by Markus Heitz
“And my homeland, too,” added Sirka.
On the left more and more beasts were breaking through, heading for the artifact. Tungdil rode back and forth, felling one creature after another, but there were far too many. Three dozen were coming their way.
Sirka pillowed Lot-Ionan’s head on her mantle, then she took her combat stick and nodded to Ireheart. “I think we’ve got work to do.”
Rodario broke the arrow off close to the entry wound and got to his feet. “Well, you’ll be needing me, as well. I can’t miss a third opportunity to be a hero.”
Ireheart gave Goda a tender kiss. “Hurry. But not too fast. Leave a few for me and my crow’s beak.” He turned to face the foe. Again the world seemed to waver in front of his eyes and he needed to blink before his sight cleared.
“Irrepressible,” was all Goda said. She went to the nearest ring and sought a hold for her fingers as she started to climb.
“Just you try,” shouted Furgas. “I’ll kill you.”
Sirka twirled her weapon and looked at Ireheart. “Can I ask a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me the joke about the orc and the dwarf?”
“Now?”
“Might be our last chance.” Sirka grinned. The first monster was ten paces away, swinging a huge sword.
“Hurry.”
“Well, one orbit, a dwarf meets an orc at the Stone Gateway.” Ireheart raised his crow’s beak. “The orc saw him and said, ‘Little man, can you tell me where…?’ ”
Sirka’s adversary arrived and grabbed her attention with a hefty swipe.
“Later,” she called to Ireheart as she put her heart and soul into the fight.
Tungdil spurred his befún across the battlefield, striking at the monsters’ heads with Bloodthirster. Each strike took a life.
The refashioned älfish blade raged amongst the enemy throng. It seemed as if the sword were helping of its own accord, directing its own attack, and seeking out the most vulnerable places to strike. The weapon was uncanny but fascinating.
But whatever efforts the ubariu and the undergroundlings made, more and more creatures broke through the defenses, as soldiers were lost.
The winged monsters could not be stopped. They seemed immune against attack by arrow or crossbow bolt and had overturned two of the armored wagons, falling in swarms on the others. Swift as the wind they tore off the heavy plating to slaughter the crew inside.
The remaining vehicles gave the infantry some cover and kept up a spear attack, but they too were damaged.
“Curses!” Tungdil halted his befún to study the artifact. He saw Furgas was at the top and that a small figure was making its way up on the outside ring. “Goda?”
The befún cowered and emitted a furious roar. All at once it was dark round Tungdil, and a foul-smelling wind touched him. Claws slashed to the right and the left, lodging in the flesh of his steed, then up he soared…
The ground fell back and he was hovering over the battlefield witnessing the butchery on both sides of the chasm; it was a miniaturized version of what he had been experiencing himself.
“What…?” Tungdil turned to see the hideous face of one of the winged monsters, its muzzle agape.
His first thought was to plunge Bloodthirster between the teeth of the beast to kill it. But it would have meant his own death. From one hundred paces up in the air a fall was certain death.
Instead, he leaped off his injured steed to land on a claw of the flying beast, who dropped the befún and uttered a fearful cry. The animal tumbled to earth, smashing four ubariu beneath itself as it fell into their own ranks.
“You won’t shake me off,” snarled Tungdil, stabbing the monster in the belly, making a gash half a pace long, out of which a stinking liquid gushed to drench him.
Screeching, the dying beast tried to land, coming down over the line of undergroundlings and skimming over the spears of the Black Abyss army before it came to earth with widespread wings, blundering through the ranks and killing or maiming maybe fifty.
Vraccas protected Tungdil. Apart from a few scratches and a shallow gouge on his right calf from a spear tip, there was nothing. So he struggled out from under the wing and found himself standing right in the middle of the opposing army. He had not been noticed.
The foremost ranks of the ubariu and undergroundlings were an arrow’s flight away, and the entrance to the chasm fifty paces from him.
“Well, Vraccas, whatever your plan is,” he said, looking round, “I’m very keen to know how it all ends.”
