch, becoming a short, solid wall of raised shields and running feet. The first line of Daergar hit the humans, and men went down, shrieking and tumbling as hammers, picks, and iron chisels smashed at them. Even as they fell, those still standing among them pitched forward as stone-drills flicked from between shields to shatter knees and pierce thighs. Thirty or more humans fell within seconds, and the first line of Daergar washed over them, then parted, swinging aside in disciplined lines as a second wave of dwarves flooded through to attack the humans beyond. Here and there a Daergar fell to a lucky blow, but far more humans went down than dwarves.

  “The torches!” Sledge ordered.

  Lines of dwarves swarmed past the melee, clambering up the sides of the little gully, and ran along the line of humans still pushing forward. Delving axes lashed out, and torches flew from human hands as dwarves scrambled in the confusion to extinguish them with their shields. Within seconds, the entire section of tunnel was dark.

  In the darkness, the Daergar went to work with murderous efficiency. A vague glow here and there was all the light their miners’ eyes required.

  It was a massacre. Those humans who tried to hold their position were cut down, and those who tried to run were caught and killed. When silence returned, Sledge called, “Regroup!” The Daergar gathered around him, blood-soaked and sweating from exertion. There had been more than a hundred of them. There were still more than eighty, and for each fallen dwarf there were at least ten slaughtered human invaders. With the torches gone, the humans had not stood a chance. What was darkness to human eyes—and to most dwarves—was fighting light to a Daergar.

  “Who were they?” Pyrr rumbled, wiping gore from his heavy pick. “What are humans doing here, and why did they attack us?”

  “Ask this one,” a miner said. Several grim Daergar led forward a battered human, the only survivor. Sledge recognized the appearance and attire of the marauders called Sackmen, nomads from the northern deserts who had sometimes tried to make their way into the dwarven lands. The man was bloody and disarmed, though the odd, curved basket with which the Sackmen threw their deadly hand-darts was still strapped to his right wrist.

  “Only one left alive,” a miner growled, prodding the man forward with his pick handle.

  “Who are you, and what do you want?” Sledge demanded of the man.

  The man sneered, shaking his head. Without hesitation, Pyrr Steelpick stepped forward and crouched in front of the human, loosing his heavy hammer and digging a long rock-spike from his pouch. “I’ll nail his feet to the ground,” he told Sledge. “Humans talk better that way.”

  Several dwarves seized the man’s legs, holding him motionless, and the burly shaft boss set the point of his spike atop a large foot and raised his hammer.

  “Wait!” the man squealed. “Wait, I’ll tell you. We came … We were hired to fight for some wizards.”

  “Fight against whom?” Sledge asked.

  “Against …”—the man swallowed—“against dwarves.”

  Pyrr raised his hammer again.

  “Wait!” the man wailed. “It’s nothing personal! We … They’ve hired a lot of people. It’s just business.”

  “Hired you with what?” Sledge asked.

  “Coin,” the man said. “In … in my pouch.”

  Dwarven hands removed the pouch from the man’s belt and dumped the contents out. A handful of bright coins fell on the ground. A miner picked one of them up, frowned at it, and tasted it. “Rock,” he muttered. “It sort of looks like a coin, but it’s only a little rock.”

  “How many of you are there?” Sledge asked, then raised a hand. Human voices sounded somewhere in the tunnel. “Get him out of here,” Sledge ordered.

  Without hesitating, Pyrr Steelpick grabbed the man’s arm in powerful fingers. Others grabbed his other arm, and the man was propelled up the bank and toward the wall. The dwarves, running at full speed, hit the stone and disappeared within it. The man screamed, smashed against the stone, and bounced off, flipping and rolling to the edge of the gully. Where he had rebounded, heads popped out of the blood-splattered “stone.”

  “Whoops,” Pyrr said.

  Sledge squatted beside the man. He was dead. Nearby, a dwarf stooped and picked up a small stone. “Rock,” he said. “Doesn’t even look like a coin now.”

