Quickly the attack bogged down. Some dark dwarves at the foot of the stairway hacked at the backs of their own comrades out of sheer frustration. Despite the attackers' best efforts, the shield wall held. The enraged Daergar fanned out across the wide dockyard, large companies spreading to the right and left as they sought another route up to the plaza from where the archers continued their barrage. Roaring with fury, the Daergar hastened along the waterfront and Belicia knew it would only be a matter of minutes before they pressed the attack against the other stairways.
The Hylar captain stopped long enough to take stock of the archers who had been posted on the ramparts all along the market. Arrows still showered upon the attackers. Fortus Silkseller had taken command of one of these detachments and stopped shooting long enough to answer her questions. She urged the troops keep shooting, but to make sure that the archers were taking careful aim.
"Make each shot count!" she shouted, and the wielders of the dwarven short bows nodded in understanding.
The roar of battle filled the air, rising to the upper levels of the Life-Tree. From the balconies of the Third Level which overhung the waterfront by a significant distance, a shower of garbage, stones, and occasionally a flask or two of fiery oil fell upon the attackers. Small blazes sprang up here and there, and the Daergar howled, infuriated as much by the flaring brightness as they were by the heat and flame.
Belicia checked her reserve detachment, sixty dwarves under the command of a one-eyed veteran named Tenor Ironwood. He was anxious to bring his dwarves into the fray, but growled in grudging acquiescence when she explained the need to keep his warriors ready for the crisis that would inevitably come.
Finally Belicia hurried to the western staircase and saw that the shield wall was standing firm. She cautioned them that the Daergar were on the way, then headed back to the east to find the battle already joined. Here, too, the Hylar on the stairway held firm and the dark dwarves suffered under the arrows from the ramparts. The crowding forced their vast numbers into a narrow and deadly channel. A peg-legged mercenary captain called Broadaxe was profanely exhorting the Hylar of his shield wall into a killing frenzy.
The sounds of battle echoed throughout Hybardin and carried far across the Urkhan Sea. The main thrust still came at the southern stairway. Belicia was proud to see that Farran's line had only backed up five or six steps and each foot of ground gained was costing the Daergar dozens upon dozens of warriors. The lines at the east and west stairs, facing less pressure from the attack, had not been forced to give any ground, and the Daergar made no effort to circle all the way around the island to attack from the north.
Belicia was pretty certain why they were leaving the last route alone and her suspicions were confirmed an hour later by the shouts of lookouts posted on Level Three. She raced across the plaza to see that the lake was obscured by an unnatural bank of fog. The mist seethed across the black waters like a living thing, rolling steadily closer to the Hybardin waterfront. She was not surprised to see the Theiwar fleet appear. A long rank of slender hulls slid forward from the fog to the north and west.
The boats emerged from a barrier of mist far thicker than the shadows of the underground sea. She shivered at this first evidence of Theiwar magic. The vaporous barrier had concealed their approach until the dark dwarves were already well within bow range, and now the defenders had time for only a single, lashing volley. Still, a hundred crossbows snapped and a barrage of silvery arrows darted into the Theiwar mass.
But most of the missiles fizzled into ashes before they reached their targets as Theiwar magic again shimmered in the air, robbing the volley of most of its strength. The attackers hooted and jeered as the harmless dust fizzled into the sea, and the boats swept forward quickly. Belicia had no choice but to order her defenders onto the stairs, the Hylar abandoning the docks to make their defense at the bottleneck of the approach to Level Two.
She heard strange words, weird chants that seemed to writhe and twist across the waterfront, and then a barrage of flaming balls sparked outward from the boats. The dots of flame drifted easily across the docks, settling among the crates and barrels abandoned by the archers. In another second the entire area was obscured by fire, crackling sheets of flame that erupted from the deceptively gentle balls to seethe among the wooden obstacles.
Theiwar warriors, staring horridly with their wide, milky eyes, quickly swarmed the waterfront and rushed to the base of the north stairway where Belicia's last detachment soon had carved a bloody battle line.
