Jerrie was already bringing his knife up into the orc’s side when he realized the orc’s last-ditch plan. It had taken quick thinking. This orc wasn’t the brutish, wild fighter most orcs were. He thought quickly and used strategy. Now it was Jerrie’s turn for a last-ditch plan. He leapt away from the orc as far as he could. The orc slammed into the ground behind him. As Jerrie rolled onto his back, he saw the huge sword coming down at him. The orc had swung the sword with one arm while lying on his back. All Jerrie could do was put his arms up to block and hope they saved him from the blade. Then the sword stopped.
Grundel stood and watched the fight as he tried to gather himself. The lightning blast had stunned him badly. He knew that Frau had come to him, but he pushed that from his mind immediately. This wasn’t the time to sort out those thoughts. He was still dizzy, but he was back on his feet. He watched as Jerrie worked his way in and out of the huge orc’s guard. He really was fast. He rolled and spun and leapt, changing directions unimaginably fast. Grundel had regained his senses and had pushed up to the front of the dwarf lines, completely mesmerized by the fight, when he saw the orc nearly crush Jerrie.
Jerrie was on his face in front of him. Grundel wasn’t looking at him, though; he was looking at that long blade as it came down towards his friend. Grundel reached out with his axe and caught the blade, hooking it between the axe head and the handle. He walked forward, the metal of his axe scrapping against the metal of the sword. He stood over the orc, who was still lying on his back. He stepped on his arm and the sword fell from his hand.
“I am Grundel Stoneheart. I am the one you wanted.”
And then his axe came down on the orc’s neck. As he relieved the orc of his head, Grundel stepped over the body and spun, cutting into the two orcs that were close enough to reach. The dwarf line pushed past him, and the tired dwarves fought with renewed vigor.
“I had him,” Jerrie said from the side.
“Yeah, but he wanted me anyway,” Grundel answered.
They looked at each other. They had both saved each other today. That look was the only thank-you that was going to be had. They both knew it.
The orcs had lost at the tunnel intersection. The Haufen dwarves had pushed out and were fighting in both directions. The orcs were being attacked from both sides and the middle. Four dwarf shield walls continued to gain ground, closing on the orcs. In another hour, the last of the orcs fell. Dwarves cheered up and down the halls, exhausted dwarfs cheering for Shinestone.
Frau’s voice, ringing out over the din, began to silence the dwarves.
“We haven’t won yet! The dwarves of Tiefes Loch are still fighting at the entrance. Let’s go finish this!”
The dwarves roared and cleared a path for their queen as she moved to the front of the formation and led the way down to the entrance of Shinestone, and to the final fight of the day.
Chapter Fifteen
Betrayal
Frau led the dwarves over the dead bodies of thousands of orcs. The Haufen dwarves had taken the biggest hit. Their numbers were noticeably smaller and there were a lot of burnt and broken dwarf bodies at the intersection of the two tunnels. She couldn’t worry about the numbers now. There were still dwarves at the entrance. They may be the dwarves of Teifes Loch. None of them were likely to stick around, so none of them were really her dwarves, but they were still dwarves.
She led the dwarves with her down the tunnels. As she got closer she allowed herself to be optimistic. There were no sounds of fighting. Even if these orcs had wizards they wouldn’t have been able to defeat the dwarves yet. Those shield lines would have regrouped quickly after the wizard’s attacks. There was no reasonable explanation why the fighting would have stopped other than that the dwarves had won. She turned out of that tunnel and realized that whatever the explanation, it wasn’t reasonable.
They emerged from the tunnel and found the back of the orcs’ formation. They were still three tunnels away from the long entrance, but these orcs were not even ready to fight. They sat on the ground or leaned up against walls. Many of them were asleep. They had staged to defend the entrance, but no attack had ever come. She turned on Verrator. For the first time all day he had his finely crafted sword in his hand. He lunged at her, but Grundel had seen the attack coming and jumped in front of her.
