Douglas Niles: Fate of Thorbardin

Brandon scrambled up to the top of a flat boulder behind the front rank of Kayolin dwarves. From that vantage, he observed the melee and determined that Sergeant Hacksaw was handling his company skillfully. When the horax pressed on the left, pushing a bulge into the shield wall, Tankard dispatched a dozen dwarves from the reserve. They pushed back, stabbing and killing the arachnoids that threatened to break through, then shoved alongside their comrades until the company was once more secure.

They continued to advance steadily until, behind the fight, Brandon saw the mountain of eggs, pale white spheres as big as a dwarf’s torso, the whole pile looming nearly to the top of the massive cavern. At the very summit sat the queen, hideous and bloated, staring about with her massive, multifaceted eyes. She rose up on her thick, segmented legs, though the vast swell of her abdomen still rested atop the pile. She herself was no threat as a fighter, yet when she spread her mandibles and uttered a keening shriek, the teeming horde of her soldiers were spurred to charge with added intensity.

Over the queen’s head was a shadowy hole in the ceiling of the cavern, and Brandon’s eyes kept flashing to that aperture. Up there was the tunnel from which he had rescued Gretchan. He waited for some sign of movement there.

For some time the battle raged without clear advantage. The dwarves pressed, and the horax swarmed, the line moving a few feet forward or back in different places. More of the Kayolin warriors fell, gashed or sliced by a hooked claw or scything mandible, and the wounded were pulled back and, often enough, salved and saved, while more and more reinforcements from the dwindling reserve rushed forth to join the fray.

Finally, Brandon heard an extra-piercing shriek from the queen. She reared up on top of her mound of eggs, forelegs slashing toward the hole in the ceiling over her head. The nozzle of a great iron machine appeared there, as if on cue, and before the queen could strike at it, a stream of liquid shot downward, showering the bloated horax and spilling down the mountain of hideous eggs.

In the next instant, that stream of shimmering liquid-Brandon knew it was lantern oil-erupted into flames. The Firespitter had arrived!

A dazzling blossom of fire surged down the surface of the egg pile, engulfing the queen and spuming in the middle of the cavern into a searing ball of fire. The heat swept outward immediately, followed by a cloud of thick, black smoke.

“Fall back!” shouted Brandon, his voice a bellow that rose above even the thunderous chaos in the big cavern. Oil continued to spill onto and coat the eggs, reaching all the way to the floor and spreading outward in a burning slick. The eggs crackled and sizzled, bursting open as the pile shriveled and contracted. The horax nearest the flames shrieked and fled, propelled by instinctive terror that, as often as not, caused them to impale themselves upon the waiting awlspikes.

Brandon knew that Fister Morewood’s company, the operators of the Firespitter, wore gauze masks as some protection against the choking smoke. Even so, they would be falling back as well, after leaving the machine engaged so it continued to trickle flammable oil onto the inferno raging below. The fire grew hotter and larger, billowing outward, carrying the sickening stench of burned bugs with the soot and the grit of the oil smoke.

Brandon and Tankard’s dwarves, down on the floor, were forced to retreat in the face of the billowing smoke, but even so they coughed and gagged as the air grew thick. Finally they withdrew in a sprint, leaving the depths of the hive to burn, cook, and die. Even in the intense heat, the withdrawal was orderly, however, with each of the wounded aided by a pair of companions and a steadfast rearguard, eyes tearing against the acrid smoke, edging carefully backward, awlspikes raised, shields ready to block any last, desperate attack that might emerge from the egg chamber.

And with the eggs died the queen and her warriors, until the threat of the horax, ever a scourge of Kayolin, became a charred footnote in the history of dwarf war.

Somewhat south of the Newsea, in a forest of scrubby pine, spindly trees clawed their way upward from dry, sandy soil. Marshes, ponds, and a few sluggish streams dotted the landscape, but most of the ground rose high enough that the water had drained away. In one of those places, a lone dwarf maid had set about making camp.

“One thing about a dry pine forest,” Gretchan Pax remarked drolly. “There’s never any shortage of firewood.”

The fact that she was speaking to her dog troubled her not in the least. In fact, when she thought about it, the priestess acknowledged that she spent a great deal of time voicing prayers to Reorx, who was usually nowhere to be seen. Against that backdrop, her dog was a much more congenial-not to mention tangible-conversation partner. After all, he was right there, flopping lazily on the ground at her feet.

She tossed another limb onto the fire and watched as it crackled loudly, fueling the blaze enough that sparks were sent showering skyward. An experienced camper, Gretchen had previously cleared the dry needles and branches from a wide space around her fire, so there was no chance of the blaze spinning out of control.

It was not the fire that worried her, not there, not that night. Nevertheless, she threw a couple more branches into the blaze and settled back to scratch Kondike, the great, black dog that was her conversation partner, between the ears atop his broad, flat head. The animal huffed contentedly, but his flopped ears perked slightly upward. His brown eyes flashed as he shifted his head, and she could see his black nostrils flaring gently as he smelled the air, seeking some telltale spoor that might be carried by the faint breeze.

Leaning back, Gretchan tried to let the familiar presence of a wilderness camp surround and soothe her. She was a very beautiful woman, by dwarven or human or even elven standards. Her golden hair flowed down to her waist, and even after days on the trail, it shone with a coppery sheen as she loosed her braid. Her blue tunic fit snugly across her buxom torso, and leggings of the same color encased her shapely legs. Soft moccasins protected her feet so comfortably that even though she was done walking for the day, she felt no need to remove them.

Even so, she found it hard to relax entirely. Gretchan couldn’t figure out why she was so worried and preoccupied. She had been traveling down a rutted cart track, leading away from the coast, which gradually meandered into the hill country. Before choosing a campsite, she’d broken away from the trail, making her way into the trackless woods for nearly a mile. With her usual care, she’d covered her passage, so even if anyone had been following her down the road, which was unlikely in that wilderness, they’d have a hard time tracing her path into the bush.

She’d made camp in a pleasant vale. A shallow creek nearby provided her with fresh water and a couple of fat trout for supper. To the west, the trees opened slightly, revealing the glimmering surface of a small lake; she’d spent a contented hour watching the beautiful reflections as the sun had set. Her camp was far enough back into the trees that no glow of her fire would have been visible from the lake, even if anyone had been there.

Yet it wasn’t some wayward logger or even roaming band of highwaymen who worried her. She piled more dried pine logs onto her fire, watching as the flames crackled nearly as high as her head. The tops of the trees surrounding her camp were brightened by the light, a far-from-subtle declaration of her presence. But the light, the heat, even the smells of her cooking fish, were not the kinds of clues that would give her away, of that she was certain.