The four remaining soldiers who weren’t standing in the defensive line surrounded the dwarf and attacked. The dwarf spun around the sword coming in at his back. He grabbed the man’s leg and lifted with such force that the soldier’s neck snapped when his head hit the ground. The next soldier swung his sword with a powerful overhead strike that the dwarf could have easily avoided, but he didn’t. He just stood there as the blade came down on his shoulder. The steel covering the dwarf’s shoulder didn’t even dent, and the dwarf didn’t even flinch. He just reached out, grabbed the man’s wrist and made the man slide his own sword into his neck.
There were three soldiers around him now. He kicked one in the leg, grabbing the other and spinning. The crossbow bolt from the third crossbowman buried in the back of the soldier the dwarf had spun, but he had already let go of him. He walked toward the soldier he had kicked. The final standing soldier swung his sword at the back of the dwarf’s neck, but he ducked, spun, and sidestepped behind the soldier. He picked the man up over his head and slammed him down over his knee. The soldier’s back broke, and even his armor bent. The dwarf walked over to the fallen soldier and stomped on his chest.
Moglin turned back to face the king and the four remaining soldiers standing in a defensive line in front of the throne platform. The crossbowman had just finished reloading and was lifting the crossbow to his shoulder. Moglin raised his hand. The bolt slammed into the softer part of the inside his palm. The head of the bolt stuck out of the back of his hand, just barely. He pulled it the rest of the way through and looked up at the king. “Should I continue?”
King Merwein stared down at the dwarf and the broken bodies all around him. He hadn’t even used weapons, and he had killed nine of his best soldiers in seconds. He had barely been able to keep up with the fight and he had just been watching. He stared at the dwarf who stood in front of him, who was not breathing hard or anything. It seemed so effortless.
“I understand,” King Merwain said, still staring at the bolt in the dwarf’s hand.
General Moglin threw the bolt. The crossbowman yelled. He looked down at the crossbow that had been knocked out of his hand. The bolt had broken the crossbow at the point where the strings anchored, making it useless.
General Moglin looked up at the king. “Fight or die?”
King Merwein looked down at the dwarf. “It will still be a few weeks before my army returns. Then I will need a few more weeks before I can send them. They will be at Tiefes Loch in roughly six weeks.”
The dwarf didn’t even acknowledge his response. He just turned and walked out of the room.
Chapter Thirteen
Trouble in Shinestone
“King Stoneheart, it happened again,” Queen Gemcutter said, trying to suppress her anger.
“Show me,” Grizzle said as he stood. He had been sitting with King Kraft, trying to come up with different ways they could get into Tiefes Loch. King Kraft stood and followed the other two dwarven leaders out of the room.
Grizzle followed Queen Gemcutter, who followed the two guards through Shinestone. The guards led them through a series of tunnels that took them to the apartments in the lower levels of the mountain. Outside of one of the doors stood a half-dozen dwarves in full armor. They all stepped to the side and saluted by bringing their fist to their chest. The two guards leading them stopped at the entrance and each went to one side of the door. Frau walked into the room followed by Grizzle and Kraft.
Inside the room stood Fabbro Lightfinger. He was well known through all of the dwarven kingdoms for making locks that couldn’t be picked. Fabbro turned to the three dwarven leaders and brought his fist to his chest. “Queen Gemcutter, King Kraft, King Stoneheart.”
“What do you think?” Frau asked the dwarf.
“I think that whoever did this is the same killer as the last time. The lock is pretty simple, but there were no marks or scarring inside to indicate it was picked. It was also still locked when you sent for me. Why would anyone lock the door after they left?” the lockmaster stated plainly. He spoke as if the whole ordeal didn’t bother him, but he avoided looking in the direction of the body still lying on the bed in the corner of the room.
Grizzle walked across the room and looked down at the body. It was the same as last time. A slim sharp blade stuck through the chest and into the heart. The dwarf on the bed would have been dead almost instantly. He would have likely woken up, but died before his brain processed what happened.
