The Fate of the Dwarves

by Markus Heitz

  Boïndil pulled his head back, fighting down his astonishment and shock. “I wanted to know how you were feeling. If you were satisfied with how the vote went.” He took a seat opposite Tungdil.

  “Is that the real reason you came?” Tungdil was breathing heavily. “Or did you want to see what I get up to when I think no one is watching?”

  “You’re surely immune to being taken by surprise in that armor of yours.” Ireheart attempted a light tone, his smile awry.

  Tungdil looked at his friend and Ireheart was pleased to see the old familiar expression. He had no doubt about it; this was his true Scholar.

  “I didn’t ever ask you what you thought of my suggestion,” Tungdil said. “About how we take on the enemy.”

  “Bit late for that now, surely? The decision is made.”

  “Yes, I should have taken you into my confidence earlier,” replied Tungdil. “You were a wonderful advocate for me.”

  Boïndil smiled amiably. “I can’t leave you to face those obstinate stubborn-heads all by yourself. What kind of comrade would that make me?” He rubbed his brow and put his fingertips together. “It will certainly be dangerous, and undoubtedly there will be much loss of life. I have no illusions on that score. But it could work, because none of the enemies will be expecting a trick like we have planned. We’ll get them with their own weapons.” He muttered into his beard: “Well, at least the black-eyes.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  Ireheart considered the matter. “There are many imponderables in your strategy that we can’t influence. What if the älfar kill the Dragon sooner than we intend them to? What if the kordrion doesn’t care about its brood like you assume it does? What if Lot-Ionan only has to snap his fingers to turn the beast to stone?” He folded his arms across his chest. “But I think that’s unlikely.”

  “Is that because you are sufficiently desperate to believe anything or because it was me that suggested the plan?”

  “I’m in favor because it’s a good plan. Audacious, but good,” replied Ireheart thoughtfully. “I’ve been through so much with you and we’ve made so many impossible things happen, so I don’t have doubts about this.”

  Tungdil nodded in silence and stretched out his hand for the jug. Seeing it was empty he swept it from the table. “Do you think the title of high king will suit me?”

  That was a question Ireheart would have preferred not to have to answer. “It was my idea, after all. If I hadn’t been convinced of that I wouldn’t have put it to the assembly,” he said, skirting around the difficulty.

  “You think it was your idea. But what if my runes had put a spell on you?” Tungdil suggested wearily. “If it was me putting the idea into your head? So that I could get my hands on the title at last, after all those cycles of wanting it. Although I knew under normal circumstances it could never happen? It would never be allowed.” The eyelid fluttered and the eyeball rolled back. He was practically asleep.

  “I don’t believe that, Scholar,” said Ireheart quietly as he stood up. “If I don’t want to do something I’m sure nobody else’s thoughts can take hold of me.” He looked around the chamber and found a blanket that he spread over Tungdil.

  Ireheart’s lips narrowed. “You will be the best high king the tribes have ever had,” he whispered as he withdrew. “A high king born of crisis and one that will tower over all the previous incumbents. Perhaps the ruler who will finally be able to bring peace to the children of the Smith. Genuine peace and not just an armistice.”

  The warrior walked to the door and smiled at his sleeping comrade, then he left the sparsely furnished chamber, a room unworthy of a freshly elected high king.

  X

  Girdlegard,

  Protectorate of Gauragar,

  Eleven Miles East of the Entrance to the Gray Mountains,

  Winter, 6491st/6492nd Solar Cycles

  Ireheart’s eyes were fixed on the chain of hills rising to the north. They were the foothills of the Gray Range, running across the horizon in a ribbon, and they promised the travelers a place of safety.

  “I wish we were there already,” he muttered into his mottled gray and white beard.

  Tungdil was riding at his side, still preferring a befún to a pony. This made him taller in the saddle than the rest of the group, which consisted of the two of them and then Balyndar and his deputation of fifthlings. Frandibar had also given them his five best fourthling warriors, one of whom was a crossbow archer. “It never looked for a moment as if we were in any danger.”

