Realms of War a-12

by Paul S. Kemp

  It wasn't that Gendray had been killed in battle-oh no, not that! Such a fate was accepted, even expected by every member of the ferocious Gutbuster Brigade as willingly as it was by their leader, Thibbledorf Pwent. When Gendray had joined only a few short months before, Pwent had told his father, Honcklebart, a dear friend of many decades, that he most certainly could not guarantee the safety of Gendray.

  "But me heart's knowin' that he'll die for a good reason," Honcklebart had said to Pwent, both of them deep in flagons of mead.

  "For kin and kind, for king and clan," Pwent had appropriately toasted, and Honcklebart had tapped his cup with enthusiasm, for indeed, what dwarf could ever ask for more?

  And so on a windy day atop the cliffs north of Keeper's Dale, the western porch of Mithral Hall, against the charge of an orc horde, the expectations for Gendray had come to pass, and for never a better reason had a Battlehammer dwarf fallen.

  As he neared that fateful site, Pwent could almost hear the tumult of battle again. Never had he been so proud of his Gutbusters. He had led them into the heart of the orc charge. Outnumbered many times over by King Obould's most ferocious warriors, the Gutbusters hadn't flinched, hadn't hesitated. Many dwarves had fallen that day but had fallen on the bodies of many, many more orcs.

  Pwent, too, had expected to die in that seemingly suicidal encounter, but somehow, and with the support of heroic friends and a clever gnome, he and some of the Gutbusters had found their way to the cliffs and down to Mithral Hall's western doors. It had been a victory bitterly won through honorable and acceptable sacrifice.

  Despite that truth, Thibbledorf Pwent had carried with him the echoes of the second part of Honcklebart Hardhatter's toast, when he had hoisted his flagon proudly again and declared, "And I'm knowin' that dead or hurt, Thibbledorf Pwent'd not be leavin' me boy behind."

  Tapping that flagon in toast had been no hard promise for Pwent. "If a dragon's eatin' him, then I'll cut a hole in its belly and pull out his bones!" he had heartily promised, and had meant every word.

  But Gendray, dead Gendray, hadn't come home that day.

  "Ye left me boy," Honcklebart had said back in the halls after the fight. There was no malice in his voice, no accusation. It was just a statement of fact, by a dwarf whose heart had broken.

  Pwent almost wished his old friend had just punched him in the nose, because though Honcklebart was known to have a smashing right cross, it wouldn't have hurt the battlerager nearly as much as that simple statement of fact.

  "Ye left me boy."

  I look upon the hillside, quiet now except for the birds. That's all there is. The birds, cawing and cackling and poking their beaks into unseeing eyeballs. Crows do not circle before they alight on a field strewn with the dead. They fly as the bee to a flower, straight for their goal, with so great a feast before them. They are the cleaners, along with the crawling insects and the rain and the unending wind.

  And the passage of time. There is always that. The turn of the day, of the season, of the year.

  G'nurk winced when he came in sight of the torn mountain ridge. How glorious had been the charge! The minions of Obould, proud orc warriors, had swept up the rocky slope against the fortified dwarven position.

  G'nurk had been there, in the front lines, one of only a very few who had survived that charge. But despite their losses in the forward ranks, G'nurk and his companions had cleared the path, had taken the orc army to the dwarven camp.

  Absolute victory hovered before them, within easy reach, so it had seemed.

  Then, somehow, through some dwarven trick or devilish magic, the mountain ridge exploded, and like a field of grain in a strong wind, the orc masses coming in support had been mowed flat. Most of them were still there, lying dead where they had stood proud.

  Tinguinguay, G'nurk's beloved daughter, was still there.

  He worked his way around the boulders, the air still thick with dust from the amazing blast that had reformed the entire area. The many ridges and rocks and chunks of blasted stone seemed to G'nurk like a giant carcass, as if that stretch of land, like some sentient behemoth, had itself been killed.

  G'nurk paused and leaned on a boulder. He brought his dirty hand up to wipe the moisture from his eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that he served Tinguinguay with honor and pride, or he honored her not at all.

