James Wyatt - Dragon forge

At a glance, Cart guessed that the shaft drove into the hill in exactly the direction they’d come-straight back to the crystal. Had the worgs found another way to access the object of their devotion? Could worgs dig? He’d seen dogs bury bones in the ground, but dig a shaft through solid rock? He ran his fingers absently over the plates covering his chest, remembering the wounds the worgs had dealt him. They had claws and teeth that could tear into adamantine-certainly they could dig a tunnel through rock.

“We didn’t go looking for worgs,” he said, “and we all hoped we wouldn’t find them. But I think we have, so we need to prepare.”

As he spoke, he was trying to formulate a plan. They needed more information, but his group was too large to watch the mine without alerting the worgs. Were there worgs inside? They couldn’t attack them there-the defenders would have a decisive advantage, even discounting the worgs’ innately superior strength. And Cart wasn’t about to discount that factor. He wanted to keep as many soldiers alive as possible.

He decided to gamble on worgs being inside. They hadn’t seen any worgs in the area, and he would have expected at least a single guard at the shaft if the rest of the pack was elsewhere. So he led his soldiers closer to the shaft entrance, fanning them out to form defensive lines around it. The shaft was dug into a low bluff in the side of the valley, one place where the gentle slope formed more of a wall. He hoped to close the wall with a ring of swords and spears to hold the worgs in place, but he didn’t have time. A warning bark erupted from the shaft entrance, answered by what seemed like a symphony of howls. The howls echoed in the shaft, certainly, suggesting that the worgs had greater numbers, but that knowledge didn’t keep him from fear’s grasp.

“Steady,” he said. The worgs wouldn’t erupt from the shaft unless they saw that they would soon be trapped.

And just as his soldiers were about to close the trap, worgs sprang out of the entrance and bolted for the narrow gap that remained between Cart and the rocky bluff. They came like arrows loosed from a single bow, one at a time in a stream of a half-dozen.

There was no way Cart and the soldiers with him at the front of the line could stop all of the charging worgs, and only a handful of other soldiers were close enough to help. He fell back, leaving room for the worgs to pass. The worgs weren’t any more interested in a fight than Cart was, so he let them go. As soon as they had passed the soldiers’ line, they scattered to the winds.

“Mirra,” he called, and the sergeant scurried to stand before him. “Take two squads back to the camp. Tell Haldren what we found, and come back here with miners-as many picks as the camp can spare.”

Mirra saluted and went to gather her two squads. Cart pulled the other soldiers together and started preparations to spend the night at the worgs’ den.

No one slept. Camped outside the entrance to the worgs’ shaft, the soldiers were in constant fear of worgs, and the shaft itself loomed like a constant, vigilant presence. Soldiers who glanced that way turned away quickly, and Cart felt a slow pulse that resonated in the metal cores of his limbs, a sensation that hovered just at the edge of pain. He wondered how far the shaft went-had the worgs already succeeded in clearing a path to the crystal, opening a channel for its awful presence to extend into the neighboring valley?

As soon as the sun’s light faded completely from the sky, the worgs launched their first attack. They struck at the weakest point-a relatively small cluster of soldiers a short distance from any reinforcements. It was a quick and brutal strike, leaving two soldiers dead, then the worgs retreated before any help could arrive. Cart pulled the troops closer together, and they nervously awaited the next attack.

The worgs always came just as the soldiers began to relax or grow tired, letting their attention wander and loosening their grips on their weapons. Each time, they left at least one soldier dead or grievously injured, and as far as Cart could tell, the worgs had suffered no significant wounds. As the night wore on, the attacks became less frequent as the tension among the soldiers grew, but each one took a greater toll as fatigue slowed their reactions and weakened their hands. Cart managed to bring down one worg when the beasts made their only significant mistake-attacking too close to where Cart stood guard.

With dawn’s light, Cart looked down at a row of six bodies. It could have been worse, he told himself, but that was little comfort. What was supposed to have been work to busy idle hands had become a costly engagement.

By the time the soldiers had constructed and lit a pyre for their fallen comrades, Mirra arrived with her two squads of soldiers, a platoon of miners, and Ashara, who insisted on inspecting the crystal and supervising the collapse of the tunnel.

Cart took one of Mirra’s squads into the shaft first, to ensure that no worgs remained inside. At the shoulder, the worgs were taller even than Cart, so the height of the ceiling gave plenty of room. It was the width that made Cart nervous-if they did find any worgs, it would be a series of one-on-one fights in the narrow tunnel, and the soldiers would have trouble swinging their weapons at full strength. They made it only a short way inside before Cart called a halt and withdrew to replace his axe with a spear more suited to fighting in close quarters. So armed, he advanced into the tunnel alone, holding a sunrod before him to light his way. If only one soldier could face a worg at a time, he wanted that soldier to be him.

The shaft was straight, with no branches, and ran deep into the rock of the ridge. To his surprise, he found the tunnel shored up with wooden beams. How could the worgs have brought the beams into the tunnel? To imagine them digging into the rock like dogs burying a bone was one thing-but the idea of them carrying lumber into the shaft to support the ceiling seemed absurd. He resolved to have a miner examine the construction after he had scouted to the end.

As he expected, the light from his sunrod soon sparkled blue against what seemed like a doorway cut into the rock, outlining a crystal wall. A few paces farther in, he realized that the shaft widened and rose higher before the blue rectangle, as though the worgs had built a subterranean temple to replace their scattered labyrinth in the canyon.

Steeling himself for an ambush, he advanced slowly and as quietly as he could to the end of the shaft. He found himself in the entry to an impressive chamber carved from the stone. The walls were polished smooth except around the blue doorway, where a demonic figure was chiseled into the rock. Its feline head snarled in rage, and its clawed hands held the limp form of a winged serpent. The blue crystal gleamed between its legs, framed by pillars and a lintel that were also carved from the stone. The sculpture, more than the shores, convinced him that the worgs had not built this temple.

No worgs lurked in the chamber, but as he looked around, something moved within the crystal. First he saw a silver swirl-the serpent swimming through the mineral sea. Its movements had a sense of urgency that drew Cart a little closer. Other feelings surfaced in his mind, awe and wonder, respect and compassion for the sacrifice the spirit had made, giving its own freedom to bind the evil here in the earth. Cart wanted to honor that sacrifice.

Then a shadow moved behind the serpent. Two claws took form within the shadow and tore at the serpent, pushing through the barrier it had tried to make. He felt a flash of the serpent’s fear, then an overwhelming sense of anger. The shadow pressed against the surface of the crystal, and Cart stared into the incarnate face of evil.