Day of the Dragon

15

Vereesa gasped as breathing once more became an option for her. The nightmare of being buried alive slowly receded as she gulped in great lungfuls of air. Gradually, full calm returned to her and she finally opened her eyes—to see that she had traded one nightmare for another.

Three figures hunched about a tiny fire in the midst of what appeared to be a small cave. The flames gave their grotesque forms an additional element of horror, for because of it she could make out the ribs beneath the skin and the mottled, scaly flesh that hung loosely. Worse, she could clearly see the long, cadaverous faces with beaklike noses and elongated chins. The ranger could especially make out the narrow, insidious eyes and the sharp, sharp, teeth.

The three were clad in little more than ragged kilts. Throwing axes sat beside each figure, weapons that Vereesa understood these creatures used with enviable skill.

Despite her attempts to keep silent, some minor movement on her part must have reached the long, pointed ears that so reminded the ranger of goblins, for one of her captors immediately looked her way.

“Supper’s awake,” he hissed, a patch covering what remained of his left eye.

“Looks more like dessert to me,” returned a second, bald where the other two wore long, shaggy mohawks.

“Definitely dessert,” grinned the third, who wore a tattered scarf that had once belonged to one of Vereesa’s own kind. He seemed lankier than the other two, and spoke as if no one would dare contradict him. The leader, then.

The leader of a trio of hungry-looking trolls.

“Slim pickings lately,” the scarf-wearer went on. “But time now for a feast, yes.”

Something to the ranger’s right suddenly let out what would have been quite a telling epithet if not for the gag that smothered the words. Twisting her head as best as the carefully tied ropes allowed her, Vereesa saw that Falstad, too, still lived, albeit for how long she could not say. Rumors had long persisted, even before the days of the Troll Wars, that these hideous creatures saw anything other than themselves as fair game for food. Even the orcs, who had accepted them as allies, had been said to ever keep one eye on the nimble, cunning fiends.

Fortunately, due to both the Troll Wars and the battle against the Horde, their foul race had dwindled in numbers greatly. Vereesa herself had never seen a troll before, only knew them from drawings and legends. She found she would have much preferred to keep it that way.

“Patience, patience,” murmured the scarf-wearer in a mock sympathetic voice. “You’ll be first, dwarf! You’ll be first!”

“Can’t we do it now. Gree?” begged the one-eyed troll. “Why can’t we do it now?”

“Because I said so, Shnel!” With one hard fist, Gree suddenly struck Shnel in the jaw, sending the second creature rolling.

The third troll hopped to his feet, encouraging both of his companions to more blows. Gree glared at him, literally staring the bald troll down. Meanwhile, Shnel crawled back to his place by the tiny fire, looking completely subdued.

“I am leader!” Gree slapped a bony, taloned hand against his chest. “Yes, Shnel?”

“Yes, Gree! Yes!”

“Yes, Vorsh?”

The hairless monstrosity bobbed his head over and over. “Yes, oh, yes, Gree! Leader you are! Leader you are!”

As with elves, dwarves, and especially humans, there had existed different types of trolls. Some few spoke with the sophistication of elves—even while they tried to take one’s head. Others ranged toward the more savage, especially those who most frequented the barrows and other underground realms. Yet Vereesa doubted that there could be any lower form of troll than the three base creatures who had captured her and Falstad—and clearly had still darker designs for them.

The trio went back to some muffled conversation around the tiny fire. Vereesa again looked to the dwarf, who stared back at her. A raised eyebrow by her was answered by a shake of his head. No, despite his prodigious strength, he could not escape the tight bonds. She shook her head in turn. However barbaric the trolls might be, they were true experts in knot-tying.

Trying to remain undaunted, the ranger peered around at her surroundings—what little there was to see of them. They seemed to be in the midst of a long, crudely hewn tunnel, likely of the trolls’ own making. Vereesa recalled the long, taloned fingers, just perfect for digging through the rock and earth. These trolls had adapted well to their environment.

