Jeff Crook: Dark Thane

Captain Axeblade led Tarn and his party through the main gate and into a broad, paved courtyard beyond. The courtyard lay in a bowl-like valley, deep in the shadows of the gigantic towers. Here Tarn saw the preparations for war were continuing even at this late hour. Donkeys brayed beneath their loads, while the caves dotting the eastern slope glowed like red eyes from the forge fires within. The dwarves guarding the walls watched the king and his party pass then turned back to their duties. Tarn’s silence told them all they needed to know. They looked now to the north, their commanders quietly telling them to be on their guard for the attack most felt was sure to come. Tarn ground his teeth in his beard. He wanted to say something to dispel their fears, but he would not lie to them, and the truth was too grim, too fresh in his memory.

“I must see General Otaxx Shortbeard,” Tarn said to Captain Axeblade.

The captain nodded and led them across the courtyard into the east tower.

“I don’t like crawling in here like a whipped dog,” Mog whispered harshly as he and Tarn waited in the general’s study. General Shortbeard was one of Tarn’s oldest and most loyal commanders, one of the few Daewar who had not followed Severus Stonehand on his mad quest to retake Thoradin in the years after the Chaos War.

The general’s quarters were located on the second level of the east tower of Pax Tharkas, but his office was within the great shaft that had been built during the War of the Lance to house the dragon mount of the commander of the red dragonarmies. The shaft had once pierced the tower from its base to its top, but the dwarves had since roofed it over and divided it into its proper levels once more.

The general’s office was spartanly furnished, as befitted an old campaigner. His desk had once been a door, looted from some ruin or dungeon during his youth. Fitted with iron bands and rivets, marred by axe blows that had since been lovingly polished, it sat atop a pair of wooden chests. An iron dragonhead ornament in the center of the door held an inkpot in its gaping mouth. A book lay open on the desk, the page marked with an ornate silver dagger. A canvas-backed chair, much sagged in the middle, stood behind the desk, and trophies of old battles hung on three of the stone walls—an ogre’s wolf-toothed club, an evil knight’s broadsword decorated with skulls, an elf’s delicate but deadly longbow. A pair of ancient wooden chairs dating back to before the Cataclysm completed the room’s furnishings.

“No disrespect, Thane,” Mog whispered, “but it was wrong of us to slink in here like gully dwarves. The lads on the walls were looking to you for encouragement.”

“I’ve no encouragement to give them, Mog,” Tarn snapped. “What did you want me to say? Half of them had friends or relatives in Qualinost. Shall I tell them how their loved ones were buried alive? Or drowned? I don’t know which is worse. I can’t get their faces out of my mind. I can’t stop imagining all the ways they could have died.”

“They’re warriors. They knew what might happen when they chose their lot in life—to die and to see your friends die. We all learn to accept it. You should have told them the truth,” Mog grumbled. “You owe them the truth.”

“What? That their kith and kin died horribly for no good reason?” Tarn snarled.

“You should have told them that they died honorably and their deaths were not in vain,” Mog said as the door opened. He lowered his voice. “They won a great victory.”

A stout dwarf stopped short within the doorway. “Victory?“ he exclaimed. “Do my ears deceive me?” He entered, his round face flushing crimson above his spade-shaped beard. “They told me you’d been defeated!”

“Shut the door, Otaxx!” Tarn barked, glaring at the dwarves crowding the hall outside. Every word he’d said to Mog had probably been overheard and was already spreading like measles through the fortress. He gnawed at the filthy ends of his straw-colored beard while the general closed the door and locked it with an iron key.

As he turned and crossed the room, General Otaxx stared first at Tarn then at the Captain of the King’s Guard. Mog only shook his head, while Tarn avoided his gaze entirely.

“What happened?” Otaxx asked he as he lowered his rotund bulk into the creaking canvas-backed chair.

When Tarn didn’t answer, Mog hesitantly said, “We’re not sure.”

“We’re sure enough that no one survived,” Tarn said in a low voice trembling with suppressed emotion.

General Otaxx’s breath escaped his lips in a long sigh. He leaned back in the creaking chair, which threatened at any moment to split apart at its canvas seams.

“We don’t know that for certain,” Mog amended. “There could have been survivors, but we never found any. We tried to get away—er, get back here as soon as possible. The woods were crawling with the remnants of Beryl’s army.”

“Remnants?” Otaxx’s face brightened. “Beryl is dead, her army scattered?”

“So we hope,” Mog said. He quickly recounted what had happened in the tunnels, their discovery of the drowned city. “I found one of Beryl’s scales floating in the flotsam along the shore of the new lake. It was not some old dried scale that dropped off her body naturally. It was tom out of her flesh, by what force I cannot begin to guess.”

“Whatever it was that flooded the city must have also killed her,” Otaxx ventured.

“We don’t know that for certain either,” Tarn snarled. He rose to his feet and began to pace the small chamber. “She may only be wounded. In truth, we know almost nothing. We don’t know why the city was flooded or what happened to those defending it. We don’t know how many of Beryl’s soldiers were killed or if they are still under any kind of central command. We don’t even know for sure if Beryl is alive.” He stopped before the door and slammed his fist into it so hard that the center wooden panel split down its entire length. He seemed not to even notice, for he immediately resumed his pacing. Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the flagstone floor.

“I cannot allow myself to hope that the Great Green Bitch is dead,” Tarn finished.

“If you had no hope of defeating her, why did you aid the elves?” Otaxx asked with a frankness that might have been traitorous had Tarn been any other king. His commanders and generals knew that Tarn valued frank advice, even if it disagreed with his plans.

Still Tarn spun and glared at the portly general, anger flaring in his violet eyes.

“I had no other choice,” he said, repeating the excuse he’d been practicing since they left the Qualinesti forest early that morning. He felt weary to the bone. He’d had no sleep in almost two days, but that was little more than an inconvenience. He’d gone far longer without rest in the days after the Chaos War, when the survival of his people had lain in the balance. He felt as though there were a palpable force trying to restrain him, to surround him and smother him, plucking at his elbows and tugging at his sword belt. Even now, he sensed it. It felt as though there weren’t enough air in the room for all three of them to breathe, as though each breath were a struggle.

“I aided the elves because I had no other choice,” Tarn repeated wearily. “To not aid them when they came begging at my door would have been immoral. Besides, since when has an elf ever begged aid of a dwarf? I could not pass up the opportunity to forge an alliance between our two people in this time of danger. And I wanted a chance to strike a blow at Beryl and her minions and also at the Dark Knights.”

“Then you did hope to defeat her,” Otaxx shrewdly observed.

“The elves’ plan was a good one. It could have worked. For all we know, it did work,” Mo said, a smile creasing his unkempt black beard.