by D. P. Prior
“We can take that as given, lassie. We are dwarves, and we will do what dwarves do.”
The vanguard was nearing the foothills beneath the mountain, and so, if there was any point in saying it, he needed to say it now, before all hell broke loose and the Thanatosians had to do nothing but swoop down and pick up the pieces.
“It’s the Warlord I need you to trust.”
“What? After what he did to us? After he stole the portal stone?”
“And we will fix that!” Nameless said. He hadn’t meant to shout, but his blood was up, and they had very little time. “It’s past now. All we have is this moment, and if we are lucky, the future. What the Warlord did was wrong. I suspect even he knows that. But the Warlord has his needs like the rest of us. He has agreed to help us, and by shog we need him right now. And we’re going to need him again to reach the portal, and to get back to Arnoch.”
“You have placed our fate in the hands of our enemy?” Gitashan said.
The Dwarf Lords around them were starting to look edgy. They were not used to seeing the Matriarch ruffled, and yet, judging by what had happened back at the citadel, when Thyenna had spoken for all of them, the idea that Gitashan was to be obeyed without question was starting to fray around the edges.
“The enemy of my enemy…” Nameless was already wincing at his resort to cliché.
“Is still my enemy.”
“Spoken like a true Dwarf Lord,” Nameless said. “But a Dwarf Lord of Thanatos, not of Arnoch. Lassie, what I am asking of you is no small thing. You were right just now, about us trusting each other, and maybe that is what I need from you.You have to believe in me if we are going to get through this. I’m not always right, and I may even be wrong this time, but I have a feeling in my guts, in the weave of my beard, that this Warlord, this Harry Chesterton, is a good man, a man we can rely on.”
Gitashan picked up her pace, started to pull away from him, and for a fleeting moment, he thought he’d lost her. But then she slowed down to wait for him and said, “Call me foolish, if you like, call me naive. There is no way for me to trust the Warlord. His very act of theft tells me there is no honor in him.”
“But?” Nameless said. “I’m assuming there is a but?”
“But I do trust you.”
“I have that effect on people,” Nameless said.
“Do not make light of it. And trust does not mean I like you. The Annals may one day curse me for it, but something in my guts, something in the weave of my beard, tells me you will not fail us.”
Shadrak, draped over Nameless’s shoulder, moaned. Nameless had assumed he was asleep, so quiet had he been.
“Is he…?” he asked Gitashan.
She peered behind at the assassin’s face. “Awake, but not with us. I have seen this sort of thing before. Our people are inured to grief. It is something only time can heal.”
Nameless nodded. He only hoped they had the time. Seeing his old friend like this was almost as bad as if he’d been killed. Maybe it was worse.
“Lassie,” Nameless said, returning to what they had been talking about. “I don’t expect you to like me. I quite often don’t like myself. But one thing I can promise you: by this act of coming with us to the portal, of pledging yourselves to Arnoch, your people and mine are one.” His anger almost flared again when he saw the derisive look that crossed her face. “Maybe not in your mind, but in mine, they are. And I once crossed half a world to keep my people from harm. I would do no less for yours.”
Before she could reply, cries of alarm went up all along the length of the column. Thanatosians leapt from the peaks and soared downward at frightening velocities. Those already circling above plummeted, and cast the path into shadow.
Nameless glanced in front. They had reached the steps growing out of the foothills, almost made it to the gully skirting the mountain.
“Keep going!” he cried.
“No!” The Matriarch countermanded him with a voice like thunder. She suddenly seemed ten feet tall, and all eyes were upon her. “Tortoise, now!”
Shields turned in one glimmering wave-like motion. At the same time, the ranks up front and back compressed, until Nameless was wedged into the center of a tightly formed-up square. The shields on the edges stayed outward facing, but those in the body of the square were raised in a ceiling overhead.
And not a moment too soon.
