“Put the ladders up!” he roared, and with that, almost a mile’s worth of ladders were raised up and set against Karak-Drang’s high walls. “Now, climb! All of you climb! Get into the city and destroy it!”
A great, savage cheer tore through the entire army, like the sound of a massive thunderclap, booming through the whole of the Below World. This was the moment they had been waiting for. Now, breaking free of the discipline that had constrained them before, the warriors surged with wild, barbaric enthusiasm up the huge siege ladders.
The Factory Core watched grimly as thousands of enemies began to race up the ladders. There was no way it was going to give an inch, though, even if the tide of the battle had turned. As the demon warriors climbed frantically, the Core directed the spiders and geckoes on the walls to snipe them off the ladders, and soon they were falling off, dead, with none being able to reach the top before being shot.
However, as had always been the case, the demons had numbers on their side—a great many numbers. For every demon the Factory Core’s snipers shot off, two more took its place. And the pace of this replacement of dead troops only increased. Soon it was for every two troops shot off the ladders, five took their place. Then for every three shot off the ladders, eight swarmed up. Slowly but surely, the demons were edging their way toward the top.
At that moment, seeing that its sniping was becoming increasingly ineffective, the Factory Core decided to opt for a different strategy. It positioned mechanical spiders at the top of every ladder, one for each vertical beam—and then, when the demons had almost arrived, and the ladders were absolutely full of them, the immensely strong spiders shoved the siege items backwards, away from the walls.
Some of the ladders flew back, and then crashed like falling trees to the ground, killing and maiming both the demons that were on them and the demons they landed on. Others, however, were held in place by so many arms on the ground that even the powerful spiders were simply not strong enough to shove them away. And it was from these ladders that demons started pouring onto the tops of Karak-Drang’s walls in droves.
The battle had now entered another phase, one that the Factory Core had hoped would only come a lot later. For the second time, enemy troops had entered Karak-Drang, and now the Core knew that the fighting was likely to be some of the fiercest yet.
CHAPTER 30
The hour was late; it was well past midnight, but King Pavanir was still awake in his private chambers, poring over maps. Already he had started to put together a number of strategies for invading other kingdoms. All he needed was that dwarven super weapon to be under his control.
The candles in his chambers were burning low, but he refused to go to sleep. He was waiting for Ser Greenfield to report back to him on his meeting with the dwarven general. Finally, after what seemed like ages, there was a knock on his door.
“My lord, it is I, Ser Greenfield.”
“Enter,” Pavanir called out.
Ser Greenfield strode in, walking smoothly and steadily.
“You look as if you’ve had a fine evening of drinking, Greenfield,” said King Pavanir with a smirk.
Ser Greenfield chuckled wryly. “Aye, my lord. The dwarves were totally fooled by my little trick. When I staggered out of the tavern, lurching and swaying, they truly thought that I was as drunk as they were.”
“Excellent, excellent. Did you make progress with them?” asked Pavanir eagerly. “Have you learned more about this Factory Core … and how we might appropriate it?”
“Runes, my lord,” answered Ser Greenfield. “This is how the Factory Core is controlled. Dwarven runes carved into it, which are activated by molten gold. If we’re going to have any hope of getting this weapon to work for us, we’re going to need a master of dwarven runes.”
“I see, I see,” said Pavanir, stroking his beard while lost in thought, staring at the flame of the candle in front of him. “Well, finding such a scholar should not be a problem. I know that there are some at the university here who have studied that topic. And I have more than enough gold to be melted, when the time is right. How goes the weapon’s fight against the Demon Horde?”
“The dwarven general could not give me specifics on that,” answered Ser Greenfield, “except to say that the dwarves believe that the weapon will almost certainly prevail and hold the city of Karak-Drang.”
Pavanir nodded, thinking on this. “I suppose we cannot move until the Factory Core has defeated the demons,” he said.
“It would not be wise to, no, my lord,” said Ser Greenfield. “From what the dwarven general said about fighting the demons, it seems that they are ferocious opponents, and that their numbers are vast. They present a truly dire threat to the dwarves’ Below World. If we were to remove the Factory Core at this stage, it seems certain that the demons would overrun the Below World … and after that, they would come up to our world, and no doubt attack our own cities.”
“And if such a thing happened,” muttered King Pavanir, “our hopes of crushing the rival kingdoms of Men would be dashed. We would be forced to fight the demon menace instead.”
“This is the case, my lord,” said Ser Greenfield. “So we will, unfortunately, have to wait until the Factory Core vanquishes before we can make a move on it.”
Pavanir scowled, and growled angrily. “Curses,” he muttered. “For too long has Merador stood in the shadow of other cities of Men! We need this weapon … we need it for the glory and honor of Merador!”
“And we will have it, my lord,” said Ser Greenfield. “When the time is right.”
***
“It would seem,” said Bomfrey, “that Ser Greenfield has taken quite an interest in the Factory Core.”
Akzad leaned back against the wall of the crypt room that served as Bomfrey’s chambers and shook his head.
