The Dwarves d-1

by Markus Heitz

  "What's done is done," Tungdil said sharply. "We'll have to make the best of things." He loosened his hold on Bavragor and clapped him on the back. "No matter what happens, we're not going to let it stop us. We can't! No one else is going to forge the ax and save Girdlegard. It's up to us."

  "It would be a darned sight easier without Goпmgar," grumbled Bavragor. "He only drags us down."

  "Vraccas must have made him part of this mission for a reason." Tungdil noticed that the mason was wheezing. "Steady on, Bavragor, you'd better stop talking before you get a stitch. Goпmgar's fitter than you."

  "Cowards always make good runners." Even as he spoke, there was a jangling noise and he stiffened. Before he could take another step, his legs buckled and he toppled over, raising a cloud of glistening snow. When the flakes settled, he was buried beneath a layer of white crystals. Sticking out of his neck was a bolt fired from a crossbow.

  The others, with the exception of Djerun, threw themselves to the ground so as not to fall victim to the archer.

  Once again, Andфkai barked an unintelligible command, whereupon the giant scanned their surroundings and set off at a sprint.

  It definitely wasn't an дlf, thought Tungdil. Unlike Djerun, he could see no sign of their hidden assailant. Guardsmen? But guardsmen carry torches…

  The maga crawled through the snow to examine the mason's wound. Balyndis wriggled over to join her.

  "The tip stopped just short of his spine," said Andфkai, after a cursory inspection. "If it weren't for his cloak and the metal-plated nape of his helmet, it would have penetrated farther." She gripped the shaft of the bolt resolutely and pulled it from his flesh. With her right hand she stemmed the blood from the wound. "I hope he'll forgive me for using my dastardly magic to save his life." She closed her eyes in concentration. "I can't say I've had much experience in healing dwarves. I hope I can do it."

  So do I. Something whirred past Tungdil, just missing his head; then a third missile rebounded off Goпmgar's shield. They heard a high-pitched scream, which stopped abruptly as Djerun seized his prey.

  He cast their tormentor into the snow beside them. A yellowy-green circle sullied the pristine snow around the diminutive corpse. A head with two long pointed ears plumped beside it.

  Goпmgar shrank back in horror. "Sverd!" The dead cross- bowman was Bislipur's former slave. The artisan looked at the mangled gnome and shuddered, then stared at the dent in his shield where the third bolt had struck. "But why would he…" He broke off, not wishing to draw attention to the matter, but Tungdil finished the question for him.

  "Why would Sverd be aiming at you?" He stared into the gnome's unseeing eyes, but Djerun's ruthless solution to the problem had ruled out all hope of an answer. "You were traveling with the wrong party, I suppose."

  He bent down to pick up the now-redundant choker. Sverd was free at last, but not in the way he had hoped. Pensively, he pocketed the collar, intending to confront Bislipur with the evidence when they next met. As he looked down, he noticed a shiny lump of butter-yellow metal. Gold! There could be no further doubt that the gnome was responsible for the mishaps that had befallen them on their journey.

  Boпndil got straight to the point. "Bislipur is the most contemptible dwarf that ever lived." He wiped the snow furiously from his thick cloak and beard. "Setting his lackey on us and trying to have us killed! Dwarves don't assassinate their kinsfolk; it's the most dastardly crime a child of Vraccas could commit!"

  "The gnome did all his dirty work," commented Tungdil, his mind still whirring. "Bislipur wasn't going to kill us himself. He would have washed his hands of all responsibility."

  "Just wait until I get hold of his wretched king," threatened Boпndil, praying to Vraccas to hasten their encounter. "I'm going to beat him black-and-blue."

  Still struggling to digest what had happened, Goпmgar shook his head slowly. "No, Gandogar would never have agreed to it; he's not a murderer, whatever you think. Bislipur must have taken it upon himself to…" The artisan lapsed into a helpless silence, no longer sure what to believe.

  "Hang on a minute; you want Gandogar to be high king, don't you?" Boпndil accused him suspiciously.

  "Of course I do! I said so from the start. But to murder a dwarf because of it…" He shuddered. "Bislipur must be mad," he murmured, staring at Bavragor's motionless form. "He must be so desperate for Gandogar to be crowned that he doesn't know what he's doing. He's insane."

