Time of the Stonechosen (The Soulstone Prophecy Book 2)

by Thomas Quinn Miller

  Finngyr's boot caught him soundly in the breastplate and down he went again.

  “Think of this as the pebble that broke the human's back. I am going to let you up in a moment Knight Horth. When I do, you have a choice to make. Either you will rise, address me as Knight Justice Finngyr and then bow and ask forgiveness for your arrogance and lack of discipline…”

  Horth sputtered and started up again. Another boot returned him just as quickly to the ground.

  “…or you will rise, collect your hammer, and try to kill me. I say try for I will surely kill you.” With that, Finngyr stepped back and hefted his hammer off his shoulder and let the haft fall into his other hand with a slap of finality. He limbered his shoulders and waited, his face a stone mask.

  Horth didn't rise immediately. He took it in turn to glower at Finngyr and glance into the sky at Kjar, who still had not gotten his griffon under control. Finngyr could see Horth weighing his options. It was obvious he wanted nothing more than to attack Finngyr, but without the aid of his thin southern companion, he didn't have a chance of besting the more seasoned knight and he knew it. Some other thought played behind the beardling's eyes.

  Finngyr glanced in Kjar's direction and couldn't suppress a satisfied smirk. “Well, Knight Horth?”

  “The Judge's Council will hear of this!” The words all but tore themselves past Horth's lips.

  “The Judge's Council? Surely you mean the Knight's Council, Knight Horth? For wouldn't a young knight, freshly raised from squire, complain to the Council of his sect instead of going directly to the great Judge's Council?” Finngyr said. He raised an eyebrow to emphasize his question. He could see the dawning realization on Horth's face. The young knight made a mistake in his anger and had let slip what Finngyr expected all along.

  “My father-”

  “Will mourn the loss of his over indulged and treacherous son. Decide, Knight Horth, or I will crush you where you lay and be better off for it.” Each word was measured and said with a cold certainty that would have had no more effect had Finngyr roared them like an enraged human.

  “Orcs!”

  “Orcs!” Kjar shouted again. He had his griffon in check, though he turned in the saddle trying to look in every direction at once. His griffon hovered a short distance above them. “What are you two doing down there?”

  Finngyr only spared him a glance. “I grow weary Knight Horth and your time grows short.”

  Horth held up a shaking hand. “No, Finngyr, please wait! Orcs. Kjar has spotted orcs. Now is not the time. We need-”

  “What did you call me?” Finngyr said.

  “In his holy name! Knight Justice Finngyr! You are Knight Justice Finngyr.”

  Finngyr never took his stare off Horth as he called to Kjar, “How many and from what direction?”

  Other than the sounds of the griffon's beating wings the outcrop was silent. After what seemed minutes, but was no more than seconds, Kjar answered. “Thirty or more. I'm not sure. They are coming around from both sides and from below. What are we going to do?”

  Finngyr nodded at Kjar's words, but continued to stare at Horth. “Well?”

  Horth swallowed and spoke the words hastily, glancing left and right as they tumbled out. “I most humbly, em, ask, that you…um…forgive me, er my disrespect, Knight Justice Finngyr.”

  Finngyr could hear them now and so could Horth. They were close. The sounds of bare hands and feet slapping stone, grunts coming from deep barreled chests, even the rattling of bones.

  Finngyr had faced orcs before. They were not uncommon in the Nordlah Plains. They shared a common enemy in the humans and like them were primitive and no match for an armed and armored dwarf. Most of the time they stayed clear of them. The Bastions were too well fortified and heavily guarded to have anything to fear from orcs.

  Though they were powerful warriors, there were only a handful of tribes in the plains. Their constant blood feud with the humans, and the orc's ridiculous beliefs, kept their numbers at a minimum.

  So why were they attacking now? If they spotted the griffons land, they were well hidden enough to have slipped away without detection. What would make them seek out three obviously superior dwarves? An idea struck him.

  “Is there a watcher among them?” Finngyr called to Kjar.

  “What?” Kjar shouted back

  “A watcher?”

