by C. L. Werner
‘Thoriol is my heir, the one who will wear the Phoenix Crown after me. He is my legacy, the legacy of Tor Caled.’ Caledor clenched his fists. ‘I will not have the blood of Caledor Dragontamer extinguished by a gaggle of bearded savages. If I must bring every asur in Ulthuan against them, I will do so!’
‘Then you intend to lead the army yourself?’ Caradryel asked, still reeling from the news that Thoriol was wounded and possibly dying.
Caledor smiled, somehow making the expression even colder than before. ‘I killed their prince – it should be no great ordeal to kill their king as well. I’ll return to Lothern with my nephew and their king’s head on a platter. Then we shall have peace in the ten kingdoms and in Elthin Arvan.’
Caradryel wondered if the king would have such confidence if he had any idea how strong the dawi truly were; if he’d seen the forces Caradryel had seen, and if he understood how many more dwarfs there were in the mountains.
‘I shall do honour to the trust you have placed in me,’ Caradryel announced. ‘I will safeguard the Phoenix Crown until your return, my liege.’
A sharp laugh rose from the king. ‘The crown? There will be no need of that. I shall take it with me. When I lead my armies into battle against the mud-eaters, I will wear the crown over my helmet. How else will the vermin know that they have the honour of dying upon the sword of a king?’
Chapter Fourteen
The Battle of Three Towers
597th year of the reign of Caledor II
The outer wall of Tor Alessi had been reared after the seventh siege against the city. Built on a colossal scale, the fortification was fifty feet thick at its base and stood one hundred and fifty feet off the ground. Running across the plains in a semi-circle, the wall was anchored at either end by the pounding waves of the sea. Every three hundred yards of its three-mile length, a broad tower rose, its covered roof harbouring deadly eagle claw bolt throwers and cauldrons of molten lead to spill down upon attackers. Between each of the towers, ramparts with stone crenellations stretched, affording hundreds of archers protection as they loosed arrows at the enemy.
For a further six sieges, the outer walls had held and prevented all but the most minor harm to the city they defended. Now, with the fourteenth siege against Tor Alessi, they found themselves outmatched.
Grudge throwers cast tonnes of stone over the outer wall of Tor Alessi, soaring across the empty plain beyond to smash sections of the older inner wall that surrounded the city proper. Smaller catapults had to be content with battering the defences of the outer wall itself, collapsing the parapets and obliterating the battlements, sending the elven defenders scurrying into the shelter of the guard towers. One of these towers had been reduced to a heap of shattered stone, its rubble laying strewn in all directions. The rubble itself was too extensive to afford the dwarfs an easy way past the barrier, but at least the bolt throwers housed in the fortification had been silenced.
Yard by yard, the dwarfs were making progress, though the elves couldn’t see it. Runesmiths and runelords lent their magic to hiding that secret from enemy mages while the utmost care was taken to conceal the advance from more mundane scouts and spies.
Years ago the dwarfs had started their tunnels, reaching out to undermine the outer wall. The elves had learned to take precautions against such tactics, placing enchantments upon the foundations that would scorch any sappers before they could get close enough to undermine the walls. It was an obstacle the dwarfs had learned about only through the most devastating losses, but nothing could stand between a determined dawi and his objective.
Instead of digging close to the foundations, the miners had excavated forty feet beneath them, well past the enchantments, creating a great underground corridor running just ahead of the wall. At intervals of every ten yards, a little notch had been dug into the side of that corridor, and into each notch had been set a great steel spike twenty feet long and five feet wide. Placed at an angle, the spikes were aimed up at the wall. Charges of zonzharr lit behind the spikes would drive them upwards, skewering the walls from below. A further charge placed within each hollowed-out spike would then explode the barrier from within. When every sapper was in position, signals tapped against the walls of the tunnels would give them the command to light the charges and run to the side-shelters prepared for them.
