by Robert Day
Chapter 25
The city of Chul’Haka sat lifeless and destitute beneath the burning sun. Dry and warm winds blew dust across the great plains from the south, settling against the northern peaks of the Paradise Ranges. Far beyond these low ranges, but within view on a clear day, the Cliffs of Solace flanked the Bay of Darkness, named for the perpetual darkness that seemed to cover the water, with only the midday sun able to penetrate to the base of the thousand feet high cliffs. Once legend to be the home of many pirates and buccaneers, no sail from near or abroad had entered the perilous straits leading to the bay for many centuries, though only the scant sea birds or insects would have borne witness to such.
The constant ringing of hammers on steel echoed through the squat city, a stark reminder of the situation the town faced. Even resting as he was inside the modest single level dwelling assigned to the Dwarven Smiths, Kylaran heard and felt every ringing as he lay staring at the sandstone roof from his hard pallet. With shoulders, back and arms aching from a morning of heavy toiling over the same forges the Dwarves worked still, he was not sure some of the rings were not figments of his imagination to remind him of his morning’s exertions.
Yet even this had not allowed him to divert his thoughts from Alric and the other Dwarves, who late the previous evening had slipped away in their daring attempt to rescue Thorgast. Dearly had he wanted to join them, but he was not blind to the fact neither could he see in the dark as the Dwarves could, thus negating the need for a light, nor was he a warrior, despite his previous melee encounters against the Haruken and Hrolth. Luck and desperation had carried him through, but he could not see this keeping up, which was why, after he rested, he had an appointment with one of the Dwarven Smiths who had agreed to aid him in his axemanship.
Not that he felt much like wielding the bulky axe after the constant rigors of swinging a hammer all morning, but necessity forced him to make the effort. The city could be attacked at any time by the combined forces of the Haruken and Hrolth, and only sufficient training in the martial arts would offer him a small hope of surviving for longer than the first meeting with an armed enemy.
With the extent of the populace overwhelming what scant dwellings there were in the city, their meeting was scheduled in the clearing surrounding the Ancestral Vault, the closest clear area to both the Smithies and the Dwarven quarters. The day was at its hottest, but Kyle wore both long sleeved shirt and trousers of light cotton. Not unaccustomed to heat, he was nonetheless not immune to the sun’s burning rays. His double bladed axe hung from the thong at his waist, cumbersome and awkward, but both Alric and Ishaar, the Dwarf who had agreed to work with him, advised him comfort was an essential part of working with the blade.
‘Know your weapon like you do your own hands,’ were the sage like words of Ishaar, a young Dwarf by their long lived standards, but already a Smith of considerable skill and potential, and a talented Warrior. ‘Know its weight and movements as they concur with your own. This will lead to a greater understanding of forces, an Axeman’s forte. An axe is unlike swinging a sword or even a hammer, and it requires great precision to use at its deadliest potential.’
When he reached the Vault, Ishaar was already there, speaking with one of the guardsmen. When he saw Kyle approaching he nodded farewell to the young Urak’Hai. He was dressed in heavy shirt and breeches, seemingly unaffected by the heat that had Kyle’s shirt drenched with sweat, and his steps sluggish.
“Well met, Kyle. Are you prepared for your lessons?”
Tall for a Dwarf at a hand over five feet, he carried no weapon himself, but a pack upon his back bulged with items that clinked as he walked. He was thickly muscled, though not as barrel chested as some of the other Smiths who were here in Chul’Haka. His shoulders were wide, and his stomach narrow, giving him a statuesque appearance that Kyle figured the female Dwarves might find alluring. His beard was almost golden in color, lighter than his tawny hair, which was thick with curls, and his green eyes were sharp but soft.
Without waiting for Kyle’s reply, Ishaar removed his heavy pack and squatted beside it, rummaging inside and removing several items. One was a thick metal bar, two feet in length and round, obviously taken from the smithy. There were also two chain mail gloves with padded innards and two curved channels of leather as wide as a finger and joined by two cords. Kyle realized they were covers for his axe blades even before Ishaar motioned for his axe and began to fasten the device.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” quipped Ishaar, tossing Kyle back the axe. Kyle found the device made little difference to the weapon’s feel.
