by Thomas Head
With a ripping plunge, he split one dwarf’s forehead. The second dwarf swung. He caught the tip, but the force sent his own pummel into his face. Twisting under the force, he whirled his weapon under the arc of the third dwarf’s sword, and he swiped down at his belly, still spinning. He heard him fall, and stepped back, controlling his lunge until he ripped the second dwarf’s throat. There were more coming. Many, many more. Another flung some manner of ax. It hit near the left shoulder. It was a fierce bite, and it knocked him back a step. But now he had a weapon he was familiar with. The same dwarf drew another sword. Before he could raise the blade, Cullfor lunged from the one leg, with unsure footing. Most of the lips were ripped from the dwarf’s mouth. More came, fast. They were roaring. Just in the moment he splayed open the face of another, someone else’s stomach ripped across his steel. A third was brought to his knees on the backswing, his head butterflied. Cullfor was pulling it out when a second wave of dwarves rushed him. The first wore strange crimson armor. He was the only one among them with a sword instead of the long pole axe. The armor fit him horribly, but he was a rough and swift bastard. He could not remove the blade from the ripened head before the dwarf swiped his sword high atop Cullfor’s helmet, twisting his neck. The second dwarf chopped as if cleaving wood, and it raked Cullfor’s armor to the skin. When he freed it and swung the blood-soaked blade, Cullfor swung at a head that had already fallen away.
The gore of it was slowing now, bringing to his strange sight the growing blanket of corpses around him.
And now a great wave of the dwarven army crashed upon the circle of Arwegians.
All around him men and halflings screamed. They were running in no certain direction holding onto things that should have been hurled down atop heads.
There was no sense anymore; sense had abounded this beach. He could feel it leaving him. Boulders cascaded down, dropping with thunderous crashes. Soldiery, everywhere, was flattened or roaring. A dwarf crawled next to him. One of his feet askew. Cullfor removed them with a thrust of his ax.
And now the bodies of Arwegians piled.
Cullfor grunted and crawled, ducking flakes stones and his own insane trolls, mad with battle-fever. He thought he heard a lion. There was great thud overhead. Thunder. And another noise like a lion. A small growling of noise, rising in his mind to get his attention.
It was Blackthistle himself.
He had joined the dwarves.
The strength of some ancient and wicked force was surging in him. Guards rushing to his side, men and halflings went flying by clusters from the mighty blows of his sword, but they kept coming. And coming. The clanks and growls of men and mutilation rolled up like a smell.
Soon, it was all just a hive of fools, killing and chopping, every being for themselves. There was only the shrill bellow of clashing warriors.
Suddenly, a single moment hovered in view: it was the lengthy shadow of Blackthistle as he grabbed a shield that hung across his horse’s rear. He wrapped its leather straps around his forearm, his movements slow and meticulous.
As the warriors tore into each other, he raised the shield. Three long arrows bit into it.
Blackthistle was watching the waterfall of men, washing down the beach into the river. Guards folded and groaned around him, pierced by another shower of arrows, even as another rush of men stormed ahead.
Cullfor swung now under a stream of dwarves and wood and steel, and hurling stones. Below him, a great charge of dwarves rushed. They chopped with long weapons, like pole-swords, an ancient weapon called the dragonblade.
In the middle of chaotic line, the Blackthistle plunged himself into the mayhem. Cullfor watched him, even as his own hands burned, his blade biting against a cascade of spears that came.
He was like some troll-berserker, swinging and crushing men below him, and so many were in his path they soon formed a ramp of flesh. Suddenly someone stepped on his head. His spine torqued. As he crumpled, his flesh pulled him to one side. Cullfor gritted his teeth, muting his screams as, all around, hands and feet gripped, straining to hold as the Arwegians were getting pushed toward the river. He could not so much as hope to form any type of shield, for the wrench of metal on metal came like a wave. A few spears launched toward him. Blackthistle was just behind the dwarves who threw them. Climbing down a wall of dead Arwegians, Blackthistle took off his helmet, smiling.
His head was well-coifed, and handsome, and fierce. Blackthistle’s shield went swiftly as his sword, countering a blow from a dragonblade.
Men and halflings buckled under his hits, jerking.
The fight was carrying itself more and more toward him. Dwarves jumped to defend him.
Crushing skulls underfoot, ribbons of blood spewed across Cullfor’s head as he swung. He looked. His helmet had come off, and his hair was dripping with blood. Twenty feet over an ocean of tangled and flattened bodies he fought toward Blackthistle, but the nightmare of all the chaos of hell was too packed.
