Archmage (33 page)

The glabrezu staggered, and Connerad wriggled free his sword arm and stabbed straight ahead. He felt his fine blade sink into demon flesh, and felt the hot Abyssal blood spurting out over his arm.

Not far from the floor, Kenneally Harpell watched the dwarves scrambling, trying to get back to the landing area—which was easy to locate with nearly thirty broken dwarves lying in a tangled heap.

The woman forced the gruesome image out of her thoughts and looked up, trying to see if Tuckernuck and the others were in position, and with their spell enacted once more.

But to no avail, for they were in darkness too complete. But Kenneally knew she couldn’t wait. She began casting her spell, a powerful dweomer known to only a few at the Ivy Mansion, aiming it right at the dwarves clustered about their fallen kin.

“No, you hold!” Tuckernuck shouted at the dwarves on the landing. He had figured out Kenneally’s desperate plan and knew what would soon be coming his way. “They’re coming back, all of them, and you need to be ready to catch them and pull them to safety! Grapnels, I say! Ropes and grapnels!”

Many dwarves shouted questions back at the flying wizard, and many more shouted curses.

Tuckernuck ignored them. He had to lead the ritual—nothing else mattered. He understood the carnage that would ensue should he fail Kenneally, should he fail the dwarves now.

The other three Harpells returned to him, and he motioned them into place. Clearly injured, Toliver barely managed to get near to his spot diagonally across from the leading wizard, and Tuckernuck wasn’t sure that one could bring forth his part of the ritual.

The dweomer needed four participants.

With no options available, Tuckernuck continued his casting, then reached his arms out left and right, forming his corner of the square. From his fingertips shot tiny filaments of light streaming out to be caught by the casters at those corners, the two of them then redirecting the energy to Toliver.

But Toliver only had one arm up to receive the light. He remained lurched over to his left. There was nothing Tuckernuck could do—he couldn’t even shout out for Toliver or he would ruin his own casting.

But how he wanted to, and even more so when he heard the sudden commotion below him, and glanced down to see the tumbling, spinning charge of a score of dwarves flying up at him.

No, falling up at him, he realized, for they were caught in Kenneally’s spell of inversion, where up was down and down was up.

“Flip!” he did yell at the other wizards when the dweomer reached them, and they did, except for Toliver, righting themselves upside down, which was now upright!

The falling dwarves drew near, but the Field of Feather Fall wasn’t complete, and the ceiling, now the floor, loomed just above.

“Toliver!” Tuckernuck and the other two shouted, for now their spells were complete.

And from the landing, which was not in the area of effect, the dwarves began to scream and curse.

Dead dwarves tumbled upward beside living dwarves. Pursuing goblins were caught in the spell and went falling upward in the line. More dwarves came in, leaping, then flailing as they were caught in a free fall as surely as if they had leaped off a cliff.

But many other dwarves weren’t going to make it, Kenneally realized. Nearly a hundred and fifty of the sturdy folk had leaped down, the last three groups falling to their deaths almost to a dwarf. But the Harpell wizard realized that of the six-score who were already on the floor, less than half were going to find their way back. Yet another group of several Gutbusters were pulled down by the goblin horde, overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Kenneally spotted King Connerad of Mithral Hall staggering away from a skewered demon, the beast spouting blood from its gut but still stubbornly pursuing.

And more monsters—like great bipedal vultures—swept in from the sides, cutting off the young dwarf’s retreat.

Connerad fought valiantly, but Kenneally shook her head in despair. She began casting a spell, a fireball, thinking to put it high enough to catch the heads of the tall monsters. She took hope when one of those vulture-like demons screeched and staggered back, its beak shattered by a mighty stroke of Connerad’s sword.

But the four-armed behemoth leaped in, pincers leading, and Kenneally lost the spell in her throat as the beast extracted Connerad from the commotion and lifted him up into the air, both pincers grasping tightly around the poor dwarf’s midsection.

“Bah, ye dog!” she heard Connerad cry, and he lashed out with his blade and managed to clip the huge beast’s canine muzzle.

With a yelp of protest and rage, the demon thrust its arms out wide, and Connerad Brawnanvil, the Twelfth King of Mithral Hall, was ripped in half at the waist.

