by Markus Heitz
Ireheart looked her up and down. Now it occurred to him that running into Bramdal had been no accident. He should have known. “I understand what you want. I shall not fight with you, Goda. You are too young and inexperienced to have a chance against me. Let your clan send one of their warriors, or go and study and come back in fifty cycles and we will fight and you shall have your revenge, if Vraccas has no other plans for me and if he lets the fires in my life-forge continue to blaze.”
The dwarf-woman gathered her long hair into a pony-tail, tying it with a leather thong. The muscles twitched as she lifted her arms. She shook her head defiantly. “There are no others in my clan.” She certainly had the air of a warrior. “I insist.”
“No, by Vraccas. I don’t kill children!”
“So you refuse me? I’ll go through the dwarf-realms from land to land and I’ll blacken your name and say that Boindil Doubleblade would not give satisfaction. You’ll bring shame on yourself and on the shade of your brother. You’ll be spat on, you and your clan. And they’ll spit on the memory of your brother, the hero.”
Quick as a flash the old rage flared up in the dwarf. The mad spark was back in his eyes, a light that had died five cycles before. He took two swift steps forward. And grabbed Goda by the leather dress she wore.
“No, Boindil!” warned Tungdil.
“You shall have satisfaction,” he growled furiously to Goda, who stared at him with triumph and fear in her eyes. “Right now?”
“Right now,” she nodded. “Under my conditions?”
“Yes.”
“Swear by Vraccas and on your dead brother.”
Ireheart let go of her, stepped back and took hold of his crow’s beak. “I swear by Vraccas and by Boendal. “He spat out the words before his friend could stop him. “Whatever happens to you now is your own fault.”
Goda nodded. “You took my great-grandmother away from me and she was forced into exile to live with the freelings. You killed my last living relative.” She drew her weapon. “Now it is your duty to train me.” She bowed her head.
Boindil had been expecting an attack. It took a while before he realized what she was demanding of him. “Train you? In what, for Vraccas’s sake? Child, I thought…”
“I demanded recompense and you have promised it.”
“ That is the satisfaction you are asking for?” The words tumbled out. “I can’t do that. How could I…?”
“Because of you a magnificent female warrior was sent to the forge of the eternal smith. You have stolen any possibility I might have had to take over from her and so it is only right that the one who subjugated Sanda should teach me.” Goda stayed resolute: “I take you at your words-at the words of your oath.” She went up to him and held out her weapon. “We call it the night star and I’m pretty good at it. What I need is an experienced teacher to show me the tricks to use in battle.”
Tungdil grinned at Ireheart. “Now see what it was like for me with Bavragor. He tricked me just like that,” he said. “I’ll see you inside.” He disappeared into the vaults to look for Balyndis. He wanted to greet her, take her in his arms and surprise her with how he looked now. There would be plenty of time later on for long talks with Goda.
Boindil stared at the dwarf-woman and felt completely at a loss. It was true, he had sworn an oath. “Right,” he sighed. “I’ll quickly show you a few…”
“No,” said Goda. “You’ll teach me properly and you won’t stop until I’m at least as good as you. Same as my great-granny. And then we’ll fight to decide just how good your training has been.” She raised the night star and the blades grated against each other. “A proper fight, master.”
He rolled his eyes, put the crow’s beak on the ground and leaned his weight on the head of the weapon. “Goda, I may have been a good warrior, but I’m out of practice. And just because I’m a good warrior doesn’t mean I’m any good as a teacher.”
“You can say whatever you want, master; I’m not leaving your side until my training is complete.” The face of the dwarf-woman showed the familiar stubbornness of her people, coupled with the determination of all womankind. “Wherever you go, I’ll be there.”
And she stuck to his heels, as he attempted to enter the vaults, following him at half a pace. “You’re going to leave me in peace some of the time, though?” he asked over his shoulder.
“If you need to relieve yourself, master,” she answered, cockahoop that her trick had worked. “When shall we start the training sessions?”
