by Markus Heitz
“Stubborn bastard,” said the dwarf behind him, glowering at the corpse.
A terrible thought occurred to Tungdil. “Shush,” he commanded. Judging by the grunting and jangling at the bottom of the watchtower, Boïndil’s other victims were clambering to their feet.
“Everyone back!” he ordered. “The beasts aren’t… dead.” His mind was gradually clearing. Only the Perished Land had the power to raise the dead—but its influence stopped at Girdlegard’s border, beyond the Northern Pass. It doesn’t make sense… His success in defeating the revenant seemed to confirm that there was only one sure way to deal with the beasts.
“Chop off their heads!” he bellowed. At the bottom of the watchtower, the dwarves at the rear of the unit were fighting off the sharp claws and hastily drawn daggers of a horde of undead beasts. “They’re revenants!”
The battle started all over again, only this time it was fiercer and more dangerous.
Tungdil fought his way out of the tower, brandishing Keenfire. The ax lit up, vaunting its legendary power.
Runes ablaze, the shimmering blade sliced through the air, leaving a trail of blinding light, but the spectacle seemed to bypass the orcs, who attacked with undiminished savagery. The beasts were natural fighters, quick to exploit the slightest mistake, and the dwarves, hampered by the height difference, were hard pressed to behead them.
“Aim for their throats!” yelled Tungdil, ducking and swinging his ax. He brought down his opponent with a blow to the leg and followed up with a decapitating strike.
Panting heavily, he straightened up and looked around. The battle was shifting in favor of the orcs: All around him, dwarves were being killed or wounded after assuming—mistakenly, as it happened—that they had dealt their antagonists a mortal blow.
Most of Tungdil’s companions, unfamiliar with revenants, were on the defensive, slashing pluckily but pointlessly at the orcs. Their axes cleaved through flesh and bone, but the undead orcs fought on regardless, faltering only if they lost both arms. The determination faded from the younger warriors’ faces as the casualties grew.
“You need to behead them,” shouted Tungdil, rushing to the aid of a dwarf who was hacking frantically at a clawed hand that was closing around his throat. Green blood spurted in all directions, but the orc, caring nothing for his injuries, merely tightened his grip. With three powerful strikes of Keenfire, Tungdil felled and killed the beast.
The beasts had to be brought to their knees before they could be beheaded, which was troublesome and tiring, but the indefatigable Tungdil seemed to be everywhere at once. Inspired by his example, the dwarves regained their confidence and overpowered the undead orcs.
Victory didn’t come cheap. Tungdil’s unit had started with superior numbers, but fifteen had fallen and another twenty were seriously hurt. To everyone’s relief, the slain dwarves showed no sign of rising from the dead to turn on their erstwhile friends.
“To the tower!” shouted Tungdil to the survivors. He and the others raced up the steps, nearly colliding with Ireheart, who had cornered the final beast. The secondling swung both his axes simultaneously into the creature’s groin. Yelping, the orc sank to his knees and dropped his sword, which clattered down the stairs past the warriors’ boots.
“I need to behead him, right?” he shouted. His axes sped forward, severing his antagonist’s vile green head. He wiped his face, which was dripping with sweat, blood, and foul-smelling filth. “Well that was fun,” he sighed happily, bending down to clean his axes on the dead orc’s jerkin. “By the hammer of Vraccas, if only we could fight on narrow stairways all the time—it’s the best way of making sure the cowards don’t escape. I wasn’t counting on fighting revenants, though—not after we defeated the Perished Land.” He fell silent and counted the bodies. “There’s one missing,” he said grimly, a crazed glint returning to his eyes. “Unless you miscounted, scholar.”
Tungdil, his mind chafing at the reasons for the orcs’ longevity, wasn’t prepared to enter a discussion. “We’ll talk at the top,” he said firmly, shooing his friend up the stairs.
Boïndil led the procession, and soon all the dwarves were gathered at the top of the fortified tower. From there they were able to survey the land on both sides of the gateway, including the track leading north out of Girdlegard.
“No sign of the enemy,” said Tungdil, relieved. With the stone doors wide open and the bolts in pieces, there could hardly be a worse time to fight off an army of orcs—especially if they were revenants. He didn’t feel ready; Girdlegard wasn’t ready.