Jerrie had been suspicious of the other dwarf since he had met him. Throughout the day he had watched as all the dwarves had fought in the front at one time or another. Even the queen had jumped in now and then to stab out through the shield wall. Other dwarves always pushed in front of her, but she had found her opportunities. Verrator had been the only one who hadn’t fought. He hadn’t even drawn his weapon. Jerrie was already releasing his knife when Grundel dove to the side in front of Frau. The impact of Verrator’s sword against Grundel pushed him down just enough that Jerrie’s knife buried in his shoulder and not his heart.
Grundel hit the ground. The finely crafted ancient sword would not likely have found its way through his chain mail, but they had removed it after he had been electrocuted. He had never put it back on, and now he was lying on the ground with dwarven steel in his stomach. Verrator fell in front of him, letting go of the blade. At least he wouldn’t have to feel the blade come out before he died. The dwarves were on Verrator immediately. Frau knelt down next to Grundel.
“Why did you do that?” she asked him.
“You are my queen,” he told her. Then it hit him: this was the last time he was ever going to speak to her. He was dying. He could say whatever he wanted. Duty didn’t matter; he had done his duty. “I couldn’t risk losing you. Being around you has been torture, because no matter how much I fought it I knew I was falling in love with you. Dying would have been nothing compared to losing you,” he told her.
She stared into his eyes. Tears were running down her cheeks. She bent down and pushed her lips against his. “I fell in love with you the second I saw you. That is why I demanded that you come with me. I just wanted to get to know you. I am sorry. This is my fault.”
“No, I had decided to come before you ever came to Evermount. This isn’t your fault; it’s his,” he said, looking at Verrator.
Frau stood up and walked over to Verrator. The other dwarves had rushed past them to fight the orcs that had started getting up when they saw the commotion. They were fighting again. They were fighting for her kingdom. They had been fighting all day, while Verrator and the dwarves of Tiefes Loch had betrayed them from the start. She looked down into the dwarf’s eyes.
“Why? How could you betray your own kin?”
“You dwarves are not our kin. You have all grown weak. You follow the old ways. No dwarf can birth more than two dwarves, you work so hard to make the humans happy, and you depend on them for everything. Over the last three hundred years Tiefes Loch has made its own rules. The rest of you have treated us like we don’t matter. We have tripled our population since Bergmann took the throne. Tiefes Loch will not answer to Evermount any longer. We will rule all of the kingdoms. You will all bend the knee or fall. Our kingdom had more than the rest of you before the fall of Shinestone, and none of you had a clue. Now you will know. It is a new age for the dwarf. Today is only the first day. You have fought for hours—look around you. Your dwarves are exhausted and they have thousands of orcs to fight yet. The dwarves of Tiefes Loch wait at the entrance. When the fighting is done they will take Shinestone. Give yourself over to Tiefes Loch now. Submit to our rule and you will live through the day.”
“You will all die today. We will not submit. Grizzle is the king of the dwarves. We answer to his call alone. No matter what happens, you will not live through this day,” she spat angrily.
Verrator smiled at her. “Then let my death be remembered as the first of the dwarf wars, and the beginning of the reign of Tiefes Loch.”
“No one will remember you,” she said, and then she pulled out her own sword and pushed it into his chest. She stared into his eyes and watched as the life left them.
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br /> “Help him out of the way,” she said, pointing to Grundel. Two of the dwarves pulled him to the side and laid him down next to the wall.
Rundo was struggling with himself. He wanted to go help Grundel, but he didn’t know how much he could really help. He knew he could help in the fighting. He linked with the air and pushed it out with more force than any of his previous attempts. Every orc in the tunnel for hundreds of feet was knocked off his feet. The dwarves charged forward again. They were abandoning caution. They were exhausted, and they had a chance to finish this quickly. Rundo was exhausted, too. Each time he linked with the air it took more of his concentration. The dwarves made it almost all the way to the end of the tunnel before any orcs provided any real resistance. The dwarves didn’t form a shield wall; they charged into battle, cutting down the orcs before they could gather together. This cost more casualties for the dwarves, but it was faster. The dwarves wanted to finish this.