Thanatosians crashed into them like hail on a tin roof, every thud jolting the Dwarf Lord beneath. Knees buckled, but did not fail, and under the sustained barrage, the ranks packed even tighter together. Here and there, silver daggers poked through gaps in the shield ceiling, but glaives, hammers, and axes were rammed up with practiced precision, and the daggers either withdrew or clattered to the ground. Nameless saw a bearded girl slip between two women and slice a Thanatosian’s grasping fingers off with her shortsword.
“Thyenna, lead!” Gitashan bellowed.
She had no shield of her own, but was pressed in beneath those surrounding her, Nameless, and Grimwart. It seemed strange the Kryptès was sheltering beneath someone else’s, while his own massive shield remained strapped to his back.
Nameless could see Grimwart didn’t like it, being hemmed in, barely able to move. He didn’t like it himself, being reliant on everyone else, unable even to swing his axe.
Up ahead, Thyenna cried out, “Tortoise, crawl!”
The square started toward the gully at the bottom of the mountain path. Steps were negotiated with disciplined ease, without any break in the lines. It was nothing less than Nameless would have expected from dwarves, especially Dwarf Lords.
Thanatosians clanged and clamored against the shields. One squeezed through to the side, but a Dwarf Lord head-butted it and closed the gap. It was one of the scarolite-helmed guards from outside Gitashan’s chambers.
A crushing weight buckled the middle of the shield ceiling. Dwarves were forced to their knees, bracing their shield arms on their helmed heads. Another heave, and they inched closer to the ground. But just when Nameless thought they would break, the Dwarf Lords burst into a fierce, booming battle song. At the third blistering beat, they surged upward together and threw the Thanatosians back.
“Keep moving!” Thyenna yelled.
“Forward!” Gitashan bellowed. “For Arnoch!”
Nameless’s heart swelled with pride hearing her give the cry, and he joined his voice to hers: “For Arnoch!”
The battle song gave way to a chant that punctuated every grueling, hard-won step toward the gully: “Arnoch! Arnoch! Arnoch!”
The Thanatosians rammed concussively into one side. A dwarf was flung back into the next in line, bowling her from her feet, and one after another, Dwarf Lords fell in swift succession.
A single Thanatosian pushed through the gap left by the fallen dwarves, and sprang straight at Nameless. There was no time to react, but Paxy reacted for him. She wrenched herself away from his shoulder and launched at the Thanatosian, punching it out of the shield square. And then she hovered there, in the gap, warding against any more incursions as the Dwarf Lords got back to their feet. With the breach closed, she weaved her way back to Nameless.
“Good girl,” Nameless said. Without her, he’d have been dead.
Another concerted attack, this one from behind, and the shield wall finally started to come apart. As chinks of gray light speared down from outside, and flashes of silver started to rip the ceiling of shield apart, the rattle of thunder came from up front.
A man cried, “Get down! All of you, now!”
Gitashan found Nameless’s eyes. She looked defeated, petrified she had failed her people at the last.
“Do it!” Nameless bellowed. “Down on the ground!”
There was an instant’s hesitation from the Matriarch, and then she roared, “Now!”
As one, the Dwarf Lords dropped to their backs, shields raised over them. Grimwart was on his front, like a turtle beneath its shell, but Nameless had no shield. The best he could do was co
ver Shadrak with his body.
Flames roared above them. Scorching heat singed Nameless’s hair and britches, and he gritted his teeth, waiting for his skin to blister and bubble.
RETURN OF THE DWARF LORDS
The oppressive weight of Thanatosians lifted as they were driven off by the initial burst of fire, and a second blast sent them fleeing up the mountain path.
Thankfully, the streams of flame had been aimed high enough not to do Nameless any lasting harm, though sitting down might be out of the question for a week or so. He felt behind and was relieved the seat of his britches was still intact. It would do nothing for his status and dignity among the Dwarf Lords to walk around with his hairy arse sticking out.
Boots stepped among the dwarves toward the routed Thanatosians. Fire continued to spew in long, sweeping arcs. Nameless craned his neck, took in the padded black outfits, the snub-nosed masks, and he thanked shog his trust had been rewarded.
The Warlord had come for them.
