by Markus Heitz
Tungdil grimaced. “That doesn’t sound like the man who brought me up,” he muttered. “I’ve no reason to doubt you, my friend. Something in the past must have contaminated him with evil. Perhaps the source that awakened him?”
Ireheart wiped the pearly tears away. They melted in his fingers. “No one knows. You’re the only one who would dare take up arms against him. You, and maybe the Emperor Aiphaton.”
“The High Pass-is it open?”
“He closed it up after the black-eyes from the south marched through. He didn’t want to let too many of Tion’s monsters in, I suppose,” said the dwarf dismissively. “Are we sticking to your plan, Scholar? Or have you thought of another way to defeat an adversary like him so that we can force him to serve us?”
Tungdil did not answer. He stared straight ahead at the hut. “Someone’s expecting us,” he said quietly. “I wonder why they haven’t got a fire going.”
Ireheart’s eyes widened in anticipation. “Here we go! You think there are some footpads waiting to ambush us?” Secretly he was wondering how Tungdil could have spotted the enemy. The wind was blowing away from the hut, there were no tracks in the snow and he himself would have heard the tiniest of sounds in the stillness. He supposed it was down to the constant experience of battle sharpening his friend’s senses. He got ready to wield his crow’s beak, but Tungdil motioned him not to.
“I don’t know how many they are. We’ll act as though we haven’t seen anything. That way he, or they, will think we’re an easy target,” he suggested.
“Because if they have crossbows they could shoot us out of our saddles. I get it,” said Ireheart, pretending to be checking the buckles on the harness. “I hope the place is full of robbers,” he said. “Ho, this’ll be fun!”
“Not much fun for whoever’s going to have to fight us.” Tungdil patted his befun’s neck. “Shall we have a bet?”
“No, not this time,” said Ireheart with a grin.
VII
The Outer Lands,
Seventy-six Miles Southwest of the Black Abyss,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
The oddly assorted dwarf-pair continued to ride toward the apparently deserted hut.
It was a mystery to Ireheart how Tungdil had sensed someone was lying in wait. He squinted over to his friend, looked ahead and shifted in the saddle.
They were thirty paces from the hut now and there was no sign of anyone.
“Are you sure, Scholar?” Ireheart enquired, laughing out loud as if they were telling each other jokes; that should fool anyone watching them. He saw that a couple of the runes on his friend’s dark armor were glowing.
There was a smile on Tungdil’s lips. “You’ll see. Get ready.”
“What if it’s just some innocent travelers?”
“Sitting in the cold? Travelers who haven’t stepped outside for orbits?” a disdainful Tungdil retorted.
“They…” Ireheart did not know what to say. Whatever he came up with made no sense at all.
Their animals halted some way off from the cabin and the dwarves dismounted.
“And now?” Boindil wanted to know, slipping his pony’s reins over a post. He didn’t tie them in case they needed to leave in a hurry. “Do we storm in?”
“No,” said Tungdil firmly, drawing Bloodthirster. “Go and knock.” He grinned and tapped on the head of Ireheart’s crow’s beak. “With that.”
“Good idea! Off we go!” Ireheart laid his pipe on the ground near the door so that it wouldn’t get damaged in the fighting. He took his faithful weapon and smashed it against the door. The lock splintered away from the wood and the door flew open so violently that the hinges broke off. It crashed to the floor.
Ireheart stormed in with a roar-and stared at the empty tables and benches; it was icy cold in the hut and there was no sign that anyone was or had recently been there.
“Well, then,” he muttered, disappointedly. “Hey, Scholar! Did your senses fool you? Come and see!”
Behind him all was quiet.
Boindil turned round, but Tungdil had disappeared. “What, by Vraccas, is happening now?” he thundered, catching a noise at his back. He whirled round, crow’s beak raised high. “Scholar?”
He moved carefully into the room, one step at a time.
He checked the fireplace for ashes, the wooden floor for footprints. Not a single trace.
