The Gully Dwarves

by Dan Parkinson

In the devastated footings of one of the great walls, where a jagged opening gaped above the city’s underground, several furtive gully dwarves scurried from the shadows and darted for better cover. They disappeared into the dark hole, where drains led downward to the caverns. All but one. One of the gully dwarves held an ivory stick in its grimy fist—the Fang of Orm. And that one, darting for cover, encountered a Tarmite soldier. With a shriek the gully dwarf turned and fled, back into the base of the tower.

  As suddenly as it had appeared, the raging dragon, which had now devastated and scattered the armies both inside and outside of Tarmish, was gone. As though it had never been there, it simply vanished, and once again Clonogh’s magic-honed senses detected the ironlike taste of a dragon spell.

  “Transformation,” he muttered, recognizing the pattern of the magic, though he had no clue as to what the beast had become, or where it had gone. Dragon magic had restored him, magic drawn from the dragon’s previous spell, but though his sorcery was now powerful again, he was still only human. The mind of a dragon was not the mind of a human, and the intricacies of its sorcery were beyond him.

  Still, it was gone now from view, and whatever the beast’s purpose had been, it did not seem to have any further effect on him. He stood unharmed on the skeletal remains of the tower, and Tarmish Castle lay in shambles around him, gaping and broken first by the missiles of contending armies, then by the wrath of a rampaging dragon.

  The place was almost silent now. Here and there injured men cried out among the dead, and as the breeze shifted he could hear the strident, stunned voices of both Lord Vulpin and Chatara Kral, barking curses and orders at the scattered handfuls of Tarmite and Gelnian troops they still commanded.

  The jagged hole where the gully dwarves had disappeared gaped dark and silent, like a beckoning cavern. Soldiers of Tarmish were hurrying toward it. On the south wall, several of Lord Vulpin’s lieutenants noticed them and pointed.

  Raising a bony fist, Clonogh muttered a small spell. On the south wall Lord Vulpin halted and turned, as though confused. For a moment he gazed around, this way and that, then his gaze fixed on the tower and he started toward it. Beyond the open gate, Chatara Kral also turned, hesitated, then strode toward the gaping portal and the tower beyond. Behind each regent, confused men milled about, some choosing to follow their leaders, others turning away.

  With a savage grin, Clonogh paced the great tower, hearing the thud of little feet on the rising stairs. The Fang of Orm was on its way to him, in the hands of an innocent.

  * * * * *

  In dim recesses in the bowels of Tarmish, Graywing stared about him in bewildered disgust. The dragon that had been here not half an hour ago, seeming to fill the resonant caverns with its fearful presence, was nowhere to be found. He and Dartimien had searched for it, splitting up to scour the echoing, vaulted chambers in wide sweeps, poking and peering into every tunnel and shadowed niche.

  There was no sign of the formidable beast anywhere. Now Graywing stood a few steps into the great chamber in which the castle’s foundations towered like dark monoliths, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. There were gully dwarves everywhere he could see, doltish little creatures bumbling about here and there, more or less centering upon a major concentration of Aghar around the base of a huge pillar. Some sort of conference seemed to be going on there. A dozen or so gully dwarves were engaged in animated debate about something, while uncounted others looked on with dull curiosity.

  A few yards back of the main swarm, he spotted Thayla Mesinda, trim and beautiful even here in these noisome surroundings. Small of stature though she was, she stood head and shoulders taller than most of the milling, blundering little creatures around her.

  Scattering gully dwarves ahead of him, the warrior strode across the cavern toward the girl. As he approached her he held out a beckoning hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll take you away from all this—” his voice broke abruptly into a grunt of surprise as a quick movement beside him warned him of attack. With a curse Graywing leaped straight up, drawing his feet up as a wide broadsword whistled past just below him, just where his shins had been.

  Bron the Hero lost his balance as his mighty slash met nothing but thin air. Trying to keep his grip on the heavy weapon, he spun half around, tripped and fell on his face. The broadsword clanged against the stone of the cavern floor, and Bron’s big iron shield teetered for a moment on edge, then fell over on top of him.

  Cursing and furious, Graywing stepped over the struggling gully dwarf, pinned the broadsword beneath a soft-booted foot and leaned down. “Don’t ever do that again!” he ordered.

