Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

So he took a deep breath. Slooshy still clutched his right arm and Berta his left as he swaggered up the gangplank at the end of the column of soldiers. No sooner had they tumbled over the rail and found a place to huddle on the deck between casks of water and dwarf spirits than the sail dropped with a loud whoomf .

The wind blew steadily, and by the time Gus lifted himself up to peer at the shore, the dry land was at least two and two more long jumps away.

“Facet! Come here!” barked Willim the Black.

“Yes, Master,” came the immediate reply. The apprentice, draped in her silken robe, approached from behind the wizard. Her face expressionless, she stopped two paces from him and bowed deeply.

The wizard stood at his worktable, his face turned toward the far corner of the laboratory. Of course, he didn’t need to direct his attention toward that which he wished to see; he was currently studying the row of bottles along one shelf on the right side of the table. At the same time, he observed the female’s calm obedience and allowed a cold smile to crease his scarred, thin lips.

“Bring me a silver bowl of clean water,” he ordered.

“At once, Master.” The apprentice hurried away and soon returned from the water barrel with the requested bowl.

“Put in on the table. I intend to cast a spell of scrying, but my shoulders are stiff,” Willim said calmly.

Immediately Facet did as she was told and more; once the bowl was resting on the table, she stepped behind the black wizard and began to gently massage his shoulders. Her fingers, as always, seemed to possess an extrasensory perception, a keen insight that allowed them to know exactly where to touch him, where to press, where to stroke. Almost immediately he felt the tension drain from his taut muscles.

He ignored her then, though of course she didn’t cease her ministrations, and turned to concentrate on his spell. He dropped a few crystals of powdered silver into the water and poured in a bit of oil. Finally he muttered the words to a powerful spell.

Immediately the tingle of magic spread through his body, energizing him like a drug. Facet’s touch became even more sensually pleasurable, though of course the magic-user did not allow pleasure to detract from the concentration required for his spell.

As the magic took hold, the water in the bowl, filmed with a thin coating of oil, began to glow. Images shimmered there and Willim couldn’t suppress a frown, for they were images of war. He saw no sign of the fire dragon, which was something of a relief, but instead he noted martial pictures: dwarf troops waging battle against a backdrop of stone, underground. He saw a blue axe flailing and slaying and he flinched.

Then a chill of real terror ran down his spine, and even Facet’s ministrations couldn’t stop his trembling. The image was there, clear and menacing: a three-colored hammer, held high against the outside sky, raised like a talisman of ultimate warning.

“Leave me!” Willim shouted, turning and pushing Facet away with a violent shove. He saw that she had allowed her black robe to fall open while she was massaging him, and that effrontery enraged him further. She tumbled to the ground, shocked and bruised, but she knew him too well to cry out. Instead, she scuttled around the table, pulling her robe closed over her breasts and cowering in the shadows between the table and the potion cabinet.

But Willim had already forgotten her. His whole being was suffused with the terrifying picture of that hammer. He knew that his enemies had created the dread artifact, the only thing in the entire world-besides Gorathian-that he feared.

And he knew, too, that his enemies were coming for him.

The crossing of the sea took only four days, but that was enough time to bring the seasick, frightened, and claustrophobic dwarves almost to the point of mutiny. Conditions aboard the galleons, those ships that had looked so majestic and spacious from the land, proved to be confining and constricting and unsettling in ways that even the subterranean-dwelling dwarves found incredibly stifling. By the third day, half the army was practically in revolt, and only Brandon’s calm assertion that they were only one day away from their destination-whereas it would take three days to turn around and go back to Caergoth-allowed him to calm the men enough to, however impatiently, wait for landfall.

When it came, it was a smudge of brown hill on the horizon and a harbor sheltering a small fishing village. With no wharf available, most of the dwarves had to be rowed to shore in small boats, and that alone was a harrowing enough experience to cause most of them to swear off water transport forever. More challenging still was the debarking of the Firespitters, and in fact, one of the heavy, iron machines toppled into the water and was lost. The other two were laboriously, one at a time, loaded onto hastily constructed rafts and slowly pulled to shore.

But at last the army, without losing a dwarf, had assembled on the southern coast of the Newsea. They were two score miles south of the ancient ruin known as Xak Tsaroth and, by Brandon’s best estimate, about a week’s march north of their first destination: the fortress of Pax Tharkas. They wasted little sorrow in watching the ships hoist sail and head for the north, and instead turned their landlubber eyes southward, seeking the road to their objective in the mountain pass.

The next week of marching took them through terrain that was far more rugged and varied than the monotonous flats of the Solamnic plain. They crossed rugged, flinty ridges that lay like barriers across their path, forged paths between swampy bottomlands, and even skirted a desolate plain where the ghastly mountain known as Skullcap-a permanent scar of the Dwarfgate War-rose into view from the western horizon.

Finally they approached a mountain range, and as the highland’s extent expanded over the course of two full days’ march they realized they were traversing much greater heights, loftier summits, and broader ridges than anything in the familiar Garnet Mountains back home.

“That’s the High Kharolis,” Brandon informed them solemnly. “Beneath that great summit, Cloudseeker Peak, lies Thorbardin itself. And those lesser mountains stand in our path to the North Gate.”

Despite the arduous climbing required, the dwarves were eager to return to a mountainous environment. The marching soldiers swung along easily, as always accompanied by their drums, and the miles fell behind as they climbed along rugged roads, ascending into the heights.

Finally the route became so tortuous that they were forced to narrow the column to single file, following a dusty track in a formation that stretched nearly two miles long, as all of the soldiers of Brandon’s army filed southward through the rugged hill country rising toward the fortress of Pax Tharkas. Brandon himself strode along at the head of the column, setting a brisk pace. It was partly because he wanted the Kayolin Army to make good time and to march in peak condition. Once again his men were hardened, tough, and strong, and it was that strict pace that had toned and sharpened them.

But Brandon had another reason for his haste: he missed Gretchan more than he would ever have thought possible. As they began the seventh day of the march, he hoped they would come into sight of the fortress before dark-but even if the army needed to bivouac one more night on the trail, he had resolved to press on alone, so he could once again hold his beloved dwarf maid in his arms.

Under his watchful eye, and the steady guidance of his two legion commanders and General Watchler, the army had marched at a good pace, starting from the first hour after debarkation on the southern shore of the Newsea. Tankard Hacksaw, commander of the First Legion, marched right at Brandon’s side, with his troops forming the first part of the column. In the middle was the baggage train, a collection of two-wheeled carts pulled by mules or sturdy dwarves, bearing the dried trail provisions that ensured the dwarves didn’t have to take the time to forage for food.