She had decided to pull down the ruined towers, with the weathered stone broken up for use as missiles, piled now on the top walkways and in heaps next to the catapults. The walls were high enough to serve without towers, but she had put up ramps to use for the spear-throwers.
She was surprised how easily the humans were satisfied with the work. The critical eye of a dwarf would have been much more demanding about standards. She was determined to get Paland into a state that made even the elves praise the speed at which the work had been completed. Not its beauty but the speed and thoroughness of the work.
So far only one of the remaining diamonds had arrived safely in the fortress. Queen Wey and her soldiers were already here. The messengers sent out from the other groups heading for the fortress were keeping the commanders informed of their progress.
It looked as if Sangpûr’s jewel would be the next to arrive. It would be placed in a room with walls many paces thick. Balba had had the roof reinforced and had put in extra supporting pillars.
Even the comet that had once hit the Outer Lands would not destroy this granite armor.
The dwarf directed her steps to the walkway that faced south. She wanted to see the size of Queen Umilante’s force approaching from the hot desert lands, the army protecting her diamond.
As she stood on the battlement walkway taking a drink of water from her flask, an armored elf came up to her. “Greetings,” he said.
“Greetings.” She knew that he had arrived with the two-hundred-strong contingent sent as an advance party from landur; other soldiers would follow.
Apart from them there were a thousand fighting men from Weyurn in the fortress. The rest, a further fifteen thousand infantry and two thousand mounted troops led by Prince Mallen, were advancing swiftly toward Idoslane to storm Toboribor and to destroy the unslayables and the monsters in those caves. Now that they had shown themselves, there was finally something to attack.
“Sitalia has sent us a fine day,” the elf addressed the air as he looked down toward the wall beneath them. “The goddess looks after her own.” He took off his helmet, letting his pale gold hair shine on his shoulders.
Balba took another gulp of water and put the flask down. “Sitalia looks after the elves, so she’ll only send the fine day for you guys. The humans are giving thanks to Palandiell and we praise Vraccas. That’s the way of it,” she said amicably. She pointed over to the right where the sun was going down. “The day’s not over yet.” She looked at the white metal armor. She had never seen it before. The elves were all in new clothing, all two hundred of them, in white and pale colors, a dazzling sight in the sunshine. Their new appearance reminded her of something, but she couldn’t think what.
“You are right there, Balba Chiselstrike of the Stone Teasers,” responded the elf apologetically. “I wanted to praise the work you have done here. It is excellent. The diamonds will be safe here.”
She nodded in acknowledgment and gave a shy smile. “Would you like some?” She offered her flask.
The elf stretched out his armored hand and took the bottle. “Thank you.” He sniffed at the contents first to find out what he would be drinking, then placed the opening to his lips—and froze. “By Sitalia!” he whispered, pointing south. “Do you see what I see?”
Balba looked where he was pointing.
The escort force for the diamond had appeared between two hills and was passing a wood whence an attack was being launched. The girl saw a huge black monster capering around amongst the tiny forms of the soldiers, swinging a scythe-like weapon; from time to time green lightning bolts shot out, and where they hit home men fizzled to steam where they lay.
“The unslayables have tricked us! They aren’t in Toboribor. They have sent their evil misshapen devils here to steal the diamonds before we can place them in safety.” The elf dropped the flask, ran down the steps and put on his helmet as he went, calling out in a language Balba did not understand.
The elf troops rushed to their white horses and thundered out through the southern gate to support Umilante’s soldiers. A handful of their messengers were setting off in other directions to warn approaching groups of dwarves and humans of the acute danger.
The fortress commander had the gates shut and called everyone to arms.
“I said the day wasn’t over yet.” Balba was faced with the prospect of a battle. She was not bad with a cudgel, but didn’t really consider herself a fighting champion. Now, under cover of the uproar, she left the battlements and went off to hurry her workforce through the remaining tasks while there was still light.
Unexpectedly there was a commotion at the eastern side of the fortress but Balba remained at the construction site until the humans had completed their work to her satisfaction. Any faulty workmanship would reflect badly on her family and her clan. When all was done she hurried back up to the battlements, shield in hand.
A cloud of dust was making for the eastern gate.
And whatever was creating the dust was moving extremely fast. Too fast to be a human, an elf, a dwarf, a beast or an animal.
“What happened to Umilante’s troops?” she asked a soldier nearby.
The man had gone pale and was clinging to the shaft of his spear. “They’re all lying out there by the hills and they’re not moving.”
“And the elves?”
“Gone. Swallowed by the monster,” he whispered and gulped with horror.
The sun had gone down and Gauragar was plunged into the half light preceding the dark of true night with its stars.
Torches blazed all round the fortress, chasing away the frightening shadows. Men ran out to bring up the wooden drawbridges and to set alight tar and brushwood piled in the moats. The first line of defense was in place.
Balba heaved one of the rocks onto the battlement wall, ready to cast it down on the attacker. She quickly scratched her initials into the stone, grinning with excitement.
