Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

Eventually, they found a witness. An Einar herder, far out in search of stray goats, had been walking along the bottom of a crevice in late evening when he happened to look up and see something unusual—something large and nebulous—cross a clearing nearby.

He had seen it only briefly. “It was like a fog bank drifting by,” he told them. “Except that there was something inside the fog. I could hardly see it. Then a wind came, and for a moment the mists were swept back. I saw it then. It was gray, like steel. Not bright like Daewar steel, but darker, like Daergar blades. And it was big. It looked like a big lizard, but shaped more like a . . . well, like a skinny turkey except that its head and neck were larger, and thrust forward, not up. Two legs, and two . . . something like wings. And it had a great, long tail that shimmered like wet iron.”

“How big was it?” Cale asked the herder.

“About like this.” The dwarf paced off a distance of more than thirty feet. “Best I could tell, anyway. Maybe even bigger. It was hard to see, except when the fog was blown aside.”

“Was there other fog?”

“No, it was a clear evening. But there was fog around that thing. It wore fog the way I’d wear a fine cloak—if I had such a useless thing as a fine cloak. The fog went with it, and covered it.”

“What did you do?”

“Do?” The herder squinted at him. “I did what anybody would. I hid until it was gone.”

“Did you find your lost goats?” Crag Ironface asked.

“Three.” The herder frowned. “Or maybe four. Something had found them first, and there wasn’t enough left of them to tell.”

“Don’t look for the rest,” Cale told him. “Go home and warn your people. The thing you saw has wiped out three villages so far. Be on your guard, and if you see fog, scatter and hide.”

“Out here, I hide,” the herder said stubbornly. “If a thing like that comes to my home, I fight.”

“They fought at those villages, too,” Cale said, bleakeyed. “They fought, and they died just like your goats died.”

“And still you Neidar are seeking it? What will you do when you find it?”

“I don’t know,” Cale admitted. “Kill it, if we can.”

For another day, the Neidar tracked the fog-thing. Then, in a deep hollow, as dusk shadows darkened, the thing found them.

The first warning came when Cale glanced up from the faint trail and noticed a mist settling over the hollow. Above, the sky was clear, but suddenly they were surrounded by deep mist turning to fog.

“Hist!” He raised a hand and reined in. “The thing is here . . . somewhere. Keep your eyes open. Stay together.”

Their eyes strained as they backed their horses into a tight group. Weapons drawn, they scanned the dimming spaces around them. For long moments, they saw nothing. Suddenly dense fog swirled forward out of dark shadows, a cold, rolling fog that seemed to spring at them, as though to engulf them.

“Retreat!” Cale shouted. “Stay away from the fog!”

They backed their horses away, watching, then turned and ran as the fog bank surged toward them. Just behind them they heard a sound that started as the hissing of wind, then grew to a shriek of rage.

“Spread and hold!” Cale commanded. Eleven horses pivoted and planted solid feet. In their saddles eleven dwarves leaned forward, shields up and weapons raised.

For an instant, the rolling mass of fog seemed to hesitate, as though considering the semicircle of dwarves. Abruptly, the shriek came again, this time a deep, rumbling roar that echoed from the hillsides. With the roar came a surge of fog as though a high wind were behind it. Thick mist engulfed three of the dwarves; from within came the sounds of blows being struck and cries of pain. A dwarf screamed. A horse shrieked in pain, then another. The sounds became sounds of ripping and tearing, of crushing of armor and bone.

“Attack it!” Cale shouted, putting hard heels to his horse. Hooves thundered, and eight Neidar spread, circled, and charged into the blinding mist. Cale drove six yards into blindness, then twelve, and suddenly saw a dark form ahead. Reining his mount aside, he closed and swung a mighty cut with his axe. The blade rang as though against steel, and something very large whisked past him just above his head. He pivoted, followed, and swung again.

This time the blade encountered a softer hardness, like chain mesh, and something roared in anger. He heard other blows being struck, but could see nothing. Then the roar of rage grew louder, and he looked up. Above the low mist, something reared high, a huge head with daggerlike teeth turning this way and that. Cale and someone else—he could not see who—charged in directly under the towering beast, swinging at its underbelly. But again it was as though the blades encountered stone or steel.

The thing reared again, seemed to pause, then pounced, and Cale saw a wide, grasping thing that might have been a foot or a ridged wing with talons drop down upon the dwarf next to him. Bones crunched, blood-mist spewed in the fog, and dwarf and horse were both ripped apart in an instant.

From somewhere a great tail swept around, barely missing Cale and his horse. They backed away. It was no use. They were trying to fight something they could not even see. “Break and run!” he shouted. “Break free! Escape!”

As Cale cleared the mist, another rider was right behind him. He heard other hooves as well, going in another direction.

The fog bank swirled and roared, surging after them, then turned to pursue someone else. Halfway up the slope above the hollow, Cale slowed his horse, turned, and recognized Crag Ironface beside him. They looked back, and the fog was gone. Where it had been, Cale saw only shadows, but he heard the Daergar’s gasp of shock as his miner’s eyes saw what was there.

“Reorx!” Crag breathed. “I don’t know how many we lost, Cale. Dwarves . . . horses . . . There’s nothing whole down there. Only . . . only sundered pieces!”

By morning light they reassembled, those who were left. Cale Greeneye, Crag Ironface, and a Theiwar youth, Pounce Tambac, who was afoot. He had outrun the fog-thing, even though his horse had fallen and been caught by it.

Out of eleven armed and mounted Neidar, only three remained. Three dwarves and two horses.

“Do you think we hurt that thing at all?” Crag asked grimly.

“No,” Cale admitted. “No, I don’t think we even scratched it. We’ve paid a heavy price, and it is still out there, going where it will.”

“East.” Crag pointed. “East, toward Thorbardin.”

“A waste.” Pounce Tambac frowned. “All for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” Cale said. “We know about the thing now. We know what it can do, and a little of what it can’t.”

“What can’t that thing do?” Pounce squinted at him.

“It doesn’t move rapidly,” Cale noted. “It’s agile, but it’s not very fast. Also, its wings aren’t really wings. They’re more like webbed claws. That’s why it doesn’t fly far or often . . . it can’t. And we know it can’t see through its own fog. Not very well, anyway. It had to rear above it to find us.”

“That’s all very well,” Pounce sighed. “But how do we kill it?”

“I don’t know,” Cale admitted. “We’ll just have to think of something.”

“Are we going after it again?” Crag asked. “The three of us?”

“No. That’s no use. We’ll have to get help.”

For a long time, all was still on the sloping meadow that led down toward the breaks beyond which stood Sheercliff. An oval area the size of a small village had been burned and scorched as though by instant fire. Within it, a few blackened brush-stumps thrust up from the ashes, and in its center lay three still, smoke-dark forms. As the sun sank beyond the Anviltops, one of the forms stirred, moaned, and stirred again. After a time it sat upright, solemn eyes blinking in a smoke-blackened face capped by a seared helmet and framed by wisps of what had once been a thick beard.