Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

A hand, thick with bloody bandaging, touched Hornfel’s shoulder lightly. He looked up and met the eyes of a son of Clarm Hammerfell, black, and flecked with blue lights.

Hornfel sighed. “I owe you my life.”

“You’d best not take an accounting, Hornfel Thane, until we find a way out of here.”

“Sound enough advice, young Stanach.”

Stanach crooked a smile. Bitter though it was, it softened the harsh, red line of a knife’s trail.

“Aye. According to our restless Hauk, we’re neatly trapped and only have to wait for the hunters to finish us,” Stanach said. “And according to you, Thane?”

“Me, I think he’s right. The only way out of here is into the great hall or out the gate. We can’t fly and we’re only four. You know that Realgar is calling up more warriors even now. I say if the hunters want us they’ll have to come in and get us. If they do, let them make their peace with Reorx.

“They’ll have to earn their prey, those hunters. If we suffer a lack of numbers, we have all the weapons we want; this is a guard hall as well as a gatehouse.”

Stanach nodded solemnly.

“Wait.” Hornfel drew a short breath as though reluctant to ask the question. “Kyan Red-axe and Piper?”

“Their cairns are in the Outlands, Thane,” Stanach said simply. He needed to say no more. Mountain dwarves know that there is no bleaker way to describe a death.

“Go arm that girl with something more suitable than a dagger,” Hornfel said softly. Then his voice hardened. “No mail or helm of ours will fit Hauk, but there may be some to fit her. See if you can find something for us as well. Realgar may find us few, but he’ll find us ready.”

Kelye dtha . One who wanders. Dressed in a cast off elven hunting costume and a borrowed dwarven mail shirt too big in the shoulders and too short at the waist, Kelida shifted from one foot to the other seeking a balance for the new weight of the mail.

The west corridor of the gatehouse was apportioned into guards’ quarters. Spare, comfortless bunks were built into the back walls, racks of spears, crossbows, and swords lined the side walls. On either side of the door were coffers filled with quarrels for the bows.

Little sunlight leaked into the stone-walled room from the gate, though the air was thick with ashy scent of smoke.

Guyll fyr , Stanach thought. He’d seen the blaze from the gate, a great sea of fire. With only the thin ledge of the wall between himself and the thousand-foot drop into the burning valley, Stanach had felt that he was standing at the edge of the world.

Stanach shook his head as Hauk fitted a glittering steel helm on Kelida’s head. The nose guard gave her trouble, crossing down into her line of vision. She made a face something like a grimace, almost like a sheepish smile.

“ Lyt chwaer , look beyond the nose guard, the way you’d look beyond your hand when you shade your eyes from the sun. Try not to see the guard.”

She nodded, the gesture awkward with the helm’s unaccustomed weight. “I feel foolish, Stanach. Like a child playing at dress-up.”

With a gentleness Stanach had not seen in him before, Hauk adjusted the helm and stroked Kelida’s face, lifting her chin to kiss her lightly. Stanach saw her shoulders tremble, looked away, and said, “Foolish or not, Kelida, this is one of those times when the costume is dictated by the event. I would be happier if you would take a sword.”

Kelida, eyes bright, thumbed the hilt of her dagger. “No. I can’t use a sword, Stanach. I can use the dagger. Sort of.”

The phrase held an echo of Lavim’s equivocating. Stanach smiled in spite of himself.

“Aye,” Hauk said, “and failing that, there are those who have cause to regret getting in the way of he^ kick.” He pushed her gently toward the door. “Kelida, take some swords from the rack and bring them to Hornfel. Choose the best, for he is thane of the Hylar. Stanach and I will make do with what remains.”

When she was gone, Hauk dropped to a seat on one of the hard bunks. Whatever tenderness had been in his expression when he spoke to Kelida had vanished as though it had never been.

“Stanach, we’re going to die here.”

“I wouldn’t put odds on anything else.”

Hauk smiled grimly. “Neither would I. I hear you call her lyt chwaer . What does it mean?”

“It’s dwarven for ‘little sister.’ “

“Good, if you mean it.”

Stanach looked around then. Aye, he thought, she taught me how to mean it. “A dwarf does not claim kin lightly.”

A ghost of a smile lighted Hauk’s face. “I’m glad. This is a dirty game we’re engaged in, friend Stanach. She goes out there to your thane with a warrior’s intent, but not with a warrior’s skill. It won’t matter to those she fights against. She’s going to be one of the first to fall, and you know it. Is there a way out of here for her? A place to run to, to hide?”

Stanach shook his head. “The only thing she could do is bolt herself in here.”

When Hauk’s expression told him that he thought this a good idea, the dwarf added, “You’d never get her to agree to do it. I’ll tell you this about her, Hauk: she survived a dragon raid on her home, the occupation of Long Ridge, and a dragon flight across the Plains of Death. She is not going to be easily convinced that she must hide in here now. And I don’t think you should try. She deserves that respect.”

Out in the corridor Hornfel called softly. “It’s time, Stanach. They’re here, and they are many.”

Smoke dragged up by the wind from the great burning in the valley, channeled through the defile and filled Tyorl’s lungs. Black, hopeless dread fill his heart. Though it was only the wail of the bitter wind on the heights, he imagined that the shrieking he heard was a dragon’s battle cry. I don’t smell dragon-stink, he told himself firmly, I couldn’t possibly smell anything in this smoky reek but ash and burning!

Still, he could not banish the dread, the sense that something huge and deadly, taloned and fanged, watched him and patiently waited for him to come within reach.

Fear of the dragon, however, seemed like a child’s warrantless night fears compared with the ranger’s terror of the heights upon which he now walked.

Tyorl cast a quick look over his shoulder. He and Lavim were running scout. Lavim’s strength had increased with the degree of his fascination. Like all kender, his fascination grew in direct proportion to the degree of danger. Tyorl was the only one who could curb Lavim’s inclination to scramble too far ahead of his companions, peer out over the ledge, or climb just a little higher up the sheer face of the wall to see down into the burning valley.

His legs weak and trembling with both fear and exhaustion, the elf pressed his back against the ice-sheathed stone of what must once have been the wall of Thorbardin’s Northgate, waiting for Finn and Kem to climb with painfully slow care over a tumble of rocks and gravel. The slither and clatter of falling stone found echoes in the thumping of Tyorl’s heart.

Ahead, Lavim amused himself kicking stones into the wind-torn depths from a ledge no wider than his foot was long.

Tyorl closed his eyes against a sudden wave of vertigo, found that darkness was worse than sight, and swallowed. He forced himself to open his eyes again.

Though the might of the gods, unleashed during the Cataclysm, had sheared away huge portions of the Northgate wall, the destruction had been capricious. In some places, like the place where Tyorl now wedged himself for balance, the raw stone of the mountain gaped like open wounds. In others, the smooth curved masonry of the wall could still be seen. The ledge was most treacherous in the niches and the gaps, strewn with the rubble of centuries.