“Have you questioned the guards?” Grizzle asked, turning to Queen Frau.
“They are standing outside with the others,” Frau said. She was the queen of Shinestone, but she hadn’t been in charge long. She knew that the other two kings had been raised to take thrones and had no problem deferring to their knowledge and experience. She walked to the door and called to the dwarves who had been patrolling this area last night. After the last attack, they had put soldiers on patrol on all of the levels that had living quarters. The two dwarves walked into the room and saluted.
“How did you discover that something had happened in this room?” Grizzle asked.
The dwarf on the left stepped forward. “This man works in the forges. When he didn’t show up this morning, someone was sent to get him. When the dwarf arrived and could not get a response, we sent for Master Lightfinger. That is when we discovered the dwarf like this.”
“Did you see anyone moving around who seemed suspicious?” Grizzle asked.
“There was no movement on this floor, King Grizzle. We passed the word that no one should move around at night until the assassin was found. No one came out of their rooms until this morning,” the soldier answered nervously.
Grizzle looked back to the body and then to Frau. “Increase the soldiers on each floor. We have to spread the word now. One death that goes unexplained is hard enough, but two cannot be ignored. Have the soldiers spread the word that there is a murderer in Shinestone. Let everyone know that both of the murders were of dwarves who were sleeping alone. Have everyone start staying together. Hopefully we can deter the assassin or catch him.”
Frau looked to the soldier. “Start spreading the word to the others. Double the guard. Have dwarves that live alone start doubling up. No one sleeps in an apartment alone until we figure this out.” The guard saluted and took off out of the room.
Ombra listened to everything. He hid in a dark corner of the hallway outside the room. His shadow cloak magically concealed him from the dwarves and as he listened to the dwarf leaders he couldn’t help but smile. They were afraid. He would continue to build on that fear, killing dwarves at random. When the time was right, he would start attacking the leaders. For now, he wanted to watch them squirm. He wanted them to feel how he felt being lost in the dark in those tunnels under Shinestone.
He watched as the dwarves walked down the tunnel away from him. Once they were all gone, he moved out of his corner and further down the tunnel. He waited in a locked room that no one lived in. Here he rested and waited for the dwarves to finish out their day. There was no sun down here but it was somehow not as dark as the tunnels below. The dwarves also operated on a day and night schedule, even without a sun to indicate the change. The temperature did change a couple degrees and at night, and something felt different at night, but Ombra knew that might just be because of the lack of movement in the evening. When the dwarves finally settled in for the night, he used his magic to take him out of the room and down the tunnel to a specific point. This ensured that there were no footprints or disturbed dust around the room he was staying in. He didn’t want to invite attention to himself during the day.
He hid in a corner as two dwarf soldiers marched by. When they were gone, he stopped outside an apartment, but changed his mind before magically travelling into the room. The dwarf he had killed last night hadn’t been far from here. He didn’t want to isolate any group of dwarves. He wanted them all to be afraid. He moved down the passageway in the direction the dwarf soldiers had gone.
&nbs
p; When he heard footsteps coming in his direction he made his way to a shadow, allowing his cloak to conceal him. One of the dwarf soldiers walked by so close that Ombra could have reached out and tripped him, but he resisted. The guards continued back down the tunnel and Ombra got up and continued the way he had been going until he reached the tunnel that led up to the next level. He continued up until he was two levels above where he had killed the dwarf last night. He moved through the tunnels until he was in a passage with dwellings on each side. He stopped in front of one of the stone doors.
He used his magic and forced his body to become insubstantial. When his body was no longer there, he used his will to force his body to reappear on the other side of the door in a room with a single stone bench that had a few pillows on it. This was pretty typical of the dwarves’ rooms. The meeting rooms he had seen had all been very basic. He moved to the next room, which contained a bed. On that bed was a sleeping dwarf. Ombra didn’t understand why the dwarves slept on such terrible beds. The beds themselves were always made of stone, and all of the mattresses he had seen so far had been very thin pads. This dwarf was sleeping directly on a stone slab.
