Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

“There must have been a point, though,” the old campaigner suggested grimly. “Even if the purpose is not our own, we were sent here because someone wanted us here.”

“Just to waste our time?” he wondered aloud. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Otaxx agreed.

Fister Morewood, looking perplexed, came up to join them at the water’s edge. “Not a damned sign of a Theiwar anywhere along this road,” he reported. “Anything down here?”

“Not a bit,” Brandon replied. “Where do we go from here?”

“I’m thinking we’d better get out of this road, this tunnel, before we get some unpleasant information,” Morewood suggested.

“You’re right,” Brandon agreed. “Can you start the legions marching back to the plaza? I’ll be along shortly. I want to study this lakeshore a little more.”

“Sure thing,” the legion commander agreed. “Just don’t dawdle.”

The Kayolin dwarf turned and started up the road, a grade that climbed gently away from the water. “All right, you lazy lugs!” he barked to the hundreds of Kayolin dwarves waiting within earshot. “Strap on your helmets and put down your flasks! We’re marching back to the city. Now move out!”

Brandon couldn’t help but smile at the good-natured grumbling of the weary soldiers who, nonetheless, began to follow orders and start back up the four-mile-long road they had just marched down.

But his good humor quickly vanished as he remembered Gretchan’s predicament and considered the fact that he might have brought his men on a wasted mission.

Or was it a trap? He didn’t see how it could be. Sure, the men on the road were vulnerable to attack from the city, but the Tharkadan Legion held the gatehouse and was maintaining a garrison in the square. No army could reach the Kayolin troops, not so long as Tarn Bellowgranite and his legion were posted astride that key route.

Otaxx seemed to be deeply troubled by his own thoughts. He kept looking out over the water, as if the mystery might be solved by something floating on the Urkhan Sea.

“I’m going to head back up to the city,” Brandon said to the old campaigner. “But I’d like you to stay down here and keep an eye on things. Would you do that?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Shortbeard agreed. “Although this whole place smells like a gully dwarf latrine.”

“I’ll leave a company of scouts here as well. I’m going to ask some of these men to try and set up a smithy, see if they can start repairs on the boats. Can you supervise them?”

“Sure. Good luck to you, and I’ll let you know if there’s anything amiss.”

“Thanks.”

Still Brandon didn’t leave, not just yet. Instead, he found himself staring out over the water. Somewhere out there, he knew, was the rocky pile called the Isle of the Dead-once the site of the greatest city in all dwarvendom. He tried to spot it, but the lake was too big, the darkness too intense, for his vision to penetrate that far. Remembering tales of the Urkhan Sea as once it had been, before the Chaos War, he pictured glittering cities lining the rocky shore of the vast, underground lake, lights shining from thousands of windows. Boat traffic had been common back then, which explained the existence of wharves such as the one they stood on and the many others that were positioned all around the shore.

Of course, there was no commerce there anymore; there was not much of anything actually. It saddened him to think of that great age, when Thorbardin had flourished so, and to compare it to the sorry state of the nation as it currently existed. So much of it could be blamed on the Chaos War, he knew, and dwarves never hesitated to do that.

But much of the blame lies with us, ourselves.

He didn’t like to admit that-no dwarf did-but he knew it was true.

Finally, Brandon’s eyes alighted on the captain who had informed him about the boats, and he went over and told him to keep an eye on the wharf as well as set up a temporary forge to repair the boats. He was relieved, at least, that Otaxx would be there to oversee things. Something about that place made him think it needed watching.

Frustrated, melancholy, and very worried about his priestess, Brandon started up the road. He trudged wearily, feeling the hunger, the fatigue, the stultifying exhaustion of so many days of almost constant battle. The victories seemed like tiny, intangible things at such moments, while the challenges still facing him and his army seemed almost insurmountable.

Deeply wrapped in that gloom, he didn’t even notice the commotion ahead of him, not until a breathless courier jogged into view. The dwarf’s face was streaked with sweat, and even more alarming, he smelled of soot and fire.

“What is it?” demanded Brandon. “What’s the news?”

“The Theiwar have attacked from the rear. They’ve captured the Firespitters, General,” the dwarf reported. The veteran warrior’s face was streaked with blood too, Brandon noticed once he saw him up close. The whites of his eyes were like two beacons shining from a murky night, and they shone with a message of real alarm.

“What about the Tharkadan Legion?” the Kayolin general demanded.

“They’re right up here in the tunnel with us, sir. I hear they got the same reports we did, and the king didn’t want to sit around picking his nose-no offense intended, sir-while we were busy killing Theiwar. So it’s all of us, the whole of the Dwarf Home Army. The enemy has us trapped on this road. And they’re pouring fire in from the high end!”

Crystal looked around in awe. She almost had to pinch herself to remember she was returning to the place that had been her home for most of her adult life. Beginning with the shattered ruin of the gatehouse, she had felt a growing apprehension. When she and Tarn had left Norbardin, the place had been a splendid tribute to her husband’s wisdom and foresight, a truly great city that had risen from the terrible wreckage of the Chaos War. Moving through the smoky and soot-stained halls of what had once been an immaculate barracks and into the streets, though, she felt horror and dismay.

She barely recognized a thing.

“This is terrible,” she whispered, half to herself and half to Slate Fireforge. “So much destruction … so much damage.”

“All from the civil war, do you think?” asked the Neidar commander.

“It must be,” she said, pointing to a row of houses, an entire block where the front walls had all been smashed inward. The dwellings revealed were empty, pathetic little cubicles, from which everything of value had long been removed; whatever remained was covered with a thick layer of dust. “That didn’t happen in the last fortnight, certainly.”

“No, it didn’t.” Slate pointed to a once-grand edifice, a broken structure rising at the end of the street they were on. It blocked their view of the central plaza, but from there they could see that the surrounding wall was shattered in many places, and the once-splendid building beyond the wall showed gaping holes in the roof. A crooked, shattered spire of a broken tower rising only a short distance beyond. “What was that?”

“That was Tarn’s-was our -palace,” she said in dismay. “It was a beautiful building, surrounded by ornate columns. That wall was high and straight, with a beautifully carved parapet surrounding it. We had colored banners hanging all along the rampart, with tall spires on the corners. There was a marketplace on each side of the palace, and the merchants thrived at all hours; there were always customers, of course. The palace gate was never closed, and people came and went with complete freedom.”