Boindil stared straight ahead, and a broad grin spread across his weathered face. He would be so tough with her that she’d leave of her own accord. And then he wouldn’t be breaking his oath. “The training starts now without a break.” He found a pile of old beams that Tungdil had placed tidily against a wall. “Carry those out, one by one and pile them up outside by the gate,” he ordered bad-temperedly.
“Yes, master.” Goda did not even ask the reason for the order. She put down her weapon and shield and got ready for the task.
Ireheart picked them both up. “Who said you were to put those down?” he said bitingly. “A dwarf never leaves weapons lying about. And certainly never puts down his weapon if he’s only got the one.” He nodded at her. “Carry the wood, then you can start the search of the vaults.”
She wrinkled her brow. “What search?”
Boindil rattled the metal balls of the night star and started to swing it. “Later. I’m going to hide it and you can’t go to bed till you find it.” He stepped round the corner. He was only just out of sight and chuckled to himself. He heard her give a big sigh as she tried to lift the first of the beams onto her shoulder. He was thrilled to bits with his plan. He’d think up some more good ideas soon. He’d be rid of the child within a few orbits, he was sure.
T ungdil stepped quietly into the bedroom.
Balyndis lay under a thick blanket. Her eyes were closed and her face was half hidden in the pillow. The long dark hair made her face look chalk white in contrast: she really did look weak and sick. Cautiously he sat down next to her, thinking through what he had prepared to say; he stretched out a hand to touch her gently on the shoulder.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think I was dreaming,” she whispered. “A fine-looking dwarf has entered my chamber.” She opened her brown eyes and reached for his left hand with her right. “You’re looking good, Tungdil Goldhand. It’s been a long time since I saw you looking like that. What does this change in appearance signify?”
“It’s not just an outward change.” He kissed her fingers. “I’ve been a fool. Boindil forced me to see the error of my ways. I’ve stopped drinking,” he said quietly, looking her straight in the eyes. “I was making you suffer for the pain and the guilt that I was feeling and I behaved like a…” He swallowed.
“… like a stubborn, blind drunkard, self-obsessed and tortured by his conscience,” she completed for him without mercy. “You mean to say you’ve been off on a trip, had a chat with Ireheart and now you’re completely transformed?” Her surprise was obvious and her voice incredulous. “You’ve changed, just like that, in a few orbits?”
Tungdil nodded.
“How? Tell me everything, so that I can believe you.”
He told her what had happened at the edge of the precipice and how his warrior friend had forced him to choose between life and death. “The wall round my mind broke down and I saw things clearly for the first time in many cycles. I can only beg for forgiveness,” he said quietly. “Will you believe that I have changed?”
When she put her arms around him, Tungdil started to cry. He embraced her in return, pressing her to him; he closed his eyes. He smelt her hair, felt the soft down on her cheeks and her warmth against his skin.
They sat like that for a long time, holding each other tightly, each enjoying the nearness of the other-a closeness shared once more. Shared wholeheartedly.
“It’s not just your fault that we grew apart. I withdrew and left you on your own,”
she confessed. “It won’t happen again.”
“Never again.”
She hugged him and took a long look at his face. “Give me time to get used to the new old Tungdil. This seems too good to be true.”
“It is true, Balyndis,” he smiled, but then a shadow fell across his face. “You look ill,” he said, his voice full of concern.
“It’s just the remains of a chill,” she answered. “I’m feeling much better now.” She kissed him on the brow. “You’ve met Goda?”
“She was quite a surprise. Especially for Ireheart.”
She grinned. “It will do him no harm if he has to contend with a dwarf-woman.”
Tungdil looked surprised. “You knew about her plan?”
“It was my idea.”
“What?”
Balyndis chuckled and sat back against the pillows. “When she turned up and asked if she could stay, I had no idea who she was. We talked a lot that first evening and I learned that she had been to the Blue Mountains. She had hoped to find you here to ask you where Boindil was. The secondlings refused to tell her.”
