Leaning to gather the beast’s reins, he hauled the girl up behind him, just as the heavy door ahead of him burst open. Beyond it were armed men, crouched to enter, but he saw them only for an instant. They were bowled over and swallowed up by a bounding tide of gully dwarves spilling out the door and across the landing beyond.
Somewhere near, Dartimien shouted, “Get off me, you little dolts!” A pile of gully dwarves erupted upward. Graywing tried to hold the horse, but it shrilled in terror and charged the open door, and all he could do was hang on. Behind him, the girl clung like a monkey, her arms wrapped around his middle. A second horse, riderless, was just behind them.
In the space of a heartbeat they were pounding across the plank landing and down a steep, curving stairway, engulfed to the hams in a rising tide of fleeing gully dwarves, bits of armament and tumbling, inverted Tarmite soldiers.
Somewhere behind him, the plainsman heard Dartimien’s angry shout: “Graywing! Get back here, you barbarian! I saw her first!”
Somewhere on a distant plane, Orm blinked huge, slit-pupiled eyes and hissed in frustration. Again the lost fang had called, but again the call had lasted only an instant.
Great, scaled coils writhing in serpentine irritation, Orm waited. The call had come. It would come again. Sooner or later there would be a long moment of life, stimulated by someone’s concentration. It would be enough. Orm needed only a moment, a lingering, consistent moment of wishery by whoever held the fang. Then Orm would have the path across the planes. Then Orm would strike.
Frustrated and seething with dark anger, the great serpent waited.
When Bron crawled out from beneath the Tall chair, everything seemed relatively peaceful. There were gully dwarves scattered here and there, picking themselves up and staring around in puzzlement, but most of the sudden crowd seemed to have gone somewhere else.
Bron took a deep breath, shook dust out of his hair and his clothing, and picked up his bashing tool. “Wow,” he muttered.
Somewhere above him, Tunk said, “That some kin’ party, Bron. Didn’ last long, though.” The chubby Aghar extracted himself from the chair’s cushions and stood up, jumping on the seat. “There what’s-’is-name,” he pointed. “Th’ Highbulp. Hi, Highbulp.”
A cabinet drawer hung open across the room, and Glitch the Most peered out of it, rubbing his eyes with a grimy fist. “What goin’ on?” he grumbled. “What kin’ place this?”
Nearby, a fallen tapestry seemed to be coming to life. Its folds twitched, humped and muttered. An edge of it lifted, and the Lady Lidda crawled out, followed by Gandy and several others. The last one to appear from there was Pert, who gawked at her surroundings, then smiled happily at the sight of Bron. “Hey, Bron,” she chirped. “Been lookin’ all over for you! Where you been?”
“Bein’ a hero,” he explained.
“Bein’ what?” Pert started to lean against a large, iron turtle, then jumped back as the turtle moved behind her. It was the legendary Great Stew Bowl, and under it was the dour Clout. He looked more unhappy than usual.
Bron helped Clout out from under the iron shield, and knelt to look the shield over, carefully. It seemed to be unharmed. As an afterthought he glanced around at Clout, who seemed unbroken as well. “Here, hold this,” he handed the ivory bashing tool to the Chief Basher, and raised the Great Stew Bowl by its leather strap. It was almost as big as he was, but he was used to carrying it around.
“This a pretty good bashin’ tool,” Clout judged, brandishing the ivory stick. “Where Bron get it?”
“Found it, someplace,” Bron answered, then turned abruptly as a groan sounded from a heavily-loaded metal “sled” resting aslant against one wall. Carrying his shield, Bron approached the object cautiously. On top of the rig rested a large, bright broadsword with strings tied to it. The bindings served as lashing for a blanket-wrapped package beneath, and it was this package that seemed to be groaning.
Curious, Bron untied some of the lashes and lifted off the broadsword. It was as long as he was tall, and quite heavy, but it fascinated him. “This a Tail’s bashin’ tool,” he told the others, who were gathering around him. “Talls call it ‘sword.’ ”
“Clumsy thing,” Lady Lidda pointed out. “Too big for rat killin’.”
“Maybe good thing for hero, though,” he lifted the sword high, panting at the effort. It was heavy, but Bron was strong.
