When he got to within four paces, the wind and snow suddenly ceased to reveal a great round stone near the citadel’s stairs. The sight of it brought the big man to an abrupt halt, and he stared in wonder for a split second before the sight of something crimson caught his eye.
“Sair’n Kryl!” he shouted.
The magus, stumbling up to the stone, wheeled around to face him. Ulfilas gasped at the sight. The man’s right arm was missing from the elbow down. A river of blood was pouring from it, coating the upturned dirt in the same color as the wizard’s cloak. In his left hand, which was raised to give support to his right, he was clutching the antler that had led to Krin’s own death.
“Don’t move!” Ulfilas warned. Though the magus’s face was covered by a swath of linens, the giant could see the terror in his eyes. Eyes that seemed so very familiar to him. Eyes that, at one time, he might have trusted…even liked. “Don’t even breathe! You will pay for your treachery.”
But the strange glowing light of the stone continued to grow, to twist and swirl, until it hummed to life with an alien hiss, and another blast of frigid air. Sair’n Kryl stared at Ulfilas for several immeasurable seconds, as if he wanted to say something, then thought better of it, and dashed into the open portal. With another hiss, the rift slammed shut, sealing Ulfilas alone with nothing but his anguish, and own unavenged fury.
BRIDGE ONE
Sair’n Nanlech
Three Weeks Later
Garhetnor Bliix wiped the sweat from his eyes with a forearm, while adjusting his grip on the axe, and planting a foot up onto a step stool. He then gazed out over the makeshift fortification the magi army had hastily constructed around the base of Sair’n Nanlech. The dwarf glanced to his right, then his left, glumly surveying the fifty or so magi soldiers that wearily lined the wall barring the entrance to the mines.
Though the air was well below freezing, and the sky was gray with a gentle flurry, he broiled inside his heavy layer of furs and armor. The steady stream of sweat stung at his many cuts and lacerations, eliciting a few choice curses from the dwarf’s salty lips.
“It looks like they’re about to advance,” Ulfilas growled, nodding to the army of thousands on the other side of the battlefield.
Garhet only grunted in reply. He had no taste for words at the moment. He hadn’t, in fact, since the bounty hunter had rendezvoused with the Magi army twelve days ago. Since he had told them the gruesome fate of the son of Kraen-Lil. Garhet’s friend.
“I don’t know what the scholars are planning.” Venom dripped with the word ‘scholar’ whenever Ulf said it. “But I don’t know how we’ll be able to fend them off this time. We’re not just dealing with that pompous Roman any longer. Sair’n Kryl’s returned, and he’s brought enough Dhuna to invade the whole empire.”
Another grunt.
The big guy was correct. Until yesterday’s unexpected arrival of the traitorous magus, and his immeasurable army of dark elves, trolls, ogres, and a horde of other nightmarish Dhunafolk, the Magi had been able to defend the mines beneath the Dragon Spine with relative ease. After all, as they had marched from Madagus Keep on that fateful day a few weeks before, Calibus had traveled to Stindoln, and, though they were still grief-stricken over the loss of their missing children, nearly a hundred able-bodied men agreed to join them in freeing Behk’n Lorent’s dwarf clan from bondage. Even a handful of goblins had seen the wisdom of aligning themselves with the Magi, so that by the time they had arrived at the foothills of Sair’n Nanlech, they were nearly two hundred and fifty strong.
On the other hand, the Romans, had easily tripled their numbers, but most of the soldiers were inexperienced, and very few of them had ever encountered the likes of what they faced in Thana Pel. Dwarves. Goblins. The stuff of legends for the Roman soldiers—many of whom had been whisked away from their own rustic and superstitious villages, and conscripted into service to an emperor they had never formally recognized. And as luck would have it, the commander leading the Romans was none other than Nicholas’ ‘old friend’, Alexandrius, from Myra.
It was still unclear to the magi, just how the commander had come to Thana Pel, or who had recruited his services. But the cold, hard fact remained that he was as incompetent as he was arrogant. Even his own men despised him.
And so it was that the initial siege, and liberation of the dwarf clan, had gone easily enough. After two days, and only a handful of casualties, the Magi forces had beaten their enemy back. Then, it was only a matter of defending the mines for as long as they could.
