Douglas Niles - Fate of Thorbardin

She drew a breath, trying to stem the emotions, the grief and sadness, that threatened to choke her voice. In a moment she went on, retrieving the happy memories.

“And the keep-it had a high roof, supported by flying buttresses. It had a slate roof, not because it needed one, but because it looked so beautiful. Now it looks like it was smashed by a meteor shower.”

The gaping hill dwarves continued to advance. They spotted a dwarf watching them from a niche in the broken wall. The fellow was wearing a bright red shirt, and he raised a crossbow as the front of the Neidar column drew close.

“Halt!” he ordered. “And name yourselves!”

“Or what?” Slate retorted belligerently. “You’ll fire your lone arrow at nearly two thousand dwarves?”

“If the alternative is surrendering this palace to the enemies of King Bellowgranite, then yes, I will!” the sentry replied boldly.

“Then there is no need to shoot,” Crystal said, stepping in front of Slate. “For I am the king’s wife, and I bring a force of hill dwarves to aid him in his campaign.”

“Hill dwarves? Here to help the king? Well, that’s different, then-and some good news indeed. Come forward.”

As the Neidar advanced, more than a hundred other dwarves, all wearing that distinctive red tunic, popped into view along the jagged top of the wall. Each wielded a heavy crossbow, and though the sentry held his at ease after Crystal spoke, it looked as if he would not have hesitated to let loose a lethal volley.

“Of course, I might have met you with more than a single arrow,” the archer said with a twinkle in his eye.

Another dwarf in red, older and bearing himself with immense dignity, stepped through the gap in the wall to meet them. He was unarmed, saved for a short sword, but he had the unmistakable air of a warrior, a commander, about him.

“I’m General Watchler,” he said, “of the Kayolin Army. Did you say you are here to assist the king’s cause?”

“Yes!” Crystal said, sensing the tension in the general’s question. “We see that the Tricolor Hammer did its job. But how fares the campaign against Willim the Black?”

“Poorly, up until now,” Watchler replied. “But you just might be the folks to turn the tide. Come here and let me show you what I mean.”

Gus was having a hard time keeping up, the hill dwarves were moving so quickly. He jogged along, chasing the last of the warriors, wishing he were up front close beside Crystal or Slate or someone who could stop and tell him what was going on. Maybe he really had toughened up, as Crystal had said, but climbing was hard . He didn’t really understand why they had climbed up the steep trail and filed along the high ledge next to the deep, steep-walled crevasse.

He had followed loyally, though, as the Neidar army moved through a large, battered room that smelled of smoke and soot and blood. He had gaped at a huge stone door that had been shattered as if by a giant fist. He even spotted many bodies, wearing black leather armor, of dwarves who had apparently been crushed under the weight of the collapsing doors. Many other shapes, black and weirdly twisted like some kind of strange carvings, intrigued him until he looked closer, and with a yelp of alarm, he jumped away.

“Those things bodies!” he exclaimed, wondering what kind of horrible thing had happened to those dwarves that would make them look like half-burned firewood.

Still, he kept pushing forward, ignoring the fatigue and the cramps in his legs and knees that made him really want to sit down for a spell. Instead, he tried to keep the hill dwarves in view, realizing that they were constantly getting ahead of him and his two female tagalongs-very far ahead of them.

Next they had proceeded down a long tunnel, a roadway that descended from the mountain gateway toward an unknown destination, with the little Aghar, his legs and lungs pumping, plunging after the main body. It wasn’t until the hill dwarves broke into a run and spilled out of the tunnel and Gus emerged after them into a wide cavern that he skidded to a stop and stared in surprise and wonder at the scene spread out before him.

It was the city! It was dotted with buildings, crossed with a regular network of streets. Some of the structures reached all the way to the ceiling, but enough of them were lower in height that he could see most of the way across the place. The roads were wide and straight, and one huge structure was in plain view; Gus recognized the former palace of King Jungor Stonespringer in the center of the city.

“Hey!” he cried in delight to no one in particular. “We got to Thorbardin! This big-time city! Called Norbardin!”

He watched the tail of the hill dwarf column as it vanished around a corner of the wide avenue before him. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted two tiny specks and decided it was a good time to sit and wait for his girls, who had fallen behind their hero and leader. Smugly he realized that he’d been able to outrun at least them!

There was a bench nearby, set up on a little balcony right where the road departed from the tunnel and entered the city proper. From there, a downward-sloping ramp provided a route to the city streets, but he didn’t feel the need to go down there, not just yet.

Instead, he settled himself there with a sigh of comfortable pleasure. The place was higher than most of the buildings, and as such, it offered an excellent view of the subterranean cavern. At one point, it had been an outdoor serving area for a traveler’s inn, though Gus noticed the door to the inn was spiked shut and, to judge from the dust over everything, the place hadn’t been open for business for quite some time. Gus didn’t mind, actually, since, from what he remembered of Thorbardin, if the inn had been open, either the proprietor or some of the customers would have, at the very least, picked up any gully dwarf who dared to sit down there and pitched him right back onto the street.

Or over the balcony, he reflected with a gulp, stepping up to the railing to see that the floor of the city proper was a very, very long way-at least two feet-below him. Certainly the fall was far enough to kill him, if he should be so careless as to stumble. He sat back down on the bench.

“Hey, you bluphsplunging doofar! Why you run away?” demanded Slooshy, finally catching him and coming to sit on one side of him.

A panting Berta came right behind and firmly sat on his other side. “Yeah! Berta wants come too!”

“You girls shut up now. Gus watching Thorbardin. Gus back home! You can stay, or you can go,” he added pointedly. “Gus not care.”

“Oh yeah? Well Berta not care neither! Berta goin’ back to Patharkas!”

Slooshy snorted. “Not too soon, Berta go back Patharkas! Go now!”

But Gus wasn’t listening. His eyes were drawn to a spectacular scene across the city. He saw billowing balls of flame and thick clouds of oily smoke rising into the air.

“Girls hush mouths!” he barked, his tone so unusually commanding that his two companions obeyed. “Look!” he said, pointing at the conflagration. “We watchin’ the war!”

The three Aghar stared, open mouthed, as the scene unfolded.

The Neidar troops had formed into two wings, and somehow Gus understood, even without knowing the plan, that half the hill dwarves were commanded by Slate Fireforge, the other half by Axel Carbondale. The troops flowed around the shattered edifice of the palace, which Gus recognized as the place where, fortuitously-long, long past it seemed-he had found the Redstone.

And speaking of “red,” he counted many soldiers wearing shirts of that same color and remembered that the red ones had come all the way from Kayolin. The two armies were fighting together, just like Crystal and Gretchan had wanted!