  “I think we had better tell Vog Ironface about this,” Sledge decided.

  Down the tunnel, more glows indicated that more human invaders were approaching. Turning, Sledge climbed what he hoped was the north side of the little gully and walked directly into the stone wall of the tunnel. “There isn’t any tunnel here,” he reminded himself. He stepped into the stone and disappeared. Behind him, the others followed a few at a time. The last of them were still climbing from the gully when another band of mercenaries rounded the near bend and found themselves wading through, and stumbling over, the bodies of the dead. Those in the lead, holding torches high, spotted the last few Daergar still in the “tunnel” and sprinted toward them, blades drawn.

  Chink Deepshaft, a young sapper, was the last Daergar to reach the gully bank, and several big humans were at his heels as he raced full-tilt into the wall. He dived for the apparently solid stone and rolled through it. Behind him, blades clanged against solid rock, and a pair of Sackmen warriors bounced off the stone.

  Beyond the ridge, the group of Daergar emerged into normal night and gazed at the Promontory spreading ahead of them with Cloudseeker rising beyond it.

  As they emerged, five shamefaced young miners scurried down the slope of the ridge that wasn’t a ridge and joined them, gawking at the blood-smeared apparel and gore-stained tools of those who had gone through and survived.

  “That’s what you get for doubting your own logic,” Pyrr Steelpick snapped at them. “You knew there wasn’t a ridge here, but you believed there was, so you missed all the fun.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” Sledge added. “If you know a thing is so, it’s so. If you know it’s not, it’s not. Otherwise you’re no better than humans.”

  When the first wave of human mercenaries came down the long meadows from the west, making for the ways below Southgate, drums sang the warning and dwarves were ready to meet them. Twelve “hundreds” of fighting Holgar—four mounted companies and eight foot companies—emerged from the mountain fortress at Southgate and marched with parade precision down the twin, slanting ramparts of the gate approaches to take up positions at intervals above the north swales of the Promontory.

  Some of the fighting units were tribal—three of the four mounted units were almost entirely Hylar, two foot units were Theiwar, and one, the legendary Golden Hammer assault force, was entirely Daewar. The rest, though, were mixed companies of Hylar, Daewar, Theiwar, Daergar, and even a few Klar.

  With quick precision, the companies moved into assigned positions: along the exposed flank of Cloudseeker’s south face, in the rock formations near the Valley of the Thanes, in the broken-cliff canyons of the old Theiwar raiding grounds, behind the bastions at the foot of each gateway road, on the forested slope overlooking the Daergar ore pits, and out on the Promontory itself. The line of defense was a bowed, reinforced arc of foot troops, with fast-moving attack squadrons at each end, and armored cavalry at the wings and point.

  Barek Stone, placing the units, made no attempt to conceal their strength. A veteran of many battles, the captain gener
al knew that just the sight of armed dwarves, ready to fight in formation, was enough to awe most human warriors.

  So Barek let the humans see what they were up against—or, at least, the first line of defense. What they didn’t see was the special equipment carried by some of the defenders and what lay behind the first line. Within many of the shields carried by defenders were mirrors. Hidden along most of the trails and paths leading from the Promontory to the slopes were companies of ambushers with nets and cables, deadfalls and pendulums, spring-spikes and brush-balls. In the rocks above each wing of the defense line were companies of slingers, with woven leather slings and supplies of iron balls.

  And along each walled way leading up to Southgate, hidden by the guard towers which stood at intervals there, were the engines of defense from the crafteries within Thorbardin: huge, winch-drawn bows that could hurl a thick, ten-foot spear three hundred yards and batteries of drawn catapults armed with everything from stones and dagger blades to brass containers full of Pack Lodestone’s awful concoctions. And behind the highest outposts were two huge towering engines that humans had never seen because the dwarves had never shown or used them. They were a recent development of the crafteries—side-arm discobels that could sling saw-edged iron disks with enough force to knock down large trees.