After a strenuous warm up, loosening muscles and joints tense from worry and a morning’s labor at the forge, Ishaar had Kyle memorize and practice repeatedly several forms and stances that soon had his arms burning with a dull fire. Being such a bulky weapon, the stances were mostly wide footed, focusing on position and balance rather than constant movement and dancing about, which was the basis of swordsmanship and most other martial arts. There was also more wristwork than Kyle had expected, designed to help with the manipulation of the weighted weapon.
The iron bar and mailed gloves came into play when Ishaar showed him the variances between shadow fighting and sparring. As he had Kyle work through his strikes at him, the powerful Dwarf would block each strike to show what forces were exerted upon the heavy weapon during combat. Kyle found it easier, as he often did not have to bring the weapon to a halt through strength, allowing his moves to become faster, though not as fluid.
As the afternoon wore on, and brought with it a gentle breeze to hint at the coming coolness of night, Ishaar and Kyle returned to the Dwarven quarters, where the obvious tension did little for Kyle’s thoughts as he ate in silence and then fitfully dozed on his hard pallet. The disturbing dreams he woke from ebbed at his subconscious, and he lay awake for a time and listened to the faint silence of the sleeping city without, where even a faint dog’s bark sounded alien and eerie, but then sleep reclaimed him.
One of the younger Dwarves, Olric by name, woke him as the faint light of the coming day permeated the eastern horizon, and he rose and changed to prepare for more work at the forges. What soft words passed between the Dwarves were terse and rueful, and it was not difficult for Kyle to realize the Dwarves were not expecting the rescue party to return.
Luckily, the repetitive strain of the smithy and training with Ishaar made it possible for him to block out the nagging fears he held for Thorgast and Alric’s safety. Occasionally he would look to the South east where the Haruken fortification was, and offer up whispered words of encouragement to Alric and his companions, and although he was not a pious person in any way, he offered up some prayers to Phaeron, father of the Gods, and Karn, Lord of the Earth and Master of Smiths.
Late at night, the second since the rescue party’s departure, Kyle woke again from a nightmare. A cold sweat gripped him beneath the thin sheet as he gasped for breath, the fading vestiges of the tormenting dream sharp in his mind. It had not been a nightmare involving the deaths of Thorgast or Alric or even the other Dwarves and people of Chul’Haka, as he had dreamt several times.
He had stood in a chamber where the tangible walls were of darkness, devoid of doors or windows, and he the only occupant. He was naked, and before him the familiar glow of a forge, where a long sliver of glowing metal was thrust into the unnaturally glowing embers. It looked to be the point of a lance, broken three feet from the point, and even as the dragons fire forge heated it to extreme temperature, refulgent silver sigils glowed upon the golden metal.
Then a great pounding began to reverberate through the room, first like giant fists striking from without, then like a veritable hail storm striking its full fury upon a wooden roof, except that the pounding was much more intense, held back only by the unnatural strength of the dark walls. Beneath the barrage, and with a calmness that belied the intensity of the hammering upon the chamber, he reached into the ardent forge and grasped at the strange metal. At first, it
appeared as if his hand and forearm glowed from the fiery brilliance of the forge glistening off sweating skin, but as he grasped the metal without the slightest discomfort of heat, he realized his arm was made of metal, a red tinged Mithril crafted in the likeness of a real limb, yet it felt and acted like one.
The feel of the strange white metal was one of electrical exhilaration through his metallic arm, as if he could feel the power of the item. With a hissing of anticipation it came free of the forge, and he laid it against the hard anvil bench of the forge. He raised his other arm, a natural act as he had many times in his life to shape and define metals, but the hammer he held this time seemed of living energy, a core of power in itself that seemed almost omnipotent, the purest of entities. The hand that grasped it was a normal, human hand without the augmentation of metal or magic, as he put his considerable strength into bringing the ‘hammer’ down against the glowing metal.
