Markus Heitz - The Fate of the Dwarves

Tungdil grimaced. “That doesn’t sound like the man who brought me up,” he muttered. “I’ve no reason to doubt you, my friend. Something in the past must have contaminated him with evil. Perhaps the source that awakened him?”

Ireheart wiped the pearly tears away. They melted in his fingers. “No one knows. You’re the only one who would dare take up arms against him. You, and maybe the Emperor Aiphaton.”

“The High Pass-is it open?”

“He closed it up after the black-eyes from the south marched through. He didn’t want to let too many of Tion’s monsters in, I suppose,” said the dwarf dismissively. “Are we sticking to your plan, Scholar? Or have you thought of another way to defeat an adversary like him so that we can force him to serve us?”

Tungdil did not answer. He stared straight ahead at the hut. “Someone’s expecting us,” he said quietly. “I wonder why they haven’t got a fire going.”

Ireheart’s eyes widened in anticipation. “Here we go! You think there are some footpads waiting to ambush us?” Secretly he was wondering how Tungdil could have spotted the enemy. The wind was blowing away from the hut, there were no tracks in the snow and he himself would have heard the tiniest of sounds in the stillness. He supposed it was down to the constant experience of battle sharpening his friend’s senses. He got ready to wield his crow’s beak, but Tungdil motioned him not to.

“I don’t know how many they are. We’ll act as though we haven’t seen anything. That way he, or they, will think we’re an easy target,” he suggested.

“Because if they have crossbows they could shoot us out of our saddles. I get it,” said Ireheart, pretending to be checking the buckles on the harness. “I hope the place is full of robbers,” he said. “Ho, this’ll be fun!”

“Not much fun for whoever’s going to have to fight us.” Tungdil patted his befun’s neck. “Shall we have a bet?”

“No, not this time,” said Ireheart with a grin.

The Outer Lands,

Seventy-six Miles Southwest of the Black Abyss,

Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle

The oddly assorted dwarf-pair continued to ride toward the apparently deserted hut.

It was a mystery to Ireheart how Tungdil had sensed someone was lying in wait. He squinted over to his friend, looked ahead and shifted in the saddle.

They were thirty paces from the hut now and there was no sign of anyone.

“Are you sure, Scholar?” Ireheart enquired, laughing out loud as if they were telling each other jokes; that should fool anyone watching them. He saw that a couple of the runes on his friend’s dark armor were glowing.

There was a smile on Tungdil’s lips. “You’ll see. Get ready.”

“What if it’s just some innocent travelers?”

“Sitting in the cold? Travelers who haven’t stepped outside for orbits?” a disdainful Tungdil retorted.

“They…” Ireheart did not know what to say. Whatever he came up with made no sense at all.

Their animals halted some way off from the cabin and the dwarves dismounted.

“And now?” Boindil wanted to know, slipping his pony’s reins over a post. He didn’t tie them in case they needed to leave in a hurry. “Do we storm in?”

“No,” said Tungdil firmly, drawing Bloodthirster. “Go and knock.” He grinned and tapped on the head of Ireheart’s crow’s beak. “With that.”

“Good idea! Off we go!” Ireheart laid his pipe on the ground near the door so that it wouldn’t get damaged in the fighting. He took his faithful weapon and smashed it against the door. The lock splintered away from the wood and the door flew open so violently that the hinges broke off. It crashed to the floor.

Ireheart stormed in with a roar-and stared at the empty tables and benches; it was icy cold in the hut and there was no sign that anyone was or had recently been there.

“Well, then,” he muttered, disappointedly. “Hey, Scholar! Did your senses fool you? Come and see!”

Behind him all was quiet.

Boindil turned round, but Tungdil had disappeared. “What, by Vraccas, is happening now?” he thundered, catching a noise at his back. He whirled round, crow’s beak raised high. “Scholar?”

He moved carefully into the room, one step at a time.

He checked the fireplace for ashes, the wooden floor for footprints. Not a single trace.

“It’s the spirits of the mountain haunting us,” he told himself silently. His gaze fell on a lonely dried sausage hanging above the stove. “Scholar? Tell me where you are? I don’t want to clobber you by mistake.”

Ireheart moved cautiously around the corner to the cooking stove. There was a thick layer of grease on it. No meals had been cooked there recently.

The string the sausage hung on, suspended from a rafter, made a rustling noise. The dwarf, surprised, noted there was no obvious draft in the cabin, but the string swung forward and backwards.

If he looked closely he could see the ceiling boards move slightly, and he grinned. That’s where the rat is hiding! Whoever was waiting for them had crept up to the hayloft, to give the dwarves a false sense of security.

“Scholar?” he called again, before leaping onto the stove and hacking through the ceiling boards with his crow’s beak. He jumped up and pulled at the handle with all his strength until the planks gave way.

Dried grass fell into the room, showering Boindil; dust blurred his vision. But he thought he spied a movement in the hay. Certain that Tungdil would have made himself known if it were him, he struck out without mercy.

His blow was parried, metal hitting metal. Suddenly the crow’s beak was wrenched aside and Ireheart needed all his strength to hang on to his weapon.

Surrounded by showers of drizzling hay and dust he tried another attack on his opponent, who still was only visible as a silhouette. Judging from the size it must be-a dwarf!

“Scholar, is it you?” he asked, to be on the safe side, holding back for a second.

A mistake.

A very narrow blade, more like a finger-slim iron rod, appeared in front of him and Boindil was only just able to swivel his torso to the right to avoid being stabbed through the chest with the sharpened point. But it found its way through the material of his padded tunic, hitting his collarbone. Intense pain flashed through him.

Ireheart growled in rage, and the weapon was withdrawn. He felt his blood trickling warm from the wound, but realized the injury was relatively harmless. His shoulder and arm still worked and he could breathe without difficulty.

Angrily he grabbed the handle of his crow’s beak again and jumped through the hay to attack. He circled round, waving the weapon; some time soon he was bound to hit something. “Don’t hide, you coward!” he shouted, stepping out of the cloud of straw and dust. He coughed, his eyes streaming, then saw a figure by the door.

“Halt! Stay where you are!” He raced after it, following the unknown figure into the open air.

But once outside in the snow he saw that the attacker had completely vanished.

“How, by Tion’s ghastly-” and then something struck him on the back of the head. His helmet took most of the force of the blow, but it was enough to make him giddy. “Yes, sneak up on me from behind; you can do that, can’t you?” he raged, and a red veil laid itself over his already restricted sight. “Ho, stand and fight!” Battle-fury was about to overwhelm him.

The enemy was back at the door. He wore a close-fitting leather helmet with decorations of rivets and silver wire. His body was protected by dark leather armor with ornate tionium plates and his legs were concealed behind a skirt of iron discs. It looked like the kind of armor a thirdling would make.