The dark dwarves cast more spells. Hissing, sparking arrows suddenly began to shower into the Hylar. Some of the magic missiles were deflected by shields and armor, but others seared into skin and flesh. Dwarves screamed, but there was more anger than pain in the sounds as the vengeful defenders wielded their axes and swords with fury and skill. Even a magical cloud of stinking gas didn't break the line. When the vapors seemed to choke as many Theiwar as Hylar, the attackers finally set about the onslaught with the physical tools of war. Swords clanged against shields, and the Theiwar invaders hurled simple, brute strength against resolute Hylar stubbornness.
More Theiwar swarmed to the west and the Hylar captain watched with grim amusement as these newcomers set upon the Daergar, driving their fellow dark dwarves away from the base of the stairs. The defending Hylar took the chance to catch their breath, until the Theiwar rushed to take the place of the attackers they had just dislodged.
The battles raged at each of the four stairways, and each step of advance was purchased at a heavy toll in blood. Belicia held her reserve detachment at the ready, wondering how long her brave defenders could hold out.
More and more attackers swarmed from the darkness to all sides. Even if the battle waned, there was no denying the ultimate truth. The Hylar were surrounded by enemies and any hope of survival would have to be found within the hearts of those who were ready to give their lives in defense.
Interlude of Chaos
The fire dragons were joined by shadows of purest darkness. All around the cosmos, from every place where the beings of wildness and destruction had been held, the creatures of Father Chaos arose and heeded the call. They swarmed through the stuff of worlds, howled in the vast silences of space, and rushed toward the poor vault of dirt and stone and sea.
But Krynn itself could not even acknowledge the presence of danger. A mere piece of ground in the cosmos, that place of men and dwarves and dragons could only whirl in its appointed place and allow the dwellers upon and within it to face the host of horrors that swept in with the tide Chaos.
Already many of the realms under the sun had felt the sweep of undoing, for the creatures of Chaos had begun their war against the rulers of Ansalon. But soon the attackers and their waves of destruction swelled beyond the visible world, moved past the places that could be seen. Some of the horde soared through the skies and others moved into the bedrock of the world.
And these last flew through the rock and stone as if it was wispy smoke. They followed the beacon of Primus, who in turn was guided by his dark master. They flew, climbed, and swam in the world until the shell of that planet fell away to reveal a great underground sea, teeming cities-some bright with light and others inky black. They also found peoples of blood and flesh, victims for the coming of Chaos.
Zarak Thuul led, and the horde of Chaos followed.
Chapter Thirteen
Coming of Chaos
Though the lesson was painful, Tarn learned it quickly enough. The best thing to do was to try to breathe through his mouth. The air in the escape shaft had been tolerable, but when Regal had led him to an adjoining tunnel the stench had become fetid, the air almost unbreathable. By Tarn's best guess, their current passage was one of the sewage drainage tunnels underneath Daerforge. When he took a careless breath, this supposition was vividly confirmed.
"This Street Number One," Regal proclaimed proudly as he strolled down the great pipeway with no apparent discomfort.
"Street? Of
what?" wondered Tarn, looking for anything that might distinguish the dark shaft as anything other than a big drainage pipe.
"Of Agharhome!" The gully dwarf seemed perplexed at his thickness. "This Number One Main Street of city!"
"Does it smell this bad everywhere?" Tarn asked, still breathing through his mouth.
"What smell?" Regal took a loud, wet sniff, and shook his head in mystification. "I smell no smell. Maybe you smell?" He fastened a look of calculated appraisal on his companion, but then shrugged forgivingly. "Oh, well. You not smell too bad."
Regal continued to lead him down the long, damp tunnel. He finally turned into a different shaft, then crawled into a narrower pipe that forced the reluctant Tarn onto his hands and knees as well.
"This Main Street Number Two," the Aghar informed him.
Despite his resolve not to breathe through his nose, Tarn periodically found himself accidentally catching a tiny whiff of Agharhome. Each time he gagged on the stench, and they were forced to halt while Tarn drew desperate, rasping mouthfuls of air.