“It’s the spirits of the mountain haunting us,” he told himself silently. His gaze fell on a lonely dried sausage hanging above the stove. “Scholar? Tell me where you are? I don’t want to clobber you by mistake.”
Ireheart moved cautiously around the corner to the cooking stove. There was a thick layer of grease on it. No meals had been cooked there recently.
The string the sausage hung on, suspended from a rafter, made a rustling noise. The dwarf, surprised, noted there was no obvious draft in the cabin, but the string swung forward and backwards.
If he looked closely he could see the ceiling boards move slightly, and he grinned. That’s where the rat is hiding! Whoever was waiting for them had crept up to the hayloft, to give the dwarves a false sense of security.
“Scholar?” he called again, before leaping onto the stove and hacking through the ceiling boards with his crow’s beak. He jumped up and pulled at the handle with all his strength until the planks gave way.
Dried grass fell into the room, showering Boindil; dust blurred his vision. But he thought he spied a movement in the hay. Certain that Tungdil would have made himself known if it were him, he struck out without mercy.
His blow was parried, metal hitting metal. Suddenly the crow’s beak was wrenched aside and Ireheart needed all his strength to hang on to his weapon.
Surrounded by showers of drizzling hay and dust he tried another attack on his opponent, who still was only visible as a silhouette. Judging from the size it must be-a dwarf!
“Scholar, is it you?” he asked, to be on the safe side, holding back for a second.
A mistake.
A very narrow blade, more like a finger-slim iron rod, appeared in front of him and Boindil was only just able to swivel his torso to the right to avoid being stabbed through the chest with the sharpened point. But it found its way through the material of his padded tunic, hitting his collarbone. Intense pain flashed through him.
Ireheart growled in rage, and the weapon was withdrawn. He felt his blood trickling warm from the wound, but realized the injury was relatively harmless. His shoulder and arm still worked and he could breathe without difficulty.
Angrily he grabbed the handle of his crow’s beak again and jumped through the hay to attack. He circled round, waving the weapon; some time soon he was bound to hit something. “Don’t hide, you coward!” he shouted, stepping out of the cloud of straw and dust. He coughed, his eyes streaming, then saw a figure by the door.
“Halt! Stay where you are!” He raced after it, following the unknown figure into the open air.
But once outside in the snow he saw that the attacker had completely vanished.
“How, by Tion’s ghastly-” and then something struck him on the back of the head. His helmet took most of the force of the blow, but it was enough to make him giddy. “Yes, sneak up on me from behind; you can do that, can’t you?” he raged, and a red veil laid itself over his already restricted sight. “Ho, stand and fight!” Battle-fury was about to overwhelm him.
The enemy was back at the door. He wore a close-fitting leather helmet with decorations of rivets and silver wire. His body was protected by dark leather armor with ornate tionium plates and his legs were concealed behind a skirt of iron discs. It looked like the kind of armor a thirdling would make.
“What do you know: A dwarf-hater! So what brings you here?” Boindil wiped his eyes, then saw his pipe under the enemy’s feet. Trampled and broken. “Look at that! You moron! How am I going to smoke now?” He clenched his teeth and snorted with fury. “It doesn’t matter. I know who’s going to smash you.”
Tungdil appe
ared above them on the roof, Bloodthirster in his right hand. An impressive figure, Ireheart had to admit. “Something much more important,” Tungdil called down. “How did he get through the Brown Mountains and past the fourthlings? We’ll have to find out and stop the gap before others find it.”
“Wait, Scholar. I’ll put a few sharp questions to him!” Boindil raised the crow’s beak. “That’s what this is for!” He dashed up to the dwarf, who bore a round shield in one hand and a weapon like a sword in the other. The base of the sword was thick to withstand heavy blows, then the blade thinned out to form a slender point, ideal for striking through gaps in an opponent’s armor. “I’ll break your rods in half!” he promised with a roar, turning inwards on the attack to make his strike impossible to parry.
The thirdling, however, was not going to place himself in the path of a crow’s beak strike. He leaped to one side and lifted the arm that held the shield. Boindil noticed far too late that something was being thrown at him.
