by John Dalmas
* * *
A great raven had given the report to the King in Silver Mountain. The king had given him one in return, which the bird relayed to the entrance of the Great Northern Copper Lode. Production there was not what it had been a century earlier. But still there were more than three hundred adult male dwarves within a five-hour speed march of the head of the pass, and as many more within nine hours. The speech of message gongs sounded throughout the networks of drifts, dwelling areas, and utility and connecting tunnels, inspiring swift but organized activity.
* * *
Shortly after noon the next day, the lead battalion approached a third suspension bridge. There the river was a relatively modest stream. The road was cut into the south side, forty or fifty feet above the river, and the gorge walls, though still precipitous, were not so high as before. Clearly they were near the head of the pass.
The scouts had already crossed the bridge when their trumpeter blew a warning peal: danger!
It was a signal to more than the army's commanders. Within seconds, a swarm of crossbow darts hissed down from the opposite rim. Soldiers fell, along with voitar, horses, cattle. Nor did it seriously abate after the first volley. The dwarf physique is ideal for stirrup-cocked crossbows, providing a rate of fire not so inferior to that of an ordinary bow skillfully used. And their accuracy was excellent. Soldiers and animals panicked, filling the air with screaming, whinnying, bawling, and shouted curses. And trumpet blasts, which stopped the rearward battalions where they were. The panicked cattle were especially dangerous because of their horns. A number of men and horses were crowded off the edge of the road, to fall to the broken rocks along the river's edge.
Until the whole army could stop and turn around, there was no place to go except ahead. The first unit of the command battalion was the prince's company of mounted rakutur. Without conferring with Chithqôsz, General Klugnak ordered them to charge, to take and hold the bridge. They charged.
As if the charge were another signal, a barrel-sized stone started down from the gorge top, rolling and bounding to the road, where it killed two men, squashing one of them. It hadn't yet landed when others started down, then still others.
All remaining order dissolved. The men who could, crowded against the gorge wall, hoping the stones would land farther out, as most did. For two or three minutes the bombardment continued on the lead battalion. Then it stopped, only to begin farther down the column a few minutes later.
Between the assault of boulders and crossbow darts, the only voitik eyes that had followed the charging rakutur were Klugnak's. He watched the lead squads make it across the bridge without drawing fire. Then a swarm of darts slammed into them, and on those jammed up on the bridge behind them. The bridge span began to sway from side to side, as wounded and panicked animals reared, trying to escape. Some got their forelegs over the hand line, and overbalancing, fell to the rocks and water below. On the far side a block of stone—half a ton or more—struck the top of a bridge pier. The upper part of the pier shattered, releasing the great ringbolt that held a suspension cable. The bridge span fell sideways, dumping horses and men into the gorge. A few rakutur held on, dangling from the hand lines and targeted by sharpshooters.
That was the last that Klugnak saw. A block somewhat smaller than most, perhaps a hundredweight, struck and killed him, instantly and messily. Chithqôsz stood five feet away, flattened against the cliff, his eyes pinched shut. He saw none of it. Then his communicator gripped his arm and pulled him back down the road.
The lead battalion was a shambles. Although many were dead, a large majority had survived, but their morale had been demolished. More by the crashing rocks than by crossbow bolts, though the latter had caused most of the casualties. And the way ahead was destroyed. The army's only option was to get back downstream, out of the gorge. They'd taken something more than two and a half days to get where they'd gotten. If asked, they'd have said a day and a half would get them back out.
* * *
The entire dwarf attack had been concentrated on the first two battalions in the column, but word passed swiftly backward. Within two hours, the final battalion in the ten-mile-long column had heard what had befallen the first, a report enriched with exaggerations. By then, all of them had seen the two dead dwarves lying by the gatepost of their barricade, their beards plaited in war braids.
Now the legend felt real.
Meanwhile the command lines had begun to function. The rear battalion became the lead battalion, and its voitik commander sent mounted scouts out "ahead," back the way they'd come. It was downhill, and the scouts rode briskly. At length they rounded a bend from which they could see the guard station—and the second suspension bridge. They stopped, staring. Its oaken span had been burned; its cables hanging loosely in sagging arcs. Feeling ill, they rode down to it and looked long, then started back to report.
* * *
The voitik colonel commanding the 4th Infantry Regiment had crowded and intimidated his way past the twenty-two hundred officers and men of his command, to the new "head of the column." Any voitu was intimidating to hithar, and the colonel more than most. He was nearly as tall as the crown prince, and for a voitu burly, 320 pounds. And a magnificent runner, where there was room to run.
