by D. P. Prior
Dwarves were screaming now as the gale roared into a hurricane. The span of the dragon’s wings threw the citadel into shadow, as though night had fallen in an instant.
Grimwart grabbed her arm again, and this time she did not resist. He tugged her backward toward the gatehouse, but she couldn’t wrench her eyes from the beast.
A group of Red Cloaks raced to meet the threat, crossbows aimed high, axes held aloft. Before the dragon was within range of their weapons, dark liquid gushed from its jade head and spattered them with sizzling droplets. Screams rent the air, but already, the purple head was belching forth a churning brume of darkness that smothered the dwarves. The crimson head whipped round next, and as the smog dispersed in the wind, the Red Cloaks were revealed, frozen in poses of battle. Monstrous jaws opened, and flames roared.
“No!” Cordana cried.
The ground shook as the dragon landed. Cordana stumbled, but Grimwart caught her and shoved her toward the entrance, covering her back with his shield. The dragon advanced with thunderous footfalls, and Arnoch’s towers teetered and trembled.
Cordana turned back to watch while she waited for the last of the stragglers to make it inside. The Red Cloaks on the door waved her in anxiously, but she hesitated, spellbound by the awesome power of the beast.
Grimwart backed away behind his shield. It seemed a vain gesture. The dragon wouldn’t have noticed if it squashed him like an ant, and each of its five heads was large enough to swallow a house.
“Cordana,” Grimwart growled over his shoulder. “We need to go.”
Her legs refused to move.
“Now!”
Grimwart barreled into her as the crimson head swooped down. Red Cloaks grabbed Cordana and pulled her inside as fetid breath struck her. The dragon’s jaws gaped. Its fangs were thicker than tree trunks, keener than speartips.
Grimwart retreated into the gatehouse after her. He raised his shield and crouched behind it. The stone doors were already grinding their way shut. Beyond the threshold, the hyaline shields winked and shimmered into life, enclosing the citadel in a protective bubble. Thank shog. Someone had acted without needing to be told, for a change. Flames welled at the back of the dragon’s mouth, burgeoned into a small sun. Heat scorched Cordana’s face, reflected orange from Grimwart’s shield.
The doors thudded closed. Cool air and relief washed over her. There was a colossal boom. The barbican rocked. Cordana stumbled into the arms of Kal, who instantly marched her toward the rear. There were dwarves everywhere, calling to one another, screaming. Black Cloaks wove among them, as Red Cloaks tried to funnel them out the back to safety.
The milling dwarves parted to let Cordana and Kal through. Even panicked, they knew what was expected. Grimwart pushed and shoved his way toward her, but Cordana waved him back. She was quite safe with Kal, and the Black Cloaks were going to have their work cut out for them.
Halfway along the main concourse to the keep, the homunculus Abednago was waiting for her.
If not for his gray hair wound into dreadlocks, the wizened grooves of his face, he could have been taken for a dwarf child, he was so small. That, and the fact he was wearing the white robes of a councilor. The thought crossed Cordana’s mind, he hadn’t been there with the other members of the Twelve at Old Moary’s funeral. That was the trouble with homunculi, the shifty little shoggers: you could never rely on them. It made her question her decision to appoint him to the Council, the first non-dwarf ever to hold a seat. Thumil always used to say, if you can’t trust folk with the small things, then you definitely can’t with the big.
Abednago turned and walked with her and Kal.
“I activated the shields. I assumed you wouldn’t mind.”
“Well done,” Cordana said. It was hard not to be disappointed a dwarf hadn’t had the nous to act. But what could you expect? They’d languished for centuries at the foot of the ravine that housed Arx Gravis, and made a religion out of doing nothing.
Above the concourse, the dragon’s wings smothered the sky seen through the translucent shields. More thunderous roars came from outside, this time from different points about the citadel. Five concussive booms sounded, each one an earthquake, costing Cordana her footing.
Back the way they’d come, the bricks of the barbican glowed an angry red.
“It’s through the shields, that side,” Abednago said.