  “That’s what bothers me,” said Balyndar, scanning the snowy expanse before them. “On the journey we narrowly escaped from a patrol of Duke Amtrin’s men. He’s in the service of the älfar.”

  “Escaped! Listen to that,” snorted Ireheart. “I can’t believe it! In the old days we’d have hunted them down instead of running away and hiding.”

  Balyndar assumed the words were intended as criticism of himself and his fifthling soldiers. “I don’t blame you for talking like that, Doubleblade. You won’t know that their patrols are always accompanied by two älfar archers with longbows. We can’t compete with them.”

  “I know that,” he growled. “My brother was nearly killed by their black arrows.”

  Tungdil sat up straight in the befún’s saddle. “We’re going to get a chance to prove the opposite,” he said quietly, pointing to the southwest with Bloodthirster. “They’ve been following us for a while now. If I’m right, there are twenty of them. They could have overtaken us easily with those horses.”

  “They’re waiting to see what we’re doing. Which way we’re heading.” Balyndar let his pony drop back between Tungdil and Ireheart. “That’s more than strange. The others always chased us.”

  “They’ll be afraid.” Boïndil gave a hearty laugh. “If they meet more than forty dwarves they start to sweat, no matter what the temperature is.”

  “I think,” Tungdil took up his train of thought, “that they don’t have any älfar with them. I can’t make out any firebulls or night-mares. On snow like this it’d be easy to spot the animals.”

  “Or maybe they are circling round us to attack from the front. An ambush,” Balyndar suggested in concern. He gave his fifthlings the order to have their shields at the ready.

  Ireheart reckoned the enemy troop were a good two miles away, if not more. It was a miracle that Tungdil had been able to recognize anything at this distance, he thought. When he lost that eye of his, did the vision in the other get sharper? Or what else could it be?

  The befún gave a warning snort and turned its head to the right, where several large—up to seven paces high—dark gray boulders jutted out from the snow.

  “Take cover!” Tungdil commanded, slipping out of the saddle. Ireheart did not hesitate and even Balyndar quickly followed suit.

  The long black arrow aimed at the leader whirred through the air straight past his right ear and buried itself in the snow so deep that not even the fletching was visible above the white.

  Immediately there followed a cry and one of the female dwarves fell back off her pony. An arrow had pierced the edge of her shield and gone straight through the protective helmet into her right temple.

  Now all the dwarves had grasped that the archers attacking them were hidden behind the rocks. They dismounted quickly and used the bodies of their ponies as shields against the lethal arrows. Nobody panicked and nobody shouted out, as might have happened with humans in the same situation.

  Another set of arrows hissed, and three dwarves fell. Hit in the heart or the head, none of them had any chance of surviving.

  “Curse the black-eyes,” raged Ireheart, crawling through the snow to Tungdil. “I’ll shove a longbow up their arses and the arrows, too. Sideways!!”

  “They’re behind the second boulder from the front,” said his friend calmly, spying out between the legs of his befún. “Can you see them? Their white cloaks make them nearly invisible against the snow.”

  Ireheart had
to screw up his eyes to make out the figures, which bobbed up occasionally above the rocks they were hiding behind just long enough to fire their arrows before ducking down again. Again Ireheart was amazed by Tungdil’s eyesight. “It’s at least forty paces to that first rock,” he calculated. “Time enough for them to finish us off with forty arrows.” He turned to Balyndar. “Suggestions?”

  One of the ponies collapsed with a whinny; an arrow had struck it in the eye. The älfar were changing their tactics and were going for the dwarves’ cover. One small horse after another was killed, kicking out wildly, sometimes injuring their own riders with their hooves.

  Ireheart grabbed a handful of snow and pressed it into a ball of ice. “Three shields on top of each other and we storm them? Scholar? We could make our way forwards like that.”

  “The patrol is galloping this way,” called someone. “They’re attacking!”

  “This’ll be getting crowded,” muttered Ireheart.

  A loud scream came from by the boulders.