A cloud of black powder exploded over him and he tumbled straight into it. His eyes smarted and streamed. It hurt to breathe now and he was coughing badly, unable to take in any air.
His battle-fury was inflamed now and he lashed about blindly, but his strength was dwindling and he soon collapsed, panting, into the snow.
The madness left him, and the snowy whiteness melted under the warmth of his body, washing the sting out of his eyes. When he lifted his head he could see again. He spat. The saliva was black, like the snow he was lying on.
Tungdil and the unknown fighter were locked in combat, blades clashing repeatedly. The mountains sent the sound back as an echo as the two of them circled around in a lethal dance. Their whirling movements and maneuvers were nothing like those seen in conventional fighting. Ireheart had never seen anything of the kind before.
For Boindil it was as if two brothers were fighting. In their black suits of armor they were so similar that it was only their weapons that distinguished them.
Tungdil’s adversary had taken quite a beating. His shield was cut to shreds and the tip of the strange sword was missing. His armor hung open in places. Blood trickled out, red drops falling onto the snow.
Ireheart pushed himself up onto his feet. Gasping for breath and groaning, he raised the crow’s beak. “Wait, Scholar! I’m coming!” he called, stumbling forward. “That skirt-wearer has got something coming to him from me!”
Tungdil took a strike on his armor, letting the blow slip past Bloodthirster. When the iron met the tionium there was a yellow flash of lightning and the enemy cried out. He had been forced to let go of his weapon; the sword fell and vanished, hissing, into the snow, sending up steam.
The unknown warrior withdrew three paces and lifted his left hand, uttering an unintelligible word-it sounded like the language of the alfar-from inside the helmet, and all the runes on Tungdil’s armor lit up, bright as the sun! Boindil’s friend disappeared for a moment in a sea of dazzling rays.
Ireheart shielded his eyes with his hand and ran towards the enemy. “Let’s be having you, you fiend!” But when he reached the place where his adversary had stood there was only a footprint leading away. Has he jumped over the top?The tracks went over the edge of a steep slope, almost a sheer drop.
Far below he could make out a figure tumbling and somersaulting toward the valley before pulling out the damaged shield and sitting on it to sail down the mountainside at high speed on the icy snow. Round about him the drifts were starting to slide. An avalanche was going to accompany the thirdling to the valley floor.
“Ho! Skirt-wearer! Tion’s not going to be on your side for much longer!” he shouted happily after the fleeing dwarf. “The White Death can have you, as far as I’m concerned!” Boindil waited until he saw the snow swallow the figure up.
He turned back to Tungdil with a grin on his face. His friend was a few paces away. “Just a pity we didn’t get to ask him a few sharp questions first. With this.” He fingered his weapon. “Would you have let him live, Scholar?”
His friend said nothing and remained motionless.
Full of apprehension Ireheart hurried over to Tungdil and yanked his visor up using the end of his crow’s beak. Tungdil’s features were devoid of expression and his eyes looked through Ireheart into the distance. “Oh, by Vraccas! What’s he done to you?” He tapped the armor. “Or was it this armor that did the damage? This black tin seems to have its drawbacks, too.”
Ireheart picked up a handful of snow and threw it at his friend’s face. At once the lids fluttered and the gaze returned to focus on him. “Aha, you can move again!” Ireheart sighed with relief.
“Not quite.” Tungdil’s face was red with exertion. “I’ve been trying, but the armor has me stuck fast!”
“What?” Ireheart put down his weapon, grabbed Tungdil’s right arm and tried to push it up by force. The hinges stayed where they were, immobile, as if riveted in position. All he achieved was to set Tungdil rocking, such that he toppled backwards into the snow.
“Well done, Ireheart,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll freeze to death in here now.”
“Might be better than being smothered in your own excrement?”
“I don’t think that’s funny, Ireheart!”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll look after you. We’ll get your tin can open.” Boindil checked on the befun. “But not out here. The befun can pull you to the hut and the pony can tug you in through the door. I’ll get you warmed up and then I’ll have a think about what to do.”
