The War of the Dwarves

by Markus Heitz

  The executioner’s explanation only added to Tungdil’s confusion. He was looking forward to seeing the outcasts’ kingdom for himself. “How do I get there?” he asked. “I’d like to visit the place you speak of. Are you sure they’ll let me in?”

  Bramdal gave him directions to a pond that Tungdil judged to be located near the entrance to the tunnels. “Strap weights to your ankles and jump into the pool. It’s important to sink to the very bottom—only then will you be admitted to the freelings’ halls.”

  “Is that what you call yourselves?”

  “Free by nature, free by name.” Glancing up, Bramdal spotted a man sitting two tables to their left. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said, picking up his rucksack and limping across the bar. He and the man talked in hushed tones.

  Tungdil wasn’t sure what to make of the instructions. Dwarves were famously suspicious of water, regardless of the depth.

  He still had painful memories of traveling across Girdlegard with the twins, neither of whom would set foot on a boat, resulting in constant detours. Like most of their kinsfolk, they believed that contact with water would lead to certain death. In their opinion, any lake, tarn, river, or stream outside a dwarven kingdom was a threat.

  How am I going to get Boïndil to weigh himself down and jump into a pond when he won’t even tread in a puddle? Tungdil leaned back in his chair and racked his brains. He had to hand it to the outlaws—it was the perfect way of hiding their existence from the other folks. It’s going to be a real challenge. He watched the man push a couple of coins toward Bramdal, in return for which he was handed a small object wrapped in cloth.

  “What was that about?” asked Tungdil nosily when the executioner returned.

  “You don’t want to know. It’s superstitious human stuff,” replied Bramdal in a tone that was affable but firm.

  Rather than press him for details that he probably wouldn’t get, he tried another tack. It had occurred to him that some of the dwarf-like inhabitants from the Outer Lands might have crossed into Girdlegard, and he wondered whether Bramdal might have met one. “You’ve been living with the freelings for a while. Have you ever seen an undergroundling in your realm?” He ran a finger around the rim of his tankard and traced a moist rune on the tabletop. It was the mysterious symbol from the cave. “Do you know what this means?”

  Bramdal raised his eyebrows. “No idea. Undergroundlings, did you say?”

  It was too much to hope for. “It’s just a rumor I’d heard of. Where are you heading now? The roads aren’t safe at the moment. An army of orcs is marching north toward the Gray Range—we had a run-in with some of their scouts.”

  The executioner shook his head, braids flying to the side. “It’s all right, I’m on my way south. I’m needed in the next city: The prisons are overflowing with criminals and justice must be done.” He held out his hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Tungdil Goldhand,” he said solemnly. “Perhaps our paths will cross again. I hope I’ve been of some assistance. May Vraccas guide you to your goal.” He shouldered his rucksack and limped to the door. Outside, it was pouring with rain. Bramdal took a step back, put up his hood, and slipped away.

  “Excuse me, but do you happen to know what the executioner sold to that man?” asked Tungdil when the publican collected his empty tankard. The man bent down and whispered in his ear. Tungdil’s eyes widened: Bramdal was trading in body parts.

  “They make excellent talismans,” explained the publican. “Candles from the tallow of murderers will cure most illnesses, and a thief’s little finger is good against fire. I’ve got one myself.” He raised his hand with the empty tankards and pointed to the ceiling. A shriveled scrap of blackened flesh was fixed by a nail to the beam. With a bit of imagination, it was possible to make out the shape of a finger. “This street has been struck by lightning on two occasions, but my tavern has never been hit.”

  Tungdil shuddered and paid up quickly, keen to escape before he was hit on the head by a dead man’s finger. He set off to tell his friends of his discovery. The outcasts would be easier to find than he had imagined—although there was still the challenge of persuading his companions to dive into a pond.

  As he trudged through the alleyways of Hillchester, he realized that Bramdal hadn’t told him the reason for his banishment. The word murder haunted his thoughts.

  At last the laughter died down.

  Boïndil ran a hand over his eyes to wipe away his tears of mirth, while the others lay back on their beds and struggled for breath.

  “That was a good one, scholar,” chuckled Boïndil. “But, joking aside, how do we get to their realm?”

