But the derro pressed all around, and he felt himself back ing up to keep from being surrounded. Bernhard and Hildy fought beside him, desperately holding the renewed derro attack at bay. From somewhere, a swordblade bit into Flint's forearm, and he shouted in pain. Two more derro lunged, their faces twisted by cruel grins.
Before Flint could raise his axe, another form stepped be tween them. He saw Bernhard drop one mountain dwarf with a sharp blow to the neck, but then his brother's weapon stuck in the armor plate of his victim. Desperately Bernhard struggled to pull the axeblade free, but the other derro was too quick.
Flint stared in horror as Theiwar steel sliced into his brother's throat. Blood — more blood than Flint could have imagined — spilled down Bernhard's chest. The hill dwarf spun, giving Flint a look of uncomprehending surprise, and then he slumped to the ground.
"Bastard!" growled Hildy, lunging at the still-grinning derro. The mountain dwarf raised his blade, deflecting her attack, but he could not guard against two at once. Flint, his whole body trembling with rage, attacked. The Tharkan
Axe flashed, and the Theiwar's head flew from his shoulders.
Through his shock, Flint sensed a change in the tangled melee; the elite mountain dwarf fighters were recovering their equilibrium.
"Back!" ordered Flint. "Back to the wall!"
The order was unnecessary because the defenders of Hillhome were being forced back to the breastwork through no choice of their own. Soon, as the mountain dwarves pushed their renewed attack, it was all Flint could do to pre vent their fallback from becoming a rout.
The hill dwarves desperately scrambled back up the wall and into their redoubt, but the mountain dwarves followed their advantage aggressively.
"Hold at the top!" shouted Flint, turning and bashing one more of the mountain dwarves. Once again his axe crushed metal armor, killing the foe without penetrating the rigid barrier of his steel plate. His victim tumbled back down the breastwork, knocking two of his fellows over as he fell. Flint noticed that the still-glowing Tharkan Axe was growing un comfortably warm to the touch, and the blood of his ene mies now sizzled on its blade.
Along the crest of the wall, Tybalt and other hill dwarves stopped their retreat. Gasping and panting from the exer tion of the combat, the defenders nevertheless stood firm.
The Theiwar, exhausted from their long charge, still dis organized by the disruptive attack, suddenly fell back from the wall to catch their breath and regroup. Flint sensed the near-collapse of the hill dwarves around him and knew that the respite had come none too soon.
Then he looked over his shoulder and saw disaster.
Chapter 23
The Last Bastion
"Damn your filthy cowardiance!" Pitrick exploded at the two sergeants who stood before him.
At first, things had seemed to develop fairly well. His reg iments had formed with parade-ground precision, and their advance had proceeded with apparently irresistible momen tum. It seemed certain that the hill dwarves would be over whelmed by the first rush!
His eagerness for battle had increased with a conclusion he had gradually drawn over the preceeding day's forced en campment. He had brooded and cursed and schemed, still tormented by Perian's existence, out of his reach. But the more he thought, the more he believed that she would be here, in Hillhome, once again within his grasp.
After all, had she not dwelled in Mudhole with the very hill dwarf who, to Pitrick, embodied the pestilential stub borness of Hillhome? And would not Flint Fireforge be cer tain to race to his village's defense? It therefore seemed very likely that Perian would be here, too, and this added heat to
Pitrick's hatred, made him more determined than ever to wipe out the town and all its inhabitants.
But the first wave of his assault had been thrown back, and now these two craven warriors stood before him, stam mering their pathetic excuses.
"Do you mean to tell me that you were beaten by hill dwarves!" the hunchback continued, turning his savage, penetrating gaze on each of the frightened mountain dwarves in turn. Good, he thought. They face the odds of battle willingly enough, but when I speak to them, they are still afraid.
Pitrick paced back and forth before the cringing derro. He limped awkwardly on his throbbing foot, and the pain mo mentarily distracted him from the matter at hand. He shook his head to clear it.