Again he heard the sound of the kordrion. Stone cracked and a landslide of rubble buried several beasts. Immediately there was stillness and the warriors’ eyes all turned to the entrance to the ravine.
A pale claw as wide as three fortress gates shot up out of the blackness of the abyss and took hold of the outer edge of the ravine, trying for a hold. Cracks formed and rock crumbled under the pressure and weight of the creature that was still down there in the dark attempting to free itself. Its claw fastened into the rock again, the long nails taking hold.
The most dwarven of Tungdil’s virtues came to the fore. When all about him was hopelessness, he kept his head and drew on the qualities of steadfast stubbornness and pigheadedness or whatever other folk thought of when they spoke of the dwarves.
He climbed up the corpse of the winged beast so that both friend and foe should see he was there. He took his bugle from his belt, placed it to his lips and replied to the call of the kordrion, sounding the battle signal into the horrified silence.
“I shall not allow you out of your prison,” he bellowed down into the chasm. He raised Bloodthirster, drenched as it was with the black lifeblood of all the creatures he had vanquished. “The weapon I snatched from evil shall be the one to stop you, whatever you are. Fire fights fire.”
He stormed straight through the ranks of the beasts, and hacked to pieces every assailant that dared to cross his path; it was as if their armor was but butter and their bodies but straw.
Behind him he heard Flagur’s voice, then the ubariu yelled and the undergroundlings hallooed, joining their efforts with his own.
Hope began to blossom.
Flagur saw Tungdil suddenly appear between the enemy ranks and the cadaver of the monster. He had sounded his horn as fearlessly as if standing in safety behind the walls of Letèfora. His words resounded clearly, echoing over the death-filled field. Then he sprang forward.
“Ubar, you have sent us a true hero, whose courage surpasses even that of an acront,” he avowed, lifting his sword. “Let us follow him!” He sent his rallying cry to right and to left. “We shall be the first to defeat a kordrion. For Ubar!” Stepping forward, his weapon grasped in both hands, he cut the beast that reared up before him into two halves, slicing from skull to groin. He was covered in its dark blood and the smell of it spurred him on.
His warriors joined their voices to his own and sallied forth. Turning their enormous shields they charged ten paces deep into enemy lines. There they halted: the first ubariu formed a protective metal wall, cutting off the antagonists now behind them from the main army of monsters.
Following in the wake of the ubariu, the undergroundlings bombarded this isolated section, felling monsters so swiftly with their combat batons that the creatures could not coordinate any defense.
Meanwhile, pressure was increasing at the shield barrier where the Black Abyss hordes were menacing the ubariu.
“Again!” yelled Flagur, calling for the lance with his banner affixed. They repeated the maneuver: turn shields aside, let some of the assailants through, hem them in and butcher them.
“Take care!” called Flagur to the front line overlooking the field, holding his banner aloft to ensure the enemy knew what name death bore.
At that moment he felt a searing pain in his side. Suddenly there was an arrow sticking out between his ribs, making breathing a torture. Yet Flagur did not surrender to the pain. His fingers contracted around the shaft of
his lance and he used it to support himself. Show no weakness. The battle must first be won. “And change… now!”
Those fighting at the front withdrew and were neatly replaced by a second line of fresh warriors, so that the onslaught kept up its momentum. Their enemy floundered when faced with well-drilled strategy like this. The monsters were exhausting themselves in their relentless attack.
Losses, however, were many.
More than once Flagur saw a good friend fall, heard a death cry and chimed with it in his soul.
On the outside no weakness could be seen, even though he would have wished his fallen warriors out from underneath the carcasses of slaughtered monsters. They deserved a better resting place. Several of them he had known for countless star cycles; he had trained them himself. To watch them die like this hurt as badly as the arrow in his side. Mourning would have to wait, as always in battle.
Flagur saw that one of the armored vehicles was set sideways-on to provide cover for their advance. Flurries of arrows and spears were whizzing out over the heads of their own troops. The archers knew their stuff. Five whole rows of the enemy were felled by these missiles, and a second salvo mowed a wide path through the heaving, screaming throng.