Despite already knowing the results in advance, the elf nonetheless tried to find some looseness in her ropes. She twisted around as cautiously as she could, rubbed her wrists nearly raw, but to no avail.

A horrific chuckle warned her that the trolls had seen at least her final attempts.

“Dessert’s lively,” commented Gree. “Should make for good sport!”

“Where’s the others?” groused Shnel. “Should’ve been here by now!”

The leader nodded, adding, “Hulg knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t obey! Maybe he—” The troll suddenly seized his throwing ax.“Dwarves!”

The ax went spinning through the tunnel, passing just a few inches from Vereesa’s head.

A guttural cry followed but a moment later.

The walls of the tunnel erupted with short, sturdy forms letting out battle calls and waving short axes and swords.

Gree pulled out another, slightly longer ax, this one evidently for hand-to-hand combat. Shnel and Vorsh, the latter crouched, let loose with throwing axes. The elf saw one squat attacker fall to Shnel’s weapon, but Vorsh’s went wide. The trolls then followed the example of their leader and readied stronger, bulkier axes as the newcomers surrounded them.

Vereesa counted more than half a dozen dwarves, each clad in ragged furs and rusting breastplates. Their helmets were rounded, form-fitting, and lacking any horns or other unnecessary adornments. As with Falstad, most had beards, although they seemed shorter and better trimmed.

The dwarves wielded their axes and swords with practiced precision. The trolls found themselves pressed closer and closer to one another. Shnel it was who fell first, the one-eyed beast not seeing the warrior who came in on his blind side. Vorsh barked a warning, but it came too late. Shnel took a wild swing at his new foe, missing completely.

The dwarf drove his sword into the lanky troll’s gut.

Gree fought the most savagely. He landed one good blow that sent a dwarf tumbling back, then nearly beheaded another. Unfortunately, his ax broke as it collided with the longer, well-built one wielded by his latest opponent. In desperation, he seized the dwarf’s weapon by the upper handle and struggled to take it out of the shorter fighter’s grip.

The well-honed blade of another ax caught the troll leader in the back.

The elf almost felt some sympathy for the last of her captors. Vorsh, eyes wide with the knowledge of his impending doom, looked ready to whimper. Nonetheless, he continued waving his ax at the nearest of the dwarves, almost landing a bloody strike by sheer luck. However, he could do nothing to stem the tide of foes who now advanced in an ever-tightening circle, swords and axes ready.

In the end, Vorsh’s death approached butchery.

Vereesa turned her gaze away. She did not face forward again until a steady voice with a hint of gravel in it commented, “Well, no wonder the trolls fought so hard! Gimmel! Ye see this?”

“Aye, Rom! Much better sight than what I’ve found over here!”

Thick hands pulled her to a sitting position. “Let’s see if we can get these ropes off ye without too much damage to that fine form!”

She looked up into the face of a ruddy dwarf at least six inches shorter than Falstad and built much stockier. Despite first appearances, however, his expert handling of the ropes quickly informed the ranger that she should not take him or any of his companions for clumsy, especially after the manner in which they had dispatched the trolls.

Up close, the garments of the dwarves took on an even more ragged appearance, not surprising if they had been subsisting, as Vereesa suspected, on whatever they could steal from the orcs. A distinctive odor also prevailed, indicating that bathing had also long been at a premium.

“Here ye go!”

Her ropes fell away. Vereesa immediately pulled free the gag, with which the dwarf had not bothered. At the same time, a long string of swearwords from her side indicated that Falstad, too, had now been completely released.

“Shut ye mouth or I’ll stuff that gag back in permanent!” Gimmel snarled back.

“It’d take a hand’s worth of you hill dwarves to bring one from the Aerie down!”

A rumble of discord indicated that their rescuers could readily become new captors if the gryphon-rider did not quiet. Stumbling to her feet—and recalling at the last moment that the tunnel did not quite match her height in this area—the anxious ranger snapped, “Falstad! Be polite with our companions! They have, after all, saved us from a horrid fate!”

