by Elliott Kay
“You say you aren’t a cleric?”
“No. I’m not. But I am just useful enough to have around despite my heresy.”
She nodded, thinking. “So where is your hearth?”
War Cloud made a casual, sweeping gesture to the others. “On the move.”
* * *
She was used to wake-ups with more kicking and insults. War Cloud roused her with nothing rougher than pulling the rags off one of the glowstones at the end of his watch. The dim light and sounds of his movement were enough to wake her. He made no effort to wake anyone, but rather returned to kneel before the hearth.
Scars and Yargol remained where they lay, still sleeping deeply. DigDig was still out cold in the bed. Closer to Shady Tooth, Teryn rolled over in her blanket on the floor, her eyes fluttering open. When their gaze met, the bugbear tilted her head toward the hearth. “What’s he doing?” she whispered.
“Meditation, I think. Or prayer. Maybe both,” came Teryn’s hushed answer.
“Medi-what?”
“It’s a way to clear the mind,” Teryn explained. “You concentrate on one thing and push all else away. Emotions, stray thoughts. It helps focus. Magicians and clerics do it to renew their magic, as I understand it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We talked last night about his faith,” she added.
“I heard.” Shady Tooth flicked one of her catlike ears. “We’re all in the same room.”
“Ah. Sorry if we kept you awake,” said Teryn. Shady Tooth frowned, prompting a similar reaction from Teryn. “What?”
“All the ‘sorry’ stuff. Is that normal for humans? War Cloud and Scars do it, too. They’ve lived among humans. You say ‘sorry’ for any little thing.”
“It’s part of being polite. Considerate,” Teryn elaborated when Shady Tooth’s frown only deepened. “Part of showing you care for another’s feelings.”
“You care about every little shit thing like waking someone up?”
“Big things matter, too.”
“Sure, but you’re saying sorry for anything.”
“I suppose it is a difference between us, then. How do your people make up for little things?” Teryn ventured.
“We expect others to suck it up.”
Teryn pressed her lips together, eyebrows rising. “Oh.”
“We don’t worry about it unless someone demands it. And we learn whose demands matter by seeing who can back them up.”
“I see,” said Teryn.
“What did you think of what he said?” Shady Tooth asked.
The human glanced to War Cloud. “Er…is this…he’s right there.”
“Yeah, but he’s focusing or whatever, right? He isn’t listening.”
“It made a certain amount of sense,” Teryn said hesitantly. “He’s not wrong about the other gods of war. About their priests and, ah, kings and such. It’s all used to motivate people.”
“You stop to think maybe his shit is used to ‘motivate,’ too?”
“That’s sort of what religions do.”
“Uh-huh,” grunted Shady Tooth. “Not sure how that’s good for anyone but the priests and their masters.”
“You know he can hear you even if he’s meditating?” Then a second thought occurred to Teryn. “Isn’t this also heresy?”
Shady Tooth shrugged. “Does any of that matter?”
“It should matter to you, Shady Tooth” said War Cloud. He stood from the hearth, walking between the two. He sounded unbothered. “Only you should decide it for yourself.”
He stepped past Yargol, who sat cross-legged against the wall with his hooded head bowed in seemingly much the same effort as War Cloud at the hearth. The only difference Shady Tooth noticed was the open book in Yargol’s lap. The magician didn’t look up or speak.
War Cloud loomed over the bed and its occupant. “How do you feel, DigDig?”
“Still hurts,” said the goblin. “Got up to piss earlier. Hurt so bad. Almost slept in the privy.”
“Let’s see if we can make this better. Hold still.”
War Cloud pulled aside DigDig’s little blanket and the back of his old tunic. Even with Yargol’s magic to cleanse the bandages and DigDig’s clothes before they slept, the fabric around the wound had clearly sopped up more blood in the night. War Cloud gently pulled the bandages away, revealing ugly black blisters that would surely bring further complications—if they hadn’t already.
Unconcerned, War Cloud held his rough and bestial hands over the wound. “Dastia, bring this fighter back to the battle,” he murmured. “Bring him back so he might bring us all home.”
