Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

The road-tunnel swung to the right, climbing toward higher levels. Willow’s small, booted feet pounded the stone as she ran. Behind her she heard a rending crash and an angry roar. Another crash, then she heard the gate’s great timbers splintering as the fog-beast smashed through it. Cold, dense mists flooded into the tunnel, ebbing around her feet as she darted around another turn and saw brighter light ahead in the distance.

Up a steep slope she dashed, and out into a cross-tunnel. Some distance to her left, an old dwarf with white whiskers turned to stare at her and at the rolling mists entering the corridor behind her.

“Run!” she shouted, waving at the old one. “Run for your life!”

Down the tunnel, to the south, the elder gaped at her, then turned and hobbled away on ancient, stubby legs. After a few steps he stumbled and fell, and Willow turned and ran the other way. Runes on the stone wall near the intersection of tunnels told her that she was now in the Second Road, heading north. In the distance, going the other way, the old dwarf had picked himself up and was hurrying off, but then cold fog surged outward from the intersecting tunnel and blocked her view. Kneeling, panting, Willow pried a flagstone from the floor of the tunnel and flung it into the blinding mist. “Here!” she shouted. “Here I am, you . . . you contemptible rust! I’m the one you’re after!”

Fog rolled toward her, and she turned and ran again. Behind her came the beast of ages, raging and cold.

Along the tunnel, Willow gained a little distance by darting into a parallel vent-shaft barely large enough to admit her. Crouching, she ran along the shaft for a hundred yards, then scurried through another vent and was in the roadway again. Behind her, tearing at the wall where she had gone, the creature roared and lashed, then raised its head and saw her again. With renewed ferocity, it pursued.

The Second Road tunnel came out into a large, hewn cavern with a single sun-tunnel above. Tools and blocks of cut stone scattered around indicated that the dwarves of Thorbardin intended to build something here, but had not yet started construction. Willow darted across the wide opening and into the road-tunnel beyond, now going almost straight north. Not far ahead she saw people—dwarves, most of them unarmed, milling about in another wide concourse.

“Run!” Willow shouted at them. “Get away! The fog-beast is here! Run!”

Dwarves scurried around ahead of her, and, by threes and fives, disappeared. Scampering into the opening just ahead of the pursuing fogs, Willow blinked and glanced around. There wasn’t a sign of anyone, anywhere. Then suddenly, only a step ahead, a great open pit yawned before her, its wide opening partially screened over by a lattice of rods and bars. It was too late for her to stop. Leaping frantically, she reached the nearest crossbeam and scampered along it to another, her arms spread wide for balance. She teetered over a bottomless void, leapt to another crossbeam, and still another, then was past the pit and racing into the next roadway opening.

Behind her, the fogs reached the great pit, and the creature within the mist spread wide, stubby wings and soared across, huge talons barely missing the latticework of crossbeams over its top. And, just below, clinging to perches and drop-lines, dozens of “Shame of Reorx” crafters stared at the huge, misty shape going past above them.

Hardly slowing her pace, Willow Summercloud dashed out into the great, vaulted emptiness of Anvil’s Echo and ran along the precarious, suspended catwalk through its center. Here and there, in the walls of the great chamber, a murder hole opened, and Willow shouted, “Alarm! Signal the gatehouse! Danger!”

She danced off the outer end of the catwalk on to solid stone and looked around. Fog was filling Anvil’s Echo as the creature came through, gliding just above the catwalk on set, web-taloned wings. Here and there, missiles flew from murder holes, but they simply entered the thick fog and bounced off what was within it. Willow turned and fled toward the dead end of the road, the gatehouse of Northgate.

Rage focused all her attention now on the puny little warm-blood fleeing ahead of her. She knew there were others here, but the rage within her—the rage that was all of her—was concentrated now on that one individual creature. It had challenged her and escaped. It had attacked her and escaped her fury. It had actually caused her pain, piercing the skin of her only soft part—her neck—with its edged implement.

She would get around to all the rest of the creatures in this place in her own time. They would all die. There was nothing they could do. She would hunt them down relentlessly and kill them all. But first, this one must die. This one had challenged her, and it must die as horribly as she could manage.

Through various tunnels, some wide and spacious, some barely large enough to let her spread her wings, she pursued the little creature. Often, with the mists swirling around her, she could not see her prey, but she could sense where it was. Its very warmth was a beacon to her, almost a second sight, and she longed to feel that warmth burst and flow from her fangs, to hear the screams as the warmth struggled, then turned cold.

Now the tunnel became narrower, and ahead were echoes that said the way was blocked beyond. Other warm things were there, scurrying around, and she sensed their fear. But they could wait. She wanted this one—the one fleeing her—first.

Willow was panting and shaking as she entered the gatehouse tunnel, with its water lofts and mechanisms, and the great, glistening screw running along its length. Desperately she looked around and saw others, cringing here and there in the shadows.

“Open the gate!” she shouted.

The gate crew cringed and stared at her, then gaped at the thick mist rolling into the corridor just behind her.

“Quickly!” Willow demanded. “If you want to live, open the gate!”

“By whose orders?” a dwarf queried, glancing nervously at the thickening mist.

Willow started to say something and was drowned out by the roar of the creature as its head emerged into the narrow corridor, rising to glare over the great screw. Its roar was like echoing thunder in the enclosed space.

“By those orders!” Willow snapped. “Stop staring and open the tarnishing gate!”

Dwarves scurried toward a long, vertical lever set in sockets at the center of a great, up-and-down column of gray iron. With only a moment’s pause, one of them pulled the lever until it was horizontal. Opposite it on the column of iron, a second lever raised from horizontal to vertical, and the unmistakable roar of flowing water echoed in the gatehouse.

Grudgingly, the huge metal screw began to turn, and the massive plug at the end of it inched back on its tracks. A rim of outside daylight appeared around its edges.

The fogs rolled, and a huge fanged head lunged forward, missing Willow by inches as she scooted under the screw and ran along its far side. The creature towered above the screw, seeking her, its prehensile neck curving upward and down, and she ducked beneath the screw again and reversed her direction. As the great head followed her, it seemed as though the creature were winding itself around the turning screw.

Dodging the crunching fangs, Willow leapt upward and grabbed the handle of her axe, still flopping beside the long neck. With a heave, she pulled it loose and struck again, making a second shallow cut.

The creature roared in fury, drummed great wings, and lashed its tail, filling the gatehouse with thunder. Beyond it, dwarven gatekeepers disappeared into little tunnels. The screw continued to turn, and the opening around the great plug widened. Abandoning her axe, which was stuck again, Willow dodged past the forward braces of the screw and dived for the opening. For a second, she stuck there, caught between plug and frame. Then the opening was enough, and she squeezed through just as a formidable, fanged muzzle lodged itself in the widening crack just behind her.