Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Kelida kept close behind Stanach and took a little comfort from the sound of Hauk’s even breathing behind her.

After a time whose passage seemed slow in the unmarked blackness, light, like gray fog, eased the dark around them.

Kelida made out the tall broad shape of a dome-capped building to which wide stone steps led. They were no longer in the stone walled corridors, but a kind of plaza or square.

“The temple,” Stanach breathed. “We are close to the gatehouse. Listen!”

Echoing flatly, like whispers from the long past, came the sound of mail jingling and metal-shod boots scraping on stone. Fear spidered along Kelida’s skin. Hauk’s hand, warm on her shoulder, made her gasp and start.

“Easy,” Stanach hissed. “It’s only the Guard of Watch changing. And likely a good thing. Whatever Realgar plans, he can’t possibly carry out Hornfel’s murder in front of two full watches.”

At one time the temple must have been as beautiful as any within the precincts of the cities. Though the domed ceiling was gapped and shattered now, it had once soared across the temple. Some of its pieces lay on the dusty black marble floor and stars, carved deep into the stone and blacker than the marble, showed from beneath shrouds of dust. At first Kelida wondered why the artisan who’d made this dome would show the stars as blacker than the sky. Then she realized that these stars had originally been deep etchings filled with gleaming silver. That silver, tarnished now with age, must once have reflected the lights of torches and braziers in such a way as to mimic the dance and play of true stars. Columns of rose-colored marble, some split and fallen, some still whole, lined the wide, crimson tiled walk leading to the central altar. There an anvil stood, seven feet high, its face five feet across. The whole altar had been carved from a single block of obsidian. At the anvil’s foot lay what seemed to be the helve of a giant’s hammer.

A temple to Reorx, Kelida thought, how beautiful it must have been!

She shuddered to think that murder was being planned so close to what had been a place of worship.

Stanach slipped behind the altar and found a cleric’s door.

“This should lead us out into the great hall itself. This whole place is part of the North Hall of Justice. At one time, the temple was for the convenience of visitors to the kingdom. Now, it’s only a ruin. From here on, the going should be easier. Theiwar may like the rubble and filth, but the gatehouse is kept clear in case a watch is mounted.”

Hauk moved close beside him. When he spoke, his voice was a barely heard whisper. “What lies beyond?”

Before Stanach could reply, a scream, high and filled with a terrible agony, rang from without. The echoes of that horrible cry had not fully settled when a shout of alarm and then another followed.

Like a bolt from a tightly strung crossbow, Stanach was through the cleric’s door.

Hauk grabbed Kelida’s wrist. His eyes mirrored both fear for her and a strange, fierce longing that had nothing to do with her at all. Kelida fell back a step, recognizing the lust for battle.

“Stay,” he snarled. Then, perhaps hearing the harshness of his command, or recognizing that no order of his could hold her if she took it into her head to follow, Hauk said, “Defend the door. If we can still help Hornfel, likely this will be our only way out.”

He did not stay to see that she obeyed.

Alone, the sound of battle rising and swelling close now, Kelida swallowed back an urge to call after him, forced herself to stay where she was and not run to follow. He had looked like some strange, heartless warrior whose purposes all had to do with killing.

Kelida’s fingers were cold and dry around the grip of her dagger. The little weapon felt both heavy and absurdly light in her hand. Faint memory ghosts from what seemed a long, long time ago, Lavim’s incongruously cheerful instruction in the art of the dagger, whispered to her.

Another thing a dagger is for is stabbing.

Kelida tried hard to ignore the roiling sickness in her stomach, the weakness of her knees, and crept closer to the doorway. Stabbing … The great hall beyond the temple was only a little less dark than the disused sections of Northgate, but the illumination there was more diffuse and even. There was enough light for Kelida to see that Realgar had indeed attempted Hornfel’s assassination during the change of the Guard of Watch, and that for a very good reason. Dwarven warriors wearing the black and silver of Realgar’s service filled the place, falling upon the Guard of Watch and outnumbering them almost two to one.

The battle thundered through the hall. Steel clashed against steel, voices soared high in almost indistinguishable cries heralding death or triumph. The stench of blood and fear hung over the place as though it were the clouds from which the storm fell.

In the center of that storm, its eye and its focus both, a badly outnumbered, embattled dwarf fought for his life. Nothing marked him as the Hylar’s thane unless it was the storm raging around him, and perhaps the innate nobility of one who knows himself beaten but fights on. Hornfel had long been a warrior before he was thane.

There was one guardsman left to him, a young dwarf wearing the scarlet and silver of what Kelida imagined must be the Guard of Watch. His back to Hornfel’s he kept off all comers with a wolfhound’s valiant ferocity. It was for this eye, this focus, that Stanach ran. Behind him, Hauk defended Stanach’s back.

Kelida moved without thinking. She was not a half dozen yards into the hall before the tide of battle swept between her and her friends. Something hit her hard in the back, an arm caught her around the knees and, too breathless to scream, she fell. Terror tightened her hand on the dagger’s hilt or it would have flown from her grip. Twisting hard, kicking out with her right foot while she got her free hand and left foot under her, Kelida lurched to her knees.

She screamed then, but not from terror. She screamed with the rage of one who sees her own death in the eyes of an opponent.

Stabbing is funny stuff … Don’t stab down if you’re in close. All you’ll do is hit bone and make someone mad. Stab up from below. That way, you stand a really good chance of hitting something important, like a liver or kidney …

Two handed, Kelida drove her dagger’s blade hard and up. Steel rasped on mail and the blade turned. Panting desperately, Kelida adjusted her aim without thinking and plunged the dagger with all her strength up and into the dwarf’s throat.

Blood, like an ugly crimson fountain, spurted high and the Theiwar guard fell away.

Retching from the coppery reek of hot blood, Kelida scrambled to her feet. Again something hit her from behind. Blindly she spun and struck, missed her mark, and simply kicked low and dirty. Her attacker fell, gagging. Instinctively, Kelida brought her knee up hard. She heard and felt the dwarf’s jaw shatter.

Heart thundering now, Kelida spun and found herself, for a moment, in the clear.

Quelling urges to vomit, scream, or run, Kelida searched the bloody hall for her companions. The guards of the black and silver, though not as many as before, still outnumbered Hornfel’s defenders. Tall among them all, like an enraged bear among the battling dwarves, Hauk still fought to keep any enemy away from Stanach’s back.

Stanach, now an arm’s length from his thane, swept the head from the shoulders of a Theiwar guard with his sword. He kicked the corpse away and reached with his right hand, the bandage stained with blood and dirt, for Hornfel.

As he did, the valiant guardsman, Hornfel’s only defender, died with a Theiwar dagger sunk to the hilt between his ribs. When Stanach touched him the thane spun.