by Markus Heitz
The maga skimmed the letters again to be sure she had understood everything correctly, then she called the ubari over. “Summon the officers. Tell them to gather in the conference chamber. We’ll be making a sortie.”
Kiras straightened up and wiped away a tear. “I’ll come, too,” she announced. “I want to see with my own eyes exactly what’s been going on.”
Goda gave her an anxious glance.
Rattling and groaning, the mechanism to open the great southern gate slowly started to move. Four hundred soldiers waited, poised to sally forth.
At the head of the force stood a hundred dwarves, then came two hundred combined ubariu and undergroundlings; the rear was brought up by one hundred humans, archers and crossbowmen, to provide covering fire for the warriors and to check enemy attacks at source.
Goda looked at her daughter Sanda and her son Bandaál, both standing by Kiras among the dwarves at the front. These two children of hers had inherited her magic gifts and knew their way around spells and incantations. They waved at their mother.
The maga was including them in this force so that they could, if necessary, recite spells to protect them from enemy sorcery. She was uneasy sending her own flesh and blood to the other side, but there was no other way. She would have her hands full, holding the gap in the screen open for them; her children would not be capable of doing that.
And there was another of her offspring among the company of brave hearts. He had not brooked any attempt to hand over command to anyone else: Boëndalin Powerthrust, her oldest son, an excellent warrior, taking after his father. He stood proudly in the first row, holding a shield and his two-bladed ax. He greeted his mother with a nod, his eyes flashing with battle-lust. He controlled his hot blood better than his father could, which was why the command was safe in his hands. His skill with weapons made him the best warrior in Evildam.
Between the double gates of the fortress a slit was visible now, letting in a reddish shimmering light.
“May Vraccas be with you,” called Goda. “You have your orders: Destroy as much as you can and come back quickly if the opposition is strong. We don’t need heroic sacrifices today. Save them for another time.”
Kiras raised her hand. She was wearing leather armor and carrying a sword-ax, a weapon the undergroundlings had developed in the last eighty cycles. On one side you had a blade, and at the end there was a narrow ax head that could be employed against shields and helmets.
Sanda and Bandaál had the traditional dwarf chain-mail shirt, helmet and shield; they carried axes in their belts. Their priority would be to counteract any magic attack. Goda had also given them each ten splinters of diamond. They were to use up this external energy first before having recourse to their own inner powers.
Goda raised her arm and concentrated. She did not want to repeat her mistake of trying to break the screen by force. Instead she wanted to chip away at it gently with magic, to scrape and abrade it until a weak spot developed. A weak spot large enough for all these warriors.
Her lips moved and she assayed a combination of formulae. She was not entirely sure what would work, but had a few ideas.
Pulsating white magic left her fingertips and snaked toward the barrier, smoothing itself around, like a cat encircling the legs of a human.
No resistance was encountered.
Goda sighed with relief and increased the area covered, so that it would be large enough for the ubariu to walk through.
Sparks appeared and this part of the screen turned a lighter color, going pale pink and then disappearing completely until only the white could be seen.
“Off you go,” Goda commanded, holding her magic firmly to support the rest of the barrier. Where red and white met, there was hissing and crackling and occasional sparks, which, if they touched anything, left a black scorch mark.
The troops stormed out without any battle cries and fanned out to form a long line, while the archers remained behind preparing to shoot their arrows and crossbow bolts. The attack began.
The first of the tents and buildings fell to the warriors without a sound. Only when the flames shot up, leaping from one length of canvas to the next, to spread to the whole encampment, did the horrified howls of the monsters ring out. Trumpets gave the alarm. Drum rolls called them to arms.
Goda kept her arm outstretched and fed further magic into her spell in order to be able to maintain it. She was afraid she might not be able to open the gap again if she allowed the first beam to fail.
“May Vraccas be with you,” she repeated quietly. And with my own children, above all things.
Kiras followed close on Boëndalin’s heels.
They ran forward, passing through the gap in the barrier. The undergroundling felt pain for a fleeting moment as they did so.
“Take out the big machines by the walls first, and the tents,” Boëndalin ordered, telling the archers to prepare their fire arrows. While the unit moved over to the right, their burning missiles shot in the opposite direction to keep the monsters occupied extinguishing the flames. Then they confronted their first opponents.
Kiras was struck by the ease with which they were able to rampage unopposed. They had caught their foes unawares at their midday meal—indeed, how could they have possibly guessed that Goda was going to open the barrier?
In the course of all the turmoil created by the attack more fires broke out as cooking stoves were kicked over in the general confusion.
Before long all the machines by the gates had been destroyed; the largest ones now were three hundred paces away. From the direction of the gates impressive numbers of strangely diverse monsters came surging toward the dwarves.
“Archers! Fire!” Boëndalin ordered the rest of the company to continue advancing. Arrows skimmed overhead from behind, targeting the monster horde, bringing some of them dead or injured to the ground. “And now have at them! Down with them all! Over there, get to the catapult!” the dwarf shouted as he rammed the sharpened edge of his shield into an opponent’s neck. Slicing through leather protection the metal opened the monster’s throat all the way to the spine. The beast went flying, as good as decapitated.
