Chris Pierson - Spirit of the Wind

“Where are the cauldrons?” Tragor wondered suspiciously, scanning the battlements. An arrow glanced off his plumed helmet, knocking it momentarily askew; he straightened it with an irritated grunt. “They poured buckets of pitch on Baloth’s band.”

Kurthak squinted at the walls, his brow furrowing. Then he shook his head stubbornly. “What does it matter?” he snapped. “Fewer dead on our side this way!”

The blasted ground ran red with the blood of dead and wounded ogres, but the living far outnumbered the slain. Some of his troops heaved javelins up at the battlements; pierced by those spears, kender began to topple from the walls. The horde crushed them into the ground where they landed.

“Ladders!” Kurthak cried.

Tragor sounded a third call on his horn. Ogres picked up scaling ladders-more than a hundred of them-and started forward, into the melee. Some didn’t make it, brought down by the bombardment from above, but most pressed on, until at last they were in place. They planted the bases of the ladders in the blood-dampened earth and raised them toward the battlements.

Then something curious happened. Atop the wall, the silver-haired kender who had stood on the merlons at the start of the battle called out again. “Retreat!” she shouted.

At once, the kender vanished from the battlements, yelling and screaming as they climbed down the insides of the walls. In mere moments, none remained. The ogres whooped with malevolent joy, clashing their weapons against their shields.

“What’s happening?” Kurthak wondered aloud.

“They’re retreating!” Tragor cried jubilantly, waving his great sword in circles above his head. “The walls are ours!”

The ladders rose upright. Ogres started to clamber up toward the abandoned battlements. They spread along the catwalk, tossing aside the bodies of kender who had died on top of the walls.

The new sound was low at first, scarcely audible above the yowling of the horde. It grew quickly louder, though, and Kurthak and Tragor glanced at each other in confusion as the ground trembled beneath their feet. Then their eyes widened when they recognized the noise. It was the grinding and cracking of stone.

“Fall back!” Kurthak shouted to his troops. “Get away from the wall!”

Too late. With a rumble that shook the earth, the city’s walls groaned and gave way. The ogres on the battlements screamed as the catwalks fell from beneath their feet, then they plummeted to their deaths in the middle of the avalanche. The walls did not simply collapse, however; the kender had spent weeks preparing them, chipping away the stones at their bases so they would do the most damage to their enemies. They fell outward, on top of other attackers.

Stones pounded down on top of ogres, crushing them by the score. Scaling ladders, pushed back from the crumbling battlements, crashed to the ground. Within seconds, a large part of Kurthak’s horde disappeared beneath countless tons of rock.

Dust exploded outward from Kendermore in a billowing, gray wave. Kurthak and Tragor choked and wheezed as it broke over them, stinging their eyes and filling their throats. When it cleared, they stared in shock at the ruins. The clattering of stone mixed with the cries of injured and dying ogres. Besides the hundreds who lay buried beneath the rubble, hundreds more lay on the ground, their legs crushed, or staggered aimlessly along the edges of the wreckage, clutching broken arms and bloodied bodies. Those who had escaped stood about the periphery, staring dumbly at the heaps of shifting flagstones.

Soon, however, the stupor wore off. The ogres had toppled the walls. The city lay naked before them, inviting and defenseless. What was more, hundreds of kender stood, in the courtyards just beyond the ruined battlements, leaning on their hoopaks and grinning mockingly. It was too much for the dull-witted ogres. Howling furiously, they surged over the shattered walls, trampling their own dying comrades as they boiled into the city.

They poured into the courtyards like water through a broken dam, weapons held high. As they ran, though, the ground gave way beneath their feet. Their bloodthirsty roars became a chorus of screams as they vanished into the earth.

The kender had dug over a thousand pits in the courtyards. Most swallowed at least one ogre, and many claimed two or more. Kendermore’s attackers died by the hundreds, their massive weight breaking the fragile rope-and-wood lattices that held up the cobblestones. They fell, landing hard on the sharpened stakes that lined the bottoms of the pits. Gored, they writhed and choked as they died.

Kurthak seethed with fury at what was happening. Rage filled his mind, clouding his vision with red mist. The kender were grouped on the other side of the pits, in the shadows of the courtyards, laughing. Laughing at him.

His temper snapping, he threw his massive arms up over his head and howled. “Kill them!” he cried. “Take no prisoners! Kill them all!”

The surviving ogres-no more than five thousand of his original mass of ten-began to pick their way past the deadfalls. Hooting derisively, the kender turned and ran down the streets into the heart of the city Kurthak drove his ogres furiously after them.

Riverwind and his companions had walked for hours, following the snaking passage deep into Malystryx’s mountain. As they went, the reddish glow before them grew slowly stronger, flickering and gleaming as it reflected off the obsidian walls. The ground beneath them shuddered frequently, sending shards of glossy, black stone showering down from the ceiling. One piece nicked Kronn’s forehead, and the cut stubbornly refused to stop bleeding. Other than that, though, their march went undisturbed. They never noticed the shadowy form that trailed silently behind them.

“I should be making a map of this,” Kronn whispered. His voice sounded loud and strange.

Riverwind chuckled softly. “Next time.”

At last, the light ahead grew bright enough that they could douse their torches. The air, already oppressively warm, grew steadily hotter. The three travelers wiped stinging sweat from their eyes. In the distance, they could hear the crackle of flames. Wispy smoke curled around them. Kronn reached behind his back and touched his chapak warily; beside him, Brightdawn and Riverwind rested their hands on their own weapons.

The tunnel wound around a corner. The three companions rounded it, then stopped in their tracks, staring in wonder. Brightdawn gasped softly.

The passage opened into a vast chamber, a hole in the mountain’s heart. The light here was shockingly bright, the heat like a dwarven foundry. A glowing pool of magma roiled and bubbled far below, choking the air with smoke and ash. Flames danced across its surface and burst forth in violent gouts. Stones, shaken loose by faint tremors, rattled down the walls to vanish with hisses of steam into the molten rock.

On the far side of the cavern, across the soot-choked chasm, yawned a dark tunnel mouth, twin to the one where Riverwind and his companions stood. Stretching across the gulf, joining the two passages, was a crude bridge. It was made mostly of thick rope, tied fast to stone outcroppings on either end. A series of wooden planks were lashed to the span, but the companions could tell the purchase they provided was precarious at best: scorched by the baking heat from below, they looked fragile as eggshells, and there were several ominous gaps where boards had fallen away. As Riverwind watched, a glowing cinder landed on the bridge, burned brightly for a moment, then went out, leaving behind a charred, black spot where it had been.

“Whoa,” Kronn said, and meant it.

Suddenly, Brightdawn made a small choking sound. Riverwind glanced at her sharply, but she said nothing, only raised a trembling finger and pointed up the cavern’s far wall. The others followed her gesture, squinting against the stinging smoke. When they spied what she had seen, they caught their breaths, paling with horror.