There had been a few skirmishes here and there, but with the addition of Lorent’s clan, the Magi were more than a match for the task. That is, of course, until two days ago. Scouts, surveying the region for enemy intel, had reported back to Calibus that the Rifting Stone to the south, at Sair’n Del, had blazed to life, and that a red-robed man, and an army of Dhuna—in more numbers than the scouts could count—had marched half a day west to reconnoiter with Alexandrius in his encampment near the barrows of Thana Mog’nan.
The drums started soon after that, and hadn’t stopped beating ever since.
“Are you even listening to me?” Ulfilas huffed.
“Aye!” Garhet answered. “Yer just not sayin’ anything I don’t already know. Nor care to hear.”
“You act as though it’s over.”
“What in blazes am I supposed to think, you walkin’ tree?” Garhet tossed a piece of hard candy into his mouth with a scowl. “We’re outnumbered by an ungodly number, and an even ungodlier sort. Our leaders, the Magi, are doin’ little but yammerin’ on about strategies and tactics that have no precedent. And worst of all, our one hope had his throat slit ear to ear before disappearing into Wyndter. How, pray tell, am I supposed to act?”
Ulfilas opened his mouth to speak, but was cut short by the dwarf.
“I mean, if we had an inkling of what the Winterking really had planned with the Crown, it might help. The Magi never rightly knew. Even when they sent the lad off to his doom. Theories and postulations about how the Four Worlds might be linked together and dragons'll be reborn and such nonsense, and how the Crown was the one thing that could do it all.” He crunched down on the candy, crushing it to powder in one bite. “But why the blazes did that troll dung of a magus cut the Crown in two? For what purpose?”
“Well, it’s possible…”
“If we knew that, ye big loaf of bread, we might have a fightin’ chance. But all we know is that they want to get into the mines…near the dragons’ burial ground. It makes no sense, I tell ye! How’s a half a set of antlers gonna raise an army of dragons from the dead?”
Both men stopped debating the moment the drums changed tempo. Garhet, standing on tip-toes to stretch above the wooden-piked wall. He gazed out across the field, straining to see the army approaching in the dim purple and orange light of the setting sun.
“It’s odd they’d be marchin’ at dusk, don’t ya think?” Garhet asked.
The big man nodded. “Aye. Makes me think they’re up to something.” He turned to survey the odd rock formation known as Sair’n Nanlech—the Dragon’s Spine. As he stared, scouring for enemy forces that might be attempting to flank them, Ulfilas recalled the story the dwarf had told him upon first seeing it.
The Spine had been there since the early days, just after the Great Divide, when the last dragon, Tielsec, was said to have been killed by Blitzkryl, the mate of Nandur. Legend said that the dragon was the physical embodiment of the Serpent that led Eve and her husband Adam, astray in Eden. Once stripped of his legs by a great curse, and deprived of the indwelling of Fallen One, Lucifer, he wandered the earth for thousands of years, laying waste to the land in a fit of rage for his divine misfortune.
When the Great Divide had ripped the souls of all the dragons’ souls from the Thanaheim, Tielsec somehow remained to continue his eternal vengeance. Until, one day, when coming upon the female reindeer known as Nandur—one of Eden’s creatures, like him—he hatched a terrible
scheme. Alone in the world, Tielsec wished to be reunited with his brothers, and Nandur had the power to do just that. Being one of the Wardens of the Divide, her antlers could momentarily reunite the Thanaheim with that of the Dhunarheme, and in the process bring dragon corpse and dragon soul together again.
In the end, Tielsec had murdered Nandur, ripping the antlers from her head. He used the Crown to resurrect the other dragons, and had nearly succeeded until Blitzkryl, seeing his slain mate, went into a violent rage, and ripped the great dragon’s soul right out of his body. With the dragon’s sudden death, his machinations were undone, and the dragon souls returned to Wyndter where they once more turned the land into a frozen tundra.
But Blitzkryl, in tormented anguish over the loss of Nandur, didn’t rest there. He gathered all the bones of the dragons into one place, cast them deep into the earth, and covered them for all time in hallowed ground. Over the centuries, the bones mysteriously grew in size, jutting up from the earth in strange, alien spires of stone. The burial ground would eventually become known to the people of Thana Pel as Sair’n Nanlech due to its striking similarity to one giant dragon’s back.