  Balyndis took Bavragor's hand to comfort him. Slowly the open wound in his neck shriveled until only a small scar was left. Exhausted, Andфkai sank down and cooled her face on the snow.

  "I've healed the wound," she said faintly. "In a moment he'll…"

  "Magic," Bavragor muttered sleepily. "I've been thinking; maybe it's not so useless after all." Groggily, but with a profoundly serious expression, he nodded to the exhausted maga. There was no need for him to thank her in any other way.

  A question if I may, glorious captain of our troupe." The sun was just rising when Rodario, shivering with cold but gripping his duffel bag with grim determination, drew alongside Tungdil. The impresario pointed furtively at Djerun. The events of the previous night had reminded him and the others that the giant was unlikely to be an unusually tall man. "What kind of creature is he?" The question was barely audible through the layers of scarf wrapped around his head.

  "I have no idea," Tungdil said frankly without slowing his pace.

  Rodario displayed his customary persistence. "No idea? But I thought the lot of you had been traveling together for a while…"

  "She told us that he isn't a monster." Tungdil suddenly remembered the night in the desert when he had caught a glimpse of what lay behind the terrifying visor. A shiver ran down his spine.

  The impresario blew on his frozen fingers. "Not a monster, eh? Then what in the name of Palandiell is he? I've never known a human to light up a darkened street with the power of his eyes. If it's a trick, I'd give anything to know the secret; the audience would love it."

  Hoping that Rodario would give up and go away, Tungdil said nothing and trudged energetically through the snow, glancing at the map to get his bearings.

  "Very well. I'll have to assume that he's a creature of Tion." Looking pretty pleased with himself, Rodario stuck his hands into the pockets of his fur coat. "It adds a bit of drama to the plot. Ye gods, the play will be brilliant. The whole of Girdlegard will flock to see it." He stopped and cursed. "I wish my blasted ink would stop freezing. At this rate, I'll have forgotten the best bits before I get a chance to write them down."

  "You should carry the inkwell next to your skin," Tungdil advised him. "That way the ink will be nice and warm and you can scribble as much as you like."

  Rodario gave him a friendly pat on the back. "There's a sharp mind hiding under all that hair, my little friend. I was thinking the same thing, but thank you nonetheless."

  Not a single footprint marred the snowy road ahead. The wintry weather and marauding orcs had convinced the people of Tabaоn to stay by their hearths and barricade their doors.

  The terrain was so flat that raiding parties could be spotted well in advance. In clear weather the watchtowers commanded views of over a hundred miles, but no amount of warning could save the settlements from the orcs. The northern hordes could be stopped only by good swordsmen, and Tabaоn had precious few of those.

  Tungdil checked their position against the map. They were closer than ever to the southernmost reaches of the Perished Land. Who knows how far the pestilence has spread? There's no way of telling with the landscape blanketed in snow.

  "Orcs," came Boпndil's warning from the front of the procession. "Twenty miles to the west. They're…Hang on, they're turning east," he reported, surprised. "They're moving fast. You don't think they're looking for us, do you?"

  Bavragor pointed to a hamlet situated in the direction that the beasts had been heading originally. The superior vision in his remaining eye enabled him to see what the others could not.
"That would have been their next stop, but they've abandoned their quarry." He wiped the sweat from his forehead. A red glow had settled over his face.

  "Are you sure you're all right?" Balyndis asked. "You look a bit feverish."

  "What if it's gangrene?" said Boпndil. "Maybe the hocus-pocus hasn't worked as well as it should."

  The allegation spurred Andфkai into action. She asked the mason to lean forward so she could inspect the wound on his neck. Boпndil was beside her in a flash. They came to the same conclusion.

  "The wound has healed nicely," he admitted. "I can't argue with that."

  "I've lost a bit of blood, that's all," said Bavragor, trying to allay the others' fears. He was obviously uncomfortable at being the center of attention, but Balyndis persevered. She pulled off her left glove and laid her hand on his forehead.

  "For the love of Vraccas, I could forge a horseshoe on there," she said in alarm.

  "With a skull as thick as his, I don't suppose it would do much harm," Tungdil joked. "He's a tough customer, our Hammerfist."

