Return of the Dwarf Lords (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 4)

by D. P. Prior

  Yyalla came round in front of Nameless and shackled him with manacles made from the same dark rock as the citadel.

  Gitashan flashed him a look of pure malevolence before turning on her heel and barking, “Take him away!”

  THE HARVESTERS

  The stone manacles on his wrists pinched, but Nameless wasn’t about to complain to the three dwarves escorting him. Even if they replied, they would see it as a sign of weakness; and if they were anything like the Matriarch, that would only make matters worse.

  Certainly, the three women were sterner than they’d been before, as if seeing the Matriarch’s anger toward him was confirmation of how he should be treated. Beforehand, they’d not really known what to make of him, but now, he was just another prisoner.

  They took a right at an intersection and headed for some stairs down. Two thuds from behind had Nameless turning, and Yyalla, holding the leash attached to his shackles, turned, too.

  Kona and Shinnock were collapsed on the ground. Before Nameless had fully registered the fact, a black shadow flowed past him and flung itself at Yyalla. Pallid fingers jabbed her in the throat. She choked once, then dropped like a stone. The clang of her helm striking the floor echoed away down the corridor.

  “Scuts should invest in gorgets,” Shadrak said, spinning to face Nameless, already unrolling his tool pack and setting about the manacles with a slender pick.

  “You took your time, laddie,” Nameless said as one of the manacles clicked open. “If things had progressed much further, you’d be the one having to explain it to Cordana.”

  “Explain what? That you went and got yourself captured?”

  “It’s more than that,” Nameless said, feeling the heat rush to his face. “Wouldn’t it be easier to search them for the key?”

  Shadrak opened the other manacle and dropped them clattering to the floor. “No, it wouldn’t.”

  Nameless rubbed his wrists where the skin was chafed.

  “She wanted… their Matriarch… You know.”

  “Matriarch? What’s that, then?”

  “Like Dame Consilia,” Nameless said, “Only more insistent.”

  “And you said no?”

  “Believe me, laddie, you would have, too.”

  Shadrak rubbed his box beard, considering for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right. She’s a dwarf. Makes me want to yak just thinking about those hairy nipples.”

  On the floor, Shinnock started to groan.

  Nameless looked at Shadrak with surprise. “You didn’t kill them?”

  “Nope.”

  “But—”

  “Remember when I broke you out of Arx Gravis?”

  “Well, it wasn’t just you. I did my fair share.”

  “Not disputing that,” Shadrak said, “but you gave me a hard time over slitting one or two throats. I figured, seeing these are dwarves, too, you’d want them alive.”

  “I do,” Nameless said, realizing he hadn’t even considered it. Only three-hundred left. They couldn’t afford to lose a single dwarf. He gripped Shadrak by the shoulder and looked into his pink eyes. “Thank you, laddie.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Shinnock began to sit up, but Shadrak rushed over and pinched her on the neck. Her eyes rolled to white, and she keeled over again.

  “I’m a bit rusty,” Shadrak said. “Ain’t much need for pressure point work as an assassin, but it used to come in handy when I was a cat burglar.”

  “You used to steal cats?”

  “Come on,” Shadrak said. “Down here. I already got the others out. They’re waiting in the crapper. Shog, you dwarves sure must eat some rank shite, judging by the stench in there.”

  “Believe me, laddie, you wouldn’t catch me touching the food on offer here. But the minute I’m back in Arnoch, I’ll show you how a dwarf’s supposed to eat.”

  “Let me guess,” Shadrak said, heading for the stairs, “liquid diet with a big head of froth on top?”

  “Ah, you’ve tried it, then.”

  They descended three levels, which must have taken them into the roots of the mountain. They passed row upon row of cell doors, each with a narrow view window cut into the black rock. All but one was ajar, and Shadrak explained that was down to him checking inside for the others. Beyond the cells, they came upon what must have been the jailer’s room, a compact square with just a stone desk and chair, and dozens of keys hanging from pegs on the wall.

  “Jailer’s taking a bit of a lie down in one of the cells,” Shadrak said.

