In The Depths Of Winter

by Bradley Mitzelfelt

  When they were all back to working, he stood and pulled the armor on. It was snug, but still flexible enough for him. There were obvious weak points in his armor design, but at least his vital organs would be protected. He couldn’t really ask for more than that.

  As it turned out, making the chest plate first only proved to make the greaves that much easier. The techniques he’d learned from the dwarves made molding the metal a much smoother process, and they took less time. The helmet was trickier, more intricate, but he opted for something simplistic in design. There would be no moving parts on his helmet.

  When all was said and done, he stood wearing the shadowy armor, his bracers the only difference in design. Each piece of the armor was angular. The helmet was sharp, jetting towards the back of his head and neck, but leaving his face exposed so as not to limit his vision and ability to call out if necessary. Still, it protected his neck and skull. The chest plate was molded perfectly to his torso, but with an angular flap that hung down lower to protect below the belt, and built in shoulder protection that stuck out to a sharp point. The greaves rose in layers like scales, ending with a long point that touched his knee.

  It was imposing armor, but as light in weight as it was strong. He was impressed with it, though he had to admit that the hardest part of the work associated with it had come at the hands of the dwarves, who’d shown him the necessary techniques for the creation of each piece. He thanked them in turn, each grunting their assent, but not saying much else. As he was about to leave, though, he stopped and looked back at the one who had helped him.

  “What hall is it that you’re from?” he asked.

  “Oderine,” the dwarf said. “Far ta da eas’ of ‘ere.”

  “I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “Few ‘ave. Not ver’ big and we ten’ ta keep ter oursel’es. Or did, a’ leas’.”

  “I see. Thanks again for your help.”

  The dwarf just grunted and went back to his work, leaving Dearic to do whatever he was going to do. What am I going to do? he asked himself. By this point the battle below had been raging for more than a full day and he was exhausted, yet excited to test out his armor at the same time. They weren’t going to let him fight at the entrance, but at least he could be nearby just in case. Just in case the things they’d seen that looked like golems came back from wherever they had gone. They were heading off towards the Valley, but they wouldn’t find anything there, he was certain.

  He climbed down the stairs and approached the main hall. It was still crowded with dwarves as they funneled up the chute in shifts towards the front, fighting back the many waves of goblins that sought to break into the dwarven home. As he approached, some of the dwarves looked at him appraisingly. Once or twice there was the nod of a head or a word of approval, but in general it seemed that they were too focused to even speak to him. This wasn’t new.

  As he stood above the dwarves, he looked down the entrance hall towards the gate. He could see just well enough to tell that the goblins were chucking their dead back out onto the mountainside behind them in order to keep the way clear for them to fight. Injured dwarves were being hustled down the hall to the main chamber. Once there, they were herded off to the side where they could be tended to by those that weren’t fighting. The more seriously injured ones were ushered up to the waiting pool of healing water above.

  More and more of the dwarves were being ushered back and it made Dearic upset that he wasn’t able to help them. He could ply his magic upon them, but the risks were great and the reward would be anger. These dwarves would not accept his meddling in the magic of healing upon their bodies. The healing waters were far too sacred to them. But he had to do something or else he was going to lose his mind standing around as a useless being in a hall full of warriors. He had one idea, but he wasn’t even sure that it would work, and if it did, it wasn’t a permanent solution to their problem. It was worth a shot, though.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and lifted both gauntleted arms, the armor pieces flaring at the feeling of magic coursing through him. If he had noticed he would have marveled at the fact that they didn’t allow Magic to harm him, but still allowed him to use it. All he could see, though, was the entrance to the cavernous city, once his eyes opened again. On the mountain above the entrance, where the door normally would have been situated, rock began to shift.

  A huge boulder ripped itself free of the mountain face and began to move towards the entrance. Goblins beneath the boulder stared at it. A few skittered quickly away from it, wisely fearing that which lifted it free. Dearic focused, concentrating his mind, as sweat began to pour down his face. Creases lined his forehead as he shifted his hands towards the entrance, and the boulder was guided above it. Then he released his control. Outside, the boulder smashed down with thunderous impact, crushing goblins at the cave entrance and sending a wave of dust and debris scattering down the tunnel, through and over the dwarves that lined it.

  Dearic bent over and heaved, but all that he saw were droplets of blood splashing against the ground beneath him. Blood droplets that continued as he watched, and he realized that they were dripping from his nose and mouth both. He lifted his arm and wiped his hand across his face. It came back smeared in blood.

  He was about to sit down when he was shoved over by a pair of rough hands.

  “I told you not to get involved!” Dwemorin said as he loomed over him. “If that were the only entrance to this hall we would be trapped until we could relieve that boulder from blocking it. You didn’t think about that, did you? Too thick headed to leave well enough alone.”

  Dearic stared at the dwarf and wiped his hand off on the ground. He’s right, I didn’t think about that. I could have doomed us all to being trapped here until they broke the boulder down, and then the goblins would just be waiting again. For a moment he just stared at the Hallmaster, blood still seeping from his nose. Then he nodded his agreement.