“Aye, ye have the right of it,” Rom replied. “The damn trolls, they eat anything of flesh—dead or alive!”

“They mentioned some companions,” she suddenly recalled. “Perhaps we had better leave this place before they come—”

Rom raised his hand. His crinkled features reminded Vereesa of a tough old dog. “No need to worry about them. That’s how we found this trio.” He mused a moment longer. “But ye may be right, nonetheless! It’s not the only band of trolls in this region. The orcs, they use ’em almost like hunting hounds! Anything other than an orc that crosses these ruined lands is fair game—and they’ve even taken one of their own allies from the mountain when they’ve thought they could!”

Images of the fates that had been planned for them coursed through Vereesa’s head. “Disgusting! I thank you wholeheartedly for your timeliness!”

“Had I known it would’ve been ye we were rescuing, I’d have made this sorry bunch move faster!”

Gimmel, eyes shifting much too often to the elf, joined his leader. “Joj’s dead. Still stickin’ halfway out the hole. Narn’s bad; he’ll need fixin’ up. The rest of the wounded can travel well enough!”

“Then let’s be moving on! That mean’s ye, too, butterfly!” The last referred to Falstad, who bristled at what apparently had to be a harsh insult to one of the Aerie dwarves.

Vereesa managed to calm him down with a soft touch on his shoulder, but her friend continued to glower as the party started off. The elf noticed that the hill dwarves stripped not only the trolls of any useful items, but also their dead companion. They made no move to try to bring the body with them, and when Rom noticed her glance, he shrugged in mild shame.

“The war demands some proprieties be left behind, lady elf. Joj would’ve understood. We’ll see that his stuff is divided up to his nearest kin and that they also get an extra share of the trolls’ items . . . not that there was much, sorry to say.”

“I had no idea that there were any of you left in Khaz Modan. It was said that all the dwarves left when it became clear that they could not hold the land against the Horde.”

Rom’s canine face turned grim. “Aye, all that could leave did! Wasn’t possible for all of us, ye know! The Horde, it came like the proverbial plague, cutting off much of us from any route! We were forced to go deeper underground than we’d ever gone before! Many’s that died at that time, and many more’s that died since!”

She looked over his ragtag band. “How many are you?”

“My clan? Seven and forty, where once we counted hundreds! We’ve talked with three others, two larger than ourselves. Put that total number at three hundred and a little over, and ye still only got a small fraction of what we once were in this land!”

“Three hundred and more’s still quite a number,” rumbled Falstad. “Aye, with that many, I’d have gone to take Grim Batol back!”

“And perhaps if we fluttered about in the sky like dizzy bugs, we might confuse them enough to make that seem possible, but on the ground or under it, we’re still at a disadvantage! Takes only one dragon to scorch a forest and bake the earth below!”

Old enmities between the Aerie and the hills threatened to explode again. Vereesa quickly tried to breach the gap between the two. “Enough of this! It is the orcs and theirs who are the enemies, am I not correct? If you fight with one another, does that not serve their purpose alone?”

Falstad mumbled an apology to her, as did Rom. However, the elf would not let matters settle at only that. “Not good enough. Turn and face one another, then swear you will fight only for the good of all of us! Swear that you will always remember that it is the orcs who slew your brothers, the orcs who killed what you loved.”

She knew no specifics about either of the dwarves’ pasts, but could draw upon the common understanding that everyone who fought in the war had lost someone or something dear. Rom had no doubt lost many loved ones, and Falstad, who belonged to a reckless yet daring aerial band, surely had suffered the same.

To his credit, the gryphon-rider held his hand out first. “Aye, ’tis the right of it. I’ll shake.”

“If ye be doing it, I’ll be doing it.”

Murmurs arose briefly from the other hill dwarves as the two clasped hands. Likely this sort of quick compromise would have been impossible under any circumstances other than the immediate ones.