The twenty men and women of the Warlord’s party formed a line between the dwarves and the Thanatosians. One of the fighters towered above the rest, his tow hair poking from the back of his hastily fitted mask. Ardo the Strongman, taking to his new role as if he were born for it.
At the Matriarch’s command, the Dwarf Lords got to their feet and swiftly re-formed into a column.
“To the gully,” the Warlord cried, lifting his mask so his voice would carry. A flicker of worry crossed his face when he met the Matriarch’s sullen gaze.
Gitashan merely nodded and barked, “Do as he says!”
And up front, her sister Thyenna led the way down out of the foothills.
The Thanatosians continued to harry them as they entered the gully. Dozens of those behind scrabbled up the rocky walls, tore across ledges, and flung themselves below. Shields were raised to thwart them, and with blinding speed and the agility of a cat, the Thanatosians bounded away before anyone could come close to scoring a hit.
The Warlord’s people took the rearguard. All around where Nameless walked beside the Matriarch, Dwarf Lords marched with tireless precision. The children kept up, as if they’d been born to marching, born to the trials of warfare. Grimwart was as fatigued as Nameless, though, burdened by the husk girl, and the shield on his back.
Each time the Thanatosians grew bold enough to strike from the rear, they were driven back by a wall of flame. After a mile or so of one repulsed attack after another, the flames started to sputter, and then they dried up altogether.
The Warlord issued a command, and his people adjusted their guns. Next time the Thanatosians surged forward, they were met with a hail of bullets that sent their front ranks flailing to the ground amid splashes of black blood.
But they had sensed another weakness, and came on against the gunfire in an irrepressible wave.
The Warlord made further adjustments to his gun, and with a roaring rush, smoke streaked from the barrel. A hundred feet behind, the ground exploded in a burst of flames and rocky shrapnel, decimating the Thanatosians in the blast radius. The walls either side juddered, and chunks of stone broke loose, crashing, bouncing, tumbling below, until a whole section of the gully gave way in an avalanche of boulders and billowing dust. Scores of Thanatosians were buried beneath it, and those left standing scattered up the sides of the gully.
Unhampered by attack for the moment, the column proceeded apace toward far end of the gully. The Warlord had won them a reprieve, but already Thanatosians were gathering atop the rubble of the collapsed walls.
Up ahead, the vanguard passed through the mouth of the gully, and within minutes they were all trudging across ash-covered ground away from the mountains.
“Now we stick to the flatland,” the Warlord called to his people. “Deprive them of their aerial assaults.”
He was right: the Thanatosians did not fly, they glided on the membranes under their arms. Away from the high ground, their options for attack were limited.
That still left front, back, left, and right, though, and it was the Warlord’s party at the rear who took the brunt of it. Volley after volley ripped into the Thanatosians pouring out of the gully, and little by little, they began to fall back.
Up front, Thyenna and the vanguard were largely unimpeded. On the one occasion a solitary Thanatosian dashed ahead in a wide loop and came tearing in at them, Cidruthus Tallish stepped out of column, one long gun strapped to his back, the other raised to his eye. A blue bolt pulsed from its end and punched the Thanatosian from its feet. It lay smoldering and twitching on its back as the column filed past.
By the time the staves that bounded the Warlord’s camp came into view, the Thanatosians appeared to have given up their pursuit.
The staves were dull and lifeless now, but instead, a fine mist sprayed in sporadic bursts from nozzles set into their bases. Perhaps the lights were only needed at nighttime. Maybe the threats were different by day.
“They won’t approach anywhere near the camp,” the Warlord said, making his way through the dwarves. “That’s one thing about quick learners: they know when they’re on a hiding to nothing.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Nameless said, finally feeling it was safe enough to put Shadrak down.
The midget curled up on his side as soon as he touched the ash-carpeted ground. His pink eyes were open but unfocused.
Grimwart lay the husk girl beside him. The cocoon forming around her had grown so thick, her features grew indistinct beneath it.
“We should leave them,” the Matriarch said. “They will hamper our chances of reaching the portal.”
