“If your father were here to see you, Jonas, my boy, you would not see him hang his head in shame.”
“No?”
“No.” Emil stood, gripping his leather gloves onto the sides of his commander’s breastplate and hauling him to his feet. “You’d see the backswing of his boot as it whirled towards your rump. He would say what I say: pull yourself together.”
A shark’s grin opened across Jonas’ face. He butted the older man, hitting the bridge of his nose. Emil tottered back, stunned. A fast trickle of blood dropped from his nostrils. He blinked and caught himself in mid-gesture, staying his hand from the hilt of his dagger.
“And what would my father say to that? I should have done that to him, Emil, you know, on my sixteenth birthday. Oh, what a different man I would have been. When you pass from this world, good sergeant, and encounter him in the afterlife, please pass the gesture along to him.”
Jonas swerved down the passageway, addressing his troops. “You are weary of my speeches, are you not, my fine Gerolsbruchers? Alas, I am at my best, you see, when I am either tub-thumping or killing. At other tasks, you’ve judged me and found me wanting. So I beg you, let me do what I am skilled at.
“Before we go on to examine the reasons, let us agree that I am a failure, as a man and, above all, as a leader. You won’t deny that, will you? That I’ve led you into deepest nowhere, got half of you killed, and am about to do the same to the rest of you? Come now. This is hardly controversial. Surely I am the last of us to come to this conclusion. Yes?”
He rounded on Mattes, the lone man who dared look directly at him.
“You will not answer?”
The drumsman held his tongue.
Jonas swept the tunnel with upraised arms. “You’ll not say what is on all your minds? No, no, it is only natural that you would not. For I am the orator, and you my audience. The high sheen of my eloquence renders you mute. Indeed, indeed. But please pay this humble minstrel minimal homage, and look at me, at least.”
Reluctant as corpses, the men stiffened to attention, facing front.
“Yes, yes, both submissive and reproachful,” Jonas laughed. “Forget my own claims of eloquence. You say it all without a word.”
Merwin snuck his last port jug from his pack.
Though he sat far to Jonas’ side, the lieutenant spotted him, stomped his way, snatched it from his grasp, and swigged its dregs. He wiped his mouth with a broad, theatrical flourish. “It is the truth you sought from me, was it not? Is not truth the standard borne by your great heroine here?” He snarled at Angelika. Truth, truth, truth. Well, here is truth. We’re surrounded in this cold hole. There’s twenty companies of the enemy out there. Ten and twenty, perhaps. Before I die, I can kill more of them than can any of you. But still I’ll die. As will you. We’re dead already, and merely lack the sense to fall.
“We’re denied even the defiance of a spectacular demise. Without chroniclers to remember us, we’ll leave nothing to this world but our bones and robes. No example for others. From no poets’ lips will our names spill. You know what, Mattes?”
“What?”
“As a child, the stanzas of the epic poets were my mother’s milk. Yet now I’ve seen real war, I know they’re lies from first verse to last. The woman’s right. The world’s a ball of blood and dung, and men but crawling maggots on it. So let’s take heart: what do worms suffer when their tormentors tear them apart? Let us then wriggle senselessly to our demise.”
Angelika drew her dagger. “Wriggle all you want, Jonas. But I’m no worm, and I’m getting out of here alive. Who here is with me?”
Jonas chortled. “Oh. So now it’s you who makes the empty speeches. A splendid reversal.”
“A reversal indeed. You’ve traded one lunacy for its opposite.” Angelika checked Franziskus’ position. Along with Mattes, he had crept to the tunnel mouth, to watch the massing Kurgs.
“If I’ve lost my footing,” said Jonas, “it’s you who’s pulled the rug. From the first you sought to undermine me.”
“I guess you shouldn’t have stolen from me, then.”
A blush profaned his face. “Oh, yes. That’s the truest truth of all. I pursued you. More than that. I swindled you into coming. Had I only known how you’d spell my doom. Your sharp tongue, your unforgiving gaze.” He turned his accusatory finger from her to his men. Filch seemed ready to peep out an argument but Jonas stared him down. “And you have fallen under her spell. None of you have defended me.”