“Onwards and forwards!” commanded Flagur, his spear aloft and the pennant cracking in the breeze, signaling the major assault.
Goda climbed up. Now she had reached a crossbar and slid along on it toward Furgas. Beneath her, Sirka and Ireheart were thumping the life out of the beasts; Rodario had a short bow and a quiver taken from one of the creatures and was loosing arrows at the foe. No matter if your aim was not very good—in this crush you would always hit a target.
Ireheart gave full vent to his battle rage. He used the madness coursing through his veins to make him insuperable in combat. The crow’s beak whirred without rest, denting helmets, shattering bones, slicing through armor and hurling the victims a good two paces through the air.
Sirka for her part was fighting like the water element, slipping into gaps and using the barb on her slim weapon to strike and the hook to fend off blows, to wrench swords out of assailants’ hands, or to thrust into unprotected flesh. She never stayed long in one position, but moved with flowing grace.
Goda had nearly reached Furgas.
He was watching her. “What do you think you are doing?” he asked. “I’m curious to see…”
Goda drew out her night star, her favorite weapon, with its three hefty spiked globes. She would have to be careful not to lose her footing if she missed her mark. She balanced cautiously, stepping out along the narrow strut, and raising her right hand.
Furgas pushed himself backwards out of range. “You won’t get me like that.” He squinted down, looking for the next reinforcing bar. “Time is on my side, dwarf. Always the most reliable of allies.” When Goda came closer still, he jumped off and dropped down, his fingers outstretched to catch the next bar.
Even though she only had one weapon with her Goda decided to contravene the first rule of combat: she hurled the night star at Furgas.
The three spiked balls hit his hands and smashed his fingers; screaming, he plunged, landing on his belly in the very setting the diamond was destined for—a central setting ringed with spikes.
“No!” He shrieked in agony, working the spikes even deeper into his flesh as he struggled. His blood flowed down over the hub and cascaded to the ground. His movements became gradually weaker. Finally his screams died away.
Goda sent a prayer of thanks to Vraccas, climbed carefully down to the central hub where Furgas’s body hung. The next problem would be to locate the stone. “How do I find it?” she called out to Ireheart.
Her dwarf mentor was whacking a monster on the paw with his crow’s beak, and ramming his own sharp helmet into its abdomen, so that black blood streamed down over his head and shoulders. “Slit him open. Top part of his belly. It’s only a little while since he swallowed it.” Hopping back to avoid a spear thrust, he sliced the head off his assailant.
Goda drew her dagger and forced the body into a sitting position, hauling it off the spikes. The hole in the magister’s chest would not be big enough so she was just placing the knife tip underneath his ribs when he opened his eyes.
“I won’t give it up,” he croaked, blood gushing out of his mouth, dripping down his chin. “I shall have my revenge.” He pushed her and she lost her balance.
She fell.
Tungdil stormed into the darkness of the chasm where light was afraid to go.
In front of him reared up a being beyond the wit of Tion to create. It would have needed gods such as Girdlegard had never known.
The kordrion was a vast tower of horror. Its wings were folded close in to its huge muscular body, for there was no space in this ravine for the mountainous creature to spread them. Four huge dog-like paws bore its stupendous weight, though the front two limbs seemed more like arms. The rest of its naked body lay in shadow.
Its neck was comparatively short and it had a head like a dragon, but festooned with horns and spikes. Behind the long bony snout glinted four gray eyes. Further back, two blue ones. It was half upright and struggling to place its claws into fissures in the rock to drag itself up.
A three-armed beast leaped shrieking toward Tungdil, long muzzle agape, with a dark red barbed tongue snaking out.
The dwarf confronted that tongue quite simply by holding up Bloodthirster, whose wicked cutting edge sliced the flesh, sending the creature whimpering back, its bleeding tongue segments recoiled into its maw.
