Greyfax Grimwald (31 page)

Dwarf fumed in the snow-filled bottom of his shelter. “Drat and dwarf curse on the bunch of them,” he huffed, his hat tumbled down over his eyes. “I’ll teach them better manners for it,” he mumbled, removing his hat, spinning it on his hand. An old dwarfish rune he remembered from Tubal’s lore book came to his mind, and he repeated the words, made the proper motion with his hat, and sat back to wait.

The harsh rasp of a voice called out again. “We’re ready now to welcome you, filthbreath. Come, my comrades and I haven’t eaten all day. You’ll at least fill half our cooking pot,” it sneered. A grinding noise followed, as the great bolt was shot back to open the gate.

Dwarf grew uneasy, trying to remember if he had spoken the entire spell. If he had left something undone, he would be in for it now, for two black-clad, misshapen men, or at least half-men forms, came forward out of the gate toward his hiding place, their firearms ready in their hands.

Before Dwarf could repeat the ritual, they had dragged him roughly from the ditch.

“He don’t look more than a mouthful,” complained Lakmog, picking Broco up by his ear. Dwarf twisted in pain, but the man-beast’s iron-handed fist held him fast.

“We’ll use him for dessert,” put in Mishgnash, roughly feeling Dwarf’s arm. “He seems to be meaty enough.”

The two grotesque forms, Gorgolacs, carried Dwarf back through the gates, laughing and poking his ribs, and took him to the lockhouse, behind which other men dressed in black stood watching from the low door of a guard shack.

“Bake him, broil him, clean his bones,” they chanted in unison, pounding their firearms against the hard snow-packed ground.

Dwarf, between painful pokes or pinches, tried to recall what exactly it was he had left out of his spell, and as he ran through it all for the third time, he was heaved brusquely into a steel-doored cell and left to himself for the moment. Broco regained his wind, looking about his prison. His captors had taken his sword and pack, and the hunger grew as he raged to himself at his mistake of a spell that had allowed him to be taken again.

“This begins to bore me,” he huffed. “If it’s not some jawing by an overgrown cur of a wolf, it’s these troll apes pinching and dwarfhandling me. Now where is it I went wrong with that infernal business?” Dwarf paced angrily a few steps, and stopped. There in the darkness before him trembled Corporal Cranfallow and Ned Thinvoice, drawn close into small bundles of terror.

“Hullo,” said Dwarf, surprised at the quaking men.

“Wh—who are yo—you?” Cranfallow’s voice shivered loudly.

“Broco, heir and Dwarflord UnderEarth, Lore Master, Seeker of the light,” Dwarf huffed, puffed into believing these two men terrified of his terrible countenance.

“Do they hold you hostage, too?” asked Thin voice, more sure of himself, as he looked carefully at Dwarf, finding him only half again as large as he had thought him.

“They think they hold me, but I’ve a surprise or two under my hat for the likes of those trolls. Even the Dark Queen herself can’t long keep Broco, Dwarf-lord, prisoner.”

Cranfallow was seized with wonder at this small fellow who spoke so boldly, and talked of Dwarflords and Dark Queens. But this was probably another of the long series of misfortunes that had befallen them since the appearance of those other two witches that had caused their ruin and fall. Cranfallow shuddered as he recalled the swift doom that had overtaken them not three days after the bear witch had gone. An enemy force had overrun them, and these half-men, half-beast soldiers had eaten everyone in the village, one by one, until he and Thinvoice, and this new sorcerer, were the only ones left unharmed.

Dwarf paced furiously back and forth, hat far down over his forehead, thinking. He ignored the gaping stares of the two men.
“Now, In’mun dula dil,
Mot in don a’brill
Loc Alla Dula Indomine,
Rocco ronco il da fine,”
he chanted slowly, going over it again, then repeating it in reverse.

“That must be it, it amply must. Surely I haven’t let it slip my mind so soon.”

Dwarf fell into silence, and there came a golden arc of pale light that lighted the room, and down the bridge of the glowing ray came two small, almost invisible figures. Broco, with his back turned, didn’t see the light bridge or the figures at once, but Cranfallow and Thinvoice broke in together with their chorus of rattling teeth.

“Eh, what’s that?” asked Dwarf, turning. “Upon my beard,” he cried, delighted and relieved. “It’s about time.” He crossed and sat before the pale golden figures, and fell into a tongue the two men could not understand. After what seemed hours, Dwarf got up, the light bridge glowed brightly once, then disappeared, and all was once more left in darkness.