  “What in great Daomur's name is a watcher?” Kjar called.

  The orcs were the creations of Hideon, God of Hate. His subsequent fall to Haurtu the Devourer during the God Wars was not something the proud orcs ever seemed to accept. It seemed their history taught Hideon turned his back on the orcs and left Allwyn out of disgust for some apparent weakness in his progeny. The shamans of the orcs believed only an act of great courage in battle would draw Hideon's attention and allow the shamans to implore his return.

  Thus, normally not a danger, an orc warband with a watcher with them meant they would only attack a foe worthy of their god's attention. It was always easy to pick out a watcher. Orc shamans practiced ritual scarring.

  “A shaman, Knight Kjar! Is one of their number clothed different and covered in scars.”

  “Yes! I see him.” Kjar called almost immediately, pointing further down the rocky slope.

  “Good. Take to the sky and once the battle begins it is your sole purpose to kill him,” Finngyr said.

  Kjar nodded and with a sharp jerk on the reins, turned his griffon. Wooden javelins flew through the air where the young knight had been only moments before.

  The roars rose in a unison around them as the orcs made the plateau. The ones below appeared first, grey hands gripping red stone. The hands were followed by large elongated faces, all tusks and snarls. To both sides of the ledge, others leaped from rock to rock, racing to be first to close with the enemy. The smallest of them towered over Finngyr and was almost as wide as tall. Thick pelts and hide stretched over muscled bodies, grey skin left bare in places to display prominent battle scars. The jawbones and skulls of animals, surfaces orange with the reflection of the setting sun, were haphazardly tied in place to act as shoulder guards or tooth rimmed gauntlets. Tiny deep set eyes, burning with hate stared out of each grey face.

  “Don't just sit there in the dirt, Knight Horth. Time to work out those saddle sores.”

  Finngyr paid no more heed to Horth and took in the surrounding landscape to find the best place to make his stand. There was no need to charge into this fight, it would come to him. Had he trusted Horth more, he would have gone back to back with him, as it was, he liked his odds on his own.

  He found a relatively flat space near the outer edge of the plateau with little to no rocks to trip him up, but close enough to the edge to have a height advantage over those who came at him from below. As if to prove he had chosen well, a clawed hand slapped against stone not a pace away from him, the ugly brute attached to it rising into view a moment later. Finngyr's steel capped boot caught it below the jaw, sending the orc back to the rocks below.

  There was no time to watch the orc fall as a battle cry erupted to his left. The first of the orcs who made the plateau from the side reached him. This one was big, even for an orc. It roared a challenge into the sky, foam and spittle flying past the tusks of its pronounced jaw.

  “Your god can't hear you, oaf!” Finngyr spat and stepped in with a wide swing of his hammer. The arcing blow was more to judge distance and see how quick his opponent was. It was a common tactic when fighting against a warrior with a two handed weapon to follow in after a wide swing. The orc obliged, coming in with a downward swing of its stone spiked wooden club.

  But Finngyr was ready and rushed in to close the distance. He still caught a portion of the blow, but this close in, there was little strength behind it, even though it still would have splintered the skull of a human. But, dwarves were made of sterner stuff and Finngyr shrugged off the blow. Not so for the steel vambrace Finngyr planted into the orcs midsection, or the follow-up downward thrust w
ith the end of his hammer's handle.

  The first pushed the air from the creature's lungs and the second landed on the top of the creature's knee with a satisfying crunch. Against most opponents Finngyr liked to keep distance, but this orc was twice his size and had the advantage of reach.

  Already close, Finngyr spun full circle and crouched even lower, letting his hammer gain momentum as he did. It would have been easy enough to jump over this blow, but the strike to the knee had done its job, as Finngyr knew it would. The spinning hammer smashed into the already wounded leg, causing it to bend at a quite unnatural angle. The orc toppled over.

  Normally, Finngyr would have finished his opponent, but more orcs already closed on him from behind the downed orc, their faces a mix of eagerness and bloodlust. This was not a fight to protect land or food. This was a display. A display of strength and raw savagery to appease a dead god who would never be sated.