  That explained the only door not open.

  “What I don’t understand, is why they need so many cells,” Nameless said. Maybe they used them for their own people from time to time, in case of intransigence, or the slightest misdemeanor. Either that, or they’d started this war with Thanatos optimistically, and had envisaged holding all manner of beasts here to study.

  A door at the back of the jailer’s room opened on to the most mephitic stench. Nameless put his hand over his nose and gagged. It was a bare room, save for a latrine that was a sight to… well, it was a sight best not to think about. When everyone was a lord, there was obviously no one to do the cleaning.

  “You want to try hiding in here for any length of time,” Grimwart said, barging past him and sucking in great gulps of air. “Thank shog for that.” He still had his mace and shield.

  “You find those, too, laddie?” Nameless said to Shadrak.

  “Wasn’t exactly hard.”

  Nameless felt like hugging him. “You did well, Shadrak. I don’t know—”

  “Just remember, you owe me,” the assassin said.

  Nameless nodded. Who would have thought Shadrak could have turned out like this, changed so much?

  Kadee emerged next, tottering, supported by the husk girl. The gray hair on her head was thinning, leaving patches of baldness that reminded Nameless of Thumil when his hair started falling out. It was likely due to the stress of living through the first butchery at Arx Gravis. He hadn’t been so lucky second time around.

  Kadee’s cheeks and eyes were sunken, but there was no mistaking the half smile on her face. It was only half a smile on account of the effort it cost her, not for any other reason. She was as proud of her foster son as Nameless was.

  Shadrak dipped his head and looked away, embarrassed. Either that, or he didn’t want her to see the dampness of his eyes.

  The husk girl looked different, too. Her golden hair was now lank, coated with a gooey sheen of gray. Her skin was gray, as well, and crinkled, like it had been badly wrapped in some kind of sodden membrane. The bones protruding from her back stuck out above her shoulders now. From the front, it looked like she had two ivory-hilted swords strapped to her back. Her eyes were still sapphires, though milky cataracts coated them.

  Nameless looked to Kadee, but the old woman merely shook her head and shrugged. It gave Nameless the feeling the girl was dying, same as Kadee clearly was. It made no sense to him, how a creature so young, so graceful, could wither away before his very eyes.

  “What did they do to you?” Grimwart said.

  “Offered to shag his brains out,” Shadrak answered for Nameless. “And he went and turned the bitch down.”

  “Really?” Grimwart said to Nameless.

  “Really, laddie. But let me tell you, that’s nothing compared to what they had lined up for you.”

  “Lined up for me? What was that, then?”

  “By my guess,” Nameless said, “two-hundred and ninety-seven extremely deprived females. No, make that two-hundred and ninety-six: the Matriarch’s sister has a thing for the ladies.”

  “You mean, they want to…” Grimwart clearly couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Loan you out as a stud, Grimwart. You’d be dead from exhaustion within a week.”

  “Yes, but…” Grimwart said. “Do we have to go?”

  “For now, yes,” Nameless said. “We need to get out of here, rejoin the Warlord, then renegotiate from a position of strengt
h. One thing I’ve learned about these Dwarf Lords: they respond well to dominance.”

  “Yeah,” Shadrak said, “which is why they were leading you off in chains.”

  Grimwart went ahead, tucked in behind his shield, past the cells and back up the steps. To anyone but another dwarf, it must have looked like he knew where he was going, but he was relying on the sense peculiar to all dwarves, that told them how far below ground they were, and where the nearest egress was.

  Of course, that could have been something they inherited from Sektis Gandaw’s experiments. The Technocrat had meshed the dwarves of Arx Gravis with the homunculi of Gehenna in some way, modified them so they could mine the scarolite he needed for the building of his mountain base. The homunculi occupied the deep spaces beneath Aethir, and they had an unerring subterranean sense. Shadrak had shown the same thing within the maze-like corridors of his plane ship.

  The assassin took over care of Kadee from the husk girl, as if he needed to remain close to her this last leg of her journey. Nameless only wished there was something they could do for her, some way of returning her to the Forest of Lost Souls.