  “Good. Now stop thinking of yourself. We’ve been living here for hundreds of years, and we’ve dealt with more goblins than the hairs on your head. We can defend this place without your interference, and as I said, you’d just be in the way. Go back to your room and get cleaned up. You’re bleeding.”

  Dwemorin strode away then, moving towards the injured, and leaving Dearic to his own devices. For his part, he slowly pushed himself back to his feet and tilted his head forward before pinching his nose. A grimace touched his features as he stood there for a moment, waiting for the bleeding to cease. The dwarves paid him no mind after the Hallmaster spoke with him. There was too much for them to do. He watched them through lifted eyes, each one going about a specific task in cleaning up from the battle. They were methodical. Some moved to tend to the injured. Some began clearing debris. Others tossed goblin corpses into the depths. He noted there wasn’t a sound of them ever hitting anything.

  When his nose had stopped bleeding, he walked away from the scene, heading back to his chamber where he closed the door and used some water from the basin to clean the blood off of his face and hands. His armor was slowly removed and set aside before he sat on the bed, staring at the door.

  It was almost time for him to leave.

  Chapter Seven

  Sometime during the night, Dearic woke rapidly. He’d been having a dream where he was hunting a stag in the King’s Forest. It had eluded him repeatedly, and each time he lined up to take a shot, the deer managed to leap out of harm’s way just in the nick of time. It was like the beast was taunting him. Just out of reach it loomed, waiting to be put down, but unable to be stopped.

  As he sat up, the dream dissipated into the relative quiet of the night under the mountain. Truthfully, it could have been broad daylight outside. Beneath stone it was hard to say. Regardless of the light outside, most of the dwarves must have been bedded down for the night because he didn’t hear any noise of trouncing boots moving up and down the hall. What he did hear was incessant snoring, albeit faint as it was blocked by the stone
walls that surrounded him.

  Why am I awake, then? He turned on the bed until his legs reached over the side and his bare feet touched the floor, sending a shiver through him. A lick of his lips and he scanned the room before he stood and stretched. Being as he was awake, he figured he might as well act like it. A few muscle stretches, a splash of water on his face from the washbasin, and a deep breath. When he was satisfied that he was ready to leave, he climbed into his jerkin and pants, leaving the armor in the room for now as he didn’t think that he was going to have any need of it. He did grab his rapier and strap it to his waist, however.

  Opening the door, he stepped into the hall and took a look up and down it. Not a single dwarf to be seen. Given that they’d just dealt with a hard battle to defend their hall, he surmised that they had good reason to be asleep. As he padded down the hall towards the main chamber, the lap of his feet against the stone floors resonated. In the stillness it sounded like the fire of a canon.

  Ahead of him, as he neared the grand chamber that made up the center of the hall, he saw a shadow appear before it darted away again. That’s odd. I don’t hear any sounds of struggle, so there’s no reason for a dwarf to be running that quickly. For that matter, I don’t think a dwarf could move that quickly. His fingers drummed against the hilt of his rapier. Something was certainly amiss.

  The shadow did not reappear so he moved to the opening into the hall and peered out. There were many lamps lit throughout the hall, including on the stair up to the healing pool. He could see quite clearly, but he didn’t immediately see anything out of the ordinary. No strange shadows moving about. But there weren’t any dwarves around that he could see either. He walked towards the hall that led to the entrance and looked up it. There were still blood smears all about, and some still looked fresh. Perhaps they hadn’t yet taken the time to clean it. He didn’t blame them for being too tired to take care of it.

  There were a couple of dwarves down at the end of the tunnel and he lifted a hand to them. One returned the wave, the other remained still. He decided it was probably best if he didn’t bother them considering the Hallmaster’s response to his previous actions. Truthfully he didn’t feel like getting into a verbal altercation.

  He did an entire circuit of the main level of the chamber. It gave him plenty of time to let his mind relax. Dwemorin had been right in what he said about Dearic not thinking through what he’d done. The potential for disaster had been great, but he hadn’t taken the time to consider it. Rather than trusting his head, he let his gut get in the way. There was always a time and a place for gut instinct, but he wasn’t gifted enough in the use of Magic yet to be able to rely on such feelings alone. He needed to make sure he thought first.

  After circling the chamber, he paused and looked down one of the many main arteries, this one heading off towards the current mining operations. There was no ring of axe against stone or metal resonating from deep within the mountain. This surprised him. Certainly not all had been involved in the hall defense, so why was no one still at work? There were always dwarves awake and doing something in Pabila.

  With his fingers still tapping against the hilt of his rapier, Dearic strolled down the hall at a gentle pace. He was in no hurry. Though he didn’t know anything was wrong for certain, his gut was certainly giving him the feeling that it was, and his mind wasn’t arguing against the possibility. It’s far too quiet, regardless of the time.

  The slope began to increase the further along he went. He descended deeper beneath the main chamber, past the halls where all the metal and precious stones had long been picked clean. There were no signs of use here outside of the path that descended further. Gradually he neared the lowest levels, where the current mining was being undertaken. Here he should have seen someone almost immediately, but he didn’t see a single dwarf. He paused and scanned up and down the side halls, looking for anyone, but he saw nothing.