  “Oops, sorry,” Bron said, freeing himself from the weight of the shield. “Didn’ rec’nize you. Thought mebbe you a enemy.”

  “Didn’t recognize me?” Graywing snapped. “You’ve seen me a dozen times!”

  Bron got his feet under him, dusted himself off with grimy hands and glanced up at the human. “So what? Seen one Tall, seen ’em all.” The little hero got his shield upright and arranged its straps on his arm and shoulder. He reached for his broadsword, tugged on its grip, then noticed the human’s foot planted on the blade. “Pardon,” he said. When the foot didn’t move, Bron heaved the heavy shield around and smacked Graywing on the knee with it. The human hissed, jumped back and hopped around on one foot, cursing.

  Bron retrieved his broadsword, squinted for a moment as he tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing, then resumed his position in front of Thayla. He was guarding her.

  Thayla shook her head, her eyebrows arched in a pretty frown as she watched Graywing shuffle about, testing his sore knee. “You really shouldn’t be so rough with these little people,” she scolded the dour warrior. “They don’t mean any harm.”

  “That little twit tried to cut off my feet!” the plainsman growled.

  “Bron? He’s a hero,” Thayla reminded the man. “That’s what heroes do.”

  “Right,” Bron agreed, “cut off folks’ feet.”

  Graywing tried again, this time staying just out of range of the gully dwarf’s weapon. “Let’s get out of here, girl,” he urged. “This place will be overrun by Tarmites any minute now … and that dragon is still around here someplace.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Thayla assured him. “Bron chased it away.”

  “He did not!”

  “Did, too!” The voice almost directly below his chin startled Graywing. He looked straight down, into the stubborn, serious eyes of a little female gully dwarf who stood almost toe to toe with him. Her head was at about the level of his belt, her hands were little fists planted on her hips and she looked ready to take him on in either debate or combat, whichever he chose.

  “Bron say dragon go ’way,” Pert told him, “So dragon go ’way. Ever’body know that. Tall blind?”

  Graywing took a deep breath and shook his head. The only thing dumber than a gully dwarf, he had heard, is the fool who tries to argue with one. If he wasn’t careful, he realized, he was going to find himself doing just that.

  “Get out of the way,” he snapped, then stepped around Pert, who scurried to confront him again.

  “Bron chase dragon away!” the little creature insisted. She glanced around. “Isn’ that right, Bron?”

  Bron peered over the top of the legendary Great Stew Bowl, looking puzzled. “Yes, dear.”

  “Pert’s right,” Thayla Mesinda said emphatically. “He did.”

  “Nobody just … just orders a green dragon around,” Graywing told the girl, his voice thin with exasperation. “Green dragons are—”

  “It wasn’t exactly green,” Thayla pointed out. “It was more brown, or maybe like gold and wild honey.”

  “Bron’s dragon!” Pert insisted. “Does what Bron says!”

  “She’s right,” Thayla said, nodding. “It was a bronze dragon.”

  “Alright!” Graywing snapped. “Whatever you say! Now come with me, girl! We’ve got to get—”

  From somewhere behind him cam
e the ironic voice of Dartimien the Cat. “Will you all shut up over there? And stop aggravating those gully dwarves, barbarian! I’m trying to read.”

  The Cat was over by the main pillar, squinting in the dim light, running a finger down rows of glyphs on a metallic plate attached to the stone. Gully dwarves crowded around him, some of them clambering up his back, hauling themselves up by his shoulder straps for a better view. One chattering little oaf was actually sitting on the assassin’s shoulders, peering over his head.

  Graywing swore a muttered oath and headed that way. The distant sounds of battle, filtering in through cracks and grates, had risen in volume until it was a song of chaos. Then, abruptly, the world outside the cavernous cellars had gone silent. Any moment now, Graywing was sure, hordes of Gelnians, Tarmites, mercenary soldiers and who knew what else would be flooding into these recesses. And Dartimien was reading labels on posts.

  Pushing through packed mobs of gully dwarves, the plainsman reached Dartimien and squinted at the bronze plaque. “What is it?”

