Archmage (32 page)

“Will the damned spell work?”

Kenneally glanced back at the four Harpells on the landing and nodded. “I do believe in Tuckernuck, yes. But there might be many enemies waiting for you.”

“Then we’re sure,” Bungalow Thump answered for Connerad. “Ye just get us down there, girl, and get out o’ our way so ye’re not slippin’ in drow blood!”

Out on the landing, Tuckernuck and his assistants cast spells of flying and fell from their perch, disappearing from sight.

“You tell your warriors not to run and leap,” Kenneally warned him. “Just walk off and fall straight down. We marked the spot carefully. Don’t miss it!”

“Aye, we telled ’em,” said Connerad.

“Gutbusters!” Bungalow Thump added. “Crazy as ye might be thinking ’em, none’re fightin’ smarter!”

Behind the two leaders, the next dwarves in line turned and passed down the reminder.

Kenneally led the way onto the platform, lay down, and peered over, awaiting the signal.

“Groups o’ ten at a time, boys,” she heard Bungalow Thump whisper, and the first leap team moved into position. “Three count and the next’re off !”

Connerad and Bungalow Thump were among that first group, and it occurred to Kenneally that if Tuckernuck’s spell didn’t work, his failure would splatter a dwarf king and the leader of the famed Gutbusters all over the stone.

She saw the signal then, a brief pulse of red light, and heard herself saying, “Go!” before she could even think about the grim possibilities.

And so they did, fearlessly, ten dwarves simply stepping off the landing and plummeting blindly into the darkness of a cavern whose floor was more than a hundred feet below.

Kenneally held her breath as they disappeared from sight, hoping, praying, that she didn’t hear a crash. Already the second group hustled into position around her, and before she could be sure the first group had even reached the bottom, those ten dwarves fell fearlessly away.

From the moment he stepped off the ledge, Connerad Brawnanvil feared that he was being foolish, his confidence inflated by the Throne of the Gods and his fine work in the entry cavern up above.

And inflated by the whispers, the young dwarf had to admit. Many were talking about him as the First King of Gauntlgrym, and the fact that he was being considered by some to be worthy of even being mentioned as a possibility for that title along with Emerus Warcrown and Bruenor Battlehammer, overwhelmed Connerad.

Had his pride overplayed his hand?

Those nagging doubts followed the dwarf down into the darkness, plummeting from on high. The cavern was not well lit, with only marginal illuminating fungi nearby, but he saw then the floor, hard stone, rushing toward him.

He noted the Harpells, too, though, the four standing as the corners of a square some twenty paces across, and even as he and several others started to yell out, he noted a shimmer in the marked-off field between them.

Then, before that could even fully register in his thoughts, Connerad was floating, touching down gently a moment later with nine Gutbusters beside him.

“Move out!” Bungalow Thump ordered and the group leaped away, two to each side of the square, with four, including Bungalow and Connerad, at the side nearest the circular stairwell. Barely had they made their positions and caught their collective breath, when ten more warrior dwarves came down behind them, breaking immediately, as practiced, to properly reinforce the perimeter.

Out moved the dwarves with ten more down, then another group and another, and with fifty battle-hardened Gutbusters now beside him, Connerad couldn’t suppress his grin.

Another ten landed.

Huzzah for the Harpells and the clever Tuckernuck!

B
rilliantly played
,
Jaemas signaled to Faelas in the silent hand code of the drow.

Or would be, had we not discovered their intent,
Faelas’s fingers flashed back at him.

Enough?
Jaemas asked, and Faelas nodded.

Jaemas lifted his hands and clapped loudly. In response to the signal, stones scraped and doors slid open and a host of enemies leaped out from concealment to charge at the dwarves. Slaves, mostly, goblins, orcs, and kobolds by the score.

More than a hundred dwarves were down by that point, with several times that number of monstrous foes flooding in to do battle.

But these were battleragers, with fine arms and armor, and neither of the Xorlarrin wizards held any notion that the slave force could overwhelm the dwarves.

Then came the first bolts of lightning, crackling above the heads of dwarf and orc alike. The drow were not aiming at the dwarves, but at the four wizards they knew to be in the air above them, the four human mages that Hoshtar’s spell had revealed.