Morgrim observed the assault from the top of the Long Watch. The siege was well into its second month. Snow glimmered from the roofs of Tor Alessi and ice caked the sides of the walls. He worried about how cold it must be down in the tunnels, wondered if perhaps it would be too cold for the zonzharr to catch fire. The same blasts that drove the spikes up into the walls were also expected to light the fuses leading to the secondary charges. If either should fail to catch fire then the entire attack would fail. There wouldn’t be a question of trying again. Once the elgi had even a suspicion of what the dwarfs were about, they’d spare no effort to thwart it. That would mean magic, perhaps even their remaining dragon. Malok had proven how aptly it was named in the weeks since the other drakk had been killed. The list of the wyrm’s victims swelled every time the beast flew out from the city. Either it or its master had grown quite shrewd about avoiding the precautions the dwarfs tried to take against them.
‘Strange to think of this as the quiet before the storm,’ Morgrim said. He handed his spyglass over to the dwarf standing beside him. High King Gotrek squinted suspiciously at the device. Most dwarfs were distrustful of anything new and the spyglasses had only been developed by the engineers’ guild four hundred years before. It would be some time yet before they were accepted as a useful tool rather than an exotic contraption.
‘The elgi have always built to please their eyes,’ Gotrek said. ‘I warned them about that. Who cares how pretty something is if it lacks the strength to endure?’
As Gotrek spoke, the rock upon which the dwarfs stood gave a mighty groan. A jagged crack snaked across its surface, sending an overhang crashing down into the forest. The two dwarfs were sent reeling, fumbling for handholds to stop themselves from falling after the overhang. Smaller stones and pebbles crashed all around the dawi as the quake knocked them loose. Fighting to keep his footing, the High King pressed the spyglass to his eye and nodded. He could see the spikes jutting out from where they’d stabbed their way through the base of the wall. Playing the glass across the length of the fortification, he saw scores of places where the spikes had ripped their way up from below to stab through the stone.
A moment later an even more tremendous shiver passed through the rock. The two dwarfs staggered, almost falling from their perch. Morgrim reached out to help steady his king, but Gotrek waved him off. He was too intent on studying the walls to be distracted.
Great plumes of smoke and dust rolled out from the walls. As they began to clear, Gotrek handed the glass back to Morgrim. ‘You’d better get your warriors moving,’ he advised.
Morgrim peered through the glass. He could see that the wall had been brought down in a dozen places. Dead elves were strewn about the heaps of rubble; on the battlements, stunned elgi were stumbling about in shock. Before they could gather their wits enough to try to defend the breaches, Morgrim wanted his troops well beyond those walls.
‘They’re your warriors,’ Morgrim reminded the king as he started to descend the steps. ‘They fight for the Karaz Ankor and their High King.’
‘They fight for their leader,’ Gotrek corrected him. ‘They fight for the one who takes them into battle. That is you. Elgidum, the great hope of the dawi.’
Morgrim couldn’t linger to reassure his uncle. He knew the doubt and pain behind Gotrek’s words, just as he knew there was nothing he could do to ease that doubt. All he could do was to try and bring his king whatever peace victory over the elgi would allow him.
Volleys of arrows rose from Tor Alessi, raining down into the killing field between the outer and inner walls. Bolt throwers cast their sp
ears at the advancing enemy, impaling dozens of them. Arcane fires swept about the invaders as the elf mages drew upon their magic to burn down scores of the foe.
‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’
Roaring their fierce cries, the dwarfs charged across the killing ground, running the gauntlet of arrows, magic and spears. When sufficiently roused, the normally ponderous dawi could become a raging avalanche of flesh and steel. Such an avalanche stormed through the broken walls, dwarf warriors hurdling the piled rubble with the agility of mountain goats. Some of the elves who’d survived the explosive demolition managed to create a few pockets of resistance. The dwarfs didn’t gain ground without paying a toll in blood though. Such a toll wasn’t enough to stall the impetus of their attack, however. By the hundred and then by the thousand, the dwarfs rushed past the broken wall out onto the open plain. Others rushed up onto the walls they had breached, confronting the surviving archers with hammer and axe. In short order the last holdouts were eliminated.
‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’
The thousands of dwarfs mustering on the plain grew into tens of thousands. Throngs of dwarfs cleared away the rubble piled about the outer wall, making a path for the great siege engines they’d brought to break the city. Now the catapults hurled their burdens over the inner wall and far into the streets; the grudge throwers cast their stones almost into the bay itself.
The inner walls were barely scratched, those same walls that had defied Morgrim the first time he’d laid siege to Tor Alessi almost four centuries before. Every dwarf knew they would be no easy obstacle to clear, yet they also knew that no wall was stronger than the warriors defending it.
A delegation of dwarfs under a flag of truce started to march towards the inner wall’s great gates. They would offer to the inhabitants Morgrim’s terms for surrender, a test to evaluate the resolve of the elgi inside the city.
The delegation had only proceeded part way towards the wall when a strange sound rose up from Tor Alessi. It was faint at first, but it steadily grew until it became a dull roar. Bells rang out from the temples and towers, gongs boomed from the shipyards, horns and trumpets flared. Out on the field, the dawi stared at one another in confusion, wondering what new elgi trickery this sudden celebration might portend.
The dwarfish delegation was stopped when a set of arrows flickered past their noses. Another arrow sheared through the flag they bore, sending them hurrying back to their own lines. Jeers in stilted Khazalid pelted them from the walls. The elgi were mocking them for their presumption.
The battle was far from decided. Because in Tor Alessi’s darkest hour, their homeland had remembered them. The armies of Ulthuan had come at last.
Thoriol could hear the tumult echoing outside his chambers in the Tower of the Dragon. At first he mistook the sounds for those of battle and thought that the dawi had at last forced their way into the city. Then, as the fog of fatigue began to clear from his mind and he became better attuned to his senses, he began to wonder if his injury had driven him mad.
It wasn’t the sounds of battle he was hearing but rather jubilant cheers. Gripped by confusion, bewildered beyond endurance, Thoriol forced himself from his bed. His entire body felt as though it had been scooped out and only a shell remained. From his talks with Liandra, he knew this was what it felt like to have the connection with a dragon broken. No one had to tell him Draukhain was gone; he’d known it the moment he regained consciousness. That feeling of emptiness was even worse than the pain in his side where the crazed dwarf’s axe had struck him. That wound had only threatened his life – the hurt left by Draukhain’s death was a scar against his soul. Flesh could knit and heal, but spiritual hurt lasted forever.
‘My prince, you must rest.’ The alarmed voice belonged to a servant in the livery of Tor Caled. The elf came rushing across the chamber to push Thoriol back into bed. The prince was too weak to mount much of a resistance. Slowly he was forced back among the silk pillows and fur blankets.
‘What is happening outside?’ Thoriol demanded. ‘Why do the people cheer?’
The servant smiled back at him, his face fairly glowing with delight. ‘It is the fleet. The king’s fleet has come.’
Thoriol blinked in amazement. He lifted himself back off the bed. ‘Help me to the window. I must see for myself,’ he told the servant. The other elf demurred for a moment, but then assisted his master to the balcony.
What he saw out in the bay was indeed wondrous. As far as his eye could see, the water was filled with ships, ships of every shape and description, with more cresting the horizon with each breath. It was an armada such as Elthin Arvan had never before witnessed. He marvelled at the spectacle, at the infusion of troops and weaponry that would soon be set against the dwarfs.
He felt a pang of guilt when he realised this was exactly what his mother and people like Caradryel had struggled so long to prevent. King Caledor had ordered the armies of Ulthuan to the colonies. The days of half-measures and limited efforts against the dawi were over. The full might of the ten kingdoms was now being set loose.
Amongst the fleet, Thoriol spied a gigantic white galleon and above it, snapping in the wind, was the dragon and phoenix standard of King Caledor himself.