  “Sign,” the gully dwarf on Dartimien’s shoulders chattered happily. “Got runes on it. Say this place fulla crumbs an’ shiny rocks.”

  “That’s fulcrum!” Dartimien growled. “The fulcrum on the shining stone!”

  “Yeah,” the gully dwarf agreed. “Right.”

  The explanation was lost on most of the crowd of gully dwarves. Several dozen of them stared around, thoughtfully, then wandered off in search of crumbs and shiny rocks. Within moments some of them had found a vein of quartz leading upward, ridged with imbedments of gleaming pyrite. Forgetting everything else around them, these intrepid explorers dug out various tools and began climbing the cavern wall, mining pyrite as they went.

  “Shiny rocks,” some of them called. “Jus’ like dragon said.”

  “That dragon kinda like Highbulp’s dragon,” a gully dwarf proclaimed, “Maybe same dragon?” Almost upsetting Graywing, he pushed forward between the tall man’s legs. He was a portly little individual with a curly, iron-gray beard and puffy little eyes set close above a protruding nose. He wore a crown of rat’s teeth on his unkempt head. “Yep, same dragon,” he decided. “Same dragon as before, long time ago.”

  Beside Graywing, Pert bristled. “Bron’s dragon,” she insisted. “Not Highbulp’s.”

  Ignoring all of them, Dartimien studied the runes on the metal plaque, then peered closely at the stone around it. Where the mildew was rubbed away, the stone glowed with a soft, pearl-white luster. “Interesting,” the Cat mused. “I think we’ve found something of value here. Something about the high and the low—”

  Fifty yards away, at the mouth of a dark, jagged hole in the cavern wall, torchlight flared and suddenly there were armed men there, dozens of them.

  Dartimien straightened, daggers flashing in his hands. “Tarmites,” he hissed. “They’ve found us.”

  “Ever’body run like crazy!” the Highbulp screeched. The crowd of gully dwarves roaming the cavern floor dissolved into a tumbling tangle of panicked little people as his subjects tried to respond, bouncing one another right and left in their haste. Several of them bounced off a wall and set off a chain reaction of tumbling bodies. The Highbulp was swept off his feet and buried in the turmoil. The lady Lidda dug him out, cuffing gully dwarves right and left. “Glitch a real nuisance,” she observed. Gripping her husband’s ear, she dragged him free and propelled him toward a wall. “Climb!” she ordered.

  Shaken from his reverie, Scrib fell on the tottering old Grand Notioner, who cursed loudly, crawled free, got to his unsteady feet and flailed about with his mop handle staff, delivering swats and bruises with enthusiastic abandon. On the walls of the cavern, various gully dwarves looked downward at the melee. Some lost their holds and fell, joining the free-for-all below. Others, though, were absorbed in their tasks. They had found a vein of yellow pyrite above the tumbled portal, and were busily mining it.

  All around the great column, the pandemonium spread. In the midst of it, Bron braced himself, his iron shield swaying this way and that. He had lost track of Thayla Mesinda, and without the human girl’s presence to remind him, he was a bit confused as to what he was supposed to be doing. Then he saw a tumbling gully dwarf—one of his closest friends, though the name escaped him for a moment—rolling toward little Pert. Without hesitation he swatted the miscreant with the flat of his broadsword, then placed himself to protect little Pert. As a designated hero, he felt compelled to protect somebody, and Pert was a reasonable choice.

  Graywing the barbarian stared around in open-mouthed disbelief. He had never seen such total, all-out confusion, all of it because the pompous little Highbulp—who now was among those on the wall, mining pyrites—had told them to run.

  “There’s no place to run to, you little idiots!” Graywing roared. “We’ll have to fight!”

  On the wall above, the Highbulp glanced around, almost losing his grip. “What?”

  “I said, fight!”

  “Okay,” Glitch said. “Ever’body fight!”

  All around, agitated Aghar froze, straightened and looked around them. “Okay,” several of them said. “Whatever.” Beside Graywing a husky gully dwarf swung a roundhouse punch that sent another gully dwarf tumbling. Several of them went down, bowled over by the ruckus. The riot became a melee as the entire tribe joined in, gully dwarves pummeling away at other gully dwarves, enthusiastic combatants piling onto those who fell.

