by Markus Heitz
“A wise decision, Scholar,” commented Boindil.
“But it brought down the anger of my master on my head. I had always let him think that I was sticking to his own principles: Never take sides and make everyone pay.” Tungdil was about to take another sip and saw his cup was empty. “A mercenary. For one hundred cycles I was no better than a mercenary, serving the rulers who offered the best wages. I had my own domain, Ireheart.” He smiled, but it was a thoughtful smile and a cruel one. “Thousands followed my command, my two fortresses were impregnable. But that made the princes in the underworld mistrust me. The ones I served got together to try to defeat me.”
“You had to escape?”
Tungdil laughed and the sound of his laughter sent shivers down Boindil’s spine. He noted the deep malice in the voice of his friend. “No. I defeated them all and seized their realms. My warriors were the best because I had trained them in the way of dwarves. They were able to cut great swathes through the lines of the enemy. My power lasted about thirty cycles and I was the undisputed overlord on the other side.”
“And your former master had turned against you,” Ireheart assumed. He could not banish the chill from his body. The shadows were making Tungdil’s face harder, the furrows deepened and the scar on his brow darkened.
“Because there was no more money to be made. I had ruined trade for him.” Tungdil took a deep breath. “Let me stop there for now, my friend. I am tired and pained by the memory of all those orbits in Girdlegard I had wanted to forget. They pain my heart and mind.” Tungdil got up and walked to the beds. “Can you take first watch?”
“Of course, Scholar.” Boindil hid his disappointment as best he could. He had a thousand questions to bombard his friend with, but he took pity on his old comrade-in-arms, noting how stiff and tortured he seemed to be-like a dwarf of eight hundred cycles.
Ireheart got up, placing a few more small logs on the fire and in the stove so that they would not freeze. The vital heat they needed was escaping all too quickly through the gaping hole in the roof. When he turned round he saw that Tungdil had closed his eye and was already asleep.
The dwarf rubbed his beard. He stood in the middle of the room, at a loss. Time passed slowly.
Eventually he went over to where his friend lay.
He studied the familiar face closely. Slowly he stretched out his right hand, the fingers approaching the golden eye patch.
When his fingertips were a hair’s breadth away, Ireheart hesitated. It is not right, he said to himself. He balled his fist and forced his arm away, turning around and making his way back to the table.
You’ll regret this one day! That was an opportunity that won’t come round again. The doubting voices in his mind were shouting and screaming at him, but Boindil ignored them.
He stared up through the gap at the stars and prayed to Vraccas-to the true Vraccas-and this Vraccas did not live on the far side of the Black Abyss, among fiends and monsters.
IX
Girdlegard,
Northeast of the Brown Mountains,
In the Realm of the Fourthlings,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
Ireheart and Tungdil made their way to the outlying fortress, Silverfast, built to protect Girdlegard against threats from the northeast.
The stronghold had been reinforced with basalt stone by the fourthlings two hundred and eleven cycles previously because it had to serve as the primary barrier should the beasts from the Black Abyss ever encroach on this territory.
The tall walls and watchtowers with their topping of snow blocked the view of the yet more imposing second line of defense: The fortress Goldfast. These two strongholds were intended to repel any invaders and deny them access to the Brown Range of mountains.
Looking at the blocks of stone, Ireheart could easily tell they had been cut by dwarf-hands, but the fourthlings had not been granted the same skill as masons that Vraccas had given to his own race. The fourthlings were masters in the art of working with precious metals.
The ponies and the befun curved round to face the glittering white plain-a plain that years earlier had been overrun first by orcs and then, immediately afterwards, by the acronta.
Ireheart was familiar with the epic stories about the battle but had not been there himself. “I can imagine how it happened. It must have been quite a fight; just my kind of thing!” he said. As he spoke, his breath formed a white cloud. “The pig-faced orcs, ogres and trolls would have hurled themselves at those walls and started to climb.” He pointed to the right. “Over there the original watchtower collapsed under the constant catapult fire, killing hundreds of beasts.” He sighed. “And then they got closer and closer, stormed up the ladders and were about to swarm through the gem-cutters’ corridors, but…” he paused and looked at Tungdil, “… but then they appeared!”
