by Dragon Lance
“I am on the emperor’s business, and this is the emperor’s road,” Dreyus purred. “What I want is for everything to be put in order, as I will direct. You can begin as soon as you have surrendered. You may do that now.”
“I’ll see you roast on coals first,” Derkin explained.
“Ah,” Dreyus hissed. “You are as they have said. Very well, you won’t see me at all. Or anything else.” He pointed a finger at the dwarf and muttered something in a language that was no language.
Remembering something he had found in an old Hylar scroll, Damon ducked his head and closed his eyes. The blinding light that leapt from the man’s finger was like silent lightning. But instead of striking Derkin’s eyes, it struck his mirror-bright helmet and rebounded. Coffell screeched and clapped his hands to his eyes, then fell over backward as his horse reared, neighing wildly. In an instant, blinded men and blinded horses were bouncing, pitching, falling, and staggering off in various directions. Of all the humans in the little group, only Dreyus still sat his saddle, ignoring the pandemonium.
“Don’t do that again,” Derkin suggested. “Next time, these people with me will make a porcupine of you.”
“I assume you do not surrender?” Dreyus growled.
“Of course not,” Derkin said. “We are free dwarves, and we will remain free or die. Furthermore, Klanath will not be put back, as you put it. It is too near Kal-Thax. We don’t want human settlements this close. Also, this is not the ‘emperor’s road,’ because there is no road here. If you and your emperor want to keep pestering those people east of here, you’ll have to find another path. This one is closed.”
“Closed?” Dreyus sneered. “You dwarves can’t keep us from using Redrock Cleft.”
“We don’t have to.” Derkin grinned. “There is no Redrock Cleft. My delvers caved it in a month ago. You might climb through it afoot, but you’ll never get a horse across it.”
The big man’s eyes seemed to blaze, and his face went dark with fury. “You’ve lost your chance to live,” he hissed.
“By the way,” Derkin asked casually, “can you tell me where Sakar Kane is? I still have business with him. If there is one thing we won’t stand for, it’s a liar.”
Dreyus glared at the dwarf. “You’re insane,” he said. Without a further word, he reined the black horse around and trotted away.
“Why don’t we put a few bolts in him?” Tap asked. “He’s still in range.”
Derkin shook his head. “He hasn’t attacked us, yet,” the Lawgiver said. Unmoving, he watched as the big man returned to his troops. A moment later, a pair of riders withdrew from the line there and headed eastward at a gallop. “He doesn’t believe me about Redrock Cleft,” Derkin said. He turned his horse and headed back to his own lines. “Maybe when he finds out that it really is closed, he’ll just turn around and go away.”
“If he doesn’t, we’re likely all going to die here,” Talon Oakbeard pointed out. “Those soldiers are all around us. We have no fortifications, and we’re outnumbered two to one.”
“Maybe we will die, then,” Derkin agreed. With sad, angry eyes he scanned his encampment. Two hundred yards across in all directions, the barren center of what had once been Klanath was a tapestry of dwarven ranks, deployed for defense. All around the encampment was a solid ring of sturdy, armored forms. A pair of javelins stood above each dwarf, and a shield at each shoulder. On every second back was a slung crossbow, and those without crossbows had webbed slings. And each dwarf had a sword, axe, or hammer.
Within the circle, grim assault companies waited – hundreds of mounted, armed dwarves and many more hundreds of footmen. Even here, surrounded on a barren, open plain, without fortification except for the shrunken skeleton of the old palace where some of the women tended the infirm, Derkin’s army was formidable. “They may kill us,” the Lawgiver agreed, “but it will cost them dearly if they do.”
*
It was midday when spotters on the palace ruins saw Dreyus’s scouts returning from the east. Drums sang, and Derkin gathered his group commanders around him for a final time. “The human knows now,” he said. “He has confirmed that Redrock Cleft is no longer passable. Now he will either leave or attack.” He turned to the only human in his camp, Tulien Gart. “Which do you think he will do?”