  Finngyr slid back and to the side, keeping the downed orc between him and the others. It caused the two closing orcs to spread out and go around their fallen companion.

  Finngyr feinted to the right and then lunged left to bring his hammer head up and block the downward strike from the first incoming orc. It's stone headed axe shattered against the enchanted metal of the hammer. Finngyr didn't hesitate, but lunged back to his right and swung hard in an upward strike that smashed the spearhead of the other orc who rushed in to skewer him in the back while he focused on the other. It too exploded into dust from the enchanted hammer blow.

  Finngyr firmed his grip on the hammer and intoned a prayer to Daomur, a deep throated rumble which reverberated deep within him. He could feel the presence of Daomur in the hammer. Daomur's magic passed through the objects his progeny created in his name. From the bridle that helped control the griffons to the armor Finngyr wore, his god's magic infused them. But none compared to the ancient hammers his sect wielded in Daomur's name. The vibrations in his throat were mirrored by those from the hammer. The weight of the hammer disappeared and it felt like he was holding little more than a stick.

  Finngyr swung the hammer back around his head and across in front of him, the head thrummed with holy might as it passed through the first orc and then the other. It then connected with the first orc Finngyr wounded, who had chosen a bad time to stand and rejoin the fight.

  Blood and bits of bone were all that was left in the hammer's wake as all three orcs, or what remained of them flew away from Finngyr like leaves on the wind.

  Even as he brought the hammer around, he could feel the vibrations fade and the full weight of the hammer return. But, the communion with Daomur, that intimate joining, revealed all of Finngyr's suppressed emotions and brought them bubbling to the surface.

  Not just the emotions his race was taught to keep buried deep within and out of the public eye, but the deeper personal emotions of discovering a stonechosen and then letting him escape. Being outsmarted by Magister Obudar back in the Cradle of the Gods. The humiliation of returning to Daomount empty handed. The looks from the other denizens of the summit at his failure. And finally the disrespect these two mockeries of his order had shown him. He felt the emotions wash over him in waves. He let them all go, let them pour forth and be purged in Daomur's light.

  Finngyr rushed into the oncoming orcs with abandon.

  Kjar circled high above the battle. The coppery smell of blood wafted up with the cries of the dying orcs. His original intentions were to stay here and see how this fight played out. The number of orcs was well past ten, fifty more like. All he had to do was wait it out and watch Finngyr fall and he could return to Daomount to give his report, having barely escaped, of course.

  But, no sooner had Finngyr dispatched three orcs with one blow then did he charge into another group, even larger and begin laying waste to them. Every swing of his hammer brought death. No more javelins came Kjar's way and even the orcs who just made purchase on the ledge ignored Horth and moved to engage Finngyr. It made no sense. Why attack the obviously more dangerous opponent? Were the orcs in such a hurry to die? At first Kjar could not believe his luck, but orcs kept falling and Finngyr showed no signs of tiring.

  If the orcs would have just rushed him in mass, they could have brought him down by sheer numbers, but they seemed to want to fight in either single combat or in numbers no greater than two or three.

  Horth was holding his own against the two orcs he now fought, he had slain two others, but he was nothing compared to Finngyr. Kjar knew Finngyr was good in battle, but this was beyond anything he had seen. Was this the battle prowess of all veteran knights of the Temple of Justice in Daomount? Kjar wondered how there were any Nordlah Barbarians left on the plains.

  In the southern lands of the Empire, a Knight of Daomur needed to be quick and strike fast. They spent their time moving through the forbidden cities dealing with the multitudes of goblins that infested them. The handful of human settlements near his southern city of Orehome where all docile. Were the barbarians as fierce as this knight? What had he gotten himself into? Kjar had traveled north through the underways as a merchant's guard after a poor decision involving a wealthy noble and the noble's only daughter. He joined the Temple of Justice in Daomount only because it was the least selective of the orders and in need of initiates. He thought himself a cunning opponent and even sometimes felt the power of Daomur emanating from his hammer. But even from this distance, he could feel his god in Finngyr, lending his might to the knight.

