The Doom Brigade

by Don Perrin

  Two hours later, the dwarves went to bed. Soon, their snores reverberated off the mountain side.

  Slith pondered what to do. He needed food now, and he would need rest later. He was alone in enemy territory, and, despite his glib words to Vruss, Slith was well aware of the danger. Not from these dwarves, but patrols had been known to emerge from Thorbardin. Ogres, too, lived in these mountains. Though they had all fought as allies during the last war, the ogres had no love for draconians. Ogres had no love for anybody, except, maybe, other ogres.

  At least now Slith knew the answer to his questions. His curiosity was satisfied. As for opportunity, even though he’d come out of this trip empty-handed, the information he’d gained might prove valuable later.

  When Slith started picturing the scroungy bearded, scrawny dwarf slow-roasting over an open fire, the draconian turned and headed for home.

  Chapter Ten

  The four dwarves were up and moving before dawn. The difficult, treacherous part of the journey was behind them. They came across a well-traveled path, probably used by Thorbardin hunting parties, which led down the mountainside.

  The going was easy, no need to be roped together. Mortar, who had persistently and annoyingly claimed that he had the strangest feeling they were being followed, announced that this morning the feeling had passed. If it wasn’t for the intense heat of the day, heat that made it seem as if they were walking through an oven, not a canyon, the dwarves would have actually enjoyed this part of the journey.

  At length, Selquist, who was in the lead, climbed atop a large, flat outcropping of rock. He motioned the others to join him. They clumped up after him.

  “What?” asked Auger.

  “The fabled gates of Thorbardin,” Selquist said, pointing. “Southgate, to be precise.”

  “Where?” Pestle asked.

  “There. Right in front of your nose.”

  “I don’t see anything except a mountain,” Auger complained.

  “Well, there’s a gate there. Trust me.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like a gate,” Selquist snapped. “Well, you’ve seen it. Let’s get going.” He started to leave the outcrop. The other three stood there, staring.

  “The great Southgate is, in actuality, part of the face of the mountain,” Mortar explained learnedly. “It is a gigantic stone plug operated by water wheels that, when in place, is undetectable from the side of the mountain itself.”

  “I’d really like to see that!” Auger said eagerly.

  “So would I!” echoed Pestle.

  “Well, you can’t,” Selquist stated. “Sorry, but we’re not going in that way. Follow me,”

  Jumping down from the outcropping, he left the path and struck out in an entirely new direction. The three dwarves traipsed after him, their enthusiasm for this journey considerably heightened. None of the three had ever seen Thorbardin before. It was the food of legend and lore, most of it dished out with a bitter sauce. Now it was reality, and nothing in the legends had prepared the dwarves for anything so grand or spectacular as a gate that took up the side of an entire mountain. They could only imagine the wonders inside the mountain.

  “Whole cities, bigger than Palanthas, are built right inside.” Mortar continued with his lecture. “And there’s the Life-tree of Hylar. A gigantic stalactite that has twenty-eight levels that house the central city of Thorbardin. You can reach the Life-tree by traveling in boats drawn by cables—”

  “Oh, give it a rest, will you,” Selquist said irritably, wondering why he’d brought along such a know-it-all. “It’s a hole in the ground. That’s all Thorbardin is and ever will be. Quit jabbering, and come along.”

  “I met a Thorbardin dwarf once,” Auger said with quiet pride.

  “Really? What are they like?” Mortar was interested.

  “He thought his beard was longer than anyone else’s,” Auger replied. “He kept calling me ‘woodsy’ and claimed that he couldn’t understand anything I said, when I was speaking dwarf just as good as him.”

  “He,” Mortar corrected.

  “I said it was a he. I never a met a female.”

  “No, the correct grammatical expression is, ‘as good as he.’ ”

  “He who?” Auger was completely baffled.

  “Never mind!” Selquist shouted.

  The other three fell silent. They continued walking and shortly came to a dead end. A rock wall, lined with bushes whose long, spiky limbs were covered with very nasty-looking thorns, blocked their way.

