In fact, having Berta and Slooshy both accompany him seemed to make things more complicated than ever before. Instead of having two women catering to his every need, it seemed the pair was concerned only with each other, bickering and arguing and fighting so continually that Gus himself seemed to get lost in all the confusion. Instead of two girls, it seemed he had no girls!
Exasperated, he had marched his way back to Norbardin, with Slooshy and Berta trailing after him, bickering endlessly. When they had approached the city, the highbulp broke into a run, thinking that perhaps he might sneak away from them. But when he sprinted through the gatehouse, into the wide plaza, there they were-right behind him.
Since then they had been hiding in the great city, looking for food as always, and dodging the crafty Theiwar, who were only too likely to chop off a gully dwarf’s head to collect the bunty. No, Thorbardin wasn’t the nice place Gus had remembered it to be.
And that was before he found out that there was a war going on.
“All right,” said Brandon, thinking furiously despite the evident helplessness of their position. “You stay behind me!” He turned to face the tunnel and the swarm of pursuing horax. He expected Gretchan to step up to his side, to offer to fight-and to die-with him as a comrade, not someone under his protection. That anticipated reaction, even against the backdrop of his despair, was vaguely comforting.
Her reaction, however, was not what he expected, and with the horax already clattering into view, he didn’t dare turn and look at her.
“Help!” cried Gretchan, leaning out to shout upward from the ledge. Her voice echoed upward through the Atrium. Brandon knew that she would be plainly audible to the dwarves at the Deepshelf Inn, which looked to be about a hundred feet overhead.
“We’re being attacked by the horax!” she cried in a loud voice. “Can you throw us a rope, drop a ladder? Anything? They’re almost here!”
“Yes, a rope!” Brandon shouted over his shoulder. “I can hold the bugs for a few minutes, but that’s all!”
As he spoke, the first of the pursuing bug monsters clattered near to the terminus of the steeply climbing tunnel. Four of the creatures eyed him hungrily but halted. The dwarf brandished his weapon and they hesitated. He feinted a charge, raising the axe over his head as he lunged back down the cavern.
The monsters hissed, clicked, and reared but showed no inclination to retreat, and Brandon hastily backpedaled to the ledge. He glanced up and saw that Gretchan had attracted the attention of a number of dwarves at the Deepshelf Inn. Several were shouting encouragement, waving, pledging that other dwarves were going to seek a rope or ladder. “Hold on!” one burly fellow called.
The horax stayed back, perhaps thirty feet down the cavern, warily watching the two dwarves. Brandon kept his eye on them, holding his axe at the ready. He didn’t know how long they would linger there, but he got an idea of what was next when he saw the teeming mass of bug monsters part, allowing a large, red-plated horax to advance toward the front of the file. He remembered the gooey webbing that creature had expelled at Gretchan, allowing the monsters to drag her off.
“Uh-oh. They’re bringing up a tangler,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Hurry up!”
The crimson horax skittered forward, rearing onto its rear legs. The tubelike protrusion on its chin came into view, and immediately the creature spit a thick strand of webbing straight at Brandon. He raised his axe and sliced at it, cutting the web into ribbons before the beast could pull him back. But the mass of bugs crept steadily closer.
“Here’s a ladder; they’re dropping a rope ladder,” Gretchan cried.
“Climb it!” Brandon urged frantically. He parried another blast of webbing then looked back to see Gretchan’s boots disappear as she climbed up the set of rungs attached between two supple lines. He darted out of the cavern and jumped to grab a rung with his left hand while still holding his axe with the right. Quickly his feet found another rung, and he climbed upward as quickly as he could while still keeping an eye out below.
Seconds later horax started spilling out of the cave, scrambling onto the narrow ledge. Above them, dwarves screamed and started shouting and pointing at the creatures. Looking up, Brand saw that Gretchan was climbing swiftly, her staff strapped to her back. The whole rim of the Deepshelf Inn was lined with gawking dwarves, and farther up, along the walls of the whole vast chimney of the Atrium, other dwarves were gathering on the balconies and perches, looking down at the daring escape and pointing. The horde of horrible monsters attacking them was in plain view of the whole city.