The party moved on. This time it was Rom who asked the questions. “Now that the danger of trolls is behind us, lady elf, ye should tell us what brings ye and that one to our wounded land. Is it as we hope—that the war turns back on the orcs, that Khaz Modan will soon be free again?”

“The war is moving against the Horde, that much is true.” This brought some gasps and quiet cheers from the dwarves. “The bulk of the Horde was broken a few months back, and Doomhammer has disappeared.”

Rom paused in his tracks. “Then why are the orcs still in command of Grim Batol?”

“You’ve to ask on that?” interjected Falstad. “First of all, the orcs still hold out in the north around Dun Algaz. ’Tis said they’re beginning to cave in, but they won’t go down without a fight.”

“And the second, cousin?”

“You’ve not noticed that they’ve dragons?” Falstad asked with mock innocence on his face.

Gimmel snorted. Rom gave his second-in-command a glare, but then nodded in resignation. “Aye, the dragons. The one foe we, earthbound, cannot battle. Caught a young one on the ground once and made short work of it—with the loss of one or two good warriors, sad to say—but for the most part, they stay up there and we’re forced to hide down here.”

“You’ve fought the trolls, though,” Vereesa pointed out. “And surely the orcs as well.”

“The occasional patrol, aye. And the trolls, we’ve done them some damage, too—but it all means nothing if our home’s still under the orc ax!” He stared her in the eye. “Now, I ask again. Tell me who ye are and what ye doing here! If Khaz Modan’s still orcish, then ye would have to be suicidal to come to Grim Batol!”

“My name is Vereesa Windrunner, ranger, and this is Falstad of the Aeries. We are here because I search for a human, a wizard, tall of height and young. He has hair of fire, and when last I saw him, he was headed this direction.” She decided to omit the black dragon’s presence for the moment, and was grateful that Falstad did not choose to add that information himself.

“And as daft as wizards are, especially human ones, what would he be thinking of doing near Grim Batol?” Rom studied the pair with some growing suspicion, Vereesa’s tale no doubt just a bit too far-fetched for his tastes.

“I do not know,” she admitted. “but I think it has something to do with the dragons.”

At this, the dwarven leader let out a bellowing laugh. “The dragons? What’s he plan to do? Rescue the red queen from bondage? She’ll be so grateful she’ll gobble him right up out of excitement!”

The hill dwarves all found this terribly amusing, but the elf did not. To his credit, Falstad did not join in the merriment, although he, of course, knew about Deathwing, and most likely assumed that Rhonin had already long ago been “gobbled up.”

“I swore an oath, and because of it I will go on. I must reach Grim Batol and see if I can find him.”

The merriment changed to a mixture of astonishment and disbelief. Gimmel shook his head as if not certain that he had heard right.

“Lady Vereesa, I respect ye calling, but surely ye can see how outrageous such a quest is!”

She carefully studied the hardened band. Even in the near dark, she could see the weariness, the fatalism. They fought and they dreamed of their homeland free, but most likely thought that it would never happen in their lifetime. They admired bravery, as all dwarves did, but even to them the elf’s quest bordered on the insane.

“You and your people have saved us, Rom, and for that I thank you all. But if I can ask one boon, it is to show me the nearest tunnel leading to the mountain fortress. I will take it alone from there.”

“You’ll not be journeying alone, my elven lady,” objected Falstad. “I’ve come too far to turn back now . . . and I’m of a mind to find a certain goblin and skin his hide for boots!”

“Ye both be daft!” Rom saw that neither would be swayed. Shrugging, he added, “But if it’s a way to Grim Batol ye want, then I’ll not set that task to another. I’ll take ye there myself!”

“Ye cannot go alone, Rom!” snapped Gimmel. “Not with the trolls on the move and the orcs near there! I’ll go with ye to watch ye back!”

Suddenly, the rest of the band decided that they, too, needed to go along in order to watch the backs of their leaders. Both Rom and Gimmel tried to argue them down, but as one dwarf was generally as stubborn as another, the leader finally came up with a better notion.