But Tungdil followed through, cutting the monster in two from top to bottom. Then he turned Bloodthirster on the kordrion. “Get back in the abyss you crawled out of,” he commanded. “I don’t believe anything is insuperable, whether my opponents look like you or even worse.”
The creature’s blue eyes focused on him. It dropped down onto its forepaws, but this still meant that its head hovered a good ten paces above Tungdil. It opened its powerful jaws and roared at the dwarf. Each and every tooth in its head was as big as one ubariu standing on top of a second.
From behind he heard the rattle and clash of weapons and armor, and then Flagur stood at his back with his ubariu and undergroundlings. With the aid of their armored vehicles they had managed to defeat the beasts and had stopped up the entrance. The kordrion was making things easy for them now because none of the other monsters still in the ravine dared force their way past it.
“Ubar, help us now,” was Flagur’s prayer. “How can we deal with this one?”
“I can see the acrontas might be needed for a monster like this.” Tungdil experienced no fear. With Bloodthirster in his grasp he was a bundle of confidence, tenacity and cussedness. “But if we don’t make a start we’ll never know if it can be done without them.” He raced forwards, aiming for the claws which were now down on the rocky floor. “While he’s stuck in this cleft we have the advantage. Cut through the tendons—hack at anything you can reach. Sooner or later we’ll have him down!”
Flagur watched the dwarf go. “He’s not afraid at all,” he murmured admiringly as he lifted his own spear. Shaft and banner fabric were now drenched in the blood of monsters he had slain. “Onwards!” he called out, and cantered off, his breath shallow as he battled with the wound in his side.
His warriors followed him and rushed toward the kordrion with weapons held high—until they heard the infamous roar. But it was not the being in front of them that made the horrendous sound.
Flagur’s steps slackened and the blood froze in his veins. The ecstasy of battle dispersed and gave way to fear. “Tungdil! Come back! There are two of them!”
Then the kordrion opened its great muzzle and swept the warriors with a wave of white fire.
With enormous presence of mind Goda managed to hook her leg over one of the bars. She pulled herself up again, panting hard. She could never have imagined herself capable of these acrobatic tours de force. All that exercise, all those drills, all that training with heaving
and hauling—it was all paying off now. She would never complain again about the harshness of that regime.
Ropes with grappling hooks flew past her, fastening themselves to the bars. Some of the monsters were attempting to demolish the artifact, while their comrades, at risk to their own lives, tried to provide cover from attacks by Ireheart and Sirka.
“Faster!” Boïndil called up to her. He knew what was making him feel giddy; the woman’s dagger had been coated with poison and it was starting to work.
Goda crawled over to Furgas. “You did not get rid of me.”
He drew a rattling breath and drew out his dagger. “And you have not killed me.”
“I’m going to make up for that.” She avoided his lunge, grabbed his useless arm and removed the knife. It was easy for her now to overcome the fatally wounded Furgas and to ram his own dagger into his body. The man gave one final groan and died.
Now she was faced with the part of her task she was not happy about. She fumbled around in the magister’s warm vitals until she found the hard object she was searching for.
“I have it!” she yelled triumphantly, to boost the morale of the defenders below. She cut the diamond out, then gave the corpse a shove so it plummeted to the ground.
Goda did not bother to clean the stone but pressed it, filthy though it was, into the setting, then closed the four fastenings. She stared at the stone. “Come on now! Do something!” She rubbed it to make it work.
A new roar sounded from the chasm and a wall of white fire shot out of the cleft, surging across the ground. The burning bodies of ubariu and undergroundlings were hurled through the air before slamming into the cliff face and extinguishing like sparks. The armored vehicle that was nearest was consumed with fire so that the iron plating peeled off and the wooden frame beneath turned to ash.
The kordrion pushed itself out into the light. With a louder roar than ever, which broke whole boulders off, it forced its way free and was approaching on all fours. It gave another roar of victory as it left the darkness of the abyss. Goda couldn’t gauge its size accurately. Twenty paces high and sixty paces long?