The demon warriors, meanwhile, were pressing their charge home even as the rifle-dwarves were inflicting heavy casualties on them. Dozens of demon fell every time a musket volley smashed through their writhing ranks, but still more demons came on, pushing and screaming.
They were getting close to the cannons, though, as were the steadily-retreating rifle dwarves. Once all of the companies of rifle-dwarves had gotten behind the cannons, the dwarven commander would unleash hell—so to speak.
Except that he wouldn’t. Not with Grakk’n waiting in the shadows to foil his plan and launch a surprise attack from the rear.
Another volley smashed through the demons, and now the rearmost company of rifle-dwarves was within a few yards of the cannons. Grakk’n growled softly in the shadows, and the black blood that flowed through his veins became heated with the excitement of impending combat. He quietly drew his dragon-bone sword from its sheath and gripped it lightly in both of his hands, and in the shadows his black eyes seemed to become even darker as he prepared to make his first kill.
Then, with a deafening, metallic roar blasting out of his huge mouth, Grakk’n jumped out of the shadows and struck.
The closest of the dwarven bodyguards to Grakk’n barely had time to even look over his shoulder and see, towering like a giant over him, the huge, armored demon commander, who had his dragon-bone sword raised high above his head. The blade came whistling down just as the bodyguard’s eyes widened with shock … and it split him in half, swishing through his skull, and then his torso, and emerging from his groin.
The two halves of the now-dead dwarven bodyguard flopped to the ground, and the others spun around, shouting with rage and surprise as they realized they were being attacked from the rear.
Grakk’n howled with the madness of battle as he charged into their midst, swinging his black sword around him in huge, whistling arcs, the vicious cuts and slashes and hacks splitting dwarven warriors in half and sending them flying through the tunnel.
The bodyguards were elite warriors, and they showed no fear as they jumped Grakk’n with their silver-coated battle-axes. Unfortunately for them, he was a far mightier warrior than any of them ever would be, and he smashed them aside and sowed destruction among their ranks, demolishing them and cutting them down like a peasant cutting wheat with a scythe.
After just a minute or two of fighting, Grakk’n had decimated the entire core of dwarven bodyguards, and only the officer remained, still determinedly holding the string that would detonate all of the cannons.
Grakk’n smiled evilly at the officer as he advanced on him.
“Pull the string, dwarf, and I’ll give you a quick death,” he growled.
“Never, you foul fiend!” roared the dwarf defiantly. His men were still in front of the cannons; they had not managed to retreat behind yet, and if the cannons were fired at this moment, they would all be blown to shreds.
“Have it your way then,” snarled Grakk’n. He lunged forward, stabbing his sword through the dwarven commander’s stomach. As the dwarf cried out in pain and writhed in agony, impaled on the dragon-bone blade, Grakk’n lifted him high in the air on his sword, grinning as the commander howled in pain.
Finally, the retreating dwarven troops turned around and realized what had happened behind them … and with horror, they saw that Grakk’n’s hand was now holding the deadly string.
“Enjoy the grapeshot, my dwarven friends,” roared Grakk’n with a malicious smile.
Then he pulled.
CHAPTER 12
King Odok-Kram cursed, and balled his hand into a tight fist, which he punched into the open palm of his free hand.
“Another unit wiped out completely,” he muttered. “Another hundred warriors lost.”
“Not completely, my lord,” said General Khazum. “There was one survivor. Sergeant Balion, come forward.”
General Khazum and the sole survivor of the battle in the tunnels were meeting with King Odok-Kram in his private chambers in the palace. Evacuation of the dwarven civilians had already begun the previous day, after a suitable amount in gold had been paid to Ser Greenfield. Thousands of dwarves were already on their way to the Above World.
However, the Dwarven Army had been suffering heavy losses at the hands of the Demon Horde, and it looked like their numbers would be reduced even further while trying to hold back the demons, while the rest of the dwarves were evacuated from the city of Karak-Drang and other underground settlements.