Kenneally’s fireball spell was lost in her throat then, and all she could do was fly up for the ceiling, her eyes wet with tears, and gasping for breath she could not seem to find.

She took some heart as she rose, though, to see her four kin maintaining their dweomer. Toliver had straightened and completed the square just in time. Upward fell the dwarves, then upward they floated, to land lightly on the ceiling.

And dwarves on the landing threw them ropes, which fell up to them, that they could be hauled to safety.

And upward fell the pursuing monsters, too, then upward they floated, and not one got to the ceiling before a dwarven crossbow launched a bolt into its torso, and the dwarves already up above were ready for them anyway, cutting the disoriented and confused goblinkin apart in short order.

“Hurry, pull them in!” she heard Tuckernuck commanding. “Kenneally’s spell will not last much longer! We will lose any not on the ledge!”

Kenneally nodded agreement and focused on the task at hand. She was more than halfway to the ceiling, the jumble of falling dwarves and monsters just in front of her. Now she concentrated on that tumbling mess, picking out monsters.

A line of magic missiles shot out from her fingertips, striking a goblin, killing it, and taking out the one beside it as well.

Kenneally chanted the spell for a lightning bolt, and when she executed it, she perfectly angled it to blast several enemies, with not a dwarf singed. The power of the bolt jolted one large demon too, sending it spinning out of the area of her reverse gravity, and as soon as the beast went out of the dweomer, it fell back the other way, more than fifty feet to the floor.

And so Kenneally realized a new and deadly tactic, and one executed by a simple spell she could cast quickly and repeatedly. She picked out her targets with gusts of wind, blowing them out of the reverse gravity field, sending them falling back for the cavern floor, living bombs to drop upon the sprawling horde below.

She would avenge Connerad, she determined, and she narrowed her eyes and sent a dozen goblins flying free of her enchanted area.

Tuckernuck Harpell looked up, or rather down, nodding approvingly of Kenneally’s exploits.

But noting, too, that fewer and fewer dwarves were among the dozens falling upward, and that little fighting continued on the floor.

He glanced the other way to see most of the living dwarves already out of the enchanted area, scrambling on ropes with their crowded brethren grabbing at them and hauling them over the lip of the landing.

He looked back the other way, back to the floor. He saw no dwarves, none living at least, but now more and more monsters were taking the leap.

Tuckernuck could only hope that he wasn’t killing more dwarves then, but he flew backward and dropped his arms, ending the ritual enchantment of the Field of Feather Falling. He flipped back upright, and waved his three fellow Harpells back as monster after monster tumbled past to crash against the ceiling, or, soon, to crash against the bodies of those that had already crashed against the ceiling.

He looked down again to Kenneally, and he gasped and cried out. A pair of ghastly creatures, like giant houseflies with human faces, flew upon her at either side, biting and tearing at her.

“Kenneally!”

He began to dive, but a fireball below stopped him before he ever truly moved.

Kenneally’s fireball dropped right upon herself.

The flames cleared and the chasme demons, their wings burned away, tumbled for the floor, bearing poor Kenneally with them.

Again Tuckernuck began to dive, and again he stopped short, for Kenneally’s powerful dweomer ended then, and a host of monsters and dead dwarves fell from the ceiling, and those falling upward in the field paused, then went tumbling back the other way.

So enthralled by the strange sight was Tuckernuck that he didn’t notice a swarm of chasme demons soaring up at him until it was too late.

Covered in blood, much of it his own, Bungalow Thump was the last dwarf holding the landing, and the one who hauled Toliver, the only Harpell to reach the landing, over the edge. The powerful dwarf sent the wounded man skidding back through the door, then his eyes widened in horror to note the other two nearby wizards caught suddenly by the horrid, insectoid demons.

Bungalow fell back in shock, barely avoiding yet another of the darting chasme. He would have been caught and surely killed, but a dwarf within the doorway grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him back and to the ground—and the pursuing chasme caught a swarm of crossbow bolts right in its hideous face.

The door slammed shut and
Comragh na Uamh,
the Battle of the Under Way, came to an abrupt and disastrous end.