Merwin stood up. “Stop it. Can’t you see we need you both?”
“We’re all far beyond need, my poor doomed halfling.”
Merwin stamped his foot. “No. Some of us can survive this, at least. So let’s all try.”
Angelika risked a step toward Jonas. “He’s right. You’ve always measured yourself by what the men think of you. Yes, you’ve disappointed them. Just now, you’ve terrified us all. Are you telling me you’re incapable of redeeming yourself?”
“There’s no good in me to redeem. You’ve shown us that.”
“More nonsense. Grab that sword, let that brandy calm you, and together we’ll find a way out of this.”
Jonas paced a worried circle. He sighed and dropped his shoulders, as if relenting.
“None of us is dead,” said Angelika, “till Kurgan axes halve our brains.”
“One of us is surely dead.” Jonas unsheathed his sword and rushed to slash her. She ducked and the sword bashed against the wall. Soldiers scattered to the ends of the tunnel, leaving them room to duel. Angelika drew her blade. She knew when she started that he’d either give in or try to murder her. Preparation was not consolation: he was a far better killer than she was. This was not her first bout against a superior opponent, bent on her demise. Usually she survived by ducking their blows, wearing them out, and finally pouncing when her would-be slayer made an exploitable mistake. Here, the narrow space left her little room for evasion.
“Stop it,” Emil demanded.
The soldiers jeered Jonas.
Merwin scuffled up to wrap his arms around Jonas’ leg. Rassau slashed down at him. Merwin drew back, a red groove incised into his forearm.
“Everyone stay back,” said Angelika. “I’ll handle him.” She likely couldn’t, but she didn’t want them trading their lives for hers.
As Jonas swooped in at her, she readied her blade for throwing. She feinted with it; he interrupted his strike to dodge a non-existent toss.
Franziskus stopped short after dashing down into the tunnel. He was behind her, and she would not make way for him. “Get back!” she yelled. “Keep a lookout for the Kurg.”
“That’s just it,” he yelled, as Jonas hacked at Angelika. She slid down the wall, kicking out at her foe, trying vainly to trip him. “Jonas,” Franziskus shouted. “They’re coming. The marauders are attacking.”
“Liar,” Jonas barked.
“No, it’s true,” countered Franziskus.
“It is,” confirmed Mattes, at the tunnel mouth.
Jonas turned ever so slightly toward the tunnel entrance. Angelika essayed a kick at his groin, but made contact only with his thigh. “All of you are liars,” he bellowed.
Including Emil, there were thirty soldiers in the tunnel. Two-thirds were stuck at its back, behind Jonas. Less than a dozen stood in the front. “What do we do?” an archer cried.
“Go and shoot at them,” Franziskus commanded. “Hold them off.”
“Should we go outside, to shoot in a rank?”
Franziskus did not know.
“No,” Angelika called, grappling Jonas’ sword-arm. “They outnumber us. Don’t give them any extra targets.” Jonas loomed over her, bending her down, as she held him off. She suddenly released her grip, sweeping under him, letting his own force knock him into the wall. The crown of his head banged firmly into it. He staggered back, shaking off the impact.
At the tunnel mouth, arrows whizzed from their bows into an unruly rank of charging marauders.
&
nbsp; Filch was sprawled by the rubble pile at the tunnel’s end. He looked at the back of Jonas’ head.
Then at the rocks arrayed around him. Most were too big for his stubby hand.
Jonas surprised Angelika with an off-hand punch. It tagged her jaw and sent her reeling. He stepped back to ready his sabre for an overhanded wallop.
In the far corner of the rubble stack, Filch spotted the perfect stone. Already imagining its trajectory as it sailed towards Jonas’ cranium, he reached over to yank it loose.
The tunnel shook. The balking groans of ancient machinery, forced suddenly to life, rumbled from beneath the floor. Angelika’s eyes widened. Jonas glanced back to see.
Stray hunks of granite tumbled from the rubble stack as it slowly receded down into a cavity below the floor. By moving a key stone, Filch had triggered the trap door mechanism providing an entry into the old dwarf complex.