Tungdil was listening but gave no sign that he knew how the story went.
“The monsters had nearly overwhelmed the fourthlings when the acronta rolled in over the plain and hunted down the orcs as if for sport, like a dog might chase a cat.” He laughed and slapped his thigh. “What wouldn’t I have given to have seen that and to have fought at their side!”
“Didn’t the acronta eat the orcs afterwards?”
“Oh, yes, they did. Do you remember Djerun, Andokai’s bodyguard-Andokai the Tempestuous?” Boindil looked at the walls, which had been repaired two hundred and fifty cycles ago, twice as thick as before, even though in truth the more dangerous enemies lay to the south of the dwarf realm. But in those times there had been no way of knowing that.
Two flags flew on the highest towers: One for the kingdom of the fourthlings and one for the union of all the dwarf realms. It was a nice fancy, because there was now no true community of dwarves as in the old times under the high king.
Tungdil patted the befun’s neck. “No,” he said honestly. “There are large parts of my life I know hardly anything about.” He touched the scar on his forehead and looked at Ireheart. “Tell me about this Djerun character.”
Ireheart gave a dismissive wave. “He’s not important, Scholar. I just wanted to talk about the acronta and… it doesn’t matter.” He took his bugle, put it to his lips and sounded it. It was not long before an answering fanfare came from the walls. On hearing that he blew a different set of notes.
Slowly but surely, the gates of Silverfast were opened for them.
Tungdil and Ireheart rode up to the entrance in silence. A troop of dwarves stood in formation at the gate, pikestaffs in their hands.
The one-eyed dwarf noted that crossbow marksmen were manning the battlements. “We don’t seem to be particularly welcome,” he commented.
“They don’t have anything against us personally. It’s regulations,” explained Boindil. “Frandibar Gemholder of the Gold Beater clan adopted the procedure on my advice. Nobody gets through to the other side without undergoing a thorough check. Not even me.” Ireheart was concerned about how the envoys of the dwarf-races would react to this folk hero, now so sadly changed.
They rode up to the guards.
“Not sure, Ireheart?” Tungdil’s voice was devoid of bitterness or reproach. He smiled sadly. “There will be others to whom the notion of my being an impostor or a phantom will occur, when they see me. Especially when they hear my new suggestions for forcing Lot-Ionan to his knees. Because that’s what we need to do: We have to bend him to our will, and not kill him. That, Ireheart, is going to be the most difficult thing, with a determined and desperate opponent.”
“Desperate? Lot-Ionan is a magus; why should he be desperate?”
“The longer we fight against him, the more he will be overwhelmed with despair. Believe me.” Again his features displayed a frightening mirth. The expression would have suited a demon. Ireheart would not have wanted to turn his back on Tungdil at that moment, but he returned his smile.
They had reached the sentries now: Heavily armed and grim-faced dwarves in thick coats. They held their pikes ready to be used instantaneous
ly.
“State your names and your business,” said the captain of the guard. Tungdil left the explanations to Boindil.
Boindil noticed that the guards’ attention was focused on the Scholar. In his flamboyant armor and mounted as he was on a very unusual animal, he aroused curiosity and suspicion; that altered when they learned the somber dwarf’s name.
“By Vraccas!” exclaimed the captain; he bowed to them both. “Can it be true that the two greatest dwarf-heroes have arrived to free Girdlegard? We did not expect you so soon. The delegates have not all come yet.”
“Then we’ll begin the strategy meeting without them,” said Tungdil abruptly. “Can we pass?”
“Of course, Tungdil Goldhand,” said the captain at once and gave a signal. The guards drew back to let them through.
“How do you know I am the real Tungdil Goldhand?” he asked darkly from atop his befun. “Do I look like a child of the Smith? In this armor? And what do the runes on the tionium signify? What if they meant death to observers?”
