Markus Heitz - The Fate of the Dwarves

“What do you know: A dwarf-hater! So what brings you here?” Boindil wiped his eyes, then saw his pipe under the enemy’s feet. Trampled and broken. “Look at that! You moron! How am I going to smoke now?” He clenched his teeth and snorted with fury. “It doesn’t matter. I know who’s going to smash you.”

Tungdil appeared above them on the roof, Bloodthirster in his right hand. An impressive figure, Ireheart had to admit. “Something much more important,” Tungdil called down. “How did he get through the Brown Mountains and past the fourthlings? We’ll have to find out and stop the gap before others find it.”

“Wait, Scholar. I’ll put a few sharp questions to him!” Boindil raised the crow’s beak. “That’s what this is for!” He dashed up to the dwarf, who bore a round shield in one hand and a weapon like a sword in the other. The base of the sword was thick to withstand heavy blows, then the blade thinned out to form a slender point, ideal for striking through gaps in an opponent’s armor. “I’ll break your rods in half!” he promised with a roar, turning inwards on the attack to make his strike impossible to parry.

The thirdling, however, was not going to place himself in the path of a crow’s beak strike. He leaped to one side and lifted the arm that held the shield. Boindil noticed far too late that something was being thrown at him.

A cloud of black powder exploded over him and he tumbled straight into it. His eyes smarted and streamed. It hurt to breathe now and he was coughing badly, unable to take in any air.

His battle-fury was inflamed now and he lashed about blindly, but his strength was dwindling and he soon collapsed, panting, into the snow.

The madness left him, and the snowy whiteness melted under the warmth of his body, washing the sting out of his eyes. When he lifted his head he could see again. He spat. The saliva was black, like the snow he was lying on.

Tungdil and the unknown fighter were locked in combat, blades clashing repeatedly. The mountains sent the sound back as an echo as the two of them circled around in a lethal dance. Their whirling movements and maneuvers were nothing like those seen in conventional fighting. Ireheart had never seen anything of the kind before.

For Boindil it was as if two brothers were fighting. In their black suits of armor they were so similar that it was only their weapons that distinguished them.

Tungdil’s adversary had taken quite a beating. His shield was cut to shreds and the tip of the strange sword was missing. His armor hung open in places. Blood trickled out, red drops falling onto the snow.

Ireheart pushed himself up onto his feet. Gasping for breath and groaning, he raised the crow’s beak. “Wait, Scholar! I’m coming!” he called, stumbling forward. “That skirt-wearer has got something coming to him from me!”

Tungdil took a strike on his armor, letting the blow slip past Bloodthirster. When the iron met the tionium there was a yellow flash of lightning and the enemy cried out. He had been forced to let go of his weapon; the sword fell and vanished, hissing, into the snow, sending up steam.

The unknown warrior withdrew three paces and lifted his left hand, uttering an unintelligible word-it sounded like the language of the alfar-from inside the helmet, and all the runes on Tungdil’s armor lit up, bright as the sun! Boindil’s friend disappeared for a moment in a sea of dazzling rays.

Ireheart shielded his eyes with his hand and ran towards the enemy. “Let’s be having you, you fiend!” But when he reached the place where his adversary had stood there was only a footprint leading away. Has he jumped over the top? The tracks went over the edge of a steep slope, almost a sheer drop.

Far below he could make out a figure tumbling and somersaulting toward the valley before pulling out the damaged shield and sitting on it to sail down the mountainside at high speed on the icy snow. Round about him the drifts were starting to slide. An avalanche was going to accompany the thirdling to the valley floor.

“Ho! Skirt-wearer! Tion’s not going to be on your side for much longer!” he shouted happily after the fleeing dwarf. “The White Death can have you, as far as I’m concerned!” Boindil waited until he saw the snow swallow the figure up.

He turned back to Tungdil with a grin on his face. His friend was a few paces away. “Just a pity we didn’t get to ask him a few sharp questions first. With this.” He fingered his weapon. “Would you have let him live, Scholar?”

His friend said nothing and remained motionless.

Full of apprehension Ireheart hurried over to Tungdil and yanked his visor up using the end of his crow’s beak. Tungdil’s features were devoid of expression and his eyes looked through Ireheart into the distance. “Oh, by Vraccas! What’s he done to you?” He tapped the armor. “Or was it this armor that did the damage? This black tin seems to have its drawbacks, too.”

Ireheart picked up a handful of snow and threw it at his friend’s face. At once the lids fluttered and the gaze returned to focus on him. “Aha, you can move again!” Ireheart sighed with relief.

“Not quite.” Tungdil’s face was red with exertion. “I’ve been trying, but the armor has me stuck fast!”

“What?” Ireheart put down his weapon, grabbed Tungdil’s right arm and tried to push it up by force. The hinges stayed where they were, immobile, as if riveted in position. All he achieved was to set Tungdil rocking, such that he toppled backwards into the snow.

“Well done, Ireheart,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll freeze to death in here now.”

“Might be better than being smothered in your own excrement?”

“I don’t think that’s funny, Ireheart!”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll look after you. We’ll get your tin can open.” Boindil checked on the befun. “But not out here. The befun can pull you to the hut and the pony can tug you in through the door. I’ll get you warmed up and then I’ll have a think about what to do.”

He was true to his word. After a bit of pulling and shoving Tungdil lay in his unwished-for, but secure, prison by the fire that Ireheart had lit. The door he had broken down earlier was now resting upright against the opening, jammed in place by a table to keep out the freshening wind. Boindil prepared a simple but delicious meal from the provisions they had with them.

“Shall I feed you?” he offered, grinning. There was gloating pleasure in his tone, despite the worry that perhaps the armor would never release his friend: Maybe it would stay rigid forever. It had lost its somber and threatening nature, its aura of fear and awe. “Just a heap of expensive junk that doesn’t work anymore,” he muttered.

“No, I don’t want you to feed me. Who knows where you’d drop the food,” growled his bad-tempered companion, staring up at the dusty sausage still hanging from the rafters. Ireheart ate with a healthy appetite. “Has this ever happened before, Scholar?” he asked, his mouth full.

“No. But I’ve never fought a thirdling before that speaks like an alf,” he replied crossly.

Ireheart chewed and put his mind to the problem at hand. If the armor was forced to go solid like that because the black-eye word was used, I wonder who created it in the first place. Who wore it before Tungdil?

Before he had left them all and gone to the abyss, his friend would never in a million cycles have thought of using armor that was obviously of evil origin.

His brown eyes focused on the blade. Had he misjudged the hero? After all, Tungdil had once made himself a new weapon out of one belonging to an alf- Bloodthirster ! Boindil was pleased with the idea: Perhaps this very blade held the key to the change in Tungdil. He had become a dark and dangerous dwarf. Although, of course, present circumstances rendered him less than effective.