The Theiwar commander trembled with rage. Angrily he looked at his shaking hands, too unsteady to bear a weapon or cast a spell. Every nerve in his body screamed that he should kill these two failures before him, vent his fury upon their miserable lives.
But he could not do that. Pitrick faced the fact that this battle would not be so easily won. Slowly, he brought his anger under control, until he could speak normally. Then he turned back to the pair of veterans who had led his first at tack against the breastwork.
Around him, the bonfires set by the hill dwarves had mostly burned themselves out. The darkness, thick and pro tecting, settled around his army again, broken only by the hot piles of red coals. Many derro stood in small groups, gathering around their sergeants, waiting for further com mands. Others tended their comrades who had been over come by the vile gas. The night was a blanket of protection and security back here, away from the defenders.
Before them, however, in the ditch along the fortification, the great, oily bundles of hay still smoldered, glowing with painful brightness in the cool night. The bales had been soaked with oil, Pitrick recognized, and their ignition had been a cruelly successful trick. But, very soon now, the hill dwarves would pay for their cleverness.
The stench of the black smoke wafted past his nostrils. He grimaced at the cloud, which still blocked the center of the hill dwarf defenses. No matter, he would break them to the left and to the right. He would destroy them!
His ambitions called his mind back to the two black plated derro who stood before him. They watched his face anxiously, contorted as it was by his all-consuming rage.
Hesitantly, one of them opened his mouth.
"But, Excellency," stammered the grizzled battle veteran.
"They fight like demons, madly possessed! They have weapons and discipline. You, yourself, have smelled the noxious gasses they cast — and they hide behind that wall, out of our reach!"
"And the fires!" chimed in his comrade. "The savants were totally blinded — and the rest of the troops suffered great pain!"
"You fools! I will tolerate no further delay! Attack again!"
Pitrick sputtered, his voice a shrill scream.
"But — " A sergeant opened his mouth to object, then shut it when he saw the look in his commander's eyes.
"No delay," Pitrick said, his voice dropping to a sinister hiss. Unconsciously, his hand grasped the five-headed iron amulet than hung at his chest. Blue light seeped between his fingers, and the eyes of his sergeants grew wide with terror.
The light seethed like thick smoke in a growing cloud around him, slowly reaching toward the cringing figures of his warriors.
Pitrick's vision vanished in the red blur of his hatred. He clenched his teeth, his breath coming in hissing gasps, as he again struggled to retain his self-control.
"We attack now, Excellency!" stammered one of the ser geants. They turned, stumbling in their eagerness to escape their maddened leader.
Pitrick took a pace after them, still tempted to sizzle one of them into nothingness as a lesson against the conse quences of failure. But that single step sent throbbing ar rows of agony darting up his leg, and he winced, forgetting for the moment his recalcitrant subcommanders.
By the dark powers, his foot hurt! He screeched his ag ony, a sound of fury that frightened those troops within ear shot. Then Pitrick limped after the two sergeants. He would find the savants, speak to them himself. Then they would know the folly of retreat!
He located, after long and painful minutes of walking, the six robed figures of his spellcasting savants. They squatted on the muddy ground of the field, pressing cold compres
ses of slushy grass to their seared eyes.
"Fools! Idiots! Morons!" he shrieked, walking among them and kicking the startled derro to their feet. "You can't stop now! The enemy strikes us a blow, then we must strike him back — harder!"
"But, Master," screeched one, groveling on his knees and holding his eyes downcast. "Our eyes… we can barely see!"
"Damn your eyes if you don't get up and attack!" sneered the hunchback. "Come with me! We will lay them low with fire and sorcery! Stand up, you blathering idiots — we must lead the attack!"
Slowly, reluctantly, the savants rose. They followed Pit rick as he limped forward, forcing his way over the muddy ground, closer to the hill dwarf redoubt.
As Pitrick marched, the pain in his foot became worse, a driving, pounding awareness that threatened to overwhelm every other sensation. But the hunchback used that pain, turning it into a kind of brutal example to show his men the true measure of their race. He marched harder and faster, in tentionally punishing himself, sneering at the weakness of those around him.