  “This is it,” Selquist announced, looking extremely pleased with himself.

  “What?” asked Auger.

  “Another gate?” Pestle gazed at the rock face with wide eyes, as if he expected it to split wide open any second.

  “The air hole,” Selquist said. “Through there. Behind those bushes.”

  The dwarves eyed the thorny bushes, and the enthusiasm they’d experienced for this project died immediately.

  “Why does it have to be there?” Auger complained.

  “Where else would it be?” Selquist demanded.

  “Someplace easier to get to. Those thorns look sharp.”

  “They are sharp. Good thing, too. Why do you think this air hole has been so well-hidden for so long? If the Thorbardin dwarves knew this was here, they would have plugged it up like they did all the others.” Selquist was defensive.

  “Maybe they didn’t plug it up because they figured no one’d be stupid enough to try to walk head first into a thorn bush,” Mortar said in an undertone to his brother.

  Selquist heard the remark but pretended he didn’t. He had now definitely made up his mind. Next time, Mortar was staying home.

  Pestle pulled out his axe, prepared to do battle. Selquist stopped him.

  “Nope. No chopping. We have to leave this the way we found it, or the Hilar will know we’ve been here.”

  “Then how the bloody hell do you expect us to get through that?” Pestle growled.

  “I did it,” Selquist said coldly. “You just have to take a little care and not mind a few scratches.”

  Selquist put on a pair of heavy gloves, placed his foot firmly on the lowest branch of the thorn bush to hold it down, used his right hand to lift up another branch and started through. A thorn scraped across his face, but he wisely kept his “ouch” quiet, not to demoralize the troops. He moved ahead another step, trampling down more branches with his feet, pulling apart other tangled branches with his gloved hands. He could see the air hole, in plain sight now, just a few feet away.

  “Follow me,” he ordered.

  “I’m really getting tired of hearing him say that,” Pestle complained to his brother.

  “See there. Nothing to it.” Selquist turned to his fellows, who had been doing a lot of screeching and cursing.

  Now he saw why. Selquist, with his scraggly beard and wispy hair, had made it through the bushes with relative ease. His companions had long, full beards and thick curly hair, which was now snagged and thoroughly tangled in the long thorns. It appeared, from the looks of things, that they were going to be snagged there forever, unless rescued.

  “Can’t you three do anything right?” Selquist asked irritably.

  Three pairs of eyes glared at him from faces that were covered with blood. Three sets of teeth gnashed at him, and three sets of mouths said not very nice things about his mother.

  Heaving a long-suffering sigh, Selquist drew his knife and waded back among the thorns.

  “I thought you said we shouldn’t cut them,” Pestle reminded him.

  “I’m not,” Selquist said coolly and instead proceeded to cut Pestle’s beard.

  ’Hey! No! Don’t!” Pestle protested vehemently. A dwarf’s beard is his pride, his joy. A dwarf would as soon consider cutting off certain other essential parts of himself as he would cutting off his beard.

  “Fine, then!” Selquist said. “Stay here. Wait for the rappels to come eat you.”

  Pestle subsided an
d permitted Selquist to cut him free. When he was finally out of the bushes and saw hanks of his brown hair clinging forlornly to the thorns, he was forced to cover his eyes and hide his tears.

  Selquist worked on the other two, and finally the rest of the dwarves, shorn and scratched, hot and sweaty, and in no very good humor, stood outside the air hole.

  “Come on, men.” Selquist waved his hand. “Follow—”

  Pestle grabbed hold of Selquist’s shoulder, spun him around. “If you say ‘follow me’ once more, it’ll be the last thing you ever say.”

  Selquist, indignant, brushed off Pestle’s hand. “I will lead the way,” he said stiffly. “You can come or not, as you choose. But may I remind you all that there is more cold ale down there than there is up here.”

  “He’s got a point,” Mortar admitted. The tussle with the thorn bush had left him extremely thirsty.

