by D. P. Prior
He stopped abruptly, suddenly scared even to breathe, in case some invisible enemy located him by the sound.
He sat and he sat and he sat. He had no idea how long. It could have been an hour. It could have been a day. All he knew was that when he looked up from the tabletop, the Dwarf Lord’s head opposite was mocking him with a smirk.
He threw back his chair, and charged across the room. With concussive force, he struck the embossed head with the black axe, but it was unscathed. It was as though the door had absorbed every last drop of energy from the blow. When he stepped back to try again, the Dwarf Lord had resumed an expression of regal stoicism.
What if Coalheart had tricked him? What if he was locked inside and could never come out?
His heart began to frantically scud about his ribcage. He flung himself in a wide circle. They were all the same: twelve scarolite doors, and there was no other way in or out.
Would Coalheart have done it? Had he been duping Nameless all along? No, he can’t have been. He’d killed, hadn’t he? Killed anyone Nameless had told him to, and with relish. If he were really working for the other side, he wouldn’t have been so compliant.
Or would he?
It made a certain kind of sense. Obedience had brought trust in its wake, and Nameless had trusted Coalheart to lock him in the Dodecagon. They wouldn’t have to find a way to penetrate the Lich Lord’s armor now. They could starve him out. Even with all this power, he couldn’t remove his ma’s great helm. He was still dependent on Aristodeus to feed him. He should have sent the army to the Perfect Peak first, he realized. Should have secured the feeding apparatus.
How long did he have? Weeks, at best.
He’d sooner face an unseen assassin than rot away in his armor, or starve to death.
He strode to the door he’d entered by, crashed the axe into it again and again. Even the sound was muffled by whatever peculiar lore enhanced the scarolite’s ability to absorb force. He felt a scream of despair welling up from his guts, but before he gave it voice, the door started to grind open.
Coalheart ducked beneath it before it had fully risen. Behind him was a mud-caked dwarf who looked set to drop from exhaustion.
“My Lord Corrector,” Coalheart said, pushing the dwarf in before him. “A messenger from the army.”
Ice locked Nameless in position, like the Demiurgos frozen at the heart of the Abyss. He knew from the look of the messenger it was bad.
“The sappers breached the walls, Corrector,” the dwarf said with a stammer. He dropped his eyes to the floor. “But they were waiting for us inside. Their legions were too disciplined. They were a wall of advancing shields, and their swords…”
“I remember,” Nameless said, lost in a daze. “Short stabbing swords. I bet they were brutally efficient.”
“We fell back before them, Corrector, but they kept coming till we were routed. Then they opened the gates and sent cavalry to ride us down. General Garnk rallied his division, did some real damage, but then wizards appeared atop the walls, and they unleashed a storm of fire.”
The messenger’s eyes were aghast.
“How many?” Nameless asked. “How many survived?”
“The miners had already withdrawn when it started, Corrector. Last I saw, there was a bunch of them fleeing the field.”
“Who else?”
Blood drained from the messenger’s face.
“No one.”
Forty-thousand. Forty thousand dwarves lost in a single battle. Nameless turned away. He almost dropped to his knees, but then he whirled back to face the messenger.
“No one but you.”
“Corrector?”
Nameless turned the eye-slit on Coalheart. “Kill him.”
Before the messenger could protest, Coalheart drew a dagger across his throat. A spray of blood, a few twitches, and the traitorous scut slumped in a heap on the floor.
“Summon the Council,” Nameless said.
“They’ve vanished,” Coalheart said. “After the assassination attempt, my men saw them fleeing toward the foot of the ravine. Many of the people took flight then and followed them.”
“And you let them?”
“Corrector, I was with you at the time. I have singled out the Black Cloaks responsible. I was merely awaiting your order to execute them.”
“But why?” Nameless asked. “Why would they flee to the bottom? They’d last all of two minutes among the baresarks and gibunas.”
“It might have been the spiked heads, Correct—”
And then he had it.
“Thumil!”
It’s why the rebels had evaded detection. They must have based themselves where no one would think to look.