Fifty paces in front of the gates the thing halted in the middle of the roadway, having advanced with such speed. It showed itself to the defenders of the castle. The surrounding veil of dust was carried off by the heat rising from the blazing moat. The image that appeared was a mixture of monster and machine.
From the hips up it was like the other monsters, a bastard hybrid of orc and älf or worse, and covered with a solid armor plating of tionium. There was not a single glimpse of bare skin to be had. Everything was protected by the plates of resistant material from any attack with arrow or missile. Only the face within the open visor showed the armor contained life.
But where legs would normally be there was a large black block, two paces high, two paces wide, and three paces long.
The sides of the block were rounded and the shiny black surface was sloped so that liquids—blood, water or whatever—would run off quickly. Balba saw the surface had openings and flaps hiding any manner of deathly surprises. Round about there were sharp spikes of tionium as long as your forearm. On the bottom of the block were the large wheels used to propel the hybrid along so swiftly using some invisible power-source inside the block.
“A fighting chariot without any horses,” judged one of the soldiers. “What the hell have they thought up here?”
“Nothing good,” replied Balba. The sight of the thing was making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
“Give me the diamond and you shall live,” it called out in a clear voice. “My brothers and sisters will soon be here. These walls will not hold us back.”
“You shall have your answer,” the commander called down, lifting his hand and dropping it sharply as a signal.
Four spear-throwing war-machines hurled their death-bringing loads toward the creature; clouds of black weaponry swished through the evening air.
The missiles would certainly have hit their target, had the creature not suddenly rolled backwards. The thick covering on the front opened up to form a shield against the spears that reached it. The wooden shafts broke and the tips splintered, bent out o
f shape on the rigid tionium. They made not the slightest indentation in the armor. The archers hurriedly reloaded.
“Aim for the wheels. We’ll get it this time round.” The commander turned to the stone catapults. “Ready to fire!” he called. “When I…”
Then all the lights in Paland went out. Candles, torches, the fire in the moat—it was all extinguished in a trice. Blackness swallowed the twilight. Everything lay in total darkness, with not even a star daring to show its face.
“Fire!” called the commander. The sounds of the mechanism being released and the ropes unwinding could be heard. And soon there was the rumble of the missiles hitting home.
Balba was not convinced she would ever hear this creature’s death cry.
Bright green runes blazed out in front of the gate, then there was a powerful bolt of lightning and the gates themselves were blown open, blasted off their hinges with such force that shards cascaded against the far wall of the fortress.
At least now the torches were not refusing their light. So the defenders in the courtyard could see exactly what death looked like, just before it struck.
The huge block had traveled over the moat and now raced through the courtyard. To the right and the left blades of tionium shot out, two paces long, slicing the armored soldiers in half. The sight of these truncated soldiers so appalled their comrades that they stood rooted to the spot.
At the front an iron protective apron had opened up and anyone standing in the way of the machine was forced into the blades or was caught under the jagged edges of the wheels. None survived. Conventional arrows raining down on the vehicle and on the creature itself had no effect.
Balba shook off the paralyzing fear. “Your commander is right: the wheels are the weak point,” she called, racing down the steps. “Do you hear me? Shove iron rods in through the wheels and it’ll be forced to stop. Get chains. We can overturn it.”
In all the noise and shouting only a few of the soldiers could hear the brave dwarf-woman’s advice, but they tried their best to follow her commands.
Just before the entrance to the diamond vault, they overtook the vehicle, which was emitting strange noises. It was clicking and ticking, hissing and steaming behind its tionium plating.
“Bring the chains,” called Balba to the men. The soldiers did not hesitate to obey her orders. They had grasped her meaning. Balba grabbed hold as well, dragging a hook and getting ready to sling it. “Hook it in the…”
A loud rumbling sound made her turn her head to look back at the blasted gateway.
A second monster was forcing its way through. Its creator had placed a huge armor contraption round it. Fists of tionium were battering against the walls, tearing out great parts of the fabric and hurling the rocks at the castle’s defenders. The brave soldiers from Weyurn were losing their lives in scores against the superior power of this attacker that was kicking at them as if they were vermin. A cage-like globe rolled through their open ranks, coming to the aid of the monster at the entrance to the vault.
Balba stopped, her heart in her mouth and her courage melting like lead in a furnace. A third of Tion’s creatures, this time with forearms of metal and glass, was climbing up the southern battlements. It swung its hands round and sent bolts of green lightning toward the soldiers. Their protective iron armor glowed and the men vaporized to nothing in the deadly light-beams. The commander himself was among the fallen. The rest gave up and ran off screaming. From one thousand maybe four hundred men were still alive.
Balba understood that without a magus there was no hope of combating these hybrid monsters. The combination of superior machinery, the strength of the creatures and the unrestrained power of magic could not be matched by any force they could offer.
She let the hook fall and ran off, in contrast to the fleeing humans, out through the northern gate. Later she was to learn that all Weyurn’s soldiers had been annihilated.
