Stormblade

28

“Friend!” Stanach roared, “Hornfel! Friend!”

It was not Stanach’s bellowed assurance that convinced Hornfel that he was not an enemy. It was the mere fact that while roaring “friend” Stanach proved his claim by slicing the arm from a Theiwar lunging for the thane’s back with a deadly shortsword and, on the back swing, opening the belly of another of Realgar’s warriors.

Hornfel bared his teeth in a warrior’s welcoming grin. Aye, this was a friend. So was the broad-chested human protecting Stanach’s back. The blade of his sword was crimsoned with blood. The light in his eyes shone like guyll fyr.

Stanach looked wildly around the great hall. He searched the place like a wolf caught in a canyon by hunters. Like the wolf, he wanted a way out of the trap, and that want made every muscle quiver. When he found the way, the bolt hole, his eyes lit.

The Guard of Watch had driven Realgar’s Theiwar, for a moment, away from Hornfel. In doing so, they had left him unguarded by none but these two.

“Who holds the gatehouse?” Hauk yelled.

“No one.” Hornfel drew a long breath and looked down at the Daewar guard who had died defending his life. “It’s where we were trying to make for when Realgar attacked.”

The young man shrugged and grinned, the grin oddly out of place and chilling. “Let’s go, then. Stanach?”

Stanach nodded, still checking the great hall as though searching for someone. Hornfel heard him curse low under his breath. Stanach elbowed his companion in the back and pointed with his blood-stained, bandaged right hand.

A human girl, with blood smeared on her hands and a face as pale as Solinari, stood with her back to one of the tall support columns. She fought off three black and silver liveried dwarves with a dagger and, when the dagger missed its mark as it often seemed to do, with vicious kicks. The girl was outnumbered and could not hold out much longer against her attackers.

“Hauk! There’s Kelida! Get her and make for the gatehouse!”

Stanach hefted his sword in his left hand for a better grip and nodded once to his thane. “I’ve got your back, Hornfel.”

Stanach was the only defense he would have, but Hornfel thought it would be enough. He ran for the gatehouse.

Piper explored the boundaries of his netherworld as often as he could and found, each time, that he was able to extend himself a little farther than the time before. It was not so much a matter of being able to go farther as it was a matter of being able to know farther. He was bounded by no sense of dimension now, no forward or back, no up or down. He could hear what his companions could hear and more; he could hear the thoughts of those around him.

It was how he became aware that, though they thought they were, Lavim, Tyorl, and the rangers were not alone in the defile. The soaring rock walls of the narrow defile formed a perfect channel for the smoke, a chamber to carry and magnify the roar and snap of the fire raging along the sides of the mountain below and above them. Tyorl cursed bitterly.

The air was already thick with smoke, heavy and black, reeking of burning, clogging his lungs. Tears streamed down his face as the smoke burned his eyes raw.

Tyorl wondered if Piper were still reading his mind, then laughed mirthlessly. Finn would say it was better to wonder if he were out of his mind for depending upon the guide work of a ghost.

Somewhere ahead, unseen but known by their deep, wracking coughs, Kembal and Finn ran scout. Lavim, following behind, made no sound but for a light wheezing.

Tyorl did not like the sound of that reedy wheezing. When he turned to check on the kender’s progress, he knew at once that Lavim was not going to make it to the end of this defile without help.

Tyorl caught his arm to stop and steady him. He went down on his heels beside Lavim. “We’ve no time to rest, Lavim. Let me help you.”

Lavim shook his head. “No,” he gasped, “I’m fine, Tyorl, really, I am.”

He was nothing like “fine.” The soot blackening his face did not hide its grayish pallor, nor did the smoke-stung tears disguise the dullness of his eyes. The dirty, weighted air seemed to get only so far into his lungs before he coughed it out again.

“Lavim, please.” He took the old kender’s shoulders in a gentle but firm grip. “Please. I don’t have time to argue. Now, climb up. Piggyback it will have to be until we can find our way to better air.”

Lavim shook his head, his cracked, dry lips thinned to a tight line of both stubbornness and wounded pride. “I can make it, Tyorl. I—”

Something cut loose inside Tyorl and it snapped painfully hard, like a whip lashing.

“Don’t argue!”

In that moment, he did not see Lavim, stunned to silence and staring at him with wide green eyes. He saw the faces of all the people who had become lost to him, snatched away by the cold hands of death and war. Hauk and Kelida.

The companions he’d fought beside in the spring, dead now and only raw, naked bones fleshed by nothing but his memories.

Young Lehr who had challenged the black dragon and died for it. Mule-stubborn Stanach!

Aye, and the mage Piper.

I walk with ghosts!

“No more!” he shouted, his voice cracking hard in his dry throat. He saw Lavim flinch and hardly understood why, so caught was he in the tide of fear and grief washing through him. “Listen to me, Lavim! No more!”