O
retheo Spikes harrumphed repeatedly as he paced across the bridge over the small pond in Gauntlgrym’s entry cavern. The veteran Wilddwarf had grown quite fond of Connerad and missed the young king, but even worse, in Connerad’s absence Oretheo had been given control of the finishing touches for the defenses of the vital cavern.

Oretheo Spikes was a fighter, as fine a warrior as Adbar had ever produced, and not a yard boss!

And there was a battle soon to begin, he knew, if it hadn’t already, for the whispers said that Connerad and his boys—almost all from Mithral Hall and Felbarr—had pushed into the final reaches of the upper level of the complex and expected to breach the lower caverns in short order. By all expectations, there would be dark elves waiting for them.

And Oretheo wouldn’t be there. He looked around as he moved across the bridge yet again, this time heading back for Gauntlgrym’s castle-like wall. He noted the many engineers, masons, and blacksmiths hard at work, finalizing the triggers and springs that could drop the bridge from a single command point.

He turned his gaze wider about the huge cavern, where a thousand dwarves worked or watched from the stalagmite towers that had been hollowed and set up as guard posts. Even out in the hallway, the dwarves labored with defensible positions—anyone coming in here would fight for every inch of ground.

That thought bolstered him, but he couldn’t shake off the notion that almost all of the dwarves in this rear guard area were from Citadel Adbar. As were almost all of the dwarves working in the throne room and adjacent chambers. Because of King Harnoth.

Despite his earlier protestations to the contrary, Oretheo Spikes truly wanted to blame king Emerus and King Bruenor, and even King Connerad. He wanted to pretend that this was Mithral Hall’s fault, or Citadel Felbarr’s. But he could not, because he understood the truth and the way of dwarves.

He and all his boys had participated in the call of Kith’n Kin with all their hearts, had given their fealty wholly to their Delzoun heritage and the rebuilding of Gauntlgrym, and he knew that their pledge had been accepted honestly and with open hearts, open arms, and a mug of magical ale courtesy of Bruenor’s marvelous shield.

But this snubbing of the Adbar dwarves was not an emotional decision by the kings of the other clans, as was proven by the fact that the thousand dwarves who had joined in from Mirabar were also here in this cavern, or scattered about at other tasks in securing the ground they had gained. The decision to take the dwarves of Felbarr and Mithral Hall was purely a practical one. In any expedition to the as-yet unconquered reaches of Gauntlgrym, the mission would be led by a dwarf king. And no king would spearhead his battle group with the boys of another clan when his own trusted warriors— in Connerad’s case, the famed Gutbuster Brigade—were readily available.

If King Harnoth had come to Gauntlgrym, Oretheo Spikes would be at the front of the column pushing into the lower chambers. Two thousand of the five thousand dwarves who had come into Gauntlgrym were Adbarrim, easily the largest of the four contingents. King Harnoth would have stood at the end of that reception line in the Rite of Kith’n Kin, instead of Bruenor. Despite his youth, he, Harnoth, would have determined the place for the Adbar dwarves.

He might have even made a play to wear the first crown of Gauntlgrym, and wouldn’t that have warmed the bones of King Harbromm in his cold grave?

“And wouldn’t that’ve avenged the death o’ his brother, King Bromm?” Oretheo Spikes remarked as he stepped off the bridge onto the beach in front of the castle wall. He turned a sharp left, moving along the bank to check on some fellows arguing about the placement height of their side-slinger catapult.

“Aligned to the top o’ the bridge!” roared one yellow-bearded dwarf, who looked very much like Oretheo, though with a much more modest beard.

“Bah! But if we’re needin’ to shoot the durned thing, the bridge’ll be turned and the enemy’ll be in the water, ye dolt!” his orange-bearded opponent countered.

Oretheo Spikes shook his head, certain that this disagreement, like all of the foul moods he had witnessed in the cavern this day, stemmed from the same frustration that twisted his own belly. Heading over to arbitrate, he was about to shout out to the two to shut their traps, when suddenly they went quiet of their own accord, both turning to the dark waters of the pond. The young yellow-bearded dwarf scratched his head and the other looked at him and shrugged, clearly at a loss.