“Well… you’re riding with Boindil Doubleblade. He identified himself with the bugle signal. I thought…” The dwarf-captain hesitated and looked at Ireheart. He had not expected to be blamed and criticized for the warm welcome he had given the new arrivals.
“Thank you. We’ll find our own way in,” said Boindil in much friendlier tones. “Give us a soldier who can guide us swiftly and directly through the Brown Mountains to King Frandibar Gemholder. There is not an orbit to be lost. And the pressure of the crisis affects even such heroes as Tungdil Goldhand. Forgive the harshness of his manner.” He spurred his pony on.
The captain saluted and called out a name; as soon as Ireheart and Tungdil had passed under the archway, an opening large enough to have admitted even a kordrion, a dwarf came riding after them to act as their guide. He kept his distance. The words of the somber hero had been noted.
“What was all that about, Scholar?” whispered an angry Boindil. “Isn’t it enough if they get suspicious gradually? Do you enjoy sowing doubts?”
“I thought there would be some kind of a check,” he replied. “But they let us waltz in without asking us even to dismount. They should have searched our luggage at the very least.” His right hand touched the breastplate and stroked one of the runes. “And with this armor, these runes, he just let me in. Did you see how they stared at me? As if I were a monster.”
“At the moment that’s just what you sound like, Scholar,” Ireheart retorted, feeling insulted. “You’re not happy, whatever people do. What advice would you have given him?”
“Go and tell the captain he must not admit a single dwarf after us,” Tungdil said. “No matter who he is or who he claims to be. We saw one thirdling in the Outer Lands and I don’t think he was the only one. They will try to break into the realm of the gem cutters from the north.
“A spy, then,” Boindil surmised. “Of course! They’ll circumvent the Brown Range and check out the lie of the land and see where the defenses are weak before they attack.”
Tungdil offered ironic applause. “Now you’ve understood. I hope you can see, then, why I acted as I did.”
But Ireheart couldn’t really, even though the explanation made some sense. Surely the Scholar could have spoken rationally and calmly to the captain. “I’ll tell our leader. He’ll pass it on to the Silverfast troops. They’ll be more careful in future.”
The main gate of Goldfast stood open in welcome for the heroes, and here again the dwarves were received with cheers of frenetic rejoicing, fanfares and drum rolls. All the guards had left their posts to greet the pair.
Waving and smiling to the crowd, Ireheart sneaked a look at Tungdil. The Scholar cast a stony gaze to right and left. He rested one hand on his thigh as he rode; the other held the reins of the befun. He entered the fortress like a grim, war-weary general: No hand raised in acknowledgment, no greeting, no smile. The only clues to his state of mind were the spark in his eye, his pride and his awareness of his own power.
They continued without delay and Tungdil urged their guide to make swift progress.
Ireheart was still thinking about the thirdling they had encountered at the mountain refuge. “It would mean,” he blurted out while they were riding through a large cavern where the walls were covered in a film of water, “that the skirt-wearers have done more than merely form an alliance with the black-eyes.”
Tungdil had shut his eye and was listening carefully to the falling drops of water in the wall niches.
“The armor carried alfar runes, didn’t it?” Boindil insisted, urging his pony to keep up with the befun. “I thought everything about the enemy dwarf was strange. That powder he strewed in my face, blinding me… where did he get that? The thirdlings usually rely on their military prowess and wouldn’t use dirty tricks like that. And he moved in such an unusual way, not like a dwarf at all. He very nearly,” he said, turning his face toward Tungdil, “made me think of Narmora. What do you think?”
Tungdil opened his eye and sighed. “So who is Narmora?”
“Who was Narmora, more like,” growled Ireheart in exasperation. “By Vraccas! How am I expected to tell you what conclusions I’ve come to if you don’t remember half the things we’ve been through together?”
“I, too, would prefer to be able to remember.” Tungdil looked at his friend. “So was she an alf?”
“She was a half-alf. She was the companion of the crazy magister technicus…” He hesitated and waited tensely.
