The Fate of Thorbardin

by Douglas Niles

  Then he froze, noticing something else. Two big dwarves were in that clearing. One was a male, a Klar to judge from his unkempt hair and wildly staring eyes. The other, a female, was fighting him. She lay on the ground, her face and most of her body concealed by that violent-looking Klar.

  Then she screamed, and the urgent fear in her voice set Gus’s heart to pounding. He blinked and rubbed his eyes and saw strands of light-colored hair flying around, illuminated by the fire. His mind focused, and he could think of only one thing.

  “Gretchan!” he shouted, charging forward without another thought. The two combatants were so fiercely engaged that neither seemed to notice him at first, but the Aghar advanced resolutely. “Leave Gretchan alone!” he shouted at the Klar.

  The only answer was an inarticulate growl as the male reared back and fastened his powerful hands around the female’s throat. Her next scream was choked into a gagging cough by the Klar’s suffocating grip.

  “You let go!” Gus cried again. He reached down, picking up a large, jagged-edged rock that was right under his feet. With an impetuous spring, he leaped forward, lifting the rock over his head in both of his hands. With stunningly accurate force, he brought it crashing down on the Klar’s skull.

  The attacker groaned and immediately collapsed on the female, who grunted and struggled to push the inert form away.

  “Gretchan! Gus save you!” cried the gully dwarf, grabbing the insensate Klar by one hand and pulling him off to the side. The victim, still coughing and choking, pushed herself into a sitting position and struggled to regain her breath.

  “Hey! You not Gretchan!” Gus declared indignantly.

  “No, I’m not,” she said when she finally found her voice. She wiped a hand across her face and looked at Gus with considerable relief. “But I’m very grateful to you for saving my life.”

  “Oh, well, all right,” Gus replied, warmed by the praise—even if the dwarf maid was an impostor.

  Abruptly his arms were seized by firm, small hands, one pair pulling to each side of him.

  “Hey, you big dwarf sister!” declared Berta in a voice full of menace. “You stay away!”

  “Yeah!” added Slooshy, tugging hard at Gus’s other side. “This my guy!”

  “Um, don’t worry,” said the dwarf maid whom Gus had mistaken for Gretchan. “I won’t take him away. But thanks for letting him come to my rescue.”

  Gus, meanwhile, was thinking about other things while the three females conversed warily. “Hey,” he said after a minute, addressing the dwarf he had rescued. “You got any food?”

  The courier found Brandon in the ruined mess hall, sitting with Tankard and Gretchan as the priestess worked her healing magic on the captain’s deep but not lethal wound. He sprinted up and clapped his fist to his chest in salute.

  “General Bluestone! Captain Morewood said to tell you that we’ve got the Firespitter up to the gate!”

  “Bring it forward at once!” Brandon replied, seizing on the news as if it were a lifeline on a stormy sea.

  And indeed, he felt direly in need of a lifeline. He’d heard from the Redshirts that General Watchler’s men had fared no better against the interior hallways than had Hacksaw’s. The toll was more than a hundred dead, and though both forces had tried to use battering rams against the stone doors, the men had not been able to protect themselves from the deadly crossbows long enough to use them.

  But perhaps their luck was about to change.

  It took another hour for the laboring crews to maneuver the first of the massive devices through the shattered gate and into the Theiwar barracks. Tankard’s men worked to clear the benches and other debris out of the way, while the crewmen used levers and pulleys to winch the giant weapon along the ledge and right into the interior of the bloodstained gatehouse.

  In the meantime, several lookouts kept an eye on the corridors down which the attackers would have to advance. The balconies overhead were darkened by shadows, but they knew that Theiwar defenders lurked there and that the deadly crossbows could be brought forward again within mere seconds.