Yet even his most powerful of swings did little to bruise the metal as he relentlessly lifted and hammered. The pounding around him was becoming more frenzied, desperate, as were his swings, and he knew then that it was a race as a blade slowly formed in his hand.
‘ BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM! ’
‘CLANG!’
The crystalline pounding of hammer on metal rang over the constant pounding, with each pump of his mighty arm.
‘CLANG!”
‘ OOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOO ‘
‘CLANG!’
Without having to look, he knew the dark walls were closing in on him, buckling beneath the supernatural forces without. At first he did not see, though he heard a great rending of the walls around him, then great claw marks began to appear, tearing the walls to reveal an even greater darkness that seemed to permeate the chamber with fear and malevolence just as the hammer he swung did the opposite.
The blade came to life in his hands, faster than he knew was possible, but invariably too late as he could feel the darkness distort and change the room, spreading its immoral manifestations in the form of illusion, which grabbed at Kyle and assaulted his mind as the pounding continued without the dark chamber. He withstood their fury, however, realizing they could do him no harm. The greater danger still lay without, for the moment.
A hilt, in the form of a dragon set with wings half drawn, appeared where moments before there was nothing, and there was a vague familiarity about it that stirred his memories, but his focus remained in setting the newly formed blade to it. The slender, double edged blade slid into the opened maw of the dragon hilt with an audible ‘click’ as the maw snapped shut around the blade, which began to glow with a pale blue nimbus as if rejoicing at the bonding with the hilt.
But a rumbling laughter, like the incessant pounding of thunderous surf, rattled the chamber and froze his very blood with its dreadfully mocking warning. The greater darkness beyond the chamber was slowly seeping in through the rents and holes from the unending assault, and it seemed more substantial than a mere mist, clinging to Kyle as he spun constantly in search of some danger to reveal itself.
Yet the laughter continued, mocking his work, which to all appearances seemed fruitless, now. How could a mere blade help him overcome whatever it was that waited without? With a primeval howl of fury and rage he hurled the sword spear like through one of the larger tears, where it struck the impenetrable darkness outside. A blinding flash erupted from the contact, shaking the chamber and tearing what fragments of wall there remained, and as the pounding froze to bring an unnatural silence, he waited as the darkness loomed over him, threatening to consume him…
Shaking his reeling head and rising from his bed, he dressed in the dim light of the moons through the narrow windows, and silently let himself outside, deciding at the last moment to bring his axe with a thought for Ishaar’s earlier advice. The air was chilly, as was normal here on the harsh plains during the night hours, but the illumination from the two moons gave him more than enough light to see by, and even gave the taciturn city a majestic ambience.
With no destination in mind, Kyle wandered, but as habit has a way of taking control, he rounded a corner to find the clearing in which lay the Ancestral Vault. Not wanting to alert the guardsmen, whose shapes he could see around the Vault, and bring any attention to himself, he turned to retrace his steps and seek another path. He had taken only two steps, however, barely disappearing around the corner, when a nagging thought struck him. Something about the clearing had not been right!
Returning to peer around the corner, he saw that where normally several torches lit the area, only one flickered low at the side of the squat structure. That may not have been out of the ordinary considering the ample illumination the twin moons cast, but he assumed one of the front torches would be lit, not one at the side. Also, the several guards he could see seemed to be reclining against the walls, silent and unmoving, which also was not out of the ordinary, but the way in which they looked made Kyle curious.
He took several creeping paces around the corner to get a better look, keeping to the building to stay protected by the shadow created by the overhang of the roof. It was then he noticed a faint glimmer of flickering light from within the vault, and he knew the doors were slightly ajar. Fear gripped him with a cold hand as he fumbled for his axe. Then, as if his vision became suddenly clear, he saw that a sword lay at one of the guard’s feet, while another stood with his head lolled to the side, as if asleep. At a distance, they looked to be standing at their post, but Kyle knew that was not the case.