His own vision suffered from the flaring fires across the field, but he forced himself to look past those, toward the enemy on top of the low, sloping wall. He saw a long rank of motley hill dwarves there, and growled inwardly at the thought that these puny specimens had repulsed an attack of the vaunted House Guard.
They would not do so again.
As he approached, Pitrick saw the struggle that was rag ing on top of the wall. The Theiwar were advancing in small groups, rushing up the sloping wall, only to meet the sharp weapons of the resolute hill dwarves when they reached the top. Each attack broke as the derro died atop the wall, sur vivors forced backward to fall, roll, or run to the ditch at the bottom.
"Now," Pitrick snapped, his shrill voice calling for the sa vants' undivided attention. "I will show you how to attack!
Without mercy — without hesitation!"
He grasped the iron amulet and looked along the top of the redoubt, trying to identify the hill dwarf leader. The bat tle raging between the charging Theiwar and the staunch hill dwarves made it difficult to see. Once again he watched some of his elite troops thrown back, pushed physically from the top of the wall by the tenacious enemy.
Still, he only needed to find their captain. Then he would cast a single, very potent spell, and all cohesion would van ish from his enemy's formation.
Suddenly he froze, his eyes locked on a long-haired dwarf near the center of the enemy position. He blinked, but then he looked again, growing more and more certain of his iden tification. He saw that it was a frawl, and that she chopped about her with an axe, savagely skillful. Her auburn tresses burst free to swirl past her face.
Perian Cyprium!
"She is here!" Pitrick cried aloud, uncaring of the sur prised looks from the savants behind him. Instantly he raised his hand, pointing his index finger right at her. He could almost taste the effect of the fireball spell on this frawl he had come to both desire and hate so much.
But something stayed his hand. The savants waited ex pectantly as he stared at her. The yearning for her was once again surging through his pain-racked body.
Pitrick reached a decision. He would not burn her — yet.
A fireball seemed too fast, too impersonal a way for Perian to die. Far better she saw that it was he who took her, and that death should come slowly… afterward. There was even the chance she would yet come to appreciate him, and for a moment his mind thrilled to the image of Perian, on her knees, begging for mercy. A part of his mind began to imagine his response. Suddenly, violently, his attention turned back to the battle.
"Sound the fallback!" he shouted to the bugler, and, to his savants: "Prepare your spells!"
The brass notes of the horn sounded across the field, and the derro atop the earthwork quickly fell back to the rela tive safety of the ditch at the bottom of the wall.
At the same time his eyes flickered to Perian again. Later, he told himself. Later I will have her. I will find her and, by magic or might, claim her.
"Now!" cried Pitrick. "Destroy them!"
His hand clasped the medallion. Blue light spilled forth, illuminating the hunchbacked derro with a chilling outline as he launched his spell.
Violent magic exploded.
Basalt stood atop the redoubt on the right side of the posi tion, raising his axe, bashing the mountain dwarves, stand ing firm. The battle had lasted less than an hour so far, yet it felt as though his life had always consisted of this same muscle-aching combat, the ringing cacophony of pain and death.
At first, terror had consumed him, and every blow he struck had been a matter of insuring his own personal sur vival. But, with each victory over an individual derro, his confidence had grown, and with it his rage. Now he struck with cold, deadly anger, slaying to avenge his father, Mol doon, and all the other unnamed dwarves that he knew were dying around him.
Perian fought nearby, astonishing the young hill dwarf with her skill and tenacity. She shouted hoarsely at her former comrades. The black-armored mountain dwarves who recognized their former captain hesitated for but a mo ment before they tried to close with her. But their hesitation was crucial. Swinging her axe with bone-crushing force, she managed to fend off all their attacks.
Basalt saw a mountain dwarf gain the top of the rampart between himself and Perian. The warrior raised his bloody axe and turned toward the frawl. Basalt twisted to his rear and swept the Theiwar from the breastwork with the savage cut of his axe.