  He kept pace with the husk girl, but when she slowed to a stiff, faltering step, he picked her up in his arms and carried her. By the time they reached what felt to him like the ground floor, and followed Grimwart down a broad, featureless corridor toward a turning, she was fast asleep.

  Grimwart padded back toward them. “The gatehouse is up ahead,” he said. “Just around the corner. The outer doors have two guards.”

  “We should go out the way I came in,” Shadrak said, nodding up at the ceiling, indicating the upper levels.

  “You have a rope?” Grimwart said.

  “No. Just climbed the walls.”

  “I can’t see Kadee doing that, laddie, can you?” Nameless said. “Or the girl. Come to think of it, Grimwart and I would probably fall and break our necks.”

  “The gatehouse it is, then, Shadrak said. “But I go first. Those scuts sound the alarm, and we’re shogged.”

  A terrific crash came from the direction of the gatehouse. Shadrak started forward, but Nameless said, “Stay with your mother.” He was about to ask Grimwart to take the husk girl, but she was suddenly alert, and trembling with fear. He set her on her feet and said, “It’s all right, lassie. I’ll be right back.”

  Wishing he still had Paxy, he skirted the wall to the corner and peered around.

  For a barbican, it was relatively small, and it was as dull and featureless as the rest of the citadel, save for the teeth of an obsidian portcullis already starting to descend from the ceiling.

  Two Dwarf Lords moved back behind it as it came down and into the grooves cut into the floor. Shock registered in their movements, the way their helmed heads kept glancing at each other then off to the door through the latticed stonework of the portcullis. They each had glaives drawn, massive blades that required two hands to swing.

  A second crash shook the gatehouse. A third, and a fissure ripped its way down the stone of the doors.

  One of the Dwarf Lords fumbled a horn free from its clasp at her belt and sounded a long, keening note. As if in response, a thud came through the ceiling, and then a ferocious pounding started up all around the citadel. The floor trembled beneath Nameless’s feet, the walls juddered, and rock dust spilled from above. Off in the distance, the echo of an answering horn sounded, and it, too, was met with more hammering on the outside of the citadel. This time, chunks of masonry crashed down around the gatehouse, and the portcullis rattled and clanged as it shook.

  Nameless slipped back round the corner.

  “What the shog is it?” Shadrak asked.

  Kadee was hunched over beside her foster son, her head now down at his level. He had his arm in hers, and was covering her ear with his free hand, as if he could shield her from the noise.

  The husk girl’s eyes frantically flicked in the direction of every thud and clatter. Grimwart turned a steady circle, unblinking, shield raised.

  Booted feet pounded from the floor above. Distant cries reverberated along the corridors. Another horn sounded. There was the crash and rumble of falling rock—it sounded like a wall had collapsed. A woman bellowed a battle cry, and other voices joined in.

  “Which way?” Grimwart asked.

  Shadrak started to lead Kadee back down the corridor. “Away from the outer walls.”

  He stopped, though, when a dozen Dwarf Lords came tramping toward them.

  Nameless stepped in front, tried to look like he had every right to be there.

  “What’s going on?” he yelled.

  They came on more cautiously now, watching him as if he were somehow responsible for the din, for the assault on the citadel.

  “You tell me,” Matriarch Gitashan said, pushing her way through from the rear. She was armored once more, and her scimitar hung from her hip. She carried the scarolite case that held Paxy.

  “This is nothing to do with—”

  “Me,” Kadee said, in a thin, rasping voice.

  “What?” Shadrak said.

  Kadee patted his hand and left his side. She took a tottering step toward the Matriarch.

  “They’ve caught up at last,” she said. “The harvesters. They’ve come for me.”

  KADEE

  Shadrak glared at his foster mother as if she’d just betrayed him. He couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to—but he must have known this would happen all along. What was he, a scutting amateur, allowing himself to be blindsided by sentiment?