  These were the outer defenses of Thorbardin—those that were in plain view and those that were not.

  The first sightings had been of a thousand or more human marauders coming across the Promontory from somewhere near its head to the southwest. But now, as the sun of Krynn rose high, the drums spoke of other thousands coming into view. The line of grim, marching warriors seemed to double and double again as it came into sight, spreading across the high meadow. The men had been bunched, but now as they spread and formed into separate groups, they seemed to fill half the Promontory. Atop the sentinel peaks, sharp eyes estimated counts and drums spoke. Seven thousand, they said. Ten companies, spreading and approaching, each company averaging seven hundred armed and battle-hardened human warriors.

  On the walled ledge outside Southgate, Willen Ironmaul stood, backed by the Ten. He heard the count and frowned. The outside defenders, the field companies, numbered one thousand, two hundred dwarves. “Six to one,” the chief of chiefs muttered. “Well, we have some surprises to help offset that.”

  But then, abruptly, the drums on the mountains sang a new song, and every dwarven eye turned to the meadowlands.

  There was not one human army, but two! No, three! Coming onto the Promontory from the south and east were more masses of humans, marching hordes spreading and forming into fighting companies. And each army was the equal of the first.

  Three assaults! The drums sang of it. Not seven thousand invaders, but three sevens of thousands!

  And above Thorbardin, in the high outposts below Galefang, other drums joined the tattoo. Willen turned, shading his eyes. From due west, just coming around the steeps above the meadows, was still another army, a fourth army as large as the other three.

  Hurrying along the catwalk through Anvil’s Echo, Damon Omenborn scanned its massive defenses: the precarious suspended bridge with nothing around it except thin air and murder holes, and at its outward end the gateway, with its massive plug ready to rumble into place. It seemed inconceivable that any attacking force could reach Southgate, much less get through it. But, should that ever happen, here was the last and best line of defense.

  Past Anvil’s Echo, Damon heard the sentinel drums, and his jaws clenched. So many invaders? Four armies? How could there be so many? Why had the wizards brought so many troops?

  He ran through Gateway, outpacing his fifty volunteers, and scurried around the plug-housing to emerge on the walled ledge where his father and the Ten surveyed the lands beyond. At the wall, Damon looked out at the Promontory and felt his breath go ragged. He had never seen so many humans. He had never seen so many of anybody!

  The first army, from the southwest, was halfway across the Promontory now, a huge, marching rank of grim warriors, sweeping forward along a wide front.

  And to right and left, the other armies were approaching. Identical armies. Identical in number, identical in formation … His eyes narrowed as he picked out a horseman in the fore of the assault from the east. A fur-cloaked, helmeted man on a spotted horse, just like …

  Damon’s eyes swung to the right. There, at the fore of the first group, was an identical horseman, fur cloak, spotted horse, and all. Damon clapped his father’s steel-plated back and pointed. “Look!”

  The army from the south was just crossing the staging areas, far out on the Promontory. The distance was greater, but there, too, was a fur-cloaked man on a spotted horse.

  “They are images!” Damon growled. “Magic! One army has become many!”

  “Magic?” Willen Ironmaul squinted, peering out across the distance. “They aren’t real, then? Do you mean they can’t hurt us?” At the staging area—a collection of low sheds and walled pits where trade caravans assembled in season—something was happening. A pair of dwarves had appeared there, gold-bearded Daewar goods-tenders popping out of a shed to flee toward Southgate. The humans saw them, and a dozen horsemen thundered through the foot-lines after them. In a moment, the dwarves were down, felled by slashing blades. Even at this distance, those on the walled ledge could see the crimson of their blood.

  Drums muttered, and they looked westward. Just beyond the rock formations below the Valley of the Thanes, a small group of Einar had bolted from hiding, directly into the path of the fourth army of humans. Tall warriors rushed to attack, and the dwarves tried to defend. A human fell, and then another. But it was over in a moment. Methodically, the marauders cut down the little group of dwarves and came on.