Metal sang over the noise. Bones popped. The fold of knights on either side collapsed in a break of axes and bodies. Men on either side of him twisted, falling. They screamed atop the sloping pile of gore. Cullfor growled. He shrieked and fought to get back to Blackthistle. He put his shield up. Chopping, peering over it as the sea of metal and flesh surged. The ground swelled and collapsed. He felt things rip under his armor, bite into his flesh. He could only groan and hope not to fall. Swinging and thrusting, he bobbed in a storm of blades, slipping his blade into dwarven necks and chests. Cullfor stomped and swung. Very soon, he and the Arwegians were utterly bloodied. They were soaked in gore, from hair to ankles.
And now they were pressed against a rise of boulders.
And the dwarven enemy rushed now without end.
Less air came with each breath. Cullfor’s sword could ax fifty or five hundred pounds. He could not feel it in his hand. Squashed in the macabre feeding frenzy, he felt the tide relent. But it was only a break in a current. A half a breath. Cullfor was too compressed. The fatal push would come. They were too many. They swarmed now. They came over the five hundred or so Arwegians that were still alive. They created a tide, pushing harder and harder against the stone, and Cullfor killed two of his own countrymen in the rush and crunched mayhem.
Then deluge began carrying him.
Roaring as his back scraped on the stone, the great surge lifted him in a sideways thrust atop helmeted men, out from the wall and back again.
Cullfor was buried in a distorted pile of halflings, straining to look beyond a mangled torso. Everything began to redden. The rocks, the river. The grass. The air itself was a mist of blood, floating like a fog.
Deep in the gore, he roared, then fell deeper in the pile of dead.
Suddenly he could not see. Everything was black. He might drown in these guts, he feared. And as, finally, he emerged, he ran, knowing he had to get to Bunn, and get her out of here.
It was hopeless.
All was lost.
He formed a shield of magic and around himself and ran, scrambling with blood-slick feet and hands over blood-slick rocks.
Chapter 100
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The small tower, in which he had told Bunn to hide, was open to the sky. It was short, too, maybe twenty-six feet tall, but it reached into the threatening clouds.
Cullfor breathed. He thought about it another moment before going in.
Struggling not to pass out, he muscled the door open, only to find it empty.
“What the thundering hell?”
Inside the tower’s door, he turned, hearing a noise like a lion again, three bloodied Arwegians encircled Blackthistle—a dwarf to pilot the nightmare vessels that soared through a mind. His face was crimson, bloody from his bald, pale head to his chin. A few streaks of flesh showed where sweat poured. His sword was busted. Bloody. Enormous.
Blackthistle spun, whirling the massive blade.
The halflings fell, clanking. One was holding his belly. Their swords were shattere
d. Another’s head was flayed open. One hacked into the shoulder of another by mistake, or by the verve of Blackthistle will, and it could not get the blade out before Blackthistle crushed his sternum with the pummel of his sword.
Cullfor stood alone, his back to the door.
Blackthistle smiled at him through tendrils of gore, leaning on his sword, breathing.
Silence.
The dwarf began walking up to him.
Cullfor leapt, swordless.
His forehead crashed into the Blackthistle’s mouth with a splintering, bony sound. Teeth flickered from his mouth. As he pushed bloody thumbs into Blackthistle’s eyes, they fell, tumbling together. His sword slid across the stony ground. He spun as they met with the floor, then got to his knee. Before Blackthistle righted himself, Cullfor punched him between the eyes, but shattered his own fist. He turned, trying to get to his sword, but Blackthistle grabbed him. Growling, Cullfor kicked back like a horse. He split Blackthistle’s ear, then ran in leaps toward the sword.
But Blackthistle leapt after him, a quarter-step off his heels, and he grabbed Cullfor’s arm with a small, polished riverstone of a hand, spinning him.
He pressed Cullfor’s head against the rough wall of the castle.
He pulled his sword over with her feet.
“Listen to me,” Blackthistle hissed. “Only a fool could not sense I took Bhier’s magic when I killed him. You’ve seen us wage a perfect wizard’s war, attacking in the fog, and only a fool could not see that all is lost.”
Cullfor grunted, then dropped. He spun. He kicked Blackthistle in the knee, crimping him. But the blood-soaked Blackthistle caught himself.
“And I know you are no fool, Cullfor,” he hissed.
Cullfor growled and mustered the strength to push Blackthistle away at arm’s length. The two wizards wrestled, using only the strength afforded a normal human being.