And it’s why the army had been defeated. Thumil should have been with them, strategizing, guiding, encouraging. He would have seen what the defenders were up to and countered. But he hadn’t wanted to. He’d engineered the army’s defeat. Him and the Council. They would stop at nothing to keep the dwarves shut away in the ravine.
“How many Black Cloaks remain to us, Coalheart?”
“Nearly three-hundred, Corrector.”
“Assemble them, quickly. It’s time we put an end to this. Our people had a choice: greatness or death. I only hope they can forgive Thumil for making their minds up for them.”
DOOM OF THE DWARVES
Nameless leapt from the walkway and landed in a crouch at the foot of the ravine. The butt of the black axe struck rock on one side, the Shield of Warding on the other. A shock wave rolled across the ground, shook the walls, and echoed up through the levels. Gibunas shrieked and gibbered from the ledges.
He paused a second to listen. Then another.
Horns blasted, and a savage roar erupted from the mouth of a cave. One after another, dozens of baresarks poured from the opening, howling shrill, ululating cries.
Nameless waited until they were almost upon him, then lunged upright, cutting left and right with the axe. Two baresarks fell. A third crashed into him, but it was like running headlong into a cliff. A kick sent the baresark flying backward till he hit the ravine wall with a pulpy splat. An axe shattered against the Lich Lord’s armor. A hammer clanged from the shield. The Pax Nanorum rose and fell, slinging gore in its wake.
In a massive surge, the baresarks stampeded straight for Nameless. He set his feet, raised the shield, and leaned into the avalanche of bodies. He was an immovable object. He had the strength of giants.
Baresarks bounced off of steel. Some clambered over the top of those in front. One found a headlock, gave his all to pull Nameless off balance, but the black axe spun itself into the air and split the baresark’s skull in two.
Nameless caught the axe on the return, then powered into the horde, bashing with the shield, chopping, chopping, chopping. And then he saw something he’d never thought possible: the baresarks backed off, the rage in their eyes replaced by fear and uncertainty.
He stepped across mangled bodies toward them, but a second wave spilled out of the cave entrance, eyes rolled up into their heads, and froth spewing from their mouths.
A score of Red Cloaks ran from a passage at the rear of the cave. They were deserters who’d not marched with the army. He saw Kaldwyn Gray among them, and the dwarf Thumil had assigned as Cordy’s bodyguard when they were married—Duck, he liked to be known as, on account of what he bellowed when he swung his mace. Duck was snug behind his massive shield and looked as rooted as a mountain.
For a moment, Nameless faltered. In the flashback he’d experienced beneath Sektis Gandaw’s mountain, when he and Shader had reeled from the horror of the mutilated babies, he’d seen himself bringing the black axe down on Kal. And yet here Kal was, still very much alive. And then he recalled Duck coming between them, taking the axe blow on his shield.
More and more dwarves emerged from the cave, wielding all manner of improvised weapons: iron spikes, climbers’ pitons, mallets, clubs, bottles of beer. There were old men, old women, and youngsters among them.
At first, Nameless didn’t understand why they had come out to face him, when all they could expect was death; but then he heard the crying of babies from the tunnel at the back of the cave, and the despairing wails of women.
He smiled inside the great helm.
They hadn’t expected so sudden an attack, and the caves must have been a dead end. Thumil, the great strategist, had trapped them.
And then Thumil showed himself. He pushed his way to the front of the defenders, every inch the heroic marshal in his golden helm and red cloak. He still had on the white robe of the Voice beneath his armor. He held a wavering sword in one hand, and a round shield was strapped to his other arm.
“Stop this, old friend,” Thumil said in a shaky voice. “For pity’s sake, stop.”
“Was it pity that made you abandon the army, Thumil? You heard what happened, I take it? You know they all died?”
Thumil staggered back, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Others dropped to their knees or let out keening moans.
They hadn’t known. It made telling them all the more sweet.
“They went through with it?” Thumil said. “But I told the generals to send to the Senate for help.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Suddenly, all eyes were turned toward the walkways above as ropes were played out over the edge, and Black Cloaks swarmed down them.