  Selquist entered the air hole, with the others right behind. The air hole was actually a shaft bored into the side of the mountain. It was designed not only to provide air and light to those working below, but it was also intended to be used as an escape route during a cave-in. Hand and foot holds were carved into the side of the smooth rock face of the shaft, as well as grapples on which to hang ropes. Selquist tied the end of his rope to the grapple, and the dwarves swung and climbed down the shaft, keeping a watchful eye out for rappels. The temperature inside the mountain was much cooler than on its sun-baked surface.

  They’d gone about two hundred feet when the air shaft ended. It opened up—so Selquist said—into a tunnel below. The other dwarves had to take his word for it. The air shaft had provided some light at the beginning, but that was gone now, leaving the dwarves in the dark. All they could see with their night vision was each other, the warm bodies glowing faintly red.

  “I can’t feel the floor!” Auger said. He was sitting on a narrow ledge, his feet dangling.

  “The rope won’t reach any farther,” Pestle reported.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Selquist replied. “We’ll jump for it.”

  “How far?” Mortar asked worriedly.

  “Not far.”

  Selquist recalled, with a shiver, the first time he’d made this journey. Having reached this point, he had been forced to make a leap of faith, as it were, into the darkness. He had brought a lantern, but its light didn’t reach far. The map had shown the air shaft opening into a tunnel. Selquist could only trust that the mapmaker was reliable and that the tunnel floor hadn’t given way during the small quakes that occasionally rattled the dishes of Thorbardin.

  Selquist was not the dwarf to let a paltry emotion like fear come between him and profit, but he had spent several uncomfortable moments huddled here at the end of the air shaft, trying to gather up the courage to make the drop. He’d done it, of course, and found that it was only about six feet down to the tunnel floor. Now, confident, he dangled from the last hand hold and, letting go, landed lightly on the floor below.

  Pestle remained in the air shaft, peering down at his leader.

  “Hold on! I’ll light a lantern so that you can see where you’re going,” Selquist said, afraid that Pestle would land right on top of him.

  Selquist removed his pack and felt around for the lantern and the flint. A few quick sparks and the lantern was burning. The others came tumbling down out of the air shaft. Picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, they gazed around with interest. All of them were in a much better mood. Though they would have been slow-roasted before admitting it, the Niedar had the pleasant feeling, deep inside, of coming home at last.

  “Where do we go from here?” Auger asked eagerly.

  Selquist was about to say “Follow me.” Swallowing it, he said instead, “Step this way, gentlemen.”

  The tunnel was six feet in diameter, with a pair of iron rails built into the floor. The walls, once smooth, were cracked here and there, but such was the skill of the dwarven engineers who had first designed these tunnels that the delvings had withstood even the devastating quakes of the Cataclysm without collapsing.

  “What are these things used for?” Pestle asked.

  Arms flailing, he was trying to walk on one of the rails and meeting with little success. Dwarves are not noted for their agility.

  Selquist, in a good mood now that they had reached their destination, waved a hand and said magnanimously, “I know, of course, but perhaps Mortar here would like to explain.”

  Mortar told them how the rails were used by the dwarves to haul the carts loaded with gold and silver and iron ore through the tunnels. The dwarves passed one of the carts, rusted and broken, sitting on a siding.

  “What are you stopping for?” Selquist asked, turning to find that his friends had deserted him and were all gathered around the rail cart.

  “Maybe there’s some gold left,” Auger said.

  Selquist had been about to complain over the delay, but, at this, he realized that he had always longed to see the inside of one of these contraptions. He hastened back over, carrying the lantern.

  The sides of the cart were as high as the dwarves were tall and rusted. They couldn’t see the interior. Pestle suggested climbing in with the lantern and investigating further.

  “Are you kidding?” Mortar scoffed. “The Thorbardin dwarves would have picked this clean long ago. I can’t imagine why they left the cart here, in fact. It looks perfectly good to me.”

