Hammer and Axe

by Dan Parkinson

  She was on her way there, walking through the lake-front bazaar of Daebardin, when a high musical voice hailed her from behind.

  “Hello, there!” Shillitec Medina Quickfoot trilled. “I’ve been hoping I’d find somebody I knew! Wow, isn’t this the strangest place you ever saw? I’ve been trying to see it all, but I’ve only seen a little of it so far.”

  “What are you doing here?” Willow demanded, glaring at the tiny, slender being with the great mop of hair. “You aren’t supposed to be in Thorbardin. Thorbardin is for dwarves only.”

  “Is that right?” The kender girl giggled. “Well, I guess it’s all right, though, because nobody told me to stay out when I got here.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I just walked in, like everybody else was doing. There was this big gate, with dwarves everywhere looking very fierce and solemn, and just all sorts of dwarves going through it, so I went through it, too. They had a cable strung up, about this high.” She stretched on tiptoes and raised a hand as high as she could. “And after you walked under the cable you were in. Nothing to it. Did you have to walk under a cable?”

  “But surely somebody has noticed you since then.” Willow frowned. “Surely somebody told you to leave?”

  “Oh, sure,” Shill giggled. “They told me to leave at that nice bread-and-hot-meat place where I had lunch, and they told me to leave at some big, hot place where everybody was sweating and making an awful lot of noise with hammers. And, of course, there was that unfriendly dwarf with all the pretty things spread out on his table. He shouted at me. But then, I’ve never minded being shouted at. Have you?”

  “What kind of pretty things?”

  “Oh, things like this.” Shill reached into a belt-pouch and brought forth a dazzling necklace of bright jewels set in gold filigree. “All kinds of pretty things.”

  “No wonder he shouted,” Willow muttered.

  “Oh, I didn’t steal it. It was just lying on the floor. I guess somebody dropped it or something. Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to look at a farming warren. I don’t know where you’re going.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll just go with you.”

  “And what makes you think I’d want to be seen here—in Thorbardin—in the company of a … a kender?”

  “Don’t worry,” Shill assured her. “If anyone objects, I’ll vouch for you. I’ll just tell them you’re my dwarf.”

  Seeming to have no choice in the matter, Willow resumed her journey with Shill chattering along after her. As it happened, though they passed crowds of busy dwarves at every bend and interval, the creature following her attracted no more than casual, curious glances. After a time she decided that no one expected to see a kender in Thorbardin, so no one actually recognized one. And the exuberant kender—with her layers of motley-colored clothing and her various, bulging pockets and pouches—might have seemed at a glance to be just a talkative and undernourished dwarven child with far too much hair.

  For her part, Shill was taking it all in, thoroughly enjoying the excursion. Bright eyes that missed very little were constantly on the move, seeing everything there was to see. A group of Klar came toward them, carrying cudgels and day packs. Willow stepped aside to let them pass, but Shill scampered right through the group, gawking at their thick-muscled arms, their wild bushy hair, sparse beards, and close-set eyes. As the kender passed, ducking beneath an elbow here, dodging fur-booted feet there, a few of the Klar turned to look back.

  “What was that?” one asked.

  “Who knows?” another said. “Somebody’s cub.”

  “Funny-lookin’ cub,” the first one noted, shrugging.

  Willow had an impulse to ask the Klar if she was on the right road to the north warren, but she kept her silence. The Klar were strange people. Usually affable enough, and sometimes quite friendly, they were noted for their erratic nature. A friendly Klar, she had heard, could abruptly become angry and dangerous for no particular reason. Many among the other thanes avoided the Klar entirely.

  Still, Tera Sharn had told her, the Klar were—as a group—intensely loyal to Thorbardin and its leaders. And they were the most skilled of all the thanes at the task of creating arable fields underground. They seemed to have an uncanny ability to herd and manipulate the huge tractor worms that pulled the graders and plows, turned the stonecrushers, and hauled the topsoil for the warrens. Big, strong, and stupid, the giant worms were a fine resource in the warrens. But very few of any thane but Klar could really control them. And a worm out of control could be deadly, as the dwarves had learned a long time ago.

