Measure and the Truth

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The dwarves set to digging with a vengeance, working around the clock, each team of miners putting in a twelve-hour shift. The tunnel began as a simple shaft bored straight into the mountainside. Only a dozen or so dwarves could work at a time, but as the hole grew deeper, more and more picks and shovels could be brought to bear. They made steady progress and after a week had progressed more than three hundred yards straight into the rock.

There the diggers began excavating a path breaking away to the right at a perpendicular angle. That tunnel would bore toward a large section of the curtain wall beside the south gatehouse. At the same time, the dwarves continued the original straight shaft, with even more workers chopping away at a time. When the original shaft had grown to six hundred yards long, a second tunnel to the right began to creep toward the tower. Both shafts were extended and widened, the second one pushing through the rock directly underneath the great gates.

In the lightless tunnels, the distinction between day and night was meaningless, but that was no obstacle to the doughty dwarves. Dram was omnipresent, supervising the excavation with a keen eye and curt instructions to “shore up that archway” or “smooth off that knob.” Under his direction the tunnels grew deeper and wider and stronger, with many hidden passages expanded.

The ogres and humans in the High Clerist’s Tower watched the surface work from the walls but made no effort to interfere. All they could see were the periodic shift changes, as two hundred dwarves trooped out of the mountainside while another two hundred trooped in. They took note of the ever-mounting pile of tailings spilling from the mouth of the shaft and wondered at the excavation.

As a deterrent to interference from the garrison in the tower, Jaymes maintained several companies of infantry and cavalry units within a quarter mile of the southern gatehouse. If the enemy made a sortie out to attack the miners, the troops would counterattack immediately. But Ankhar obviously scoffed at dwarves digging holes and decided not to risk his precious troops in a fight outside the lofty walls.

If, in fact, Ankhar were really in charge. Despite the magical obfuscation created by the Thorn Knight and the Nightmaster, Coryn had continued her scrying of the enemy. Sometimes her searching could penetrate through the veils of secrecy, and several times she had reported arguments between du Chagne and Hoarst, or Ankhar and the black-masked cleric. The siege was taking its toll on the enemy, even before the first clash of arms.

Outside, the troops staged competitions and games in plain view of the walls. They marched back and forth in maneuvers, singing martial songs, and generally acting as though they were happy to be there. And the dwarves were truly happy; the diggers were all experienced miners, and the work was very much to their liking. The thought that they would strike a devastating blow against the hated ogres-the same ogres who had destroyed their town-only added to their pleasure and fervor.

As a result, some nearly four weeks after the mine was started, the shaft was completed to Dram’s, and the emperor’s, satisfaction.

It was time, Jaymes declared, to bring in the black powder and to set a very long fuse.

Ankhar paced the small circle of the High Lookout. That was as high up as he dared to go in the great fortress. The Nest of the Kingfisher, perched on its spire some fifty feet over his head, he judged to be too small to accommodate his size and weight. Anyway, from where he was he could see everything he needed to see. With Pond-Lily at his side, he watched the fortress and the enemy army and left the planning of the defenses to the others.

Despite his bluster about hiding behind walls, he had quickly concluded that was a very good place to live. There was plenty of food, and the officers of the Solamnic Knights had maintained a splendid wine cellar that had been requisitioned by the dark forces. When he and Pond-Lily went inside, they spent their time in a couple of very nice rooms high up in the tower. He had hobgoblins bring up his food and drink, so he never had to bother himself going up and down the long flights of stairs.

Occasionally he grew a little wistful, remembering Laka or the heady days of his great invasions out in the open air. He truly missed his stepmother, but when he cradled the Shaft of Hiddukel in his arms, he felt the presence of the Prince of Lies and that brought Laka very much into his thoughts and feelings. She had been, and would remain, the central Truth of his life.

Wandering through the wilds, living outside in the wind and rain, trying to maintain order in a large, chaotic band of barbarians-those old Truths entailed a great deal of work, a significant amount of discomfort, and massive aggravation. He had realized during the weeks in the tower that he was really very tired being a great leader. Being there with Pond-Lily in the comfort of his fine rooms, was a much more comfortable existence.

On that gloomy late-summer afternoon, clouds glowered low across the Vingaard Range, and the threat of an impending storm crackled in the air. But the half-giant’s rooms in the tower were rainproof, and Ankhar suspected that, come winter, they would prove quite snug as well. So he wasn’t worried about the weather, or much of anything else, as he propped his foot on the parapet. The rampart was waist high to a human, but it came up only to Ankhar’s knees and made for a comfortable brace as he looked out over the fortress.