  He pushed away from the stone, denied its offer to serve as a crutch, and pressed along. Soon he came past the nearest of his dead companions, or pieces of them, at least. Those in the west, nearest the ridge, had been mutilated by a shock wave full of flying stones.

  The stench filled his nostrils. A throng of black beetles, the first living things he'd seen in the area, swarmed around the guts of a torso cut in half.

  He thought of bugs eating his dead little girl, his daughter who in the distant past had so often used her batting eyes and pouting lips to coerce from him an extra bit of food. On one occasion, G'nurk had missed a required drill because of Tinguinguay, when she'd thoroughly manipulated out of him a visit to a nearby swimming hole. Obould hadn't noticed his absence, thank Gruumsh!

  That memory brought a chuckle from G'nurk, but that laugh melted fast into a sob.

  Again he leaned on a rock, needing the support. Again he scolded himself about honor and duty, and doing proud by Tinguinguay.

  He climbed up on the rock to better survey the battlefield. Many years before, Obould had led an expedition to a volcano, believing the resonating explosions to be a call from Gruumsh. There, where the side of the mountain had blown off into a forest, G'nurk had seen the multitude of toppled trees, all foliage gone, all branches blasted away. The great logs lay in rows, neatly ordered, and it had seemed so surreal to G'nurk that such a natural calamity as a volcanic eruption, the very definition of chaos, could create such a sense of order and purpose.

  So it seemed to the orc warrior as he stood upon that rock and looked out across the rocky slope that had marked the end of the horde's charge, for the bodies lay neatly in rows-too neatly.

  So many bodies.

  "Tinguinguay," G'nurk whispered.

  He had to find her. He needed to see her again, and knew that it had to be there and then if it was to be ever-before the birds, the beetles, and the maggots did their work.

  When it is done, all that is left are the bones and the stones. The screams are gone; the smell is gone. The blood is washed away. The fattened birds take with them in their departing flights all that identified those fallen warriors as individuals.

  Leaving the bones and the stones to mingle and to mix, as the wind or the rain break apart the skeletons and filter them together, as the passage of time buries some, what is left becomes indistinguishable to all but the most careful of observers.

  A rock shuffled under his foot, but Pwent didn't hear it. As he scrambled over the last rise along the cliff face, up onto the high ground from which the dwarves had made their stand before retreating into Mithral Hall, a small tumble of rocks cascaded down behind him-and again, he didn't hear it.

  He heard the screams and cries, of glory and of pain, of determination against overwhelming odds, and of support for friends who were surely doomed.

  He heard the ring of metal on metal, the crunch of a skull under the weight of his heavy, spiked gauntlets, and the sucking sound of his helmet spike driving through the belly of one more orc.

  His mind was back in battle as he came over that ridge and looked at the long and stony descent, still littered with the corpses of scores of dwarves and hundreds and hundreds of orcs. The orc charge had come there. The boulders rolling down against them, the giant-manned catapults throwing boulders at him from the side mountain ridge-he remem shy;bered vividly that moment of desperation, when only the Gutbusters, his Gutbusters, could intervene. He'd led that counter-charge down the slope and headlong, furiously, into the orc horde. Punching and kicking, slashing and tearing, crying for Moradin and Clanggeddin and Dumathoin, yelling for King Bruenor and Clan Battle
hammer and Mithral Hall. No fear had they shown, no hesitance in their charge, though not one expected to get off that ridge alive.

  And so it was with a determined stride and an expression of both pride and lament that Thibbledorf Pwent walked down that slope once more, pausing only now and again to lift a rock and peg it at a nearby bird that was intent to feast upon the carcass of a friend.

  He spotted the place where his brigade had made their valiant stand, and saw the dwarf bodies intermingled with walls of dead orcs-walls and walls, piled waist deep and even higher. How well the Gutbusters had fought!

  He hoped that no birds had pecked out Gendray's eyes. Honcklebart deserved to see his son's eyes again.

  Pwent ambled over and began flinging orc bodies out of the way, growling with every throw. He was too angry to notice the stiffness, even when one arm broke off and remained in his grasp. He just chucked it after the body, spitting curses.