The commando troops slashed and bashed their way through the enemy. Kiras, dispatching many opponents herself, had to admire Boëndalin’s skill, whether in giving orders or fighting. She would appreciate a partner like that at her side, but a sense of tradition made it an unsuitable match. Undergroundlings and dwarves did not mix. Not for long, anyway.
They had reached the tall catapult towers. Two-thirds of her group gave covering fire while the others hacked at the guy ropes, smashed the supports and inflicted so much damage on the device that there was a loud crash as the construction shuddered and fell.
“Get out of here!” Boëndalin commanded. Like Kiras, he had seen that the enemy was regrouping. “We’ll withdraw back to the gate. We have done well!”
The undergroundling looked at one of the odd poles that stood apparently isolated on the plain, a taut chain leading back from it down the Black Abyss. It was only a couple of hundred paces away. “What about that, Boëndalin?” Kiras called out. “Can’t we get that one, too?” Success had gone to her head. “We can do it!”
The dwarf looked at the beasts. Behind a furrowed brow his brain was working furiously. They still had not found out what the masts were for, and there were about four dozen of them planted round the entrance to the ravine.
“It’s not far,” she said, enticingly. “Whatever they’re for, we can easily get rid of them. And we haven’t seen hide nor hair of their magus yet.”
Boëndalin glanced at his siblings, who both indicated their approval.
One of the ubariu protested, wary of the long distance back to safety; their retreat could be cut off. Their armor had grown no lighter in all that fighting and running was getting more difficult now. For all of them.
“Let’s attack,” was Boëndalin’s decision finally. He charged off. “Archers, fire to the left and right! Undergroundli
ngs, bring up the rear!”
In this formation they reached the first of the mysterious metal poles. The foundations, made of solid lumps of cast iron, were almost impossible to dislodge.
“Get the ubariu to bend the poles back toward the chasm—they are already under tensile stress.” Boëndalin gave the command and reconfigured his troops.
Kiras was following the action out of the corner of her eye, watching the powerful warriors thronging around the pole, some pushing, the others pulling.
The metal creaked and gave way. The huge chain, which had the diameter of a tree trunk, suddenly went slack and dropped to the ground. Two of the ubariu failed to leap to safety swiftly enough and were crushed to death in their armor, squashed like insects by the heavy links.
“Come on! Let’s get the next one!” Boëndalin pointed over to the right.
This time the ubari expressed his objections forcefully. “Your mother said we were not to cross a line that’s over three hundred paces behind us now. Sir!” His pink eyes were full of reproach. “And there are over forty of these masts to be dealt with. We’ll never do it.” He pointed to the left, where a wall of beasts was advancing on them. These had shields for protection against arrows and crossbow fire; no comparison with the random rabble they had previously faced. They were still three hundred paces away. “We need to retreat, sir!”
Boëndalin exchanged glances with Sanda and Bandaál. “Keep that lot off our backs,” he told them. “We’ll bring down another dozen of the masts, and then,” he said, looking angrily at the ubari, “I’ll be the one to order the retreat. No one else.”
The dwarf-famuli took up position and raised their hands. Their fingers described runes in the air, and their diamond splinters shone out dazzlingly bright, surrendering the last of their magic to empower the formulae.
A dark-blue beam shot out from the palm of Sanda’s hand, forging a path through the attackers from the front of the wave right through to the last man. Everything the beam of light touched was immediately vaporized to a stinking black cloud, with only molten clumps of metal remaining of armor and weapons.
“What do you say to that, brother of mine?” she said, panting heavily, and flashing a challenge with her eyes.
Bandaál formed a half-globe with his hands, the open side directed toward the beasts. He blew gently through his fingers and his breath became a tornado to rout the enemy.
Half of them were swept off their feet, banners went flying and even creatures the size of an ubari were blown about like puppets of straw. Arrows that had been on their way toward the dwarves were forced back on the ranks of monsters.
Bandaál lowered his arms, grinning at his sister. “I think my spell was eminently superior.”
“It’s not a game!” Kiras had been watching them and waved them on to join the others who were charging off toward the next pole. “Come on! We’ve got to stick together!” She looked back at the southern gate, which now seemed a very long way off. The undergroundling was shocked to see the white shimmer they had come through now appeared rather pink. “I think Goda is having trouble holding open the gap!”
The famuli looked at the opening, and thus missed seeing the horde of monsters split in two to reveal a small-statured warrior striding to the front.
Kiras took her telescope off her belt to get a closer look.
A dwarf in glorious red-gold vraccassium armor with deep black tionium inlay was stomping toward the apprentice magicians; in his hands he carried two war hammers with silver and gold heads studded with jewels reflecting the light. He did not look anywhere near as dangerous as Tungdil Goldhand. Perhaps it was the color of his armor plates.
His visor was open—and she felt suddenly nauseous. The dwarf had no lower jaw!