“It’s plain to see that he has some sort of scheme in mind regarding the Core, with all those questions he was asking Khazum,” sighed Akzad. “And with what we’ve learned about King Pavanir’s true nature, I’d say that he’s involved in this too, somehow.”
“I do seem to remember Ser Greenfield getting a strange gleam in his eyes when I showed him the inner workings of the Factory Core,” said Bomfrey, grimacing. “Now I truly regret my decision to show that snake the inside of our mightiest creation.”
“Take comfort, old friend,” said Akzad, trying to sound reassuring, “in the fact that he does not know all of its secrets. In fact, what he knows about the Factory Core barely scratches the surface of its true potential and capabilities.”
“And what about Khazum?” asked Bomfrey, anger flashing across his face as he thought about the general’s betrayal. “He knows a good deal about the Factory Core! And it appears, from what we overheard in that tavern, that he’s more than willing to share every bit of it with that cursed Ser Greenfield!”
“Again old friend,” said Akzad, doing his best to sound convincing, but ultimately failing to hide the worry in his own voice, “even though Khazum knows a fair deal about the workings of the Core, he knows nothing about its deepest secrets, and its true weaknesses. He knows very little compared to you and I, and our inner circle of engineers and inventors. Do not worry so … there is nothing Greenfield, Pavanir or Khazum can do. And besides, there is one very important detail that everyone seems to have skimmed over.”
“What do you mean, Akzad?”
“The Factory Core is not a mere axe, you know this more than anyone else! It is not a weapon for someone else to wield … it is a living, thinking entity! It is true that you or I could exert a measure of control over it with the right combination of runes. But after we did what we did in secret, and truly unleashed it, I’m not even sure we could do that anymore.
“It is its own being now, with its own mind. I do not think that Pavanir, Greenfield or Khazum truly understand this. And this, my friend, is the Core’s greatest strength, its most potent asset. It is alive, Bomfrey, and immensely intelligent �
� and remember, as it experiences events, as it learns, its intelligence continues to grow, to expand. By the God of the Forge, I cannot imagine how immense that intelligence must be right now.”
If Akzad’s little speech had not motivated Bomfrey and lifted his spirits, it had at least done that for Akzad himself. He was now feeling a little less concerned about the whole situation with Khazum, Greenfield, Pavanir and the Factory Core.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Bomfrey, who, evidently, was still quite anxious. “But if you are wrong, and a man like Pavanir gets his hands on the Core, and somehow bends its mighty powers to his greedy will? Then what, Akzad, then what?”
“It will not come to that,” said Akzad with a frown. “No, it will not.”
But doubts now festered in his mind, and worry began to gnaw at him with its sharp, jagged teeth. Imagining someone with unfettered greed and ambition, someone like King Pavanir, getting control over the Factory Core and making it fight for his own greedy purposes was a terrifying thought. One which Akzad didn’t want to dwell on for too long.
“It is late, Bomfrey,” he said. “We’d better get some rest. We need to go and see Randor early tomorrow, to see how the Core’s battle against the Horde is going. That must be our primary concern right now. Because if the Core fails to contain them, then nothing will matter anymore. Not just the Below World will fall, the Above World will fall too. Everything will fall … it will all be over.”
CHAPTER 31
As the demons took possession of the walls, the Factory Core directed its mechanical units to beat a fighting retreat; there was no point in continuing to try to hold the position now that demons were swarming up the ladders and pouring onto the battlements. There were simply too many adversaries, and to try to fight them off the ramparts with melee combat with the geckoes and spiders would simply result in all of these machines eventually being overrun and ripped to pieces.
The Factory Core had studied many manuals of battle, and in addition to this, many of the gems that gave the Core its life and intelligence contained the souls of war heroes; great warriors and strategists of Men, Dwarves and Elves from past ages. The Factory Core thus understood well the usefulness of a good fighting retreat.
Its super-mind controlled the mechanical units, working them as individuals, each responsible for its own actions, yet working as one. This simultaneous mind-link between all of them was something even the best trained bands of Men, Dwarves or Elves could never hope to achieve.
The mechanical warriors fought off the screaming, howling, madly-attacking demons as they retreated down the stairs that led off the high battlements and towering walls and into the city itself. The Factory Core checked through the eyes of some of the spiders that were near the city gates, and saw that the cave trolls had not yet managed to clear a passage through the pile of rocks it had used to block the gates. So there was still time to retreat in good order and get into position to launch a counter attack, blocking up the streets with the zombie demons.
Those zombie demons may not have been fast or particularly well-coordinated … but their fire-blackened hides were immensely strong, and the weapons the Factory Core had armed them with—dwarven battle axes borrowed from various blacksmiths’ workshops throughout the city, and from a number of army weapons depots—had all been coated with silver, making them very effective against the invaders.
The Core’s strategy was to draw the unsuspecting troops into the narrower streets and alleys, and then flood these roads from the front and back with zombies, essentially cutting off sections of the demon army into little pockets, and dealing with them in this manner.