“Good thing for what?” his mother asked.
Attracted by the repeated groans, Gandy hobbled to the blanket-wrapped package and pulled back a flap. Beneath it, a hairless old human blinked rheumy eyes and groaned again. Gandy whacked him on the head with his mop handle and dropped the flap. “Nothin’,” he muttered. “Jus’ a Tall.”
A thin shriek of anger grew beneath the blanket and they all backed away. The blanket sat up, fell away, and there was an ancient man there, rubbing his aching head and muttering curses as he glared around at them.
“Oops,” Gandy said.
“Maybe bash him again, with this?” Clout suggested.
The old human gaped at the gully dwarf’s bashing tool and lunged to his tottering feet. “That’s it!” he rasped.
“Right,” Glitch the Most declared. “That ’bout it. Ever’body run like crazy.”
Clonogh stood, aching, swaying and naked atop a travel-scuffed shield as the big room suddenly emptied itself. Before he could react, the gully dwarves were gone, out the broken door and down unseen stairs beyond.
Blinking and swaying, Clonogh stared around him. He recognized the big room with its stone-framed portals. It was Lord Vulpin’s tower chamber. “How did I get here?” he wheezed.
But just at the moment there was no one around to explain it to him.
The tower stairway, from loft to ground level, made three complete circuits of the tower and ended in a wide alcove lined with guard quarters and facing on the courtyard. All the way down, the great flood of fleeing gully dwarves had picked up speed, carrying the horses and riders along with them. As a result, when they reached ground level they shot through the alcove and burst out into the crowded courtyard like a flash flood, bowling over everything and everyone in front of them.
They were halfway across the main court before their momentum slowed and the gully dwarves in front had a chance to look around. When they did, they saw surprised human warriors everywhere they looked.
“Talls!” one of them shrieked. “Ever’body run like crazy!”
Gully dwarves went everywhere, spreading like a ripple of chaos as they went. Men shouted, draft horses reared and pawed the air, a team of oxen bolted and a wagonload of hot oil vats overturned, scalding people right and left.
Graywing finally managed to get his horse’s attention by sawing at the reins, and gaped at the spreading havoc all round. In all his years, he had never seen anything like it.
Behind him Thayla gasped. “Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I’m afraid Lord Vulpin isn’t going to like this at all.”
“Lord Vulpin?” Graywing started, then stopped as a deep, angry voice rang over the chaos of the courtyard. Just ahead and above, on the ramparts between the main gate battlements, a big, dark figure stood-a large man encased in dark steel armor, plumed helm and flowing cloak. The man was pointing directly at them, and shouting.
“He has the girl!” Lord Vulpin roared. “Get him!”
Despite the chaos of the courtyard, armed men heard the command and drew their weapons, closing in on Graywing.
“Mercy!” the girl chirped.
“Mercy is where you find it,” Graywing growled. Hauling at the reins, he kneed the horse into a belly-down turn and headed back toward the sheltered alcove beneath the tower.
With attention diverted from them, the gully dwarves of Bulp sought shelter, and took it where they found it. Dozens of them plunged into gutters and sumps, seeking the storm sewers below. Others took refuge in the larders, the armories, and in every crack or crevice of the old fort’s foundations. Within moments, Tarmish was completely infe
sted by Aghar, as thoroughly as though they had been living there for years.
In the shadowed alcove, Graywing set the girl down, then wheeled the horse and charged the open portal just as a platoon of foot soldiers reached it. He hit them like a summer storm, a thundering fury of singing sword blade, flashing hooves and Cobar battle cry. Through their ranks he swept, then turned and hit them again before they could recover. Once more through the ranks, and the area outside the alcove was free of belligerents. There were still soldiers there, but those that remained were down and not likely to get up again.
Once more within the alcove, Graywing swung down from his horse. “That should hold them for a few minutes,” he muttered. He found the girl cringing in the shadow of a doorway. “Is there another way out of here?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a prisoner … or I was, anyway. Who are you?”
“Graywing,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Thayla. Thayla Mesinda.” Wide, unreadable blue eyes gazed up at him, and he felt as though he might drown there. “Are we trapped here?”