  He came to his first soldier, and winced in recognition of Tooliddle Ironfist, who had been one of the longest-serving of the Gutbuster Brigade.

  Pwent paused to offer a prayer for Tooliddle to Moradin, but in the middle of that prayer, he paused more profoundly and considered the task before him. It wouldn't be difficult, taking Gendray home, but leaving all the rest of them out there.

  How could he do that?

  The battlerager stepped back and kicked a dead orc hard in the face. He put his hands on his hips and considered the scene before him, trying to figure out how many trips and how many companions he would need to bring all those boys home. For it became obvious to him that he couldn't leave them, any of them, out there for the birds and the beetles.

  Big numbers confused Thibbledorf Pwent, particularly when he was wearing his boots, and particularly when, as on this occasion, he became distracted.

  Something moved to the northwest of him.

  At first, he thought it a large bird or some other carrion animal, but then it hit him, and hit him hard.

  It was an orc-a lone orc, slipping through the maze of blasted stone and blasted bodies, and apparently oblivious to Pwent.

  He should have slipped down to the ground and pretended to be among the fallen. That was the preferred strategy, obvi shy;ously, a ready-made ambush right out of the Gutbusters' practiced tactics.

  Pwent thought of Gendray, of Tooliddle, and all the others. He pictured a bird poking out Gendray's eyes, or a swarm of beetles crunching on his rotting intestines. He smelled the fight again and heard the cries, remembering vividly the desperate and heroic stand.

  He should have slipped down to the ground and feigned death among the corpses, but instead he spat, he roared, and he charged.

  Who will remember those who died here, and what have they gained to compensate for all that they, on both sides, lost?

  The look upon a dwarf's face when battle is upon him would argue, surely, that the price is worth the effort, that warfare, when it comes to a dwarven clan, is a noble cause. Nothing to a dwarf is more revered than fighting to help a friend. Theirs is a community bound tightly by loyalty, by blood shared and blood spilled.

  And so, in the life of an individual, perhaps this is a good way to die, a worthy end to a life lived honorably, or even to a life made worthy by this last ultimate sacrifice.

  G'nurk could hardly believe his ears, or his eyes, and as the sight registered fully-a lone dwarf rushing down the slope at him-a smile curled on his face.

  Gruumsh had delivered this, he knew, as an outlet for his rage, a way to chase away the demons of despair over Tinguinguay's fall.

  G'nurk shied from no combat. He feared no dwarf, surely, and so while the charge of the heavily armored beast-all knee spikes, elbow spikes, head spikes, and black armor so devilishly ridged that it could flay the hide off an umber hulk-would have weakened the knees of most, for G'nurk it came as a beautiful and welcome sight.

  Still grinning, the orc pulled the heavy spear off his back and brought it around, twirling it slowly so that he could take a better measure of its balance. It was no missile. G'nurk had weighted its back end with an iron ball.

  The dwarf rambled on, slowing not at all at the sight of the formidable weapon. He crashed through a pair of dead orcs, sending them bouncing aside, and he continued his single-noted roar, a bellow of absolute rage and… pain?

  G'nurk thought of Tinguinguay and surely recognized pain, and he too began to growl and let it develop into a defiant roar.

  He kept his spear horizontally before him until the last moment, then stabbed out the point and dropped the weighted end to the ground, stamping it in with his foot to fully set the weapon.

  He thought he had the dwarf easily skewered, but this one was not quite as out of control as he appeared. The dwarf flung himself to the side in a fast turn and reached out with his leading left arm as he came around, managing to smack aside G'nurk's shifting spear.

  The dwarf charged in along the shaft.

  But G'nurk reversed and kicked up the ball, stepping out the other way and heaving with all his strength to send the back end of the weapon up fast and hard against the dwarf's chest, and with such force as to stop the furious warrior in his tracks, even knock him back a bouncing step.

  G'nurk rushed out farther to the dwarf's left, working his spear cleverly to bring it end over end. As soon as he completed the weapon's turn, he went right back in, stabbing hard, think shy;ing again to score a fast kill.