Cordana had never heard a quaver in the homunculus’s voice until now.
Screams reverberated all around her as the citadel juddered. Above the western quarter, black mottling coated the outside of the shields. Beyond it, opaquely, she could make out the silhouette of another of the dragon’s vast heads. A cloud of dark vapor gusted from its maw. Where it struck, the shields began to corrode.
Kal bundled her in through the keep’s scarolite doors. Cordana doubted even the green-flecked black ore could ward against the dragon’s attack.
Abednago came in last and pulled the lever that shut the doors.
“The dragon guns—” Kal said.
“You know how to use them?” Cordana already knew the answer. The guns mounted on the battlements were leftovers from the time of the Dwarf Lords: huge cannons that no one understood, not even Abednago.
“Uh, no,” Kal said.
“Don’t ask me,” Abednago said. “I told you I was no lore master.”
A massive blast ripped through the air outside the keep. The room lurched, or it may have been Cordana, she couldn’t tell.
When she steadied herself, she turned and strode for the corridor that led to King Arios’s throne room.
“You’re not going to—” Abednago started, as Cordana entered through the double doors and made straight for the throne atop its dais. The forest of pillars supporting the ceiling shuddered under another boom.
“Don’t see there’s much choice. Unless you have a better idea.”
“My Lady Voice?” Kal said. He was out of his depth and pale as a sheet. He stood dumbly at the foot of the steps beneath the throne, waiting for her to tell him what to do.
“I’m going to sink the city,” Cordana said.
Old Moary had taught her the sequence he’d learned from Arios’s journal. It was the same combination used by the king all those centuries ago. If anything, her circumstances were even more dire than his.
The panels on the arms of the throne slid back to reveal knobs, sliders, and buttons, all of brass, silver, crystal, and stone. As she twisted some, pressed others, careful not to make a single mistake, Abednago called up to her from the bottom of the steps.
“Aren’t you going to send for help first?”
“Hah!” Cordana said without looking up. “This is Qlippoth, Abednago, the land of nightmares. Who do you think will respond?”
Somewhere in the distance, a klaxon began to wail as she completed the sequence. The Black Cloaks had been drilled for this repeatedly. Old Moary had insisted. At the nine stations around the citadel, they would already be opening panels and priming levers.
Not that anyone had expected an attack on this scale. Since their arrival from Arx Gravis, the dwarves had been pretty well left alone. It was almost as if the dreaming god at the world’s core had drifted into a more contented sleep these past few years. But if he had, his nightmares had just returned with a vengeance.
“I meant him,” Abednago said.
Cordana flashed him a glare. “Nameless? Don’t even think about it.”
If the homunculus thought she was going to send word to Nameless, he had another thing coming. She had no doubt Nameless would respond. He’d go to the Abyss and back to save his people. But this was beyond even him.
“I’m not having him killed, too. Someone needs to survive this,” Cordana said. “One of us has to survive.” Even as she said it, she realized how pointless it seemed. What good was one dwarf left alive in the world? Once old age caught up with him and he went back to the mud, that would be it: no more dwarves. It was just delaying the inevitable. But even so
, she couldn’t send for Nameless. It would break her heart to see him try… and fail.
The muffled sound of another klaxon keened through the walls. It was swiftly joined by a third, then a fourth.
“You don’t think we’ll make it?” Kal said. “Even if you sink Arnoch?”
She wouldn’t count on it. “We’ll be fine, Kal. I just don’t know when it will ever be safe to come to the surface again.”
Kal seemed to take some comfort from the lie. She’d seen the damage to the outer shields for herself. Shog only knew what would happen if the water shields were breached.
Five more klaxons started up. Nine in all. That meant they were ready.
“Go organize the Ravine Guard.” She still called them that, like everyone else did, even though there was no ravine any longer. Not since they’d left Arx Gravis. “Make sure the people get to their homes and stay there till we’re on the sea bed.”
Kal slammed a fist to his chest in salute and hurried away.
“Right, Abednago,” Cordana said as she sat back in the throne, finger poised above the final button.