“I’m afraid we are. But I’ll think of something.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I have a hero, you know. His name is Bron.”
“Bron?”
“He’s a gully dwarf. He’s here to rescue me from all this.”
“A gully dwarf?” He gaped at her, thinking he must have misunderstood. “Gully dwarves aren’t heroes, girl. Gully dwarves aren’t much of anything. They’re just … just gully dwarves.”
“This one is different,” Thayla assured him. Then her eyes widened. “Look out!”
Graywing spun around. A green-clad Salacian mercenary had crept into the alcove, and was drawing his longbow. The steel-pointed arrow was aimed straight at Graywing’s heart, point blank from three paces away.
Before the draw was completed, though, the man’s throat was full of flashing dagger. The bow and arrow slipped from numb fingers and the man pitched forward, facedown in his own blood.
“You should try watching your back, now and then,” Dartimien suggested wryly, stepping from the stairwell. “You can’t count on me to save you every time.” The Cat stepped past Graywing then, brushing him aside as though he wasn’t there. He executed a courtly bow to Thayla Mesinda and when she returned the curtsy he grinned and took her small hand. “Hello,” he purred. “I’m Dartimien, and you’re beautiful. I assume you have been waiting for me all your life.”
“Now, hold on!” Graywing snapped, and the girl gasped, looking past him.
A pair of soft-footed Tarmite axemen had crept into the alcove, and now launched themselves from the shadows, broadaxes aloft.
The first one had Graywing cold … until he tripped over a knee-high iron shield and crashed facedown on the pavement. Like a panther, Graywing was on him, dispatching him with a whistling swordstroke. The second Tarmite ducked aside, swung back his battle-axe … and toppled like a tree. From behind the iron shield, a broadsword had appeared, flashing in a roundhouse swing that took the Tarmite across his shins. The toppling man began a scream, which ended abruptly as one of Dartimien’s daggers found its mark.
Then the two warriors’ jaws dropped open in unison. From behind the shield, a young gully dwarf emerged, dragging a bloody sword that was far too big for him. “Pretty good bashin’ tool,” he said, indicating the broadsword. Several other gully dwarves, peering at him from the stairway, nodded their wide-eyed agreement.
“You? You did this?” Graywing goggled at fallen Tarmites, and the little person with the shield and sword.
“Dunno,” Bron said, raising the big sword. He stared at it in fascination. “Must have.”
“Look at that!” Dartimien pointed at the second fallen Tarmite. “Look at his legs … his feet!”
The gully dwarf’s swing had amputated both of the man’s feet. The severed feet still stood where they had been.
“Oh, yuck!” Thayla shivered.
“Forget feet,” Graywing growled. “You,” he pointed a stern finger at the puzzled gully dwarf. “You had the Fang of Orm. I saw it. Where is it?”
Bron looked around, vaguely puzzled, then he shrugged. “Beats me,” he said.
From beyond the alcove, a bull voice roared, “I want that girl! Now!”
“Here they come,” Dartimien pointed.
Just beyond the alcove, shielded footmen were advancing quickly in a solid rank, closing on the tower arch.
Graywing braced himself for combat, and a flashing dagger from Dartimien’s hand found a gap in the shield rank. A man there fell, but soon others took his place. Bron gaped at the advancing humans, and quickly disappeared behind his big, iron shield. In the shadows of the stairway, small feet scampered as gully dwarves hiding there scurried for the cover of a storm drain.
The stone that fell from the sky then was the size of a fat shoat. It crashed among the advancing footmen, smashing some of them, and showering the rest with shards of stone as it exploded loudly against the pavement. A few yards away another huge stone fell, then came several more, here and there in the courtyard.
Men shouted and screamed, and their voices were drowned out by a thousand battle cries just beyond the high walls. More stones fell, lofted by catapults and trebuchets beyond the walls, and thrown spears whistled through the sky and clattered down among them.
Bron poked his head out to see what was going on, then headed for the storm drain, carrying his shield and dragging his sword. He looked like a two-legged turtle with a long, steel tail. “Run like crazy!” he shouted.