  “They seem real enough,” Willen growled. “They kill like real people.”

  “There is only one army,” Damon said flatly. “But we don’t know which one it is. Until we do, they might as well all be real.”

  17

  The Bloody Fields of Southgate

  By sheer cunning—with the help of a pair of spells that had sent the white-coat leader Valneb to a place where his spells would fail until he could learn to say them backward and had turned the red-tunic Gilmar into a copper pot—the dark wizard Kistilan had taken control of the representatives of magic in the Kharolis mountains … just as he had intended to do from the day he left Xak Tsaroth. The two rival leaders would return eventually, he knew. Valneb would manage to reverse a return spell, and Gilmar would contrive to boil over and quench the fire beneath him. But Kistilan knew he could deal with them. In all these lands, only two remained of the wizards who were “favored of the powers”—himself and Megistal. And Megistal had disappeared.

  To the rest of them, Kistilan had spelled out his terms. “When the dwarves are defeated,” he proclaimed, “and the Stone of Threes is recovered, you may have both—the stone, for the Tower of High Sorcery, and all surviving dwarves as slaves, to build the tower and for any other purpose you wish. But whatever else we find within the mountain fortress, including the fortress itself, is mine. It will be mine alone, to do with as I wish.”

  Kistilan knew well the price the High Overlord would be willing to pay for dominance over the dwarven lands. The overlord dreamed of an empire, just as Kistilan dreamed of ultimate power over all creatures.

  Thus the assault on Thorbardin was directed primarily by one person, and that person was Kistilan. It was his intention to move swiftly, to conquer the dwarves of this place and establish himself as Lord Sorcerer before any who might contest his right came along. So, using the elemental powers he had taken upon himself and drawing upon the magics of all the rest, he doubled the army of mercenaries, then doubled it again. Where seven thousand hired warriors had marched, now twenty-eight thousand closed upon the defense cordon set up by the dwarves at the base of Cloudseeker.

  Sending thirty wizards each to follow and direct the three replicate armies, Kistilan himself—with an escort of twenty-
seven acolytes who were sworn to his cause—accompanied the original mercenary force advancing from the southwest.

  Perched comfortably on an elaborate throne floating fifty feet above the rearmost of the attacking mercenaries, Kistilan had an excellent view of the entire field of battle. He nodded in satisfaction as he saw the two dwarves flushed from the deserted trade camp fall, and again as he watched the little group of dwarves cut down by his forces’ left flank. Both of the armies involved were replicates, created by sorcery.

  “Resist magic?” he muttered. “Sigamon was a fool to believe such a thing of dwarves.” With a wave of his hand, the wizard signaled the distant wizards following the conjure-armies. His forces and the second mass, just to his right, would hold back from the first assault. The third and fourth groups, to the east and west of the dwarven line, would begin the attack.

  Kistilan muttered a spell and gave his orders to the empty air. Immediately, two voices—other mages nearly a mile away on each side—responded, their voices sounding as near to him as though they had been at his sides.

  On the wide sweep of meadow west of the stone formations, the fourth army spread and quartered, to present a long, facing line to the waiting dwarves. At the call of trumpets, the thousands of men there began to move inexorably forward, company after company of footmen with shields, pikes, and swords. The front wave was a solid line of men, shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield, stretching nearly four hundred yards from end to end. The attackers advanced to within a hundred yards of the dwarven defenders, then stopped, facing them. Trumpets sounded again, and the front line of humans dropped down behind their extended shields. Behind them, archers and Sackmen loosed their bolts. Arrows and hand-darts flew by the hundreds, whining and humming toward the nearest dwarves.

  In the blink of an eye, the dwarves reformed, front ranks kneeling, second ranks raising their shields. The rattle of arrows and darts against dwarven steel was deafening. Here and there a dwarf staggered and fell, but the holes in the shield-wall were sealed instantly with other shields.