The Dwarves (76 page)

“The battle with the golem and his master drained my last reserves of magic. There’s nothing left.” Andôkai’s eyes scanned
the crowds bitterly. “Had I known what awaited us, I would have held back, but even then…”

“Let’s go home,” Goïmgar implored them. He turned to Gandogar. “Your Majesty —”

He stopped short, silenced by a look from Tungdil. “We can’t go home now,” he said. “We’ll get to the furnace or die trying.”
He squared his shoulders stubbornly. “We’re Girdlegard’s last line of resistance. No one else is going to make it past this
hall.”

“Then it’s decided.” To Goïmgar’s horror, Gandogar gave his assent. “We’ll stay and fight together.” He raised his double-bladed
ax.

“We’re dwarves!” thundered Ireheart, who had finally found his voice. Tucking in his head, he squared his shoulders and took
a deep breath. “We never give in,” he bellowed at the beasts, beating his axes together until the smelting works echoed with
the noise. “Do you hear that, you worthless scoundrels? It’s the sound of your deaths!”

Tungdil offered a silent prayer to Vraccas. “There’s nothing for it but to fight our way through.” He looked into the faces
of his companions. “There’s a good chance that not all of us will make it. What matters is that the right ones survive.” He
glanced at Balyndis. “I’m expendable. I’ll gladly give my life if it means Girdlegard and its peoples have a future.”

Furgas’s eyes filled with tears as he kissed Narmora passionately: She was among those who had to survive at all costs. She
stroked his cheek tenderly.

“One to a hundred,” was Boïndil’s assessment of their respective numbers. “It could be worse.” This time he blew the bugle,
sounding the ancient dwarven call to war. It was answered by hostile shouts. Boïndil glanced at his companions. “Race you
to the other side.”

A
fter five hundred paces, they had fought themselves into an impasse, unable to advance or retreat.

Surrounded on all sides by the foulest of creatures, the company stood shoulder to shoulder and faced the prospect of fighting
until their arms were too heavy to deflect the deadly blows.

Worse still, they had lost Rodario in the first ten paces. He had been swallowed among the mass of orcish bodies and by the
time Tungdil noticed his absence, the impresario was nowhere to be seen.

With Rodario, they lost the dragon fire with which the furnace was to be lit.

We’re so close now, Vraccas.
“We need to go back,” he shouted over his shoulder. “We’ve lost Rodario and the only torch.”

Andôkai was about to reply when roaring flames shot toward the ceiling.

“Get back,” a voice rasped imperiously from the door. “Let me deal with them.”

The noise stopped instantly. In a flash, a path opened through the rabble, the beasts drawing away to let their master pass.
A corpulent figure in malachite robes strode toward them, extinguishing the last spark of hope that Tungdil had been kindling
with dwarven obstinacy.

“Nôd’onn.” An awed whisper swept through the ranks of beasts, who were staring at the magus in fascination, some bowing or
falling to their knees.

“I thought I would find the villains here,” he rasped, his voice giving way to a cough. A bright red globule of saliva spattered
onto the face of a bögnil whose tongue shot out hungrily and licked it away. “I sent my servants here to ambush you. I wanted
to have the pleasure of destroying you myself.”

An orc leaped forward, whipping out his sword. “Let me do it for you, Master,” he said slavishly.

“Silence, ingrate!” The magus stretched a hand. There was a flash of light and flames shot out of his fingers, setting the
orc ablaze. The beast staggered backward, stumbling in agony until at last he lay still. “Out of my way,” commanded Nôd’onn.
“If you crowd me, I can’t destroy them without destroying you.” His pale face was almost entirely obscured by a cowl, with
only a chink of white skin visible through the folds of cloth.

“I’ll do what I can,” Andôkai whispered to Tungdil. “The rest of you run.” She pushed her fair hair back from her severe visage,
seized her sword, and prepared to strike. All of a sudden she stopped.

Tungdil sensed her hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

She seemed puzzled. “I can’t see his staff. Nôd’onn would never be parted with it, no more than I would go anywhere without
my sword. It must be an illusion.”

“Ye gods! It’s Rodario!” hissed Furgas, trying not to blow his friend’s cover by looking too relieved.

