“Let’s go, then. This looks like the front door, or the back door, to Thorbardin,” Slate declared.
“Yep!” Gus proclaimed loudly. “Let’s go! Up to Thorbardin, fight wizard’s dwarves!”
Crystal knelt and addressed the gully dwarf directly. “You’re coming in there with us, Gus; you know you are. And we all know that you’re very brave. But right now I’d like you to march at the back of our army until I’m sure what lies ahead. You can see how narrow the trail is, and well, we wouldn’t want to take a chance on something happening to you.”
“But-!”
“I’m afraid I must insist,” Crystal said with a hitherto unnoticed-by Gus, at least-sternness.
Sulking, the Aghar and his two girlfriends slumped at the side of the road, watching the Neidar warriors push past. Slate Fireforge wasted no time in starting up the trail, leading the long column that was forced to narrow and squeeze along the precipitous pathway. Crystal followed close behind him, and the rest of the hill dwarves came after.
Marching two by two, the Neidar advanced up the steep trail, crossing back and forth on the switchbacks, the formation creeping like a long snake until the leaders reached the gap in the mountainside. Even from below, Gus perceived that the roadway continued into the cliff, as if the force that had smashed open the mountain had been controlled by some power that had made certain the blast would create a passage into Thorbardin.
So they entered the mountain kingdom and pressed on through the obvious detritus of battle and war. And the three gully dwarves, panting and puffing from the steep climb, hurried along behind.
Brandon stood at the edge of the water. The Urkhan Road ended at a broad wharf with a series of docks where long, metal-hulled boats could be berthed. There were many boats there, his men had reported, but every one of them had been holed, and they all rested on the bottom of the shallow lake.
“Can they be repaired?” he asked.
“Aye, General,” replied a captain of one of the scout companies, the dwarf whose men had been the first on the scene. “But it’ll take a smithy with some metal plate and a good forge. And it’ll take time. Do you want me to get started on that chore?”
“Make some preparations,” he said absently. He didn’t know that he needed boats, but considering that it was the end of the road for the Kayolin Army’s advance, he wanted to be ready for the possibility.
All around him, troops of the entire Kayolin force, including both legions, stood at the edge of the water or lined the sides of the long, wide Urkhan Road. Looking around glumly at their fallen faces, Brandon was forced to accept the inescapable conclusion that he had been duped by the prisoners he and his men had interrogated.
At least half a dozen captured Theiwar had sworn that Willim the Black and his army had come down that road and intended to make a last stand before the lake. Yet his scouts had searched thoroughly as they advanced, and there was no sign of even a small company of Willim’s troops, much less the bulk of his army. The prisoners had been lying.
“We’ve come on a wild goose chase,” he admitted to Otaxx Shortbeard, who had been detached from service to the king in order to help Brandon seek his daughter. “I didn’t really expect to find Willim or Gretchan here, but I can’t believe there’s nothing! No point to it at all.”
“There must have been a point, though,” the old campaigner suggested grimly. “Even if the purpose is not our own, we were sent here because someone wanted us here.”
“Just to waste our time?” he wondered aloud. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Otaxx agreed.
Fister Morewood, looking perplexed, came up to join them at the water’s edge. “Not a damned sign of a Theiwar anywhere along this road,” he reported. “Anything down here?”
“Not a bit,” Brandon replied. “Where do we go from here?”
“I’m thinking we’d better get out of this road, this tunnel, before we get some unpleasant information,” Morewood suggested.
“You’re right,” Brandon agreed. “Can you start the legions marching back to the plaza? I’ll be along shortly. I want to study this lakeshore a little more.”
“Sure thing,” the legion commander agreed. “Just don’t dawdle.”
The Kayolin dwarf turned and started up the road, a grade that climbed gently away from the water. “All right, you lazy lugs!” he barked to the hundreds of Kayolin dwarves waiting within earshot. “Strap on your helmets and put down your flasks! We’re marching back to the city. Now move out!”
