Dan Parkinson: The Swordsheath Scroll

Derkin and the Ten hurried around a pile of stone. "I'm here," he answered. "Who are you?" He stopped, and blinked. "Luster? By Reorx's rosy red rear! It's Luster Red-leather!"

"Of course it is." The Daewar grinned. "And these are friends of mine." He indicated a burly, dark-bearded young Hylar beside him. "This is Culom Vand. He's Dun-barth Ironthumb's son. He and I sort of take turns leading this crowd. We've been looking for you since last fall. Then, a week ago, Culom had an odd dream."

"I dreamed of drumcall," the young Hylar said. "And there was a voice that said we should go to Tharkas Pass."

"So we did," Luster said. "Do you know that whole pass is full of cut stone? There's enough to build a city. Anyway, we came through the pass, and here you are."

"Why were you looking for me?" Derkin frowned. "Has the Council of Thorbardin changed its mind? If so, they're a little late."

"Well, not exactly. But the chieftains have had some second thoughts, after that business at Sithelbec."

"Sithelbec?"

"Oh, I guess you don't know about that. There was a great battle there, between the empire's forces and the elves. We went there, with Dunbarth, to help the elves. Afterward, Dunbarth and my father had some tough conversation with old Swing Basto."

Derkin glance curiously at the Daewar. "Basto? The Theiwar chieftain at Thorbardin?"

"The same," Luster confirmed. "It turns out those renegade Theiwar he was always defending had been up to their ears in that war over there, aiding the empire. Basto claims he knew nothing about it, but my father doesn't believe him. And speaking of war, you have a nice one going on here. May we join you?"

"You already have," Derkin pointed out. "But you may wish you hadn't. We don't have much chance of surviving the day."

Culom Vand had climbed to a high place. He was shading his eyes, surveying the massive human army spread out before the stonefall. "I see what you mean," he said. "Who are those people?"

"The emperor's army," Derkin said.

"The whole army?" Luster Redleather muttered, then pursed his lips in a low whistle. "Wow! We did barge into something, didn't we?" He raised his sword, looking critically at its wide blade. "Well, Hammerhand, since we're here, I guess we've just joined your army."

"Lawgiver," Tap Tolec growled. "His name is Derkin Lawgiver. Hammerhand was before, in Kal-Thax."

Throughout a bleak morning, the Chosen Ones and their unexpected reinforcements dug in among the fresh-fallen rubble and watched the movements of the emperor's legions out on the flat. Every dwarf in Derkin's army knew that this place would be their last stand, and that there was no hope for them. Even with the arrival of eight hundred warriors from Thorbardin, they could not win. But still they watched in fascination as the panorama of one of the world's greatest armies, positioning itself for a final, deadly assault, was played out before them.

"There will be no more horse charges," Derkin told those around him. "You see, the horse companies are being moved to the rear and the sides. They can't use horses in a field of boulders, any more than we can. But they've closed any possible retreat for us."

"I wish now we'd kept Lord Kane's catapults," Tap said. "We could use them here."

When the sun was high, the vast shifting of legions and battalions was at an end. Great combined companies of footmen in heavy armor now formed the front ranks of the human formation. There were thousands of them, row upon row and rank upon rank. Derkin didn't need Tulien Gart to tell him what the humans intended. They would come afoot, protected somewhat by their armor. Some would fall, but for each one down there would be ten more behind. Wave after wave of them would come up into the rocks, and they would keep coming. Nothing the dwarves could do would stop them now.

Trumpets sounded, and the first wave of the attack began. The thousands of armored footmen started for the avalanche fan. Marching shoulder to armored shoulder, they seemed to be in no great hurry. There was no charge, no rush. The footmen simply began walking, heading into the tumblestone field. Above them, dwarves waited, their weapons at the ready.

"Make them pay for this day," Derkin Lawgiver ordered his people. "Make them remember the dwarves of Kal-Thax… and of Thorbardin."

The first armored footmen entering the tumblestone wilderness met javelins, hurled with deadly accuracy. Derkin's best delvers and some of the Thorbardin dwarves had gathered all of the remaining javelins and placed themselves in forward positions, where they could spring from cover, throw their weapons, then fall back.

The final lesson that many of the humans learned that day, about dwarves or anything else, was that pinpoint accuracy with a javelin was second nature to the short people-and especially to the delvers. For ages, the javelin had been a basic tool of most dwarven cultures. It had been used in climbing, in delving, in mining, and in the traversing of chasms long before it was ever used as a weapon. A capable climber or delver could virtually thread a needle with a javelin. At fifty feet, a delver could sink a javelin into a crevice an inch wide, with enough force that it would hold climbing lines securely.

Now, as the first ranks of men entered the rockfall, the dwarves found targets among them. Visor slits, unprotected throats, gaps between breastplates and shoulder mail, loosely fitted knee plates-any chink in the humans' armor large enough to admit a slim, steel-pointed shaft- all felt the sting of dwarven javelins. Nearly eighty soldiers fell, pierced by the slim spears, before the forward dwarves ran out of javelins to throw. And another fifty fell to bronze crossbow bolts and whining sling-stones, before any of them got far enough into the stones to use their blades.

But the tide of the assault was overwhelming. Dwarves fought the clanking humans on the lower slope of the fan, then fell back and turned to fight again, higher up in the rubble. Slowly, inexorably, the dwarves were sought out, pushed back, and compacted by the sheer weight of numbers.

Men died and dwarves died as the uncaring cliffs above echoed the clatter and clash of furious combat.

Derkin and the Ten were everywhere, reinforcing a defense here, defending a withdrawal there, setting up impromptu ambushes and counterattacks. Once into the maze of fallen rock, the humans were sometimes out of contact with their officers, and dozens of small, scattered bands of them wandered here and there, sometimes going the wrong way… and paying for their confusion with their lives. But the dwarven drums were singing constantly, orchestrating the strategies and movements of Derkin's disciplined dwarves. For an hour, and then another, it seemed the dwarves might hold their position among the rocks. Yet even as Derkin realized that they were holding, his drums told him of another wave of attackers entering the landslide fan.

As the sun of Krynn quartered in the western sky, the stonefall beneath the peaks was a bedlam of frantic, hand-to-hand fighting. Everywhere the dwarves turned, there were armored soldiers, pressing them, pushing them, cutting them down by the dozens. Derkin found himself in a narrow cleft between boulders, fighting for his life against three humans. Beyond the cleft, the Ten-or what was left of them-were standing off a dozen more. But five wandering soldiers had entered from somewhere else, and Derkin found himself and one other, fighting back to back against impossible odds. Hammer and shield against shields, armor, and slashing swords, Derkin Lawgiver admitted to himself that it was only moments before he would die. "For the Chosen Ones," he chanted. "For Kal-Thax."

Directly behind him a deep voice responded, "For Thorbardin. Everbardin, be open to this one." Hearing the voice, Derkin knew who was fighting behind him. It was the Hylar, Culom Vand, the son of Dunbarth Ironthumb.