Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

“Fire!”

Another gout of churning flame spewed from the machine, streaking through the open door before blossoming like a fireball, filling the inn so thoroughly with fire that tongues of orange flame licked out from the upper room onto a balcony overlooking the street. Screaming dwarves, afire from head to foot, came bursting out of the place to sprawl on the roadway, dying in a horrific stench of burned hair and flesh. In moments the massacre was over, the corpses lying in grotesque, blackened shapes. To Brandon they looked more like gnarled old tree stumps than the bodies of dwarves.

“Move out!” demanded the general. He pointed at the captain of a company of light infantry. “You! Take your men down that street to the right. Check every building-kill every dwarf that offers any resistance. The rest of you, follow me!”

Raising the Bluestone Axe, Brandon uttered a guttural battle cry and charged through the still-smoldering corpses of the slain defenders. Hundreds of Tankard Hacksaw’s men followed him, echoing his battle cry with hoarse challenges and vengeful shouts. All had heard of their legion commander’s death at the hands of the black wizard himself, and they intended to show no mercy toward any of Willim’s dwarves.

A pair of dwarves, hiding behind a stack of kegs outside of a tavern, were flushed from cover and bloodily butchered before they could take more than a few halting steps. A little farther on, a detachment of six or eight or Willim’s defenders tried to form a shield wall across the mouth of a narrow alley. The Kayolin dwarves smashed into them with a sharp, brutal charge, the weight of thirty attackers breaking apart the wall so each of the defenders could be quickly cut down from either side or from behind.

More and more, however, the invading troops seemed to be advancing without meeting any organized opposition. The enemy was dwindling somehow. Brandon smashed down the stone door to another inn, shattering the portal with a single blow of the Bluestone Axe. He rushed inside, followed by a dozen of his men, to find a score of dwarf maids and youngsters cowering against the rear wall.

“Where are your warriors?” he demanded, his voice a growl.

“None here, my lord!” cried one of the women, an elderly matron who nonetheless pushed herself to her feet and faced Brandon boldly. “They have all fled to the great plaza or the roadway down to the Urkhan Sea.”

“And good riddance to them!” shouted another, younger maid. “And when you find that bastard, the black wizard, may you cleave his skull with that blue axe!”

Brandon nodded vehemently. His rage still possessed him, a fury of frustration and vengefulness demanding release. But through that haze, he forced himself to remember that the dwarves before him were not his enemies; indeed, their words gave him some hope for the future of the kingdom.

Lowering his head, Brandon turned and ran from the inn, joining the charge that continued down the road. He could tell from the widening street, the vista broadening into a vast cavern before him, that they were nearing the plaza the woman had indicated. His troops were converging from all directions, and they would meet there with a powerful force. Their victory could not be denied.

But all of that paled against the truth of the questions tearing at his heart, his soul, his mind: Where was Gretchan?

And could he possibly find her in time?

Awakened by the violence and killing, Gorathian rose from the magma-fueled furnace of the underworld, once again seeking the vitality of the dwarf world. The beast hungered for blood, for the sheer joy of killing. It had languished long enough in the lava lake of the deep caverns. So once more the rock melted away in the face of the fire dragon’s advance as the creature of Chaos bored a passageway through the bedrock of Krynn.

As it rose, it was drawn to the ongoing battle as a moth is drawn to a flame. It remembered war, and it craved war.

But, too, it remembered the lure of the wizard’s magic, and that caused it to hesitate in its destructive course. It came to a halt in the midst of the solid stone, probing with its nostrils, with all of its senses, seeking that alluring power, that fundamentally throbbing sorcery that had driven it for the past long intervals of its existence.

The wizard was there, somewhere, in the midst of that violent war. That much the fire dragon realized. But where he would be found and how he could be killed before he used his magic to flee remained the great and frustrating questions of the Chaos creature’s awareness. So it sniffed and it pondered and it craved.

And in the midst of its seething meditation, it became aware of another power, a fresh source of great magic, even if it was not the magic of sorcery. Of course, it was warded by the power of a dangerous god, and Gorathian wanted nothing to do with any god.

Still, it was pure, arcane might, and there was nothing that would feed the fire dragon’s hunger more satisfyingly than such power. So Gorathian probed with its senses, wishing to learn more about that new magical presence.

“Why you goin’ to Hillhome?” Gus asked Crystal as they strode along a rocky trail between a pair of rough ridges in the foothills.

“Because it’s my home,” she declared simply. “I haven’t been there for a while, but I’ve decided to go back.”

Ignoring his two girlfriends, who stomped along behind them and repeatedly shot dirty looks at the back of Crystal Heathstone’s fur traveling cloak, Gus strolled along and pondered the situation. In truth, his new companion reminded him a lot of Gretchan, at least insofar as she didn’t try to bash him with a club or stab him with a sword just because he happened to be nearby. Yet, unlike Gretchan, Gus sensed a kind of wistful sadness in Crystal, and he wished he could do something about that. He was glad that he had killed the Klar in order to save her, but he knew that captivity in the hands of the mad dwarf was not the sole problem that had afflicted the gracious dwarf maid.

Of course, his affections had been considerably enhanced that morning, when their new companion had led them to a comfortable roadside inn, only an hour or so from her hidden camp in the woods. There she had produced a steel coin, and the innkeeper, who had at first looked askance at the trio of gully dwarves, had been persuaded to produce a loaf of bread, a pitcher of creamy milk, and even some cooked eggs that Crystal had willingly shared with the three Aghar who had rescued her in the woods.

Apparently she was still kind of lonely, for she made no attempt to shoo the gully dwarves away. Neither did she invite them to keep her close company, but that didn’t stop Gus-and, by extension, the two females who had attached themselves to him like mountain ticks-from traveling along at her heels. The word Hillhome had triggered a vague memory, and Gus scratched his head, trying to tickle out the thought.

It wasn’t until hours later, when they were descending toward a wooded valley, that the connection was finally made. “Hillhome! Gus know Hillhome dwarf!”

“Oh?” Crystal seemed surprised, even a little amused by his revelation. “And who would that be?” she asked.

“Slut Fireforge!” Gus proclaimed proudly. “Him and me was at Patharkas for Big War! Gus won Big War, but Slut help too.”

“Slut Fireforge?” she repeated. “That doesn’t sound-wait, do you mean Slate Fireforge?”

Gus frowned. He didn’t like to be corrected. “Mebbe so,” he admitted. “But Gus call him Slut.”

Oddly, Crystal was laughing. “I’m sure you did,” she said, shaking her head. “But I know Slate, and I imagine he was fairly amused. Would you like to see him again?”

“Sure! Slut big, nice guy. Even share beer with Gus.”