Tyorl saw his white-knuckled grip on the kender’s shoulders and realized dimly that it must surely hurt. Though he tried to relax his grasp, he could not. He did not know how to do anything but what he was doing: hold the kender in such a grip that not even death could snatch him away. Lavim squirmed, and then, with a sure and fine instinct, held still. He reached up and covered the elf’s hands with his own. Nodding slowly, as though suddenly he understood something, Lavim found a smile.

“All right, Tyorl. All right. I guess I could use a rest. Piggyback it is. But we’d better hurry or we’ll lose Finn.”

His arms around Tyorl’s neck, his legs around his waist, Lavim tried to settle his weight as evenly as he could. Probably, he thought, I’m not really very heavy.

He’s thinking you weigh about as much as a half-starved child, Lavim.

“Aye, well, the part about being half-starved is right.”

Tyorl looked around. “What?”

“Piper says we’re almost there.”

I did not. But you’re right, we are. You can tell him for me that I haven’t lost my mind, or my way. Just another mile down the defile and we’ll be at Northgate.

“Just another mile, Tyorl. I can—”

And don’t offer to walk. Helping you is about the only thing he can do now to make any difference. So he thinks. Let him help.

“I can really use the rest, thanks.” Lavim sighed. “Piper says to tell you that he hasn’t lost his mind, or his way.”

He felt the elf’s surprise in an involuntary hitching of his breath. When he spoke, Tyorl’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to stop reading my thoughts.”

“Sometimes,” Lavim said, “I know what you mean.”

Piper wasn’t quiet long. Lavim had no more than settled into the uncomfortable rhythm of Tyorl’s gait—like a three-legged mountain pony who limps on one of ’em, he thought—when Piper interrupted his thoughts.

Dragon!

“Dragon!” Lavim yelped.

“Dragon,” Tyorl demanded, “where?”

On the mountain!

“On the mountain!” The old kender scrambled down from Tyorl’s back, fumbling for his dagger and calling for the rangers. “Finn! Kem! Dragon on the mountain!”

Tyorl snatched Lavim’s arm and his attention. “Where on the mountain? Where, Lavim?”

Lavim shuddered and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, caught between Tyorl’s questions and Piper’s answers. He did his best to sort them out, but his head seemed to be filled with the confusing echoes of Piper’s voice, his own thoughts, and the demands of Tyorl and the rangers. Talking to everyone at once and feeling like he was talking to himself, Lavim tried to answer. “Where? Tyorl, on the peaks … high … behind the crest of the mountain … What? What are you saying? All right! All right!”

As from a great distance, the kender heard Finn mutter something and Tyorl answer. Lavim clutched the elf’s arm, his heart pounding hard now, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “He’s going to kill the Hylar’s thane! That fellow that Stanach was always talking about!”

“Who, Lavim? What are you talking about, and where is the dragon?”

Lavim shook his head hard to clear it. “The dragon is on the mountain, behind the peaks over Thorbardin. There’s a mage, a dwarf, and he’s going to kill Stanach’s thane. He’s thinking about it now, Tyorl. He’s going to do it soon—and—and there’s going to be a battle or something.

“Stanach’s there! And Kelida!”

Stunned, Tyorl could do nothing but stare. It was Finn who spoke.

“Kender, what are you talking about? Stanach and the girl are dead.”

Lavim turned to Tyorl, tugging hard on the elf’s arm.

“Tyorl, Piper knows what he’s talking about. It’s happening now—what Stanach’s been afraid about all along!”

Tyorl did not doubt the veracity of Piper’s report. He looked around them, along the smoky channel of the defile and at the shadows gathering high on the mountainside. The shadows of a dragon and war. He sensed Finn’s disbelief and confusion.

“Lavim,” he said, slowly, carefully, “calm down now. Ask Piper if it is really happening now.”

No, but soon.

Lavim shook his head. “Not now—but soon. Tyorl, we have to get—”

“Where are Stanach and Kelida?”

“In Thorbardin. They’re there, Tyorl, with—” Lavim cocked his head, listening to Piper’s soundless words. His eyes went wide with amazement.

“They’re with Hauk. He’s all right! Piper says we’re real close to Northgate now. Just another quarter mile down the defile. We could get there in time, Tyorl, maybe.”

Finn snorted. “Aye, maybe. Maybe we’ll miss our way. Tyorl, the smoke is so thick now we can’t see a yard ahead. Chances are very good that we’ll miss the gate completely.”

Lavim answered quickly. “Oh, no, we won’t miss it. The defile becomes a ledge right in front of the gate, and it’s real narrow. Five feet wide, maybe. We couldn’t miss that.”