  Shill caught up with Willow, chatting now about Klar, and the dwarf girl glanced around as light reflected from something bright. The kender was holding a little silver vial, looking at it curiously.

  “What is that?” Willow pointed.

  “I don’t know,” Shill said. “I found it somewhere. Look, it has a lid.”

  Without waiting for comment, the kender unscrewed the top of the vial and peered into it. “It’s silver inside, too,” she said. She tipped the container and a large drop of bright, metallic liquid fell from it. Where it spread, on the tunnel’s floor, it was as bright as a new mirror. “Pretty,” Shill said.

  Crouching, Willow touched the liquid metal with a tentative finger and sniffed it. Her eyes narrowed, and she backed away, frowning. “Tamex!” she spat. “Tamex, the false metal. Get rid of that! It’s poison!”

  “It is?” Shill shrugged. “I think it’s kind of pretty. Look, I’ll pour some in my hand and …”

  A strong hand shot out, slapping the vial from the kender’s tiny fingers. It clattered against a wall, trailing bright mercury.

  Shill stared at the thrown vial, then at her slapped hand, then up at Willow’s furious face, and a tear formed at the corner of her eye. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said thinly.

  “No, I didn’t,” Willow snapped. “I could have just let you play with that stuff, and maybe get sick from it or go crazy or whatever tamex does to people. Where did you get that, anyway?”

  “Back there,” the little kender pointed, stifling a sob. “Where those Klar people were. Maybe one of them lost it or something.”

  Willow stared back the way they had come, remembering something she had heard about the Klar. Some of them, it was said, traded in quicksilver. A coating of the false metal could make a corroded tool seem bright and new, at least long enough to deceive an unwary buyer. Dealing in the false metal was a serious crime in Thorbardin. Many an unwary dwarf had been poisoned by contact with tamex.

  Willow shuddered, suddenly very glad that she had not stopped to speak to those particular Klar.

  Shill was sniffling, and Willow knelt before her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was frightened. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  The north warren was huge, a natural cavern a mile wide in some places and nearly three miles in length. The light here was subdued, coming from a few scattered sun-tunnels and several wide, slanted strata of natural quartz leading upward to the high slopes of the mountain. Far off to the right, as the two entered, they could see herdsmen working with thirty-foot-long tractor worms, building topsoil on a newly leveled field. A distant wall separated the back warren from the main warren. The kender tried to scamper off in that direction, but Willow still had hold of her hand.

  Dragging the reluctant kender after her, Willow headed northward. In the distance there were fields already completed and planted. Above them, on the walls of the cavern, great terraces stood, bearing fruit vines and climbing plants of many varieties. The closer they approached, it seemed to Willow, the sweeter the air smelled—almost like the breezes across the fields back home. She shook her head, trying not to think about Windhollow. Remembering her life there led to remembering what had happened there, and the memory was extremely painful.

  With Shill tagging after her, she wandered among the fields, marveling. These were not Einar crops. Some things, like grains and fine fi
bers, would not grow underground. But those things that would, the bonded thanes had planted. Just in this one warren there were food sources for thousands of people. Combined with the grains, melons, fibers, timber, and sun-greens that Thorbardin received in trade from those outside, there was sustenance here for an entire race.

  At a stone wall at the northern end of the cavern, where a dozen varieties of spices, herbs, and aromatics were growing, Willow stopped to breathe deeply of the rich smells and noticed suddenly that the air had turned colder.

  At her side, the kender girl pointed. “Look!” she said. “Vapors.”

  Almost hidden behind a screen of green vinery, there was some kind of stone seal. It looked as though a very large tunnel had been sealed off a long time ago. But here and there, around the edges of the placed stone, little mists floated outward through the vines.