As the mechanical creatures retreated into these streets, firing their muskets and crossbows as they went, and fighting off demons in close combat with their melee weapons, some of them ended up being swarmed over and overrun by the vicious demons, who would, when enough of them swamped a spider or gecko, flip it over onto its back and rip its legs off. It was a brutally effective means of neutralizing these automated warriors, and as the battle raged on, more and more of them were falling in this manner, being totally overwhelmed and crushed by the waves of attacking demons who were now pouring over the walls and surging into the city.
The mechanical units kept up a steady, methodical retreat, though. Unlike organic soldiers, these metal warriors felt no fear, no dread of injury or death. They simply did their duty fearlessly, efficiently, without slowing down, tiring, or being tempted to flee. Each of them fell only after being utterly flooded by dozens of screaming demons.
The demons, for their part, had lost any semblance of discipline. Now that the battle madness had entered their dim-witted minds, all they cared about was rampaging through the capital and destroying whatever they could lay their claws on. The Factory Core observed as those loons charged in surging red waves of chaos, without a thought that they may be running into a trap.
As they started to fill in the areas in which hordes of zombie demons were hiding in wait, the Core turned its attention to the collective mind of that specific unit. These creatures, these resurrected corpses which were more machine than demon, it controlled like ants. Each individual zombie did not really have its own mind. Rather, it was guided by a hive mind: the super-mind of the Factory Core. Like the mechanical spiders and geckoes, the zombie demons felt none of the debilitating emotions shared by organic beings, like doubt or fear. They only lived to perform their duty … which was to slaughter as many opponents as possible.
The time had come to unleash these new troops. The Factory Core directed the hive mind of the half-living, half-mechanical troops, and they smashed down the doors of the buildings in which they had been biding their time, pouring out in a shambling mass of bodies onto the streets, blocking off both entrances and exits.
The battle-maddened demon invaders were, for a few seconds, completely taken off guard at the sight of these new, very unexpected enemies … or were they even enemies? The demons could not decide. These were their former comrades, demons who had fallen in battle just the day before this one. Yet, now they walked again, lived again, somehow.
The closest of the zombies shuffled over to an invading demon, who stared at the black demon with confusion in his black eyes, rooted to the spot, unable to act because he simply had no idea what was going on. Why was his battle brother—a demon he had personally seen get shot through the head by a spider’s musket—now standing again? And why was he carrying a dwarven axe, and why was his skin glossy black?
So many questions, but no time for answers. With a vicious swing, the zombie buried the edge of its silver-coated dwarven axe in the head of the demon warrior, splitting his skull open like a ripe melon. The other demons watched this for a few moments, frozen and silent … and then they understood what these resurrected demons were, and which side they were fighting on. With a savage roar, they attacked.
Hemmed in on both sides, the pocket of red demons was trapped and outnumbered. They fought viciously against the swarm of zombies who were crushing them like the jaws of a vice from both the front and rear, but found that their sharp claws and teeth—perfect for dismembering each other—were not so effective against the zombie demons, whose blackened skin seemed to have become like a hard shell.
Even though the zombies shuffled around and were far from agile, and could only swing their axes in slow, barely-coordinated attacks, the fact that they were so hard to kill meant that they were soon crushing the pockets of the demons they had isolated.
Grakk’n, who was now inside the city, watched with dismay as these new, surprising foes decimated his troops. Once again, it seemed, the wily machine of the dwarves had foiled his plans to take the city. However, even though rage boiled his blood as sections of his army were being cut off and destroyed by these freaks, who seemed to be pouring like an infestation of cockroaches out of every single building in the front part of the city, he knew that the battle was far from over.
He raced single-han
dedly toward the rear of a pack of zombie demons, whirling his massive sword above his head. Just as the rearmost of the zombies shuffled around at the sound of Grakk’n’s approach, he swung his blade at its neck.
While the zombie demons’ fire-hardened skin may have been an effective shield against claws and teeth, against an edge of blackened dragon bone, it might as well have been wet tissue paper. Grakk’n’s sword took the zombie demon’s head clean off its shoulders, and the creature flopped to the floor, once again lifeless.
He jumped into the mass of black creatures, swinging his weapon around him in massive, devastating arcs, cutting the zombie demons down like a peasant scything through a field of wheat, whooping out savage cries of victory as he smashed his enemies to pieces.
And from a rooftop above him, the Factory Core observed this scene coldly, watching through the eyes of a mechanical gecko. The Core knew now that this demon commander would have to be dealt with … with extreme prejudice. And in its super-mind, a plan to do just that began to form.
CHAPTER 32
The mechanical spider scuttled through the darkness, lighting its way through the dusty catacombs of Ancient Karak with a phosphorous lamp that the Factory Core had built. Karak-Drang was a city-on-a-city; the Karak-Drang that existed today was not actually the original city. The original one—Ancient Karak—had been buried beneath the foundations of the current capital over a thousand years ago.
Few dwarves knew of this fact. They thought that the city in which they lived was the initial settlement, unchanged for thousands of years. The Factory Core, however, in the research it had been conducting, poring over the ancient tomes, had discovered the truth.
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