“Behind you!” shouted one of the dwarves in the Deepshelf, and Brandon looked down again, startled to see a horax scrambling right up the ladder behind him. The monster ascended faster than the dwarf, but thinking fast, Brandon reached down to chop through the ropes of the ladder with his axe. He severed the first one, and the lower stretch of the ladder sagged, forcing the monster to hang on with many of its legs. When he cut the other rope, the bottom of the ladder fell, carrying three horax down into the depths of the bottomless shaft.
But the horax didn’t need a ladder to climb rock walls. Some of those that emerged from the cavern were scrambling right up the cliff face of the Atrium walls. They weren’t moving as fast as those that had hitched onto the ladder, but their steady upward progress was undeniable. Even worse, the great red shape of the tangler emerged onto the ledge. Lifting its head, it arrowed a strand of webbing straight up, sending the sticky ropes all the way up to Brandon’s boot and ensnaring it.
The monster pulled, and the dwarf was almost jerked from the ladder. Clinging for his life, he reached down and sliced away the web before it pulled him down. By then, Gretchan had reached the inn, where willing hands pulled her off the ladder and onto the balcony. She turned and shouted encouragement to Brand, who continued to climb as fast as he could.
By then more than a thousand dwarves were watching from dozens of different vantages, rising through most of the city’s stacked levels. They shouted encouragement to Brandon while calling others to come and witness the thrilling chase. Every balcony, shelf, and plaza was lined with onlookers. From the opposite side of the Atrium, a few intrepid crossbowmen fired shots at the horax pursuing Brandon. Several of the bolts struck home, and one horax shrieked and writhed, losing its grip on the cliff to tumble into the depths of the Atrium. But such deadly missile weapons were not common among the folk of Garnet Thax, and only a few of their wielders were in position to shoot.
Another strand of web snagged Brandon’s foot, and that one pulled his boot off before he could cut himself free. A second web shot past his shoulder, flying all the way to the railing of the Deepshelf Inn, where it snagged onto the stone parapet. By then sturdy dwarves were pulling the ladder up, hand over hand, doubling the speed of Brandon’s ascent. Moments later he was grabbed and helped over the railing, collapsing into the willing embrace of Gretchan, as a dozen hearty miners clapped them both on the backs and offered congratulations.
The celebration was short-lived, however, as other witnesses, looking down, reported that the horax were still climbing. Several were sawing at the web that had attached to the stone railing, but their knives and swords seemed unable to slice through the gooey strand.
“Here, let me at that!” Brandon declared, breaking free of the throng and striding to the web with his axe upraised. He looked down to see no less than a dozen horax slithering quickly up the ropey strand, which apparently did not stick to their claws. With one swing of his Reorx-blessed axe, he cut the web free, and a loud cheer rang out as all of the bugs on the strand tumbled, writhing and clicking, into the depths of the Atrium.
Again and again the tangler sent its web shooting upward, latching onto the parapet, providing a path for the horax to quickly slither upward. Each time, Brandon waited until a number of the creatures were suspended by the web, then cut it free to send them plummeting.
A few of the horax climbed directly up the walls, but that was harder going,
and when they reached the edge of the Deepshelf Inn, the monsters were invariably met by a half dozen burly, ill-tempered dwarves. The commotion had drawn enough attention that many of the dwarves had come running with their picks, hammers, and shovels, and those weapons were sufficient to batter the precariously clinging monsters free from the edge.
Finally, the monsters seemed to recognize, if not defeat, at least a stalemate. Those that were still in view, including the tangler, disappeared back into the tunnel. The deep shaft of the Atrium was silent for several seconds as the great throng of watching dwarves seemed to hold its breath.
Then the whole space erupted with cheers, nearby dwarves clapping Brandon and Gretchan on the shoulders, others, from higher vantages, shouting and whooping their congratulations on their victory in the public battle and very narrow escape from death.