Tulien Gart shook his head. “Any ordinary officer would leave,” he said. “Oh, he might bluster around a bit, maybe curse you and send a few arrows your way, but he would see the futility of an all-out battle here, even a victorious one. He would withdraw and go in search of another route eastward. But that is no ordinary officer out there, Derkin. That is Dreyus. Dreyus does not like to be thwarted.”
“You are free to leave,” Derkin told the human. “They would pass you through their lines.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Gart said bleakly. “Dreyus would know that I have been here by my own choice. And he would know where you learned the field tactics of empire soldiers. If I must die, I’d rather it be here, quickly and with honor, than at the mercy of the emperor’s torturers.”
Derkin shrugged. “Arm yourself, then. And find a horse that suits you.” He turned to his unit commanders. “Are we ready?”
Each commander nodded, and one said, “As ready as we’ll ever be.” They turned and headed for their units.
Tap Tolec nudged the Lawgiver and pointed. A short distance away, Helta Graywood had appeared outside the ruined palace. She was wearing oddments of armor and a helmet, all too big for her, and carrying a sword and shield. She was heading for the perimeter line.
“Do you want us to put her back in the shelter?” Tap asked.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Derkin said. “She’s decided to fight. Just bring her here, so I can keep her with me.”
Trumpets sounded all around, and the human cordon began to close in on the dwarves. Dreyus had made his decision. Foot companies led the approach, with archers among them. When they were within seventy yards, the footmen halted and the archers paced ahead of them and spread, standing and kneeling in double ranks.
“First come the arrows,” Derkin muttered, as though reciting from a manual of arms. “Drums!”
The drums sang, and shields were raised throughout the encampment. From the perimeter inward, the dwarven ranks became a wall of steel.
In unison, the human archers released their bows, and the sky came alive with arrows. But even as the arrows left their strings, small groups of dwarves charged through their perimeter at a dozen points, racing forward as fast as stubby legs could drive them. The arrows went over their heads to fall in the ranks behind them, and before the archers could recover or retreat, there were dwarves among them, slashing furiously this way and that.
Wide-eyed, bewildered bowmen, armed only with their bows and their daggers, fell by the dozens before the foot companies behind them could react. And when the better-armed soldiers did charge forward, hampered by retreating archers and the bodies of the fallen, they saw only the backs of the dwarven assault groups, scampering toward the safety of their shielded lines.
Among the dwarves, few had been hit by arrows. Most of the shafts had found only shields in their path. Others had hit nothing but the hard ground. Here and there, though, a few dwarves lay fallen, some dead and others injured.
“Bolts and slings,” Derkin ordered. Drums beat a tattoo, and on the perimeter line every second dwarf knelt and raised his crossbow. Those between the boltmen whirled their slings, filling the field for an instant with a sound like big, angry bees. Then the crossbows twanged, the stones flew, and all around the dwarves, human soldiers screamed and fell.
“First assault, first reprisal,” Derkin muttered. Clambering onto his war-horse, he pulled Helta Graywood up behind him. Around them, the Ten mounted and formed close guard. Drums tattooed, and all around the encampment, companies of dwarven riders climbed into their saddles. “He’ll put his footmen forward one more time now,” Derkin told himself. “Javelins!”
As though
responding to Derkin’s thoughts, trumpets echoed his drums, and human pikemen and macemen advanced at a trot from all sides. The dwarves on the perimeters knelt behind their shields, motionless, as the trot became a headlong charge. The humans closed to forty yards, then thirty, then twenty.
“Throw and rush!” Derkin ordered, the drums taking his message.
As one, the entire dwarven perimeter stood, aimed, flung their javelins, then followed instantly with a second throw. While the first wave of needle-sharp missiles was hitting the humans, and the second was on the way, every second dwarf in the outer ring raised shield and blade and charged forward, roaring their battle cries.
It was not a human strategy. It was a tactic the Chosen Ones had invented, and its effect was murderous. Still moving forward, confronted by javelins that tore through their ranks, stumbling over their impaled companions, the human pikemen and macers were taken completely off guard as a thousand or more dwarves hit their advance, cutting them down right and left. Edged pikes thrust and slashed, and usually went over the heads of the dwarves. Dwarven blades ran with human blood. Dwarven hammers and dwarven shields smashed human knees and jaws.