  Willow approached, stooped, and peered. The mists were only vague wisps of vapor seeping through ancient stone cracks, but they were cold. Cold as winter winds, she thought. As cold … as cold as the fogs in which the beast had swathed itself back at Windhollow.

  Then there was the distant sound of drums, echoing through the cavern. In the fields around, people stopped to listen, then picked up their tools and hurried toward the main tunnel almost a mile away.

  “What is it?” Willow asked a passing Theiwar farmer. “What do the drums say?”

  “Call to arms,” the dwarf growled. “We’re under attack!”

  16

  The Enemy

  It was a group of Daergar miners, just leaving their digs in Late evening, who discovered the invasion rift. More than a hundred in number, they had been sampling ore in the maze of shafts beneath Thunder Peaks, south of the Promontory below Cloudseeker, for several weeks. Now they had their inventory and were on their way north to report to Vog Ironface in Thorbardin. They came out of the shafts late in the day, as dusk settled over the mountain lands, and most did not put on their slit-masks. The evening light was diffused and pleasant, and the breezes were those of greening spring.

  Carrying their picks, hammers, and miners’ shields, some wearing their conical stone-fall helms and others slinging them on straps, they made their way northward as the long southern evening deepened toward nightfall. It was a three-day journey to Southgate, and, as Daergar, they preferred to travel at night and rest by day.

  They had gone four miles when their leader, Sledge Veinseek, reached the long curving ledge where the mine trail wound toward the placer camps on Ice Creek, and stopped in confusion. From the ledge, a great panorama spread northward, a view that included everything for nearly a hundred miles. From here most of the upper Promontory was visible, and beyond it the slopes of giant Cloudseeker, rising away in the distance toward its crown of three crags—the Windweavers.

  Every Daergar miner had seen the mighty view hundreds of times, coming and going between the dig-shafts above and the placer camps below. But now the view was somehow different, and the Daergar crowded around Sledge Veinseek in puzzlement.

  “There!” One of them pointed northward. “That forested ridge, running east and west … I don’t remember a ridge there.”

  “There isn’t any ridge there,” another agreed. “At least, there wasn’t the last time I passed here. There is a little canyon there, not a ridge.”

  “You’re right,” Sledge said. “Down there is where the main trace crosses the canyon. At least, it used to. But the main trace just ends now. It runs to that ridge and stops.”

  Pyrr Steelpick pushed forward, shouldering others aside. The boss of shafts was a grizzled, time-weathered dwarf with massive forearms and a stubborn streak just as large. Now he stepped up beside Sledge Veinseek and stared out across the near miles. “What’s a ridge doing there?” he rumbled. “There’s nothing like that there, where that is.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Sledge agreed. “But there seems to be a ridge there now.”

  Puzzled and wary, the miners trekked on down the winding trail to the placer camps, then turned northward on the main trail to Thorbardin. Here in the little valley of Ice Creek rising slopes blocked their view of the lands northward, but the trail climbed away—as it always had—toward the Promontory and the fortress mountain beyond.

  They had gone several miles by the time they came out of Cutpass onto the downward slopes where the trail led—or should have led—across an interval of canyons and gullies where the wide, sloping meadow called the Promontory began. But now the trail led to no canyons or cuts. Instead it ran to the slope of a high forest-capped ridge and stopped.

  More puzzled by the moment, the Daergar approached the strange formation, staring at it in bewilderment. Evening had turned to full night, but to Daergar eyes the light of the stars was enough.

  At the beginning of the surprising slope, the trail simply ended.

  “I don’t believe it,” Pyrr Steelpick growled. “Somebody is playing tricks. There is no ridge here. There never was.”

  Sledge Veinseek walked to the end of the trail and took another step. The ground on the slope felt slightly resilient, but it supported him. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll climb it and see what the other side looks like.”

