by David Gaider
“It’s getting louder.” Loghain frowned. He wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead and glanced at Maric. “How many do you think there will be?”
Maric stared ahead, licking his lips nervously. “No idea.”
“We may want to find more defensible ground.”
“Where?” Rowan seemed ready for an imminent attack, her eyes wide and nervously searching the shadows. “Back to the ruins? Will they come that far?”
“Look there!” Katriel shouted, pointing ahead.
The four of them froze as they saw a humanoid shape slowly shamble toward them out of the darkness. At first it seemed to be a man, but as it drew closer, they saw it clearly was not. It was a hideous mockery of a man, skin puckered and boiled with bulging white eyes and a toothy, malicious grin. It wore a mishmash of metal armor, some rusted and some of it held together with scraps of frayed leather, and in its hands it carried a wicked-looking sword, all points and odd angles.
The creature held its sword in front of it in a menacing manner, but it did not charge them. It moved slowly but incautiously, staring at them hungrily as if they didn’t represent a true threat of any kind.
The deep humming was coming from it. The creature was moaning softly, almost chanting, and this moan built upon the sounds of many others behind it in the shadows. They hummed in unison, a hushed and deadly whisper the creatures spoke as one.
Maric took a step backwards, gulping loudly.
More began to appear behind the first. More tall ones, some wearing strange headdresses and blindfolds, others in more impressive armor covered in dangerous spikes. Some wore little armor at all, their black and diseased skin covered in scars. There were shorter ones, as well, ones almost dwarf-sized with pointed ears and wide, demonic grins. All of them walked as calmly as the first, shambling toward them while moaning and hissing softly. The sound was loud now, reverberating around them like a physical force.
“Darkspawn,” Katriel announced unnecessarily.
Loghain held his sword up before him warningly, watching the creature at the head of the emerging pack. “Move back,” he murmured.
They slowly backed up, warily matching the pace that the darkspawn approached them with. At the back, Rowan turned about and suddenly halted, gasping in fear. “Loghain!”
In the flickering light of Rowan’s torch, more of the monsters could be seen drawing near from behind. They were surrounded.
“How did they get behind us?” Maric asked, panic creeping into his voice.
“Careful,” Loghain warned. The four of them backed up against the wall of the passage, keeping close. They watched the darkspawn advance, their weapons held at the ready. Even with their prey cornered, the creatures did not accelerate. Their hum became louder, reached a hungry, fever pitch.
“Will your sword keep them back?” Rowan cried at Maric, forced to shout to be heard over the unnerving sound.
Maric tested his glowing blade, waving it threateningly at the nearest darkspawn. The creature flinched and hissed at Maric angrily, baring rows of jagged teeth, but it did not retreat. “It doesn’t look like it!” Maric yelled.
The darkspawn continued their slow, inevitable approach. Twenty feet. Then ten. The four of them stood with back pressed against back, sweat pouring as they watched and waited.
As the first of the taller darkspawn got close, it bared its fangs and roared. Maric stepped forward and slashed the dragonbone longsword across its chest in a wide arc. Where the blade touched, the creature’s skin sizzled and it reared back in agony, issuing a gurgling scream.
This finally seemed to energize the rest of the horde. They roared in turn and began to push forward. Katriel barely knocked a wicked blade aside with her dagger, just escaping being stabbed. Rowan pushed Katriel behind her, interposing her armor to take the darkspawn blows. Maric swung widely with his longsword, taking advantage of the fact that it repelled whichever darkspawn it touched. Loghain kicked one of the smaller creatures back into its fellows, knocking them down, and then began to stab with precise, clean blows.
The ferocity of their defense worked in their favor, at least for a moment, before the darkspawn surge began to push them against the wall. They could not knock the blades aside fast enough, and though Loghain and Rowan kept pushing the creatures back, the others would heedlessly step over their fallen to strike.
The great moaning sound reached a crescendo, drowning out everything but the ring of steel upon steel. Katriel looked around despairingly. She was no warrior like the others, and felt all but useless. Was it truly all going to end here? After all they had been through?