Brandon couldn’t help but smile at the good-natured grumbling of the weary soldiers who, nonetheless, began to follow orders and start back up the four-mile-long road they had just marched down.
But his good humor quickly vanished as he remembered Gretchan’s predicament and considered the fact that he might have brought his men on a wasted mission.
Or was it a trap? He didn’t see how it could be. Sure, the men on the road were vulnerable to attack from the city, but the Tharkadan Legion held the gatehouse and was maintaining a garrison in the square. No army could reach the Kayolin troops, not so long as Tarn Bellowgranite and his legion were posted astride that key route.
Otaxx seemed to be deeply troubled by his own thoughts. He kept looking out over the water, as if the mystery might be solved by something floating on the Urkhan Sea.
“I’m going to head back up to the city,” Brandon said to the old campaigner. “But I’d like you to stay down here and keep an eye on things. Would you do that?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Shortbeard agreed. “Although this whole place smells like a gully dwarf latrine.”
“I’ll leave a company of scouts here as well. I’m going to ask some of these men to try and set up a smithy, see if they can start repairs on the boats. Can you supervise them?”
“Sure. Good luck to you, and I’ll let you know if there’s anything amiss.”
“Thanks.”
Still Brandon didn’t leave, not just yet. Instead, he found himself staring out over the water. Somewhere out there, he knew, was the rocky pile called the Isle of the Dead-once the site of the greatest city in all dwarvendom. He tried to spot it, but the lake was too big, the darkness too intense, for his vision to penetrate that far. Remembering tales of the Urkhan Sea as once it had been, before the Chaos War, he pictured glittering cities lining the rocky shore of the vast, underground lake, lights shining from thousands of windows. Boat traffic had been common back then, which explained the existence of wharves such as the one they stood on and the many others that were positioned all around the shore.
Of course, there was no commerce there anymore; there was not much of anything actually. It saddened him to think of that great age, when Thorbardin had flourished so, and to compare it to the sorry state of the nation as it currently existed. So much of it could be blamed on the Chaos War, he knew, and dwarves never hesitated to do that.
But much of the blame lies with us, ourselves.
He didn’t like to admit that-no dwarf did-but he knew it was true.
Finally, Brandon’s eyes alighted on the captain who had informed him about the boats, and he went over and told him to keep an eye on the wharf as well as set up a temporary forge to repair the boats. He was relieved, at least, that Otaxx would be there to oversee things. Something about that place made him think it needed watching.
Frustrated, melancholy, and very worried about his priestess, Brandon started up the road. He trudged wearily, feeling the hunger, the fatigue, the stultifying exhaustion of so many days of almost constant battle. The victories seemed like tiny, intangible things at such moments, while the challenges still facing him and his army seemed almost insurmountable.
Deeply wrapped in that gloom, he didn’t even notice the commotion ahead of him, not until a breathless courier jogged into view. The dwarf’s face was streaked with sweat, and even more alarming, he smelled of soot and fire.
“What is it?” demanded Brandon. “Wha
t’s the news?”
“The Theiwar have attacked from the rear. They’ve captured the Firespitters, General,” the dwarf reported. The veteran warrior’s face was streaked with blood too, Brandon noticed once he saw him up close. The whites of his eyes were like two beacons shining from a murky night, and they shone with a message of real alarm.
“What about the Tharkadan Legion?” the Kayolin general demanded.
“They’re right up here in the tunnel with us, sir. I hear they got the same reports we did, and the king didn’t want to sit around picking his nose-no offense intended, sir-while we were busy killing Theiwar. So it’s all of us, the whole of the Dwarf Home Army. The enemy has us trapped on this road. And they’re pouring fire in from the high end!”