Faelas looked at his cousin and smiled and nodded, and the two began their spellcasting in unison.

A few heartbeats later, a pair of small flaming orbs sailed across the darkness, arcing over the monstrous horde, and settling in the area where the leaping dwarves were touching down, right in the midst of the dwarven perimeter.

Two fireballs stole the darkness.

“Oh, no, no!” Kenneally Harpell cried out when she saw the lightning, when she realized that the lightning was not aimed at those dwarves already on the ground.

“Stop! Stop!” she cried at the dwarves on the landing, but these were battleragers, and they weren’t about to listen with a fight so near and their kin being hard-pressed by monsters and magic.

Ten more came rushing through the door. Kenneally leaped up to block them, screaming for them to halt.

And at that moment, they heard the crashes as the first group of unfortunate dwarves passed through the level of the flying Harpells—just three now, with the fourth having been driven off by a lightning stroke—and the now failed Field of Feather Falling.

The second group, the ones Kenneally had futilely tried to stop, hit next, crashing and groaning, and still several of the newcomers to the platform leaped away.

“Oh, no, no,” Kenneally Harpell lamented. She knew that she had to do something here, but had no idea at that moment what it might be.

“Get yer ropes!” the dwarves around her cried down the line through the door, and more than one cast a disparaging glance Kenneally’s way.

“Oh no, no,” she whispered yet again, staring into the darkness. And with a resolute shake of her head, she leaped away.

The sword of King Connerad felled the first orc to approach the perimeter, a swift and deadly strike right between the creature’s ugly eyes. Not Connerad, nor any of the Gutbusters around him, cried out with worry when the monstrous hordes appeared and charged in at them. Nay, they welcomed the fight, and when they noted the monsters as goblinkin, relished it all the more.

The trio of goblins following that orc met the gauntleted fist of Bungalow Thump, a wild head butt—one that would have made Thibbledorf Pwent himself proud!—by the same, and a twist, kick, trip, and stab movement by Connerad.

All around them Gutbusters fought wildly, and goblins died horribly. And more dwarves descended, touching down and leaping wildly into the fray. Within heartbeats, though they were outnumbered, the dwarven perimeter widened.

Then came the lightning bolts, and Bungalow Thump laughed at them and chided the enemy wizards for missing the mark.

But a wounded cry from up above warned Connerad that such was not the case, that he and his boys weren’t the targets. With the immediate threat in front of him writhing and dying on the ground, Connerad managed to step back and spin, determined to take command.

Another group of dwarves touched down, several with armor smoking from the lightning bolts—but such a tingle as that would hardly slow a Gutbuster!

Still, Connerad hoped that it had been one of the dwarves on the ground who had cried out.

A heartbeat later, when ten good dwarves crashed down in free-fall to the floor, the young king knew better.

The field of magic had been eliminated.

“No!” Connerad yelled out to a pair of dwarves who turned and rushed to their fallen comrades. The young king grimaced and looked away as the next ten came crashing down, burying those two under them in a tangle of broken bones and spraying blood.

Another dwarf hit the floor, and several more behind him.

“Form and fight!” Connerad shouted to his boys, for what else could he do? More than a hundred were down on the cavern floor, with no way to retreat, and with no further reinforcements coming . . . at least, he hoped not.

“Stop them!” Tuckernuck screamed, soaring back up, even as Kenneally came flying down from the landing.

“We have to get them out of there!” the woman shouted, moving in close. Two of the other Harpells came soaring up beside them.

“They hit Toliver!” one exclaimed.

“They broke the ritual!” said the other.

Kenneally looked to Tuckernuck, who could only shake his head, his expression horrified.

“Is Toliver dead?” she started to ask, but the answer came not from one of the three flying about her, but from below, where a lightning bolt split the darkness—one originating in the air above the battle and not the recesses of the cavern.

“Toliver!” Tuckernuck said.

“Fetch him,” said Kenneally. “We have to get the dwarves out of there. Fetch him and fly back up near the landing and prepare to set your feather fall once more.”

“Too high,” Tuckernuck argued. “The dwarves will float for a long while, easy targets . . .”

“Do it!” Kenneally yelled at him. “And allow no more dwarves to come down. Not on their ropes and not with your magic. Be quick!”