After almost four centuries, the Phoenix King had returned to Elthin Arvan to put an end to the war.
‘To the wall! To the wall!’ Morgrim’s command rang out as he led hundreds of his own retainers and hearthguard out across the open plain. His shout was taken up by thanes and captains throughout the dawi host. Every champion of that vast throng seized upon the cry, leading their warriors into a massed charge against the inner wall of Tor Alessi. Enormous siege towers and massive war machines were pushed by entire battalions of shouting dwarfs, rushed to where they could deal the most damage to the enemy fortifications.
The pride and hope of only an hour before had withered inside Morgrim’s heart, replaced with a gnawing dread. He’d imagined that at long last the dwarfs were poised to claim a hard-fought victory – an end to the War of the Beards after so many centuries. Then, just as that vision was becoming reality, the elgi fleet appeared, disgorging a flood of fresh warriors to reinforce the city. From the very edge of triumph, the dawi were being thrown back.
‘To the wall!’ Morgrim bellowed once more, trying to force his warriors to greater speed by the sheer power of his voice alone. Beside him, as he ran across the field, Khazagrim waved the thane’s banner frantically from side to side, trying to inspire the dwarfs who had sworn oaths of service and loyalty to that standard.
After so many centuries of conflict, now the matter of victory boiled down to this one instant. If Morgrim could only get his troops to the wall, if the dwarfs could force a foothold upon the barrier before the new elgi warriors arrived, they could still seize the day. The lesser walls within the city that guarded the Old Quarter and the Royal District were far less formidable than the walls that fenced the whole of the city. They would soon crumble once the dawi brought their onagers into Tor Alessi.
If only the dawi were given that opportunity.
Morgrim glanced to his right, watching as a heavy onager rolled towards the wall, hurling chunks of rubble from the outer wall at the turrets and ramparts of the inner. A regiment of quarrellers flanked the war machine, shooting bolts into the elgi archers who tried to harass the advancing catapult.
Looking to his left, Morgrim saw several bolt throwers thrown into position, their crews anchoring the siege engines with great spikes of steel before turning them up towards the walls. The machines cast iron grapples up at the battlements and as each hook caught hold, gangs of dwarf warriors rushed to pull the chains fitted to the grapples and tear down some of the tooth-like crenels, depriving the elven archers of their cover.
‘The gate! The gate!’
Morgrim wasn’t sure who first uttered the cry, but the shouting brought his gaze towards the main entrance into Tor Alessi, the great doo
r through which Imladrik and his entourage had come to parlay with him in that last fruitless peace conference so long ago. Now, the gate was shadowed by a formidable keep, flanked by turrets from which elgi bolt throwers launched spears into the oncoming dawi.
The dwarfs who now rushed at the gate weren’t repulsed by the punishing volleys. They were heavily armoured hammerers from far-off Ekrund, the fiercest warriors of that distant stronghold. They spared little notice for the elgi shooting at them, focusing instead upon helping a gang of engineers push a great bronze-roofed battering ram towards the gate. Smoke and steam spewed from the boiler that projected from the rear of the ram, feeding the engine that would provide the driving impetus of the mechanical juggernaut.
Morgrim caught hold of Khazagrim, pointing in the direction of the hammerers and the battering ram with his axe. ‘We’ll help them,’ he told the old dwarf. ‘They’ll get us inside and then nothing will force us out.’ Khazagrim nodded, waving the banner and dipping it towards the gate so that the following warriors would understand the change in their objective.
Morgrim had reason to question his bold claim that nothing would force the dawi back as he led his troops towards the gates. The full violence of the elf garrison had been unleashed. They recognised their peril and were determined to hold the dwarfs off until their reinforcements could arrive. Great eagles dived down from the sky, snatching dwarfs from the siege towers and releasing them to smash into the infantry far below. Griffons swooped upon the catapults, their snapping beaks and slashing claws wreaking bloody havoc amongst the dwarfish artillerists, while their elven riders demolished the siege engines with spell and sword.