There was the great gatehouse in front of him, manned with a hundred ogres and an equal number of Dark Knights, commanding the approaches from the south. The ogres had stacked great piles of boulders on the upper platforms and were prepared to rain those down on any attackers who came within fifty or sixty paces. Every once in a while, an ogre tossed one of those rocks in the direction of the dwarf miners laboring some three or four hundred paces away. The dwarves were well out of range of the impulsive attacks, but throwing the stones gave the ogres a bit of useful target practice as well as the grist for wagers and other amusements.

Protecting that garrison were two massive outer gates, a pair of portcullises that could be dropped at a moment’s warning, and an interior set of gates that were just as massive as those in the outer wall. If an attacker somehow managed to penetrate inside, he would find himself in a deep courtyard, with commanding positions on all four sides where the defenders could pour a murderous fire of arrows, rocks, and burning oil down upon him.

The half-giant had learned that at the time Hoarst and the Black Army attacked the place, the emperor and his Solamnics had garrisoned the tower with only three hundred knights, far too few to defend the place. The Knights of Solamnia had paid the price when the Dark Knights flew up and landed atop the walls then opened the gates for their comrades outside. With that history in mind, Ankhar was glad for the more than two thousand ogres and Dark Knights who now patrolled the walls.

The half-giant spotted the Nightmaster, clad all in black, walking among the troops down there on the gatehouse ramparts. The priest had diligently overseen the preparation of the defenses, and Ankhar was pleased to have him down there. He was further pleased by a corollary benefit: having the cleric down there meant that the man was not up here with the half-giant. The sight of that veiled, featureless face never failed to send a shiver up and down his spine.

The Dark Knights, too, seemed inclined to avoid the half-giant in his lofty aerie, and Ankhar was not displeased by their wariness. After all, he had his woman and a cadre of loyal ogres and hobgoblins waiting on him. All was right in his world.

“How long we stay here, Ankhy?” asked Pond-Lily, sidling close.

He shrugged. “You like it here?”

“Yes, I do.” She snuggled against him, sighing blissfully.

“Me too. Maybe we stay for a long time. Live here in winter, with fires on hearths to keep us warm.” With a squeeze of his massive arm, he held her tight.

“I like that. But bad men-what if they come and fight us? What those dwarves doing anyway?”

Ankhar chuckled genially. “Dwarves, hah! We squash them if they come too close. And see little fort down there, pet? Bad men have to fight through that first!”

And right then, before his very eyes, that massive gatehouse simply disintegrated. He saw the explosion before he heard it: the platform where a hundred ogres and a hundred Dark Knights stood blasted straight up into the air, propelled by a gout of flame and smoke that seemed to erupt like a volcano from somewhere deep in the bowels of Krynn. Pieces of stone shot high into the sky, intermingled with lazily tumbling bloody figures of ogres and men.

Next he felt the pressure of the blast, a sickening lurch in the floor beneath his feet. The massive High Clerist’s Tower swayed like a tree in the wind, and for an instant, the half-giant was certain he would be pitched over the low side and fall to certain death. Pond-Lily screamed, and for a moment, that piercing noise, coming from right below his ear, was the only sound he heard.

Finally the sound of the explosion reached him, a boom of noise louder than any blast of thunder he had ever heard. It felt like a punch to the heart and gut and deep inside his brain, knocking all the air out of him, smashing and staggering him. He tumbled back against the interior column, where the tower climbed to its lofty Kingfisher’s nest, then slumped to a sitting position, stunned and staring. The first echo came then, almost as loud as the initial blast, and all he could do was numbly clap his hands over his ears.

Jaymes, Coryn, Dram, and the generals watched the explosion from a mile away. The dwarf let out a whoop as the column of debris-intermixed with smoke and searing balls of fire-spewed high into the air. The blast was tremendous, carrying away the entirety of the south gatehouse and a great section of the adjacent wall. Even the huge spire of the central tower felt the shock, swaying visibly back and forth. Churning upward, the mass of smoke and destruction billowed into the sky. Bursts of fire showed in the darkness of the cloud, and for a splendid few heartbeats, the great scatter of debris poised, almost weightless, in the air.

The smoke kept climbing, but almost immediately stones, rocks, and bodies rained back down across the pass, killing men and ogres of the garrison who had survived the blast but weren’t quick enough to duck under shelter. One slab of wall, a hundred feet wide, smashed every Dark Knight on a nearby rampart above the curtain wall. A huge portcullis, bars twisted but still banded together, crushed three ogres who stupidly had raced outside the base of the main tower to gape in astonishment at the devastation.

Smoke spewed into the sky like a column of ash from an erupting volcano. Bits of wooden debris, much of it flaming, tumbled away from the murk, scattering like small meteors across the road, the mountains, and the interior of the fortress.

“Go now! Give them your steel!” Jaymes roared to the men and dwarves of his assembled, waiting forces.