“You have set a young child on him, not a dwarf-woman.”
“She’s four and forty cycles old. You can see by her stature that she’s no longer a child,” Balyndis contradicted with amusement. “Ireheart will soon discover her female charms.”
“She’s related to the dwarf-woman he killed. There’s not likely to be any romance blossoming between those two,” he countered. “What was her original plan before you suggested this approach?”
“She wanted to kill him.”
Tungdil stood up, opened the buckles on his chain shirt and let it fall to the ground. Then he hung it carefully on the stand by the door. “She would never have been able to. But by the time her training is over, things might be different.” He slipped off his leather over-garment and stood before her in his shirt, breeches and boots. “She’s a thirdling, Balyndis. She’ll have picked up all the fighting skills and soon be better at it than him. Do you want her to kill him?”
She folded her hands and laid them on the blanket. “It won’t go that far.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Balyndis shrugged her shoulders and kissed him again, this time on the tip of his nose. “I can’t really say,” she admitted. “Call it intuition.”
“You women and your intuition,” he murmured and gave in. “Let us pray to Vraccas that you’re right about this.” He looked at his armor. “Have you heard what’s happening in Girdlegard?” When she shook her head, he summed up all the recent events he and Ireheart had experienced or heard about. “You’re sure that Goda isn’t after the diamond? What does your intuition say on that score?”
“It was good in the past when you could meet a child of the Smith and not have to worry about whether they were telling the truth,” she groaned. “I can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but in all the orbits she’s been here there hasn’t been anything suspicious about her.” She stroked his bearded chin. “The stone is exactly where we hid it.”
“I’ll go and tell it I’m home.”
“I’ll make us something to eat. If I know you and Boindil, you’ll both be ravenous.” Balyndis got up and quickly threw on a simple woolen dress over her linen nightgown, then put on her boots. “The meal will be ready soon, so don’t spend too long talking to your precious one.”
“My precious,” he hissed, imitating the stance of the greedy rock gnome that grabbed and kept anything that looked valuable. Then he laughed and walked out of the chamber hand in hand with his wife. Soon their ways parted and he took a different corridor, using an oil lamp to light his path into the other gallery where once Lot-Ionan’s apprenticed famuli had had their quarters. Most of the iron doors were still in place. Behind them the student initiates had followed their studies of magic and had dreamed of one day inheriting Lot-Ionan’s enchanted realm.
Now nothing was left. No magic, no enchanted realms. No Lot-Ionan.
Tungdil entered the laboratorium.
It was in this very room that a trick had once been played on him that had resulted in most of the fittings and equipment going up in flames; it had not been his fault. The flasks full of elixirs, the pots of ointments, the glass tubes containing extracts and essences, all that priceless experimentation had melted into one dangerous mass. A powerful explosion had ensued and little had survived of the benches, shelves, tables and apparatus.
And that was still how it looked. He stepped over the splintered glass and the broken pottery, walking over to where a pile of glass was all that remained of what had been complicated distillation equipment. Before the explosion.
The dwarf bent down and rummaged around. He didn’t locate the diamond immediately. There was so much broken glass that it was practically invisible. Nobody would ever find it if they didn’t suspect it was hidden in the rubbish.
Tungdil took delight in the cold fire shining from the stone’s facets. His heart leaped. He turned it this way and that, so that it could blaze at its best, returning the lamplight, and throwing reflections onto the dark and somber walls.
Whenever he took the stone in his hand he waited for the jewel to show him somehow whether it was just a diamond or the most powerful, magic artifact in all Girdlegard.
And, as always, he waited in vain. He put the stone back in its mound of glass fragments and pushed it down to the bottom of the pile.
Girdlegard,
Kingdom of the Fourthlings,
Brown Mountains,
Early Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle
A shrill whistle sounded up through the broad shaft and straightaway the bell rang in the winch room. Apart from one alcove, the entire room was filled with a strictly logical system of pulleys, winches, winding gear, cogwheels and levers, weights and counterweights in every conceivable size, all carefully proportioned. The alcove was the lift master’s post.