Oretheo Spikes, too, turned to that water, and now he noted the first small ripples running toward the bank, and the strange undercurrent of the waves. He continued on his way, and glanced back just as a sizable freshwater fish leaped out of the water and sailed at the yellow-bearded dwarf. That fellow reacted quickly enough to bat the biting thing aside, but another came out, and another.

Oretheo Spikes started to run to the fellows, but skidded to a stop and threw himself back a stride, narrowly avoiding his own leaping fish missile.

“How’re they seein’ us?” the red-bearded dwarf yelled, but before any could even consider the question, they realized that it was moot, and simply coincidence, for the only fish they had noticed were the ones coming at them, but now that they had taken note, all three of the dwarves saw the truth and fell back in shock.

Dozens of fish were leaping out of the pond, flying onto the beach and flapping wildly.

Nay, scores of fish, on both sides of the pond, from one end to the other.

Just off the shore, some dozen feet, the water stirred and broke, and Oretheo Spikes and the rest of the dwarves watching the spectacle quickly came to understand why the fish were fleeing. They knew at first glance the horrible nature of the demons walking toward the shore, walking toward them.

An army of misshapen humanoids, pallid and decrepit and bloated, like ugly little fat men with flaming red eyes . . . an army of manes.

“Shields and pointy things!” Oretheo Spikes shouted, and he fell all over himself scrambling from the bank.

He nearly tumbled to the dirt when out in the middle of the pond a swarm of chasme broke the surface, the buzz of their wings filling the cavern with strange echoes.

Whistles sounded at every end of the cavern, along with cries of “Battle groups!”

“Here, Oretheo!” one dwarf by the wall cried, and Oretheo Spikes glanced that way to see a gathering of shield dwarves already forming their line at the base of the castle wall.

Above them, side-slinger catapults cranked back and let fly, clusters of sharp stones spinning over Oretheo’s head, splashing into the water and crashing into the approaching demons. So, too, did the ballistae fire, huge spears whipping away, skewering manes two at a time. But perhaps most damning of all to the demons came the spells of magical light from the many clerics at the wall, illuminating all the beach areas on both sides of the pond.

Oretheo staggered for the shield line, and glanced back, nodding at the holes already punched into the approaching horde. He sucked in his breath, though, for bigger things than manes appeared in the pond. Crawling out the other way, into the main cavern, went a pack of fourarmed—and two of those with fearsome snapping pincers—greater demons. And vulture-like creatures—huge and terrible, and with beaks that seemed as if they could surely punch through a breastplate with ease.

The cranking catapults brought him hope, and before he had ever reached the shield line, which parted to let him in, a second volley of heavy stones flew for the pond and the monsters.

“Ah, good boys!” Oretheo Spikes congratulated. “We’ll hold ’em here and let the wall-sitters thin ’em to nothing, eh!”

The dwarves, their shields hooked together as one solid wall, reached over in unison and banged their hammers, maces, and swords on the strong metal blockers. And those about Oretheo Spikes in the second rank readied their longer weapons, the spears and pikes they would prod above that solid wall of shields.

Oretheo Spikes continued to call out commands, but he knew that he needn’t have bothered. This group knew their jobs and did them well.

Thirty feet up from the floor in the middle of the large entry cavern, in a wide, round room cleverly carved to give optimal views—and thus, optimal lines for shooting—Nigel Thunderstorm leaned on his heavy ballista, thinking of what delicacy he might prepare for his Ma, Nigella, when she arrived in Gauntlgrym. And aye, she would soon enough be here, the dwarf master chef was certain, for Nigella still resided in Citadel Felbarr, whereas Nigel had gone to live in Adbar. King Emerus understood the grandeur of this place, and he’d allow as many from Citadel Felbarr as desired to come here to settle.

“What ho?” cried another of the dwarves in that stalagmite guard station, a strapping young lass named Carrinda Castleduck, who braided her long yellow hair under her chin in a “beard” that would make a grumpy old metal-pounder proud. “Oh, by the hairy-arsed gods!”

“What do ye know?” asked Ogden Nugget, the third in the room, and he and Nigel scrambled over beside Carrinda to gaze out over the battlement.

“Demon beasties! And what a horde!” came a cry from the lower level of the tower even as the three artillery dwarves began to register the monsters crawling out of the pond, so clear to see under the magical illumination of the enchantments thrown about the pond by the dwarf clerics.