  "I'm serious, Tungdil, he's feverish. Either that, or he's got a nasty cold. We need to get him inside before he loses consciousness or worse."

  "Don't be ridiculous," objected Bavragor. "I'm perfectly-" He doubled up in a coughing fit that went on and on until he was shaking so violently that his legs caved in. Tungdil pulled him upright and steadied him.

  "I'd say it's a cold." Balyndis scanned the horizon. "He needs a warm bed for the night."

  Tungdil nodded. "We'll stop at the next hamlet. Sorry, old fellow, but a dead mason won't be any good to us."

  "A cold!" Goпmgar chuckled maliciously. "So who's the weakling now? I might not be big, but at least I'm hardy." He was practically glowing with satisfaction at not being the underdog anymore. Head held high, he strode past the ailing mason with a smug smile that prompted Furgas to throw a snowball in his face.

  Tungdil soon realized that their efforts to find a bed were destined to fail; there wasn't a single farmhouse, let alone a hamlet, between them and the Gray Range. Since Bavragor refused to make a detour, they walked without stopping in order to reach the entrance to the tunnels as soon as they could.

  A nasty surprise awaited them when they finally reached the spot. The mouth of the shaft had transformed itself into a frozen pond.

  "We'll have to walk, then," said Bavragor cheerily, doing his best to downplay his illness and seem sprightly despite his fragile state. His bright red face and the beads of perspiration forming beneath his frozen helmet told a different story. "I can see the range from here."

  "The range has been in sight since the moment we entered Tabaоn," moaned Goпmgar, dreading the prospect of another long march in the cold. "Are you trying to get us all snow-blind or something?"

  Grumpily, he set off through the snow, the others following in his wake. Toward evening they came to a deserted barn filled with bales of hay.

  They lit a fire in spite of their qualms and made themselves comfortable, then cleared a spot for Bavragor to lie beside the flames, swaddling him in three blankets so he sweated out the cold. Rodario curled up in the warmth, while Djerun stood guard by the door, leaving the others free to look after the invalid. They clustered around him.

  "It's nothing, honestly." Just then he choked and spat out a large clot of blood. He was gasping for air, groaning rather than breathing, and he seemed to be losing strength. The warmth was making things worse. "If you give me a sip of brandy, I'll be fighting fit."

  "It can't be a cold," Boпndil said firmly. He got up. "It's gangrene, I know it. Sometimes it spreads beneath the skin, even after the wound has healed."

  "No, Boпndil," snapped Andфkai, "I cleaned the flesh thoroughly."

  A terrible thought occurred to Tungdil. He got up, went over to Goпmgar, and picked up his shield to examine the dent. Where the bolt had hit, the metal was discolored and there were traces of a clear frozen liquid that neither he nor the artisan had noticed before. His spirits sank. The bolt had been dipped in something that had stuck to the shield.

  Vraccas, give him strength. "Do you have a spell against poison?" he asked Andфkai hoarsely. "By the look of things, Sverd wasn't relying purely on his aim."

  "Poison?" Bavragor swallowed his cough and grinned. As his lips parted, his companions saw the blood leaking from his gums and coloring his teeth. His mouth was full of blood. "I knew it! Did you hear that, Goпmgar? What's the betting you'd be dead already? I've drunk enough brandy and beer in my lifetime to toughen me up. Ha, a cold!"

  The maga closed her eyes. "I can't do anything against poison. My art is… I'm afraid, it's not my kind of magic," she said in a soft, apologetic tone. "Healing the wound drained a lot of my energy. My strength is all but exhausted."

  A terrible silence settled over the group. There was no mistaking what Andфkai's words meant for the mason. Balyndis reached for his calloused hand and squeezed it encouragingly. She was too choked to speak.

  "I know what you're thinking," croaked Bavragor at length. "Things don't look good for the merry minstrel. It's all right; I wasn't intending to return from the mission anyway." He looked up at Tungdil. "Still, I'd give anything to see the fifthling kingdom and fashion Keenfire's spurs. I wanted to go out with a bang, not in a dingy barn miles away from my beloved mountains."

  Blood was seeping through his pores, the droplets merging into rivulets and soaking his straw mattress. In no time his garments were drenched with red.