When he saw the ruined bridge, he didn't waste time swearing. First he ordered his trumpeter to call the army to a halt, and his communicator to send back the reason. Then he examined the situation more closely, and gave other orders. Not far upstream, a brawling tributary entered the gorge from a hanging ravine, tumbling fifty feet down a stairstep falls. The colonel sent a team of engineering troops, equipped with axes, struggling up the difficult slope. They were to cut trees—pines so far as possible—fifteen inches or so in diameter. Drag and slide them down to the stream, and float them over the falls. Squads below the falls were detailed to intercept them, and pull them onto the bank. Horses would drag them to the road, and down it to a relatively quiet stretch of river, not far upstream of the bridge piers. There, rope from the engineer wagons would be used to tie some of them together, end to end, in a string along the riverbank. They were to build a small raft at the upstream end. When securely tied together, and the downstream end anchored to the shore, the raft would be launched into the current, ridden by men. The colonel didn't volunteer to be one of them. The current should swing the chain of logs out to lodge on the far bank, where the men were to anchor it.
The whole process was to be repeated, and the two chains of logs fastened together side by side, with wagon planks spiked to the logs. The army would then have a narrow bridge. Unstable, wet and slippery, perhaps, but a bridge.
That was the theory. The colonel's engineers, all of them human, were not as confident. But they kept their mouths shut. After his log cutters had disappeared upslope into the forest, the colonel sent word of the situation to Chithqôsz, via his communicator. Chithqôsz started back at once along the stalled ten-mile column.
The first object to come down the falls was a dead soldier, soon to be followed by others. Grim and angry, the colonel sent up another team of log cutters, this time preceded by a company of infantry to protect them. Soon logs began coming down the falls. The colonel decided there'd only been a few of the enemy, probably those sent to destroy the original bridge. And they'd slipped away when they saw the infantrymen with their crossbows and swords.
On the other hand, they may have heard what the colonel had not: distant thunder over the western slope of the mountains.
* * *
The storm first struck what had been the lead battalion. They'd seen the storm clouds, and over the river noise had heard their rumbling, so they were not taken totally by surprise. An onslaught of hail and icy rain swept them, with swirling wind, blinding flashes, crashes of undelayed thunder. The troops were soaked in the first seconds. Hail fell for only four or five minutes, but the extreme rainfall did not slacken for thirty. And when it did, it was only to a heavy, steady downpour.
It seemed
to Chithqôsz he'd never seen it rain so hard. With his orderly and his bodyguard, he picked his way among the miserable soldiers huddled and shivering in the road. Hundreds of new rivulets poured down the side of the gorge in miniature waterfalls. Within half a mile he came to one of the tributaries, previously small. It was already storm-swollen, surging from its ravine.
Below it he saw no further casualties, and wondered if the storm had driven their assailants to cover. If so, it might prove a life saver. At about five miles he wasn't so sure. A new squall line had passed over them, and he'd never realized that water could be so deafening, short of a major cataract. The side streams had swollen beyond recognition, and the river itself was a raging torrent. Close ahead it had flooded a stretch of road that before had been six or eight feet above the water. It was impossible to go farther downstream.
Then, loud as the river was, it took on a new tone—a booming and rumbling that was not thunder.
Here and there were trees along the margins of the road, mainly on the uphill side. Abruptly his bodyguard grabbed the prince, manhandled him to a large hemlock, and shouted unheard words in his face. Then grabbing him, turned him to face the tree, and boosted him. Chithqôsz realized the rakutu wanted him to climb.
It was a thick-boled tree, but well equipped with dead branches, and gripping them, Chithqôsz began to climb. When he paused, ten feet up, his bodyguard shoved him, and he climbed again; the rakutu would not let him stop. The booming grew louder, more alarming, and he no longer needed urging.
At twenty feet he saw it: a wall of water ten feet high, carrying at its front a crest of fallen trees, like battering rams. Men were swept off the road and disappeared. Chithqôsz realized now what the booming was—great boulders carried rolling and bounding downstream by the torrent. One struck his tree a heavy blow,: the shock almost dislodging him, and for a moment he feared the hemlock would be torn from its roothold. Swiftly the water climbed the trunk, and panicking, Chithqôsz began to scramble upward again, into green branches, pursued by the water.
He spent the evening and night there, the rain never stopping, though gradually it slowed. Exhaustion and hypothermia weakened the prince, and long before midnight he'd have dropped into the river, had it not been for his bodyguard. The rakutu somehow got out of his own breeches and used them to tie the prince to the tree. Then, clinging to the trunk with powerful arms and hands, the half-breed jammed a broad shoulder under the prince's rear, for support.
Numb with cold, Chithqôsz slipped into a sort of sleep, dreaming, but always aware of the rain. Were he not tied to the tree, he'd have fallen. At some point he became aware that his bodyguard was no longer there.
Eventually the rain nearly stopped, and although he couldn't see it, the water level had dropped somewhat. It seemed to him he was alone in the gorge, his whole army drowned, carried away. He was sure he would die.
* * *
He was wrong on both counts. Dawn thinned the darkness. The river was less loud, and he heard shouts! Then the sun came up! The sun! Sections of the road had remained above the flood. Men had retreated to them. Others, where the slope allowed, had scrambled up out of the gorge. The base of his tree became visible, then the road surface beside it. With his dagger he cut the breeches that held him in place. Then, with exaggerated care, he climbed unsteadily down from the tree.