Then, as before, the dwarves wheeled and withdrew, hurrying back to their own lines. As they returned, those lines backed away, tightening and withdrawing toward the center, compacting their defense. Not all of the dwarves who had countercharged came back. Many lay now where they had fallen – their blood flowing, mingling with the blood of their enemies. But most returned, and the perimeter tightened inward to compensate for the losses.
All around the compact dwarven force, stunned confusion ran through the human ranks. At Dreyus’s command, his officers had launched a standard field assault against a surrounded enemy. First an archery barrage, then pikes and maces to overrun the perimeter, with horse companies in reserve to mop up afterward.
It was a classical tactic, and it should have worked. But the dwarves had not played their part. Instead of cowering and fleeing from the arrows, they had come out under the barrage and decimated the archers. Instead of regrouping for defense against footmen, they had unleashed a deadly barrage of their own. And instead of falling before the pikes and maces, they had countercharged, and now the forward foot companies were in turmoil.
Trumpets sounded, and all around, human soldiers turned and retreated toward their original lines, some running as fast as they could.
Derkin walked his horse across to where Tulien Gart stood beside a human-saddled mount. “Thank you,” the dwarf said. “You taught me well, about human strategy.”
Gart looked up at him bleakly. “It isn’t over,” he said. “That was only the first assault. They’ll come again.”
“Why?” Derkin asked. “They’ve lost hundreds of men. Isn’t it enough?”
“It might be, for a regular officer,” the man said. “But you’ve humiliated Dreyus now. He can’t let you get away with that.”
Behind Derkin, Helta Graywood leaned to look around him. “Who is this Dreyus, anyway?” she asked.
“I don’t really know.” Gart shrugged. “No one knows much about him, except that what he does is the emperor’s doing, and when he speaks it is the emperor speaking. Some suspect that he may actually be Quivalin Soth, in some other form … in a second body, somehow. Two separate men, but with one mind. But even the wizards I’ve met don’t know how that could be done.”
“What will the soldiers do next?” Derkin asked the man.
“Probably try the horse-charge approach,” Gart said. “With their lancers leading, and footmen behind them. It is a time-honored tactic in circumstances like this, when a first assault has been repelled. Quivalin Soth has never been a soldier, and Dreyus probably isn’t either. So he’ll let his officers advise him one more time.”
“The horse-charge,” Derkin said thoughtfully. “Yes, we’ve planned for such. And if that tactic fails, then what?”
“Beyond that I can’t predict,” Gart told him. “Were his officers to fail again, I think Dreyus would take full command. There’s no telling what he would try.”
With the humans withdrawn, dwarves scampered through their lines to retrieve their dead – those they could reach without an arrow finding them. Dragging them back into the besieged encampment, they laid them out honorably and stood over them for a moment, willing their spirits to the mercy of Reorx. There was no time for burial now. That would have to wait until they, under Derkin Lawgiver’s leadership, had chased the humans away.
Spotters atop the ruined palace signaled, and the drums spoke. All around the beleaguered dwarves, the mighty human army was regrouping. Horse companies were moving into the fore now, mounted lancers followed by great tides of foot soldiers.
Chapter 22
THE LAST DAY
By last light of evening, the lancers came, a unified attack aimed at three separate points in the dwarven defense. From the south, northwest, and northeast they charged – armored men on armored horses, lowering their lances as they closed on the stolid ranks of dwarven shields. As the gap narrowed between lancers and dwarves, trumpets blared, and long lines of foot soldiers poured across the frozen ground, following where the horses went.
The dwarves at the assault points stood as though rooted in the rocky soil as the lancers bore down on them. Steel tips with the momentum of charging steeds behind them aligned on steel shields held only by dwarves. Then, at the last possible instant, the shields fell away. Each dwarven defender at those points fell backward, flat on the ground with his shield on top of him.