  "For Tinguinguay!" he cried in Dwarvish, because he wanted his enemy to know that name, to hear that name as the last thing he ever heard!

  The dwarf fell flat; the spear thrust fast above him, hitting nothing but air.

  With amazing agility for one so armored and so stocky, the dwarf tucked his legs and came up fast, his helmet spike slicing up beside the spear, and he rolled his head, perfectly parrying G'nurk's strike.

  He kept rolling his head, turning the spear under the helmet spike. He hopped back and bent low, driving the spear low and getting his belly behind the tip. And, amazingly, he rolled again, turning the spear!

  Almost babbling with disbelief, G'nurk tried to thrust forward on one of those turns, hoping to impale the little wretch.

  But the dwarf had anticipated just that, had invited just that, and as soon as the thrust began, the dwarf turned sidelong and slapped his hand against the spear shaft.

  "I'm taking out both yer eyes for a dead friend," he said, and G'nurk understood him well enough, though his command of Dwarvish was far from perfect.

  The dwarf was inside his weapon's reach, and his grip proved surprisingly strong and resilient against G'nurk's attempt to break his weapon free.

  So the orc surprised his opponent. He balled up his trailing, mailed fist, and slugged the grinning dwarf right in the face, a blow that would have knocked almost any orc or any dwarf flat to the ground.

  I cannot help but wonder, though, in the larger context, what of the overall? What of the price, the worth, the gain? Will Obould accomplish anything worth the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his dead? Will he gain anything longlasting? Will the dwarven stand made out on that high cliff bring Bruenor's people anything worthwhile? Could they not have slipped into Mithral Hall, to tunnels so much more easily defended?

  And a hundred years from now, when there remain only the bones and the stones, will anyone care? I wonder what fuels the fires that burn images of glorious battle in the hearts of so many of the sentient races, my own paramount among them. I look at the carnage on the slope and I see the inevitable sight of emptiness. I imagine the cries of pain. I hear in my head the calls for loved ones when the dying warrior knows his last moment is upon him. I see a tower fall with my dearest friend atop it. Surely the tangible remnants, the rubble and the bones, are hardly worth the moment of battle. But is there, I wonder, something less tangible there, something of a greater place? Or is there, perhaps-and this is my fear-something of a delusion to it all that drives us to war again and again?

  Along that latter line of thoug
ht, is it within us all, when the memories of war have faded, to so want to be a part of something great that we throw aside the quiet, the calm, the mundane, the peace itself? Do we collectively come to equate peace with boredom and complacency? Perhaps we hold these embers of war within us, dulled only by sharp memories of the pain and the loss, and when that smothering blanket dissipates with the passage of healing time, those fires flare again to life. I saw this within myself to a smaller extent, when I realized and admitted to myself that I was not a being of comforts and complacency, that only by the wind on my face, the trails beneath my feet and the adventure along the road could I truly be happy. I'll walk those trails indeed, but it seems to me that it is another thing altogether to carry an army along beside me, as Obould has done. For there is the consideration of a larger morality here, shown so starkly in the bones among the stones. We rush to the call of arms, to the rally, to the glory, but what of those caught in the path of this thirst for greatness?

  Thibbledorf Pwent wasn't just any dwarf. He knew that his posture, and his need to speak and grin, would allow the punch, but indeed, that was how the battlerager preferred to start every tavern brawl.

  He saw the mailed fist flying for his face-in truth, he might have been able to partially deflect it had he tried.

  He didn't want to.

  He felt his nose crunch as his head snapped back, felt the blood gushing forth.

  He was still smiling.

  "My turn," he promised.

  But instead of throwing himself at the orc, he yanked the spear shaft in tight against his side, then hopped and rolled over the weapon, grabbing it with his second hand as well as he went. That's when he came back to his feet, he had the spear in both hands and up across his shoulders behind his neck.

  He scrambled back and forth, and turned wildly in circles until at last the orc relinquished the spear.

  Pwent hopped to face him. The dwarf twisted his face into a mask of rage as the orc reached for a heavy stone, and with a growl, he flipped both his arms up over the spear, then drove them down.