by D. P. Prior
Ten pairs of stony eyes glared at him from full-faced helms the same black texture as the mountain. They were armored neck to ankle in cataphracts of obsidian, with granite-dusted boots poking out from beneath. Each bore a round shield that shone like a darkened mirror, and they brandished heavy axes, hammers, glaives, and mauls. Thick, braided beards, beaded with stones and iron, hung beneath full-faced helms that left only the eyes visible. All were squat and bulky with muscle, and all seemed as immovable as the mountain they stood upon.
Shadrak reached for his flintlocks as the two rappelling dwarves dropped from the ends of their ropes and advanced on him, both drawing short swords as they came.
A ruffle of sound made him look up, just in time to see a floundering, undulating net dropping from the balloon’s basket. He started to move, but too late. The net hit him and dragged him to the ground face-first. He tried to rise, but whatever was weighting the net was heavy and growing heavier. The more he struggled, the more it pressed him into the hard rock of the pathway. He managed to crane his neck to look up as boots tramped toward him.
A dwarf stood over him, axe raised high.
Shadrak started to speak, started to yell for the dwarf to wait, but even before the words left his lips, he knew it would do no good.
The axe was already coming down.
THE AXE OF THE DWARF LORDS
It was a long shot, but it was the only one he had.
The instant Nameless came round the bend in the mountain path and saw Shadrak beneath the net, a circle of dwarves around him, and one sweeping down an axe, he flung Paxy.
The Axe of the Dwarf Lords streaked through the intervening space like a comet. Dark-helmed heads turned, and the dwarf swinging the axe faltered.
That was all Paxy needed. Seeming to know what Nameless intended, she sheered through the axe haft and sped back toward his waiting hand. He was already running to meet her, caught her with effortless ease, and bellowed like a baresark as he charged.
The dwarves didn’t scatter or panic, which told him all he needed to know. These were seasoned warriors, fearless and disciplined. If he hadn’t expected to find them here, he’d have known them anyhow. It was all in the way they stepped over the net holding Shadrak, formed a seamless line like a breakwater, and braced to meet his attack.
Behind him, Nameless heard the din of Grimwart bashing his mace against his shield as he ran in support. It was a sound that filled him with grief as much as it did pride, because he could tell from the brief snatches of movement he’d glimpsed from the Dwarf Lords that the Kryptès was completely outmatched.
Nameless crashed into the shield wall. It buckled, but rather than break, the Dwarf Lords encompassed him with choreographed grace. Paxy connected with a shield, sent rocky black shrapnel spraying into the dwarves either side. A maul glanced off his helm. If he hadn’t twisted at the last second, it would have been a crushing blow. A glaive thrust for his belly. He smacked it aside with his axe and ripped a scything chop at the next in line. The dwarf swayed back, and Paxy’s blade merely shrieked against the face plate of his helm.
Not the best of starts. Normally, Nameless would have opened a breach and muscled through. Normally, his foes would have panicked and scattered.
A Dwarf Lord was flung into him with a whuff and a thud, and then Grimwart was there tucked in behind his shield. Nameless slammed the butt of Paxy’s haft into the back of the Dwarf Lord’s head. The force smacked him into the ground, even if the helm took the brunt of the blow.
Grimwart went back-to-back with Nameless, weathering a storm of juddering blows on his shield. It was all he could do to remain standing, never mind get off a strike with his mace.
An axe powered toward Nameless’s head. He ducked and came up swinging. Paxy caught the assailant beneath the chin guard. The black helm shattered, and blood sprayed from jagged shards of stone slicing the skin beneath. For an instant, Nameless hesitated. He’d assumed they were men, because of the bulk of their armor, but, blood-speckled beard aside, this one was most definitely a woman.
She snarled and delivered a head butt, but Nameless met her face with his fist. Her nose exploded in a pulpy spray of gore, and she grunted before pitching to her arse.
Grimwart took a colossal hammer blow on his shield. The metal buckled, and he was forced to one knee, but still he had Nameless’s back.
A glaive came at Grimwart from the side. Nameless saw the glint of steel and hacked down, snapping the blade in two.