On the verge of shouting a warning that would at least wake those who resided nearby, he froze, as a small figure disentangled itself from a shadow near the door. It began walking forward, towards him, and after a wave of foreboding and fear swept over him, he gave a relieved sigh as he recognized one of the Dwarves from the rescue party, though his name was unknown to Kyle. He took several steps forward, and then began to jog as the dwarf stumbled, his face haggard and his clothing torn and cut.
Had he looked closer, Kyle may have noticed none of the cuts in his clothing showed wounds, and the blood looked to be sprayed on, not coming from any wounds of his own. He was no more than three paces from the dwarf, when a warning shout erupted from the vault, as the doors were thrown wide.
“Kyle, NO!”
Thorgast?
The huge barbarian hobbled into the light, his left side bloodied as he held a bloodied axe in his right hand. His hair and face were caked in blood and dirt, and he looked as if mere strength of will kept him standing.
If not for the warning, Kyle would have reached the dwarf, but his faltered steps gave him a little room to act as the dwarf exploded into movement. Little legs launched him at Kyle as a raven dark knife appeared in his hand, arcing straight at Kyle’s throat. Through some luck and a last minute lunge backwards, the cut missed, but off balance as he as, Kyle could barely raise his axe as the dwarf came bustling forward, dark eyes unblinking as his face twisted into a snarl of hatred.
The dark blade scored along the haft of his axe as he flicked a parry at a lightning thrust, but a reversed slash caught him on the left forearm, just behind the wrist. An intense pain shot up his arm and into his body as he let out a piercing scream and fell backwards, defiantly clasping his axe in his right hand and groaning away the pain of the wound, but the dwarf knew he was vulnerable and closed in quickly.
A huge form caught the dwarf before he could strike, tackling him with a force that carried both over Kyle where they rolled several times and came apart. The dwarf was on his feet in a flash, and began to close on his tackler, the hunched over form of Thorgast. The giant barbarian clutched at his side as he attempted to rise, and Kyle could see that his clothes were already soaked through and blood was dripping at his feet.
Luckily, the dwarf had lost hold of his weapon, but it did not seem to concern him as he leapt at the unarmed barbarian, and for a moment, Kyle felt hope, for even unarmed and wounded, Thorgast should have been able to at least fend off the dwarf until help arrived. He could he
ar distant shouting, but could not distinguish its source as his eyes were riveted on the battle before him, and even as he watched, a distant alarm bell began to ring.
Like wrestlers, the two struggled, Thorgast using his long arms to envelope the dwarf in a hug, but in horror, Kyle watched as the dwarf broke the hold with almost casual effort and then grabbed the great barbarian and began to lift him. It was then that Kyle knew this dwarf was more than just a dwarf turned insane or traitorous, even if the tainted weapon had not given it away.
With a heave, Thorgast went flying for several feet and landed with a thud and a muffled groan. He struggled defiantly to rise; yet the dwarf would have been on him had he not turned to retrieve the dagger.
Knowing Thorgast was in trouble if he had to face the armed dwarf, Kyle tried to rise, but it was if ice encased his very limbs, and shock waves jolted his senses at every fraction of movement. He was barely able to make it to his knees without passing out from the pain, and by then, the dwarf already had his knife and was stalking Thorgast.
With a cry that was half pain, half defiance, he launched his axe in Thorgast’s direction, hoping the effort would be enough to take it near the barbarian, but he did not see the result as his eyes blurred and he fell forward. He struggled to retain his grasp on consciousness, dimly aware of shouting and pounding feet and a sudden concussive explosion that was enough to tip the balance on Kyle’s struggle and send him reeling into unconsciousness. Hands grabbed at him as a distant voice shouted, “Quick, get him up!” It sounded like Alric’s voice, and for the first time in days, Kyle smiled, even as he felt the dark face of death closing in on him.
So it was a surprise when his eyes opened to an intense brightness, and found himself in a stiflingly hot room. Braziers burned with incense, throwing off an herbal aroma that was bitter to the nose but not unpleasant, while a fire even burned low on a hearth set in one wall. There was scarce furnishing, with a stool and a low table beside the bed in which he sweltered.