But the homunculus was gone.
“Shifty little—”
Her finger stabbed down, as if it had a life of its own. It was too late to change her mind.
The throne room rumbled, but this time it wasn’t the attack from outside. The pillars shook so much they seemed to sway. The clunk and thud of massive scarolite clamps being released reverberated around the chamber, and then her stomach flipped, and a rushing noise filled her ears.
Arnoch began to sink.
A CLASH OF ARMS
The Nameless Dwarf stepped up to the table. It was waist-height to him, but that was no bad thing for an arm-wrestle.
Big Jake loomed over the other side. He’d have to stoop when he set his elbow on top.
Farther back in the gym, the clangor of iron punctuated the anticipatory silence that had fallen at the front.
The swing doors burst open like a release of breath, as someone else was pulled from the streets by the promise of battle.
A whiff of perfume distracted Nameless, and he looked, even though he already knew her from the scent. Everyone did. It seeped from her brothel like sweet pollution; left its taint on most every nook and cranny in Brink.
“Glad you could join us, lassie,” he said.
“Dame Consilia.” Big Jake acknowledged her with an awkward bow and a waggle of his fingers that made him seem half the man he’d been a moment ago.
Her entrance marked the end of the silence, and those gathered to watch started to jabber and chatter. They were locals all, and they knew there was no chance of proceeding until the dame had a chance to banter.
“Gentlemen,” she said, whipping off a white glove and fanning herself with it. “It’s frightfully warm in here.” She gazed past them to the new recruits squatting, dead lifting, hanging from the chin bars. She looked about to whistle, but with a subtle shift of her facial muscles, turned it into a sigh of feigned disapproval. “Oh, I see. Do they have to sweat so?”
“If they don’t,” Nameless said, “they’ll feel my boot on their rumps, won’t you lads?”
Someone swore. Someone else gave him the finger. The rest grunted like they did anytime he asked a question.
Nameless eyed the finger guy, gave him the once over. He should have remembered the fellow’s name, but he’d be shogged if he could recall any of their names, the army had sent him so many of late. It was as though the curse that afflicted him, robbed him of his own name, was spreading like the pox among Dame Consilia’s strumpets.
“Well, make sure they shower before coming across the road,” the dame said. “My girls are not fussy, but there are limits. Now, are you two gentlemen going to ‘get it on,’ as they say? I’ve a client due after lunch, and I’m not anywhere close to ready.”
She looked ready enough to Nameless, what with her stacked and braided locks wound up into a platinum beehive. A bit narrow at the hips for his liking, but with curves a dwarf could get lost in.
Big Jake thought she looked ready, too, judging by the way he swallowed and drooled. Always made him look such a nonce, the silly shogger, although nothing could have been further from the truth.
Since Jake had jumped the sinking ship of the Night Hawks and come to work at the gym on the recommendation of his former guildmaster, Shadrak the Unseen, Nameless had seen a side to the big man few others suspected. Jake was shrewd as a fox with a monocle, wise as any bar-room philosopher, and a dab hand with a hog roast. Course, he was crass as a baresark, and strong as one, too. And there was a legend he was unbeatable in an arm-wrestle.
Nameless turned back to the table and pressed up close, till its edge dug into his belly.
One thing Jake was hopeless with, though, was women. No matter how many times the dame offered, Jake couldn’t pluck up the courage to step across the threshold of The Panting Peacock. He always claimed he was saving himself. With the way he blushed and stammered in her presence, you had to wonder if he wasn’t sweet on Dame Consilia herself.
Jake almost didn’t notice Nameless was ready to start. His eyes were riveted to the dame as she glided into a gap in the cordon of onlookers waiting impatiently for the bout to begin. She hooked her arm in Slythe’s—Senator Sendal Slythe of the Senate of New Londdyr, if he was to be believed. Certainly, Nameless was willing to believe him, if only to hear Slythe pronounce his title with such an appalling lisp. But word was, he had retired, or been removed from office. No one seemed to be able to confirm one way or the other, and nor should they. A man’s past was his own business. Nameless, of all people, should know.
