Markus Heitz - The Revenge of the Dwarves

“Perhaps that orc is still around?” murmured Boindil, and drew back: his companion’s breath was heavy and sour with alcohol. “Oh, you know what? Maybe I do feel like a fight, after all.”

“Boindil! Just keep quiet, for once!”

“All right. I won’t say another word. Until we find the orc, that is.” He wielded his war hammer in a trial move. He had missed this sense of excitement.

They made their tortuous way through the mist that was dampening their beards and hair; drops of moisture had collected on their armor. The dwarves pricked up their ears to listen for sounds in the gray murk; you could detect nothing but the steps of the dwarf directly ahead, or the one behind you. The monsters were not showing themselves, which was not making progress any easier.

“When’s this fog going to stop? I’d rather face an attack and use my crow’s beak to slash through. I can’t stand this creeping around,” Boindil complained.

“Have you seen an orc?” asked the wraithlike figure of Tungdil bad-temperedly.

“No, why?”

“Then why are you talking about it?”

Ireheart fell silent again and he heard Tungdil take another draft from his flask; there was a smell of brandy.

After endless walking they discovered they had reached a cave. They felt their away round the walls. Tungdil located the rune and then they found a tunnel leading deeper into the Outer Lands. Nobody dared raise his voice. Now they were really in a place no dwarf had been before.

Suddenly, round a turning, the fog thinned as if a wet gray curtain had been torn away and discarded.

The quiet made them nervous. The dwarves would have been keen to hear the slightest sound, any sound to indicate life here in the tunnels-it didn’t matter if it came from friend or foe.

“This is a ruddy labyrinth.” Manon spoke. “There are more and more forks to the path.”

“I know,” replied Tungdil. “And someone has been here before us.” He pointed to scratches on the rock wall that no one else had noticed. “It’s an orc rune from Girdlegard. It stands for gr. We’ve been following the marks for some time.”

“We’re on the tracks of the pig-face that escaped us that time!” Boindil nodded to Manon as if to say, You see? This is a fine leader we have. “Wonder where it’s taking us?”

Tungdil shrugged his shoulders and moved on. The runes he found now were less carefully scratched, and soon they petered out altogether. Tungdil led the troop along the passage, leaving his own marks on the wall as he went.

“A cave,” he said after the last turning. He pointed. In front of them slanting light filtered through, shining on the bones that covered the floor. They entered the chamber cautiously.

“Ho, so somebody doesn’t like orcs,” said Ireheart, looking at the remains scattered around. He crouched down to examine his finds. “They’ve been dissected. The kind of monster that pulls an orc apart is my kind of monster,” he joked. He spat on the bones. “They’ve been here for some time, it looks like.”

“This may be why there’ve been no more attacks on the gate,” chipped in Manon, picking up a thigh bone and checking out the knife marks on it.

“There are too many orcs. Nothing could eat all of them,” said Boindil doubtfully.

Manon looked at the huge cavern and held his hand out in a beam of light. “What if it’s a really big monster? A dragon?”

“I don’t think so,” contradicted Tungdil. “We would have seen tracks: marks on the rock, discarded scales, broken teeth.” He had located the way out.

“And a dragon could never have got through the narrow passageways.”

“There used to be smaller dragons in the old days,” objected Manon.

“I know. I’ve seen the books and the drawings. I’ve studied them all.” Tungdil wanted to show the thirdling that he was indeed the educated dwarf here. “That is why I am dismissing the possibility of a dragon.” He turned and walked on.

The others followed him to the next tunnel and then they got to a further cave that had a stream running through it. The dwarves spread out. It was clear from the tracks on the ground that there had been an encampment here. And a very big one, at that.

The number of fires that had been lit here in the past indicated to Boindil that perhaps two thousand people had made camp here. “They were here for quite some time,” he said, looking at the marks. “And they haven’t been gone long.” He ran his gloved hands through the ash. “Cold, but fairly fresh.”

“The question is, were they orcs or something else entirely for whom our deadly enemies are food?” Tungdil pointed over to the opening of a wide naturally formed tunnel. “That way. Let’s see if we can find more clues as to where they’ve gone.”

They moved on, weapons at the ready, and muscles tensed. Just because a creature had developed a taste for orc flesh did not mean that a dwarf would be considered a friend.

The tunnel ended at a heap of stones blocking their path.

Tungdil looked up, then at the stones in front of him. “These boulders haven’t fallen from the roof. They’ve been piled here on purpose to close off the tunnel.” He looked at Boindil. “Maybe the army camping here did this to cover its retreat.”

“Or perhaps they were trying to stop more monsters coming through,” suggested Manon.

“It’s all very peculiar,” was Ireheart’s view. “Easier in the old days, wasn’t it, Scholar? The pig-faces came, we wiped them out, all done, finished.” He sat down on a rock ledge, and slipped off his helmet, scratching his head; it was one of the few days he wore his hair unbraided, and it looked strange on him. “Now we’re right back at square one.”

“Except we know now that someone has a fancy for orc flesh,” Manon chipped in. “I’m sticking to my dragon theory. We’re in the Outer Lands here…”

“No. There are no more dragons. Or they’re never seen nowadays.” Tungdil sat down, too, and ordered the troops to take a rest; they all relaxed and had something to eat. “No dragon would take the trouble to collect its prey together in this way.” His clothing stuck to him; he was dripping with sweat. He was not used to the exertion of a long march any more.

“Those beasts are clever. They would never put orc-snout flesh in their mouths,” laughed Boindil, as he bit into his bread and stinking cheese. All of a sudden his gaze fastened on the heap of stones behind Tungdil. “What’s that? Isn’t there something catching the light?” Boindil jumped to his feet and began to pull away the rubble. He called five of the warriors over and got them to dig. He was too tired.

It took quite some time before the hidden object was revealed. Rubble kept slipping back down over where they were working whenever they removed a sizeable boulder, and there was dust everywhere by now. Finally Tungdil was handed a flattened helmet. A helmet with a golden moon on the front; black bloodied hairs stuck still to the rim.

“So that will be her son we have found,” said Ireheart under his breath.

Tungdil put the helmet in his pack. “It’s his helmet we’ve found. Not him. Don’t make the same mistake as the search party the king sent out. They might have placed the helmet there on purpose, so it gets found and it’s assumed that he’s dead.”

“Why on earth would anyone do that?”

“Exactly. Why? Orcs would never have taken the trouble. It must have been something with a brain,” insisted Tungdil.

Ireheart leaned back and looked at the stone barricade. “Are you thinking of dismantling it to find out?”

Tungdil shook his head. “No. I’m sure that would be a waste of effort. We-”

They all heard the clinking noise that traveled out along the tunnel toward them from the cave; metal had come into contact with stone.