“Line her level!” Nigel cried, running to the missile rack set against the opposite end of the chamber. He first lifted a thick-ended bolt, the shaft filled with oil that could be set aflame, but put it back and pulled forth a black metal tri-spear instead.

Carrinda and Ogden had already turned the ballista, which was set on a circular base that could swing it in a full circle, before Nigel had the tri-spear in place.

“Put ’er down a fat fist,” Nigel instructed, one eye closed, the other looking through the crosshair sight set atop the weapon. He held up a hand when the tip lowered just enough, accounting for the expected drop to the pond—one they had measured many times—and nodded.

“Ah, but just a pinky-finger to me left,” he begged, for he had a particular target in mind. This was their first shot, after all, and Nigel wanted it to count. Staring through the sight, the dwarf gave a rather eager chuckle and nod, noting the top crown of an avian behemoth.

Nigel yanked the lever and the ballista let fly, the spear arcing out beautifully and breaking into three separate missiles.

The spear on the right disappeared into the water with a splash, and perhaps hit something just below the surface, given the strange way it didn’t immediately sink. The missile on the left drove into the hip of a vrock, drawing a great screech from the beast. And the third, the center spear, impaled the target, another vrock, right through its massive chest.

Unlike its counterpart, that one didn’t cry out, but simply flew over backward into the water.

“Huzzah!” Carrinda cried, turning back to Nigel—and finding him already back at the caisson, drawing forth another tri-spear.

“Find another group!” she told her partner, and she grabbed the crank at the side of the ballista and began drawing the heavy wire once more.

The stalagmite shook then, as the side-slinger catapult mounted in the lower level let fly, and then again as the conventional catapult out on the balcony joined in.

“Find the biggest!” Carrinda ordered. “Aye, but we’re the prime bombers, so let’s make ’em count!”

The barrage pounded the lake and the demons coming forth, spears and stones and burning pitch flying in from many guard towers, while those artillery batteries set in the castle wall focused their devastation on the back of the horde pressing the shield dwarves.

How wonderful the light was, Oretheo Spikes realized, seeing that it clearly marked out the targets.

But with that thought, the Wilddwarf leader saw a bigger problem. Across the way there was no such clarity, and there, into the wider cavern, went the biggest of the monsters coming forth—the biggest and the smartest, no doubt.

And from those shadows, he saw a group strike, huge four-armed glabrezu demons appearing as if out of nowhere to assault one of the stalagmite guard positions. That tower was lost in short order. The demons had been clever in their assault, using the mound to shield themselves from any other batteries that might have struck out at them.

The focusing mirrors were not yet in place in the stalactite and stalagmite towers, and without them, the shadows would greatly limit the artillery.

The dwarf shook his head. Though this side of the pond already seemed as if it would hold, and so this monstrous horde would find no easy entrance into Gauntlgrym, he had no desire to surrender the rest of this cavern, particularly not with nearly eight hundred of his fellows out there across the pond.

“All right, boys,” he told the spear-wielding dwarves at his side, dwarves furiously stabbing as monsters tried to reach over the shield line, “our brothers’ll be pouring out o’ the throne room in a heartbeat, not to doubt. Ye gather ’em and make yerself a wedge and push to the bridge. Ye take the pond bank, one wall to th’ other, and nothing gets out on this side!”

“Ye goin’ somewhere?” one of the dwarves asked, and Oretheo Spikes smiled with resignation.

“Aye,” he replied. “And don’t ye let none forget me!”

He hopped up and tapped the two shield dwarves directly in front of him on the shoulder. “On me word,” he instructed, and they grunted, shoulder-blocked back the press of manes, and nodded.

Oretheo turned to the wall and called up to the nearby batteries. “Ye open me a line to the bridge!”

“The bridge?” one dwarf yelled back. “Bah, but th’ other side’s crawlin’ with the damned things.”

“Aye,” Oretheo Spikes agreed, and he hunched up his shoulders, shook his head wildly, banged his axe against his shield, and laughed boisterously.

“Open it!” he roared.

That command echoed up and down the line on the wall and many of the batteries concentrated their fire then on the monsters between Oretheo’s position and the entrance to the bridge.