"Fine work!" said Perian with a grin. Her face, flushed with exertion, showed a glow of exhilaration at the intensity of the fight.
Suddenly a bugle sounded, and the mountain dwarves fell back from the breastwork. We stopped them again! Ba salt cried inwardly with relief. But Perian spotted six figures moving forward through the ranks of the thane's troops.
Then, beside them she saw the dark, twisted figure of her worst nemesis — it could only be Pitrick. She stared, mo mentarily uncertain of the threat, but then she saw the wash of blue light and her panic galvanized her into desperate action.
"Get down!" Perian cried, throwing herself flat on the rampart.
"What?" grunted Basalt, even as he, too, flattened himself to the earth.
He squinted into the night, seeing a tiny globule of flame drift slowly through the air. It danced forward, toward the redoubt, to a place just to the right of Basalt's and Perian's position. Basalt thought that the tiny ball was rather pretty, though that instantly struck him as incongruous.
But nothing could have prepared him for the horror that happened next.
The dot of fire drifted onto the top of the breastwork among a huddled group of dwarves. Then it instantane ously erupted into a huge, globelike inferno of death. Basalt felt the heat from the nearby explosion singe his skin and hair. He heard screams of terror and pain, yet saw nothing for precious moments against the brightness of the fireball.
But then the fire faded, and he stared in dull shock at the charred bodies of the hill and gully dwarves who had been unfortunate enough to be within the fireball's killing zone.
The stench of burned flesh carried past him on the breeze, sickening him. He could not bring himself to believe that those blackened, stiff shapes had ever been living dwarves.
The corpses looked like statues carved from charcoal.
Then Basalt saw more sparks, more light, explode from the dark-robed dwarves. The hill dwarf looked up in shock as crackling bolts of energy hissed and exploded over his head. With horror he saw a pair of hill dwarves — lifelong neighbors — fall lifeless, slain instantly by the strike of the magic. Screams erupted from the line, and Basalt sensed panic arising in his own heart.
The savants chanted a new sound, and hail erupted from the clear skies overhead to pummel those on the breast work. Basalt clapped his hands over his head and pressed his face into the dirt, waiting for this nightmare to end.
Large round stones of ice hammered his body, smashing against his skin, numbing his ha
nds, pounding a savage ca dence of pain into his skull. He cried out with agony as a large ice ball cracked his elbow, and when another pounded him brutally in the kidney. Holding his breath and gritting his teeth, Basalt struggled to maintain consciousness, know ing that he could not stand another minute of this punish ment.
The unnatural storm ceased as suddenly as it had started.
For a moment a low, rumbling stillness fell over the field — not exactly silence, for many Aghar and hill dwarves groaned in pain along the ice-hammered redoubt. Basalt winced as he struggled to his knees, seeing other dwarves slowly climbing to their feet. We've got to hold them off, he told himself.
"Wait!" hissed Perian, pushing him back down.
Now the hill dwarf heard the sharp clunk of heavy cross bow fire. Metal bolts raked the top of the breastwork where many battered, exhausted hill dwarves gasped for breath. A few, like Perian and Basalt, had dropped to the ground in time. Most still stood, fully exposed to the lethal volley.
"To the brewery!" shouted Flint, Tybalt, Hildy, and ev eryone else who knew the plan. The stone walls of that structure would provide a last bastion of security, though they all realized that it meant leaving the town in the hands of their rapacious enemy.
Flint stopped in the center of town, watching the hill dwarves stream past. Small bands of gully dwarves scram bled along with the larger brethren. Perian and Tybalt joined him while Hildy and Basalt went to organize the de fense of the brewery.
"Damn!" the constable cursed. "I thought we were going to hold them!"
"We tried," said Flint. "Now it's up to the stone walls of the brewery. We've got to stop them there!"
"Basalt all right?" Tybalt asked Perian. The blossoming fireballs and hissing magic missiles had been clearly visible to the other hill dwarf defenders.
"Fine — he's getting the defenses organized at the brewery," she replied. "The magic really raked us on the right, though.
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