“Cheer up, laddie,” he said to Jake, soft enough the crowd wouldn’t hear over their ruckus. “Doubt Slythe’s ticker could take it. And besides, it’s all for show. She told me she loathes him, and only puts up with him because his connections are good for business.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, leaning into the table and resting his elbow on it. “I heard that; but then I also heard it was his business.”
“Not so, not so, laddie. The money was all the dame’s, brought with her from Portis. She tells me she had a little windfall there a while back.”
“Only thing I ever got from Portis was the stink of fish,” Jake said. “Used to take me days to get the stench out of my clothes back when I was doing guild runs. Amount of shogging fish I carted to New Jerusalem’s finest eateries, don’t think I’ll ever touch haddock again.”
A cheer went up from the back of the gym. The crowd quieted, and a handful of people looked mildly panicked.
“Nameless!” one of the recruits hollered—was it Edgry? No, Edgry was the ginger nut. Palson? Griff? “A sweet five-hundred. What do you say to that?”
“Five-hundred?” Nameless made a show of squinting.
The man was standing with one foot on a dead lift bar loaded up with the new iron plates Jake had brought back from New Londdyr. They’d been made by the Senatorial armorer himself, Chad Myers, according to the designs Rugbeard had used in Arx Gravis.
“Five-hundred pounds, you say, laddie? Knock out a set of six to find your form, then get serious.”
“Six?” the indignant soldier shot back—it was Griff, Nameless was sure of it. Or Palson—“You gotta be having a laugh.”
“Laddie,” Nameless said to Jake, “do you mind?”
“Go right ahead.” Jake’s eyes flicked to Dame Consilia then back to the lifting platform. He’d built half a dozen as a favor to Nameless: two sheets of ply nailed together. Gave a bit of spring, and stopped the weights from chipping up the stone floor.
Nameless sauntered over.
“Now, look, Griff,” he said, waving the man aside as he bent from the hips in front of the bar.
“It’s Palson.”
“That’s what I said.”
He took a wider than normal stance, grasped the bar dead center with one hand, and heaved it up to his knees.
Palson gasped. The other recruits wat
ching muttered among themselves, and Big Jake hooted with laughter. Nameless lowered the bar to shin-height and dropped it the rest of the way. The clatter of iron on plywood elicited a look of utter shock from Palson.
“Admittedly, I’m a dwarf,” Nameless said, “but a big strapping lad like you, making a fuss over dead lifting five-hundred pounds—with both hands—is no laughing matter. Do better, or I may have to write you up and send word to your commanding officer.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Palson barked, and extended his arm in salute.
Nameless shook with suppressed mirth.
Palson frowned at him, then looked to his comrades for help.
A chortle escaped Nameless’s lips, then a cackle, and then he doubled up.
“It’s not even funny,” he guffawed. “It’s just the look on your face. I was pulling your leg, laddie.” Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he was snotting up his mustache something terrible. “You did well.” He gave an almighty cough and straightened up, forcing himself to look serious. “You did great. Now, end on a high. Go get yourself a drink on me.” He nodded over to the beer hall that he and Jake had converted one half of the gym into. Training, after all, came in many guises.
Palson looked flushed with relief, and his comrades took it in turns to clap him on the back as he made his way to the bar.
Nameless called out, “Drop the weight back down tomorrow. Four-fifty should do it. Ten sets of three. Good lad. I’m proud of you.”
“People are leaving!” Jake hollered over to him.
The cordon of onlookers was breaking up and edging toward the door. Dame Consilia and Sendal Slythe were the first out. She turned apologetically to Nameless and raised her palms, as if to say duty called.
“Can’t blame them, laddie,” Nameless said on his way back to the table. “I shouldn’t have kept them waiting.”
“Anyone would think you were scared of losing,” Jake said. All his awkwardness had vanished along with Dame Consilia’s arse. He was as cocksure as a man who’d never been defeated at arm-wrestling had every right to be. “Shall we?”