The Revenge of the Dwarves

by Markus Heitz

  Tungdil and Sirka helped the magus to his feet.

  Lot-Ionan drew the arrow out of his flesh and discarded it. “It’s not so easy to kill a magus,” he said with a peculiar smile. “Evil will not prevail.” He grasped the iron rings to start the climb.

  A bolt of lightning struck from the center of the artifact, sending the wizard sailing through the air to land four paces away. He lay groaning as smoke poured out of his body.

  “Lot-Ionan!” Tungdil ran to his side. The wizard’s hand was badly burned and the skin was flaking off onto the ground. Blood seeped out of the blackened flesh. His eyes had turned back in his head and he was convulsing.

  Sirka stared. “It’s because his soul is not true,” she realized with horror. She watched the battle rage. “What now?”

  Their army was holding their ground on nearly all sides, but a few of the creatures had broken through the defense line. And it was these misbegotten beings that were now heading toward the artifact. They were well aware what had held them prisoner for so long in their black ravine. They were desperate to destroy it.

  “I don’t know,” Tungdil replied quietly. Raising Bloodthirster he mounted his befún and rode to confront the monsters. “I’ll keep them busy. Then we’ll have to see. Look after the magus.”

  Ireheart had reached the archer and smashed her bow just as she was notching her next arrow. It fell harmlessly to the ground and she leaped back in fury, drawing her sword.

  His eyes flashed. “So, you cowardly murderess. Let us see what battle skills you have now that I’ve broken your favorite toy.” He dealt her a blow with his crow’s beak.

  She sidestepped deftly and launched a kick but he was able to ward it off with the handle of his ax. He drove the jagged point, where the spike had broken off, deep into her flank, tearing a gaping wound. She fell back, gasping.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, you crafty bitch,” he crowed and, whirling his ax, was about to strike when she threw her sword.

  It missed him and he heard Goda cry out.

  Up until recently there would have been nothing that could have distracted him in combat, but his concern for Goda did so now. He turned.

  The archer’s sword was stuck deep in Goha’s arm, and the impact had forced her backwards—right up against the rings of the artifact.

  “Vraccas! No!” yelled Boïndil, thinking of what Flagur had said. In his mind’s eye he saw Goda transformed to ashes, torn by lightning bolts, consumed by flames…

  But nothing happened.

  Before he could realize how surprised he was, he felt a sharp pain in his side. It had a hellish kick. Turning, he faced the flying fist of the archer-woman.

  “Not so fast!” he exclaimed and hit at her hand with the flat of his battleax. There was a loud crack on contact and the finger bones crunched. Without waiting to see what she was doing, he dealt her an uppercut with the jagged edge, shattering her chin.

  She fell to the ground but still slashed out with her dagger.

  Ireheart sprang to one side and the glistening knife-tip missed him. “My turn,” he laughed, lifting his weapon high over his head to slam it down with all his strength. “What does a skull do when it bursts?”

  The woman had no answer. Under the blow from his ax her head demonstrated the solution to his riddle.

  From far above Furgas shouted. He had found his footing on one of the cross-bars and sat there, condemned to watch and wait, which was what he had demanded the others should do.

  “We’ll deal with you in a minute,” Ireheart called up. He raced to Goda’s side. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was careful, master.” Laying his hand on the sword handle he pulled it out of her arm. Goda gave a quiet moan. He showed her the sword. “Never throw your weapon unless you have a second one,” he reminded her. “She still had her little toothpick.”

  Goda noticed the blood trickling out of his side. “I can see.”

  “That? Only a scratch.” He inspected her back for any scorch marks on the armor. Nothing. A slight giddiness forced him to plant his feet firmly on the ground.

  “Goda, Ireheart!” called Sirka. “Come over here. The magus has something to say.”

  It was only now that the two dwarves saw Lot-Ionan stretched out on the ground next to Rodario. “Oh no! Did he fall?” asked Boïndil somberly. “Now we’ll need a catapult to get him up there.”

  They ran to the magus. His breath was short and he was obviously in great pain. Sweat glistened on his forehead. “I didn’t fall. The artifact rejected me,” he explained.