TWENTY-ONE
BATTLE IN THE BALANCE
Crystal looked around in awe. She almost had to pinch herself to remember she was returning to the place that had been her home for most of her adult life. Beginning with the shattered ruin of the gatehouse, she had felt a growing apprehension. When she and Tarn had left Norbardin, the place had been a splendid tribute to her husband’s wisdom and foresight, a truly great city that had risen from the terrible wreckage of the Chaos War. Moving through the smoky and soot-stained halls of what had once been an immaculate barracks and into the streets, though, she felt horror and dismay.
She barely recognized a thing.
“This is terrible,” she whispered, half to herself and half to Slate Fireforge. “So much destruction … so much damage.”
“All from the civil war, do you think?” asked the Neidar commander.
“It must be,” she said, pointing to a row of houses, an entire block where the front walls had all been smashed inward. The dwellings revealed were empty, pathetic little cubicles, from which everything of value had long been removed; whatever remained was covered with a thick layer of dust. “That didn’t happen in the last fortnight, certainly.”
“No, it didn’t.” Slate pointed to a once-grand edifice, a broken structure rising at the end of the street they were on. It blocked their view of the central plaza, but from there they could see that the surrounding wall was shattered in many places, and the once-splendid building beyond the wall showed gaping holes in the roof. A crooked, shattered spire of a broken tower rising only a short distance beyond. “What was that?”
“That was Tarn’s-was our-palace,” she said in dismay. “It was a beautiful building, surrounded by ornate columns. That wall was high and straight, with a beautifully carved parapet surrounding it. We had colored banners hanging all along the rampart, with tall spires on the corners. There was a marketplace on each side of the palace, and the merchants thrived at all hours; there were always customers, of course. The palace gate was never closed, and people came and went with complete freedom.”
She drew a breath, trying to stem the emotions, the grief and sadness, that threatened to choke her voice. In a moment she went on, retrieving the happy memories.
“And the keep-it had a high roof, supported by flying buttresses. It had a slate roof, not because it needed one, but because it looked so beautiful. Now it looks like it was smashed by a meteor shower.”
The gaping hill dwarves continued to advance. They spotted a dwarf watching them from a niche in the broken wall. The fellow was wearing a bright red shirt, and he raised a crossbow as the front of the Neidar column drew close.
“Halt!” he ordered. “And name yourselves!”
“Or what?” Slate retorted belligerently. “You’ll fire your lone arrow at nearly two thousand dwarves?”
“If the alternative is surrendering this palace to the enemies of King Bellowgranite, then yes, I will!” the sentry replied boldly.
“Then there is no need to shoot,” Crystal said, stepping in front of Slate. “For I am the king’s wife, and I bring a force of hill dwarves to aid him in his campaign.”
“Hill dwarves? Here to help the king? Well, that’s different, then-and some good news indeed. Come forward.”
As the Neidar advanced, more than a hundred other dwarves, all wearing that distinctive red tunic, popped into view along the jagged top of the wall. Each wielded a heavy crossbow, and though the sentry held his at ease after Crystal spoke, it looked as if he would not have hesitated to let loose a lethal volley.
“Of course, I might have met you with more than a single arrow,” the archer said with a twinkle in his eye.
Another dwarf in red, older and bearing himself with immense dignity, stepped through the gap in the wall to meet them. He was unarmed, saved for a short sword, but he had the unmistakable air of a warrior, a commander, about him.
“I’m General Watchler,” he said, “of the Kayolin Army. Did you say you are here to assist the king’s cause?”
“Yes!” Crystal said, sensing the tension in the general’s question. “We see that the Tricolor Hammer did its job. But how fares the campaign against Willim the Black?”
“Poorly, up until now,” Watchler replied. “But you just might be the folks to turn the tide. Come here and let me show you what I mean.”
Gus was having a hard time keeping up, the hill dwarves were moving so quickly. He jogged along, chasing the last of the warriors, wishing he were up front close beside Crystal or Slate or someone who could stop and tell him what was going on. Maybe he really had toughened up, as Crystal had said, but climbing was hard. He didn’t really understand why they had climbed up the steep trail and filed along the high ledge next to the deep, steep-walled crevasse.
