by D. P. Prior
“Want me to fix them links in your hauberk?” Targ asked, picking up some pincers and snapping them together.
“Sure,” Nameless said, reaching for one of the buckles.
Cordy’s massage had afforded him a bit more range of movement, and the soreness in his shoulders was little more than an annoyance now. He’d barely taken hold of the leather strap, when a fierce rattling from above startled him.
He looked up, same time as Targ, to see claws poking through the grilles in the ceiling.
“Shog!” Targ said. “I never even thought—”
One of the grilles fell away and clanged to the floor.
The dwarves gathered at the keg swore and gasped and started running for hammers, chisels, and whatever else they could use to defend themselves.
Nameless surged to his feet and cut the first feeder in half before it had a chance to reach the ground, but already the other grilles were giving way, and more of the creatures were dropping into the chamber.
Targ was wide-eyed and stuttering before he managed to bark, “Get that shogging cannon out of here!” He snatched up a hammer and hollered above the screeching of the feeders. “Out, lads, out! I can hold ’em here.”
Nameless dodged a savage bite and disemboweled the offending creature. Before he could recover from the swing, another leapt at him, but Targ caved its skull in with the hammer.
Three of the sappers pushed and pulled the cannon from the forge, bottlenecking the doorway so that the others began jostling for position and yelling out in panic.
A dwarf at the back went down to raking claws, screaming as his innards were ripped out and devoured while he still lived.
Nameless charged, cutting a path to the fleeing dwarves and turning to fight a rearguard action.
Targ was surrounded by a score of the creatures, bashing left and right with his hammer. When the last of the sappers was clear, Nameless pushed forward, desperate to reach the old sapper. Targ gave as good as he got and crushed the skulls of a couple more feeders to make it to Nameless’s side.
“You, too, son,” Targ said, giving Nameless a shove through the doorway.
The feeders were dropping from the grilles at an alarming rate. Pretty soon, there’d be no room to move.
“And you,” Nameless said, dragging Targ back by his shirt collar.
As the old sapper cleared the door, a feeder grabbed hold of his beard, and another ripped into his shin with its teeth. Targ cursed and kicked and spat, swinging the hammer with demented rage.
Nameless tried to pull him clear, but a third feeder wrenched Targ back into the chamber. As he passed the threshold, Targ lashed out with the hammer and struck the red stud on the inside of the doorway.
“No!” Nameless cried as the scarolite door lowered from the ceiling. He jabbed at the green stud on the outside, but nothing happened. Targ’s blow must have broken the mechanism.
Dropping Paxy, he tried to stop the door’s descent with his hands, but there was nothing to hold onto. He got his fingers beneath it, even as it neared the floor, and a second pair of hands joined his.
“Heave!” Old Moary grunted.
Nameless’s legs and arms shook with the effort, but still the door came down. The instant before it hit the floor, they let go and fell back.
“Shoggers!” Targ’s muffled scream came from beyond the door. “Shoggerrrrrrrs…”
His final cry gave way to a gurgling choke.
Nameless pressed his forehead to the scarolite and groaned. “Targ,” he sobbed, banging his head again and again. “Targ!”
“Humph,” Old Moary gasped, and sagged back against the door.
“Councilor?” Nameless asked. “What is it?”
Old Moary’s face was white as a sheet, and he grimaced as he spoke. “Heart.” He thumped his chest. “Too… old for… this.”
NILS
Nils had to drape himself around Blightey’s leg to avoid falling off the disk. It weren’t exactly dignified, but he didn’t have the strength to hop off and walk. His throat was stinging from where the leash had pulled tight. He was lucky it hadn’t garroted him, he guessed, although maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.
“I’ll leave it off for now,” Blightey said, untying the leash and dispelling it into midair, “but just remember, disappoint me again, and I’ll drop the protective sphere.”
He clicked his fingers, and the silver light surrounding Nils vanished.
Immediately, the nearest feeders turned, snarling, long ropes of drool hanging from their all-encompassing maws.