Ingbar Onyxeye of the clan of the Stone Turners, faithfully carrying out his important duties, had recognized the signal. “Here it comes!” he shouted back down.
His hands worked the various iron levers in turn, each as big as a dwarf; these released the brake blocks from the rollers and the wheels. Machinery whirred loudly into action.
The rotating parts set up a draught that smelled of oil and lubricating grease; the sheer mass of weights on the end of their chains pulled the lift upwards without a single dwarf wasting his muscle power. By this means, forty hundredweight could be heaved up easily.
Ingbar closed his eyes to listen better. Responding to the sounds, he took his oil can and applied lubrication where the machinery needed it to run more smoothly. It was intolerable to know metal was rubbing against metal, causing lasting damage. Oil would prevent unnecessary wear.
Suddenly there was a sound the lift master had never heard before, and the whole winding gear came to a halt.
“What’s wrong?” he muttered, swiftly checking all the most vulnerable parts of the equipment. He couldn’t find anything untoward. The cogwheels were intact, as were the chains, and the pulley belts had not come out of their runners.
Ingbar went over to the shaft. Right at the bottom he could see a pale shimmer of light coming from the lift cage. It had to be at least fifty paces down. “Oi, you down there! Has the pulley jammed?” he yelled.
In reply the little bell rang wildly, somersaulting and ringing fit to bust, so loud that it hurt his ears. Then its cord broke and the bell fell silent. “What are you doing down there?” he called, worried now.
The chain jerked, started and stopped, the metal screeching as the load increased.
“Have you gone mad? What are you doing? Are you dancing down there in the cage?” Ingbar stared at the winding gear. The whole system was running in reverse and the lift was dropping down. He ran back over to the levers and applied the brakes. “You’re overloaded. Unload something quickly, otherwise…”
With a scream of grinding metal the first brake gave way. A high-pitched metallic cla
ng resounded as the other holding devices failed one after another. The bolts shot out like bullets. One of them, sharp-edged, flew through the chains and pierced the lift master’s leg. Slowly the chains unwound, sending lift and cargo down toward the bottom.
“What the hell?” Ingbar clamped a hand over the gaping wound. There was no time to bandage it now. He had to save the workers in the cage and stop them crashing to their deaths.
He limped over to the ramps where the extra counterweights were stored. They used these when particularly heavy loads were being transported; they would be applied to the winches, but nobody had ever tried to do that while the lift was already running.
Ingbar knew the winding gear very well indeed; he knew the ins and outs of the system and its peculiarities and foibles. He fixed new weights to a long chain, attached a huge hook and thrust it into the emergency slot on one of the winches that was still moving.
The hook sat firm. The chain came taut with a clank and pulled the new weights down toward itself. Because of the tons of extra ballast the chain was prevented from unwinding, so the lift came to a standstill.
“Are you all right down there?” he called down the shaft. The cage with the workers must be a hundred paces down, he reckoned, judging by the chain length. They’d stopped by one of the secondary galleries. “Good,” he shouted. “Now unload the shale-tailings or some of you will have to get out. Otherwise it’ll never move.”
He waited a while to be sure they had followed instructions, then removed the counterweights and set the winding-gear into action, to get the lift up at last. For brake power he took a long iron bar and inserted it into one of the smallest cogwheels; as soon as the cage arrived he jammed the bar all the way in to block the cog. The cage had come up.
“That was a near thing.” Ingbar wondered why the lights had gone out. The faint glow given by the lamps in the engine room was not strong enough to show what was inside the cage. The iron door rattled open. “I’ll have to close the shaft down till we’ve renewed the brakes. What were you…?” What he saw robbed him of the power of speech.
Huge figures stepped out of the lift cage. They were armed to the teeth, carrying cudgels and shields with unfamiliar writing. But one glance at the brutal faces with the jutting tusks was enough to tell the dwarf what he had here: Orcs!