  Ireheart was quick enough turning his head to see one of the älfar swaying behind his rock, falling forward and plunging from his vantage point, his bow and arrows falling with him.

  “What happened? Did his bowstring snap and strike him?” Ireheart noticed the snow had turned red where the älf lay.

  “Didn’t you hear the crossbow?” asked Tungdil.

  A click and a second älf lay dead.

  “Huzzah! It seems Frandibar has given us a damn good marksman.” Boïndil laughed and jumped up, lifting his crow’s beak and ordering the dwarf-warriors to form a protective wall with their shields to defend themselves against the riders’ attack. “Now I feel better.” He kept an eye out in the fray for the fourthling archer who had protected them from further losses. The marksman lay pressed close to the corpse of his pony and was calmly reloading his crossbow as the patrol came thundering up. The noise of their hooves grew louder and the group of dwarves prepared themselves for the full force of their attack.

  The archer rested the stock of his crossbow on the saddle of his dead animal for support, lay down at full length on his stomach and focused his sights on the leader of the fast-approaching troops. From this distance he could easily see their insignia.

  Another bolt whirred and the group’s commander jerked backwards from the impact; his feet slipped out of the stirrups and he fell. The riders storming along in his wake were too late to swerve and he was swallowed up under flying hooves and a glistening whirling cloud of snow.

  “Attack!” yelled Ireheart with a whoop of delight, rushing forward and circling his crow’s beak overhead. The rage he would have directed against the älfar now needed a new target.

  The troop followed him and raced toward the enemy with no thought of their own safety.

  The cavalry group’s riders fanned out, their attack formation disintegrating. So loud were the bloodcurdling cries of the dwarves that three of the attackers’ number failed to hear the order to halt, instead continuing forward at full tilt while the rest of the mounted company fell back and prepared to retreat.

  “Hey! Get over here so that I can run you through with the spike of my war hammer!” Ireheart ducked under the oncoming spear tip and struck the rider with the flat end of his weapon. The impact tore the man out of his saddle, leaving a large dent in his breastplate and blood pouring out of a gash.

  Ireheart employed the remaining impetus to swing round in a circle, delivering a swipe with the spiked end to the next rider’s thigh.

  “Gotcha!” He took a strong wide-legged stance in the snow and held the handle of his crow’s beak in both hands. “You’re not going anywhere, long-un!”

  At first the dwarf was pulled a few paces forward across the snow, but then he found stone underfoot. Now he could pull the man’s leg sharply backwards, dislocating it at the hip-joint.

  Balyndar propelled the third rider out of the saddle with a blow from his morning star. The spike-studded balls hit him on the neck and breast and the man fell gurgling to the snow.

  Boïndil towered over his fallen prisoner, crow’s beak in one hand as he pushed down on the man with his right foot. “How long have you been following us? What’s your business?” he barked. “If you tell the truth you will live.”

  “We followed your tracks,” the man groaned, pain distorting his voice and features alike. “We’ve been coming after you for two orbits. The älfar wanted you drawn into an ambush, so we could interrogate survivors to find out what you’re up to. We were told not to attack you until they had opened fire.”

  Balyndar came over to join Ireheart. “Did you drop a messenger off first to send news of having found us?” he asked the captive, dangling the bloodied globe of his morning star above his face.

  “No,” he moaned. “We’re the only ones who know about you being here.” Tungdil stomped over through the snow, his eye on the patrol retreating into the distance. “It makes no odds,” he said darkly. “They’ll be off to the nearest garrison to make a report. By that time we’ve got to be in the Gray Mountains. The älfar will be able to work out for themselves that a large dwarf-party will have something serious in mind that’s not going to be good news. Those were the days, when we had the old tunnel system.”

  “What we need is the good old tunnel system,” said Ireheart with regret.

  “The tunnels are all flooded. I told you,” said Balyndar. “We think that’s where the water from Weyurn’s dried-up lakes has ended up. It can’t all have gone through to the Outer Lands.”