  He did hear something, however. It was barely noticeable, but he swore he heard a whimper. The first thing that ran through his mind was that something bad had happened. The second was telling him that he needed to go back up to the main hall and find whatever had been the source of that shadow he’d seen. However, he needed to know more, and he had an obligation to find the source of the whimpering before he ran off to chase shadows.

  Drawing his rapier, he moved slowly down the hall. About halfway down it, the lights had been doused. He found the lanterns, in this case housing stones that glowed when fully intact, smashed on the floor. No accident would have caused this without arousing the entire Hall. He turned back and grabbed one of the still functioning lanterns to use to light his way. When he did, he saw the horror that had befallen the miners in the lower chambers. There were dead everywhere. They’d been cut to ribbons. Their picks were covered in blood, too. It was green.

  “Goblins?”

  The whimper resounded just a little further along and he saw movement. Someone is still alive! He hastily stepped over and around the bodies until he reached the fallen dwarf. A young dwarf. He barely had any beard yet. There was a grievous wound to the side of his head that was still oozing blood, but Dearic could find no other wounds.

  “Hold still.”

  He set the lantern down on the blood strewn floor, setting his rapier beside it shortly after. Reaching his hand out towards the wound, he pressed gently against it. The skin was extremely loose, and fresh blood started to flow, but he knew that if he didn’t try and find a way to dress the wound, the dwarf was certainly going to die. He didn’t have anything on him to make bandages with, so he ripped strips from the dwarf’s tunic.

  “Sorry, but I need to bandage this so you don’t die.”

  Carefully, he wrapped the strips around the dwarfs head and tied them in a knot on the opposite side of the head from the wound. That should apply enough pressure to keep the dwarf alive until he could get him up to the pool. He was just going to carry the dwarf up, but when he thought about it, coupled with the disaster that he was currently kneeling within, he didn’t want to be unable to defend himself with a blade. There was the magic, but he didn’t want to tempt fate when his life was at stake. Too many risks and unknowns now that he understood it more.

  So the question was, how was he going to get the dwarf to the pool? He looked around and spotted, just down the hall, a wheelbarrow used for hauling raw, unrefined ore. He went and got it, wheeling it between bodies until he reached the prone dwarf. Gently, he picked him up and set him inside. Before leaving, he grabbed the lantern and set it in the dwarf’s lap. He held his rapier in his hand as he gripped both handles.

  The thin blade tapped lightly against the edge of the barrow as he wheeled it through the bodies and back to the main riser up to the central hall. The hardest part of the journey was the fact that he had to climb most of the mountain just to get to where the pool was, and he had to do it, once again, while lugging an injured dwarf. If he wasn’t careful this was going to become a habit that he didn’t want to have. It was bad enough when he’d brought Fanan. Now he was carrying an injured dwarf he didn’t even know, and he wasn’t sure who was responsible for the dead and injured down below.

  The only thing he did know was that goblins bled green. But how could goblins have gotten in and not raised the alarms? That didn’t make any sense at all. It didn’t seem possible. But the evidence was stacked against the realm of possible at the moment. When you can do magic, it means just about anything is possible.

  Up and up they went, Dearic pushing the wheelbarrow up the steep incline. It wasn’t as hard as he remembered from before. They picked up a bit of speed when the pathway leveled out, carrying them back towards the main hall. There still wasn’t anyone to be seen, and he didn’t see any new bodies, either. Maybe the goblins, if that was what they were, hadn’t quite made it up this far? Or maybe they were delving for something specific beneath the mountains. There were a lot of possibilities, and he mostly discounted all of them.

  Crossing the hall, he ap
proached the stairs up and realized he was going to have to carry the dwarf all the way to the top instead of wheeling him up there. He suddenly wished that the dwarves had built the pathway up out of ramps rather than stairs. It would have been much easier with ramps. Setting the wheelbarrow at the base, he holstered his sword and left the lantern. They weren’t going to be needing it.

  He hefted the dwarf up, which wasn’t easy. Already sweat began to run down his forehead. To the stairs he went, where he began climbing them one step at a time so as not to lose his balance and tumble into the chasm of darkness that was below them. One false step could spell certain disaster. To make matters worse, he didn’t just have to worry about himself when it came to this. So he took his time, climbing at a pace that would allow him to reach the top quickly, but still with a modicum of safety.

  They climbed without issue. It wasn’t until they started to near the top that he heard the sounds of movement ahead, and a lot of grunting and shuffling. Something smashed and he was certain that he heard the metallic twang of metal on stone. The dwarves wouldn’t be up by the pool working. The chamber there had been carved out ages ago. That and there wasn’t a lot of stone that they could carve away anymore. So why am I hearing what sounds like stone carving? He frowned and gently set the dwarf down on one of the steps, leaning him against the inside wall of the stair. The dwarf wasn’t conscious so he didn’t have to tell him to keep quiet.

  While the dwarf was in a safe spot, he drew his rapier again, and crept up the remaining stairs. Normally there would have been two guards standing at attention just outside the doors to the water chamber. Instead he saw two bodies splayed out on the floor. No one was standing there that he could see, so he finished climbing up and approached the opening to the chamber.