Nothing happened. Shady Tooth saw no flash of light or crackle of magic. She wondered if he only meant to get DigDig back on his feet with hopeful thoughts or some other bullshit. Then DigDig inhaled sharply. War Cloud’s hands came away from the wound—a wound that wasn’t there anymore.
“What happened?” DigDig asked, reaching around to touch his lower back. “What did you do?” He rolled over and sat up, looking to War Cloud in shock.
“Nothing more than you heard,” said War Cloud. “I asked Dastia to heal your wounds. They were probably infected on top of everything else. She took care of that, too.”
“How do you feel now, DigDig?” asked Teryn.
“Good!” DigDig answered. He frowned. “Hungry.” He perked up with wide eyes again. “Good!”
War Cloud looked back to Teryn and Shady Tooth. It was hard to tell given his snout and the rest of his animal features, but he might have given a smirk. “As I said. My heresies have their uses.”
Chapter Six
Light from the glowstone reached no more than thirty or forty feet ahead. Scars kept it low in his left hand, making an effort to walk steadily and reduce the dance of shadows as they moved. One shadow remained more or less constant as Shady Tooth ranged ahead at the edge of the light. The rest scattered and stretched in every direction as the light source moved.
As in the level above, these hallways ran past small apartment homes of commoner families. Unlike the upper level, this one held signs of violence and destruction everywhere. The walls bore cracks, craters, and ancient soot. Broken doors dangled from hinges or lay flat in their entryways. Windows fared no better. Debris littered the floor, including everything from bits of masonry to broken housewares—and bodies. Many bodies.
Almost all had decayed to skeletons, though many such were still encased in armor. Others lay in heaps under aged clothes. Countless dwarf bodies were nearly matched in number by goblins of every breed. Scattered remains here and there along the way looked to be humans, elves, and the occasional orc. Almost all of the fallen were dressed for battle.
“Is this it?” Scars asked, his voice only a low murmur. They were free to speak as long as they were no louder than their footsteps. “Are we looking at the First Darkness?”
“This is slaughter on top of slaughter,” said War Cloud, walking with his blade in hand.
“I believe this mess is from a later attempt to retake the stronghold,” Yargol surmised. “The bodies are old and the dust is thick, but no more so than the level above. Yet much of the damage to the hall seems older. And there are others here besides the dwarves. It fits with what I have read of Thrandor’s history.”
“How much have you read?” asked Teryn. She crept beside Yargol with her bow in one hand and an arrow ready to go. “And what explains this?”
“Zuck recovered some books when we established control over the upper levels. The library and other higher chambers held out briefly during the First Darkness. They were also usually among the first areas taken in the efforts to reclaim the hall in the years that followed. The dwarves and their allies often left records behind when they were repelled. I suspect this was the first attempt, or the backlash to it. When the First Darkness came, there was no time to enlist allies from the surface. Humans and elves came with later efforts. Even one of the neighboring orc settlements joined in for the earliest attempts.”
&n
bsp; “I keep expecting these bodies to get up and attack us,” said Teryn. “Suppose they would have already if they could, though.”
“War Cloud has a particular sense for the undead,” said Scars. “Besides, Shady Tooth knows what she’s doing. DigDig, too. They can spot that sort of trouble.”
“How well does DigDig know the ruins? How far down has he gone?” she wondered.
“He hasn’t explored everything, or he’d be able to tell us that,” Scars answered. “He’s gone as far as he has gone. We don’t know how deep the stronghold goes.”
“Deep,” said Yargol. “The caverns ran deep when Clan Ironhall first settled here. They thought their gods had carved it out for them as a new home. Some of the mining ran even deeper than the natural tunnels.”
“Mines?” Teryn asked. “I thought this was a holy city.”
Yargol chuckled. “It’s a dwarven holy city. Of course there are mines. As for its holy nature, a few ancient scraps talk about rumors of ruins of the World Before down here.”
“The World Before?” asked War Cloud.