The warrior who had survived the battle, Sergeant Balion, a young warrior with a shock of ginger hair and a bushy, deep red beard, stepped forward and bowed before the king.
“My lord,” he said in his gruff voice. “I am at your service.”
“How is it that you were the only one who escaped with his life?” asked the king, examining Balion with a look of suspicion on his face. “It seems a little strange, given that the demons usually drag any survivors back to their Infernal Realm for questioning. Why were you not taken by the demons?”
Sergeant Balion lifted up his shirt, and when he did, the king gasped. Beneath his shirt, Sergeant Balion was wearing a shirt of mithril chainmail.
“This huge demon, much bigger than the others, he attacked us from the rear, took us by surprise. I was one of the commander’s bodyguards—we were protecting him, positioned behind the cannons, while the rifle-dwarves made a fighting retreat, to draw the demons into the mouths of our cannons, as we’ve done a few times before.”
“A tactic that I personally developed,” interjected General Khazum. “And one that’s been bloody effective against those vile monsters in the past.”
“Yes, I am aware of this,” said King Odok-Kram. “But anyway, tell me how you evaded death.”
“This massive demon, my lord, he was just smashing us to pieces with a huge dragon bone sword. I wasn’t going to let him get to the commander though, so I charged him with my battle axe. He moved so bloody quickly though … swung that sword of his, and I felt a tremendous thump on my left side. Next thing I knew I was flying!”
“Flying, soldier?”
“Yes, my lord,” answered Sergeant Balion. “The bastard hit me so hard that it sent me flying a good thirty yards up in the air. I landed up on a ledge that was jutting out of the rock, and just lay there, wondering if I was dead or not. The last thing I saw was that rotten demon firing our cannons on our own men. Blew the lot of them to shreds, he did. Then I don’t remember anything for a while, and when I eventually woke up, everything was quiet and the tunnel was empty. Only reason I survived that blow with the demon’s sword was cause of my mithril chainmail.”
“How does a mere sergeant afford a shirt of mithril chainmail anyway, soldier?” asked King Odok-Kram, still looking at the warrior with a glint of suspicion in his eyes. “It is the kind of armor that only a king could afford.”
“And that’s why I kept it hidden, under my regular armor, my lord,” said Sergeant Balion. “Nobody knows I have it except General Kazum, and you, now. I inherited it from my father, who inherited it from his father. And his father stole it from the Wood Elves when we tunneled under their palace and raided it three hundred and fifty years ago.”
The look of suspicion on King Odok-Kram’s face morphed into a look of glee when Sergeant Balion said this, and he laughed. A loud, booming laugh that rang cheerfully through his chambers.
“Your great-great grandfather was one of the daring dwarves who raided the palace of the Wood Elves? Well then, he deserves to have come away from such a mission with as rich a reward as that. It almost caused a full-scale war between their kingdom and ours … but even so, my ancestors admired the courage and the audacity of the dwarves who raided them.”
“Thank you, my lord. It’s a story that’s been passed down through my family, just like this mithril chainmail shirt. And thanks to it, I survived a blow from that blade that should have sliced my body in half. Think that because the blow launched me up onto that led
ge, the demons didn’t know I was up there. That’s why I wasn’t dragged off to their Infernal Realm. While the mithril saved me from being cut to pieces, it didn’t stop that bastard demon’s sword from breaking a few of my ribs.”
Sergeant Balion lifted up the mithril shirt, and beneath it his whole left side had turned a dark shade of purple, with crimson and yellow blotches all over his skin around that area too.
“Be thankful, soldier, that broken ribs are the only injury you suffered. You are alive and well. That is more than can be said for your comrades who fought with you.”
“Aye, my lord,” said Sergeant Balion sadly. “May the God of the Axe welcome their souls into the Eternal Warriors’ Hall.”
“They fought bravely, I’m sure,” said General Khazum. “The God of the Axe will surely welcome them with open arms.”
“Tell me more about this huge demon you fought,” said King Odok-Kram.