And then a new sound interrupted the battle: the blowing of a horn, three strident notes that rang out into the passages, silencing the darkspawn completely.
Many of the creatures began to turn and hiss with outrage at something that was descending on them from behind. Blue lights lit the Deep Roads from that direction, and it took only a moment for the first dwarves to appear—dwarves, not some new monster of the deep. Maric glanced in Katriel’s direction, shocked, but she felt the same as he did. After journeying all this time, to find someone else down here in this oppressive darkness, to find anyone, was beyond belief.
Was this their salvation? Were they rescued? Or were these dwarves here to fight the darkspawn for their own meals?
They were warriors, short but bulky dwarves rippling with muscle and covered with bronzed chain. They wielded ornate swords and longspears, and some of them held lanterns hung from long poles that shone with a glittering sapphire light that seemed to cut through the shadows with ease. More strangely, these dwarves all had their faces painted—images of skulls with fangs, giving them a dread and frightening appearance. In some ways they looked almost as frightening as the darkspawn.
As one the dwarves shouted a guttural war cry and began carving through the darkspawn lines with relative ease. The darkspawn all but abandoned their attacks on Maric and Loghain and the others, realizing that these dwarves were the more immediate threat, and turning to defend against the onslaught. The sheer rage and hatred of the darkspawn as they leaped at the dwarves spoke of the fact that these were true enemies. They knew each other and killed each other gladly.
Loghain did not let up, stabbing his blade deep into the back of a darkspawn that had turned away from him. The creature roared in pain as he kicked it off his sword and then turned to the next. Encouraged, Rowan and Maric did the same and began to fight toward the dwarves. Katriel went with them—for all they knew, the dwarves could be worse than the darkspawn, but for the moment they were the enemy of their enemy. They were willing to take their chances.
The result was dramatic. A great cry of terror went up from the darkspawn as their ranks began to dissolve. The ones behind Loghain and the others turned and fled, while the ones caught between them and the dwarves began to fight viciously and desperately. Several of the dwarves were hacked down, only to have their darkspawn killers immediately leaped upon by enraged dwarves.
Within minutes it was over. The last of the darkspawn had fled screaming into the tunnels behind them. What remained was a charnel house of gore, darkspawn bodies littering the tunnel with their black blood pooling over the rocky floor. Only a few dwarves had fallen, and now at least fifty stood staring suspiciously at the humans and elf as if wondering if they shouldn’t be their next victims.
Loghain held his blade firmly and crouched to attack the first dwarf who charged his way. Rowan stood beside him, equally ready though clearly winded by the fight. Katriel moved behind them, wondering if the battle was not yet over. Were the dwarves going to rob them? Slaughter them? Leave them here?
The silence continued until Maric cautiously stepped toward the dwarves. He had black blood splattered across his surcoat, and his sword was dripping with it. He seemed nervous and perhaps even frightened, yet still he put up his blade before the dwarves to show them that he meant no harm. Very slowly he put it down on the ground, and then raised his hands in fr
ont of him again. Empty hands, no threat.
“Do you speak the King’s Tongue?” Maric asked, making certain to pronounce each syllable carefully.
One of the larger dwarves, a thick man with a long black beard and a bald head entirely painted to resemble a white skull, sized Maric up. He was dressed in golden plate covered in large spikes, and wielded a warhammer at least as tall as himself, covered in darkspawn blood. “Who do you think taught it to you surfacers?” he growled. The accent was thick, but very understandable. “What sort of fools are you to come down into the Deep Roads? Are you seeking your deaths?”
Maric coughed uncomfortably. “Well . . . your group is here in the Deep Roads, aren’t you?”
The dwarf glanced at his fellows, and they exchanged an amused if grim chuckle. He looked back at Maric. “That is because we are seeking our deaths, human.”