“No one left up top that we could find,” Coalheart said, as he dropped to the ground and approached.
The rest of the Krypteia fanned out in a semicircle behind Nameless, nearly three-hundred of Arx Gravis’s most deadly fighters, and yet, to his mind, they were redundant. He needed no help putting an end to these traitors.
“So, all the rats fled to the bottom, to the protection of good old Marshal Thumil,” Nameless said. “Well, Thumil, I have some bad news for you. News that will rival the bad news I had about the army. There is absolutely nothing any of you can do against me. You are completely at my mercy, and do you know what? After you reneged on your orders, after the attempt on my life, and now, after the complete and utter failure of the army, any mercy I might have had has shriveled up and died. Oh, by the way, speaking of the assassination attempt, where is Shadrak?”
Thumil’s face went blank, and he said nothing.
The Black Cloaks advanced without Nameless ordering them to. He was about to say something, but then, he thought, why not? The idea of Thumil’s rebels realizing that each Black Cloak they took down was one step nearer to facing certain death at Nameless’s hands was faintly amusing.
A gurgling choke from behind made Nameless turn. At first he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Coalheart was flailing and twitching. A Black Cloak had a garrote around his neck and was straining to keep it tight. Coalheart’s eyes found Nameless’s through the great helm. He reached out a hand, fingers splayed. A violent spasm ran through his body, then he went rigid.
A roar went up from the baresarks. Thumil’s few remaining Red Cloaks clashed weapons on shields, and the double-crossing Krypteia bore down on Nameless in a roiling black tide.
He abandoned himself to the Pax Nanorum’s power. Dark fire erupted in his mind, surged through his veins. He glided into the massed Krypteia and brought the black axe to bear with the savagery of a hurricane.
Baresarks slammed into him from behind. He spun to meet them, windmilling the axe and shield in a furious dance of destruction. All around him, dwarves fell, and he mounted their piling bodies, reveling in the slaughter, ecstatic on the stench of blood.
Then, before he had even warmed up, he was left standing upon a mound of the dead, as a handful of Krypteia scattered for the closest buildings.
Of the Red Cloaks, only Kal, Duck, and Thumil were left alive. Duck’s shield was so dented, it was virtually turned inside out.
A few dozen baresarks backed away, bloodied, and nursing injuries that would have killed a normal dwarf.
But it was the normal dwarves who advanced next, grim-faced and knowing the futility of their last stand. But what could they do, with their children wailing in the cave behind them?
Nameless took a step toward them. Some flinched, but all stood their ground.
For a second, he hesitated. He saw it then. Saw the defiance, the honor, the sheer bloody-minded bravery that could have made these people Dwarf Lords, if only they’d done his bidding.
And then Cordy pushed her way through them, baby Marla screaming in her arms.
“Enough, you shogger!” she railed with such loathing, it drove Nameless back a step. “Leave!” she screamed as she advanced on him. “Shog off, you butcher! Just go!”
Thumil tried to pull her back, but she shrugged him off and came on.
“You kin-killing piece of scum,” Cordy spat. “Wasn’t it enough for you last time? What, you had to come back for more? Look around you, scut-breath. Look at what you’ve done. They’re dead. They’re all dead. But you’ll not kill my baby, you hear me? Mine or any of the other children back there.”
The black axe shot jolts of lightning through Nameless’s veins. In spite of himself, he drew it back.
Cordy gasped, and turned to protect baby Marla.
The axe scythed toward her neck.
Thumil darted in front.
Blood sprayed. Thunder cracked. Something pinged off the inside of the eye-slit. Sparks erupted, then swiftly died. Nameless blinked against flash-blindness.
He was dimly aware of a body dropping in front of him, something clattering and bouncing away. He heard Cordy screaming. But it was movement on a distant ledge that caught his attention—the source of the thunder-crack:
Shadrak.