Tungdil stared in disbelief. The impresario’s transformation was as complete as it had been on the stage, but now he was playing
to an audience who would kill him and eat him if his performance was anything less than faultless.
How does he do it?

“As for you,” the sham magus rasped at the company, “you shall suffer. But first I shall be merciful: You may advance to the
forge and touch the hallowed door. Only then will my servants rip you to pieces. Is that not exquisitely cruel?” The beasts
cheered excitedly.

This time the crowd parted on the other side of the company, allowing them to proceed through a narrow corridor toward the
locked door. The sham magus followed behind them, swaying, coughing, and whipping his followers into a frenzy as he threatened
the company with increasingly diabolical fates.

They were ten paces from the door when the impresario swayed more vigorously than usual and stumbled.

“Stop!” Tungdil grabbed Narmora and Furgas before they could rush to his aid. “You’ll give the game away for all of us.”

The costumed Rodario struggled upright. A helmet rolled out from beneath his robes and his left leg seemed suddenly a good
deal shorter. Without the makeshift stilt that had allowed him to tower majestically at the real magus’s height, the fakery
was obvious. It took the beasts a few moments to fathom the situation.

“That’s not Nôd’onn!” An orc rushed toward him, brandishing his sword, as the company closed ranks around the hobbling Rodario
and the battle recommenced.

“What have you done with the torch?” demanded Tungdil.

Clutching his side, the impresario coughed up another mouthful of blood; this time he was wounded and not just relying on
his props. Even so, he managed a smile as he held up a small lantern. The wick was burning brightly. “No self-respecting magus
would dream of carrying a torch.”

Their courage restored, they fought their way more determinedly than ever toward the door, while the orcs pushed aside their
smaller colleagues and attacked with full force. They were determined to put an end to the indefatigable men and dwarves.

Every member of the company was struck by an ax, sword, or mace. Some of the wounds were more serious than others, but the
dwarves stood their ground. Tungdil focused on deciphering the runic password that would gain them entry to the forge. For
once his knowledge failed him.

“I can’t read the runes,” he cried despairingly to Andôkai. “It must be a riddle.”

“How awfully inconvenient,” gasped Rodario. He clutched the door, trying to hold himself up as his legs gave way. “I don’t
expect my death to trouble you greatly, but remember this: Girdlegard has lost a luminary of the stage.” He closed his eyes
and slumped to the ground, suffocating the lantern as he fell. The flame flickered dangerously.

“No!” murmured Gandogar, who had been watching the dying actor out of the corner of his eye. “We can’t let the flame go out!”
As he turned to save the lantern, an enormous orc seized his chance and waded in. With a terrible shout he thrust his notched
sword toward the king’s back.

“Your Majesty!” Goïmgar realized midshout that the warning would come too late. Without thinking, he threw himself — shield
first and head ducked — into the path of the blade.

With a high-pitched ring the sword struck the edge of the shield, forcing it down. The dwarf’s head and neck appeared above
the rim.

The orc bared its teeth, expelling a foul rush of breath, which swept through Goïmgar’s beard. The beast’s long blade settled
on the shield, using its contours to draw a perfect line from right to left.

Goïmgar thrust his blade forward, but it was no match for the orcish sword. His stumpy weapon shattered, shards of metal jangling
to the floor, and the sword continued, cleaving through skin, flesh, sinew, and bone.

As the artisan’s head fell to the right, his twitching body toppled left, brushing against Balyndis, who let out a furious
howl and swung her ax with fresh savagery.

Gandogar turned in time to see Goïmgar die in his stead. Even as the head hit the floor, the flame died, a thin wisp of smoke
snaking its way to the ceiling. “May Tion take you!” Gandogar raised his ax and split the murderer from skull to chest.

With two of their number dead and the dragon fire extinguished, the company struggled against the heaviness in their arms.
Their resistance was weakening.

“Did you get us this far in order to destroy us, Vraccas?”

Tungdil shouted accusingly as he drove his ax between the jaws of an orc.

At that moment there was a welcome grinding noise and the right-hand panel of the door swung open.

T
he deep tones of a bugle rang out, echoing the melody that Boïndil had sounded at the beginning of their attack. Stocky figures
streamed through the doors and threw themselves on the beasts. Their axes and hammers raged mercilessly among the hordes.