  Brandon and his officers anxiously watched the progress of the Firespitter as the crew pushed it into position. The weapon was large and unwieldy but not so big that it couldn’t be maneuvered through the tight spaces of a subterranean battlefield. The spout of the machine was a long nozzle, a tube of steel, that extended more than a dozen feet from the round body. A portable furnace was attached to the bottom of the snout, and it was capped with a door that one of the crew-members could open by pulling on a lever at the rear of the machine. When the furnace door was opened and pressurized oil shot down the spout, the coals incinerated the vaporous oil, and the result was the lethal incendiary attack that had proved so effective against the horax.

  The mighty weapon would be turned against dwarves, something they never imagined. Brandon was suddenly acutely aware that much, perhaps too much, depended on the success of the Firespitter.

  “Open fire as soon as you’re ready,” he instructed the crew chief. That scowling, short-bearded sergeant looked more like a mechanic than a soldier, which was probably appropriate.

  “Aye aye, sir,” the chief replied. “Open up the boiler,” he called to one of his men, who turned a valve on a large secondary tank at the rear of the Firespitter. “Bring up the pressure.”

  The hissing of steam was audible in the close space. Two hundred or more Kayolin dwarves watched hopefully as the war machine rumbled and slowly came to life.

  “Push ‘er forward a dozen feet, no more,” ordered the chief, and six of his crewmen worked levers and ratchets, clicking each wheel in unison. With each click, the Firespitter advanced another foot until the spout with its dangling furnace jutted into the hallway.

  Brandon thought, with sudden regret, of all those slain dwarves in there—his dwarves. Their bodies would be burned beyond recognition, he knew. But it would cost even more lives to send in troops to bring out the dead, and that was not a sacrifice he could afford to make.

  “Open the hatch,” ordered the chief, and yet another crewman pulled the lever that would expose the burning coal to the vaporized oil. The sergeant glanced over at Brandon one last time, and the general nodded.

  “Let ’er rip!” came the command.

  Many things seemed to happen at once. Two dwarves turned valves that allowed the pressurized oil to spew out of the reservoir while another cranked up the steam pressure. The crew chief sat in his seat atop the machine and sighted down the barrel while the hissing of the pressurized steam grew to a shrieking crescendo.

  Then the mist of oil shot down the long spout of the nozzle, passed over the glowing coals, and burst into flame. A billowing cloud of liquid fire spewed into the hallway, roaring like a fierce windstorm, while a wave of heat blasted back into the mess hall where the dwarves of the First Legion were gathered.

  From within that long corridor, Brandon thought he heard screams of pain and fear, sounds of chaos and destruction. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the noises echoed on and on in his ears, and he knew they would haunt his dreams for a long time. Gretchan, he realized, had disappeared; she had apparently gone back out to the gatehouse to avoid witnessing the carnage.

  The chief held the valve open for only six or eight seconds, though it seemed like an eternity. Finally he gave the order: “Cut!” And the cessation order was instantly obeyed. The fire died away. The steam was allowed to escape with a rush, and the nimble crewmen, working with clocklike coordination, quickly backed the machine out of the doorway.

  “Go, you rascals!” shouted Tankard Hacksaw to his men who had already hoisted a replacement ram. “Beat down that door! Take the war right up to them!”

  With a hoarse cry, the Kayolin dwarves charged into the hot, smoky corridor, carrying their heavy ram. They smashed it once, twice, and a third time against the soot-stained, smoldering doors at the far end. No archers sniped at them from the upper, scorched balconies. On the final blow, the twin barriers
collapsed inward, tumbling to shatter on the floor, revealing a roomful of terrified, and somewhat singed, Theiwar warriors.

  When the rest of the First Legion charged through the breach, the defenders never had a chance.

  Facet brooded in a corner of the laboratory, watching Willim and Sadie huddle over a bowl of clear liquid. They were casting a spell of scrying there, she knew, though the spell itself was beyond her limited but growing powers. Still, a day earlier Willim would have made sure that she was at his side when he worked such important magic, so she could watch and admire and learn.

  As he worked with Sadie, Facet was all but forgotten.

  Abruptly she became aware that Willim had become agitated about something. Sadie recoiled from the bowl of liquid with the magical picture still shimmering on the surface. In another instant, the wizard blinked out of sight.