“Best advice I’ve heard lately,” Dartimien muttered. He reached for Thayla’s hand, but missed it. Graywing was already lifting the girl, flinging her across his shoulder. Graywing ran off. With an oath, the Cat followed.
The Gelnian army had begun its assault on the fortress of Tarmish, and the open courtyard and its alcoves were not healthy places to be.
Chapter 19
The Road To Rune
In a place of shadows, small shadows moved. Here ancient, mildewed granite walls stood half-buried by rubble and silt, somber testament to the antiquity of the unseen structures high above. Great pillars of rough-cut stone towered at intervals along the walls and across the fields of rubble. Dark monoliths stood here and upon their sweeping shoulders rested Tarmish-the fortifications, the habitat, the entire culture of the people of this place. Here in a time long forgotten, generations of human toil had carved foundations from the virgin stone, foundations upon which future generations could build a fortress.
No one remembered now how these monoliths had come about, or who had shaped them. Over time these reminders had been so despised by the people above them that they had been ignored and eventually forgotten. For those ancient people who built such underpinnings had been neither Tarmite nor Gelnian, but the common ancestors of both.
For any Gelnian to admit such ancestry would have been unthinkable, for it would have been an admission of kinship with the hated city dwellers of Tarmish. And of course no Tarmite would even consider that a Gelnian-one of those despised rural folk who were good only for tending the crops that kept the city fed-might be even remotely a relative.
Thus the foundations of Tarmish-a dim catacomb of tunnels, vaulted passages and great chambers among stone foundations-went unnoticed, generation after generation. If anyone thought of the cavernous cellars at all, it was only as the place where storm drains led, and where sewers discharged.
Yet now, suddenly, these nether regions were occupied. The new tenants crept here and there, cautiously, exploring their surroundings by the muted light that came from grates far above. Here and there, little bands of Aghar roved the shadowy corridors, exploring. None of them were quite sure where this place was, or how they came to be here. But such abstract reflection was of little interest. The fact was, they were here, and until somebody told them otherwise, they would stay here.
It was a place. That was enough to know about it. It
wasn’t This Place, of course. For any place to be This Place, the Highbulp must designate it as such. But nobody had seen the Highbulp just lately, or anybody else of any authority. The Lady Lidda wasn’t here, any more than the Highbulp was. Nor was Clout, the Chief Basher, or Clout’s wife, the Lady Bruze, who might have taken charge had she been around. It was the nature of the Lady Bruze to take charge every time she had a chance. But she was as absent right now as the rest of Bulp’s notables. Even old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, was among the missing.
Others seemed to be missing, too, but nobody was exactly sure who, or how many. There was a lot to see here, and having nothing better to do, most of the lost tribe of Bulp set out to see it. For a time, Scrib followed along with the general pack, peering here and there, as awed as the rest at the magnitude of the ancient construction. “Big stuff,” he muttered, circling a monolithic stone pillar that rose from rough rubble into the echoing shadows far above. It was like the countless other pillars in this catacomb, but larger, and it captured Scrib’s attention by its sheer size. “Somebody make all this big stuff, sometime,” he said, nodding sagely. “Long time before yesterday.”
Hands clasped behind him, he shuffled around the great, standing cylinder of the monolith.
Though roughly crafted, without the fine work of a column that was intended to be seen, the massive, carved stone fascinated him. Shrouded in centuries of accumulated lime, mildew, fungus and filth, it was nearly a hundred feet in diameter, and at least twice that tall. Though the Aghar had no concept of such architecture, the massive column was the central support for the Tower of Tarmish, high above. It was, in fact, the root of the great tower and its solid core of stone extended to the very floor of the tower’s highest bastion.
At a bulge in the dark, grime-coated surface, Scrib paused, peered more closely, and rubbed the moist, sticky surface with an inquisitive finger, which he then stuck into his mouth. Cocking his head thoughtfully, he smacked his lips. “Not bad,” he decided. “Taste kinda like mushroom.” He took another taste, and was crowded aside by dozens of other curious Aghar, who had been following him around the base of the column, all of them gawking like tourists. Scrib had tasted the mildew, so now they all wanted a taste, and all from the same bulge.
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