Jeff Crook - Dark Thane

Tarn resumed his seat and rested the stone club on his knees. What he really needed was rest, but he couldn’t risk closing his eyes for a moment; he might fall into a deep sleep. He had to get ready. If nothing else, he would spend his life to see Jungor Stonesinger’s brains splattered all over the floor.

He jerked awake and caught the stone baton as it rolled off his knees. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. But he heard footsteps coming, and then the key rattling in the lock. Thinking quickly, Tarn rested the baton next to his thigh while he slipped the chains back around his legs.

The door groaned on its rusted hinges to admit the jailer. He was soberer now than he had been, though in much worse temper. He carried an old bucket and a large sponge in one hand, a smoking torch in the other. As he entered, slopping water onto the floor and cursing, Tarn noticed that the jailer was alone. The hall outside appeared to be empty.

The jailer crossed the chamber and stopped at the bottom of the steps, setting his bucket down. Soapy gray water slopped over the sides. He dropped the sponge into the bucket, then started up the short flight of steps to Tarn’s throne.

“Jungor has sent word to make you presentable. He wants you pretty, it seems, so you don’t offend the Hylar sensibilities. I have to rinse the piss stains from your trousers,” he growled. “But first let me see to your chains. I…”

The jailer gaped as Tarn rose up before him, his chains sliding from his limbs. Before he could shout or scream, the stone baton had crushed the dwarfs skull to the earholes. Tarn stepped over him, stooped to the bucket, and washed the dried phlegm from his beard. Then he took the jailer’s keys and ghosted from the chamber.

Slipping into the hall, Tarn paused. To his right, the passage descended sharply downward for about forty feet before entering a wider room lit by flickering torches. Twenty yards to his left, the passage ended at an ironbound door, which stood partially open, revealing a dark staircase heading up. He knew that the downward passage led to an old dungeon level, little used these days. But the stairs led to a tower of the North Gate fortifications. He didn’t relish the idea of trying to fight his way through a garrison of troops loyal to Jungor Stonesinger. Just as well to sit in his cell and wait, than to try to run that gauntlet. But the dungeons didn’t offer any better prospect.

He started for the stairs. At least that was a way out, even if not a very certain one. But the quick thunder of boots on the stairs sent him scurrying back in the other direction. He hurried down the sloping passage and into the room at the bottom just as dozens of dwarves tumbled down the stairs and slammed the door behind them. Tarn heard shouts and curses, and something heavy began to pound on the door. “Kill the king before they break through!” one of the guards shouted.

Tarn cast a quick glance around the small subterranean room. Chains and manacles hung from pegs on the walls, while a large, battered table surrounded by benches occupied the center of the chamber. This was another guardroom, luckily unoccupied at the moment. Opposite the entrance, a rusted metal gate blocked the entrance to a narrow passageway lined with doors—more prison cells. The door to his right was, in all likelihood, the jailer’s quarters.

Tarn raced to the metal gate and tried the largest and most ornate of the keys he had taken from the jailer. It twisted in the lock with surprising ease; apparently someone had recently oiled the mechanism. But in his haste, Tarn dropped his weapon. The stone baton, bloody and slippery with the jailer’s brains, broke cleanly in half on the hard stone floor. Swearing, he glanced around the room for another weapon. A bench or a length of chain would prove singularly useless against the swords and axes of trained warriors, but the jailer’s room held the promise of something more suitable.

He found the door unlocked and quickly entered, silently closing it behind him. The room was tiny and unlit, and it stank to the heights of heaven with the odor of unwashed dwarf. A bent dagger lay on a dressing table beside the sagging wooden bed. Several whips and a cat-o-nine-tails hung inside a wardrobe beside the door. But on the opposite wall, a shield and a pair of goblin swords were displayed atop a cabinet which housed a dented horsehair-crested helm—testimony of better and more honorable days perhaps, when the jailer had served in the king’s army. Tarn ripped the shield and one of the swords from the wall. The shield’s leather fittings, old and dry rotted, crumbled as he thrust his arm through the strap, but the sword seemed serviceable enough, if ill-balanced and poorly forged. Thus armed, he crept to the door and leaned against it, straining his ears to hear.

The guards had poured into the small chamber outside the jailer’s door. Seeing the open gate, several raced through, the shouts of their fellows encouraging them. “Find the king! Don’t let him escape!” Tarn smiled grimly and tightened his grip on his sword.

Just then, in the passage above, there was an explosive noise—the wooden door guarding the stairs bursting from its hinges. Footsteps pounded, and dwarven voices roared battle cries that shook the stone. Tarn opened the door a crack. The guards—a dozen hard-bitten Hylar warriors—had thrown up the table and benches to form a sort of breastwork across the entrance. They crouched behind it now, gripping crossbows and spears. Six Theiwar hung back with loaded crossbows, anxiously watching the gate. By his black robes and belt of pouches, one of them appeared to be a sorcerer. Tarn eyed this one narrowly, knowing him to be the most dangerous.

“Come out, you dogs, and submit to the king’s justice!” a voice roared from the passage above. Tarn smiled to hear his old friend Glint Ettinhammer, thane of the Klar, who had somehow rushed to his rescue.

“The king is dead,” one of the Hylar guards shouted back. Just then, the four dwarf warriors sent down the prison hall to search for Tarn returned, sliding into the chamber with baffled expressions on their bearded faces.

“Nothing but prisoners. He’s not among them,” one said to the Theiwar sorcerer. The magician gaped in surprise for a moment before his dark eyes narrowed. He turned his pale visage toward the door to the jailer’s room. Tarn stepped back from the door. He picked up the shield, useless for defense to be sure, but an effective distraction if flung into someone’s face.

Outside, the Hylar guard’s words were met with cries of dismay from above. One in particular rose above the rest. “Kill them all then! Traitorous dogs, assassins! No mercy for anyone with the king’s blood on his hands.” Tarn started, wondering whether his ears were deceiving him, or if the dead had joined the living to revenge their king. For surely that was the voice of his old friend Mog Bonecutter, leading the charge.

Tarn jerked open the door, surprising the Theiwar warriors slinking toward it, crossbows at the ready. At his sudden appearance, the sorcerer lifted his hands and began to chant a spell. Tarn flung the shield. The closest warrior ducked the goblin shield, discharging his crossbow into the ceiling in his excitement. The shield careened off the sorcerer’s shoulder, staggering him momentarily, and breaking the intense mental focus so vital to spellcasting. He was forced to begin his spellcasting anew.

Tarn slammed the door shut just as a half-dozen crossbow bolts shuddered and splintered into the wood, then nearly snatched it from its hinges as he swiftly charged out, bellowing, “Thorbardin!” His goblin sword cleaved the closest Theiwar warrior to the spine. His next blow shivered the brittle goblin-forged blade to splinters over the iron helm of one of the Hylar warriors. Momentarily stunned by the impact, the dwarf was powerless to prevent Tarn from yanking the war axe from his belt. Before the other Theiwar could reload their crossbows, Tarn was among them, laying about with the flat of the axe blade, cutting down Hylar and Theiwar alike.