  Immediately Facet rushed forward. She regarded the older dwarf maid through narrowed eyes. “What happened?” she demanded suspiciously.

  Sadie looked at her and uttered a short bark of laughter. “Don’t take that tone with me, apprentice!” she sneered.

  Facet felt a stab of anger, an emotion so strong that her limbs quivered and her hands clenched into fists. Only with great effort did she restrain herself from attacking the elder sorceress, from scratching her eyes out or worse. For her part, Sadie watched the apprentice with an air of contempt, her fingers curled and ready for a duel of spellcasting.

  What kind magic was the old crone capable of using? Suddenly, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, Facet decided that she didn’t want to find out.

  “Who are you?” the younger dwarf maid demanded.

  “I’m someone who sees what goes on. Someone who fears our master, like you do,” Sadie said pointedly. She turned and looked at the locked potion cabinet then swung back to look at Facet with a knowing smile. “I’m someone who knows,” she concluded.

  Facet could not suppress a shiver of fear. How many times had she stolen desirable potions from the cabinet while Willim had been absent? She had used some of them, especially his charm potion, with impunity, often mixing it into his wine. The subtle effect of the potion, she knew, helped keep the wizard’s darker impulses under control.

  Yet each time she had made one of her sly thefts, that bell jar had been sitting there, with those two blue sparks flitting around inside. It had never occurred to Facet that the minuscule bits of light might have been alive … or that they might have been watching her actions.

  The older female smiled, a thin, cold expression devoid of humor. But Facet felt as though Sadie had been reading her mind, analyzing everything that the apprentice had been thinking and perhaps feeling.

  “Your little secret is safe with me,” Sadie confided in a voice that was not at all reassuring. “So long as you know your place and don’t interfere with me.”

  The apprentice stared at the wizard for a long time, feeling as though a chilly fog had wrapped its tendrils around her. The old crone merely smacked her lips and went back to looking at the image in the bowl.

  “What do you want?” asked Facet hesitantly, stepping forward. She wondered why the old woman hadn’t told Willim about her treachery, and she suspected immediately that it had something to do with Sadie’s own ambitions. For the first time she wondered why Willim had trapped her and her mate in the jar prison.

  Sadie shrugged, not bothering to look at the younger dwarf. “I want what we all want. Power. Prosperity. Freedom. And perhaps revenge,” she said finally.

  Facet smiled inwardly. She could relate to all of those desires, and that gave her, for the first time, a sense of possible kinship with the older woman. Again she advanced until she, too, was standing beside the scrying bowl. “What’s happening?” she asked again in a beseeching tone, peering into the bowl.

  “The North Gate of Thorbardin has been breached by our master’s enemies,” Sadie explained, gesturing.

  Yes, Facet could clearly discern an image of violent battle portrayed in the pool. Dwarves were hacking at each other with swords, stabbing with spears, charging and falling back in chaotic patterns. Flames swirled around the armies at one point, bright and vivid and so searingly real that she put a hand up in front of her face to block the illusionary heat. Eerily, she heard no sounds, but the sense of combat was so fierce and real that she was surprised that the surface of the water wasn’t vibrating from the tumultuous action.

  “What is the master doing?” she asked curiously.

  “For now, it seems he goes to observe. He won’t use his spells, won’t attract attention to himself right now—not so long as the fire dragon still roams free.”

  “He fears that beast!” Facet burst out. “He thinks it wants to find him and kill him.”

  “And he’s right,” Sadie said, nodding. “That’s why he freed me. He thinks that I might be able to help him win that fight.”

  “Can you?” Facet asked.

  Sadie shook her head grimly. “No. That one is beyond the reach of wizardly magic.”

  “Then what can you do? If you fail, won’t he lock you up again?”

  Sadie cackled and straightened her frail shape to a surprising height. “I’ll never be locked up by him, never again,” she spat. “But I have found one who might be able to help him.”

  “Who?” Facet was intrigued in spite of herself.