  Ireheart looked up at Furgas. “Fine artifact this one is. Why doesn’t it grill him instead of you?”

  Lot-Ionan turned his pale blue gaze on Goda. “You must go and complete the task.”

  “Me?” The dwarf-maiden raised her night star as if in excuse. “I’m a warrior and—”

  “The rune master knew and I saw it with my own eyes, too,” he interrupted, speaking hoarsely. “Goda, you bear within you the gift to use magic. And unlike mine your soul will be pure and innocent.”

  “Innocent?” Rodario scoffed. “It’s a good thing the artifact does not have ears, after what I heard in Pendleburg.”

  Goda blushed. Ireheart looked sternly at Rodario. “We were doing wrestling drills, actor. She is still untouched.”

  Lot-Ionan gazed steadily into Goda’s brown eyes. “I don’t know how—perhaps from the magic source, or perhaps you’ve had it from birth.”

  “Is that what you and the rune master were talking about at the campfire that night?” Rodario remembered the evening he had shared the strange spice with Flagur and seen the two men talking.

  “Yes. I did not want to tell Goda until we had completed our mission. You might have been my famula.” He shut his eyes, and his teeth were chattering. “Climb up, Goda.” His words could hardly be heard now. “Kill Furgas, put the diamond in the setting and save Girdlegard.”

  “And my homeland, too,” added Sirka.

  On the left more and more beasts were breaking through, heading for the artifact. Tungdil rode back and forth, felling one creature after another, but there were far too many. Three dozen were coming their way.

  Sirka pillowed Lot-Ionan’s head on her mantle, then she took her combat stick and nodded to Ireheart. “I think we’ve got work to do.”

  Rodario broke the arrow off close to the entry wound and got to his feet. “Well, you’ll be needing me, as well. I can’t miss a third opportunity to be a hero.”

  Ireheart gave Goda a tender kiss. “Hurry. But not too fast. Leave a few for me and my crow’s beak.” He turned to face the foe. Again the world seemed to waver in front of his eyes and he needed to blink before his sight cleared.

  “Irrepressible,” was all Goda said. She went to the nearest ring and sought a hold for her fingers as she started to climb.

  “Just you try,” shouted Furgas. “I’ll kill you.”

  Sirka twirled her weapon and looked at Ireheart. “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell me the joke about the orc and the dwarf?”

  “Now?”

  “Might be our last chance.” Sirka grinned. The first monster was ten paces away, swinging a huge sword.

  “Hurry.”

  “Well, one orbit, a dwarf meets an orc at the Stone Gateway.” Ireheart raised his crow’s beak. “The orc saw him and said, ‘Little man, can you tell me where…?’ ”

  Sirka’s adversary arrived and grabbed her attention with a hefty swipe.

  “Later,” she called to Ireheart as she put her heart and soul into the fight.

  Tungdil spurred his befún across the battlefield, striking at the monsters’ heads with Bloodthirster. Each strike took a life.

  The refashioned älfish blade raged amongst the enemy throng. It seemed as if the sword were helping of its own accord, directing its own attack, and seeking out the most vulnerable places to strike. The weapon was uncanny but fascinating.

/>   But whatever efforts the ubariu and the undergroundlings made, more and more creatures broke through the defenses, as soldiers were lost.

  The winged monsters could not be stopped. They seemed immune against attack by arrow or crossbow bolt and had overturned two of the armored wagons, falling in swarms on the others. Swift as the wind they tore off the heavy plating to slaughter the crew inside.

  The remaining vehicles gave the infantry some cover and kept up a spear attack, but they too were damaged.

  “Curses!” Tungdil halted his befún to study the artifact. He saw Furgas was at the top and that a small figure was making its way up on the outside ring. “Goda?”

  The befún cowered and emitted a furious roar. All at once it was dark round Tungdil, and a foul-smelling wind touched him. Claws slashed to the right and the left, lodging in the flesh of his steed, then up he soared…

  The ground fell back and he was hovering over the battlefield witnessing the butchery on both sides of the chasm; it was a miniaturized version of what he had been experiencing himself.