Nils screamed as one leapt, but in that instant, the sphere reappeared, and the creature was flung back, as if it had been struck by lightning. Its charred corpse was ripped to pieces by the others.
Blightey raised an eyebrow and gave Nils a pat on the head. “Stick close to Uncle Otto, and you’ll be safe as houses.”
The disk carried them along a winding tunnel into a vast chamber. A bank of sweltering steam rose from broken grilles set into the floor, and the place was teeming with feeders, yelping and screeching in their eagerness to climb down.
“Tally ho!” Blightey cried. “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!”
“Eh?” Nils said, barely able to lift his head to look the Lich Lord in the eye.
That was a mistake. Blightey might have sounded full of the joys of spring, but in his smoldering eyes, Nils saw only cruelty. The oddest thing, the thing that set his bowels roiling, was that rather than burning, like Nils would have expected, Blightey’s gaze was chilling. Cold as a dead man’s passion, his dad would’ve said. Dead man seemed a fitting description, what with the Lich Lord being nothing more than a flying skull in reality; but judging by the way he was grinding his hip against Nils’s lolling head, his passion was anything but cold.
Nils let go, as if he’d been clutching a maggot-ridden corpse. He forced himself to his feet, swooning, and almost stumbled from the edge of the disk. Blightey steadied him with a hand on the arm, and when Nils tried to swat him away, Blightey’s fingers interlinked with his for a moment.
Nils extricated his hand as politely as he could, fighting the urge to rub it against his britches. Blightey merely smiled and then switched the beam of his focus onto the grilles.
The feeders were packed all the way up from the floor below to the ceiling. Those left above had no room to join them, and the noise of their frustration was starting to shred Nils’s nerves.
“Out!” Blightey commanded with a wave of his staff.
Those in the room with them retreated to the tunnel, forcing back the endless stream of feeders bringing up the rear.
“Here, hold this.” The Lich Lord handed Nils the Ebon Staff.
Tingles of wrongness crept under Nils’s skin, but as much as he wanted to let go, the staff stuck to his palm, as if glued there. He felt its malignancy massaging his organs, wrapping itself around his innermost thoughts. He felt its yearning, its desire to take hold of… its sister, and to do such awful things to her.
With a gasp, Nils saw with terrible clarity an image of the woman the staff wanted to molest and then slaughter. Once, she had been a dwarf with the most striking silver hair and an intricately braided beard. She had eyes like stars and glistening olive skin. Now, she was a hybrid, like her brother, the staff, and another sibling who’d been melded with a stone-headed warhammer. Nils saw her present form and nearly choked with recognition. It was Nameless’s axe the Ebon Staff was after—the Axe of the Dwarf Lords.
“Why?” Nils asked, before he knew his lips were moving. “What has she done to you?”
The staff cackled deep within his mind. Nothing, it whispered. Do you think I need a reason?
Nils shuddered and felt the need to vomit, as if his body were trying to reject some deadly poison.
“Everyone needs a reason,” he rasped. “Otherwise you ain’t…” He ran out of words to say.
Human? the staff said. Never was. Never will be. Let’s just say, my darling
sister, my brother, and I were given a task. They took to it with relish, like the pathetic slaves they are. I, however, took issue with our loving father. They should have done, too, but they left me to oppose him alone, and for that reason, we are all three trapped here in this dismal world.
A blast of heat snapped Nils back into focus. Blightey’s fingers were smoking, and flames flickered up through the grilles in the floor.
“Staff,” Blightey said, holding out his hand.
Nils passed it to him, surprised that it slipped from his grip with ease.
The disk carried them down through an open grille into a fire-blackened chamber. A hearth bubbled with viscous red sludge. There were tools hanging from the walls and ceiling, and dozens of anvils about the floor, which was covered with mounds of ash. A black door, flecked with green, marked the only way in or out of the room, save for the grilles up above.
With a wave of Blightey’s hand, the disk vanished. He pointed the tip of the staff at the door, and it glowed a deep shade of purple.
