T Lain - The Sundered Arms

This drew an approving nod from Hargrimm, who made a gesture and slowly levitated up to the level of the walkway. When he came to rest on the iron catwalk, he beckoned again. The gesture was polite enough except for his wolfish grin of anticipation.

Tordek walked forward. All the eyes of the slaves and their keeper turned up to witness his exchange with their master.

“Who in the countless cells of the Abyss are you?” demanded Hargrimm. Again he cocked his head to listen to his unseen familiar. His eyes were novas against a face as dark as demon wine as he stared at the finger bones that lay on Tordek’s chest.

Tordek set the head of his axe upon the bridge and planted his fists on its butt. “I am Tordek, son of Vardek Sure-Fist, grandson of Grisna the Red, slayer of the usurper Felldrake, great-grandson of Belsedar Truce-Forger.”

“I know none of those names,” said Hargrimm. He bit the fingers of his glove and pulled it off, revealing a ruined hand with only a thumb and one finger to hold the glove in place. “Still, something about you makes my fingers itch.”

“My brother’s name was Holten.”

“Ah.” He smiled wistfully. “That name I know. You may know me as Hargrimm…” The creature’s grin grew improbably wide, revealing a thicket of sharp, yellow teeth. “…Devourer-of-Holten.”

“Our meeting was fated,” growled Tordek. “Prepare to return to the pit from which you crept.”

“Yes, now I see the resemblance—thick of chest, thick of arm, and thick of skull. Come, if you wish to follow your brother.” The demon licked blood from his lips. “He is lonely in his torment, and I am hungry.”

Tordek growled and raised his axe. Below Hargrimm, the pale woman smiled and sank into the shadows, while the red ogre snapped his vast wings open with a sound like sailcloth in a gale. Hargrimm waved them away with his maimed hand as he raised the hammer of Andaron in the other.

“No, Tordek! Not here!” called Vadania, standing to show herself to the foes and thus spoiling Tordek’s hasty plan to act as a diversion. “Not now.”

“She’s right,” said Lidda, rising to level her bow at Hargrimm. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Come on, Tordek,” pleaded Devis. “At least give me time to compose a proper revenge ballad before we all go down fighting.”

“Idiots,” muttered Tordek.

“Your friends are loyal,” laughed Hargrimm, “if not obedient. Have you told them the lesson of your brother?”

“Enough talk,” said Tordek, raising his war axe and dropping his shield. He would have shrugged off his pack if he had a moment more, for there was precious little room atop the catwalk.

With an evil grin, Hargrimm raised the glowing hammer and struck the iron frame of the catwalk.

The iron rippled like water, hurling Tordek up so suddenly that he missed grabbing the rail. Behind him, iron bolts shrieked and popped as the catwalk snapped away from the wall. He glanced back to see Lidda, Devis, and Vadania tumbling to the ground twenty feet below. Karnoth remained on the level above, narrowly avoiding the fall but now revealed to all who cared to look up.

Tordek crouched and clutched the railing. The catwalk dipped and listed six feet to one side, but it did not break. He looked down to see the smiths at one of the outer anvils running away to avoid being crushed by the tumbling metal. Still it held, shaking in the aftermath of the hammer blow.

“You see?” said Hargrimm, hefting the hammer. “This is what your brother sought. It is a weapon worthy of me. He held it only briefly, and now it is mine, along with his soul. Today the hammer’s power is restored, together with its kin. Do you know what I will do with them? Do you know the real power of the Arms of Andaron?”

“It will matter little when I send you back to the Abyss,” growled Tordek. He took a step toward his foe, but his shifting weight set the catwalk to swaying dangerously. He clung desperately to the rail with one hand, gripping his axe tightly in the other.

Hargrimm laughed at his predicament. “You shall live long enough to be the first sacrifice to my lord Gruulnargh. Your courage is amusing, and I admire your necklace. Did you bring it as a gift?”

Tordek spat at the demon and advanced another step. This time he was ready for the motion of the catwalk. Adjusting the rhythm of his pace to its swaying, he took another step, gripping the rail with his shield arm. He dared not look back at his companions, but he hoped they had recovered sufficiently from their tumble to escape.

“Close enough, Tordek, brother of…what was his name again?” said Hargrimm. “Oh, I remember. Supper.”

With rippling muscles he raised the hammer and hurled it at Tordek. The weapon smashed into the dwarf’s chest, crushing the armor plating and hurling him backward off the catwalk. As he flew through the air, Tordek reflexively grabbed the hammer as if for support. For an instant he felt it tug away, as if it might actually lift him up and spare him from the fall. When he hit the ground and felt the wind knocked out of his lungs, he realized the truth. The hammer should have returned to its wielder, but it hadn’t. Some quirk of its enchantment failed.

Tordek felt his friends’ hands on him, helping him to his feet.

“It isn’t possible!” roared Hargrimm from above.

Tordek felt heat from the hammer surge through his palm and into his veins. Inside his body, it sang to him a warrior’s song.

“Get him!” screamed Hargrimm. “Retrieve my hammer!”

With wings snapping like sails, the winged Zagreb dived toward the dwarf. Tordek saw the half-dragon’s jaws open wide, and a red spark flashed deep in the serpentine throat. Flames engulfed him. All he saw was light, and all he felt was searing pain. He closed his eyes tight against the inferno, praying that he might live long enough to strike just one blow.

Someone grabbed him from behind and together they fell onto a hard, wood surface. It shifted beneath Tordek with a grating sound. He tried, but he could not open his eyes to see. His nostrils were filled with the stench of his own burned hair and flesh, and he felt a searing stripe of pain across the exposed portions of his face.

“Push!” shouted Devis, so close to his ear that Tordek at least knew his hearing had not been burned away. He felt the earth shift beneath him, two more bodies leaped atop his, then the whole pile was sliding downward, backward, somehow picking up speed as it raced away from the Hellforge and plunged deep into the mines of Andaron’s Delve.

At last Tordek pried open his scorched eyelids and blinked away the gummy residue of his eyelashes. The ceiling of the mineshaft sped by at incredible speed as they plunged down the steep slope. Despite his pain, he recognized immediately that they were piled onto a flat, wheelless ore sledge plummeting down an inclined tunnel.

“Who is steering this thing?” he shouted.

“There’s steering?” cried Lidda, straddling his armored chest. She kept enough of her wits to strike another sunrod, which she waved to and fro in her search for a brake, a wheel, a lever, anything to guide or slow their descent.

Tordek wriggled and shoved, but not so hard as to send Vadania or Devis over the side of the sledge. At last he managed to turn over on his stomach and look forward instead of straight up. They were sliding so fast that the new vantage was no more reassuring. He barely glimpsed side passages and rotten wooden braces to either side as they sped past.

“This is going to hurt when we stop,” suggested Devis. “A lot.”

“You can be the first to jump off!” snapped Tordek.

The bard shut his mouth and concentrated, thinking of a spell that might help them, Tordek hoped. At last he shrugged and quickly sang the cat’s grace spell that he had cast on Lidda earlier, but this time on himself.