  Graywing stared around in disbelief. “Oh, for the gods’ sake!” he breathed. Then, brandishing his sword, wading through rioting Aghar, he headed for the human intruders piling through the broken portal. Dartimien was beside him, bounding over clusters of gully dwarves. From a distance, somewhere behind the Tarmite warriors gaping around in the gloom, came the sounds of falling stone. Billows of dust issued from the jagged portal, partially obscuring the invaders. Dartimien’s eyes narrowed, his darting glances scanning the humans in the dust. They were all footmen—tower guards and warders, low soldiers wearing the colors of home guardsmen. Nowhere among them were any officers’ insignias.

  Graywing filled his lungs and raised his sword, ready to fight, but suddenly Dartimien wheeled to face him. “Wait!” the Cat rasped. “We can use these dolts!”

  Before Graywing could react, Dartimien turned away again, his hands empty of daggers, and strode toward the Tarmites. “Where is the rest of your detail?” he demanded, his tone as imperious as any field commander’s.

  The Tarmites huddled in confusion, their weapons lowered. “I don’t know,” one of them said. “Cap’n was right behind us a minute ago, but I don’t see him now.”

  “He’s still outside,” another volunteered. “Lord Vulpin himself was … well, I think he sent us in here.”

  “Idiots!” Dartimien rasped. “Don’t you see what has happened? The invaders have tricked you. That rockfall, they’ve sealed us up in these cellars. The attack is above, in the courtyards. Not here!”

  “It is?” a burly Tarmite tilted his helmet to scratch his head. “Then what do we do now?”

  “You can follow your orders!” Dartimien hissed. “You should be up in the main keep, defending against the enemy!”

  “Y-yes, sir,” the burly one said. “But how do we get back there?”

  “The way you came, obviously. Now get in there and start digging!”

  Obediently, most of the Tarmite warriors turned and headed back the way they had come, through the broken portal and up the tunnel. One or two glanced back, gawking at the scene in the catacombs. There seemed to be gully dwarves everywhere. “Wh-what about them, sir?” one asked, pointing.

  “What about them?” Dartimien snapped. “They’re only gully dwarves. Ignore them!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Within moments, more than a dozen yeomen of Castle Tarmish were at work in the tunnel, digging away fallen stone.

  “That should keep them busy for a while,” Dartimien confided to Graywing, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
r />   “They took your commands,” the plainsman said. “Why did they do that?”

  “Don’t you know about the Tarmites and the Gelnians?” Dartimien cocked an ironic brow. “The only difference between them is the colors they wear, yet they’ve been at war against each other, off and on, for hundreds of years. Not one in a hundred on either side has any idea what they fight about. They just take orders from whoever’s in charge at the moment. It’s always been like that.”

  “So they accepted you as being in charge? Why?”

  “Because I acted like I was. Now I think we should see about getting out of this hole.”

  “How? The entrance is blocked.”

  “You really don’t know anything about cities, do you, barbarian?” The Cat gestured toward a gloomy alcove a hundred yards away, in the recesses of the cavern. There, shadows among the shadows, a troop of female gully dwarves was descending from above, winding their way around a huge pillar. They carried loads of forage, found somewhere above.

  “I suggest we use the stairs,” Dartimien said levelly.

  Chapter 21

  The Hole Truth

  Seething with malignant intent, Clonogh paced the wrecked tower. He had scores to settle, and now, thanks to the intervention of a dragon, he had the power to do so.

  He might have gone out to face his enemies, but that was never Clonogh’s way. Here in this tower, he felt aloof, above the turmoil beyond, and he liked the idea of his enemies coming to him—using their own efforts to go to their doom. So, a seething old spider in its chosen lair, he waited.

  The skeletal structure of stone that had been the great tower of Tarmish was a twisted ruin now, its precipitous stairway a shambles. But he knew the loft was secure. Where the stones had fallen away, where bombards had blasted outer walls to reveal the winding stairs within, and shattered the dark inner walls beyond them, white stone gleamed—a monolith of pure basalt that descended through the great structure, its foundations deep in the bedrock below. The trappings of mankind might fall away, but this stone was eternal.