  The old sorceress gestured to the glimmering pool. Facet saw a dwarf there in the midst of the battle, a blond-haired female with a blue robe and a brightly glowing staff.

  “Arcane magic is of no use against a creature of Chaos,” Sadie declared. “But that one wields the power of a god. And we’re going to seize her and use her power as our own.”

  For the first time in more than sixteen hours, Brandon allowed himself to relax his grip on the handle of the Bluestone Axe. He heard Fister Morewood barking orders to his dwarves of the Second Legion, while on a lower level of the city—visible from the balcony where he and Gretchan had finally stopped to catch their breath—Otaxx Shortbeard and Mason Axeblade directed the dispersed companies of the Tharkadan Legion to move into the alleys and byways to either side of the road. The whooping sounds of the Klar company had faded into the distance as the berserkers, barely controlled by the roaring bellows of Wildon Dacker, led the charge into the heart of the city of Norbardin.

  Sounds of battle rang out from several skirmishes, but the great din of the fighting seemed to have settled down. Brandon found a stone bench that had been toppled in the fray and pulled it upright. Gretchan sat down on it and leaned back against a marble column, closing her eyes and holding her staff across her lap.

  “Mind if I join you?” Brandon asked, nudging the rod to the side so there was room for him to sit on the bench beside her.

  “Only if you’ll show a lonely girl around a strange town, soldier,” Gretchan said, smiling through her weariness.

  “We’ve made a pretty good start, for tourists,” Brandon pointed out with a grin.

  And indeed, they had. The initial blast of the Fire-spitter had been enough to shatter the resistance in the gatehouse, and when the First Legion troops had poured through the breached doorway, the wizard’s defenders had been too few, too disorganized, and in many places too fearful to put up a coherent defense. As a result, the attackers had claimed more than half of the great city in the first day of the battle. They were able to concentrate their forces wherever Willim’s fighters had tried to make a stand and overwhelmed each strong point in turn before moving deeper into the legendary kingdom.

  For the Tharkadan Legion, the initial victory had been a return to home. To the Kayolin dwarves, each step forward, each intersection and new building and small square or plaza, was part of the discovery of a new world that nonetheless was familiar in their hearts. None of the northern dwarves had ever seen Thorbardin before, but throughout their lives, all of them had heard of it and held the name and the place in a state of reverence and awe.

  From their curr
ent resting place, Brandon and Gretchan could survey only a small portion of Norbardin, but the sight was enough to convince them both that it was the greatest underground city in all of Krynn. Even Garnet Thax, the jewel of Kayolin, looked like a piddling small town by comparison.

  Great edifices rose along one wall of the vast, cavernous space. Brandon counted at least ten levels on that cliff face, each one marked by columned balconies and lofty windows, porches, and other vantages.

  Between their current position and that grand facade lay a series of narrow streets and multistoried buildings, some rising far above their line of sight but others low enough that they could spot the splendid architecture beyond. The crowded lanes of the district below them no doubt usually teemed with pedestrians and vendors, but most of the citizens of Thorbardin had been content to lock themselves into their homes when the invasion began. Brandon had received encouraging reports indicating that a great portion of the populace was not enamored of either Willim the Black or his predecessor, Jungor Stonespringer. One tyrant was the same as the other, as far as they were concerned. Word of Tarn Bellowgranite’s return was slowly spreading among the common people, advancing well ahead of the army.

  Brandon and Gretchan looked up to see Tankard Hacksaw heading toward them. The legion commander was caked with dirt and sweat and had a bloody cut running across his forehead. But he also carried a decanter of water, and it was the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen.

  “Help yourselves,” he said with a tight smile, handing the tall glass vessel to Gretchan.

  The priestess took a deep draught and passed it to Brandon before pushing herself to her feet with an effort. “Here, let me have a look at that cut,” she said concernedly.

  “Bah!” Tankard waved her away. “It’s nothing. There’s them who’re hurt a lot worse than me. Besides, you already did me more than fine when you plucked that arrow out of my shoulder.”