Suddenly, Ulfilas turned back to Garhet with a shout. “Ah! I’ve got it!”
The dwarf kept his eyes fixed on the approaching army, and grunted.
“I know what Sair’n Kryl and the Krampus intend to do! Why they had to cut the Crown in half!”
This got Garhet’s attention. He turned to look at his large friend. “And?”
“Come on!” Ulfilas grabbed the dwarf and pulled him away from their station within the fortification. “This is something Calibus and Nicholas need to hear.”
They had barely moved five paces when twenty creatures, black as night, swept down on the Magi encampment with ear-splitting shrieks. With wingspans as wide as three men standing abreast of each other, and talons larger than Ulfilas hand, they swooped down on the unsuspecting army, clamping down on their victims with their terrible claws, and lifted them high into the air. Three heartbeats later, the hapless soldiers were dropped to their deaths onto the rocks below before a second wave of winged creatures struck.
“Harpies!” Garhet shouted, diving for cover just as one of the creatures moved toward him. Grabbing a discarded shield, the dwarf raised it over his head like an umbrella, then looked over to Ulfilas, who was hunkered down under a blacksmith’s workbench. “Don’t let their claws get you. They’re tipped with poison!”
The big man nodded, then whipped out his falx, and peered out from the table. One of the harpies landed just a few feet away, the crushed form of a Stindoln warrior firmly planted under its talons. Ulfilas studied the creature, and shuddered at the sight. The creature was a full head taller than the Visigoth, resembling an old, bent crone with beak-like nose. Her craggy face was free of feathers, but was black as if covered in pitch. The dome of her head was hairless, and her humped back and bent neck reminded Ulfilas of a gigantic, ravenous buzzard. She folded her wings against her back like an ebony cloak, then croaked as she reached forward with a thin, frail arm. With bony fingers that sported claws as long as her fingers, she delicately plucked the eyes from a fallen soldier, dropped them into her mouth with a satisfied slurp, then glanced up to eye the giant hungrily. Ulfilas swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He gripped the handle of his blade tighter, preparing to fight. He was just about to burst out from the protection of the workbench when the sound of a great horn blared across the battlefield, followed immediately by the shouts of thousands of men, monsters, and creatures who deemed themselves gods.
The harpy, hearing the horn, took the air, following her sisters to the call of their master, Sair’n Kryl.
“The battle has been met!” Ulfilas shouted to Garhet, as they both scrambled from their hiding places. The two made their way once more to the fortified walls--wary of any straggling harpies--stepping over the disemboweled remains of a number of their comrades, and looked out across the fortification.
The giant had been right. As if the Magi had anticipated the harpy attack, they had rallied their cavalry, and were already riding out to meet Sair’n Kryl even before the assault. Now, the two armies met at the center of the battlefield, with only a gap of a hundred paces separating them.
The sight sent a chill down Garhet’s spine. The Magi forces—barely numbering five hundred and fifty—looked like a minnow against the sea of bodies that comprised Sair’n Kryl’s army of thousands.
“We should be out there with them!” Garhet said, leaping atop the wall, and attempting to scramble over it. But Ulfilas snagged the dwarf’s cloak, hauling him back into camp. “That would be a bad idea.”
“What are you talkin’ about? Our friends—my brother dwarves—need us!”
“We’re exactly where we need to be, runt. Those harpies weren’t an attack…or even a distraction. They were reconnaissance.” He pointed back to the Dragon Spine formation behind them. “They were spying out the best place to get them inside there. That red-robed maniac wants to use the Crown to bring all those dragons to life again. And someone needs to be standing near the mine’s entrance to be sure that doesn’t happen, wouldn’t you say?”
“But…”
“You know I’m right.”
Garhet glanced out at the battlefield. Calibus and Nicholas had dismounted, and were striding boldly up to Sair’n Kryl, who was riding on the back of one of his Cra'chuna. The dwarf smiled grimly as he noticed the gleaming metallic hook in place of where Kryl’s forearm and hand had once been. Good job, Krin, me lad.