“Bluestone!” Gretchan shouted, wrapping Brandon in a firm embrace. “This is Brandon Bluestone!” she repeated loudly. “You know,” she said in a lower voice, winking at Brandon, “famous for his Bluestone Luck!”
He was about to ask her what she was doing when he heard the chant picked up by the dwarves in the Deepshelf Inn. It rose like smoke through the chimney of the Atrium, borne higher by a thousand voices:
“Bluestone! Bluestone! Bluestone!”
He looked at her in amazement, knowing that their return to the city could not escape the notice of the Enforcers. He glowered and was surprised to see her beaming at him.
“You do realize we were going to try and sneak back into the city?” he demanded.
She kissed him and nodded. “But just let the king try to arrest you now!”
PART III
THEHEIR
EIGHTEEN
NORBARDIN’S NIGHT
King Jungor Stonespringer, wrapped in his shabby robe, with his golden artificial eye gleaming, studied General Ragat carefully. The military commander did not flinch under the scrutiny but stood at attention and waited for his monarch to speak. The great square of Norbardin was silent, as it had been for the several days since the battle had ended. Though there were many dwarves throughout the city, those that dwelled there were in their homes, hiding, while those that belonged to the two armies remained in their camps, healing and resting and awaiting the future with a universal sense of foreboding.
The two dwarves stood on the summit of the prayer tower, which had, miraculously, survived the ground-shaking tremors that had rocked Norbardin and brought the civil war to an abrupt halt. It was the same place where the black minion had been obliterated by its collision with the Kingsaver Shield, the place where Willim the Black and his female apprentice had flown to confront the king directly-and from which they had toppled when the ground shook and the stone-lined cavern began to crack and crumble.
Ragat still held the Kingsaver Shield, the metal disk burnished to a high gleam, even after the dissolution of Willim’s flying minion. The city of Norbardin, sadly, was not so untarnished. Even then, several days after the fighting had ceased, smoke lingered like a miasma of gloom. The convulsion of the brief earthquake had smashed buildings and brought large pieces of rock tumbling from the ceiling. Bodies were rotting all across the vast square, still lying where they had fallen during the battle as their comrades, blinded by the explosion of god’s light, cowered in their camps, barely able to feed themselves or bandage their own wounds. As to the citizens of the once-great city, they remained hiding in their homes, terrified even to venture onto the streets.
“The will of Reorx was made real!” the king declared forcefully. “You were here; you saw it!”
“Yes, my king. His will was a blinding light, and when it seized the bedrock of our nation, he shook the world and brought the battle to a stop in the same instant,” Ragat agreed, even as he studied his king warily. The shield had blocked the loyal general from the flash of light, so he hadn’t been blinded, but the king had suffered along with the rest.
“And he drove the wizard and his wench away!” the king exulted. “The will of Reorx rendered the rebel army weak kneed. Even now they cower under archways and stout columns; they fear to venture on to the attack!”
“Yes, Reorx’s display did all those things, my liege,” agreed the general noncommittally.
“Then why can you not muster a counterattack?” the king demanded. “The black wizard’s army is scattered, ill prepared. You could sweep them from the gates and reclaim the city’s outer defenses!” Stonespringer blinked, his good eye shifting wildly across the war-torn city until finally, again, settling on his general.
“The men refuse to fight, my liege,” Ragat declared bluntly. “They took the message from our god as an immortal command, an expression of Reorx’s displeasure with the war. Many are still blinded or can see only a little. Even those who had their eyes averted, who were unaffected by the light, will not fight. It seems that neither the enemy’s nor our own soldiers will agree to recommence the attack.”
“The fools!” snapped Stonespringer, turning to stalk to the edge of the parapet. “The god was showing his pleasure with me, his favored prophet and spokesman! I demanded his action, and he acted. His blow struck at our enemies when they stood at the verge of triumph-Reorx brought their attack to a halt so that we could prevail! Do the men not see that?”