“He was gigantic,” said Sergeant Balion. “Much bigger than the other fiends we’ve fought in the past—who, as you’ve seen, are bloody big enough as they are. But this one, not only was he carrying a bloody massive dragon bone sword, he was wearing armor too.”
General Khazum grimaced and shook his head. “Now the damned things are wearing protection too,” he muttered. “What else? Are they going to start using muskets and cannons against us next? Curses!”
“What kind of armor was this creature wearing?” asked King Odok-Kram. “I must inform Archwright Bomfrey. Perhaps his Factory Core will be able to develop countermeasures.”
“I don’t remember much of it, my lord,” said Sergeant Balion. “On account of the fight being so quick, and the darkness of the tunnel. But from what I can recall, my lord, I’d say that the scum’s armor was also made of dragon bone.”
General Khazum let out a low whistle through his teeth and shook his head. “Dragon bone armor?” he said, shaking his head again. “No metal we know of can cut through that, none except mithril. And the number of mithril axes and swords that exist, that haven’t been lost to the mists of history, I can count on one hand. It’s not like we can coat musket balls and cannonballs with mithril either! By the God of the Axe, that would cost how much in gold per shot? Each musket ball coated in mithril we fired would be the equivalent of the average dwarf’s lifetime wages! There’s no way it can be done, not unless we somehow stumble across a previously untapped vein of mithril. But most of it was mined thousands of years ago, and all the old mithril veins have been dry for centuries.”
“There may be other materials that can pierce through dragon bone,” said the king. “I must call Archwright Bomfrey to my chambers and speak with him about this. You two, leave me now.”
CHAPTER 13
“A demon with dragon bone armor, this is unusual, yes,” mused Archwright Bomfrey. “But, my lord, it is nothing that the Factory Core cannot handle. I assure you of this.”
King Odok-Kram looked unconvinced. “General Khazum tells me that the only metal that can affect dragon bone is mithril. I know that the Factory Core is a wondrous weapon, but it is not a god; it cannot simply conjure mithril out of thin air. And you and I both know that our ancestors exhausted the old mithril veins in their mines centuries ago.”
“Mithril is the only metal that can cut through dragon bone, yes,” said Bomfrey. “But there are other substances capable of that feat, materials that are not necessarily metals. Diamonds, for instance, can achieve the same goal.”
King Odok-Kram scoffed. “Diamonds? Is that what you’re proposing, Bomfrey? They’re just as rare and expensive as mithril!”
“No my lord, I wasn’t suggesting that we use diamonds to enhance our weapons. I was just saying that mithril is not the only option. There are others … and, perhaps, combinations of substances that might prove effective. The Factory Core is capable of advanced alchemy, my lord. In fact, one of the soul gems embedded in the Core contains the soul of a genius alchemist from a past Age. The Factory Core will figure out a way to combat this demon’s armor, I guarantee this, my lord. For now though, we must focus on evacuating the last of our people from the Below World. Once all of our cities and citadels and forts are empty, then the Factory Core will take over and handle the demons on its own.”
“If it can handle the demons on its own,” said King Odok-Kram grimly. “If, Archwright Bomfrey, if…”
Archwright Bomfrey smiled broadly. “Oh, it will, my lord. Believe me, it will.”
“For all our sakes, I hope you are right,” said the king with a sigh. “If the Factory Core fails, the demons will have the Below World, and they will take from us the kingdom our ancestors held for five thousand years. And I … I will be remembered in dwarven history as the king who failed, the king who lost the kingdom.”
“No my lord,” said Archwright Bomfrey reassuringly. “This is not how you will be remembered. You will be remembered as the king who wielded the greatest weapon we dwarves ever invented. Trust me, my lord, this is how you will be remembered.”
“I hope so, Bomfrey,” said the king. “I truly hope so. Go now, and get your Factory Core ready for the coming war. From tonight, after the last of our people have left this place, it will be on its own.”
