Dan Parkinson - The Swordsheath Scroll

Then Derkin replaced his helm, straightened his armor, and mounted his horse. It took three hours for the entire army to pass through the narrow gate in the wall. Daylight was beginning to fade, the clouds were dark and low, and each gust of wind whining in the pass carried fitful flurries of snow. When they were all through the gate, they closed it and headed north.

Derkin was not surprised that the humans had left the pass, and left the wall standing. Winter was coming on, and humans feared the mountain winters. Undoubtedly Lord Kane felt he had rid himself of dwarves and could wait for spring to open the pass.

All along the way, Derkin conferred with his unit leaders and with those who had served as sentinels above Klanath. Just at full dusk, they came out of the pass on a wide, sloping shelf overlooking the city directly ahead. Usually, this shelf below the pass was a busy place. Here stood Klanath's slaughtering pens, butcher stalls and tanneries, and the mills that ground the grain of those in the city. But now, as the dwarves had anticipated, the slope was deserted. It was nightfall, of a blustery winter day, and all who could would be behind closed doors, staying close to their hearths.

The usual perimeter guards would be in place, of course, and the strong guard forces of Lord Kane's compound. But out here on Slaughterhouse Shelf, there was nothing worth guarding on such a night.

Looking down on the snow-misted city, lying like a soiled crazy quilt beneath the low clouds and its own smoke, many of Derkin's army felt a twinge of doubt. Wedge Stonecut, a young dwarf who found himself now a member of the Ten, muttered, "It's so big… and all spread out. How does one attack a thing like that?"

"The way one attacks anything too big to wrestle," Talon Oakbeard said ironically. "Ignore its body and go straight for the head."

Hushed commands rippled through the massed units, and a company of nearly a thousand Daergar moved forward, led by Vin the Shadow. Most of these Daergar had been slaves in Klanath's mines years earlier, and none of them had forgotten the treatment given them by their human overlords. Now, grim and determined, they ranked themselves before Derkin Hammerhand and raised dark-steel blades in salute. All of them had their boots bound in fabric to still their footfalls, and all of them had removed their metal masks. Large, wide-set eyes glittered in shadowy, feral faces as they looked toward the waiting city.

Derkin returned their salute and nodded to his right, where several dwarves were pouring sand into a tin funnel set on a little platform of withes. "One hour's sand," he said to Vin the Shadow. "Then we will follow."

"An hour is enough," the Daergar said. "With Reorx's aid, or even without it, we can clear a fine passage in an hour."

"For Kal-Thax," Derkin said.

"ForKal-Thax."

Like silent shadows in the gloom, the Daergar slipped away toward the outskirts of Klanath.

"I wouldn't like to be a human guard in a dark place on this night," Wedge Stonecut breathed. 'They say a Daergar can see when there is no light at all."

"Did you notice the blades they carried?" Talon asked. 'Those curved, dark-steel swords… where did they get them?"

A few feet away, Derkin Hammerhand turned. "They've always had them, wrapped and hidden away. They've taken them out now, in honor of Lord Kane."

"They honor the human?" Talon asked, puzzled.

"In their way. It was the custom of Daergar long ago to carry such blades. They are as light as daggers, very swift and very sharp. And once drawn, they were never sheathed again until they had tasted blood."

"I wouldn't want to be a guard in that city tonight," Wedge Stonecut muttered, repeating himself.

As the sands flowed through the little funnel, Klanath dozed below Slaughterhouse Shelf. No outcries came from there, no trumpets or bells sounded, no slightest alarm. Except for having seen them go, the waiting army would have had no hint that a thousand dark-seeing Daergar now roamed those ways, doing their bloody work.

The funnel emptied itself, and Derkin climbed aboard his horse, looking around judiciously as other dark forms mounted behind him. Then he waved his footmen forward. No battle cries came from the thousands streaming down the slope now. Hammerhand had ordered silence, and the Chosen Ones complied.

Derkin waited until his foot legions were at the outskirts of the city, entering the dozen dingy streets that led toward Lord Kane's compound, then he and his horse companies moved out. For the first two hundred yards, they walked their mounts. Then at the bottom of the slope Derkin urged his horse to a trot, and all around him rose the muted thunder of hundreds of horses stepping up their pace. At the outskirts of the sprawling city, a few doors and shutters opened as the sound carried to them. Human faces peered out, then shutters were slammed and bolts were dropped into place. Most of the residents of Klanath probably had no idea what they had seen, but they wanted no part of it.

Along three narrow streets the mounted dwarves trotted, as long minutes passed. At a torchlit intersection Derkin saw a pair of Klanath guards lying in their own blood, and just beyond them at least a dozen more. No steam rose from the gaping, slitted throats of the men. The bodies were already beginning to cool. The Daergar had wasted no time opening a path for Hammerhand.

Sooty snow flurried and gusted along the streets, and the shacks and sheds became more densely clustered. Here they found more bodies-some in guard uniform and some not. And just ahead, there was the ring of steel on steel. The first footmen had reached the compound gates. But the sounds of combat were brief. A few clashes of steel, then a few more, and a series of muffled shrieks. Then the riders heard the distinct creaking sounds of great weighted gates being opened.

"At the gallop!" Hammerhand roared, and spurred his mount. The great horse, and all those behind it, bunched powerful haunches and leapt forward at a run. For a hundred feet, the three horse companies charged along parallel streets, then the streets converged, and the compound's wall lay just ahead. A pair of wide gates stood open, with thousands of armed dwarves pouring through. As the reunited horse battalion thundered toward them, the footmen spread to each side. Hundreds of charging horses thundered through, each rider shifting to one side of his saddle as a running footman swung aboard and clambered up the other side.

Within the compound, human soldiers were pouring from every barracks and redoubt, many of them only partially dressed, but all wielding shields and swords. But their resistance was puny against the overwhelming might of the dwarven forces. Faster than sleepy human companies could get themselves organized, solid ranks of dwarves swept through them, hacking and slicing. Somewhere a trumpet blared, then another and another, and torches came alive on the battlements of Lord Kane's palace fortress in the middle of the compound.

Leaving the panicked soldiers to the mercies of his footmen, Derkin led his horse company at full charge directly toward the open gateway of the main palace, where torches flared and chains began to rattle as surprised gatekeepers bent to their winches-far too late. The entire horse battalion thundered past the portcullis and into the inner courtyard, sending human guards and gate tenders flying in all directions.

The household guard, the most elite of all Lord Kane's forces, was just issuing from its halls when the courtyard abruptly filled with horses and dwarves. Better trained than the outside companies, these soldiers-led by a man with a scarred face-mounted a fierce defense. For long minutes, the battle swept this way and that through the courtyard, guards grouping and regrouping, fighting desperately while the dwarves thundered about, ranks and disciplined lines of hoofed fury, armored horses with death clinging to each side of their saddles.