Air rushed toward his ear, and he spun—straight into the path of an axe. Paxy came up in a blur, deflected the blade, but a hammer hit Nameless in the ribs. He staggered. Crushing pain throbbed through his chest. Paxy flared and numbed it, but a maul clipped against his helm and sent him sprawling. His vision blurred, and he lost his grip on the axe.
A boot came down, but Grimwart cannoned into the owner before it could connect. At last, the Kryptès had a split second in which to swing his mace, and it smashed the face plate from a helm and sent the Dwarf Lord reeling back. Weapons hammered, thrust, and chopped at Nameless from every side, but Grimwart crouched over him beneath his shield. Nameless stretched his fingers toward Paxy’s haft. Of her own accord, she shook and started to skitter toward him, but a gauntleted hand grabbed her and whisked her away.
The shock of seeing it happen almost tipped Nameless into despair. No one but he could touch the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. But then he realized his mistake: no one without the blood of the Immortals.
Grimwart grunted and whimpered under the strain of the attacks raining down from above. Each pounding blow crushed him lower to the ground, until he was lying on his back on top of Nameless, the shield the only thing between them both and a brutal, bloody death.
Nameless tried to roll out from beneath, but another blow slammed Grimwart into him so hard, his head bounced against the ground, and white flared behind his eyes.
“Shog you!” Grimwart yelled from under his shield, but it was a last desperate act of defiance.
Nameless struggled to rise, but Grimwart might as well have been a mountain on his back. Strength seeped from Nameless’s limbs along with consciousness. He tried to cling on, tried digging deep into his inner dark, to find some thread of rage that could turn the tide. But the attack of the Dwarf Lords was relentless. Grimwart was a dead weight on top of him, all resistance final fleeing his battered body.
The shield was pulled away, and a dwarf—another woman—said, “Finish them.”
“No!” a croaky voice cried. It was Kadee, rasping and breathless.
Nameless turned his head to see, as Grimwart rolled off of him and lay prone upon the ground, a mass of yellowing bruises already blooming wherever his skin was exposed. He was still breathing in ragged pants and gasps. Almost certainly, it was the shield and his scarolite armor that had kept him alive.
Kadee was a dozen yards off, her eyes wide with horror. She was hunched over and impossibly old, but that did nothing to stop her hobbling toward the Dwarf Lords as if possessed by a demon.
The husk girl glided behind her, eyes blazing blue. He golden hair fanned out in the breeze.
“And kill them, too,” the dwarf woman said.
“My son!” Kadee cried. “Don’t hurt my son!”
Trapped beneath the net. Shadrak. Nameless’s mind was so muggy, he could barely recall what had happened, who it was he’d tried to save.
The tramp of boots on the rocky path was as grim as a death knell. Four dwarves stormed toward Kadee and the husk girl; the rest turned their attention back to Nameless and Grimwart, lifted their weapons for the killing blows.
“Nooooooooo!”—a scream that rent the air like breaking glass and went on and on, reverberating around the mountain.
At first, Nameless thought it was him, and he was ashamed to have faced death in such a manner. But his lips hadn’t moved. In fact, he hadn’t even flinched.
The Dwarf Lords stood frozen in time, weapons locked in mid-swing.
The h
usk girl flowed toward them, radiant as star shine, immaculate as newly forged steel. Her eyes were blazing beacons of icy blue, and her golden hair was now rime-frosted and standing out in glistening spikes.
Then, as soon as it had come, the transformation left her. Her tousled hair fell languidly about her shoulders, and the light went out of her eyes. She stood there before the Dwarf Lords, dumb and vacant. As they awakened from their stupor, Nameless’s heart started to hammer frantically. She had done all she could, but now she was rooted to the spot, like a lamb awaiting slaughter.
He pushed himself to his feet. The Dwarf Lords staggered back to life around him. Weapons started to move.
“Will you shogging cut it out?” Nameless barked in the same parade ground voice he’d heard Thumil use a hundred times.
His tone visibly stunned them.
Taking courage from that, he puffed out his chest. It’s something Nils Fargin used to do when he wanted to look bigger and more important than he was.
