Dark Thane

by Jeff Crook

  He knelt down. "Oh Reorx, save my son," the dwarf king prayed, perhaps for the first time since the Chaos War. Though he knew that the gods had left Krynn at the end of the war and could not answer his prayers, still he prayed. "Oh, gods, please save my poor dear innocent boy!"

  But after he prayed, he jumped up and considered his options. The ancient wood door was not only locked, but swollen so that the jailer had had to force it shut with his shoulder and kick it several times just to get the key to turn in the rusty lock. The chamber had long ago been stripped of its contents, but he eventually found an old stone baton lying in a corner under heaps of dust. Once used in drills for strengthening arm muscles, it would make an effective if crude weapon. He thought about using it to batter down the door, then gave up that idea as too noisy. The guards would only return, and the next time they wouldn't be so careless with their chains.

  Tarn resumed his seat and rested the stone club on his knees. What he really needed was rest, but he couldn't risk closing his eyes for a moment; he might fall into a deep sleep. He had to get ready. If nothing else, he would spend his life to see Jungor Stonesinger's brains splattered all over the floor.

  He jerked awake and caught the stone baton as it rolled off his knees. He wasn't sure how long he had been asleep. But he heard footsteps coming, and then the key rattling in the lock. Thinking quickly, Tarn rested the baton next to his thigh while he slipped the chains back around his legs.

  The door groaned on its rusted hinges to admit the jailer. He was soberer now than he had been, though in much worse temper. He carried an old bucket and a large sponge in one hand, a smoking torch in the other. As he entered, slopping water onto the floor and cursing, Tarn noticed that the jailer was alone. The hall outside appeared to be empty.

  The jailer crossed the chamber and stopped at the bottom of the steps, setting his bucket down. Soapy gray water slopped over the sides. He dropped the sponge into the bucket, then started up the short flight of steps to Tarn's throne.

  "Jungor has sent word to make you presentable. He wants you pretty, it seems, so you don't offend the Hylar sensibilities. I have to rinse the piss stains from your trousers," he growled. "But first let me see to your chains. I…"

  The jailer gaped as Tarn rose up before him, his chains sliding from his limbs. Before he could shout or scream, the stone baton had crushed the dwarfs skull to the earholes. Tarn stepped over him, stooped to the bucket, and washed the dried phlegm from his beard. Then he took the jailer's keys and ghosted from the chamber.

  Slipping into the hall, Tarn paused. To his right, the passage descended sharply downward for about forty feet before entering a wider room lit by flickering torches. Twenty yards to his left, the passage ended at an ironbound door, which stood partially open, revealing a dark staircase heading up. He knew that the downward passage led to an old dungeon level, little used these days. But the stairs led to a tower of the North Gate fortifications. He didn't relish the idea of trying to fight his way through a garrison of troops loyal to Jungor Stonesinger. Just as well to sit in his cell and wait, than to try to run that gauntlet. But the dungeons didn't offer any better prospect.

  He started for the stairs. At least that was a way out, even if not a very certain one. But the quick thunder of boots on the stairs sent him scurrying back in the other direction. He hurried down the sloping passage and into the room at the bottom just as dozens of dwarves tumbled down the stairs and slammed the door behind them. Tarn heard shouts and curses, and something heavy began to pound on the door. "Kill the king before they break through!" one of the guards shouted.

  Tarn cast a quick glance around the small subterranean room. Chains and manacles hung from pegs on the walls, while a large, battered table surrounded by benches occupied the center of the chamber. This was another guardroom, luckily unoccupied at the moment Opposite the entrance, a rusted metal gate blocked the entrance to a narrow passageway lined with doors—more prison cells. The door to his right was, in all likelihood, the jailer's quarters.

  Tarn raced to the metal gate and tried the largest and most ornate of the keys he had taken from the jailer. It twisted in the lock with surprising ease; apparently someone had recently oiled the mechanism. But in his haste, Tarn dropped his weapon. The stone baton, bloody and slippery with the jailer's brains, broke cleanly in half on the hard stone floor. Swearing, he glanced around the room for another weapon. A bench or a length of chain would prove singularly useless against the swords and axes of trained warriors, but the jailer's room held the promise of something more suitable.