She flew off then, diving down to the cavern floor. As she moved lower, she only confirmed her idea—Connerad and his Gutbusters were being sorely pressed by monstrous hordes of goblinkin.

And soon to be joined by demons or devils or some other extraplanar menace, Kenneally saw, noting a band of lumbering four-armed, dogfaced beasts moving through the slave horde, tossing aside the goblinkin with abandon.

The woman stopped and hovered, surveying the area, noting mostly the movements of the two Harpells flying down to retrieve Toliver.

“Hurry,” she whispered under her breath, and then, having no choice in the matter, Kenneally began to cast a powerful spell.

Another pea of flame arced in. Connerad and Bungalow Thump dropped to the floor and covered just in time before the fireball erupted, immolating several goblins they were battling and igniting a dwarf behind them.

“Put ’im out!” Bungalow Thump shouted to the others, but all nearby were too engaged in desperate battle to break off to the aid of their burning friend.

“Go!” Connerad told his friend, and he shoved Bungalow Thump along. The dwarf sprang over the burning fellow, bearing him to the ground and rolling him about, smothering the flames.

Behind them, Connerad met the incoming enemy, bracing himself to the charge of a pair of orcs.

But those creatures never made it, caught suddenly by monstrous pincers, to be so easily hoisted and flipped aside.

In waded the gigantic glabrezu. Connerad got his shield up in front of a snapping pincer. He slashed across with his sword, but the glabrezu’s reach was too great and the blade cut across short of its mark.

In came the second pincer and Connerad had to throw himself backward and to the side, executing a perfect shoulder roll to come back to his feet just in time to spin and duck behind the shield as the pincer came in once more.

A familiar voice sounded then, a magical call from above. “Get to the landing area! Now!”

The dwarves didn’t know what to make of it, and weren’t sure the call was even aimed at them, or from where it had come.

Connerad couldn’t begin to react to the command anyway. The demon pressed him hard, pincers snapping all around him. He got his shield up to block one, but the powerful demon pressed in with the claw anyway, and Connerad winced as the shield cracked ominously under the great weight of the press.

The demon held on and twisted and the young dwarf king found himself easily yanked off balance, and thought his life at its end as the second pincer came across for his midsection.

A living missile intercepted it as Bungalow Thump flew into the glabrezu, knocking aside the arm and driving the beast backward. It let go of Connerad’s shield, and the overbalanced dwarf king tumbled back and to the ground.

Bungalow’s cry of pain had Connerad back up immediately, though, and seeing Bungalow Thump hugged in close, the demon’s maw chewing at the dwarf’s neck, he fearlessly charged in.

Connerad Brawnanvil leaped high, both hands gripping his sword for a mighty two-hand chop aimed at the glabrezu’s neck. At the last moment, the demon stood taller, though, and so the cut came in low, driving just below the shoulder.

Not a mortal blow, perhaps, but a vicious one, so much so that the glabrezu’s top left arm fell free, cleanly severed.

The demon’s howl echoed across the cavern, and many combatants— dwarf, goblin, demon, and even drow—paused to consider the sheer horror of that shriek.

The glabrezu threw Bungalow Thump at Connerad, the dwarves colliding and tumbling in a heap.

But Connerad went up and hauled the bleeding Bungalow Thump up beside him. Before the Gutbuster could argue or resist, Connerad shoved him hard and sent him stumbling back to the landing area.

“Ye heared Kenneally Harpell!” Connerad called to all the dwarves. “To the landing area, I say!”

Easier said than done for Connerad, though. The wounded, outraged glabrezu leaped in at him.

“Go! Go!” he roared at Bungalow Thump even as the demon began knocking him back. He knew the Gutbuster wouldn’t leave him. “I am right behind! Form the defenses!”

But Connerad Brawnanvil wasn’t right behind. The glabrezu’s pincer caught him by the shield again, and this time the compromised buckler folded under the tremendous pressure.

Connerad grimaced and growled as the pincer came in hard across his forearm, pressing in through his fine mail. He tried to bring his sword to bear, but the demon caught his arm and held him at bay.

In came the biting maw, and Connerad timed his headbutt perfectly to intercept the toothy jaws with the crown of his helmet.