The shield wall was reestablished as they turned down the tunnel, and Rundo sent out another wave of air. As he tired, it took him a few more seconds to manipulate the air into doing what he wanted, but orcs fell. The orcs behind them who were being knocked back didn’t know if the other orcs were fleeing or charging in their direction, but they began to push the orcs ahead of them. Soon the orcs were all pushing to escape the tunnel. The confusion made the orcs easy targets for the dwarves. Some orcs were trying to get away while others were turning to fight. Eventually the orcs’ momentum forward wasn’t enough, and the orcs had to turn and fight.
Rundo linked with the aura of air again. Establishing the connection was still easy; manipulating the element took focus and energy. He pushed out with his mind, binding the air in the tunnel to his will. This time, the orcs were all bombarded with the strong wind, knocking them down. The dwarves were getting a system down. The dwarves up front would run past the first orcs that were knocked down, only striking out at the ones who grabbed at them. The dwarves coming up behind would hit the downed orcs as they moved forward, and the dwarves up front would start striking at the ones on the ground farther up. Doing this they were able to kill hundreds of orcs before the orcs could gather themselves.
The dwarves formed a shield wall, and dwarves from the back moved up to take the place of the heavily breathing, thoroughly exhausted dwarves in the front. The shield line pushed forward just as it had all day, and then they turned a corner to the left and there was light at the end of the tunnel. Rundo linked with the air. Seeing the light and an end to the battle give him a final burst of energy. He pushed the air forward all the way to the end of the tunnel. The orcs at the end were forced out into the light. The orcs nearest the dwarves were killed before they could even register what had happened, while the orcs who managed to regain their feet ran for the exit. Orcs were known to fight to the end, but they were also followers, and the orcs near the end of the tunnel were running that way, so the rest began to follow.
Within minutes the entrance to Shinestone was clear. All the orcs were dead or gone. Shinestone was back in the hands of dwarves.
Dwarves’ cheers were cut short as the entrance began to fill again. It wasn’t orcs coming back, though. It was the dwarves of Tiefes Loch. Rundo watched as the dwarves of Tiefes Loch slowly poured into tunnel. It was hundreds of paces to the end of the tunnel, but they were slowly pouring in. The tunnel was about twenty paces wide. There were two hundred dwarves from Tiefes Loch. There were maybe five hundred dwarves left from Evermount, Shinestone, and Haufen. Those dwarves had been fighting for most of a day. They could hardly lift their weapons. They could barely put one foot in front of the other. Dwarves possessed an amazing constitution and incredible endurance, but these dwarves had fought hard and nonstop against an enemy that was much larger—in number and in stature—than them. They didn’t have much left. At best it was an even fight.
Jerrie looked from the dwarves to Frau and then finally at Rundo. He looked spent.
“You have anything left?” he asked his halfling friend. He had seen him slump after each of the last two wind attacks.
Rundo looked from Jerrie to the dwarves and then back at Frau. He thought about her last moments with Grundel. Those might have been his last moments on this earth. These dwarves from Tiefes Loch had come here to kill him, to kill all of them. He reached out for one final attack. He didn’t link with the wind this time. He linked with the stone itself. He took a moment to get to know it. He looked down the tunnel at the enemy. The traitors. He reached out, and the entrance collapsed behind the invading dwarves.
“Get back,” he said to no one in particular, to everyone.
“Get back,” he heard the queen echo.