Finn stared at the kender as though not certain if he was joking. “We’d better not, eh? It’s a thousand feet to the valley below. What does your ghost say about that?”

Nothing could have been more innocent than Lavim’s expression then.

“He says you’d better not miss your footing. He says you probably won’t want to be caught outside the gate in case the dragon notices us, so we’d better get going.”

Rage coursed through Realgar the way the guyll fyr tore through the valley below Northgate. His attack on Hornfel had failed! Like a bloody haze across his vision, fury clouded everything. He heard nothing but his own raving thoughts and was only dimly aware of the groans of the dying, his own guard and the Daewar who had defended Hornfel, as distant whispers. Then, cold and black, Darknight’s mental voice growled from the heights above Thorbardin. Realgar heard that bad-tempered growling as a deep rumbling in his mind and grabbed it. The Theiwar slipped, staggering, into the language of the mind.

Are you ready!

Aye, ready. I am hungry and I smell blood.

Realgar smiled then. Patience, my friend. There will be food enough for you soon. You’ll have your pick of the Hylar’s kin.

Darknight subsided. Thin wisps of its longing drifted through Realgar’s soul and twined with his own.

Realgar ran his thumb along Stormblade’s guards, feeling the blade’s red heart of fire as a wild song in his own heart. The great hall was still now and, but for the groans of the dying and wounded, quiet. New blood stained the cracked and shattered paving stones of the court, spattered the walls and broken columns. He counted twenty dead from among his own guard, thirty from Hornfel’s defenders.

He had not killed all of them. Realgar cursed bitterly. He should have killed the two humans, should have made certain that Hammerfell’s apprentice was well and truly dead!

Aye, Hammerfell’s apprentice, he was the one who had fouled the coup. Without his aid, the two humans would still be in the Deep Warrens, dark-blind and secure until Realgar could finish his business with them. Without that damned stripling of an apprentice to interfere, Hornfel would not now be holed up in the gatehouse.

Realgar closed his eyes and breathed deeply, seeking a calm place within where he might think. Slowly it came, and with it came an ordering of his thoughts. With order came a solution.

Though twenty of his own men were dead, there still remained six, uninjured and, by the look of them, eager to avenge the deaths of their comrades. Though they were not enough to rush and take the gatehouse, there was an easy way to increase their ranks. It would take time, but not so much that Hornfel and his three defenders would become so emboldened as to try for a renewed engagement in the hall. Soon, he thought, soon he’ll tire of his bolt hole. There is no way out of it. The whole of the two Guards of Watch are dead, his own guards are dead. Now, there is no way for him to send for aid. Realgar laughed aloud. In short order, anyone who might think to aid Hornfel would be busy fleeing the fire of revolution.

Secure in the knowledge that the thousand-foot drop to the valley below the Northgate wall would keep Hornfel tightly trapped—and if it did not, Darknight would!—Realgar called a guard to him.

“Five squads, I think, to the Northgate. Move them fast.”

The guard ran, ducking back into the North Hall of Justice and into secret passages beneath the ruined temple. There were Theiwar ready to attack the Klar city. Among them he would find the derro to fill his thane’s need.

Realgar stroked the flat of Stormblade’s bloody blade.

Hornfel listened to the final cries of the dying. Here in the gatehouse, he could not tell whether those cries were made by friends or enemies. Muscles quivering with the exhaustion of a battle’s aftermath, his lungs thick with the encroaching smoke of the guyll fyr, Hornfel leaned against the wide shaft of the huge, ancient gate mechanism. It hardly mattered whose cries they were. They were the cries of the dying. Treacherous Theiwar or Gneiss’ faithful warriors, they were dwarves.

He shuddered. Whether or not they chose to acknowledge the fact, they were kin. And kin had raised steel against kin, as they had in the Dwarfgate Wars.

Then, he thought bitterly, they were fighting for the right to eat. Today, we fight for the right to rule.

The sword Realgar wielded was the Kingsword. Hornfel had never seen Stormblade before today. Fire-hearted steel and blazing sapphires, Stormblade had cut through Gneiss’s warriors like a scythe through wheat. The Kingsword had come back to Thorbardin.

Behind him he heard the restless pacing of the hungry-eyed human warrior they called Hauk. He was well named. In battle he struck with a raptor’s instinct to kill and kill fast, a hawk’s wildfire in his eyes. The girl, possessed of a starveling’s thin, pale face, they called Kelida. Hornfel wondered who had named her and if they had known that if they softened the d in her name she would be known as Wanderer in dwarven speech. Kelye dtha: the one who wanders.

A hand, thick with bloody bandaging, touched Hornfel’s shoulder lightly. He looked up and met the eyes of a son of Clarm Hammerfell, black, and flecked with blue lights.

Hornfel sighed. “I owe you my life.”