He was shivering with cold and shock. Other voitar found and fed him, and together they worked their way down the gorge. In places the road was still under water, and they waded, or waited. Late in the day they came to the ruined bridge. Some soldiers had crossed on the deck cables, holding on to the hand lines. Others had butchered horses and cows, and lacking dry wood, were eating the meat raw. Many were coughing, harsh hacking coughs rooted in shock and hypothermia.
Using his communications aide, a colonel had reached the hive mind, and reported the catastrophe to the crown prince's headquarters, then to the brigadier left in command on the Scrub Coast.
Meanwhile they ate, stashed raw meat in their packs, and took their turns crossing on the cables.
Two days later, coughing, wheezing, wobbling, sweating with fever, Prince Chithqôsz emerged from the gorge. A remarkable percentage of the troops who emerged were similarly ill. Someone had ordered camp set up near the stone dock, with fires and crude lean-tos. The weather was clear, the nights cold, even frosty. They ran out of the meat they'd brought with them. Many died of pneumonia.
A relief column arrived from the coast. Ships from Balralligh came up the river channel through the great swamp, and loaded men at the dock.
The magnitude of the losses in the gorge would not be sorted out for another week. Nearly six thousand men were missing or known dead.
And of course, the army had a new enemy, though it occurred to no one that their significance would go beyond this one encounter.
* * *
Many of the bodies snatched away by the flood were swept out to sea by the current. There, some were taken by sharks and other marine scavengers. Many were carried along the coast by offshore currents, then deposited by waves on the beach, to be scavenged by an assortment of beach fauna, from gulls to vultures, crabs to possums.
One very long corpse, face down in the sand, was examined curiously by a fish crow. Earlier scavengers had reduced the clothing to shreds, the body to bones and cartilage. Lying beneath the ribcage was a shiny stone—a blue crystal, round and polished, about the size of a hickory nut with the husk on. The fish crow walked around the ribcage, looking for a way to get at the stone.
Circling above, a great raven watched, large as a vulture but incomparably more intelligent. Deciding to investigate, it swooped down. Complaining, the fish crow flew off a few yards and waited.
The great raven grasped the rib cage with its large powerful beak and tugged, tugged, and tugged again. Then reaching, it picked up the stone and flew away with it.
PART FIVE
An Early Winter
Charisma is spiritual, but at the same time it is an artifact of being incarnate.
In the case of Curtis Macurdy, nearly all the variables, including an imposing body, predisposed him to strong charisma. Before his first transit of the Oz Gate, it was not conspicuous. Afterward, almost every experience strengthened it, culminating with his victory at the Battle of Ternass, the defeat of the elder Quaie, and the negotiation of peace. All within a few days.
Afterward he retreated somewhat from that charisma, particularly during his return to Farside. But when he exercises it, he is difficult to resist.
This guarantees neither his success nor his survival. Certainly not in conflict with Crown Prince Kurqôsz, who apparently is also charismatic, and has far greater resources. But it will enable our friend to forge alliances, and to contend.
From a brief conversation between
Vulkan and Lord Raien Cyncaidh,
before Macurdy's departure from Duinarog
29 Reunion
A great raven receives its first name when fresh from the egg. After leaving the nest, it commonly renames itself or is renamed by others, a process sometimes repeated over the decades. The ancient bird with whom the King in Silver Mountain wished to speak, had come to be called Old One. The great ravens of the east admired Old One more than any other, and though he had no formal authority, they deferred to him.
When a dwarf king wanted to communicate with the species as a whole—perhaps twice a century—he did so through the most respected of them. And Finn Greatsword wanted very much to communicate with them. Enough that he came out into daylight because Old One wouldn't go into the mountain.
The great ravens flew widely and saw much, and they had the hive mind. Thus Old One knew things about what had happened in the gorge that Finn Greatsword did not. Nonetheless the bird listened patiently and with interest to the king's description. And when the dwarf had finished, added for him what the great ravens knew, but not the dwarves. "There was carrion enough to fatten us all," he finished, "right down to the sand c
rabs. To the gulls it was paradise.
"But all that is in the past." He stopped then, waiting for the dwarf king to tell what he wanted without being asked. Unlike many great ravens, Old One was always courteous. Even when being blunt, he put things respectfully.
"Aye. Now it's time to look to the future. Ye know, of course, of the human called the Lion of Farside. And what he accomplished in Tekalos and the north."
"We do. Including what he did to become 'dwarf friend.' It is in our hive mind. One of us was his companion then."
The king nodded. "He has returned, riding about on a great boar now. I'm sure ye know that too. It's even told he fought a duel with a troll, and called down lightning from the sky to win it. He's visited the kings of all the Rude Lands, and the emperor in Duinarog. And myself, in the Mountain."
He paused, to give Old One a chance to comment. "Indeed!" the bird said. He'd heard a bit about the travels, but not their purpose. The king went on. "He told of a dream he'd had, that warlike sorcerers would come across the Ocean Sea with a great army. And that if it came to pass, he might call on the kingdoms to drive them out.
"And it has. It has. With two invader armies, including the one we drove from the gorge. But the larger one's captured much of the Eastern Empire. I suppose ye know that, too."