At first each assault of tainted vapor seemed like a toxin powerful enough to blacken his vision. But he was surprised to note that, very gradually, the hideous stench seemed to become somewhat less offensive. It was not that the smell was any less vile or any less intense. Instead, it was more like his nostrils had become desensitized, so that the occasional waft that passed through the guard of his closed palate ultimately brought no more than a sensation of mild distaste.
Regal Everwise-or was it Wise-Always? — continued to lead the way as the two of them moved through a series of tight passages that sometimes descended and sometimes proceeded in a more or less lateral direction. The passages were narrow and smoothly made, but nothing like a city in Tarn's mind.
"What's that?" the half-breed asked as they passed a wider passage and heard sounds of laughter and sociable conversation.
'That Main Street Number Two," declared Regal.
"I thought this was… never mind." Tarn decided it was best to follow along with as few questions as possible.
They finally emerged from the base of a cliff. Looking over his shoulder and upward, Tarn saw the sweep of stone wall rising to the uppermost of Daerforge's levels. He recognized the twin towers at the gatehouse of his mother's manor and realized he was really not that far from the dwelling of his maternal ancestors.
But as he looked around he also felt transported to another world. A slope before him led steeply downward. It was a surface of huge rocks teetering dangerously at unbalanced angles. The slope was scored by paths and gullies that twisted around the huge outcrops. Beneath and around the rocks Tarn could see countless niches and darkened alcoves. He guessed that these dens must serve as the Aghars' houses and other buildings-well, shelters anyway since they didn't seem to have actually been "built."
While he was watching, he noticed several small figures dashing from one of these entrances to another with every appearance of great urgency. They dove into the burrows under the rocks, vanishing as quickly as they had appeared. Agharhome covered a broad, steep slope that led from the base of the cliff to the shore of the Urkhan Sea. At a casual glance the gully dwarf city was indistinguishable from a field of strewn boulders. The network of ravines and channels served as roads, just as the crude niches between the rocks served as buildings.
"Here we find my friends," Regal said, his conversational voice sounding like a shout to Tarn after the long, silent crawl. As soon as he got over his surprise, he realized that the whole area was abuzz with noise: laughter, argument, snoring, all kinds of sounds-though there were still no Aghar immediately in view.
"Sure. Regal?"
"What?" The gully dwarf stopped and looked up at Tarn, scowling suspiciously.
"I just wanted to say, urn, thanks… thank you for getting me out of there."
"Beer was gone anyway," Regal replied with a shrug. "My friends got more, but different kind. You will see. Gully grog got some real kick."
Tarn suppressed his misgivings, remembering the rather startling taste when Regal had shared his flask. "Well, I might have to take your word for it. The last time somebody showed their hospitality to me with a bottle, it didn't work out too well."
"Head hurts?" wondered the gully dwarf.
"Yeah, for starters," Tarn replied, still feeling the cottony thickness in his mouth and the queasiness in his stomach.
Regal sniffed, somewhat contemptuously. Any further critique was prevented by the sudden appearance of two more Aghar, who seemed to crawl out from beneath a nearby boulder. One was chubby and short even for a gully dwarf, while the other was taller with a red face framed by a bristling mane of frizzy hair.
"Regal Way-Too-Smart!" the short one declared, beaming. "You got home in time for… what? We gonna do something, I know." He turned to his companion while scratching his bushy head. "Why he come home?"
The second dwarf with an entirely hairless, egg-shaped face scowled. A seared and frazzled fringe of hair was visible at the back of the Aghar's head. The skin of his face was blistered. Even his eyebrows had apparently been burned away.
Regal cleared his throat with great formality. "This Poof Firemaker," he declared, pointing at the singed gully dwarf. "And Duck Bigdwarf."