“It’s the myth of another civilized era before this one. An entire world, all of it underground, where the first dwarves battled the first dragons and the first races of goblins. A very dwarven myth,” Yargol added with a wry note. “The elves must be offended whenever it comes up.”
“Yeah, but when does a dwarf ever let go of his-story?” asked War Cloud.
Scars stopped in his tracks. “No. No puns. We are not doing puns in this crew.”
“I think we should vote on it,” said War Cloud.
“I think we should vote on eating you,” grunted Teryn. Stunned, the others turned to look at her. She blushed. “I’m sorry, is it too soon for me to make those jokes?”
Scars snorted out a low laugh. Yargol brought one hand into the hood of his robe and turned away, letting out a noise that sounded like amusement.
“Little bit,” said War Cloud.
“It’s not,” said Scars. He looked to War Cloud again. “No puns in this crew.” He continued on down the hallway.
Up ahead, Shady Tooth lingered at a hallway intersection until the light of their glowstone touched her. Debris piled up at the center of the space, with carts and stones gathered like a hurried barricade. Remains strewn everywhere suggested its defenders couldn’t hold in the end. As the group closed in, Shady Tooth merely gestured for them to follow before turning down the right of the path.
Their new direction was wider. They’d come from a narrower path for residents into a broad lane for heavier traffic. Remains from the ancient battle lessened sharply beyond the barricade, only to pick up again a few dozen yards past. Once more, bodies lay strewn about the passage.
Scars looked on with narrowed eyes. “Huh. More dwarves here than goblins.”
“Hold on,” said Teryn. “Can we take a look at this?”
“If it’s quick. Shady Tooth will know we’ve stopped, but we need to keep up with DigDig.”
“Dwarven armor, dwarven weapons,” said War Cloud. “There’s bound to be good looting in all this if we took time to look. Something here has to fit one of us. Might even be some enchantments.”
“I’ve kept an eye out for signs of magic,” Yargol spoke up, shaking his head. “So far I have seen nothing but broken remnants. Nothing useful.”
“It’s not that. Look at this.” Teryn crouched down amid the fallen for a closer look. Arrows stuck out from most of them. “These are elven arrows.”
“In the dwarves? The elves shot the dwarves?” wondered Yargol.
“It fits. Look at how the bodies lay,” said Scars. He looked from the scene back to the barricade, now barely a shadow out of reach from his glowstone. The mob looked to have fallen in a general common path toward the intersection.
“Interesting. Treachery, perhaps? But why?” Yargol thought out loud.
“Not in the middle of a fight like this. Those elves had dwarves right beside them.”
“Unless it was a factional split,” said War Cloud.
A hiss from the darkness broke into their discussion. “We need to keep up with DigDig,” said Shady Tooth. “We don’t have time for ancient history nonsense.”
“The ancient is still the present down here,” Yargol countered. “We may find hints to what we face on this level and below.”
“My thoughts, too,” said Scars. “Go ahead. We’ll be right behind you. Teryn, she has a point. We need to go. What are you looking for?”
Gently, Teryn drew an arrow from a gap in one body’s ancient mail armor. She had to turn it to avoid getting the arrowhead caught on any piece on the way out, but its value was clear as soon as she had it free. “Silvered,” she said.
Yargol turned to searching the other bodies. He rolled one over, finding a skeleton long bereft of muscle or gore. It was easy enough to pull the arrow from the hollow eye. “This one, too,” he said. He turned the arrow around, looking it over before handing it to Teryn. “Seems to be in good shape.”
“So is this one,” said Teryn. “Can’t say I’m shocked. Scars, a couple of those ghouls in the prison were dwarves. One was even an elf. I didn’t think that could happen to elves.”
“Pretty sure it’s the elves who tell everyone it can’t happen to them,” grumbled War Cloud.
Teryn shrugged. “Sure, but does it happen this fast? Was this all from the same fight? Were these dwarves part of the army, only to be slain and then rise as ghouls against their own?”
“Or did they fall in the First Darkness and only meet their end here?” asked Yargol. “More to the point, what did they become the first time they died?”
