Markus Heitz - The Revenge of the Dwarves

“A fighting chariot without any horses,” judged one of the soldiers. “What the hell have they thought up here?”

“Nothing good,” replied Balba. The sight of the thing was making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

“Give me the diamond and you shall live,” it called out in a clear voice. “My brothers and sisters will soon be here. These walls will not hold us back.”

“You shall have your answer,” the commander called down, lifting his hand and dropping it sharply as a signal.

Four spear-throwing war-machines hurled their death-bringing loads toward the creature; clouds of black weaponry swished through the evening air.

The missiles would certainly have hit their target, had the creature not suddenly rolled backwards. The thick covering on the front opened up to form a shield against the spears that reached it. The wooden shafts broke and the tips splintered, bent out of shape on the rigid tionium. They made not the slightest indentation in the armor. The archers hurriedly reloaded.

“Aim for the wheels. We’ll get it this time round.” The commander turned to the stone catapults. “Ready to fire!” he called. “When I…”

Then all the lights in Paland went out. Candles, torches, the fire in the moat-it was all extinguished in a trice. Blackness swallowed the twilight. Everything lay in total darkness, with not even a star daring to show its face.

“Fire!” called the commander. The sounds of the mechanism being released and the ropes unwinding could be heard. And soon there was the rumble of the missiles hitting home.

Balba was not convinced she would ever hear this creature’s death cry.

Bright green runes blazed out in front of the gate, then there was a powerful bolt of lightning and the gates themselves were blown open, blasted off their hinges with such force that shards cascaded against the far wall of the fortress.

At least now the torches were not refusing their light. So the defenders in the courtyard could see exactly what death looked like, just before it struck.

The huge block had traveled over the moat and now raced through the courtyard. To the right and the left blades of tionium shot out, two paces long, slicing the armored soldiers in half. The sight of these truncated soldiers so appalled their comrades that they stood rooted to the spot.

At the front an iron protective apron had opened up and anyone standing in the way of the machine was forced into the blades or was caught under the jagged edges of the wheels. None survived. Conventional arrows raining down on the vehicle and on the creature itself had no effect.

Balba shook off the paralyzing fear. “Your commander is right: the wheels are the weak point,” she called, racing down the steps. “Do you hear me? Shove iron rods in through the wheels and it’ll be forced to stop. Get chains. We can overturn it.”

In all the noise and shouting only a few of the soldiers could hear the brave dwarf-woman’s advice, but they tried their best to follow her commands.

Just before the entrance to the diamond vault, they overtook the vehicle, which was emitting strange noises. It was clicking and ticking, hissing and steaming behind its tionium plating.

“Bring the chains,” called Balba to the men. The soldiers did not hesitate to obey her orders. They had grasped her meaning. Balba grabbed hold as well, dragging a hook and getting ready to sling it. “Hook it in the…”

A loud rumbling sound made her turn her head to look back at the blasted gateway.

A second monster was forcing its way through. Its creator had placed a huge armor contraption round it. Fists of tionium were battering against the walls, tearing out great parts of the fabric and hurling the rocks at the castle’s defenders. The brave soldiers from Weyurn were losing their lives in scores against the superior power of this attacker that was kicking at them as if they were vermin. A cage-like globe rolled through their open ranks, coming to the aid of the monster at the entrance to the vault.

Balba stopped, her heart in her mouth and her courage melting like lead in a furnace. A third of Tion’s creatures, this time with forearms of metal and glass, was climbing up the southern battlements. It swung its hands round and sent bolts of green lightning toward the soldiers. Their protective iron armor glowed and the men vaporized to nothing in the deadly light-beams. The commander himself was among the fallen. The rest gave up and ran off screaming. From one thousand maybe four hundred men were still alive.

Balba understood that without a magus there was no hope of combating these hybrid monsters. The combination of superior machinery, the strength of the creatures and the unrestrained power of magic could not be matched by any force they could offer.

She let the hook fall and ran off, in contrast to the fleeing humans, out through the northern gate. Later she was to learn that all Weyurn’s soldiers had been annihilated.

Girdlegard,

The North of the Kingdom of Gauragar,

Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle

Boindil stomped off after the undergroundling and made no attempt to conceal his displeasure. “We’re putting ourselves voluntarily into their hands. They attacked our people! It’s not good.”

“They will give us a hearing. If we can reach an agreement, that’s always going to be better than more attacks,” said Tungdil.

“And he still hasn’t told us what his name is.” Boindil found another reason for his bad mood. “Oh yes, and they’re friends with the snout-faces.”

“Just wait and see,” advised Tungdil, who had by now had enough of these complaints. Goda was walking next to her master and not getting involved, but judging by her face he reckoned she would have preferred Boindil to be less argumentative.

All three were tense as they followed the dwarf-stranger. No one knew what to expect from the coming meeting with their distant relatives from the Outer Lands.

Tungdil watched how the undergroundling moved. His walk was smoother than a Girdlegard dwarf’s rolling gait: he set his feet down in a straight line, not a little way apart like them. He kept his upper body straight and hardly made a sound as his boots touched the ground. In contrast to Ireheart. The undergroundling was so good at moving silently that he might have learned his skill from the alfar.

They marched till sundown, when they found themselves at the foot of three hills in a gentle wooded valley, in the middle of which a bubbling stream arose.

The undergroundling led them straight over to the water, called out some incomprehensible words and sat down at the edge of the spring. He drank from his hand. “Sundalon will be here soon,” he said.

Ireheart rammed the head of his crow’s beak into the soft moss-covered earth and listened. “How peaceful it is,” he murmured. “Might just as well be one of the elves’ sacred places. The only thing missing is the big white stone.”

The undergroundling looked up. “A white stone? With the broka?”

Tungdil remembered that this was the undergroundling’s word for elves. It seemed he and his folk were already acquainted with them. “Yes.” He described the stone, its appearance and the secrecy the elves had tried to maintain. “Does that sound familiar?”

“Yes,” nodded the undergroundling, giving him a sympathetic look. “We had broka and their stones in our land, too.” He drank some more water and washed his face, without smudging the sign on his forehead.

“What does that mean?” grunted Boindil impatiently.

“What do you think?” The undergroundling looked annoyed now. “That we had to destroy them before they destroyed us.”

Ireheart looked at Tungdil and gulped. “Did you hear that, Scholar?”