Duck was undoubtedly one of the shortest Aghar Tarn had ever met. Even after he rose from his sweeping bow-a gesture which dropped him onto his face for a disconcerting moment-his head came barely to the level of Tarn's chest. Looking down, Tarn saw that the tangle of Duck's hair was alive with fleas. Stepping quickly backward, Tarn tried not to let his distaste show.
Poof also bowed, and Tarn saw that the burn line neatly intersected his skull into fore and rear halves. It seemed obvious to Tarn that the Aghar Firemaker had held his face a little too close to some incendiary project. This suspicion was reinforced by the sight of a small tinderbox that the gully dwarf proudly held up for the half-breed's inspection.
"Come and have some grog, now?" asked Regal, showing every intention of crawling under the boulder where the pair of gully dwarves had been. It appeared to be no more than a small and dingy niche. "Plenty even for big thirsty guy like you."
"Thanks a lot," the half-breed tried to explain, "but I've got to be going. I want to look around a bit."
His reluctance was only partly out of distaste. In fact, his thought processes had finally begun to grapple with the next question. Where should he go? The answer was obvious: back to Hybardin, back to his father, and especially back to Belicia. He would have to travel by boat, but his hopes were dampened by the sight of the Agharhome waterfront. There were a series of small jetties made from tumbled rock, but these looked like precarious places even for walking, much less docking a boat. And there were no watercraft anywhere in evidence, which, he realized with another glance at the trio of Aghar, was probably very sensible.
Across the harbor, mostly hidden by the curling shoulder of the sea's steep shoreline, lay the crowded and busy waterfront of Daerforge. He saw the cables of the chain boats far out over the water followed their pylons to the distant, illuminated height of the Life-Tree. Could he get there, somehow sneaking aboard some dark dwarf boat without being noticed? He didn't care for his chances.
And then, before his disbelieving eyes, flaming balls of winged fire burst upward from the Urkhan Sea and soared high into the air.
"How is your ammunition holding out?" Belicia had located Fortus Silkseller on the rampart over the southern stairway and now she shouted over the din of howling dark dwarves. Just below them-despite having suffered hundreds of casualties-the Daergar still pressed against Farran's shield wall. In several hours of battle the doughty Hylar had given up no more than six or eight steps on the wide stairway.
"We've used half our arrows," replied the grim merchant. "A while ago I told 'em to start taking their time, to make each shot count."
"It looks like they paid attention."
Looking over the mass of bodies sprawled across the dockside bel
ow, Belicia saw that many of the dark dwarves had been felled by the missiles sent down by the Hylar archers. Just below the wall several ladders lay scattered and broken, and the dead Daergar bristled with so many arrows that they looked like pincushions.
"They thought they could bypass the stairs," Fortus said with a loud spit, followed by a hearty chuckle. "Wanted to take us by surprise with a sudden rush and a few ladders. Guess we made 'em think otherwise."
"Good job," Belicia said. She pointed toward the center of the line where a dozen or so Daergar carried on with an attack that seemed to finally be losing some of its relentless ferocity. "Good timing, too."
Farran shouted hoarsely, and his shield wall pressed forward. In a few seconds they had regained all the steps they had lost since the attack began. Fortus laughed with real pleasure, and Belicia nodded in satisfaction. "It seems like the attack on the stairs is starting to slacken a little bit."
"About time." Despite his gruff manner, the merchant-turned-warrior looked immensely pleased. "What about the other three sides?"
"Every one of them has held. It seems like none of them got hit as hard as you did here. We're all grateful. I know you've paid the price."
"Your boy there… Farran…" Fortus cleared his throat, "he's doing a yeoman's job, by Reorx. I was in the Lance War you know, and I've never seen a shield wall hold against such a press. The fellow looks young, but I'm here to tell you that he fights like a seasoned veteran."
"Yes… he does well," Belicia replied softly, her eyes misting at the memory of her young sergeant mere weeks earlier, stumbling over each foot as he was among the rawest of recruits. "I guess war has a way of maturing you quickly." A thought jarred her, as she recalled one of the hundreds of reports she had received today. "Is there any word on your friend?"
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