Dan Parkinson - The Covenant of The Forge

“Turn the stones, Willen. Face the rollers outward.”

A lethal grin spread across the big dwarf’s face. Willen understood instantly, and the idea pleased him. “Aye, Sire. Workers! To your prys! Turn the stones!”

Spotting Frost Steelbit among the milling crowds nearby, Colin shouted, “Frost! Take charge of the wounded and the weak! Get them out of here, into the concourse. We’ll make a stand there, at the inner gate!” He swung down, and Jerem Longslate and the others also dismounted. The horses were led away, toward the far portal of Grand Gather and the city beyond. There would be no further need of horses now. What must be done would be done afoot.

Wight Anvil’s-Cap, the old delvemaster, appeared at Colin’s side. “Has it come to that, then? Must we close the inner gate?”

“I am afraid we have no choice,” Colin rasped. “This is no barbarian attack. It’s an invasion. Nothing less will keep those people out of Thorin.”

“Reorx help us,” the delvemaster muttered. “No one knows whether that thing will even work. It has never been tried.”

“I know that, Wight. Pray that it does, because if it fails, we’ll be fighting that mob in the streets of Thorin itself.” He turned away, toward the portal. The second of the two huge blocks of stone was just being steadied in place, pointing outward. Beyond, the howling of the human tide was deafening. Arrows were flicking through the opening, between and around the stones. “Willen, is it ready?”

“Ready, Sire.”

“Then let them go and close these doors.”

At Willen Ironmaul’s command, burly dwarves stooped behind the stones, heaved at prybars, and the stones moved. For an instant they seemed to hang suspended in the portal, then they pitched outward and began to roll down the corridor beyond, their rollers rumbling as they picked up speed, twin juggernauts bearing down on the packed masses of humans charging upward.

“Close and bar those doors,” Colin ordered. The oaken gates slammed, dimming the screams from beyond, where tons of polished stone paved trails of carnage through the human ranks. Colin Stonetooth didn’t stop to listen. “Retreat!” he shouted. “To the inner gate!”

By the hundreds dwarves ran, around and across Grand Gather’s arena, some stopping to help the wounded littering the area. The barrage of arrows from the invaders had done damage. Everywhere, people were down. Abruptly, Colin Stonetooth spotted Handil in the crowd, coming toward him against the flow, carrying his drum. Jinna Rockreave was with him, her eyes wide and a web sling clasped in her small fingers.

“I heard, Father,” Handil said. “In the city they say a thousand humans have attacked us.”

“A thousand?” Colin shook his head. “Many thousands, I’d say. Too many to fight off. Thorin must be sealed.” He turned as a resounding crash echoed through the great chamber. The doors from the keep tunnel had burst open, and wild-eyed, howling humans were pouring through. “To the inner gates!” he snapped. “Hurry.”

An arrow whisked past his head and sank into the back of a fleeing stone-mover. Other arrows followed, and Jerem Longslate and his men pressed around the chieftain, shielding him. One of them gasped and fell, a shaft protrading from his exposed side. He had used his shield for the chieftain, not for himself.

“Come, Sire!” Jerem Longslate urged. “There is no time!”

“Come on!” Colin shouted at Handil as the guards hurried him away, their shields at his back.

Handil turned and hesitated. Beside him, Jinna Rockreave spun her sling and released it. The stone — the size of a fist — sang across the arena and took a bearded man full in the face. He fell backward, carrying others with him.

“Jinna, come on!” Handil shouted.

“All right,” the girl nodded. “Just one more …” And then she was on her back on the stone floor, an arrow standing from her breast.

Handil dropped to his knees beside her. “Jinna!”

At the touch of his hands she shuddered and gasped. “Don’t … don’t move me, Handil. The pain …”

With a cry of agony, Handil the Drum crouched over his beloved and raised stricken eyes toward the far portal. His father was there, beckoning to him, and workers were chipping out the stone at each side, where the stops of the inner gate were concealed.

“Handil,” Jinna whispered, “go now. Leave me. You must. The humans …” Gasping with pain, she held out her hand and dropped something into his.

Tears misted his eyes as he saw what it was — an exquisite ring, embedded and twined in the elven style. The gift from Cale Greeneye. Arrows whisked around him, and a thrown axe hummed past his head as he slipped the ring on, then drew its mate from his belt and placed it carefully on Jinna’s finger.

“For as long as we live,” he murmured, gazing into her stricken eyes, seeing the blood that seeped from her nose and mouth. “For as long as we live.”

Humans were rushing toward him now, weapons raised for the kill. In the distance he heard his father’s voice, calling his name, and then a crash like thunder. He glanced around. Where there had been a portal — had always been a portal, opening onto the great concourse of Thorin — now was solid stone, twenty feet thick. The inner gate had worked. Thorin was safe behind a wall of stone that no human could penetrate.

Jinna no longer moved, and he realized that she had stopped breathing. Distractedly, barely aware of the howling tide of murderous humans sweeping down on him, Handil the Drum stood, swung his vibrar under his arm, and stripped away its wraps. An arrow buried itself in his thigh as he drew forth his mallets, but he hardly felt it.

The nearest humans were only yards away now, rushing at him, but when he turned to them, they slowed, stunned at what they saw in his eyes. In that instant, a few of them may have realized that they were looking at their own deaths. Unhurriedly, standing over the body of his beloved, Handil raised his mallets and brought them down, and the Thunderer began to sing.

No Call to Balladine was this, no glad song of the high peaks. The rhythm of the big vibrar was a dirge, and it filled the great hall of Grand Gather with sound so intense that humans reeled back from it, many dropping their weapons to clap hands to their ears.

Another arrow struck Handil, and then another, but they meant nothing to him. The mallets increased their tempo, and the vibrar thundered.

And all around — above where the sun-tunnelled ceiling arched away, around every wall and in every rise and ramp of Grand Gather — hewn stone took up the vibrations and began to disintegrate. The cavern roared and bellowed, and huge chunks of broken stone showered down from above, crushing everyone and everything beneath them. An entire sun-tunnel slipped free of its collar somewhere and plummeted to the arena floor, shattering into bright, piercing shards which flew in all directions. Humans milled and screamed, many turning back the way they had come. But the entryway had collapsed, and there was nowhere to go.

A raging human, crazed by fear, ran at Handil with a raised sword and impaled himself upon the lance of another human trying to get away. An axe struck Handil in the hip, and he fell, then raised himself on one knee, never missing a beat.

The song of the vibrar built upon itself like contained thunders rolling back and back, echoes becoming great choruses of echoes.

“As long as we live,” Handil the Drum muttered to himself, building his beat to a crescendo. And the entire roof of Grand Gather collapsed inward, millions of tons of cold stone filling and forever sealing what was now only a silent tomb.

Clouds of dust and debris rose from the mountainside above Thorin Keep as a chasm opened there. The great monolith called First Sentinel, standing just at the edge of the collapse, teetered and swayed, then disintegrated and fell into the hole, raising more clouds of stone-dust.