  “What…?” Tungdil turned to see the hideous face of one of the winged monsters, its muzzle agape.

  His first thought was to plunge Bloodthirster between the teeth of the beast to kill it. But it would have meant his own death. From one hundred paces up in the air a fall was certain death.

  Instead, he leaped off his injured steed to land on a claw of the flying beast, who dropped the befún and uttered a fearful cry. The animal tumbled to earth, smashing four ubariu beneath itself as it fell into their own ranks.

  “You won’t shake me off,” snarled Tungdil, stabbing the monster in the belly, making a gash half a pace long, out of which a stinking liquid gushed to drench him.

  Screeching, the dying beast tried to land, coming down over the line of undergroundlings and skimming over the spears of the Black Abyss army before it came to earth with widespread wings, blundering through the ranks and killing or maiming maybe fifty.

  Vraccas protected Tungdil. Apart from a few scratches and a shallow gouge on his right calf from a spear tip, there was nothing. So he struggled out from under the wing and found himself standing right in the middle of the opposing army. He had not been noticed.

  The foremost ranks of the ubariu and undergroundlings were an arrow’s flight away, and the entrance to the chasm fifty paces from him.

  “Well, Vraccas, whatever your plan is,” he said, looking round, “I’m very keen to know how it all ends.”

  Again he heard the sound of the kordrion. Stone cracked and a landslide of rubble buried several beasts. Immediately there was stillness and the warriors’ eyes all turned to the entrance to the ravine.

  A pale claw as wide as three fortress gates shot up out of the blackness of the abyss and took hold of the outer edge of the ravine, trying for a hold. Cracks formed and rock crumbled under the pressure and weight of the creature that was still down there in the dark attempting to free itself. Its claw fastened into the rock again, the long nails taking hold.

  The most dwarven of Tungdil’s virtues came to the fore. When all about him was hopelessness, he kept his head and drew on the qualities of steadfast stubbornness and pigheadedness or whatever other folk thought of when they spoke of the dwarves.

  He climbed up the corpse of the winged beast so that both friend and foe should see he was there. He took his bugle from his belt, placed it to his lips and replied to the call of the kordrion, sounding the battle signal into the horrified silence.

  “I shall not allow you out of your prison,” he bellowed down into the chasm. He raised Bloodthirster, drenched as it was with the black lifeblood of all the creatures he had vanquished. “The weapon I snatched from evil shall be the one to stop you, whatever you are. Fire fights fire.”

  He stormed straight through the ranks of the beasts, and hacked to pieces every assailant that dared to cross his path; it was as if their armor was but butter and their bodies but straw.

  Behind him he heard Flagur’s voice, then the ubariu yelled and the undergroundlings hallooed, joining their efforts with his own.

  Hope began to blossom.

  Flagur saw Tungdil suddenly appear between the enemy ranks and the cadaver of the monster. He had sounded his horn as fearlessly as if standing in safety behind the walls of Letèfora. His words resounded clearly, echoing over the death-filled field. Then he sprang forward.

  “Ubar, you have sent us a true hero, whose courage surpasses even that of an acront,” he avowed, lifting his sword. “Let us follow him!” He sent his rallying cry to right and to left. “We shall be the first to defeat a kordrion. For Ubar!” Stepping forward, his weapon grasped in both hands, he cut the beast that reared up before him into two halves, slicing from skull to groin. He was covered in its dark blood and the smell of it spurred him on.

  His warriors joined their voices to his own and sallied forth. Turning their enormous shields they charged ten paces deep into enemy lines. There they halted: the first ubariu formed a protective metal wall, cutting off the antagonists now behind them from the main army of monsters.

  Following in the wake of the ubariu, the undergroundlings bombarded this isolated section, felling monsters so swiftly with their combat batons that the creatures could not coordinate any defense.

  Meanwhile, pressure was increasing at the shield barrier where the Black Abyss hordes were menacing the ubariu.

  “Again!” yelled Flagur, calling for the lance with his banner affixed. They repeated the maneuver: turn shields aside, let some of the assailants through, hem them in and butcher them.