He was true to his word. After a bit of pulling and shoving Tungdil lay in his unwished-for, but secure, prison by the fire that Ireheart had lit. The door he had broken down earlier was now resting upright against the opening, jammed in place by a table to keep out the freshening wind. Boindil prepared a simple but delicious meal from the provisions they had with them.
“Shall I feed you?” he offered, grinning. There was gloating pleasure in his tone, despite the worry that perhaps the armor would never release his friend: Maybe it would stay rigid forever. It had lost its somber and threatening nature, its aura of fear and awe. “Just a heap of expensive junk that doesn’t work anymore,” he muttered.
“No, I don’t want you to feed me. Who knows where you’d drop the food,” growled his bad-tempered companion, staring up at the dusty sausage still hanging from the rafters. Ireheart ate with a healthy appetite. “Has this ever happened before, Scholar?” he asked, his mouth full.
“No. But I’ve never fought a thirdling before that speaks like an alf,” he replied crossly.
Ireheart chewed and put his mind to the problem at hand. If the armor was forced to go solid like that because the black-eye word was used, I wonder who created it in the first place. Who wore it before Tungdil?
Before he had left them all and gone to the abyss, his friend would never in a million cycles have thought of using armor that was obviously of evil origin.
His brown eyes focused on the blade. Had he misjudged the hero? After all, Tungdil had once made himself a new weapon out of one belonging to an alf-Bloodthirster! Boindil was pleased with the idea: Perhaps this very blade held the key to the change in Tungdil. He had become a dark and dangerous dwarf. Although, of course, present circumstances rendered him less than effective.
“Hope you don’t want to make dwarf-water?”
“Not yet,” said Tungdil impatiently.
“I could tip you over so that it runs out of your helmet?”
“You would, too.”
“Of course.” Ireheart laughed.
“By all that’s infamous! If only I knew the counter-incantation.”
Now Boindil’s jaw dropped open, showing the mouthful he had been chewing. “That thirdling put a spell on you? A dwarf-hater that can do magic?” He picked up his cup of tea. “Vraccas help us! It’s getting more and more complicated.”
“No, it wasn’t magic. It was… a command,” Tungdil said, attempting to explain the effect of the thirdling’s words.
“So the wearer can be sure nobody else uses the armor,” sighed the one-eyed dwarf. “It would take too long to go into it.”
“Oh, I’ve got masses of time.” He licked the spoon clean. “So’ve you, Scholar.”
“I don’t feel like explaining, dammit!”
“So, if I’ve understood correctly, it could happen again. For example, when you’re having to deal with an orc. And that,” Ireheart waved the spoon, “is something that’s more than likely. Certainly in Girdlegard.” He contemplated the runes. “You really should take it off as soon as it’s working again. One of these orbits. Soon.” He winked at Tungdil. “If I have to I’ll drag you back all the way to Evildam. Back in my forge I’ve got all the tools I need to crack you open. I’ve got hammers this size!” He spread his arms wide.
“It wouldn’t help.” Tungdil watched the sausage swinging in the breeze. “It’s enough to drive you mad!” he shouted, exasperated and trying with all his might to sit up. But the armor could not be moved. The joints did not even squeak.
“Do you think I could use you as a sledge?”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Taking the rise out of me?” said Tungdil accusingly. “Pity would be more appropriate than this teasing.”
“I’m not being malicious. I’m just saying there are drawbacks to walking around in someone else’s armor if it’s as moody as a woman. I hope you see it that way, too.” He took another mouthful and stood up. “I’ve got an idea,” he mumbled, taking the crow’s beak in one hand. Legs wide apart, he stood over Tungdil, about at the level of his friend’s knees. “Perhaps it’s the same as with a stubborn woman. If you want something from them you have to win them round.” He shoved the last piece of bread in his mouth.
Tungdil stared at him in bewilderment. “What are you up to?”
“Winning it round. Properly.” He took the measure of the blow he would land on the breastplate, using the flattened side of his war hammer. “It might hurt, Scholar. But it’s in a good cause.”