  Tungdil gave the order to remount and then placed Bloodthirster’s tip at the nape of the captive’s neck. “Anything else we should know?”

  “I’ve told you everything!”

  “Then you’re no more use to us.” His arm jerked forward, the blade he held slicing through skin, muscles and sinews; vertebrae cracked apart. “Right. Let’s deal with the black-eyes,” he said calmly to Balyndar and Ireheart.

  “I promised I would spare his life!” Boïndil blurted out incredulously.

  “If he told the truth. That’s what you said,” retorted Tungdil, going over to his befún, climbing into the saddle and heading over to the rocks where the dead älfar lay, sprawled in unnatural postures. “How would you know if he was lying to you?”

  Balyndar watched the black-armored dwarf go, then turned his gaze to the corpse on the ground, the blood still welling. “I’m not wasting any sympathy on the long-un,” he said thoughtfully. “But I can’t go along with Goldhand’s action either. We could just have left him. The winter would have finished him off.” He walked away to get his pony.

  Ireheart pulled the end of his crow’s beak out of the man’s leg, cleaned it on the fellow’s cloak and marched over to the rocks. The old Tungdil would never have done that. “Yes, he would,” he muttered. “We had to do it. The Scholar was right. It wasn’t nice, but it was necessary.”

  “Did you say something, General?” the dwarf with the crossbow turned to ask. “I didn’t catch it.”

  Ireheart stopped and looked at the fourthling. Under an open mantle he was wearing light armor composed more of leather than of mail. The resultant lightness made for ease of movement; he wore a broad metal strip over the breast to protect heart and lungs. Shoulder-length brown hair was visible below the helmet; his beard, of the same color, was braided along the jaw line, with silver wire around the individual plaits. It gave him a dandyish air.

  At his side hung a quiver with crossbow bolts and a device for anchoring the loading mechanism when he retightened the bow. The thick bowstring of the long-range weapon had to be cranked by hand. The firing force was immense, as the älfar and members of the mounted patrol had learned to their cost.

  Boïndil examined the stock. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve never liked crossbows and archery. They take all the fun out of fighting. But today I gave thanks to Vraccas that he let us have you by our side.” He proffered his hand. “What is your name?”

  “Goïmslin Fastdraw of th
e clan of the Sapphire Finders, fourthling. But they call me Slîn,” he said, fastening his crossbow to the saddle so that he was free to shake hands. “I know that all children of the Smith prefer the blade to the bolt. But if, like me, you’re not so quick with the sword, then this is the only option.” He pointed up to the rock formation. “When you go up to check on the älfar, have a look: I should have got both of them through the heart. If not, I owe you two gold coins.”

  “That exact?”

  Slîn nodded. “I always aim for the heart. Whether it’s women or my other victims.” He winked and Ireheart had to laugh.

  “I’ll have a good look.” He hurried off to join the others, who were already over by the rocks.

  It was quite obvious how excellent Slîn’s eye was. Both älfar lay in the snow with skewered hearts. The reinforced bolts had penetrated their armor and Boïndil found himself wondering if Tungdil’s special armor would withstand such an impact.

  “They’ve tethered their night-mares on the other side,” Tungdil said in greeting.

  Ireheart fingered the crow’s beak. “They will follow their masters into death.” He looked at the älfar archers’ bodies and ordered them to be searched. Balyndar and his dwarves got to work.

  Under the whitish gray mantles was the typical älfar lamellar armor; their swords lay unused in the scabbards, the two älfar having been given no opportunity to draw them against the dwarves. The dwarf-warriors were not interested in the food supplies the älfar had with them, but there was a fine dagger that one had carried in his belt.

  Balyndar noticed it first. “By Vraccas!” he cried angrily, pulling the knife out of its sheath. “That is the work of a dwarf-smith!” He turned the blade, held it to the sunlight, and ran his finger along it. “No question: This dagger was fashioned by a dwarf.” He bent down to study the armor. “Unbelievable!” he exclaimed. “The thirdlings have been co operating more closely with the älfar than I had ever feared.”