The assassin was lying face down on a low ledge, the barrel of a rifle aimed Nameless’s way. Even as Nameless spotted him, there was another retort, and a flash from the barrel. Air whistled, and Nameless swayed aside. The bullet hit the side of the great helm and ricocheted away.
Shadrak was up and running back along the ledge.
Nameless hurled the black axe with all the might of the giant’s gauntlets. The Pax Nanorum streaked across the intervening space like black lightning. It struck the ledge and rocks exploded.
Shadrak dived. His gun went flying. He hit the ground, rolled, and went on tumbling, until he was lost from sight behind a building.
The black axe spun back into Nameless’s hand. He started toward where he’d last seen the assassin, but Cordy slammed into him, screaming and cursing.
He swatted her away with the shield of warding. She cannoned into the ravine wall and slumped to the ground.
And then Nameless realized.
“Where’s the baby?” he cried. “Where’s my soul-daughter?”
His eyes came to stop on a headless corpse, red cloak like an extension of the blood pumping from the neck. His heart lurched. He panned the great helm till he saw what it was that had clattered and bounced:
Thumil’s head, still wearing his golden helm, face set in a death-mask of terror.
Duck and Kal ran to Cordy’s side. Duck helped Cordy to her feet, pulled her into a fierce hug. Kal bent down and came up with a blood-spattered bundle in his hands.
“No!” Cordy wailed as she saw her mangled child. “No!”
Nameless ran straight at her. “Look what you made me do!” he bellowed. He swept down the axe.
Duck got his shield in the way. He grunted and dropped to one knee. The axe struck again, and Duck was forced onto his back beneath the shield. Nameless drew back for a blow that would pulverize the shogger, leave him a splat at the center of a crater.
“Leave him!” Kal shouted, holding baby Marla’s blood-drenched corpse out like a talisman. “Back off, you evil shogger.”
Nameless froze. He couldn’t take his eyes from his soul-daughter.
Kal was trembling so much, he nearly dropped Marla. Cordy stepped in, took the child from him, and wailed away the last of her strength. She collapsed to her knees, gasping and sobbing.
Kal stoo
d protectively over her. His eyes yelled accusation.
“You blame me?” Nameless said. “You shogging blame me?”
He singled out a dwarf wielding a miner’s spike. “Give me that!”
The dwarf didn’t dare move as Nameless snatched the spike in his shield arm, then strode toward Thumil’s severed head. He lay down the axe so he could grab the head.
“This is who you should blame.”
He drove the butt of the spike into the ground with such force, fissures webbed away through the rock. Then he rammed the head onto it.
He’d expected screams. Lots of screams. But no one made a sound. Even Cordy’s bawling had stopped.
He made a circle of Thumil’s staked head. “You chose him over me, Cordy. And you,”—he addressed the rest of the dwarves—“you sided with him, a liar, a cheat, a betrayer worse even than Maldark.”
“No,” Cordy said, laying down her baby as she stood. “My husband did everything he could to save them. Thumil was the leader they wanted. The leader chosen by the Council. We reject you, Corrector. We reject you, Butcher. We reject you, Nameless scutting Dwarf. What more do you think you can do to us? Kill us? Go ahead? You’ve already killed everyone we care about. Go on. Shogging kill us!”
Nameless snatched up his axe and strode toward her.
Gunshots ripped out across the ravine floor. Bullets bounced off his armor.
Nameless whirled away from Cordy.
Shadrak was running toward him, flintlocks bucking in either hand.
Nameless charged.
The dwarf, Stupid, rose up from the ground, as if it were a ghost-wall. A dazzling spray of prismatic color burst from his palm and streaked outward in an expanding funnel. Instinctively, Nameless checked his charge, but before the kaleidoscopic attack reached him, it faltered, then swirled away into the Shield of Warding.
A bullet pinged off the great helm. Then another, and another.
Stupid sank back down through the rocky floor.
Nameless threw the axe. Shadrak swayed around it, still running, still firing. The axe looped back behind him, shot toward his back. At the last instant, the assassin tumbled, and the axe passed overhead to slap back in Nameless’s palm.