“What made them keep fighting?” persisted Boïndil. “Was it the curse of the Perished Land?”
Loud, brutish snarls heralded the arrival of the missing trooper, dragged and pushed by his smaller captors to the top of the tower.
“Maybe he can tell us,” said Tungdil. This time he didn’t need to warn Boïndil to keep his axes away from the prisoner; judging by the warrior’s pained expression, the message had got through. “Bring him over,” Tungdil instructed the four dwarves, who promptly pinned their victim against the battlements.
It had clearly taken considerable effort to capture the orc, and the dwarves had set about their task wholeheartedly. The beast was bleeding from manifold gashes, mainly to his thighs and abdomen. His jawbone had been smashed by a dwarven hammer, and nothing remained of his tusks except two jagged stumps. Any ordinary mortal would have died of such wounds.
The beast’s deep-set yellow eyes darted nervously between the dwarves, taking in their bearded faces. His flat nose quivered as he sniffed the air. The rise and fall of his grease-smeared breastplate mimicked his shallow, rapid breathing.
“What brought you here?” demanded Tungdil, hefting Keenfire. The diamond-encrusted blade glittered in the sunlight, dazzling the prisoner. Squealing, the orc shied away, but his back was against the parapet. “You’re right to fear my ax,” said Tungdil, speaking in the tongue of the orcs. Once again, he had cause to be grateful for the cycles of study in Lot-Ionan’s library.
The orc’s terror gave way to surprise. “You speak orcish!”
“Where are the others? What made you immortal? How strong is the Perished Land?” He swung his ax, stopping just short of the creature’s nose. “Talk, or we’ll kill you.”
“It’s because of the water,” stammered the orc. “The blood of the Perished Land turned us into…” He tailed off. “I’m not allowed to tell you.”
Just then Tungdil, who was working on the assumption that the orcs had invaded from north of the border, realized that his logic was flawed. How would an orc from the Outer Lands recognize Keenfire? Could news of the weapon have spread beyond Girdlegard? Would an orc be scared of an ax that he knew only from hearsay? “You know this weapon, don’t you?” he challenged him. “You know the weapon, and you know who I am. You’ve come from the Blacksaddle, haven’t you?” He glared at him menacingly. “You’d better tell me about the water.”
“I can’t,” the orc said hastily, keeping his eyes on the blade.
“Do you want me to kill you?”
“No, but Ushnotz will…” The orc broke off and looked around frantically. Tungdil read the signs correctly and jumped aside in time to evade the charging beast.
But neither Tungdil nor his captive had reckoned with Ireheart’s smoldering spirit. Shouting wildly, the secondling warrior threw himself on the orc, using both axes to slice through his neck. Blood gushed from the headless body, which slumped to the floor.
“Bravo, Boïndil,” said Tungdil sarcastically. “We can safely assume that the prisoner is dead.”
“He tried to attack you,” said Boïndil meekly, knowing that his friend was right to be cross. “Did he tell you what they were up to?”
“He might have done, if you hadn’t cut his throat.” Tungdil looked thoughtfully at the corpse. The name Ushnotz seemed familiar, but he couldn’t work out why. “Search the bodies,” he ordered. “And keep an eye out for anything that might link the revenan
ts to the battle of the Blacksaddle.” He bent down and rummaged through the dead orc’s pockets and rucksack.
Boïndil, full of contrition for killing the prisoner, hovered behind him. “If they came from the south, they must have sneaked past our sentries,” he said evenly, fixing his gaze on the surrounding peaks.
“Not necessarily—they probably got to the Gray Range before us and lost their way in the tunnels. The signposts wouldn’t be any good to them because they can’t read dwarven runes.” He picked up the dead beast’s waist bag and turned it upside-down. “They weren’t carrying much, which means one of two things; either they’ve been traveling for orbits and finished their provisions—or they’ve set up camp nearby.”
The crazed glimmer faded from Boïndil’s eyes. For a short while his mood would be stable until he was filled again with a burning desire to hunt down Tion’s hordes. A cool breeze buffeted his face, drying the blood on his beard, as he contemplated the ruins of the gateway.