“Now listen, you ignorant scuts, I am a Dwarf Lord, like you.”
Looks passed between them, expressions hidden beneath the black helms. One of them opened the face plate—another woman.
“You lie,” she said. “Kill them.”
Before anyone could move, Nameless singled out the Dwarf Lord holding Paxy with the sort of reverence a priest might have for a holy relic. A shield hung from one arm, and a broadsword was scabbarded at her hip.
“You know what that is?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Then you know only one with the blood of the Immortals can wield it.”
A hushed awe fell over the group, and a hint of indecision crept into the expression of the woman who had spoken.
“Trickery,” she said. “Do not believe him, Thyenna.” She took a step forward, raised her glaive to strike.
“No,” Thyenna said in a voice used to command. “No trickery. This is the Axe of the Dwarf Lords, Janyl, the artifact that passed through the Void from the Supernal Realm. It is the weapon of champions.” She held Paxy out to Janyl.
With shaking fingers, Janyl reached for the axe, but she grasped only air.
“How can this be?”
Thyenna opened her face plate. Her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. She turned them on Nameless. Her voice grated with suppressed emotion as she said, “My sister and I are the last surviving Immortals. How is it you are here? Who are you?”
Well, that was a question and a half. It was also a major drawback of having a name like his, which was no name at all, however you looked at it.
“You know of Arnoch?”
Thyenna’s eyes widened. “The mythical citadel of our forebears?”
Nameless reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers about Paxy’s haft. Thyenna seemed about to release the axe to him, but then tightened her grip and snatched it back.
“Not mythical,” Nameless said. “It’s as real as you are. And it is in dire peril. The dwarves of Arnoch sent me to find you. They need you to return home. They need your help, if they are to survive.”
Thyenna and Janyl exchanged looks. The other Dwarf Lords muttered among themselves, clearly unsettled.
Janyl started to speak, her lips curling in some scathing reply, but Thyenna cut her off.
“You must speak with the Matriarch. My sister will want to hear all about this. And she will definitely want to see the axe for herself.”
She turned her eyes to the sky and snapped her fingers. The ballon hovering above them began to slowly descend.
As the basket touched down, Thyenna opened a low gate set into its side, and climbed aboard with two others.
“You four,” come with us, she said to Nameless and his companions. “The rest of you, back to your posts.”
Nameless helped Grimwart to his feet. The Kryptès winced with every movement and clutched his chest through his armor. He stooped to retrieve his battered shield and his mace.
“What about my son?” Kadee said, turning her head toward the net sprawled out on the ground.
It was empty, a gaping hole cut into its weave. Shadrak, as usual, never missed an opportunity.
“Find him,” Thyenna said, as Nameless helped Kadee into the basket, and then Grimwart.
The husk girl stood dumbly, as if all the life had gone out of her. Whatever it was she had done had given Nameless invaluable time; time that had saved them all, without a shadow of a doubt. But had she spent herself in the process, or was she still growing, cocooning herself in some invisible chrysalis, waiting to reveal what she truly was?
When Nameless tried leading her toward the balloon and she didn’t respond, he gently lifted her into his arms and cradled her like a child.
As he climbed into the basket, one of the dwarves with Thyenna tugged a hanging cord. Flames gouted from a cylinder of stone beneath the opening at the base of the balloon, and slowly, imperceptibly at first, they began to lift away from the ground.
THE MATRIARCH
Beneath the descending basket of the balloon, Nameless could see a waiting circle of Dwarf Lords spread out atop the flat summit of the citadel’s central tower. He stumbled and caught the side of the basket as they touched down. Thyenna, shield now strapped to her back, opened the gate and stepped out, and a dwarf of arresting beauty strode toward them.
She was armored in scales of black stone, but unlike the ankle-length cataphracts the others wore, hers was close-fitting, molded to her torso. And what a torso it was, tapering in at her waist, but with shoulders as broad as any man’s; and her curves were… well, they were in all the right places.