“Furgas,” said Tungdil without hesitation. “I remember him very well. A true master, more than a genius. But then he was seduced by evil ideas and went mad. Narmora will have inherited… Was it her father or her mother that belonged to the alf folk?”
“The mother.”
“So it goes like this,” Tungdil summed up pensively. “You think the black-eyes have been training the thirdlings in their own dark arts. But how would that work? Our race has no talent for magic…”
“And what about Goda, then? And my children?” Ireheart objected, having to rein in his family pride. His life-companion was a maga. The only maga in the dwarf folk. “Goda belonged to the thirdlings once. Why should she be the only one?”
“If you follow that through, maybe the secret talent Vraccas gave to the thirdlings was the gift of magic,” Tungdil mused. “A gift he never told them about, on purpose. He wanted them to find it out on their own, in good time.”
Ireheart rubbed his beard and fiddled around arranging the braids. “Why would he do that? I think it’s just a matter of chance.” Even while he was speaking he was aware that his friend had spent many cycles in the vaults of a great magus. “Go on, Scholar, tell me. Did you ever have a go at spells yourself?”
“No.”
That answer was so fast in coming that it made Boindil’s inner chorus of doubting voices wake up. He closed his eyes and demanded that they stop challenging his friend’s identity, but however forcefully he pressed his eyelids shut the voices merely became hoarse, rather than going quiet; he waited in vain for them to be silent. What evidence will allay these suspicions once and for all, Vraccas?
After a long ride through the Brown Mountains and in through a vaulted arch, seven paces high and made of pure silver set with onyx stones, they reached an area of the dwarf realm set aside for official business.
On the walls of the corridors were depictions, more than life size, of events from the history of the fourthlings and of the other dwarf folk, displayed not in paint but in mosaic, using different-colored jewels. Shortly before they were told to dismount they saw a picture of the Black Abyss. The artist had placed a dwarf in heroic stance at the mouth of the ravine, the weapon Bloodthirster clearly recognizable in his hands.
Tungdil got down from the befun to inspect it. Slowly he raised his hand to touch his own image. “By all that’s unholy,” he mouthed, swallowing hard. “Such a long time. Such a long time ago.”
Ireheart stood next to him and observed his expressi
on. “Typical of the gem cutters. They could easily have done one of me as well,” he complained jokingly, without taking his eyes off his friend’s face.
“In truth, they could,” said Tungdil absently, his armored gauntlet still resting on the mosaic. “I promise you’ll be in the next one they do.”
“Side by side, the two of us, Scholar.”
Tungdil stared at the picture of the Black Abyss. “No. I shan’t be on the next picture, Ireheart. I’ve already played my part. It is the turn of other heroes now.” Tungdil turned abruptly to face his companion. “Heroes like you and your children. Heroic women like Goda.” A tear rolled down his cheek and slid down into his beard to hide. “I shall merely be the one who brings things together, but the fighting and glorious deeds will be carried out without me.” He took a deep breath and his expression became cold and hard again. “Let’s get on.”
Ireheart was too surprised to respond. He followed Tungdil, who was heading toward a huge door where the dwarf-leader stood; the door itself was covered in gold leaf, and runes picked out in diamonds shone brilliantly. They promised a haven of calm and safety to whoever passed through the doorway.
Four dwarf-sentries stood guard. It was obvious from their relatively slight stature that they were fourthlings; they saluted the new arrivals.
Tungdil and Ireheart stepped into the room one after the other. There was a hexagonal table in the middle, made of a bluish-gray ogre-eye stone. Each of the tribes had a place accorded them, and the freelings had also been included. The bitter enmity of the thirdlings had led to someone shattering the part of the table originally intended for them. Between the secondlings and thirdlings was a gaping hole.
This was not the only thing that struck the eye; only the representatives of the fifthlings and fourthlings were sitting at their places; there was food and drink arrayed on the table in front of them. The delegates of the various clans sat some distance off on stone benches.
Ireheart saw at once how few were gathered there. His courage started to ebb.