Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

Damon Omenborn had no idea what had happened. One moment he and his two escorts had been riding down a long slope with Sheercliff looming a few miles ahead; the next moment there had been searing light and intense heat, and then nothing. His throat was parched, and the exposed skin on his face, arms, and legs felt as though he had crawled across a working forge.

Slowly, gritting his teeth, he got to his feet, turning at the sound of a moan nearby. Someone else was still alive. He knelt beside the fallen figure, wondering who it was, then saw the ruined mesh faceplate still clinging to its strap even though the dwarf’s helmet had fallen away. “Tag,” he rasped, his voice as hoarse and rough as an anvil-crafter’s file. “Tag, wake up.”

The figure stirred, moaned, and muttered, “What happened? Did lightning hit us? Who . . . Damon? Are you hurt?”

“Not too much,” Damon said. “And you?”

“I’ve had better days,” the Theiwar allowed. He struggled to a sitting position, staring around through the mesh that had probably saved his light-sensitive eyes. “Where’s . . . where’s that grinning Daewar?”

“Copper,” Damon muttered. He stood and looked around, then ran to where the third body lay. He knelt over it, then stood, turning away. Copper Blueboot was dead, his chest armor crushed. If he had survived the fire, he had not survived the fall. It looked as though his horse had rolled on him. And there was no sign of their horses anywhere.

“Dead,” Damon said. “He’s dead, and all the horses are gone, along with our packs and most of our gear.” Wiping soot from his eyes, he looked at the sky and at the world around him. “How could it have been lightning?” he wondered. “There were no clouds.”

“I remember something else,” Tag Salan said, getting to his feet. “Just before . . . before whatever happened. It seemed as though the world turned around. We had been going west, and suddenly we were—we seemed to be—going south. What had been ahead was to our right.”

“But it wasn’t,” Damon corrected him. “It looked as though we had turned, but we hadn’t. And the terrain seemed odd. It didn’t look quite right, as though just beyond the turned-around view was another view, one that hadn’t changed.”

“That’s right.” Tag nodded. “I noticed that, too. And you insisted we go on, and when we did the turned-around view faded away, and things were as they had been. What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Damon admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He went and knelt again beside the body of Copper Blueboot. He closed the staring, lifeless eyes and crossed the Daewar’s arms over his mashed chest.

“Traveler,” the big Hylar murmured, “your travels are through. Everbardin opens its gates to you.”

Beside him, Tag Salan asked, “What was that?”

“Just something Hylar say.” Damon shrugged. “It comes from the old times, I guess, when some of us were Calnar, in a place far away.”

“He would want to be buried,” Tag said.

“Yes.” Damon stood again and prowled around the area, with Tag joining him. Not far from Copper’s body they found a few tools and a coil of hemp cable, probably thrown from a pack when the horses bolted. The tools, like the weapons and gear they carried on them, were scorched but usable—a stone chisel, a pick, and a prybar. Damon chose the chisel for himself and unslung his hammer and shield. He handed the pick to Tag. “Here, where he fell,” he said. “The stone is thin, and there are soft layers below where we can dig with our shields. “We’ll bury him here.”

They worked into the night, burying the Daewar youth, then shared the remaining water in Damon’s sling-pouch and sat down to rest. Suddenly Tag Salan pointed and jumped to his feet. “There!” he shouted. “There it is again.”

Damon stood, squinting. Moments passed, and a brief light blazed in the distance, atop the towering wall of Sheercliff. More moments passed, then there was another flash. After that, there was only darkness.

“Someone or something is up there,” Damon said. “Those are the same flashes we saw earlier. Three of them, like before, then nothing.”

“Three different colors,” Tag added. “I didn’t notice it before, but one flash—the first one—had a hint of red in it. The second was white, and the third more blue. Did you see that?”

“I couldn’t perceive a difference,” Damon admitted. “But then, your Theiwar eyes are better than mine after dark.” He paused. “Blue, you said? The third flash looked blue?”

“A little,” the Theiwar told him.

“Like the light that burned us,” Damon murmured. “In the instant that I saw it, it seemed blue.” Again they sat, and Damon said thoughtfully, “This is where that thing—the killing thing—must have come from. Somewhere over there. But those people in the village said nothing about flashes of light. I wonder what it is.”

“Back there, at Windhollow, your uncle set off with ten Neidar to search for the beast,” Tag said. “The rest of the Neidar went in another direction. Where were they going?”

“To the Road of Passage,” Damon said. “They’d been told about some human wizards getting off the road. But. . he paused, feeling a tingling in his scalp and spine. His gaze fixed on the far-off top of Sheercliff. “Wizards,” he hissed. “Magic! Do you suppose . . . ?”

“Do you suppose that was magic that hit us, Damon?” Tag growled. “Somebody deliberately attacked us . . . with magic?”

“I’ve never seen magic.” Damon shrugged. “But it could have been. If it was, we’d better do something about whoever is using it.” In his voice was no sign of the anger that Tag felt, and the Theiwar wondered again what it would take to arouse the big Hylar’s ire.

“I guess it didn’t kill us,” Tag said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“If someone used magic on us, then whoever used it could see us. And they might see us again, out here on this open slope. How do you feel about night travel?”

“I like it better than you do,” the Theiwar reminded him. “Of course, I’m no Daergar, who can count footprints in a dark mine shaft, but I can see all right by moonlight.”

“Then I think we had better be on our way. By morning, we can be in those breaks below the cliff. We’ll rest then, with cover.”

Wide-eyed with terror, Willow Summercloud clung desperately to the little straps of Cawe’s harness as the great bird soared higher and higher into the sky. The harness was nothing more than tied loops of soft leather, fore and aft of the raptor’s wings, connected by a single strip of what seemed to be discarded linen, casually tied with knots that looked as though they would fail at any moment.

The first takeoff had nearly been a disaster. The kender girl, Shill, hadn’t bothered to explain to the dwarf how one stays on the back of a bird, and Cawe was no more than fifty feet above the ground when Willow’s booted feet slipped on slick feathers, and she fell past a huge wing, only saving herself by grasping and clinging to a huge, taloned toe underneath.

In the landing, she had been rolled, tumbled, and thoroughly aggravated. But she had finally agreed to try it one more time when Shill showed her how to sit just behind the great wings, using the linen strap as a handhold and her legs and feet as braces. Now Willow shook windblown hair out of her eyes, glanced downward, and wished that she had decided to walk. Below, the world was far away and tiny. Peaks and valleys looked like little furrows in poorly plowed fields, and what the dwarf knew to be tall trees on the lower slopes seemed nothing more than bits of brush.

“We’re too high!” she shouted, hearing the wind carry her words away behind her.