Grimwart elbowed him in the ribs, and Nameless raised his eyes to the woman’s face. Say one thing for the Kryptès, though: he might have been beaten to within an inch of his life, but he’d noticed, just the same.
Her beard was satin black and twisted into a single, thick braid tied with silver thread. But it was her eyes that were her most striking feature: they were amber, like some feral beast’s, yet they glinted with fierce intelligence.
At her hip, a naked scimitar hung. It was forged from scarolite. Either there were pockets of the diamond-hard ore on Thanatos, or the weapon was impossibly old, brought with the Dwarf Lords from Arnoch.
A sly look passed across her exquisite face as she looked Nameless up and down. It melted away, though, when she clapped eyes on Grimwart. She wrinkled her nose up and said, “What… is… this?”
“Dwarves, Sister,” Thyenna said. “Matriarch,” she corrected herself. “Coming up the mountain path. And there were others—”
“I can see they are dwarves. Well, at least one of them.” She returned her appraising gaze to Nameless. “But a common blood… They were supposed to be extinct.”
Thyenna glanced at Grimwart. “Ancient Bub says the common bloods left Arnoch to cross the Farfall Mountains, with Lords Thane, Carrig, and Ferzus, not that they died out. At the same time, the majority of the Lords who remained alive were sent here to Thanatos.”
“Bubanthus Balderson says a lot of things he can’t substantiate.” The Matriarch jabbed a finger at Kadee, then the husk girl. “And this, Thyenna… this is unacceptable. Remember what happened last time you admitted strangers to the citadel? Remember the Warlord and what he stole from us?”
Thyenna lowered her eyes, and a pink flush suffused her cheeks. “I thought—”
“You didn’t think, sister, and that was the problem. You hoped for an ally and found a betrayer. But enough. It is a subject fitting for no ears but yours and mine.”
Thyenna stood ramrod straight and thumped her chest in a salute that was essentially the same as that used by the Ravine Guard, back in the Arx Gravis days.
Dwarves of “common blood”, sent across the Farfalls? That could only have meant the founders of Arx Gravis. So, the original dwarves of Arnoch weren’t all Lords? That was news to Nameless. He’d known for some time about the Immortals, the elite among the Lords, but he’d had no idea Arnochian society had been so
hierarchical.
It appeared Abednago had been right all those years ago, when he’d shattered the myth that the dwarves of Arx Gravis were creations of Sektis Gandaw. They had been altered, tainted with the blood of homunculi, but they had not been the Technocrat’s creation. Like the Dwarf Lords themselves, they must have predated Gandaw’s arrival. Like everything else indigenous to Aethir, they were dreams of the Cynocephalus.
“And what is that?” The Matriarch nodded at Paxy, still clutched in Thyenna’s gauntleted hand. “It looks like a prop from the mummers’ plays we used to put on for Arnoch Day.”
Thyenna stepped forward, dropped to one knee, and held out Paxy to her sister.
“This, Matriarch Gitashan, is the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. The real one, I am sure of it, not a prop.”
Gitashan swallowed thickly. Her fingers hesitated an inch from Paxy’s haft. They were trembling. She blinked furiously, her eyes flicking between her sister and the axe.
Gitashan withdrew her hand, clutched it to her chest, as if it had been scolded.
“You know this how?”
“I saw it in action,” Thyenna said, standing. “And in case there’s any doubt, look.” She beckoned one of the dwarf soldiers making up the cordon around the top of the tower.
Nameless could tell from the bearing it was another woman. He scanned the rest of soldiers as discreetly as he could. They all were.
Thyenna offered Paxy to the soldier, but when the woman went to grasp the haft, her fingers passed straight through it.
Matriarch Gitashan’s amber eyes widened, and she drew in a sharp breath.
“Just as Ancient Bub described it,” Thyenna said. “When he used to read to us from the Annals.”
Gitashan nodded slowly. Her eyes roved back and forth, not focused on anything in particular, at least, not anything outside her own head. She was taken off guard, that much was clear, and weighing up all her options.
Finally, she held out her hand, and Thyenna passed her the axe. Gitashan’s fingers closed gently around the haft. Satisfied it was real, she took a firmer grip.