“I believe,” said Bomfrey with a swift but strange smile, “that the Factory Core is quite looking forward to this. Worry no more, my king. My weapon will not only win this kingdom back from the Demon Horde, it will make a legend out of you.”
By the evening, the last dwarves had left the great underground city of Karak-Drang, capital of the Dwarven Kingdom for five millennia. And this was the first time in that span that the city was empty—well, almost empty. Archwright Bomfrey, along with a few other inventors and engineers, and a company of bodyguards, were making a few final tweaks to the Factory Core before unleashing it fully.
The demons, meanwhile, were already massing outside Karak-Drang’s huge city walls, which were fifty feet high, and twenty feet thick. The demons had information about where weak spots in the walls were located, after having tortured this information out of dwarven warriors they had interrogated. However, the demons did not yet know that the entire city had been evacuated, or indeed that the whole Dwarven Kingdom had been evacuated. The dwarves had traveled to the Above World via a number of secret passages built exactly for this kind of emergency. Passages only the Dwarven Royal Family knew about. This knowledge was kept a strict secret precisely so that it couldn’t be revealed by captured warriors who were tortured.
Archwright Bomfrey was inside the heart of the Factory Core, along with his most senior colleagues, all of whom had worked closely on the Factory Core over the past few decades. These were the few dwarves who knew all of the Core’s secrets, and because of this Bomfrey had made all of the other engineers and inventors, and the bodyguards, of course, wait outside.
His pretext for keeping the other dwarves out at this moment was for maintaining secrecy about its inner workings. This was for the same reason the evacuation tunnels had been kept secret, so such information could not be extracted out of a captive by their enemy. However, the real reason Bomfrey had kept everyone else but this small handful of trusted confidants out at this moment was quite different.
It was because he was about to do something that he was not authorized to do, something that he had not even told the king about doing. Because he knew that if he had said anything, the king would never have allowed him to unleash the Factory Core in the first place.
Nonetheless, the situation for the dwarves was incredibly dire; Bomfrey was not doing what he was about to do for his own personal reasons, but to save dwarven civilization from the scourge of the Demon Horde. Yet, because it was such a drastic measure, he knew that many would see it as … distasteful. However, to save civilization itself, extreme measures were needed. Measures that not everyone would agree with.
“Are you sure we should be doing this, Bomfrey?” asked Chiefwright Akzad, an obese grey-bearded dwarf with piercing
blue eyes that appeared twice the size of regular eyes due to the thick spectacles he wore. He had been one of the primary designers on this project. “We stand to lose thousands of years of history and our heritage.”
“If we do not do this,” said Bomfrey gravely, “the Factory Core will not be able to fight at its full capacity. And if that happens, the demons win. The demons take our kingdom from us. And then we will not just lose some of our heritage and history, we will lose all of it. Forever. I know that what we are about to do might seem drastic, extreme perhaps, mad even … but we all know that it must be done.”
Akzad sighed and shook his head. “I know Bomfrey, I know, you are right. I just, I just can’t believe it’s come to this.”
“The demons are massed outside the city walls already, Akzad,” said Bomfrey gravely. “Soon enough they will be in the city. You have seen what they have done to the citadels and forts they have already captured from us. They have torn them down, vandalized our temples and destroyed our artworks. They have reduced everything we built over centuries, over millennia, to rubble.
“And they will do the same to Karak-Drang unless the Factory Core—fully unleashed—stops them. And if there is some collateral damage, then so be it. The bottom line is that we must defeat them, at all costs. We must. The survival of our civilization depends on it.”
“Very well,” said Chiefwright Akzad. “Then let us activate the runes which will allow the Factory Core to … to cannibalize our city.”
“The destruction it will wreak in feeding off the city,” said Bomfrey, “will be minor compared to what the demons will do if we don’t allow the Factory Core to do this. There are a great many valuable metals, elements and minerals which the Core could use, just sitting around uselessly in works of art, museums, and treasure vaults. We at least will be giving these objects a purpose. They will finally be employed for a more noble cause than mere display: they will be used to defend our civilization.”
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