“They pulled the bolts off,” he said, thinking aloud. He noticed gouges around the upper edge of both doors—it looked as though someone had attacked them with a chisel. “Look, they were trying to take down the doors, but their second-rate tools weren’t strong enough. They must have settled for ripping off the bolts.”
“Our smiths and masons will put everything to rights,” Tungdil reassured him. He hadn’t found anything yet to indicate where the orcs had come from. He searched methodically, frisking the orc’s clothing and removing his mail shirt and armor to check underneath. At last, a small chunk of wood fell out of the cuff of his glove. It was clumsily engraved with the insignia of an orcish chieftain, and it was darker and heavier than ordinary wood.
Boïndil leaned over to take a closer look. “It’s fossilized,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from a dead glade, like the one we saw in Gauragar.”
The memory snapped into place. Tungdil’s last encounter with Ushnotz’s troopers had taken place in Gauragar before he met the twins. While hidden in a tree, he had eavesdropped on the orcs’ plan to attack the village of Goodwater. Strictly speaking, Ushnotz and his band belonged in Toboribor, the orcish enclave in the southeast of Girdlegard. Toboribor is fifteen hundred miles away. What would Ushnotz be doing in Gauragar? And why would he send a band of troopers to reconnoiter the Northern Pass? He shared his thoughts with Boïndil.
“It stands to reason, doesn’t it? Escaping across the Northern Pass is the perfect solution for the orcs. Ushnotz lost a decisive battle, and the allied army is waiting for him to return to Toboribor. If you were a lava-livered runt, you wouldn’t go home either.”
“I think you’re right about them leaving Toboribor,” said Tungdil, nodding. He joined Boïndil at the weathered battlements, leaning over the parapet and running his fingers over grooves and pockmarks created by cycles of rain, wind, sun, and snow. Straightening up, he fixed his gaze on the legendary peaks of the Gray Range. “But if you ask me, they don’t intend to leave Girdlegard: They’re planning to settle here.”
“What?” growled his friend. “In our mountains?” He spat on the fallen orc. “May Vraccas beat your soul with a red-hot hammer and torture your spirit with burning tongs!”
Thinking about it, Tungdil felt certain that Ushnotz had intended to occupy the fifthling kingdom. It’s lucky we got here first. He doubted that he and his warriors could have liberated the stronghold from an army of orcs.
It was difficult to know what the troopers had been doing at the gateway. Trying to close it or destroy it? He wondered whether the orcish chieftain had been planning to charge a levy for crossing into Girdlegard. A toll system would be an excellent way of securing weaponry and supplies. Ushnotz struck him as the type to exploit a situation for maximum gain.
Tungdil, having made the connection between Ushnotz, the dead glade, and the revenants, realized with a sinking feeling that he and the others were soon to be visited by some very unwelcome guests. How big was the orcish army? Four thousand, at least…
His gaze swept the mountains, valleys, and ravines and came to rest on the mighty summit of the Dragon’s Tongue.
“I promised to win back the fifthling kingdom for the dwarves,” he murmured softly. “The orcish invaders brought misery on Girdlegard. I don’t care how many necks we have to sever, we won’t let the Stone Gateway fall to the beasts.”
Boïndil nodded. “Well said, scholar. To blazes with the orcs! If they’re the same lot we saw in Gauragar, they’ll be stronger in numbers: The odds aren’t impossible—but it’s a sizable challenge.”
“We’ll have to behead them, don’t forget. Undead orcs are four times more difficult to kill—we lost a lot of warriors today. We won’t defeat them on our own.” He thought for a moment. “We can’t ask the firstlings—they won’t get here in time.”
“What about the elves?”
“They’re too busy reclaiming landur and destroying the älfar. We can’t rely on their help.”
“Hmm.” Boïndil stared at the sheer flanks of the Great Blade. “Who can we ask?” His eyes lit up as he thought of the perfect solution.
“The outcasts,” said Tungdil, thinking the same.
“Look!” shouted a dwarven warrior, peering across the border to the Outer Lands. A milky fog had descended on the mountains, shrouding the Northern Pass in mist. “There’s something down there! I saw movement on the track.”