“They are close,” Blightey said. “I must say, I’m growing bored of this game, aren’t you? Perhaps it’s time to end it.”
Nils opened his mouth to say no, but the look Blightey gave him froze the blood in his veins.
“Unless you have a better idea to entertain me,” Blightey said, feigning a step toward him, a leer spreading across his pallid face.
Nils shook his head and licked his lips.
“Maybe later, then,” Blightey said.
He turned back to the door and unleashed a spinning ball of flame from his outstretched palm. It exploded against the scarolite and faded harmlessly away without so much as a scratch.
Blightey tutted. “Bloody scarolite,” he said. “Always hated the stuff. I’m starting to think it’s the bane of my life.”
Nils took a step back. A hint of frustration had crept into the Lich Lord’s voice, and he’d lost some of his calmness and poise.
Blightey twirled his hand, and shards of ice formed on the tips of his fingers. This time, he sent a frosty storm directly at the door, but again, it had no effect. He tried lightning next, then a barrage of bone fragments that exploded in sprays of green sparks but did nothing to the scarolite.
“Shit!” Blightey snarled. “Cunting, fucking, bugger and damn!”
Nils retreated further. He had that feeling he used to get when gramps was on the booze and getting a bit too fist-happy.
Blightey whirled on him and glared, all of his anger focused into a rictus grin. The silver sphere flickered and nearly failed.
Up above, the feeders started to bay.
NAMELESS
“Didn’t know you were a scout, laddie,” Nameless said as Weasel led him through the camp spread out down the steps.
Dwarves grumbled as they passed, looking up with mournful eyes. If they didn’t find some grit, and find it soon, they were as good as dead. If it hadn’t been for his own vacillating moods, Nameless wouldn’t have understood them at all, but nevertheless, in spite of all they’d been through, all they’d lost, someone needed to put the fire back in their bellies. Someone needed to teach them to fight, and to hope. Only problem was, as far as they were concerned, he was part of the problem.
“Wasn’t till this shit happened,” Weasel said. “Like to think of it as community service, my chance to get back on the straight and narrow.”
“Were you ever on it?” Nameless asked.
“Point taken,” Weasel said. “But you know what I mean. Times like these, it’s—”
“Every dwarf for himself?”
Weasel stopped and pouted. “Now that’s below the belt. What I was saying is that we have to pull together.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
Weasel gave a look that was almost bashful. “Not exactly. Way I see it, the people have to survive intact so’s I can fleece them later.”
Nameless shook his head and found himself grinning. “Well, for a lying, cheating scumbag, you certainly have a streak of honesty that would be the envy of any councilor.”
“Reckon it qualifies me to be one,” Weasel said. “Come on. This you’ve got to see. Couple of the lads did a quick recce and reported that the tunnels changed. Thought I’d take a look myself and lo and behold…”
They rounded a bend, and Nameless stopped in his tracks. He blew out a long breath and stared at the walls. They had been fronted with square-cut blocks of the sort of bluish stone they favored back in Arx Gravis. As far as he knew, it was only found deep beneath the Cooling Crags the other side of Malkuth. Assuming it had been quarried there, it must have been a monumental task moving the rock across the Farfall Mountains.
The blocks had been finely mortared with a skill to rival the work on the Cyclopean Walls of New Londdyr. No doubt about it, this was top-notch stonemasonry, the sort only dwarves were capable of, and exceptionally skilled dwarves, at that.
Sconces were set at intervals of five feet or so, but instead of torches, they held softly glowing crystals that cast shifting, eerie shadows.
The floor was of perfectly even marble flagstones, so arranged that their natural blemishes and darker veins wove together in a sinuous pathway down the center, leading to an archway through which scintillating colors danced with a dazzling beauty.
“Gets even more impressive inside,” Weasel said, but before they could go any further, Nameless turned at the sound of footfalls.