“I regret to say, sire, that they do not. Those who saw the blast of light sweep from the tower at the middle of the battlefield still are blinded. The priestly healers tell me it will be days, if not weeks, before their vision begins to return. And even those who were not blinded felt the tremor that threatened to bring the mountain down on our heads, and they took that to mean that they should no longer fight their kinsmen.”
“But those arrogant rebels are still there! They cling to the gate fortresses. They could strike the city again at any moment.” The king waved his arms, gesturing at the plaza, to the gatehouses, and to the many places where the enemy forces crouched in their camps.
“Begging your majesty’s pardon, but my spies suggest that the rebel troops are no more anxious to fight than are your own soldiers,” Ragat reported, repeating the assurance he had been giving the king over and over since the battle had been interrupted several days earlier. He spoke calmly, patiently, though his heart broke to reject his king’s orders.
“Spies can be wrong!” Jungor hissed. He trembled, clenched his fists, and made a visible effort to restrain himself from striking the loyal general in the face. Instead, he turned abruptly toward the door into the palace. “We need to know Willim’s plans, to understand his resources and what actions he might take next. Where did he go after he fell from this tower?”
“It is impossible to say, my liege. All who might have witnessed his flight were still suffering from the blindness of Reorx’s light. But it is certain that neither his body nor that of the female are anywhere below the tower. We must conclude that he was able to escape Norbardin.” Ragat himself had led that search, and he, too, had at first refused to believe that their enemies could have escaped. But an exhaustive investigation of all the grounds around the palace had confirmed beyond any doubt that Willim the Black and his female lackey were gone.
“We must know more!” the king declared. “What does the black wizard intend next? How many of his troops survive? When might they be ready to attack?”
“Begging my king’s pardon, but I have a spy who has been very accurate in his reports to me,” the general reported. “He came to me even during the battle for the palace. He says he has identified some of the wizard’s agents, here in Norbardin. It may be that, if we take those spies, they will be able to tell us something about their master’s intentions.”
“Go to him, then,” ordered the king. “Seek out your agent and have him take you to these enemy spies. Be sure to take them quickly, and with surprise; remember, our enemies possess arcane magic, obscene power that we cannot fully understand. Arrest them, and bring them to me!”
“Bluestone! Bluestone! Bluestone!”
&nbs
p; The cry echoed through the tunnels of the deep-levels, up and down the Atrium, rising into the city of Garnet Thax on a cresting wave of triumph and celebration. Brandon held on to Gretchan’s hand and let the swelling shouts, the pats on the back, the cheers, and the congratulations sweep him along. They had just emerged from the Deepshelf Inn and made their way along a street suddenly crowded with boisterous revelers. It was only then dawning on Brandon that they were celebrating because of him.
In the midst of the fight with the horax, he’d been only vaguely aware of the rest of Kayolin-at least, beyond those dwarves in the Deepshelf Inn who had helped rescue them by throwing them the rope ladder-but he realized that his battle and almost single-handed defeat of a swarm of the bug monsters had been observed by a significant portion of the population. They had watched in horror as the clicking, hungry monsters had swarmed up the walls of the Atrium like some nightmare from the ancient past. And they had seen the wielder of the Bluestone Axe fight them back, slashing through the webs of the tanglers and sending dozens of the horax tumbling to their doom.
Clearly, from the adulation he and Gretchan received as they strode proudly along, with more and more citizens of Kayolin streaming out of houses, shops, and inns, the word had spread rapidly among the city’s dwarves about their amazing fight.
“You’re quite the hero,” the cleric said, pressing his hand and impulsively leaning over to kiss him. That gesture drew another round of cheering as well as some hoots and whistles from the crowd, mainly male, for there were many miners and smith-workers who thronged the lower levels.
Brandon couldn’t hide his grin until he remembered the reason they had plunged down the Atrium in the first place. “I imagine the League of Enforcers are going to hear about this,” he said grimly, glancing around for a glimpse of the dread shiny black leather uniforms.
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