Katriel moved to stand beside Maric, lowering her head respectfully toward the dwarf. “You’re . . . all of you, you’re the Legion of the Dead, aren’t you?” It was only a suspicion, considering what little she knew of the dwarves. But there were only so many of them who would be out in the Deep Roads and away from Orzammar, and these—with their skulls painted onto their faces—brought up something from her memory, a tale she had thought forgotten.
The dwarf seemed impressed. “Aye, you’ve the right of it.”
Loghain shot up a brow, glancing toward Katriel. “And what is that, exactly?”
“I know only a little,” she protested.
Sighing with exasperation, the dwarf turned back to the others with him and mulled over an unpleasant decision. After a moment he shrugged. “Collect our fallen,” he ordered them, “and bring the surfacers back to the camp with us.”
Loghain lifted his sword threateningly, Rowan standing resolute beside him. “I don’t remember us offering to go with you,” he stated in an even tone.
The dwarf paused and regarded them with amusement. “I’ll give you that; I didn’t think you surfacers would want to stay here and let the darkspawn swarm back down on top of you the moment we’ve left . . . but by the Stone, if that’s what you truly want, I’ll not stop you.”
Maric stepped forward and gave the dwarf a pained smile. “We’ve had a difficult time down here, Ser Dwarf. Please excuse our manners. We’ll gladly go to your camp.” He then shot Loghain an incredulous look that said, What are you doing? Loghain stared back at him, and then at the dwarf, before reluctantly sheathing his blade.
The dwarf shrugged. “So be it.” He hefted his warhammer onto his shoulder. “And the name is Nalthur. You’ll not fall behind if you know what’s good for you.”
15
It took several hours for Nalthur and the rest of his Legion of the Dead to lead their guests back to the camp. They carried the bodies of their slain companions reverently, first wrapping them up completely in cloth and then carrying them high overhead. They sang a sad dirge in a guttural, unfamiliar language, their march almost a funereal procession through the underground with their blue lanterns lighting up the passages around them.
The song echoed off the stone walls of the Deep Roads, carrying far into the depths, a challenge to those dark places that here life still existed. Alone in the Deep Roads, these dwarves cared when someone died. Katriel could not understand the words, but she knew it spoke of loss.
She watched Maric as he listened to it, his eyes far away. Did he think of his mother? He reached over to Rowan and comforted her, and Rowan let him. Her eyes were far away, too, and Katriel remembered she had lost her father only recently. So, too, were Loghain’s eyes dark as he listened to the funeral dirge. They had all suffered great losses, and how many of them had had time to properly mourn?
Katriel had added to their losses, as well. She knew that. She watched Maric’s tears, watching him mourn with Rowan under the sapphire lanterns, and she felt emptiness in her heart, knowing she could not join him. She did not deserve to join him. A vast chasm was opening up between them, and he didn’t even know it, one that she would never be able to cross.
She wondered if she would cry if Maric died. She had never cried for anything, since the bardic training she had received had wrung the sympathy out of her; a necessity for a spy whose loyalties were up for sale. Sympathy was a weakness, she had learned, and yet now she wondered. Part of her quailed at the thought of living without him, but need was not love. She had no idea if she was as capable of love as she was of treachery.
She saw the dwarf, Nalthur, studying her carefully. And she watched him turn and study Maric and Rowan and Loghain in turn, intrigued by their mourning. Perhaps he thought they cried tears for his fallen comrades? For all she knew, they did.
As the hours wore on, it was simple to see they would have been lost. Twice they passed intersections where the dwarves turned without a second thought. Katriel craned her neck at those places to look for signs of markers or anything at all to indicate where the other directions might have led, but there was nothing but rubble and decay. Whatever corruption the darkspawn spread, it covered everything as they proceeded farther in, like a slick coating of filth and oil.
It was a frightening thought, to her. The farther they went, the more she realized that the chances of finding their way back to where they were diminished. They were now completely dependent on the dwarves for their lives. Maric seemed willing enough to trust their fate to Nalthur and his men, but that was part of the problem. Maric was far from infallible. He trusted her, after all, and thus his instincts were more than a little suspect.