The thought of the boy brought an unsolicited tear. He rubbed it away just as the three magi converged. Inaudible words—heated, angry words—were exchanged by both parties. Terms of surrender, no doubt, Garhet thought. The arrogant braggart thinks he’s already won.
Garhet looked back at the Spine--at the stone-carved entrance to the mine—then returned his gaze to the field, uncertain of what to do. Every instinct in his bones told him to rush out, and kill the villain where he stood. Only his inner, softer voice told him that his friend was correct. The real battle would be met at the entrance to the mines…the entrance to the burial chamber of Tielsec and his brothers. No matter what happened, the Winterking and Sair’n Kryl could not get past them. Could not enter those mines. Only Ulfilas, a handful of dwarves, and Garhet himself stood in the way of the dragons being reunited with their souls.
So they would make there stand here. They would gather whoever remained behind in the camp, and fortify the entrance. They would rally together and defend the accursed place until their dying breath.
Aye, Garhet thought. It’ll be a good way to die.
BRIDGE TWO
Sair’n Nanlech
Eighteen Hours Later
“Watch out!” Ulfilas shouted to Garhet, who wheeled around just as the ogre—twice as tall as the bounty hunter—prepared to strike. The dwarf dove to his left, as the massive ogre’s hammer crashed into the soil where he had been standing. As the monster withdrew the hammer for another blow, Garhet rolled past its legs, and lashed out at its hamstrings with his axe. With an agonized cry, the creature plummeted face down in the snow, only to have the Visigoth’s falx driven into its back a second later.
Garhet nodded his thanks to his over-sized friend, and lunged for his next victim—a wart-covered troll.
They had been fighting for hours. Considering just how innumerable the enemy forces were, it was amazing that the Magi’s army was still standing at all, much less still defending the entrance to the Sair’n Nanlech mines. But the dwarf knew it was only a matter of time.
Slamming the flat of his axe against the troll’s head, then sweeping its feet out from under it with his legs, Garhet glanced out across the battlefield. At one time, the field had been rife with holly bushes, their berries painting the landscape a merry shade of red. Now, the bushes had been trampled underfoot by Sair’n Kryl and his army, and the only red visible for miles was the pools of blood covering the snow-dusted ground.
Garhet placed his armored boot across the trolls neck, keeping him locked in place, while he studied the scene more attentively. The warriors of Stindoln were defending the western flank, and were being pounded into the ground by a horde of ogres that came at them by the dozens. The brave men were fighting valiantly, but already their numbers were dwindling to nothing.
To the east, Behk’n Lorent’s dwarves were having their revenge against the Roman legion that had so briefly enslaved them. Although the Romans were fierce, and well trained, they had never dealt with dwarves before, and had no notion of their tactics. The dwarves, taking the offensive, seemingly disappeared in front of the Romans’ eyes, sending the troops into a wave of confusion. But Garhet’s kin had not disappeared. Instead, they had simply burrowed into the ground from whence they had been born, tunneled under their enemy, and reemerged from behind. Though the Romans outnumbered the dwarves easily by four to one, the Lorent Clan were hacking away their foes as easily as a farmer whisks away chaff.
My brothers, Garhet thought glumly, are the highlight of the day’s battle. But there is little else to be thankful for.
The troll squirmed under his boot, but the dwarf merely clubbed it on the head with the flat of his axe once more. There were plenty of foes still left to fight, but he was growing weary. He needed to rest. But more importantly, he needed to assess the situation.
The Magi and their captainless Guard were fighting in the middle of the battlefield, keeping a wave of dark elves, harpies, and an assortment of every kind of Dhuna imaginable from breaking their defensive line. The Magi themselves managed to inflict greater damage to the enemy forces than they received by using both science and ancient ways.
At one point, only a couple of hours before, they had used a special compound—created by a strange warrior-mage named Achelous in the days of Nebuchadnezzar—to blow a hole in the earth itself with the power of fire, sound, and light. The Dhuna had scattered, fearful of the sorcery the Magi seemed to possess, but were eventually corralled by Sair’n Kryl, keeping a safe distance from the battle on the back of his Cra'chuna steed.
The Legend of the Winterking: The Crown of Nandur Page 36