  “I don’t intend to climb any ridge that isn’t there,” Pyrr announced. “There is a trail here, crossing a canyon. There has always been a trail and a canyon, and I have always walked the trail and crossed the canyon. I don’t intend to change my ways now.”

  With a fierce frown, the shaft boss stepped off the end of the trail, and his foot sank to the knee in the stony slope. He took another step and was waist-deep in what seemed to be solid hillside. “I told you,” he said, glancing up at Sledge, who stood on the slope above him. “There isn’t any ridge here.” With grim determination, the stubborn shaft boss pushed on, disappearing into the hillside which seemed to close behind him as though no one had been there.

  Watching him go, Sledge felt his own feet sinking into the yielding surface. Suddenly he was standing on solid ground, and the “hillside” engulfed him to the neck. “Pyrr is right!” he said. “This isn’t a real ridge.”

  “Then what is it?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sledge admitted. He stepped forward, and the hillside surrounded him. He felt as though he were immersed in jelly and could barely see his own raised hand. At each movement, the “hill” resisted him, then yielded. But he could breathe freely, and despite the resistance of whatever he was in, he could still move. He backed up until his head and shoulders were in the clear and looked at the exposed parts of himself. Nothing clung to him. Whatever it was, it was not sticky or fluid. He leaned to taste the surface before him. It had no taste. It was as though there were nothing there.

  “Come on,” he told those behind him. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

  Several of them hesitated. “That’s one way to put it,” someone commented. But others plunged forward, following their leader. Confusion followed. Some of them walked directly into the slope, as Pyrr and Sledge had, but others found themselves moving upward, climbing a hill.

  Below them, Sledge snapped, “You, up there! Come down here!”

  “How?” one asked. “This is a hillside.”

  “Which are you going to believe, your eyes or me?” Sledge demanded. “This is not a hillside. Now come on!”

  Most of those on the slope dropped out of sight, and the company disappeared into the ridge, all except six young Daergar who simply couldn’t seem to sink. They had their leader’s assurance that there was no hill, but the fact was, they were standing on it. With nothing else to do, the six kept climbing, heading for the top, hoping to meet the rest of their party on the other side.

  Inside the strange ridge, Sledge groped blindly forward until he came up to Pyrr Steelpick, who had stopped. “What is it, Pyrr?” he asked. His voice sounded muted and soft in the thick gloom.

  “Look,” Pyrr said. “Just ahead. Lights.”

  Sledge squinted and saw what
the shaft boss had first noticed. Ahead, seeming near, a line of yellowish glows swam by one after another, sometimes in groups of five or ten, and sometimes so closely packed that it might have been made up of many small glows or one big one. The glows were all moving from right to left, coming into view from what Sledge assumed was still the east, and fading toward the west.

  Pushing past Pyrr, the Daergar mine commander crept closer to the line of passing lights and observed that they became more clearly defined as he approached. They looked like torches. He moved forward again and saw dim figures trotting past—or the heads and shoulders of figures. Like tall people moving along in a trench, only their upper parts were visible. He crept closer still, and gasped. The lights were torches, torches carried by armed humans, passing just ahead of him.

  As he took another step, the last torch passed, and darkness descended. Sledge pushed on and suddenly found himself beyond the eerie, heavy murk. He was standing at the rim of a little gully, inside what seemed to be a wide tunnel of solid stone. He looked to his left and saw the last of a large party of armed men trotting away around a bend. Their torches cast eerie shadows on the tunnel’s walls.

  Just behind him, Pyrr Steelpick stepped out of what seemed a solid stone wall, and others appeared, crowding around, gaping at the long tunnel that seemed to run through the bottom of a ridge that was not a ridge.

  “What is this?” a sapper demanded. “Is this magic?”

  “It might be,” Sledge said. “I’ve never seen magic, but this sure looks like it.”

  From down the tunnel came the sounds of voices and trotting feet, and torchlight glinted on the stone. Another band of armed humans came around a bend and skidded to a halt as the light of torches fell on the mob of Daergar spreading across the way.