Jeff Crook: Dark Thane

Jungor had seen the staff in her hands at many meetings of the Council of Thanes. It was a wizard’s staff, for Brecha Quickspring was one of the more powerful sorcerers of her clan. The Theiwar had an innate magical ability that allowed them to cast spells, unlike most dwarves, who feared and distrusted magic. The staff was made of some unidentifiable dark wood and mounted with a large round red stone set in gold.

Jungor reluctantly picked up the staff. Although he bore a natural prejudice against magic and doubted that it would prove much use against his Daergar opponent’s heavy sword, he had few options. The staff felt surprisingly light in his hands, which only deepened his distrust. Surely it would shatter at the first blow. A staff was no weapon for a true warrior.

Vault Forgesmoke lifted his heavy curved sword and charged across the arena, bellowing a battle cry that eclipsed the deafening crowd. Jungor readied himself, still trying to blink away the last of the acid. Vault switched his blade to his left hand as he closed. Jungor turned to meet him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dagger appear in the Daergar’s right hand and dart toward his unprotected left side.

Jungor dived under the Daergar’s sword, away from the slashing dagger. At the same time, he swung around, smashing the butt of the staff into his opponent’s left leg. Vault Forgesmoke stumbled with the momentum of his own attack, crumpling from a shattered kneecap. Jungor turned the staff and swung it with all his might against the Daergar’s back before he had even hit the ground. As the staff slammed into his back, a flash of scarlet light burst from the red stone. Steel scale armor shattered like glass, and his spine sank beneath the blow, a sodden pulp of bone, meat, and nerve. Vault Forgesmoke dropped like a poleaxed hog.

As he fell, he rolled onto his back, his arms thrown wide to either side. He lay before Jungor, panting, paralyzed, his dark violet eyes wide with terror as he looked up at the Hylar thane’s acid-stained visage. The crowd fell silent at the suddenness and violence of the attack.

“Mercy!” the Daergar cried weakly.

Snarling, Jungor tossed aside the staff and picked up the dagger his opponent had dropped. He knelt on Vault Forgesmoke’s chest and with a violence that shocked even the most hardened warriors among the crowd, plunged the blade into his helpless opponent. Not satisfied, he sliced open the dwarfs body, reached inside, and dragged out his red, still-beating heart.

Jungor rose and approached the silent, horrified crowd, the Daergar’s heart dangling from his fist.

“You want blood?” he screamed. “I give you blood!” With a wail of rage, he flung the organ into the stands. Blood spattered the faces of those in the front row, but they barely flinched. They sat mesmerized.

Jungor returned to stand over his vanquished opponent. His fists covered in gore, his right eye a milky ruin, he glared down at the dead Daergar warrior. “As thane of the Hylar, I bar your entrance to the Kingdom of the Dead, Vault Forgesmoke. For your treachery, your ghost shall wander the houseless mountains beyond the doors of Thorbardin forever!”

He turned and stalked toward the exit. As if released from a spell, the crowd erupted in wild cheers. Dwarves poured over the wall and into the arena, some to gather reverently around the Hylar thane, others to drag Vault Forgesmoke’s body out of the arena. Astar Trueshield surged past them and raced to Jungor’s side, Thane Brecha Quickspring following closely in his wake.

The Theiwar thane stopped only to retrieve her staff. To anyone who would listen, she cried, “I have the sight, and I saw Vault Forgesmoke’s ghost obey Thane Stonesinger’s command! I saw his ghost bow in obedience.”

Those who heard her turned to Jungor with awe written into their features. “The dead obey him!” Thane Quickspring shouted over and over again, gleefully.

Jungor slapped the doctor’s hand away from his face. “Clumsy oaf!” he spat, then snatched the bloody towel from the doctor’s grasp and clapped it to his ruined eye. “Must I do everything for myself?”

“The wound must be cleaned, my lord,” the doctor insisted as he tried to pry the towel from Jungor once more.

“Just do it, then,” Jungor snarled. “Stop pussyfooting around. I’m not some nobleborn fainting at the thought of a hangnail, whose brow you pat to cool his fevered brain. I won’t have your head lopped off if it hurts. Just do your job and be done with it!”

“As you wish, my lord,” the Daewar doctor said, bowing. He picked up a leather bag from the floor, set it on a chair, and began sorting through various gleaming metal probes, knives, pliers, and other instruments of torture and surgery. Jungor lay back on the examination table, sighing angrily while he pressed the crimson-soaked towel to his face. The table was as sturdy as a butcher’s carving block. It had seen enough meat carved upon it in its day. The doctor’s examination room lay one level beneath the arena at the bottom of a staircase leading directly up to the arena floor. Those wounded in the arena were usually carried here by orderlies, but Jungor had made the descent on his own feet, refusing to be coddled.

Hextor Ironhaft nervously paced the chamber, trying to oversee the doctor’s work. Astar Trueshield stood beside the closed door, his hackles up and still angry at being prevented from protecting his thane. Jungor glanced at him and snorted. “You would have disgraced me,” he said. “Interference isn’t allowed.”

“You are the thane!” Astar shouted angrily, forgetting himself for a moment.

“If I had been attacked in some alley of Norbardin,” Jungor said, “I would have your head on a pike for failing in your duty to protect me, Astar Trueshield. But in the arena, there are rules—”

“Nevertheless, you shouldn’t have risked your life in this wasteful manner,” Hextor Ironhaft interrupted. “Rules be damned. There is more at stake here, my thane.”

“Do not preach to me, Hextor Ironhaft,” Jungor said in a low, dangerous snarl that brought the wealthy Hylar merchant to a stop. “My honor was at stake. What do you think would have happened if I had been dishonored by that Daergar?”

Cowed, Hextor shrugged and resumed his nervous pacing. “Those who prevented Captain Trueshield from going to your aid may have been part of the conspiracy.”

“I assure you, they now regret their mistake,” Astar said.

Jungor chuckled appreciatively. “Yes, I know. The doctor has already seen them in the other room. I expect nothing less from you, even though they were merely enforcing the rules of the arena,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t kill them, though.”

Jungor smiled grimly and turned his attention to the doctor, who was still rummaging through his surgery bag and laying out various instruments, the use of which was beyond guessing. “By the gods, how many knives does it take to pluck out one eye?” the thane snarled at him.

I can do this quickly, or I can do it correctly, my thane,” the Daewar doctor said, rising up with a pair of metal tongs in either hand.

“They’re probably already saying I am dying down here,” Jungor grumbled. He toweled his eye one last time and tossed the bloody rag on the floor. Though a veteran warrior of many battles, Astar winced at the sight of the thane’s vitriol-scarred face. Hextor clapped a hand over his lips and turned away. The skin around the eye was hideously marred and bruised a dusky purple, like rotted meat, while the raw flesh showed through in places where the skin had fallen away entirely. The right eye was the color of watery milk, and a sickening wheylike substance oozed down the thane’s face and into his beard. He seemed not to notice the pain, which must have been excruciating. He lay on the table as though waiting for the physician to remove a splinter.