“How would you know that I am no fool, Blackthistle?”
“I know… because I have watched you for some time, lad. And I would never sire a damn fool.”
Cullfor’s eyes widened.
“Father?”
“Yes, boy.”
“Fie said my father was an elf. I mean, my ears….”
“You are a dwelf. That much is certain. But Halvgar was not your father, nor was Siri your mother. The child they had was taken on the night of its birth by Halvgar’s elvish enemy, Bloodroot, and sold as a slave. I was a wild dwarf in those days. I had no need for a child. So I switched them.”
Cullfor let go of his father. He looked at the ground.
“But I can assure you, after we went after the dragon to get you back, I learned I had nothing in common with the dwarf I was when I made that decision.”
“And I assure you, father, you have nothing in common with your own son.”
“You could rein with me boy. You can… you still have a choice. You can be a prince. Or you can die!”
Cullfor spat blood into his father’s eye, just as Blackthistle swung the enormous sword backward and downward.
Cullfor fell to a squat, instantly kicking sideways. Still the blade grazed his back and sent him sprawling. In brutal pain, he leapt, just before a second fearsome strike that would have spilled his entrails.
Blackthistle fell on him, throwing that stone hand into his face. His eyebrow was cracked. When they rose, Cullfor knew he had been defeated. He lifted deadening eyes to his father, not pleading, only to show that he did not regret his choice.
But there was a dragonblade sticking through Blackthistle’s heart.
Blackthistle looked down at it, slowly. Then he rocked under failing knees, fainting. He dropped his sword and twitched, groaning.
Then he laughed, his blood spilling, then fading into a thin black cord, which writhed like a snake that had been chopped in half. Then Cullfor felt his knees hit the ground. He clasped his hands in front of his chest. His life withdrew into his heartbeat and his world became a subdued thump as he looked up at Delthal Blackthistle’s killer.
His father’s killer.
It was Bunn.
.
Chapter 101
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There was a brisk crack followed by a rolling boom.
Cullfor opened an eye, trying to see where he was, but audacious pain jarred his head, the sheer animal hurt making him roar.
Then he heard a loud ringing noise.
Just as suddenly, the pain and noise subsided. Cullfor opened his eyes again. Blood had filled his mouth and nose. Tears only muddied his vision. He could move a little. His mouth, his eyelids. He tried his foot then roared in agony. For a moment he was motionless. But being still was little help. His feet trembled on their own. Misery radiated beyond his body. Suffering does not begin to describe the monster thirst of the dying. Wiping and sneezing and spitting into his own eye were enough to see that Bunn stood outside the pale broken walls of the tower, smiling.
A few bodies lay beside her.
With great effort, he controlled his convulsions and twisted the feet under him to stand.
He grabbed her and put his arm around her.
Far Below, Dhal was being raised above the heads of a thousand dwarves, and she and Delway’s King Jorigaer were kissing in some prolonged ceremony he could only assume was a wedding.
“Folly,” Bunn growled airlessly.
“Folly,” Cullfor said again, and spit blood laughing. Then he quoted his old teacher, saying, “But folly is wonder and beauty and awe; and to see all the world in a smile, this is folly.”
And he spun her, and kissed her.
She shook her head, smiling. And she kissed him back.
And together, hand in hand, they limped an unhurried retreat in to the dark forest, still kissing.
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Much, much later, nestled in a rock-peppered crook of two mountains, near a place called Goback, high in the mountains, the old domed oak cottage that his uncle once called home seems little more than a snow–laden boulder.
Inside, however, the cabin is voluminous and striking. Arched oak beams support an impossible thatching of pine sheaves, as if it was taken from the tree by a razor. Stone and wood are reconciled in the mantel with rugged elegance. It is reminiscent of Cullfor himself, who seems larger and more well-muscled than we saw him on his journey. Sturdy. It is odd to see him in his leather and canvas robes. He is at his core a peaceful man, but that twinkle in his eyes has a warrior’s glint.
Bunn is, as well, more gorgeous than we would have imagined from the telling. If anything, she seems younger. The eyes are, quite literally, spectacular. They twinkle with a powdery blue glint that gravity cannot quite grip—as if the blueness of them radiates.
She covers her freshly-bathed, nude body with a blanket of smoothed wool and turns to her husband. And outside in the mountainside air, he winks, and chuckles, and very soon her blanket falls to the ground around her.
And the two wizards roll to the ground, naked, kissing and grinning, knowing they can never reveal who they are… and not giving half a damn either way.
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