  Tungdil sighed. “I just told you. I was quoting Bramdal exactly.”

  Boïndil’s grin disappeared. “Let me get this straight: You’re asking me to jump into a pond.” He leaned forward and sniffed Tungdil’s breath. “Ha, no wonder! How many tankards have you had? Weights on my ankles, I ask you!” He noticed the grave expression on Tungdil’s face. “By the hammer of Vraccas, I won’t do it! Elria’s curse is bad enough, but drowning ourselves on purpose…” He folded his arms in front of his chest and stuck out his chin, black beard aquiver. “Not in a million cycles!”

  “How do we know that Bramdal’s not a thirdling?” piped up one of the others. “He could have made up the stuff about the entrance to trick us into drowning.”

  Boïndil whipped around. “Exactly!” he said fiercely. “It’s a trick! We’ll get there, and he’ll be hiding in the bushes, waiting for us to drown in his confounded pond. I bet he’s dreaming up a way to thieve our armor.”

  “There might be dwarf-eating fish in the water,” ventured one of his companions.

  Tungdil raised his eyebrows. “All right,” he challenged them. “Name me a dwarf who died by drowning.”

  “I’ve heard all kinds of terrible stories,” said Boïndil balefully. “I can’t remember the poor fellows’ names.”

  “I’m not talking about stories,” persisted Tungdil. “I want names: names of friends, friends of friends, or relatives, who died by drowning. It seems to me that Elria had plenty of opportunity to kill us on the way to the Blacksaddle, but no one died, as far as I know.” He stared into their wrinkly faces. “Well?”

  No one said a word. Boïndil examined the runes on his axes while the others stared at the ceiling or rearranged their clothes.

  “I won’t do it,” said Boïndil at last. “I don’t mind looking at the pond, but it had better be shallow. If it’s deeper than my knees, we’ll head for the tunnels, like we said.”

  “Fine,” said Tungdil, pulling off his boots. It seemed futile to discuss the matter any further, especially when he himself was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the scheme. “We’ll get moving as soon as I’ve had a bit of sleep.” He lay down on the straw mattress and dozed for a while, only to be woken by jangling chain mail. He looked up to see Boïndil standing by his bed. “I meant to tell you: I spoke to a merchant, and he reckoned he’d seen some orcs.”

  Tungdil sat up. “How long ago and where?”

  “He said they were coming from the east—from Urgon, he thought. They were marching toward the Gray Range, and he said they were moving fast.”

  Tungdil leaped out of bed, fetched the map from his rucksack and laid it on the floor for the others to see. He traced the route with his finger.

  “They must have turned east around here,” he surmised, pointing midway between the dead glade and Dsôn Balsur. “By sticking close to the border with Urgon, they slipped past the allied army and the älfar without being seen.” For an orc, Ushnotz was remarkably cunning. “Where exactly did the merchant say they were?”

  Boïndil placed a finger on the map. According to Tungdil’s calculations, the spot was only four hundred miles from the fifthling kingdom. Gauragar was hilly, but there weren’t any proper mountains or other obstacles to slow them down. The territory suited the dwarves, but their longer-legged foes would have the advantage. Orcs were formidable march
ers.

  Tungdil rolled up the map and stowed it into his rucksack. Even if everything went to plan, he couldn’t bank on recruiting the outcasts in time to save the fifthling kingdom. His boots were still wet, but he pulled them on regardless, and reached for his cloak.

  “We’re leaving,” he told the others. “From now on, we only stop if we have to.”

  The next orbit, the dwarves had a niggling feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t tiredness or stomach cramps or any physical sensation, just a general uneasiness that made them nervous and withdrawn. All around them the grass was getting greener as if to flaunt its victory over the Perished Land, but the burgeoning vegetation did nothing to ease their trepidation, and they longed for their mountain homes.

  The mood became tenser and the dwarves more irritable, but they kept themselves going with the occasional song. After a time, the path led into a forest, and the singing dried up. From then, they continued in silence, trudging bad-temperedly along the overgrown track.

  Tungdil had a fair idea what was causing their edginess, but he wasn’t inclined to share the news. The others would hardly be heartened to know that they were traveling through Lesinteïl, former home of the northern elves.