He had followed loyally, though, as the Neidar army moved through a large, battered room that smelled of smoke and soot and blood. He had gaped at a huge stone door that had been shattered as if by a giant fist. He even spotted many bodies, wearing black leather armor, of dwarves who had apparently been crushed under the weight of the collapsing doors. Many other shapes, black and weirdly twisted like some kind of strange carvings, intrigued him until he looked closer, and with a yelp of alarm, he jumped away.
“Those things bodies!” he exclaimed, wondering what kind of horrible thing had happened to those dwarves that would make them look like half-burned firewood.
Still, he kept pushing forward, ignoring the fatigue and the cramps in his legs and knees that made him really want to sit down for a spell. Instead, he tried to keep the hill dwarves in view, realizing that they were constantly getting ahead of him and his two female tagalongs-very far ahead of them.
Next they had proceeded down a long tunnel, a roadway that descended from the mountain gateway toward an unknown destination, with the little Aghar, his legs and lungs pumping, plunging after the main body. It wasn’t until the hill dwarves broke into a run and spilled out of the tunnel and Gus emerged after them into a wide cavern that he skidded to a stop and stared in surprise and wonder at the scene spread out before him.
It was the city! It was dotted with buildings, crossed with a regular network of streets. Some of the structures reached all the way to the ceiling, but enough of them were lower in height that he could see most of the way across the place. The roads were wide and straight, and one huge structure was in plain view; Gus recognized the former palace of King Jungor Stonespringer in the center of the city.
“Hey!” he cried in delight to no one in particular. “We got to Thorbardin! This big-time city! Called Norbardin!”
He watched the tail of the hill dwarf column as it vanished around a corner of the wide avenue before him. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted two tiny specks and decided it was a good time to sit and wait for his girls, who had fallen behind their hero and leader. Smugly he realized that he’d been able to outrun at least them!
There was a bench nearby, set up on a little balcony right where the road departed from the tunnel and entered the city proper. From there, a downward-sloping ramp provided a route to the city streets, but he didn’t feel the need to go down there, not just yet.
Instead, he settled himself there with a sigh of comfortable pleasure. The
place was higher than most of the buildings, and as such, it offered an excellent view of the subterranean cavern. At one point, it had been an outdoor serving area for a traveler’s inn, though Gus noticed the door to the inn was spiked shut and, to judge from the dust over everything, the place hadn’t been open for business for quite some time. Gus didn’t mind, actually, since, from what he remembered of Thorbardin, if the inn had been open, either the proprietor or some of the customers would have, at the very least, picked up any gully dwarf who dared to sit down there and pitched him right back onto the street.
Or over the balcony, he reflected with a gulp, stepping up to the railing to see that the floor of the city proper was a very, very long way-at least two feet-below him. Certainly the fall was far enough to kill him, if he should be so careless as to stumble. He sat back down on the bench.
“Hey, you bluphsplunging doofar! Why you run away?” demanded Slooshy, finally catching him and coming to sit on one side of him.
A panting Berta came right behind and firmly sat on his other side. “Yeah! Berta wants come too!”
“You girls shut up now. Gus watching Thorbardin. Gus back home! You can stay, or you can go,” he added pointedly. “Gus not care.”
“Oh yeah? Well Berta not care neither! Berta goin’ back to Patharkas!”
Slooshy snorted. “Not too soon, Berta go back Patharkas! Go now!”
But Gus wasn’t listening. His eyes were drawn to a spectacular scene across the city. He saw billowing balls of flame and thick clouds of oily smoke rising into the air.
“Girls hush mouths!” he barked, his tone so unusually commanding that his two companions obeyed. “Look!” he said, pointing at the conflagration. “We watchin’ the war!”
The three Aghar stared, open mouthed, as the scene unfolded.
Fate of Thorbardin dh-3 Page 25
