Douglas Niles: The Last Thane

Where they had left the guards outside they saw only a mess of blood and scattered lumps of debris. With a groan of horrified dismay, Tarn realized that these lumps were the remains of dwarves, torn and rent by a force almost beyond comprehension. He saw the upper half of the captain of the guard, the brave Hylar's eyes glazed but wide open, his teeth clenched and sword grasped in the lifeless fingers of his hands.

"This was Capper Whetstone," said Baker, kneeling and reverently closing the sightlessly staring eyes.

Even the Aghar had been mauled. Regal sniffed loudly as he looked at the remains of his companions. All the gully dwarves who had stayed here with the Hylar guards had been reduced to ragged bundles, bloody and still.

A savage roar emanated from the throne room, and more crashes shook the air. Through the din they heard the battle cry of a charging Hylar and knew that Axel Slateshoulders still fought.

Belicia looked back toward the throne room. "You go ahead," she said quietly. "I'll catch up."

Tarn gently put his hand on her shoulder. "Come with us now," he said softly. "There's nothing more to be done for him and every second is precious. You know that's what he wanted."

Shaking her head, tears streaming from her eyes, Belicia nevertheless followed his suggestion. The four of them fled the carnage, jogging down the street. Now even the fleeing dwarves were gone, leaving Level Ten with the air of a long abandoned ruin. In fact, to all appearances the place was utterly deserted of living inhabitants. Limp corpses lay like rag dolls in the street. The route of the great fire dragon was a clear path of melted rock, shattered gardens, and gory pieces of bodies.

Tarn started toward one of the main stairwells connecting this level to those above and below, but a block away from the place they heard shouts of barking dark dwarf sergeants and the sounds of many tramping bootsteps.

"Daergar!" hissed the half-breed in warning. "They're coming this way!"

"The dark dwarves are this high already?" Belicia asked in despair.

The party scuttled around a corner, crouching in the shadows as they watched rank after rank of their enemies charge through the streets. Some of the Daergar moved into a nearby stairwell and continued the upward charge through the Life-Tree.

"We have to find a better route so we can go all the way up to Level Twenty-eight," Baker said. "That's where we have to go. It's what I learned from the writing on the scroll!"

"You think one more clue is going to lead you to the Grotto?" Tarn asked, trying to contain his exasperation.

"I know it will," his father replied.

"And then what?" The younger dwarf's patience was frayed beyond reason. "What will we do besides see it once before it is destroyed?"

"Trust me. There is hope, there. Our only hope."

Tarn bit his tongue. He didn't see how finding the ancient lair of the good dragons was going to have any practical effect. Still, his own instincts suggested that they needed to climb. If this faerie quest gave his father motivation to attempt an ascent involving thousands of steep steps, then that was good enough for Tarn.

They darted down a side street and ran along a darkened, narrow byway. The buildings to either side were empty, dark, and abandoned though they hadn't yet been ransacked or destroyed.

Still moving at a fast trot, Tarn found himself in a section that was unfamiliar to him. The roads were narrow and winding here, with tiny alleys connecting blocks of buildings in unpredictable ways. Houses were small, with entries that were low and rounded, almost like burrows.

"Look! Aghar tunnels!" Regal cried in sudden delight.

"Come to think of it, there always were a lot of gully dwarves in this part of town," Baker noted.

"Where are they now?" Tarn asked. The alleys and slumlike dwellings seemed as empty and abandoned as every other part of this level. He hoped that, like the Hylar, the gully dwarves had the good sense to keep on climbing.

"Who cares?" Regal asked. "They got lotsa tunnels. We find a way up."

"Where? Show us the way!" said Baker, with a surprising amount of eagerness.

"Smells like people go this way," Regal declared cheerily, dropping to his hands and knees and crawling into a low hole in the side of the wall. "Goes up, too!" he called back as his feet disappeared from sight.

"Do you think you can make it?" Tarn asked his father, noticing for the first time the signs of Baker's age, the bleary eyes, the lines of fatigue and grief etched into the elder dwarf's face. Tarn questioned the wisdom of taking a tunnel used by gully dwarves. He didn't know if there was any way that Baker Whitegranite would have the strength and endurance to get through a constricted, steeply climbing passage.

"We don't have any choice," Baker declared. The thane stood straight, and Tarn saw that his father's eyes were in fact glinting with determination, even if they lacked a little focus. "I have learned I might be a little stronger than I look."

No sooner had Tarn entered the tunnel than he heard the presence of marching dark dwarves, hundreds of them to judge by the sound, pillaging through the avenues and passages of Level Ten. These warriors were even ransacking the rude hovels of the Aghar, perhaps because the fire dragons had destroyed virtually everything else of value. He took some grim satisfaction as several Daergar, to judge from the sound of their screams, apparently stumbled onto one of the rampaging, flaming serpents. But when the smell of burned flesh reached him, he could find no solace even in the deaths of his enemies.

He crawled after, just behind Belicia's boots, moving as quickly as he could. Before too long he found the others gathered in a small, circular chamber regarding several narrow passages that offered different routes.

"We should take the biggest," Tarn suggested, pointing to a tunnel that actually had stairs carved into the rocks.

"Not there," Regal replied with a firm shake of his head. "Smells like dark dwarves up ahead."

"Thanks for the warning," Tarn answered. "Which one do you suggest?" Though he couldn't smell anything unusual, he remembered that Regal's nose had enabled him to differentiate between the half-breed and the Daergar. He was unwilling to counter the Aghar's conviction.

"This way," Regal said, indicating the passage veering sharply to the right. "This best way."

Once again they plunged into a narrow passage, crawling upward on hands and knees. Tarn and the Aghar had no difficulty seeing, but he felt sympathy for Baker and Belicia, knowing that the two pure-blood Hylar were all but blind in such utter blackness. Neither of them complained, however. Slowly, steadily, the little group made its way upward.

Remembering the long journeys that had brought them to this point, Tarn was deeply saddened to realize that only Regal, Belicia, and his father remained from all their original companions. The doughty gully dwarf proved himself helpful again and again, smelling their enemies-dark dwarf or Chaos creatures-at each juncture in the winding progress of their upward passage. Always they found a way through, steadily continuing higher and higher through the dying city. At each level they looked into the streets and the vista was relentlessly unchanging: destruction and fire were everywhere. Smoke even seeped into the tunnels, though the vapors were never thick enough to choke them.

Tarn speculated that these winding, concealed passages must have been used all along by Aghar to get around the Life-Tree. It amazed him to think that there was such a network of tunnels that had existed entirely unsuspected in the midst of the Hylar city. He saw more clearly than ever how the little gully dwarves had managed not only to survive but to thrive amid the nations of their larger and more powerful cousins. He regretted again the hatred and prejudice that drove so many of Thorbadin's dwarves to despise and abuse the hapless squatters.