Ombra was nearly to the end of the bed when a thought stopped him. The king and queen of the dwarves had told the soldiers to make sure none of the dwarves were staying alone.
He froze and turned to scan the room. He saw the dwarf sitting in the corner to his left just in time. The dwarf was slowly and silently raising a crossbow. Ombra dove to the side just as the crossbow clicked. The bolt grazed his left leg. He came to his feet, drawing a dagger in each hand. The dwarf stood up with an axe in each hand and charged at him, screaming.
Ombra dodged to the side. The other dwarf woke up, and when Ombra came to his feet he was facing two dwarves. He intentionally threw one of his daggers so that the dwarf would avoid it. The dwarves did exactly what Ombra had anticipated. The dwarf who had been sleeping dove to the side toward his companion with the crossbow. Ombra had wanted to wait to reveal who he was, but he was hurt and the two dwarves were capable fighters. He had forced the two dwarves together, and now he released a ball of fire into them. The fireball knocked the dwarves off of their feet, but they didn’t die.
Ombra realized then how resistant dwarves really were to magic. He leapt onto one of them, but the other threw one of his axes, and he was forced to roll away. He came to his feet and turned toward the dwarves. He threw out black tendrils of dark energy from each of his fingertips. The energy slammed into the two dwarves and even their innate resistance to magic couldn’t save them from a dark energy blast thrown with all of his magical energy. Both of the dwarves fell to the ground.
Dark energy was one of the most powerful attacks that most wizards could accomplish, and Ombra was more powerful than most wizards. The black tendrils had punched right through their bodies. The soldiers in the hall must have heard the commotion, because they were now banging on the door outside the other room. He didn’t have enough magical energy to stay in a sustained fight, at least not with his leg bleeding like it was. He could barely put any weight on it. The door in the other room slammed open, and Ombra used the last of his magical energy to travel back to the familiar room two levels below where he had been staying. When he materialized back in the room, he slumped to the ground.
He looked down at his leg. His pant leg was soaked to the ankle in blood. He slid his pants down over the wound. Looking at the gash in his thigh, he realized that he had been more than grazed. The bolt had cut deep. He cut two lengths of cloth off of the end of an old blanket draped over the bed he was leaning against. He folded the first into a square and set it on top of the wound. He wrapped the other length of cloth around the leg, cinching it down tight over the first to apply pressure to the cut. He slid his pants back on and forced himself up onto the bed. He hadn’t been awake that long, but with the heavy use of his magic, blood loss, and the excitement and exertion of the fight, he was exhausted. He rolled over on the bed, pulling one of his daggers out and fell asleep.
* * *
Frau ran past the guards in front of the room. Lying on the ground were two dwarves. The first was obviously dead. There were four holes straight through his chest; each was large enough to fit a finger in. The second dwarf was still alive. He had a hole through his shoulder and two through his abdomen, but his chest was rising gently. She bent down next to him. He was alive, but he wouldn’t be for much longer. She shook him gently, trying to wake him. When he didn’t wake up, she made a fist and rubbed her knuckles into his sternum. The dwarf’s eyes opened slightly and he gasped in pain.
“What happened?” Frau asked.
The dwarf closed his eyes and spoke through clenched teeth. “Black Dragon, we thought he was an assassin. He attacked us with daggers. He was good. He would have beaten either of us one on one. When we finally got him on his heels, he threw a ball of fire at us. We kept fighting and we almost had him when black lines shot out of his fingers. Noren hit him in the leg with a crossbow.”
When he finished, his body relaxed and Frau knelt there over him with one hand on his unwounded shoulder. Each time his chest rose a little shallower and it took longer for it to come up. About five minutes after he finished talking, he breathed out a breath, but didn’t breathe in another. When Frau stood up, Grizzle and Kraft were standing across the room, watching.