The lance tips met only cold air in passing, and thundering hooves clattered and faltered as wild-eyed horses tried to avoid the strange footing of horizontal shields. Here and there a shield was battered downward by hooves, but far more horses pivoted and spun, or launched themselves into ill-timed jumps to clear the frightening footing. A few lancers were thrown from their saddles, and some found themselves charging back the way they had come, directly into their own footmen. Most, though, passed over the fallen dwarves and into the encampment itself. Behind them, dwarves rolled and rose, got their feet beneath them and their shields up, and drew their blades.
Several hundred human lancers now milled and wheeled inside the dwarven line, as the line closed behind them. A few found targets for their lances, but the sport lasted only seconds. With a thunder of hooves, the lancers were hit – from all sides, it seemed, by charging dwarven cavalry. Each horse carried a dwarf on each side. Each dwarf wielded a weapon and a fighting shield. With deadly efficiency, the dwarven war-horses tore through the disarrayed lancers, wheeling to charge again and again.
Armored by plate and chain of dwarven steel and protected by the same shields that protected their riders, each horse was a thundering juggernaut among the lightly armored lancers. Men and their mounts fell right and left as dwarven blades and hammers lashed out from both sides of each war-horse, slashing and crushing whatever they could reach.
None of the lancers who had breached the dwarven perimeter returned to his ranks. Some, in their final moments, might have thrown down their weapons and surrendered, given the chance. But dwarves had died in the lancers’ charge, and Derkin’s signal when the trap was sprung was a down-turned thumb. No mercy, and no quarter. It was Derkin’s fourth law, pure and simple: if dwarves were attacked, dwarves would retaliate. If dwarves died, their attackers would also die.
Throughout the slaughter of the lancers, Derkin had held back, simply sitting his mount with Helta behind him, watching the combat and hearing the singing of the drums. Now, as the last lancer fell, he looked at the dark sky and tasted the raw, cold wind that came with evening. He knew what he must do next. Hundreds of his people were dead and more were wounded. Through sheer, stubborn courage and wily tactics, they had accounted for three humans for every fallen dwarf, but were still surrounded and badly outnumbered. If the humans pressed their attack again tomorrow, the Chosen Ones would perish. It was inevitable.
“The enemy is withdrawing for t
he night,” Derkin told Tap Tolec. “All this day we have defended. Now we must attack. Bring me our master delvers, and ask Vin the Shadow to attend me.”
Tulien Gart drew near, leading a tired horse. The man was battered and bloody, his thigh gouged by a lance tip, but he stood with dignity before the dwarven leader. “I didn’t think you could turn that charge,” he admitted. “Humans could never have done it. Humans wouldn’t have had the courage to fall under those horses, as your people did.”
“They might have,” Derkin said, “if they had ever been slaves.” He climbed down from his horse and helped Helta down. “Take Commander Gart to shelter,” he told her. “Bind his wounds and make a place for him at the fire. There is a cold wind tonight.”
When the delvers were assembled along with Vin the Shadow and several of his Daergar companions, Derkin gathered them around him. “Is the stone-drilling complete up on the peak?” he asked the chief of delvers.
“It is ready, Lawgiver.” The dwarf nodded, his blond beard bobbing in the firelight. “It needs only to be pried.”
Derkin turned to Vin. “We have prepared the face of that peak above the Klanath Pits,” he said, “to fill the pits with an avalanche. That was to have completed our work here, after the last cut stones were hauled away. But now I need that avalanche to occur tonight. Most of the delvers are of Daewar descent. They cannot climb such slopes at night. Do you have people who can?”
Vin had removed his mask, and his large eyes glowed in the firelight as his foxlike face twisted into a tight grin. “There’s plenty of light for us,” he said. “Just explain what has to be done.”
“The delvers have drilled pry-holes all along a fault high on that peak.” Derkin pointed. “They can tell you what to look for, and how to break out the stone. And they can give you their climbing slings and prybars.”
“Will an avalanche help us get back to Kal-Thax?” Vin asked.
“It might.” Derkin shrugged. “The wind is cold tonight. Our spotters say that some of the humans have made their fires down in the pits, out of the wind. It is possible that their leader, Dreyus, is there. Without him, the rest might decide to turn around and go away, rather than lose more men tomorrow for no reason.”