Through the focused lenses she saw the long-healed injury in all its terrifying detail. A blow must have cost him jawbone and teeth. A healer had simply sewn up the loose flesh and tightened it so that the dwarf could take in food and continue to live, and had left him a narrow slit below the upper jaw through which presumably the food could be pushed in. But he would not be able to speak or chew, Kiras thought. Long black beard hair reached down from his cheeks to his chest. No hair at all grew where the scars were.
Some of the nose was missing, too. Cartilage had been cut away and the hole was protected by a silver plate. Two vertical slits allowed air to be taken in. The very appearance, like a skull, would be enough to root any enemy to the spot. The brown eyes burned with hatred and pain.
“By all the…” Kiras put her telescope down swiftly as an icy shudder ran through her body. This must be the master that had been spoken of. She told the famuli about this new danger, Boëndalin and the troops not having noticed, being busy with the attempt to demolish the next metal pole.
“Let me,” Bandaál said. “I’m older than you.” He prepared his magic spell, took out a further diamond splinter and clasped it determinedly in his hand to make use of its energy. He murmured a banning spell and a column of gray light the size of a human rose up before them. At the final word of the incantation if shot off in a straight line toward the dwarf, transforming itself in mid-flight.
It broadened out and developed spikes like fingers. It was clear to Kiras that nothing would survive contact with this phenomenon.
The dwarf stopped, twirled his weapons and abruptly laid the hammers crosswise together.
A loud bang ensued and a second column appeared—but this one was as high as one of the catapults. It surged off, spreading in the same way as the first, developing spikes the length of spears. The two shapes sped toward each other between the two armies. Bandaál’s collapsed with a crash and the other dwarf’s deadly wall of light continued on its path.
Boëndalin had turned round now and had seen what was happening. He screamed out commands, ordering an immediate retreat. The discipline among his troops was incredible and no one broke ranks or shouted, but they all raced faster than they had ever run before to leave the battlefield.
“By Vraccas!” Sanda cast a green lightning flash against the encroaching wall but it melted away harmlessly on contact.
“It’ll have us any second!” Kiras looked at Boëndalin, who was gesturing to them. It was impossible to avoid the magic pillar—it was moving too fast.
Sanda took hold of her remaining eight diamond splinters and told her brother to do the same. “Quick, a sphere,” she panted, grabbing his hand. Both of them knelt down.
“Get down,” Bandaál told the undergroundling, “or you’ll lose your head.”
Kiras threw herself onto the ground behind the siblings. The pillar hummed close. A milky hemisphere had enclosed them and, at the next moment, the pillar of light crashed into it.
One by one its spikes broke off and lightning bolts flashed hither and thither, but the three of them were unharmed. Kiras had a sense that every piece of metal near her, even the smallest rivet on her armor, was growing hot, and she felt her whole body being pinched and jabbed.
Then the attack was over.
“We’ve destroyed it,” gasped Sanda in relief. The sphere collapsed and she felt the wind that the wall of light had stirred up gust past her. Dust whirled up, getting between their teeth.
The undergroundling turned her head. “No!” she groaned. Before the wave of dirt hid the scene from view she saw the wall of light heading directly for Boëndalin and his troops. Then the dust cloud became too dense for her to see anything more.
Bandaál and Sanda pulled Kiras to her feet and, holding each other’s hands so that they would not get lost in the gray veil of dust, they stumbled on toward the safety of the southern gate.
All of a sudden the wind changed and they could see looming up through the dirt, less than ten paces ahead, the form of the unknown dwarf. He was holding his hammers right and left of him, arms spread out, the heads pointing down.
Sanda screamed when she saw him, clapping her hand to her mouth. Bandaál took a deep breath.
Kiras, on the ot
her hand, looked past him to where Boëndalin’s unit had been standing.
The men and women had been caught mid-flight by the magic. Their bodies lay scattered on the ground, and Kiras scanned the carpet of limbs and torsos in vain for any signs of movement. She was suffused with guilt. If she had never pointed out the masts to Boëndalin, they would all have been safely back in the Evildam fortress by now.
The dwarf’s head was held low. A black lock of hair fell over his brow and blew about in the light breeze. Without a word from him, black flames emerged from the hammerheads and he slowly raised his arms.
Kiras stepped in front of the siblings and gripped her sword-ax. “Try to get to the gate,” she told them. She was more afraid than she had ever been, but was not going to leave Bandaál and Sanda here alone. “Go on!” the undergroundling urged. “You are more useful than I am.”
Brother and sister raced off and the dwarf let them pass. His brown eyes held Kiras in their gaze. His face was expressionless, or was that an attempt at a smile on his cheeks?
Kiras forced saliva down her dry throat. It ran slow as treacle down her gullet. “You’ll have to attack if you want me dead!” she called to the dwarf, pointing her weapon at him. “You will be…”
She spoke no more.
The dwarf moved too swiftly for her to be able to follow. He was suddenly right in front of her and struck her in the chest with his burning hammer. Her armor burst into flames, even though it was not made of any flammable material.
The second hammer hit her on the back of the head and she collapsed, swooning. She could hear the crackle of flames at her ear. The metal of her helmet did not seem to care that it could not burn. Flames flickered at the holes made by the hammers.
As she fell she pushed her helmet off and rolled onto her belly to extinguish the fire on her breast.