She turned back to her soldiers standing around her. “I want every level searched. There aren’t as many places to hide on the upper levels, so start on this floor and work your way down. I want to hear about any sign of this Black Dragon. He is going to be exhausted and injured, but don’t take any chances. I want no less than four dwarves together at a time.”
The dwarf soldiers saluted their queen. They turned and saluted the two dwarf kings before exiting the room. Frau, Grizzle, and Kraft followed the progress of the dwarf soldiers clearing the rooms. It took hours before the dwarves first found signs of what they believed to be the Black Dragon. The dwarf soldiers in the lead stopped the search when they discovered footprints appearing in the dust out of nowhere. Frau, Grizzle, and Kraft were just coming up to that point when the dwarf soldiers entered a room up ahead.
* * *
Ombra woke up to four dwarves rushing into the room. He was unprepared and couldn’t defend against all four of them at once. He hadn’t rested long enough to store up all his magic, but he had enough to get away. He magically traveled to the point in the tunnel that he had made sure to become familiar with. He had hoped to escape the dwarves by traveling into the hallway and giving himself a chance to escape, but what he found when he appeared in the tunnel wasn’t an empty tunnel.
Grizzle, Frau, and Kraft were walking toward the room the dwarves had just rushed into when the Black Dragon appeared in front of them. Grizzle was the first to react. He kicked out at the Black Dragon. He connected with the front of his knee, bending it back at an unnatural angle. The man fell back and rolled away as the three dwarf leaders drew their weapons.
Grizzle lifted his Gorgan’s hammer off of his back; Frau drew Heat Taker just in time. The Black Dragon wizard rolled backward and came to a kneeling position as he released a huge ball of fire that came rushing at them, but Frau swung her magically enchanted sword at it, and the blue-tinted heat-absorbing blade absorbed the fire. Before Grizzle or Frau could move forward, Kraft let loose a bolt from his crossbow. The bolt flew forward and slammed into the wizard and exploded. All three of them were thrown backwards off their feet.
They all laid staring at the ceiling in a daze for a minute. The dwarves from inside the room had rushed out and were standing over Grizzle when Kraft burst into laughter. Grizzle started laughing then. The dwarves standing over them looked concerned as Frau stood. “Don’t worry about them. They just thing it’s funny to blow up wizards with magical weapons even if they nearly kill themselves doing it.”
Chapter Fourteen
An Impossible Family Reunion
Once they were back in the palace,
Anna was taken to her room where a team of healers was waiting. She tried to insist on seeing the beggar first, but at this point she was too weak to fight.
Master Brennin wasn’t willing to entertain it. “It’s not possible, Your Highness. Do not worry, he is being cleaned up and taken care of. He will still be there in the morning. We must see to your injuries and get you rested first, Your Highness.”
Master Brennin had very tactfully told her it just isn’t going to happen, but it had worked. That was all it took for her to slump back on the bed. She was exhausted. She was asleep seconds after she was denied.
* * *
“Who are you?” Captain Thompson asked the beggar.
“Dad,” the man replied.
“You look familiar, and I could tell the queen recognized you. Who are you?” he asked again.
“Dad,” the man responded again.
Captain Thompson was frustrated, but he let it go. The queen wanted this man taken care of, and he wasn’t going to stand here and interrogate him, at least not yet. For now, he would be treated as a hero who had saved the queen.
Captain Thompson had to admit that the man had caught the escaping wizard, which only brought up more questions, but he let them go for now and led the man to his room. Inside, the man was afforded a large feather bed, a chair and a bathing chamber. One of the servants had already drawn the beggar a warm bath with scented sands. “She will help you wash. There will be two guards outside the room at all times. If you need anything, let them know and they will send for it.”
“Dad,” the man responded.
Captain Thompson stared at the man for a second. “Use hand gestures if you need something. Put your hand to your mouth for food, things like that, until they figure it out.”
“Dad,” the man said again.
Captain Thompson just turned to his guards. “Good luck,” he said before walking down the hall.
The Half Dwarf Prince Trilogy Page 48