Still, there was nothing else for them to do now but follow.
Eventually they arrived at another outpost not unlike the one they had found when they first entered the Deep Roads, although this was far more intact. The massive gateway that bisected the passageway had been repaired, the heavily armed dwarves standing guard outside snapping to attention as soon as they saw the blue lights approaching. The cavern beyond was small but high, with reinforced walls and a number of smaller caves radiating out from the core.
Dominating the center of the cavern was a great statue of a dwarf, holding up the ceiling as if it were a tremendous burden upon his shoulders. It was not unlike the great statue they had seen back at the ruined thaig, though this was much more majestic. He wore a large helmet with horns as broad as his shoulders, and his armor was a coat of linked octagons covered in glittering runes.
It seemed that the dwarves had done a great deal to clean up the outpost and push back the filth. Even their supplies were neatly stacked, right down to the last cup on a table. Nothing was left astray. Cleanest of all, however, was the statue. It was possible that they had even cleaned it first.
“Is that Endrin Stonehammer?” Katriel asked, staring at it in awe. She had seen a painting once, in a tome that told of the oldest dwarven legends, but it had been a faded depiction, and not a good one. To see a likeness in the flesh, so to speak, rendered in such magnificent detail . . .
“That is King Endrin Stonehammer,” Nalthur muttered angrily. “And mind how you speak that name, woman. We’ll make only so many allowances for surface folk.” Without waiting for a response, he turned to the warriors who filed through the gate behind him. All of them halted in unison as he spread his hands high over his head. “We have survived one more night, my brothers and sisters!” he shouted. “One more night to deliver vengeance on the spawn that stole our lands! One more night to spill their blood and hear their cries of terror!”
The dwarves thrust up their weapons as one and roared in approval. “It has been one hundred and twelve nights since our deaths!” he shouted, and they roared again. “And tonight five more of us have found peace.”
The shouting died, to be replaced by a somber silence as the wrapped bodies were delivered forth, passed overhead from dwarf to dwarf until the five lay before Nalthur on the floor. “Rest well, my friends. For one hundred and twelve nights you lasted. Now it is time for you to return to the Stone, in the sight of the First Paragon
.”
Quietly, a large number of the dwarves marched into the rear of the cavern and returned with picks. Immediately they began pounding away at the ground a distance away from the statue. The noise was incredibly loud, but they appeared to be making quick progress in digging a pit.
Noticing his guests watching with bafflement, Nalthur turned to them. “There is enough room in this cavern to bury most of us. They will dig a tomb and seal the bodies within, so the darkspawn cannot get to them.” He shot them a dark look as if this was to prevent something he did not want to discuss with strangers. “Most of us will be returned to the Stone.”
“Most of you?” Rowan asked.
The dwarf nodded grimly. “Eventually there will only be a handful of us left. Then the darkspawn will come.” His dark eyes became distant. “We will not be returned to the Stone,” he said flatly.
The sound of the picks cracking at the stony ground rang throughout the cavern. The dwarven warriors who were not taking part in the digging spread out quietly into the outpost, removing their armor and tending to their injuries. They spoke only in hushed voices. As Nalthur moved around, inspecting his ranks, they glanced respectfully at him and then their eyes moved suspiciously up to the tall humans and the elf who followed behind him.
Eventually they reached an area with several earthen ovens carved into the stone walls. Three male dwarves and a large, pretty female dwarf were sweating profusely as they worked over massive iron pots bubbling with meaty-smelling stew. The female dwarf turned to regard Nalthur with a displeased look, wiping her filthy hands on her smock.
“Still alive, then, are you?” she chuckled.
“So far.” Nalthur shrugged.
Her eyes glanced up at Maric and then at the others. “Those don’t look like darkspawn. Where did you pick them up?”
“Out in the Deep Roads. Alone, if you can imagine.” He turned to look at them. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” Loghain said instantly.