  In that moment, Kjar's outlook on Finngyr changed. Horth had let him in on his secret and promised to give him a cut of the take if he helped Horth make sure Finngyr failed in this mission to find the lost knight and most importantly suffered the wrath of Magister Dagbar. Horth had not shared who their benefactor was, but it didn't take a scholar to know the coin came from a merchant house who employed a certain knight's father.

  Kjar was not as devoted as most, but he considered himself a pragmatic dwarf and knew which way the wind blew. He could now see his best chance of survival involved staying on the good side of the knight below him, who was cutting his way through orcs like the hand of Daomur himself. To do that, he needed to follow orders.

  He scanned the battle.

  The red hued sun sat fat on the horizon, splashing the last of its light across the outcropping and the small plateau where the battle still waged. It took him a moment, but he spotted the orc shaman standing on a spur jutting out a little above the battle. Gesturing wildly, it shook its spear to the sky and pointed down at the battle.

  Were all the creatures mad?

  Kjar banked his mount and dove towards the shaman.

  Finngyr didn't know if it had been minutes or hours. Each grey skin he slew was replaced by another. He fought to hold onto his hammer, blood from the numerous wounds he had taken ran down his arms and threatened to loosen his grip. He could not afford to lose the weapon, having thrown both his axes already. They were somewhere on the plateau, lodged in orc skulls. If he survived much longer he would lose the light and then the battle. He could already see the white reflection of eyeshine as the orcs adjusted to the darkening sky.

  It was only when the ecstasy of Daomur began to wane that he remembered Knight Kjar and the shaman. What was the dwarf waiting for? As if in answer, a large shadow swooped down and past him. Finngyr took a glancing blow to the back and shoulder rolling forward with the momentum.

  He came up, bringing his hammer over and into a downward stroke that crushed both an orc and the pitiful attempt it made at blocking with its axe. Finngyr stumbled forward with the remaining momentum and caught his balance just in time to block a spear thrust from a new opponent.

  He roared his defiance back at the screaming orcs, but still they came. Finngyr spit blood into the face of the spear wielding orc as he spun past him and clipped the back of its head with the butt of his hammer. He sensed more than saw movement on his left and spun to strike.

  Horth raised a bloodied hand. “Knight Justice, stay your hand!” />
  Finngyr looked left and right for the next attack, but none came. The orcs were fleeing. Their howls and yells still filled the darkening sky, but they were cries of anguish instead of rage. Above them, Finngyr could just make out Kjar's griffon holding the remains of the orc shaman, its rear leonine paws relentlessly rending what remained of the shaman.

  Finngyr felt the last of his strength leave with the fleeing orcs and he fell to one knee, the haft of his hammer all that kept him from falling completely. He looked to Horth, who was as bloodied and stood bent, hammer resting across his knees as he fought for breath and watched the retreating orcs. “I do not understand, we were almost beaten.”

  Finngyr pointed towards Kjar, who had already landed a short distance away. “The shaman,” was all he managed to say before blackness began closing in on the edges of his vision. He tried to shake it off. He tried to rise and slipped in blood and something else, stumbling to the side and landing hard.

  From the edges of his failing vision he could see Horth walking towards him, hammer in hand. Then there were two of him. Finngyr fought to clear his vision.

  A wing buffeted Finngyr as Kjar's griffon appeared between the two knights. Blackness wash over Finngyr, threatening to pull him under and then Kjar was at his side.

  “I am here Knight Justice Finngyr. Here, your hammer. Take it. Say the words with me. Knight Justice, focus. Say the words. Daomur is my strength…”

  “His might passes through me.”

  “His light shines from me.”

  “I am but his vessel.”

  “He fills me so I may continue to serve.”

  As Finngyr repeated the chant with Kjar, he felt the thrum in his hands as Daomur's healing flowed into him, strengthening him. His skin itched and grew tight as his flesh knitted back together.

  Finngyr's vision cleared. Kjar knelt next to him praying. A short distance away, Horth lay on the ground rubbing his head and glaring at Kjar.