The stack sat on a platform. Aside from a few loose stones laid in for the purpose of disguise, the entire heap was a single mass, fused together. It was, in effect, a secret door, ingeniously concealed.
A passageway lay revealed, beyond it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
How like the dwarfs, Angelika would later think, to design an entrance that appeared to be a permanent blockage. A simple wall would have inspired no end of searching, for secret pull-chains and hidden levers. Instead she and the others had been sitting like a conclave of cretins on the very brink of an escape route. Yes, how like the dwarfs. Those furtive, stunted, tight-fisted, dirty-bearded, unforgiving sons of curs.
But for the moment she was concerned only with her opponent’s momentary distraction, and the pommel of her dagger as it shot toward his temple. Jonas grunted in pain but did not fall. However, the soldiers pressed along the wall marked their commander’s lapse of attention, too, and boosted up to wrestle him to the floor. They thumped him on the back of the neck; they kicked at his ribs and between his legs. Glauer, his second lieutenant, stooped to grab his hair and dash his face soundly into the floor.
“They’re nearly upon us,” shrieked an archer, at the tunnel’s rim.
The rubble stack completed its leaden, shaking descent down into the floor. There was a stretch of flat stone tile; it nestled into place, flush with the opening, leaving a flat expanse of corridor. The passageway continued on for at least a hundred yards, darkness obscuring its ultimate destination. Closer by was an open doorway leading to a set of stone stairs, heading up.
“Go,” Angelika shouted.
“Which way?” Merwin asked.
Good question, Angelika thought. From its direction, the ground-level passageway could only come out in one spot: on the ridge’s other side, right in the middle of the enemy encampment. The route upwards would lead into the ridge itself, and could terminate anywhere or nowhere. Angelika had always shown the good sense to keep out of dwarf complexes, abandoned or otherwise, and could not be sure exactly what lay within.
She was prepared to stake her life, however, on the probability that its crawlways at some point led up into the sangar at the top of the ridge. Given no better choice, they could fight their way up into it, and from there clamber onto the rock ribbon. Still chancy, but there would be fewer enemies up there than were on either side of them now.
“The stairs,” she ordered. “The staircase!”
She waited for the nearby soldiers to scatter into it. Filch and Merwin waited for her. “Go, go,” she shooed them on.
With the exception of Glauer, who lingered to deliver a few extra kicks, Jonas’ assailants deserted him for the staircase. Angelika waved on swordsmen and archers as they rushed down from the head of the passage.
“Enough,” she told Glauer. He wiggled his mutton-chops unrepentantly and moved on.
In the tunnel mouth, a bottleneck of men battled. Among them was Franziskus, who’d stepped in with his sabre to relieve his archers. He kept his sabre flying, two Gerolsbruchers arrayed beside him. They fought defensively, feinting and parrying. Every time they dodged a blow, the pressing marauders drove them deeper into the passage.
The last of their comrades cleared the hidden entry and drummed up the curving stone steps. Angelika went to Jonas’ side. He groaned at her, eyes half-lidded. She strained to drag him past the trap door, then crouched by its mechanism. A steel peg no thicker than a child’s finger jutted from it. Angelika tried to depress it. It wouldn’t go in.
The barbarians pressed Franziskus and the swordsmen further back. The three of them were all that stood between the Kurgs and Angelika. She smacked the peg with the butt of her knife. Pain vibrated up through the bones of her forearm: the button hadn’t budged.
The sabre to Franziskus’ left skidded into the wall; barbarians attempted to force their way past him. Franziskus swung his blade into a big Kurg’s eyes and nose. The marauder wailed and fell to his knees, hands locked onto his mutilated face. His intended prey regained his balance, gripped his hefty sword by hilt and tip, and used it to smash the blinded Kurgan down. The marauder’s fellows climbed awkwardly over him, giving Franziskus and the sabre ample opportunity to carve their thighs and loins. The recipients of these injuries collapsed, forming a temporary barrier of bucking, wounded bodies.
Angelika spotted the stone Filch had withdrawn from the pile, triggering the device. She reached for it and slammed it into place. Metallic clicks rang in sequence as gears turned beneath her feet. The floor she stood on juddered and rose.
“Franziskus,” she cried. “Time to go.”
