Markus Heitz - The Fate of the Dwarves

The undergroundling turned her head. “No!” she groaned. Before the wave of dirt hid the scene from view she saw the wall of light heading directly for Boendalin and his troops. Then the dust cloud became too dense for her to see anything more.

Bandaal and Sanda pulled Kiras to her feet and, holding each other’s hands so that they would not get lost in the gray veil of dust, they stumbled on toward the safety of the southern gate.

All of a sudden the wind changed and they could see looming up through the dirt, less than ten paces ahead, the form of the unknown dwarf. He was holding his hammers right and left of him, arms spread out, the heads pointing down.

Sanda screamed when she saw him, clapping her hand to her mouth. Bandaal took a deep breath.

Kiras, on the other hand, looked past him to where Boendalin’s unit had been standing.

The men and women had been caught mid-flight by the magic. Their bodies lay scattered on the ground, and Kiras scanned the carpet of limbs and torsos in vain for any signs of movement. She was suffused with guilt. If she had never pointed out the masts to Boendalin, they would all have been safely back in the Evildam fortress by now.

The dwarf’s head was held low. A black lock of hair fell over his brow and blew about in the light breeze. Without a word from him, black flames emerged from the hammerheads and he slowly raised his arms.

Kiras stepped in front of the siblings and gripped her sword-ax. “Try to get to the gate,” she told them. She was more afraid than she had ever been, but was not going to leave Bandaal and Sanda here alone. “Go on!” the undergroundling urged. “You are more useful than I am.”

Brother and sister raced off and the dwarf let them pass. His brown eyes held Kiras in their gaze. His face was expressionless, or was that an attempt at a smile on his cheeks?

Kiras forced saliva down her dry throat. It ran slow as treacle down her gullet. “You’ll have to attack if you want me dead!” she called to the dwarf, pointing her weapon at him. “You will be…”

She spoke no more.

The dwarf moved too swiftly for her to be able to follow. He was suddenly right in front of her and struck her in the chest with his burning hammer. Her armor burst into flames, even though it was not made of any flammable material.

The second hammer hit her on the back of the head and she collapsed, swooning. She could hear the crackle of flames at her ear. The metal of her helmet did not seem to care that it could not burn. Flames flickered at the holes made by the hammers.

As she fell she pushed her helmet off and rolled onto her belly to extinguish the fire on her breast.

A foot turned her over onto her back and the terrible face of her enemy was directly above her own. He was staring at her as he raised his hammer again. The black fire around him had died away but its heat was still overwhelming. He pressed the hammer head against her brow and the metal ate into her flesh.

Kiras gave a scream and lost consciousness.

Goda saw the glowing wall of light approach the fleeing figures and forgot all her previous intentions. Three of her children were in mortal danger. If she did nothing neither she nor Ireheart would ever find forgiveness.

She leaped through the gap and let fall the spell that had been holding the opening against the company’s return. She hurried forward to protect Boendalin and his troop from the magic forces attacking them.

Goda racked her brain to find some incantation she could use against the wall of light. The enemy magus possessed enormous power. This shimmering wall of spikes was rushing up behind the troops, who turned to face it when Boendalin gave the command. They crouched down behind their shields.

The maga panted; there were still three hundred paces to cover before she could reach her eldest son. She had grasped the fact that she would never manage to protect all the warriors from the wall’s onslaught. In her left hand she had two dozen splinters of the magic diamond. They would be no help now.

“Take them softly to the eternal smithy,” Goda prayed, weaving a protective spell which she placed only around Boendalin. He disappeared in a flickering cloud.

Then the wall of light hit the troop.

It was painful for her to witness the deaths of so many fine fighting souls. The spikes pierced shields and armor, bodies and heads, and speared the dead onto the living until they all lay heaped up like sand on a shovel; finally the wind fell and the corpses rolled apart to scatter on the ground, the momentum still driving them.

“Boendalin!” she screamed, running on. She could see him, surrounded by the shimmering. He was standing in front of the pile of slaughtered warriors, unable to understand how he had been spared and the others had not. “This way,” called Goda. Between her fingers the diamond splinters crumbled and were blown away.

Thick veils of dust took away her vision. Fearful of a further attack, she put her hand back into her pocket, calculating how many splinters remained. She noted that she was down to half the original stock. Again she called her son’s name.

“I’m here, mother,” he gasped, coming toward her through the fog of swirling dirt. He was holding his arm across mouth and nose and had screwed up his eyes against the dust storm. “What happened?”

“The magus has…” As the clouds of dirt thinned out, Goda could see Bandaal and Sanda with Kiras standing before a dwarf in reddish-gold armor. His back was turned to her as if he had nothing to fear from her. Or had he not seen her? “Is that him?”

Boendalin’s glance flew between his siblings and the corpses on the ground. “Why didn’t you save all of us?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

The hammer heads started to emit black fire.

“He’s attacking them!” Goda hastily prepared a spell.

Bandaal and Sanda ran past the unknown figure, while the undergroundling confronted the dwarf in combat.

Boendalin wanted to charge off to help her, but Goda restrained him. “You cannot help her against this enemy. Only my powers can effect anything.” She chose an assault spell that would bombard the dwarf with multiple lightning strikes. But before she had finished speaking the charm, the foe had felled Kiras with a double blow, finally forcing his hammer onto her face; the undergroundling lay motionless.

Goda released the energies.

Lightning flashes shot out from the tips of her fingers, aimed at the dwarf, who straightened up, crossed his hammers over each other and held them up, arms outstretched.

Bandaal and Sanda had now reached their mother and saw what was unfolding.

The glowing flashes crossed the distance in zigzag lines, overtaking each other in a race to see which would reach the adversary first.

The first lightning bolt hit the hammer head, and discharged its power. Brighter than the flash itself, the symbols on the metal shone out. Then came the next strike.

The dwarf was forced back by the impact, his heels dragging great gouges through the dusty ground surface-but he did not go up in smoke, or fall! When the last bolt had hit him, he turned his upper body slightly and spread his arms again. It was a pose of consummate superiority.

Then he turned away and strode back to his beasts. He left Kiras lying there.

Abruptly he circled round again, his hammers crossed against the maga. Two of the armor runes shone out and seemed to be feeding light to a jewel that was placed above his solar plexus. The gem glowed and released an ochre-colored thick beam, for which the weapon heads formed a lateral boundary; the dwarf seemed to be steering it by manipulating the hammers.

Giving a deep dangerous roar he flew over to Goda and her children; the earth beneath him was scorched black.