Tungdil frowned. He and his warriors were in no position to defend themselves against an army of beasts. Considering how many had been killed or injured already, they could scarcely hope to hold the gateway for longer than a peal of orcish laughter would take to echo across the pass. “Be quiet while I listen,” he commanded.
They strained their ears, listening for noises in the thickening fog. The tension showed on their faces. Boïndil peered into the mist, chewing absentmindedly on his braids.
Thick tendrils of fog crept toward the gateway, slipping nervously through the opening as if afraid that the doors would close.
After listening for a while longer, Tungdil breathed out. “You must have been mistaken,” he said, relieved.
“I knew I shouldn’t have got my hopes up,” grumbled Boïndil, letting his arms hang limply by his side.
A muffled jangling sounded from below, its source obscured by the thick veil of fog. In an instant, the tension returned.
“Sounds to me like badly forged armor,” said Boïndil. He turned to the four dwarves who had captured the orcish prisoner. “You checked the gateway for survivors, didn’t you?”
They looked at each other uncertainly.
“I think so,” said one of them, but he didn’t sound sure.
“Which is to say, we might have missed one,” surmised Tungdil, realizing that the boulders on either side of the path were plenty big enough to hide an orc. It wasn’t a reassuring thought. “We’d better check.”
“Let’s catch him before he tells everyone in the Outer Lands that the border is open,” said Boïndil, jiggling his axes. “For all we know, he might be a northern trooper, not one of Ushnotz’s scouts.”
Tungdil had no desire to fight off an invasion from the north, especially with Ushnotz marching on the kingdom from the other side. He signaled for Boïndil to follow him and picked out three dwarves who had acquitted themselves well in the previous skirmish. “You lot come with me, while the others keep watch.” He and his warriors hurried down the stairs.
Porista,
Former Realm of Lios Nudin,
Girdlegard,
Spring, 6235th Solar Cycle
Take that, Nôd’onn, you traitor!” boomed a heavily armored man, leaping somewhat inelegantly out of the shadows to challenge the cloaked figure in the middle of the room. His voice was muffled by a helmet, which made it sound like he was speaking from inside a bucket. He struck a heroic pose. “Your cruel campaign against Girdlegard is over. With this ax I shall slay your inner demon and bring peace to these lands. Prepare to meet your death!” He
raised a shimmering ax and swung it above his head. The blade left a trail of red light in the air, whereupon smoke filled the room.
Yelping, Nôd’onn backed away; the valiant warrior lurched after him, armor tinkling unheroically. The magus retaliated by bombarding him with fiery sparks.
“Your dark arts can’t save you,” prophesied the warrior, sparks rebounding from his breastplate. Lunging forward, he wobbled slightly before raising his weapon to deliver the final strike. Even as the ax slammed into Nôd’onn’s torso, an almighty explosion sounded from somewhere, filling the room with blinding light.
When the glare finally faded, Nôd’onn had vanished, and the warrior was stamping frantically on the smoldering remains of his cloak. It wasn’t until the flames were well and truly extinguished that he turned to face the front.
“And that, worthy spectators, is how your hero, the fabulous Rodario…” He broke off and fumbled unsuccessfully with his visor. After a time, he yanked it impatiently, and the clasp came away in his armored hand. “Of all the confounded—”
Dropping his ax, which planted itself in the floorboards a hairsbreadth away from his foot, he raised both hands to his helmet and pulled with all his might. When that failed, he flung out his arms theatrically, causing his armor to emit an ear-splitting screech.
“As I was saying,” he started again. “I, the fabulous Rodario, assisted by Andôkai the Tempestuous and my loyal helpers, the dwarves, rescued Girdlegard from Nôd’onn’s clutches and restored our kingdoms to their rightful rulers. Thank you for your indulgence, worthy spectators. Donations will be collected at the door.”
He stepped forward to take a bow, stood on a wobbly floorboard, and tumbled off the makeshift stage. The orchestra pit, usually packed with musicians and technicians, was empty. His armored body clattered to the floor.
The audience of two burst out laughing and hurried to help him up. “Congratulations,” said Narmora dryly. “Do you think you can repeat it on the night?”