He whacked a Kurgan soundly in the side of the head and glanced briefly at her. He nodded as he saw the floor ascend below her. It jerked up incrementally; if it maintained its current speed, it would take over two minutes to seal completely shut.
“You’ll have to let some through,” Angelika shouted. She wanted to throw a knife, but that would leave her only one.
“You two go,” Franziskus told his mates. They fled eagerly, skidding across the polished floor slab as it inched its way up. Franziskus stood alone as he held off a rank of three barbarians, scores of replacements waiting behind them.
His best-positioned opponent arced an axe down at him. Franziskus slipped. A rock sailed from behind Angelika to crunch into the Kurgan’s fingers. Franziskus pivoted and capered toward her. Filch stood proudly beside her.
“I thought you’d gone,” she said.
“I was here all along,” he replied. Merwin, she saw, hung in the doorway leading to the steps. “You should look down more often,” he continued, as he, Angelika and Franziskus ran to the stairs, Kurgs pursuing behind them.
Jonas tottered into a bleary stance. He stepped in to meet the Kurgans, cleaving them as they came, painting the grey walls with their slick, red blood. They bowled into him, forcing him back. He sank under the weight of the men he’d killed. Barbarian footsteps resounded around him; he slackened his limbs as if dead. A scrawny pair stayed to poke and prod at him. When the noise of darting boots crescendoed, he resurrected himself, rolling out from under his blanketing corpse. He grabbed the closest man’s ankle and ripped it out from under him. The marauder ululated his dismay on his way to the hard floor. He landed on the back of his head, vermilion fluid pooling from his impacted skull.
Jonas snatched a horn-handled dagger from the dead man’s hip and plunged it into the other’s thigh. The barbarian drew back, astonished to see that the knife had buried itself in the main artery of his leg. Throatily giggling, Jonas wrenched it out. Pressurised gore geysered from the wound. The Kurg went pallid and dropped.
Rassau sorted through the pile of dead, freeing his sabre. He collected a serrated short sword and a quintet of crudely forged daggers. Intoxicated by his kills, he cursed the empty stairway. “I could go and save you all,” he cried. “But I won’t. You would only blame me for it. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?” He bent his way down the corridor, to the other side of the ridge, where a Chaos army would greet him, with axe and hammer.
* * *
Light grew scarcer as Angelika and Franziskus followed the halflings and swordsmen up the stairs. The gloom intensified as they climbed. Filch and Merwin skated easily up the steps, which were engineered for dwarf legs, but the humans slipped and overstepped. Judging from the thwarted barbarian grunts reverberating behind him, the Chaos troops were suffering the same frustration. Their retarded advance came as a pleasant surprise to Angelika.
“Hmm,” said Filch, “looks like the barbarians of the steppes are unaccustomed to them. Steps, that is.”
Angelika winced. “Say anything like that again and it won’t be the Kurgs who kill you.”
They found the top of the stairs. In the darkness, it was difficult to measure the extent or nature of the chamber they stood in. The remainder of the company bunched behind them. From the way it magnified their choked breaths, the room was likely to be cavernous and boxy. Sparks flashed from the cluster of men; it was Saar, working to light a torch with the flint-striker for his matchlock.
Their flickers lit up a pile of round balls stacked against a wall: shot for dwarf cannon. This place had been an armoury—still an active one, for all Angelika knew.
“You think there’s a cannon in here?” asked Franziskus.
“We don’t need one. Ferry those over.”
The soldiers formed a line and passed the heavy balls hand to hand, with Mattes last in line.
Kurgan war-cries clamoured below.
“Drop it,” Angelika commanded.
Mattes loosed the ball; it bounced down the steps. They counted each hard thump, until angry shouts of pain and grievance boomed up the stairwell at them.
“Drop another,” called Angelika.
Mattes was passed a second ball; this, too, traversed a banging route down the stairs to impede the enemy throng.
Saar got the torch going. In its first luminescence, Angelika beheld large, draping tapestries hanging from balconies ringing the room. Fierce dwarf faces, stylised and murderous, gazed out at their foes—the woven artwork depicted a series of martial scenes.
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