“Jaym’s baresarks sure make an ornery rearguard,” Duck said, striding toward them, shield strapped to his back. “Either we give them something to hit, or they need to be on the move. Patience ain’t exactly their strong point.”
Grok was with him, glowering, still the embodiment of living rage.
Kal came round the corner and stopped, looking behind, like he was waiting for someone.
“We need to keep going,” Duck said, “give the people something to aim for.”
“Says who?” Nameless asked.
“Says me.” Cordy pushed past Kal. “Targ’s plan was scuppered the moment those things took the forge. Only choice is between staying put and praying they don’t find a way through the door, or getting a head start on them. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.”
“I agree, lassie,” Nameless said, “but we need to know what’s up ahead before we risk everyone.”
“No time,” Cordy said. “Those things get among us again, and we’re as good as dead. I can give you a couple of minutes, but we can’t hang about.”
Nameless nodded. “The Council decide this?”
“The time for debating is over,” Cordy said. “With Targ gone and Old Moary on his last legs, I reckon the task of saving our sorry behinds falls to me, unless you want me to offer the job to Garnil or Yuffie.”
“You’ll do just fine, lassie. Just fine.”
In truth, he couldn’t think of anyone better, and the plan was as good as any he’d been able to come up with. A solid rearguard—Jaym and his boys weren’t going down without a major bloodbath, and the majority of that was gonna be black; himself and the remnants of the Seven up front. That just left someone in the middle to keep the folk moving, keep their spirits up. Cordy had the balls for it, in a manner of speaking, but did she have the confidence of the people?
“How is Old Moary?” Nameless asked.
“Got him on a stretcher. Looks like he’ll live, but he’s gray as shog and wheezing like split bagpipes. Says he had a mild heart attack. Just our luck to lose Targ and then for Moary to get ill straight after. He might be a procrastinating old codger, but the people feel safe with him.” Cordy sagged, looking suddenly tired under the strain.
“Can’t you work with him?” Nameless asked. “Be seen conferring, act as his voice?”
“I guess.” Cordy searched out Nameless’s eyes and held his gaze for a long while.
Whatever she was thinking was lost on him. All he saw was her pain, her uncertainty.
“Two minutes and we move up behind,” she said, and then hea
ded back down the passageway.
“You lads with me?” Nameless asked.
Duck shrugged his shield from his back and thrust his arm through the straps. “Aye, I’m with you, Nameless.” He unclipped his mace and took a firm grip on it.
Grok just snarled, but Nameless got his meaning.
Kal started to salute, thought better of it, and grunted his assent.
That just left Weasel, but he was already padding ahead, bathed in the rainbow colors emanating from the archway.
“Wait for me!” Stupid cried in a shrill voice. “Me wants to come! Me wants to come!”
“Gods of Arnoch,” Duck said. “What the shog’s wrong with the idiot?”
Stupid came tearing down the passageway and drew up sharply in front of Nameless. He gave an agitated dance, hopping from foot to foot like he desperately needed to piss.
He whipped out his map and unfurled it, stabbing at it with his finger. “We must go south. Look, see!”
He showed Nameless the volcano, and below it a range of mountains that ran like a spine down the center of northern Qlippoth. At the far end was an inland sea and a rough sketch of cliffs that had been scribbled over.
“X marks the spot,” Stupid said, looking at Nameless with wide eyes.
There was indeed an X on the shore of the inland sea, and then the realization struck Nameless like a rock to the head.
“Arnoch!” he said. “These tunnels lead all the way to Arnoch?”
“Uh huh.” Stupid nodded like an excited dog. He turned the map over to reveal a jumble of lines and sketches, scratched his head, and went back to contemplating the other side.
Kal peered over the fool’s shoulder at the map. “But Arnoch’s a myth.”
“Not so, laddie.” Nameless fingered the haft of the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. “Seen it myself. Stupid, if we could get to Arnoch, maybe we could hold out. Shog only knows what lies inside. I only saw a smidgen of it. There could be arms and armor, a dozen forges, and its defenses were designed to withstand a major siege.”