  He found the door unlocked and quickly entered, silently closing it behind him. The room was tiny and unlit, and it stank to the heights of heaven with the odor of unwashed dwarf. A bent dagger lay on a dressing table beside the sagging wooden bed. Several whips and a cat-o-nine-tails hung inside a wardrobe beside the door. But on the opposite wall, a shield and a pair of goblin swords were displayed atop a cabinet which housed a dented horsehair-crested helm—testimony of better and more honorable days perhaps, when the jailer had served in the king's army. Tarn ripped the shield and one of the swords from the wall. The shield's leather fittings, old and dry rotted, crumbled as he thrust his arm through the strap, but the sword seemed serviceable enough, if ill-balanced and poorly forged. Thus armed, he crept to the door and leaned against it, straining his ears to hear.

  The guards had poured into the small chamber outside the jailer's door. Seeing the open gate, several raced through, the shouts of their fellows encouraging them. "Find the king! Don't let him escape!" Tarn smiled grimly and tightened his grip on his sword.

  Just then, in the passage above, there was an explosive noise—the wooden door guarding the stairs bursting from its hinges. Footsteps pounded, and dwarven voices roared battle cries that shook the stone. Tarn opened the door a crack. The guards—a dozen hard-bitten Hylar warriors— had thrown up the table and benches to form a sort of breastwork across the entrance. They crouched behind it now, gripping crossbows and spears. Six Theiwar hung back with loaded crossbows, anxiously watching the gate. By his black robes and belt of pouches, one of them appeared to be a sorcerer. Tarn eyed this one narrowly, knowing him to be the most dangerous.

  "Come out, you dogs, and submit to the king's justice!" a voice roared from the passage above. Tarn smiled to hear his old friend Glint Ettinhammer, thane of the Klar, who had somehow rushed to his rescue.

  "The king is dead," one of the Hylar guards shouted back. Just then, the four dwarf warriors sent down the prison hall to search for Tarn returned, sliding into the chamber with baffled expressions on their bearded faces.

  "Nothing but prisoners. He's not among them," one said to the Theiwar sorcerer. The magician gaped in surprise for a moment before his dark eyes narrowed. He turned his pale visage toward the door to the jailer's room. Tarn stepped back from the door. He picked up the shield, useless for defense to be sure, but an effective distraction if flung into someone's face.

  Outside, the Hylar guard's words were met with cries of dismay from above. One in particular rose above the rest. "Kill them all then! Traitorous dogs, assassins! No mercy for anyone with the king's blood on his hands." Tarn started, wondering whether his ears were deceiving him, or if the dead had joined the living to revenge their king. For surely that was the voice of his old friend Mog Bonecutter, leading the charge.

  Tarn jerked open the door, surprising the Theiwar warriors slinking toward it, crossbows at the ready. At his sudden appearance, the sorcerer lifted his hands and began to chant a spell. Tarn flung the shield. The closest warrior ducked the goblin shield, discharging his crossbow into the ceiling in his excitement. The shield careened off the sorcerer's shoulder, staggering him momentarily, and breaking the intense mental focus so vital to spellcasting. He was forced to begin his spellcasting anew.

  Tarn slammed the door shut just as a half-dozen crossbow bolts shuddered and splintered into the wood, then nearly snatched it from its hinges as he swiftly charged out, b
ellowing, "Thorbardin!" His goblin sword cleaved the closest Theiwar warrior to the spine. His next blow shivered the brittle goblin-forged blade to splinters over the iron helm of one of the Hylar warriors. Momentarily stunned by the impact, the dwarf was powerless to prevent Tarn from yanking the war axe from his belt. Before the other Theiwar could reload their crossbows, Tarn was among them, laying about with the flat of the axe blade, cutting down Hylar and Theiwar alike.

  Despite surprise and a valiant effort, the king would quickly have been overcome where it not for the simultaneous assault led by Mog Bonecutter and Glint Ettinhammer. As Tarn slashed a path toward the Theiwar spellcaster, the contingent of Klar rescuers slammed into the hastily erected barrier and cast it aside. For a few brief moments, seasoned Hylar veterans grappled beard to beard with half-mad Klar shock troops, before the rescuer's momentum and superior numbers overwhelmed the Hylar guards. Those who could broke and ran, sweeping past the remaining Theiwar, who quickly followed them into the dead end of the prison section. Their passage jostled the sorcerer just as he was about to cast another spell. Before he could recover, Tarn felled him with a blow to the jaw; as the sorcerer dropped to the floor, a handful of glistening black powder spilled from his fingers.