  “Wait!” Auger said, leaning close and staring intently at the sides of the cart. “There’s writing here.”

  The dwarf brushed off a couple of centuries of dust with the sleeve of his shirt. The others gathered around to see.

  “What does it say, Auger?”

  “Yeah, what does it say?”

  Auger read slowly and haltingly. “ ‘Here lies a … a coward. Let … otters’—no, that must be others—‘Let others see his fate and beware.’ It’s dated about the time of the Dwarf gate wars.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” Pestle said.

  But the dwarves were now curious. Standing on tiptoe, the dwarves poked their noses over the side of the cart. Auger promptly shrieked, a shriek that echoed eerily through the tunnels.

  Selquist poked him hard in the ribs. “Shut up, you idiot! We’re getting close to the populated areas! Good grief, you sound like a human who sees a spider. It’s just a corpse.”

  “It startled me, that’s all,” Auger said defensively.

  Drawn by a morbid fascination, they all looked back inside the cart. The corpse was that of a dwarven male, wearing an iron helm and rusted chain mail. The head had been cleanly severed from the neck.

  Subdued, the four dwarves left the cart and its grisly occupant with a mumbled apology for disturbing his rest, adding the fervent prayer that he not return the favor and disturb theirs.

  “Welcome to Thorbardin,” Mortar said grimly.

  They continued on down the tunnel.

  Chapter Eleven

  After two more hours of walking, enlivened by the occasional tumble over the iron rails in the floor, the four dwarves reached the end of the mine shaft. Selquist flashed the lantern light all around. They were inside a large cavern. The light would not penetrate the darkness far enough to illuminate the ceiling. They could see the light shining on the iron rails, however, and those ran straight into a solid rock wall.

  The three dwarves looked at Selquist, who answered hastily, “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “A dead end?” Pestle growled.

  “Yes. I mean, no, it isn’t. As for this wall”—Selquist tapped on it—“it was added at a later date, built right over the rails. I must admit that when I first came upon this obstacle, I was more than a little disappointed. However, by means of superior reasoning, I deduced that—”

  “Of course!” Mortar interrupted. “I know where we are! Yes! This must have been the very same tunnel used by the Thane of the Neidar to lead his people in their futile attempt to break into Thorbardin, after the Hylar had refused
them admittance following the Cataclysm.”

  “How do you know that?” Pestle asked, shushing Selquist, who was trying to say something. “There’s lots of tunnels and shafts down here.”

  “Yes, but according to legend the Thane and his clan crossed Helefundis Ridge. The same ridge we just crossed. And there was that dead fellow back there and the words were written in the old language. This is a place of great historical significance,” Mortar added, solemnly and reverently removing his iron helm. “Hundreds of dwarves fought and died here.”

  “Wonderful story,” Selquist snapped. “We’ll erect a monument. Now, as I was saying, by means of superior reasoning, I deduced that there must be—”

  “That would explain why the Council of Thanes had this area walled up,” Pestle remarked. “This area was a reminder of a dark time in Thorbardin history. They wanted it to disappear. Out of sight, out of mind, as the specter says.”

  Selquist made another try. “I’m sure that’s exactly what the Council of Thanes was thinking, Pestle, and thank you for sharing that. Now, as I was saying, I thought at first I was trapped down here, until I came to the conclusion—the rather brilliant conclusion that—”

  “So,” said Auger, pondering this out slowly, “if this entrance to Thorbardin is walled up, how do we get through?”

  “I’m trying to tell you!” Selquist shouted, forgetting his own admonition to be quiet.

  Pestle reminded him.

  Selquist seethed silently.

  While he was seething, Mortar said, “You know, the dwarves must have had a forge down here. How else would they have repaired the rails?”

  “You’re right!” Pestle said eagerly. “And if they had a forge, they would have needed pipes to vent the heat. Which means that the pipes would lead … right back outside.” His eagerness faded. “We don’t want to go back outside.”