“The wounded must return home, and they need some to watch them, too—and no arguments from ye, Narn, ye can barely stand! The best thing to do is roll the bones; the half with the high numbers comes with! Now, who has a set?”

Vereesa hardly wanted to wait for the band to gamble in order to find out who would be traveling with them, but saw no other choice. She and Falstad watched as various dwarves—Narn and the other wounded excluded—set dice rolls against one another. Most of the hill dwarves used their own sets, Rom’s question having been responded to by a veritable sea of raised arms.

The last had made Falstad chuckle. “The Aerie and the hills might have their differences, but you’ll find few dwarves of any kind who don’t carry the dice!” He patted a pouch on his belt. “Can see what heathens the trolls were; they left mine on me! ’Tis said that even the orcs like to roll the bones, which makes ’em a step up from our late captors, eh?”

After much too long a time for Vereesa’s taste, Rom and Gimmel returned with seven other dwarves, each with determined expressions on their faces. Looking at them, the elf could have sworn that they were all brothers—although, in fact, at least two hinted at being sisters. Even female dwarves sported strong beards, a sign of beauty among members of the race.

“Here’s ye volunteers, Lady Vereesa! All strong and ready to fight! We’ll lead ye to one of the cave mouths in the base of the mountain, then ye are on ye own after that.”

“I thank you—but, do you mean that you actually have a path that lets you journey into the mountain itself ?”

“Aye, but it’s no easy one . . . and the orcs don’t patrol it alone.”

“What do you mean by that?” burst Falstad.

Rom gave the other dwarf the same innocent smile that Falstad had given him earlier. “Have ye not heard they’ve dragons?”

The sanctum of Krasus had been built over an ancient grove, one older than even the dragons themselves. It had been built by an elf, later usurped by a human mage, then seized long after its abandonment by Krasus himself. He had sensed the powers lingering underneath it and had managed to draw from them on rare occasions, but even the draconic wizard had been surprised to one day discover the concealed entrance in the most remote part of his citadel, the entrance that led to the glittering pool and the single, golden gemstone set in the midst of the bottom.

Each time he entered the chamber, he felt a sense of awe so rare for one of his kind. The magic here made him feel like a human novice just shown his first incantation. Krasus knew that he had only touched a bare trace of the pool’s potential, but that was enough to make him leery of trying to seize more. Those who grew greedy in their need for magical power tended to eventually become consumed by it—literally.

Of course, Deathwing had somehow managed to avoid that fate so far.

Despite being so deep underground, the water was not devoid of life—or something approaching it. Even though no clearer liquid existed in all the world, try as he might, Krasus could never completely focus on the tiny, slim forms that darted around, especially in the vicinity of the gemstone. At times, he had sworn they were nothing but shimmering, silver fish, yet now and then the dragon mage swore that he saw arms, a human torso, even on a rare occasion—legs.

Today, he ignored the inhabitants of the pool. His confrontation with She of the Dreaming had given him some hope of aid, but Krasus knew that he could not plan for it. Time swiftly approached when he would have to commit himself.

And that had been why he had come here now, for among its properties, the pool seemed able to rejuvenate those who drank from it, at least for a time. His use of the poison in order to reach the hidden realms of Ysera had left Krasus drained, and if matters demanded he act quickly, then he wanted to be able to respond.

Bending down, the wizard cupped a hand and gathered a small bit of water. He had tried a mug the first time he had dared sip, only to discover that the pool rejected anything crafted. Krasus leaned over the edge, wanting any drops that escaped his palm to return from whence they had come. His respect for the power within had become that great over the years.

Yet as he drank, a rippling in the surface caught his eye. Krasus glanced down at what should have been the perfect reflection of his human form—but, instead, turned out to be something much different.

Rhonin’s youthful visage gazed up at him . . . or so the wizard first thought. Then he realized that his pawn’s eyes were closed and the head lolled slightly to the side as if . . . as if dead.