  “Harvesters?” the Dwarf Lord with the scarolite case said. It was shaped like an axe. Her close-fitting armor marked her off from the others as someone important. Her amber eyes flashed at Nameless. “This old woman is one of the dead? You brought one of the dead here?”

  “I—”

  “You have doomed us. Doomed us all.”

  “Matriarch,” Nameless said. “Gitashan, if we leave now, if you allow us to go, they might follow us. It’s Kadee they want, not the citadel, not you.”

  “No!” Shadrak said. He pulled out a flintlock, in case anyone was going to argue with him. He took Kadee’s hand and stepped toward the Matriarch. “Out of my way. We go deeper, down into the roots of the mountain.”

  “Kill her,” the Matriarch said, and the dwarves behind her surged forward. “Kill the old woman, and throw her corpse outside.”

  “Stay the shog where you are!” Shadrak yelled. He didn’t like the way his voice came out shrill, like a petrified child’s. But even as he thought it, he knew that was the case. The harvesters were coming for his mother, and they weren’t having her. Not while he still breathed.

  The dwarves kept advancing, so he let off a shot at the ceiling. Thunder boomed, and dust cascaded down.

  Outside, it went deathly quiet. The Dwarf Lords froze in their tracks, turning their full-faced helms to the Matriarch, looking for direction.

  She, on the other hand, had her eyes fixed on Nameless, and they were ablaze with rage.

  “So, Immortal,” she said, lips curling in a snarl, “it’s your move. What are you going to do?”

  Nameless made a fist, as if it could help him think—think of a way out of this. In his way, he was as desperate as Shadrak. He’d do anything to save Kadee, anything to save Shadrak, Grimwart, and the girl. But more than that, he’d do whatever it took to save the Dwarf Lords and bring them back to Arnoch. It’s what he did. Only, this time, he was out of options, and it was apparent he knew he was by the shaking of his fist, the knotting of every muscle in his body, the sense he was about to explode. But when it came, his response was less an explosion than a whimper.

  “Whatever Shadrak tells me.”

  It was over in his mind, Shadrak realized. Nameless was admitting defeat. Or was he? The way his old friend was watching him now, the teary dew of compassion in his hazel eyes, he hadn’t given up. He’d merely put his own needs aside for his friend.

  “I’m sorry, Nameless,” Shadrak said, taking aim
at the Matriarch’s head. “I can’t leave her. I can’t lose Kadee.”

  Nameless shut his eyes, but he gave the slightest of nods.

  “Fellah…” Kadee said, voice no more than a hoarse whisper.

  “No, Mom, I can’t…” But already his gun was coming down. He couldn’t abandon Kadee to the harvesters, but he couldn’t do this to Nameless, either.

  “Well, if you scuts are going to just stand there and get us all killed,” Grimwart said, excoriating the Matriarch and her entourage with his eyes, “it’s a shogging good job you’re too up your own arses to come back to Arnoch. With you on our side, the dragon would have us for breakfast.”

  The Matriarch started to open the casket she carried. “Why, you insolent shogging commo—”

  A concussive crash ripped through the corridor, and the left-side wall collapsed. Before anyone could react, a face like a raptor’s skull rushed at Kadee, trailed by ragged wings of dust and smoke.

  Even as Shadrak’s gun came up, he knew it was too late. In the same instant, Nameless cried “Paxy!” and the Axe of the Dwarf Lords shot from the Matriarch’s casket and straight into his hand. Gold flashed across Shadrak’s vision, and the harvester’s head exploded in a thousand shards of bone.

  “Enough squabbling!” Nameless roared, and he held up his axe for the Dwarf Lords to see. “We fight!”

  Harvesters came swarming over the wreckage of the wall, and the Dwarf Lords leapt to meet them. Grimwart stepped across Kadee with his shield, and Shadrak opened fire with both flintlocks. It was a chaos of snarls and grunts, splintered bone, and flashing steel. The Matriarch drew her scimitar and entered the fray, cutting left and right, and each time finding her mark.

  But the more they smashed harvester skulls, the more came, wraith-like on their insubstantial wings.