  "You're not going to die," Tungdil told him shakily. His smile, which he hoped would be encouraging, looked more like a grimace. "We can't fashion Keenfire without you! You're Beroпn's best mason."

  Bavragor had to swallow a mouthful of blood before he could reply. "In that case, you'll have to take me with you. We'll make the ax to kill Nфd'onn, you'll see." He nodded to the door. "Carry me to the Perished Land. I'll fulfill my mission after my death."

  "But…but you'll be a revenant," stuttered Boпndil, horrified. "Your soul-"

  "I'll do my bit for Keenfire and confound the rest!" The outburst ended in another coughing fit.

  "What if you turn against us? The other dead souls tried to kill us and eat us!" Boпndil glanced at the others for support. Some were struggling with their emotions, the remainder looked embarrassed.

  "Chain my hands together, if you're worried," the mason told them. "My will is stronger than the drive to do evil. Dwarves are too stubborn to be conquered by darkness." He closed his eyes. "You'll have to hurry," he gasped. He coughed again and blood spewed from his mouth, trickling into his well-kempt beard.

  "Djerun!" At Andфkai's bidding, the giant stooped to lift the dwarf. Cradling Bavragor gently in his arms like a mother would carry her child, he left the barn and stomped through the snow.

  His long tireless limbs bore the mason toward the north, where the Perished Land had established its dominion, awakening anything that died to hideous life.

  The rest of the company packed their things and followed the giant as fast as the sparkling snow and the dwarves' stumpy legs would allow.

  Tungdil looked up at the stars and wept silent tears for the mason who was sacrificing his soul for the sake of the ax on which Girdlegard's future depended. For all Bavragor's eccentricities and occasional-crotchetiness, he was a good dwarf whom Tungdil regarded as a friend.

  He heard a sniff beside him and turned to the tearful Balyndis. Her eyes were red with crying, but she smiled and squeezed his hand. Suddenly his courage, which had all but deserted him in the barn, came flooding back.

  So much had happened since they had left the secondling kingdom-too much, in fact. Their adventure had turned into something far bigger and more perilous than they'd ever imagined. Even Rodario, renowned for his pompous comments, had fallen silent and was brooding over the mason's death.

  "I hope Girdlegard is worth it, Vraccas," murmured Tungdil, gazing up at the sparkling firmament. "When all this is over, I shall see to it that our folks don't barricad
e themselves back in their mountains. From now on, we'll work together."

  Balyndis gave his hand another squeeze, but he pulled away and hurried to join Boпndil at the head of the procession. It was the wrong time to be thinking of anything except Keenfire.

  "You like her, don't you?" the secondling said immediately, without glancing round.

  "Don't start," Tungdil told him. "It's the last thing I want to talk about."

  "I can't say I blame you. She's an attractive lass, and to someone like you, with no experience of the fairer sex, she must look as pretty as Vraccas's own daughter."

  "I've decided not to think about it until Nфd'onn has been defeated. My duty is to Girdlegard."

  "Trust a scholar to want to think about it." Boпndil took care not to meet his eye: For all intents and purposes, he was addressing Djerun's snowy footprints. "Think about it if you must, but remember: If something is worth pursuing, you shouldn't waste time. Situations change faster than you can split an orcish skull, and a moment's hesitation could cost you your chance."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "No reason." He peered into the distance. "They're up ahead." He whipped out his axes. "Let's hope the drunkard can defy the bidding of the Perished Land." It was evident from his hefted weapons that he was prepared to take decisive action.

  The maga called out to Djerun, who raised his armored hand and beckoned them over. At his side was Bavragor, arms dangling limply and gaze fixed blankly on the Gray Range.

  "Bavragor?" Tungdil said gently, searching the pale face for a trace of recognition. His features had aged terribly; he looked waxen and corpselike.

  "I feel… nothing," came the ponderous response. It seemed to cost him a great deal of effort to open his mouth and form the words. "I can't feel my body. My mind is… empty." The soulless eyes roved over the group and settled on Tungdil. "It feels bad; everything feels bad. Things I loved, I hate. Things I hated…" He stared past Tungdil and fixed his gaze on Boпndil. "I want to slaughter the things I hated-tear them apart and devour them. Tie my hands together; I don't know how much longer I can resist. The evil is inside me."