It took Tungdil a good few moments to realize that their rescuers were dwarves.

One of their number, a warrior whose polished armor outshone everything save the diamonds on his belt, nodded toward the open
door.

“Hurry, we can’t hold them back for long,” he bellowed, his deep voice sending shivers down Tungdil’s spine.

He was more used to seeing the warrior’s features cast in vraccasium and gold, but he had encountered the visage often enough
during their long march through the fifthling kingdom to know exactly who he was: Giselbert Ironeye, father of Giselbert’s
folk.

“I thought you were…”

“We’ll talk later,” the ancient dwarf told him. “Just get your company inside.”

Tungdil gave the order, Furgas hoisted Rodario to his shoulders, and Gandogar carried Goïmgar’s corpse. As soon as the group
was safely in the forge, Giselbert’s dwarves abandoned their attack and slammed the door behind them. A moment later there
was a furious hammering and pounding, but blind rage alone was not enough to breach the door.

“Welcome,” Giselbert said solemnly. “Whoever you may be, I hope your coming is a good omen.”

There were ten of them in all: ashen-faced dwarves with absent eyes that made them seem vaguely trancelike. Each was clad
in lavishly splendid mail and their beards reached to their belts. Determination, a Vraccas-given trait of their race, was
stamped on every face.

“My warriors and I have been fighting Tion’s minions since the fall of my kingdom eleven hundred cycles ago,” said Giselbert,
who seemed the most venerable, the most majestic of them all. “We are the last of the fifthlings, killed by the älfar and
resurrected by the Perished Land. As you can see, we chose not to serve it.”

Tungdil shot a quick glance at Bavragor, who was covered from head to toe in every imaginable shade of green. Orc and bögnil
blood was dripping from his hands and splashing to the floor.

“It takes a lot to kill an undead dwarf, but most of our companions were eventually slain. The rest of us retreated to the
furnace, our folk’s most treasured relic.” He held Tungdil’s gaze.

“And you’re sure you don’t hate other dwarves and want to murder every living creature?”

Giselbert shook his head. “We taught ourselves not to. In eleven hundred cycles you can learn to stifle the pestilent hatred.”
His eyes shifted to the door. “The creatures used to content themselves with guarding the entrance, but during the last few
orbits they’ve laid siege to the doors. I daresay the change has something to do with you.”

“Very likely.” Tungdil ran through the introductions and gave a hasty account of the threat facing Girdlegard and the reason
for their coming. “But it’s all been in vain. We were supposed to light the furnace with dragon fire, but the flame went out
while we were fighting by the door.”

Giselbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and a kindly smile spread across the creases and wrinkles of his ancient face. “You
are wrong to give up hope. The fire is burning as fiercely as ever.” He stopped and listened. “The furnace has always been
under our protection. Vraccas must have known we would need it one day.” He and his companions stepped aside to reveal the
rest of the chamber.

The hall, fifty paces long by thirty wide, boasted twenty abandoned hearths, lined up in two rows, and four times as many
anvils, arranged around an enormous furnace ablaze with fierce white flames.

Countless pillars supported the ceiling eighty paces above and the walls were filled with neat rows of tools: hammers, tongs,
chisels, files, and all manner of implements needed for the blacksmith’s craft. Fine sand covered the floor and the upper
reaches of the chamber were coated in a thick layer of soot. A stone stairway led to the flue.

The bellows and grindstones were attached to metal chains that ran through a system of rollers and pulleys to the ceiling,
where they looped through the rock. Tungdil was instantly reminded of the lifting apparatus in the underground network.

He found himself imagining the smithy in its heyday when Girdlegard’s finest weapons and most splendid armor had been forged
by Giselbert’s dwarves. He breathed out in relief and prayed to Vraccas to excuse his lack of faith. “That’s the best news
we’ve had since Ogre’s Death,” he said cheerfully.
We’re nearly there. And to think I’d resigned myself to failure…

“He’s alive!” exclaimed Furgas. “His heart is beating! Rodario’s alive!”

“Let me take a look at him.” Andôkai swept back her hair, knelt beside the wounded impresario, and inspected his wound. “He’s
had a blow to the head and a slight gouge to the side. It’s nothing too serious,” she announced, cleaning the afflicted area
with Bavragor’s brandy to stave off infection.