As soon as the rocks and other shrapnel ceased to rain down, the dwarves of New Compound together with the infantry of the Palanthian Legion and the Crown Army rushed forward into the gap. Shouting and cheering, chanting hoarse battle cries, they erupted into the open. Dwarves banged their axes against their shields, and humans clattered their swords together, adding to the din.

The attackers swept forward in irregular formation-pushing through the choking smoke and dust, scrambling over the piles of rubble left by the shattering of the walls, stumbling and scrambling up the steep slopes. They charged into the gaping courtyards of the fortress. So much of the wall had come down that the attackers had dozens of possible routes leading right into the interior of the fortress. Quickly they rushed up stairs, claiming the tops of the walls to either side of the massive breach, and passed through the vacant courtyards, pressing into the fortress’s interior buildings.

The dwarves, with Dram in the lead, charged to the left, sweeping up onto a standing curtain wall, rushing along the rim, one by one taking the towers that obstructed passage at intervals around the ring-shaped barrier. Axes and hammers smashed against closed doors, splintering the boards. The dwarves crushed ogre skulls and broke ogre limbs with abandon, as many defenders were still stunned by the tunnel blast. Whether the ogres were lying down, fighting, or running away, the dwarves of New Compound gave no quarter.

Following General Weaver, the men of the Palanthian Legion spread out in the middle of the fortress, capturing one courtyard after another. Several companies burst into the base of the great tower before the defenders could recover enough to close their gates, and soon the attackers found themselves in the deep passages where long ago the Heroes of the Lance had lured dragons to their doom with the Orb of Dragonkind.

From there, the attackers worked their way higher, charging up stairways, slaying any Dark Knights or ogres who stumbled into their path. The farther they got from the scene of the blast, the more organized were the defenders, yet the swiftness of the advance continued to carry the day. The knights and foot soldiers swept through a level of temples and shrines, another of garrisons and mess halls. Six ogres tried to hold at the top of a stairway. Weaver’s crossbowmen shot them down with a single well-aimed volley, and again the emperor’s men rushed up and past.

General Dayr led the footmen of the Crown Army to the right, with a large detachment under Captain Franz attacking the separate redoubt known as the Knights’ Spur. They clashed with a line of Dark Knights on the drawbridge to that isolated complex, and again the charge swept right into the spur before the outer gates could be closed. Skirmishes raged in a dozen chambers, but the Crowns threw more and more men into the figh. The Dark Knights could only fall back or die.

Then Jaymes ordered the second rank-mostly heavy infantry-to advance in as close a formation as they could maintain through the rubble and debris. The field commanders would use the second wave as a reserve, concentrating them wherever the enemy seemed determined to make a stand. Some men cleared paths through the rubble, so the follow-up troops could fight more readily.

Then, finally, the emperor and the white wizard advanced, side by side, seeking an end to the matter once and for all.

Pond-Lily was sobbing, and Ankhar cradled her under his big right arm. They leaned against the solid tower wall inside the High Lookout, watching as the attackers ran rampant through the fortress. The southern gatehouse, where the Nightmaster had pledged an epic defense, was simply gone, blasted into pieces by the unimaginable explosion. Those pieces, the half-giant assumed, included the little bits that remained of the black-masked cleric. The gatehouse was merely a gaping hole, a smoky crater crawling with the figures of dwarves and the emperor’s men.

Bakkard du Chagne burst out of the door from the tower’s interior to find Ankhar and his ogress on the parapet.

“The emperor’s men are in the base of the tower!” he cried shrilly. “They’re coming up the steps! Our men can’t hold them back.”

“Coming up the steps of this tower?” asked Pond-Lily, gaping.

“Yes, you stupid bitch!” screamed du Chagne. “They’ll be here any moment!”

Pond-Lily uttered a choking sob and buried her head in the half-giant’s side.

Ankhar shook off his lethargy and shock to glare at the chubby, balding man. The former lord regent, used to obedience and command, nervous of disposition and irascible of temper, had been an annoying presence during their weeks in that confined space. The half-giant had tolerated him only because he had been brought there by and was under the protection of the Nightmaster.

But… he looked at the crater again. No one could have survived that. It seemed safe to conclude the Nightmaster was dead.

Ankhar released the weeping Pond-Lily, who merely watched in amazement as the half-giant grabbed du Chagne around the neck and easily hoisted him off the ground. The human’s eyes and tongue bulged out, but the grip was too constricting for him to make any sound. He could only stare pathetically into the half-giant’s eyes as Ankhar lifted him over the parapet and dangled him in the air, hundreds of feet above the violence-racked courtyard below.

Then the half-giant let the former lord regent go, and that was when du Chagne found his voice, uttering a piercing shriek that lasted a very long time-as long as it took for him to hit the ground.