Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

“Hauk!” she cried. “No!”

Her cry echoed in the vibrations of the blow, echoed in the dwarf’s gasping, and the sound of his body hitting the rocky floor. And it echoed in the horror and anger in her green eyes as she flung herself across the dwarf as though to protect him from the glittering steel of the sword. His hand trembling, his heart hammering painfully in his chest, Hauk lowered the sword. The torch guttered and died. Darkness leaped to fill the cave. The only sounds Hauk heard were the murmur of wind from some far, high place and the girl’s raggedly drawn breath.

He reached for her shoulder, touched her gently. When she pulled away, her cry of fear cut right to his heart.

After a long time of sickening darkness, a hand, fingers trembling, stroked the side of Stanach’s head.

“Oh, please,” a familiar voice whispered. “Oh, please, Stanach. Please, my friend, be alive.”

It was a child’s plea, made without any concession to logic and from the heart. The plea was typically Kelida’s.

The cold air gasped as fire sprang to life.

There was light in the darkness behind Stanach’s eyes and it confused him. He remembered very little beyond the sudden roar of the dragon. Kelida had cried out in terror. His own heart had stopped beating. He hadn’t expected to feel anything but the rip and tear of Darknight’s fangs. He certainly hadn’t expected to feel a sword’s grip crash down between his shoulders.

“Lyt chwaer” he sighed, unable yet to open his eyes, “there is no sense in pleading with the dead to live.”

She caught her breath in a sharp, startled gasp and took his left hand firmly in her own.

Stanach opened his eyes then, his head aching from the sharp invasion of light. Wavering light from the reanimated torch cast black shadows across Kelida’s face. Her green eyes seemed to flicker to the flame’s cadence.

“Stanach?”

“Aye,” he sighed, gratefully. “What hit me, Kelida?”

Shadows separated from shadows behind Kelida, and a young man, black haired and black-bearded, stepped into the light. His brown hunting leathers hung awkwardly from a frame that should have been thickly muscled and stocky.

Stocky, Stanach thought, when he is eating regularly. This one has not been eating regularly or often.

“I hit you, dwarf.”

There was nothing of regret in that cold voice. A feral light gleamed in the young man’s blue eyes; the eyes of a wolf held too long captive, the eyes of a wolf cut off from the pack and afraid.

Stanach pushed himself up to sit. The young man watched his every move. Stanach shivered and thought for one long moment that he was looking at a ghost. Ranger’s garb and the look of a hungry predator. He knew, suddenly, who this young man was. And yet, how could he still be alive? How could he have survived the torments Realgar must have inflicted upon him?

Those had to have been horrible torments, indeed. The heart Stanach saw reflected in Hauk’s dark eyes was gaunt and needy.

The dwarf looked quickly to Kelida. She wore the wary and confused look of one who has found what she’s lost and now, for some reason she cannot determine, hears instinct clamoring that she must fear it. Stanach got to his feet, aching in every muscle. Hauk, head up and tense, watched him, tracking his every move with cold, deadly eyes. The dwarf forced what he hoped was a wry and appreciative smile.

“You are Kelida’s Hauk. You struck a good blow.”

The hard set of Hauk’s jaw softened and Stanach realized that the ranger hadn’t even known her name.

“Aye,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a careful hand.

“Kelida.”

Kelida swallowed dryly and got to her feet. Her gestures quick and nervous, she brushed her straggling hair from her face, smoothed her wrinkled and stained cloak. “Do you—do you remember me?”

His lips moved, though he made no sound. He nodded.

“Will you—will you put up your sword, please?”

He stiffened and tightened his grip on the weapon.

“Please.” She took a small step toward him, her hand out. “We’ve been looking for you.”

Hauk shot a sharp, suspicious look at Stanach. He lowered the sword.

“Tyorl?”

Kelida laid her hand on his wrist and lowered the sword. “All right, I think.” She looked at Stanach.

“I’m fine.” He smiled, an ironic twist of his mouth. “You’d better tell him about his sword, Kelida. And if he found us, maybe he knows a way out of here. That dragon leaving so suddenly certainly means trouble.”

Stanach looked around the cavern. A figure lay hunched in the black shadows near the cavern’s entrance. He drew a sharp breath.

“Isarn,” Hauk said evenly. “I don’t think he’s dead. I—he led me here, and we heard that screaming, that roaring. He went in before me and must have caught a glimpse of the dragon leaving.”

As Hauk had guessed, the old master was not dead. Not yet. He lay in the shadows, drawing thin, rasping breaths. Stanach hardly recognized him. The madness that had for so long ravaged his mind, the grief that had for as long ravaged his soul, left their external marks. The old dwarf was thin, his once strong wrists and arms nothing but bones for weakened muscle and scanty flesh to cling to. His beard, once full, clean, and white as snow, was ragged, tangled, and filthy.

His eyes, gently staring, did not blink or track when Stanach approached.

Stanach dropped to his knees beside him. Once those dull brown eyes had seen the vision of a masterblade. Once they had watched the first light shine from the blade of the Kingsword. Stanach’s heart tightened. He felt the shadow of impending grief.

“Master,” he whispered. The old title came easily to his lips. “Master Isarn.”

His was a voice the old one knew well, and one not heard for a long time. Isarn ran a dry tongue over cracked lips. “Lad,” he said distantly.

“Aye, Master, it’s me. I’ve come back.”

He saw the dirty green bandaging binding Stanach’s right hand. Grief filled his eyes like tears. “What have they done to your hand, boy?”

Stanach winced but did not know how to answer.

He didn’t have to; the question faded from Isam’s mind. When he spoke again, his voice rang out strong with conviction. “Stormblade will kill the high king!”

Stanach caught his breath and held it. The words sounded like prophecy! They rang with foretelling, and Stanach felt the foretelling as cold fear along the skin of his arms.

It will kill the high king.

But there was no high king in Thorbardin. None had sat upon that throne for three hundred years. Aye, and no Kingsword had been forged in Thorbardin in three hundred years.

“Master,” he whispered, “I don’t understand.”

The vacant, staring light in Isarn’s eyes changed, glimmered faintly with sanity. He looked directly at Stanach, his lips moving in what could have been a smile.

“Always, lad, you tell me you don’t understand. And always, you do.”

Like ghosts, Stanach heard well remembered words from the long past of his life, from a time when his hands were filled with discovery, his head with learning.

Your hands have the knowledge, Stanach my lad, and your heart has the desire. It remains for your head—sometimes harder than the stone for which you are named!—to understand.

So saying, Isarn would impart another bit of knowledge to guide Stanach’s hand at the forge.

Stanach leaned closer. “Master, there is no high king now. I don’t understand what you—”

Isarn’s brows contracted in an expression Stanach well knew. It was the fearsome scowl he turned upon an assistant or apprentice who has failed to listen to instruction.

“There is a king, boy,” he whispered hoarsely, impatiently. “There is a king. I made the sword for him. Stormblade, I called it—there is a king.”