Across Rhonin’s face appeared the thick, green hand of an orc.

Krasus reacted instinctively, reaching into the water to pull the foul hand away. Instead, he scattered the image and, when the ripples had finally subsided, saw only his own reflection again.

“By the Great Mother . . .” The pool had never shown this ability before. Why now?

Only then did Krasus recall the parting words of Ysera. And do not undervalue those you think only pawns . . .

What had she meant by that, and why had he now seen Rhonin’s face? Judging by the glimpse the senior wizard had just had, his young counterpart had either been captured or killed by the orcs. If so, it was too late for Rhonin to be of any more value to Krasus—although having apparently reached the mountain fortress, he had fulfilled the true mission on which his patron had sent him.

Combined with other bits of evidence that Krasus had let the orcs in Grim Batol discover over the past several months, the dragon mage had hoped to stir up the commanders there, make them think that a second invasion, a more subtle one, would be slipping in from the west. While quite a force still remained based in the mountain fortress, its true power lay in the dragons bred and trained there . . . and those grew fewer with each passing week. Worse for the orcs in the mountain, the few they had were more and more being sent north to help the bulk of the Horde, leaving Grim Batol bereft of almost all its defenses. Against a determined army comparable in size to that now fighting in the vicinity of Dun Algaz, even the well-positioned orcs in the mountain would eventually succumb, thereby losing the chance to raise any more dragons for the war effort.

And without more dragons to harry the Alliance forces in the north, the remnants of the Horde would at last crumble under the continual onslaught.

Such a force could have been raised and sent in from the west if not for the general lack of cooperation on the part of the leaders of the Alliance. Most felt that Khaz Modan would fall in its own time; why risk more on such a mission? Krasus could not believe that they would not use a two-pronged assault to finally rid the world of the orc threat, but that proved once again the shortsighted thinking of the younger races. Originally, he had tried to persuade the Kirin Tor to push the course of action to Dalaran’s neighbors, but as their influence over King Terenas had begun to slip, his own comrades on the council had turned instead to salvaging what remained of their position in the Alliance.

And so Krasus had decided to play a desperate bluff, counting on the devious thinking and paranoia inherent in the orc command. Let them believe the invasion was on its way. Let them even have physical proof to go along with the rumors he and his agents had spread. Surely then they would do the unthinkable.

Surely then they would abandon their mountain fortress and, with Alexstrasza under careful watch, move the dragon breeding operation north.

The plan had started as a wild hope, but to even Krasus’s surprise, he noted astonishing results. The orc in command of Grim Batol, one Nekros Skullcrusher, had, of late, grown more and more certain that the mountain’s days of use were numbered, and numbered low. The wizard’s wild rumors had even taken on a life of their own, growing beyond his expectations.

And now . . . and now the orcs had proof in the person of Rhonin. The young spellcaster had played his part. He had shown Nekros that the seemingly impervious fortress could readily be infiltrated, especially through magic. Surely now the orc commander would give the word to abandon Grim Batol.

Yes, Rhonin had played his part well . . . and Krasus knew that he would never forgive himself for using the human so.

What would his beloved queen even think of him when she found out the truth? Of all the dragons, Alexstrasza most cared for the lesser races. They were the children of the future, she had once said.

“It had to be done,” he hissed.

Yet, if the vision in the pool had been meant to remind him of the fate of his pawn, it had also served to incite the wizard. He had to know more.

Bowing before the pool, Krasus closed his eyes and concentrated. It had been quite some time since he had contacted one of his most useful agents. If that one still lived, then surely he had some knowledge of the activities presently going on in the mountain. The dragon mage pictured the one with whom he sought to speak, then reached out with his thoughts, with all his strength, to open the link the two shared.

“Hear me now . . . hear my voice . . . it is urgent that we talk . . . the day may be on us at last, my patient friend, the day of freedom and redemption . . . hear me . . . Rom . . .”