  A dozen Klar warriors pelted after the guards, Glint Ettinhammer in their lead. Half mad with battle lust, Tarn cast about for another foe. What confronted him chilled his blood—a dwarf wearing the mask of the death skald and bearing a gleaming warhammer in his scarred fists. Feeling the ancient dread of the skald, Tarn backed away from this new enemy, war axe warily lowered. But then the dwarf dropped to one knee and tore aside the mask, revealing the tear-streaked face of his old captain of the guard, dead these two months and thought buried under the ruins of the Isle of the Dead.

  "Mog?" Tarn asked, his hackles bristling in horror. "Have you returned to haunt me?"

  "I am sorry flesh, my king," Mog wept with joy. "I live. So long as you have need of my sword, I will smite your enemies, even unto my own death." These were words from the ritual that Tarn used to induct new members into his personal guard. Hearing them now struck him to the soul.

  "My old friend, I did not believe miracles possible anymore," Tarn said, his voice cracking with emotion.

  "There's still one or two miracles left to this old world," one of the Klar warriors said with a laugh. He was older than any of the others by more than a century, and Tarn wondered why they had even bothered to bring him along.

  At his look of bafflement, Mog answered the king's unspoken question. "My lord, this is Ogduan Bloodspike, the true death skald of the Isle of the Dead. He saved my life," he said with a barely suppressed sneer. "How he came to follow us here, I don't know."

  37

  Glint strode down the narrow prison hall toward the sound of fighting. As he passed each cell door, he stopped and peered through the narrow grate. So far, all the cells were empty. But as he turned a corner and saw his warriors cutting down the last of the resisting Hylar guards, he found one cell that still contained an occupant. He stared through the tiny metal grate into the lightless cell. A small, weak voice spoke from the far corner.

  "Help me. I am a loyal dwarf wrongfully imprisoned."

  "Loyal to who?" Glint asked as he stepped back. With a single swipe of his war axe, he shattered the rusty lock. He shot back the bolt and pulled the door open on its ancient creaking hinges, then stepped inside.

  Flickering light from torches in the hall illuminated the interior of the tiny cell and its miserable occupant. Beaten and battered, his pale skin bruised purple around his lips and eyes, Ferro Dunskull blinked painfully.

  "Ah, here's the traitor now!" Glint said with glee. "How I've longed to cleave your scrawny neck." He strode across the floor of the cell in two steps and jerked the cringing Daergar to his feet.

  Ferro slumped against him, mewling in terror and clinging to the Klar thane's arms. "Please, have mercy on me," he whined.

  Furious, Glint tried to untangle himself. "Stand up, you coward! Stand up and take it like a dwarf. I want to get a clear swing at your neck. Ah!" Glint leaped hack in surprise, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets as he stared at the hilt of a small dagger protruding from between the overlapping plates of his chest armor. "Ah, you dog! You stabbed me!"

  Lifting his axe, the Klar thane intended to end the life of this miserable traitor at once, but his weapon felt strangely heavy in his hand. His fingers grew numb and his vision began to narrow and darken. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, his axe clattering on the stones. "Damn it all to hell!" he swore thickly. "And such a pitifully small dagger." He toppled back, his great shaggy head smacking the hard stone floor.

  Zen picked up the dead thane's war axe even as his arms lengthened and grew more muscular, his pale skin flushed with a healthy glow. His lank black hair became bushy and red, his beard full and bristling. Prison rags changed to gleaming plate armor. Hefting the axe, he stepped into the hall and closed the cell door just as the Klar warriors were returning from the slaughter. A few bore evidence of the valor of Hylar arms.

  "Did you get them all?" Zen asked in Glint's jovial booming voice.

  "Aye, Thane Ettinhammer. Not a one escaped!" one of the Klar soldiers answered.

  "Good. There's nothing in there but a Theiwar, dead more than a week," Zen said, pointing with his thumb. "Gods, what a smell! Let's find the king."