The Warlord removed his mask from atop his head and called through the palisade for someone to bring supplies.
Grimwart flopped down on the ground, utterly exhausted. If he disagreed with the Matriarch, he didn’t show it. He might have been hoping the rest of them would confirm that she was right.
Nameless was tired, too. Tired beyond belief. And when was the last time he’d eaten anything? But he’d be shogged if he was leaving anyone behind.
“I’ll carry them both, if that’s what it takes,” he grumbled.
Grimwart caught his eye and gave a weary smile. “Aye, and I’ll carry you, too, when those stick-legs of yours fail.”
Maybe he’d judged Grimwart unfairly. Again.
“Stick-legs, laddie? I’ll have you know, these thighs have squatted seven-hundred pounds for seven repetitions.”
“I’m disappointed in you,” Ardo the Great said. “I had you down for eight-hundred for eight, at the very least.”
“Once I’ve seen you do it, laddie, I’ll match you and add ten pounds.”
Ardo chuckled and clapped him on the back. “And you’d beat me fair and square, Nameless. Of that I have no doubt.”
Supplies were passed through the palisade—flasks of water and more of the soft, chewy bars, that the Warlord explained to the Dwarf Lords packed more protein than a shank of mutton. None of them seemed to know what mutton was, or protein either, for that matter, but their eyes lit up with wonder as they bit into the bars. Compared with the moldering offal they were used to, the Warlord’s food must have seemed fit for the gods.
“Are you really an Immortal?” a dwarf girl said, sidling up to Nameless. She carried her helmet under one arm, and her round shield was strapped to her back. At her hip, a sort stabbing sword hung in its scabbard, and in her hand she held a half-eaten bar.
“Right now, lassie,” Nameless said, “I feel like an old, tired dwarf, and anything but the stuff of legends.”
A frown crossed her face, and she looked disappointed.
As she turned to go, Nameless said, “But give me forty winks and a flagon of ale, and I’ll be back to being an Immortal once more.”
She faced him again, the beginnings of a smile on her lips, but then her eyes hardened, and her jaw set with grim determination. She nodded curtly, and left him alone.
“They grow up before you know it,” Grimwart said with a shake of
his head.
It was no life for a child, that was for sure. But who was Nameless to criticize? All the Dwarf Lords had been doing over the centuries was trying to survive. Would he have really done things differently?
“We’ll eat and rest up for an hour,” the Warlord said, “and believe me, we’re going to need it. The Thanatosians might not come close to the camp, but you can bet they will harry us all the way to the portal.”
“Good,” Shadrak grumbled from down on the ground. “Then I’ll have something to shoot at.”
Slowly, almost painfully, as if waking from a hundred-years’ sleep, the assassin rolled into a sitting position and looked about, blinking.
“Laddie?” Nameless said, crouching at his side. “Are you all right?”
Shadrak focused on him for what seemed an age before he answered, “No. No, I’m shogging not.”
Nameless backed off. It was definitely an improvement, but Shadrak was best left alone right now.
The midget spent the next hour cleaning and polishing his guns—the two flintlocks, and the old black pistol he referred to as his “thundershot”. He took out all the razor stars and daggers from his baldric, too, and put a sparkle back into their steel.
Grimwart took his cue from Shadrak, and set about buffing his shield with the rag he kept for the purpose. The metal was mangled but still functional. Kind of like Nameless felt in himself.
The Matriarch accepted the proffered food and water, but spent the majority of the time glaring at the Warlord. Eventually, he seemed to tire of it and seated himself on the ground in front of her. When he took out the hexagonal portal stone from his jacket pocket, she immediately reached for it. The Warlord clenched his fist about the stone and tucked it away again. He said something Nameless couldn’t hear. The Matriarch’s eyes narrowed, and she sighed, but eventually she nodded, and the Warlord moved away.
“What did you say to her?” Nameless asked.
The Warlord looked over his shoulder. “Why don’t you ask her? Otherwise she might think we’re scheming.”
“Good point, laddie. And thank you.” He shook the Warlord’s hand. “I knew I could count on you.”