  “Take care!” called Flagur to the front line overlooking the field, holding his banner aloft to ensure the enemy knew what name death bore.

  At that moment he felt a searing pain in his side. Suddenly there was an arrow sticking out between his ribs, making breathing a torture. Yet Flagur did not surrender to the pain. His fingers contracted around the shaft of his lance and he used it to support himself. Show no weakness. The battle must first be won. “And change… now!”

  Those fighting at the front withdrew and were neatly replaced by a second line of fresh warriors, so that the onslaught kept up its momentum. Their enemy floundered when faced with well-drilled strategy like this. The monsters were exhausting themselves in their relentless attack.

  Losses, however, were many.

  More than once Flagur saw a good friend fall, heard a death cry and chimed with it in his soul.

  On the outside no weakness could be seen, even though he would have wished his fallen warriors out from underneath the carcasses of slaughtered monsters. They deserved a better resting place. Several of them he had known for countless star cycles; he had trained them himself. To watch them die like this hurt as badly as the arrow in his side. Mourning would have to wait, as always in battle.

  Flagur saw that one of the armored vehicles was set sideways-on to provide cover for their advance. Flurries of arrows and spears were whizzing out over the heads of their own troops. The archers knew their stuff. Five whole rows of the enemy were felled by these missiles, and a second salvo mowed a wide path through the heaving, screaming throng.

  “Onwards and forwards!” commanded Flagur, his spear aloft and the pennant cracking in the breeze, signaling the major assault.

  Goda climbed up. Now she had reached a crossbar and slid along on it toward Furgas. Beneath her, Sirka and Ireheart were thumping the life out of the beasts; Rodario had a short bow and a quiver taken from one of the creatures and was loosing arrows at the foe. No matter if your aim was not very good—in this crush you would always hit a target.

  Ireheart gave full vent to his battle rage. He used the madness coursing through his veins to make him insuperable in combat. The crow’s beak whirred without rest, denting helmets, shattering bones, slicing through armor and hurling the victims a good two paces through the air.

  Sirka for her part was fighting like the water element, slipping into gaps and using the barb on her slim we
apon to strike and the hook to fend off blows, to wrench swords out of assailants’ hands, or to thrust into unprotected flesh. She never stayed long in one position, but moved with flowing grace.

  Goda had nearly reached Furgas.

  He was watching her. “What do you think you are doing?” he asked. “I’m curious to see…”

  Goda drew out her night star, her favorite weapon, with its three hefty spiked globes. She would have to be careful not to lose her footing if she missed her mark. She balanced cautiously, stepping out along the narrow strut, and raising her right hand.

  Furgas pushed himself backwards out of range. “You won’t get me like that.” He squinted down, looking for the next reinforcing bar. “Time is on my side, dwarf. Always the most reliable of allies.” When Goda came closer still, he jumped off and dropped down, his fingers outstretched to catch the next bar.

  Even though she only had one weapon with her Goda decided to contravene the first rule of combat: she hurled the night star at Furgas.

  The three spiked balls hit his hands and smashed his fingers; screaming, he plunged, landing on his belly in the very setting the diamond was destined for—a central setting ringed with spikes.

  “No!” He shrieked in agony, working the spikes even deeper into his flesh as he struggled. His blood flowed down over the hub and cascaded to the ground. His movements became gradually weaker. Finally his screams died away.

  Goda sent a prayer of thanks to Vraccas, climbed carefully down to the central hub where Furgas’s body hung. The next problem would be to locate the stone. “How do I find it?” she called out to Ireheart.

  Her dwarf mentor was whacking a monster on the paw with his crow’s beak, and ramming his own sharp helmet into its abdomen, so that black blood streamed down over his head and shoulders. “Slit him open. Top part of his belly. It’s only a little while since he swallowed it.” Hopping back to avoid a spear thrust, he sliced the head off his assailant.

  Goda drew her dagger and forced the body into a sitting position, hauling it off the spikes. The hole in the magister’s chest would not be big enough so she was just placing the knife tip underneath his ribs when he opened his eyes.