“You’d best not take an accounting, Hornfel Thane, until we find a way out of here.”

“Sound enough advice, young Stanach.”

Stanach crooked a smile. Bitter though it was, it softened the harsh, red line of a knife’s trail.

“Aye. According to our restless Hauk, we’re neatly trapped and only have to wait for the hunters to finish us,” Stanach said. “And according to you, Thane?”

“Me, I think he’s right. The only way out of here is into the great hall or out the gate. We can’t fly and we’re only four. You know that Realgar is calling up more warriors even now. I say if the hunters want us they’ll have to come in and get us. If they do, let them make their peace with Reorx.

“They’ll have to earn their prey, those hunters. If we suffer a lack of numbers, we have all the weapons we want; this is a guard hall as well as a gatehouse.”

Stanach nodded solemnly.

“Wait.” Hornfel drew a short breath as though reluctant to ask the question. “Kyan Red-axe and Piper?”

“Their cairns are in the Outlands, Thane,” Stanach said simply. He needed to say no more. Mountain dwarves know that there is no bleaker way to describe a death.

“Go arm that girl with something more suitable than a dagger,” Hornfel said softly. Then his voice hardened. “No mail or helm of ours will fit Hauk, but there may be some to fit her. See if you can find something for us as well. Realgar may find us few, but he’ll find us ready.”

Kelye dtha. One who wanders. Dressed in a cast off elven hunting costume and a borrowed dwarven mail shirt too big in the shoulders and too short at the waist, Kelida shifted from one foot to the other seeking a balance for the new weight of the mail.

The west corridor of the gatehouse was apportioned into guards’ quarters. Spare, comfortless bunks were built into the back walls, racks of spears, crossbows, and swords lined the side walls. On either side of the door were coffers filled with quarrels for the bows.

Little sunlight leaked into the stone-walled room from the gate, though the air was thick with ashy scent of smoke.

Guyll fyr, Stanach thought. He’d seen the blaze from the gate, a great sea of fire. With only the thin ledge of the wall between himself and the thousand-foot drop into the burning valley, Stanach had felt that he was standing at the edge of the world.

Stanach shook his head as Hauk fitted a glittering steel helm on Kelida’s head. The nose guard gave her trouble, crossing down into her line of vision. She made a face something like a grimace, almost like a sheepish smile.

“Lyt chwaer, look beyond the nose guard, the way you’d look beyond your hand when you shade your eyes from the sun. Try not to see the guard.”

She nodded, the gesture awkward with the helm’s unaccustomed weight. “I feel foolish, Stanach. Like a child playing at dress-up.”

With a gentleness Stanach had not seen in him before, Hauk adjusted the helm and stroked Kelida’s face, lifting her chin to kiss her lightly. Stanach saw her shoulders tremble, looked away, and said, “Foolish or not, Kelida, this is one of those times when the costume is dictated by the event. I would be happier if you would take a sword.”

Kelida, eyes bright, thumbed the hilt of her dagger. “No. I can’t use a sword, Stanach. I can use the dagger. Sort of.”

The phrase held an echo of Lavim’s equivocating. Stanach smiled in spite of himself.

“Aye,” Hauk said, “and failing that, there are those who have cause to regret getting in the way of he^ kick.” He pushed her gently toward the door. “Kelida, take some swords from the rack and bring them to Hornfel. Choose the best, for he is thane of the Hylar. Stanach and I will make do with what remains.”

When she was gone, Hauk dropped to a seat on one of the hard bunks. Whatever tenderness had been in his expression when he spoke to Kelida had vanished as though it had never been.

“Stanach, we’re going to die here.”

“I wouldn’t put odds on anything else.”

Hauk smiled grimly. “Neither would I. I hear you call her lyt chwaer. What does it mean?”

“It’s dwarven for ‘little sister.’ “

“Good, if you mean it.”

Stanach looked around then. Aye, he thought, she taught me how to mean it. “A dwarf does not claim kin lightly.”

A ghost of a smile lighted Hauk’s face. “I’m glad. This is a dirty game we’re engaged in, friend Stanach. She goes out there to your thane with a warrior’s intent, but not with a warrior’s skill. It won’t matter to those she fights against. She’s going to be one of the first to fall, and you know it. Is there a way out of here for her? A place to run to, to hide?”

Stanach shook his head. “The only thing she could do is bolt herself in here.”

When Hauk’s expression told him that he thought this a good idea, the dwarf added, “You’d never get her to agree to do it. I’ll tell you this about her, Hauk: she survived a dragon raid on her home, the occupation of Long Ridge, and a dragon flight across the Plains of Death. She is not going to be easily convinced that she must hide in here now. And I don’t think you should try. She deserves that respect.”

Out in the corridor Hornfel called softly. “It’s time, Stanach. They’re here, and they are many.”