  Striding ahead, the draconian led them back along the prison hall and into the small chamber. The Klar loosed a thundering cheer when they saw Tarn alive. The king smiled to hear them and welcomed them with open arms. They surged around him and tried to lift him onto their shoulders, despite his protests. Angrily, Mog began to lay about with his fists, driving them back. Half the group were feral Klar, and he barely trusted them more than their enemies. The Theiwar sorcerer glowered from a chair in the corner, his hands tightly bound behind his back with mushroomfiber cords, a rag stuffed in his mouth. A large purple knot rose from the side of his face. Zen stepped past him quickly, in case the wizard still had some spell in effect that might reveal that the draconian was now disguised as Glint.

  "Thane Ettinhammer!" Tarn shouted. "Where are you going?"

  Zen stopped short, just within the exit. Remembering Glint's excitement at finding him in his cell, he quickly responded, "Ferro Dunskull is not here. I hasten to search the other dungeons for that miserable traitor."

  "Leave off. We have larger concerns than him," Tarn answered. But the Klar thane had already gone.

  Brecha Quickspring, thane of the Theiwar dwarves, stood on a rooftop overlooking the North Gate plaza. This high vantage point gave her an excellent view of the situation, which was deteriorating. Below her, a hundred or so Hylar and Theiwar warriors faced a mob of two thousand dwarf citizens of every clan. Most of those in the crowd were well armed. Here and there a spear or halberd pricked angrily above the sea of bearded faces. The dwarves of Thorbardin had a long history of maintaining a well-armed populace. It was a dangerous world and each dwarf was expected to be ready to defend his home and homeland at a moment's notice.

  Brecha made a mental note to speak to Jungor about changing the law, once his position as king was firmly established. An armed populace was a dangerous populace, independent and difficult to govern, as amply demonstrated by the scene unfolding below her. Word had spread that Tarn Bellowgranite had been captured and taken to the guard tower on the north side of the plaza. The tower lay conveniently near the Hylar district on the first level of Norbardin. It seemed that the crowd had formed largely without any express purpose—curiosity more than anything else. And no one knew yet how to react to the sudden seizure of power by Jungor Stonesinger and his allies. But in some quarters of the city, Jungor's forces had not yet gained control, especially in the fortress area of the king's residence. There were also pockets of resistance in Klar and Daergar neighborhoods.

  This large mob filled Brecha with misgivings. Normally content to allow their leaders to lead them,
they could turn dangerous if sufficiently provoked. Brecha didn't think it was word of Tarn's capture that had stirred them up. The king was too unpopular. Some other power was at work here, and she had quickly sent word to Jungor of the crowd gathering. She stood on the roof, her hands folded into the sleeves of her black robes, while she waited for her agents to return with their reports. Jungor was still in his home on the second level, where he and a dozen loyal Hylar leaders had gathered before coming to pay their "respects" to the captured king.

  A movement of the crowd below brought Brecha to the roofs edge. A party of armed dwarves had suddenly poured out of the guard tower, joining the Hylar and Theiwar guards ringing the tower's base. As the crowd drew back, Brecha swore bitterly and slammed her fist against the stone ledge. "Fools! What idiot ordered a sortie? Surely they don't mean to force… "

  Her voice dwindled away as the noise swelled up from the plaza below. The dwarves from the tower weren't joining the guards; they were attacking them! Brecha quickly spotted in their midst the unmistakable golden mane and towering frame of Tarn Bellowgranite. A massive silver warhammer gleamed in his fist as he struck right and left. Now the crowd had reversed its direction and was sweeping toward the guards battling for their lives. In moments, the Hylar and Theiwar were overwhelmed.

  Brecha clutched the roof battlements to steady herself. The words to a teleportation spell came unbidden to her mind, but she hesitated. The news of Tarn's escape needed to be delivered to Jungor without delay. Yet at the same time, she was in a perfect position to strike him down from above. She knew several spells that could kill the king from this distance. But would Jungor mind if Tarn died thusly? Was it the wise thing to do?

  While she hesitated, she saw that the battle was already over. Surrounded by the cheering mob, Tarn crossed the plaza and climbed the steps to the building whose roof Brecha occupied. The Theiwar thane peered between the battlements, unseen by the fickle crowd, now celebrating wildly. Brecha spotted numerous Hylar and Daewar in the crowd, even a few of her own Theiwar. Had how Tarn pulled off this unlikely resurgence?