  The älfar had conquered the kingdom many cycles ago and wiped out their cousins, before invading the Golden Plains, killing the elves, and founding the älfar kingdom of Dsôn Balsur. Only Liútasil’s elves in the dense forests of landur had survived the älfar’s crusade against their race.

  Tungdil suspected that he and his friends had crossed into the first of the fallen elven kingdoms, and that Lesinteïl was expressing its old antipathy toward the dwarves. Either that, or the land was drenched in the sinister memory of Sitalia’s slaughtered elves.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t reckoned with eagle-eyed Boïndil, who spotted the remains of a statue half hidden by a thicket of brambles and creepers.

  “By Vraccas, if that isn’t a statue of Sitalia!” he exclaimed, bringing the little procession to a halt. “What’s it doing in a godforsaken forest like this? Don’t tell me we’re in landur already!”

  Needless to say, the whole group looked to Tungdil for guidance. “There’s a chance we’re in Lesinteïl,” their leader conceded quietly.

  “Unbelievable,” snorted Boïndil, aiming a kick at the elegantly sculpted marble. “First you ask us to jump into a pond, and then you lead us straight to the heart of the pointy-ears’…” He stopped short and corrected himself. “Straight to the heart of an elven kingdom. No wonder I’ve got the shivers; it’s no place for a dwarf.”

  “If you’ve finished complaining,” said Tungdil, “I suggest we carry on. You seem to have forgotten that we’re friends with the elves.”

  “Tell that to the forest,” growled Boïndil, setting off behind him. He turned and glared at a nearby tree. “Trip me up, and I’ll hack you to pieces. Consider yourself warned.”

  It was probably coincidence, but at that moment the wind got up, whistling threateningly through the trees.

  Boïndil whipped out his axes and banged them together, filling the forest with a high-pitched jangling of metal. “Was that supposed to scare me?” he shouted defiantly. “Do it again at your peril!”

  Footsore and tired, the dwarves continued their journey, eating and drinking on the move. At dawn, the tops of the trees were wreathed in mist. The sun was still rising slowly as they made their way out of the forest and stopped at the edge of a meadow. The terrain was completely flat, but the grass, a mixture of dead stalks and fresh new blades, came as high as their chests.

  Scattered about the meadow was the wreckage of an elven town, and beyond that, a pond, just as Bramdal had described. For some reason, the executioner had omitted to mention that the water was as black as the night. Devoid of light or sparkle, its surface swallowed every particle of sunlight. Tungdil was reminded of the dull, forbidding water of the dead glade.

  Boïndil wouldn’t stop shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have minded if you could see the bottom, but this…” He pointed to the pond. “It’s the work of the Perished Land.”

  One of the others nodded. “It’s as black as pitch. I’ll be darned if I dip my toe in it, let alone the rest of me.”

  “We need to get a proper look,” said Tungdil, tramping through the grass.

  Tendrils of ivy twisted playfully over scattered blocks of stone. Unlike the elves of landur, the founders of Lesinteïl had favored solid, imposing buildings, but the weather and the älfar had taken their toll, and it was difficult to imagine how the town had once looked.

  “Don’t wait for me—I’ll catch up,” said one of Tungdil’s companions, stopping among the ruins. Bigor Stonecolumn was a stoneworking secondling, who was drawn to masonry of any sort. He ran his calloused fingers over crumbling carvings, cracked sculptures, and once-beautiful friezes, the colors of which had faded in the sun. “Not bad for a bunch of flower-pickers,” he said admiringly.

  The dwarf studied the intricate workmanship and found no sign of faulty hammer strikes or careless chisel cuts. In spite of himself, he wished the elven town were still standing so that he could see it in its original glory.

  Meanwhile, Tungdil had arrived at the pond. He looked around for Bigor, but the secondling was nowhere in sight. “Bigor?” he called.

  “Don’t worry, scholar. He’ll be admiring the ruins,” said Boïndil.

  “Or answering a call of nature,” chuckled one of the others. “The grass will be glad of some water.”

  Tungdil peered at the pond. In front of him were the sorry remains of a pier, and, further left, a tumbledown shrine, which, according to the worn inscription, was dedicated to Sitalia, goddess of the elves. A flight of stone steps led down to the water.