Rundo manipulated the stone. The dwarves of Tiefes Loch were charging down the tunnel now. He heard dwarf shields slam into stone as the shield wall set itself behind him. The dwarves in front of him were charging. They were afraid of whatever had caused the end of the tunnel to collapse. They should be, he thought, and then he put everything out of his mind. He reached into the stone. He found where it was strong and where it was weak. He pushed his will out to manipulate it. He didn’t have to force all of the stone to do what he wanted; he didn’t have enough energy for that. But if he forced certain spots all the way down the tunnel, the rest would do what he wanted. He targeted the weak spots and a couple of the stronger spots that would have to give out. He forced his will into them. The stone cracked and broke away. From the entrance all the way back to him, each of the points he had targeted in the walls and ceilings released their hold on the rock around them.
With a deafening roar, the tunnel began to collapse. The traitorous dwarves ran toward them. He didn’t know if they were running to escape the tunnel or to attack. It didn’t matter. The stone had obeyed his call. He realized then that he was on his knees. He watched from the ground as the tunnel imploded, burying the Tiefes Loch dwarves beneath it. He realized then, as he watched the stones settle over two hundred dwarves, how exhausted he really was.
“That is one of the most tragic events these halls have ever witnessed,” Frau said as she walked up next to him.
Rundo looked up at her. “I can open the tunnel again. It will take a little time, but after I have rested I can start putting it back the way it was. Stronger even.”
“No, this is now the tomb of the traitors of Tiefes Loch. Let it always be a reminder to any dwarf who would ever turn on his own kin.”
She bent down and helped him to his feet. She was supporting him at least as much as his own legs did. The dwarves weren’t cheering. The death of all their kin wasn’t an event to cheer even if it had likely saved all their lives.
“Let’s go check on Grundel,” Frau said as Jerrie wrapped his arm under Rundo’s other arm and helped support him as they made his way back toward their fallen friend.
Grundel was lying on the ground listening to the distant fighting. He was dying. He wanted to help. He even tried to stand up, but the blade had cut through the muscles in his stomach. He almost made it to a sitting position when the blade shifted, and he slumped back down. The fighting didn’t last long. He heard the fighting stop. He heard a tunnel collapse. He knew that sound well. They had intentionally collapsed tunnels in Evermount to slow Miskrull down. That worried him. He heard footsteps coming back in his direction, but by then he was barely conscious. He tried to determine if the footsteps were dwarf or orc, but he couldn’t tell. He realized it didn’t matter. He was dying and he accepted it. She had kissed him. What more could he have asked for? He looked around, and the last thing he saw before he let the darkness take him were the bodies of hundreds of dead orcs. What more could a dwarf want before he died? He faded into unconsciousness with a smile on his face.
“Is he . . . ?” Frau started to say, looking down at the unconscious Grundel.
“No, he’s alive,” Rundo said. “He’s lost a lot of blood, though. We need to get that sword out of his stomach. When we do it’s going to bleed more, so we have to be ready to stop
the flow. Get some cloth and put pressure on it. Wrap a belt or something around him to maintain the pressure. There is nothing we can do about internal injuries at the moment. For now we just need to stop the bleeding and keep him warm. The one person who could have saved him for sure is dead. I only know one other person who might be able to help.”
“Who?” Frau and Jerrie asked at the same time.
“Hellen. She is a healer, a friend of the of the Grizzles. She is in Freeman, though. I am sure there are other priests between here and there, but I don’t know any. Do either of you?”
Their silence was his answer. “Then I have to go get Hellen.”
Frau looked at him. “Freeman is nearly as far as Evermount. He would be gone before you got back. There has to be another way.”
Rundo looked at her. “I will leave in the morning. I can make it in a day. We will ride straight back. We won’t be going the way we did from Evermount. I will be back in less than a week. You can send someone back to Ambar. If they can get a priest to come all the way back, fine, but they might take just as long.”
“We will do that,” said Frau. “I’ll send dwarves back to Ambar tonight. We have a lot of wounded. We will need healers anyway. You go get this Hellen person. Bordin save him.”
Fuhrung came out of nowhere and bent down next to Grundel with a large piece of black fabric. Frau looked at him curiously.
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