X
Girdlegard,
The North of the Kingdom of Gauragar,
Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle
Boïndil stomped off after the undergroundling and made no attempt to conceal his displeasure. “We’re putting ourselves voluntarily into their hands. They attacked our people! It’s not good.”
“They will give us a hearing. If we can reach an agreement, that’s always going to be better than more attacks,” said Tungdil.
“And he still hasn’t told us what his name is.” Boïndil found another reason for his bad mood. “Oh yes, and they’re friends with the snout-faces.”
“Just wait and see,” advised Tungdil, who had by now had enough of these complaints. Goda was walking next to her master and not getting involved, but judging by her face he reckoned she would have preferred Boïndil to be less argumentative.
All three were tense as they followed the dwarf-stranger. No one knew what to expect from the coming meeting with their distant relatives from the Outer Lands.
Tungdil watched how the undergroundling moved. His walk was smoother than a Girdlegard dwarf’s rolling gait: he set his feet down in a straight line, not a little way apart like them. He kept his upper body straight and hardly made a sound as his boots touched the ground. In contrast to Ireheart. The undergroundling was so good at moving silently that he might have learned his skill from the älfar.
They marched till sundown, when they found themselves at the foot of three hills in a gentle wooded valley, in the middle of which a bubbling stream arose.
The undergroundling led them straight over to the water, called out some incomprehensible words and sat down at the edge of the spring. He drank from his hand. “Sûndalon will be here soon,” he said.
Ireheart rammed the head of his crow’s beak into the soft moss-covered earth and listened. “How peaceful it is,” he murmured. “Might just as well be one of the elves’ sacred places. The only thing missing is the big white stone.”
The undergroundling looked up. “A white stone? With the broka?”
Tungdil remembered that this was the undergroundling’s word for elves. It seemed he and his folk were already acquainted with them. “Yes.” He described the stone, its appearance and the secrecy the elves had tried to maintain. “Does that sound familiar?”
“Yes,” nodded the undergroundling, giving him a sympathetic look. “We had broka and their stones in our land, too.” He drank some more water and washed his face, without smudging the sign on his forehead.
“What does that mean?” grunted Boïndil impatiently.
“What do you think?” The undergroundling looked annoyed now. “That we had to destroy them before they destroyed us.”
Ireheart looked at Tungdil and gulped. “Did you hear that, Scholar?”
“Loud and clear.” Tungdil sat down on the moss and leaned back against a tree. It was high time they met up with the leader of the undergroundlings. His friend and Goda both sat down next to him.
“What do you reckon? Think they like jokes?” Ireheart considered the undergroundling. “Perhaps that will lighten the atmosphere a bit.”
“But not the asking-the-way joke,” Goda rolled her eyes. “If you must, then try the one about the elf and the dwarf and the forest.”
“Yes, you’re right. The asking-the-way they might not appreciate.” He placed his fingers round the handle of his weapon. “They’re so difficult.”
“Just because they won’t laugh at your jokes? Well, that’s certainly a good reason for mistrusting a whole people,” said Tungdil lightly. “That can be your new motto: Laugh, or I’ll thump you. You could get it engraved on the side of your crow’s beak.”
Goda laughed out loud.
“Forty push-ups for you, apprentice.” Boïndil’s pride was hurt.
“No sense of humor, master?”
He pretended to be offended. “Not when the joke’s on me.” He pointed to the ground. “Forty, if you please. And right down. I want to see moss on your nose.”
Protesting, Goda stood up and did what he had ordered. r />
Tungdil shook his head in disapproval, but Ireheart showed his teeth.
“Get your face right down into the moss,” he reminded her after the first thirty push-ups. He was enjoying watching the play of her muscles in the upper arms. Nowadays this was a sight he was finding altogether more attractive.
The undergroundling had kindled a large fire and took no notice of the three dwarves. Flames shot up high into the night sky, sending out a clear signal.
As if from nowhere there they were: two dozen silent figures standing between the trees, in light brown and black leather armor, leather breeches and boots. Their heads were protected by helmets, none quite like the next. The faces were all hidden. Each shut visor bore a demon visage engraved on the surface. The effect was uncanny and intimidating.
In their hands or on their belts Tungdil caught sight of short blackened iron batons one pace in length. At the end of each baton flashed a slim blade and a hook. It seemed the undergroundlings did not share the dwarves’ preference for heavy weaponry.
“Show yourselves,” said the dwarf who had led them to the valley. They all opened their visors.
Tungdil watched the beardless serious faces and noted that some of them were women. This aroused his curiosity. They did not seem to have the plumpness of dwarf-women that he knew; their form was taller and slimmer—more like human females.
One of the undergroundlings, at first sight just the same as the others, stepped forward. “I am Sûndalon. You want something from me?” He rammed his staff into the mossy woodland floor, lifted the helmet from off his short light blond hair and waited.
Tungdil and his companions stood up and he introduced them all. “We must talk about the diamond,” he said, speaking freely. “We know now that it belongs to you, but through broka magic it has become much more powerful. We can’t just simply hand it over.”