“And was silver the only way to kill them?” Scars added, finishing his thought.
“Could be the elves brought nothing but silvered arrows if they were worried about it,” War Cloud put in. “It seems extravagant, but that’s the elves for you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Scars decided. “Grab as many as you can. Make it fast. We don’t have time to linger.”
Almost as soon as he finished speaking, he felt Shady Tooth’s hand on his shoulder again. She warned the others with a short, quiet hiss. Scars looked past her in the darkness to see a soft flash of light far down the tunnel. Though the light of their glowstone covered only a short distance, DigDig could still catch and reflect it in his mirror to signal the others.
“Quietly,” Scars warned the others, his voice dropping even lower than before. “DigDig is coming back.”
No one spoke. Teryn picked up the pace of her salvage work.
DigDig flashed his mirror again from just outside the edge of the light to identify himself before coming forward. His dark face looked grave. “Problem. Maybe trouble. Gotta go back.”
“What’s wrong?” Scars asked.
Their guide knelt at a dwarven shield long covered in dust. He drew a cross with his finger. “Intersection. Passage leads to a bridge over a big open area,” he said, lengthening one end of the line. His finger pointed to one side of the long line. “Down here: big chasm, deep hole. Fall so far you’d run out of breath screaming before you hit bottom. Down here, other side of bridge: big hall, throne room, temple, not sure. Lots of carvings in walls. More dead dwarves. Big hall ends in throne or maybe altar. Bridge looks over it. Big stairs from both ends of the bridge go down to the hall.”
“Then what’s wrong? Is the bridge unsafe?” Scars wondered.
DigDig shook his head. “Bridge is fine. Hall below is a problem. Big, dead dwarf in armor sitting on throne or altar. Got glowing eyes.”
“Aw hell,” grumbled War Cloud.
“What color?” asked Yargol.
“What difference does that make?” asked Shady Tooth.
“Blue is one kind of evil,” Yargol explained. “Red is another.”
“Green,” said DigDig.
“Shit,” War Cloud fumed.
“What?” asked Teryn.
“Really evil,” Yargol answered.
“What the
hell, DigDig?” Shady Tooth complained. “You said you know your way around.”
“Yeah, I do,” the goblin replied defensively. “Been through here a couple times. Wasn’t a big, dead dwarf with glowing eyes there before. No dwarf there at all.”
“Nor should there be,” said War Cloud. “It sounds like a temple. A throne in a dwarf temple is meant for their gods, so it’s kept empty. A body on that seat is sacrilege.”
“Scars, whatever that is, we do not want it to see us,” said Yargol. “Not even from below us or at a distance.”
“Where else do we go?” he asked, looking to their guide.
DigDig shook his head, looking grim. “Most other halls are caved in or full of traps. Worse traps than before. Only other one is close, but it leads to tombs. Never went through there.”
“And we don’t want to try it now, either,” said War Cloud.
“Damn it,” Shady Tooth fumed. “Well, what if we do get past here? What’s on the other side of that bridge?”
“Old miners’ homes,” said DigDig. He extended the line and then drew a few short intersections at the far end. “Smaller bridges back here, going over another chasm. Thinner, but it gives us more distance. Leads to old mines.”
“And how do you know these are miners’ homes?” asked Shady Tooth. “Can you read ancient dwarven runes?”
“Little bit. Picks and shovels are carved everywhere and side tunnels lead to mines, too. Got carts full of rocks in the halls. But that could all be coincidence,” the goblin went on, staring at her dryly. “Rushing to judgment, you know? Don’t want to stereotype dwarves living next to a mine with lots of mining equipment as miners. Maybe they were artists?”
Shady Tooth’s lower lip pushed its way up against the other in an intense frown. “Fine.”
“Other problem,” DigDig went on. He waved his fingers over the diagram, going from the chasm toward the chamber. “Little breeze going this way.”
“You think that’s suspicious?” wondered Teryn.
“Worried he might have smelled me,” said DigDig. “I’m clean, but I’m still alive.”
“And hungry undead can smell the living from a mile away,” muttered War Cloud.