  Right, here goes… He crouched at the water’s edge, pulled off his gloves, and hesitated briefly before lowering his index finger into the liquid darkness. The water felt cold. “It seems harmless enough,” he said to the others. “The pier reaches almost to the middle of the pond. With a proper run-up, we should be able to reach the—”

  “Hang on a second, scholar,” interrupted Boïndil. “I’m not in the habit of questioning your decisions, but you can’t seriously be suggesting that we should jump in there.”

  Tungdil didn’t like exploiting his friend’s weaknesses, but he was left with no choice. “You’re not scared, are you, Ireheart?” He scooped up some water and threw it at the dwarf. “Ooo,” he teased. “Can you feel it trying to kill you? It’s only water, you know.”

  The tactic worked. Boïndil puffed out his chest, wounded honor triumphing over his instincts. “Why would a warrior be afraid of Elria?” he asked proudly. “Look, I’ll dive in and prove it.” He clambered onto the pier, but Tungdil held him back.

  “Hold on, we can’t leave without Bigor.” He called the mason’s name and waited in vain for an answer. “We’d better look for him. Everyone spread out.”

  “I reckon he’s been kidnapped by the forest,” said Boïndil, pulling out his axes. “Elvish trees can’t stand us dwarves.”

  “You threatened them,” commented one of his companions. “What do you expect?”

  “For them to behave themselves,” snapped Boïndil, hacking at the high grass to work off his temper.

  They spread out and advanced in a line, sweeping the meadow for the missing dwarf, and calling his name.

  Next to a marble column, shielded by head-high grass, they found Bigor, or what was left of him.

  At once Boïndil and the others formed a defensive ring around Tungdil and the corpse.

  Bigor’s mail tunic had been pulled halfway over his head and his leather jerkin ripped to shreds, exposing his torso. His flesh was covered in bite marks and some of his bones were missing, including his ribs. The trampled grass around the body glistened moistly with blood.

  “This was the work of an animal,” reported Tungdil.

  Boïndil glared furiously at the sea of rippling stems that blocked their view in all direc
tions. “It was a thirdling trap,” he growled. “Your friendly executioner was trying to feed us to his pet.” He shifted his weight, planting both feet firmly on the ground. “The dwarf-eating monster won’t be gobbling any more of our kinsfolk. I’ll deal with the varmint, you’ll see.”

  Noticing a wide channel of trampled grass, Tungdil concluded that the predator was by no means small, which led him to wonder why no one had heard it pouncing on Bigor. Judging by the dwarf’s half-eaten remains, the creature had been disturbed mid-meal. It must be lurking nearby, he thought with a shudder. He tried to predict the creature’s next move. There were two possibilities: either it meant to attack them, or it was waiting to finish its meal.

  Just then a strong wind gusted through the field. Amid the rustling grass, the hiss of an approaching arrow went unnoticed by the dwarves.

  Its arrival was so sudden and unexpected that the dwarf to the right of Boïndil barely realized he was hit. Staggering backward, he raised a hand to his chest and closed his fingers disbelievingly around the black shaft protruding from his mail shirt. Pierced through the heart, he slumped to the ground.

  “Älfar!” came the shouted warning from Boïndil. Not wanting to offer an easy target, he threw himself onto his belly. The arrow intended for him sailed over his head and pierced the back of the dwarf behind him. Groaning, the stricken dwarf keeled over. A third dwarf took two arrows to the chest.

  Seeing the arrows come thick and fast, Tungdil realized that there was more than one archer. By his reckoning, at least three älfar were hiding in the grass, making it all but impossible for the dwarves to fight and win.

  “Get down and crawl,” he ordered, throwing himself to the ground. He lowered his voice. “Make for the pond. We’ll soon see whether Bramdal was telling the truth.”

  “Are you blind or something?” barked Boïndil, wriggling through the grass beside him. “This is the Perished Land! We can’t—”

  Tungdil grabbed a handful of grass. “Look, it’s green, not gray! The Perished Land has been banished.” An arrow whistled over their heads. “No more talking; I’ll see you at the pond.” He pushed himself carefully across the ground, intent on disturbing as few blades as possible. The älfar were bound to be looking for movement in the grass.