“Well, that settles that. It seems they took so long because I neglected to mention exactly what plane I was on,” explained Dwarf to the dumbfounded men.

“Ahhhh,” moaned Cranfallow, “have mercy on our souls, another witch. A curse on the day I ever laid eyes on the bunch of them,” he sobbed into his kinds, teeth beating madly, body twitching. Thinvoice was frozen where he sat.

“Here, here, old fellow. Obviously you can’t have anything to do with these brutes out there, so you have nothing to fear. Come, friend, tell me your names, and be of good cheer. We’ll be out of this before morning,” Dwarf tried to reassure them.

“If we’re not had up for supper,” groaned Thinvoice. “They seem to have no end to their hunger.”

“My little surprise for them may spoil their appetites a bit,” laughed Dwarf. “They’ll be thinking of other things than food before this night is out.” Broco went to the iron-barred window. “Come, one of you, and hoist me up that I might see out.”

Neither of the men moved.

“Come,” said Dwarf, in a sterner voice. “If you want to keep out of the dinner pot, come and hoist me up.”

Cranfallow slowly rose and went to the small figure of Dwarf. Hesitantly he touched him, then convinced he wouldn’t be burned or otherwise harmed, he put Dwarf upon his shoulders and stood close up to the window.

“Do you know this place, friend, or are you strangers here too?”

“Corporal Cranfallow, sir, and my friend Ned and I were of the garrison that defended this town, so I know it well enough.” Cranfallow, his fear lessening as he spoke, went on, relating to Dwarf how they had been surprised in the darkness by the superior enemy force, and the town devoured, save he and Thinvoice.

“Most likely, all because of the likes of them other two, the bloody bear witch and the one what hexed us all to sleep,” he added. “No harm to yourself, sir, and I knows you means none to me, nor my friend. | Just seems that anytime you gets into anything unnatural, something dreadful always gets you.”

“A bear witch?” Dwarf tumbled quickly from the man’s shoulders, landing lightly. “What sort of fellow was he?”

“Well, sir, he comes up in the night, the first one, and has a bite to eat, and fills our heads with all sorts of strange goings-on, like I never heard before. Then he ups and hexes us all to sleep, and we wakes up the next morning to the commander bringing us another one. I brought food to him right in this very room, and he told me things that stood my hair up straight on end, he did, and while I was standing here, right here, he ups and turns his bloody self into a living, breathing bear.”

Dwarf had approached Cranfallow, and took the man’s sleeve lightly.

“You mean a real bear, friend? Or were you full of malt?” Dwarf’s mind raced. He’d found word of Otter and Bear, he knew, but he couldn’t understand the strange tale this man told of their being of man forms. He had no way of knowing of their meeting with Froghorn, or the secret he had given them that enabled them to change their forms at will, but he knew this man was too frightened to lie or try to deceive him, and he knew, too, that from what the man remembered so vividly of the bear witch, it could be none other than his old friend.

“Clever Bear, dear old ass,” he laughed as Cranfallow finished his tale of Bear’s escape. “I never would have thought it of him.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it about him neither, if I hadn’t seen it with my own two good peepers. I didn’t get these stripes of mine by going about spreading kegtales. I has my drop of malt, I’ll grant, but not so’s you’d be able to tell it on me.” Cranfallow sat down on the hard bed. “But who is you, and you all full of those powers too.”

“I’m a friend of the fellows you just told me of. I have been held prisoner for quite some space of time by the Dark Queen, but am escaped now, in search of my friends. You’re both welcome to come along with me, if you have a mind. If it is as you say, there won’t be much to stay in this town for.”

“We’d have no more brains than the droppings of swine if we was not to travel on with you. But we ain’t out of the woods yet, leastways not to my way of thinking. For one thing, we can’t gets out of here,” concluded Thinvoice wisely.

“How do you mean to spring us, sir, if it’s not too much trouble my asking?” Cranfallow looked down at his feet, ashamed for having fallen in with the lot of a dwarf witch, but more afraid of falling into a chafing pot.

“Keep your eyes and ears unplugged,’ and you’ll see,” said Dwarf. “The fun should be about to begin, if my timing’s not all off. Lift me up again, good Cranfallow, and I’ll see.”

Cranfallow stooped low, and Broco slipped onto his shoulders once more. Outside, a loud, ugly rumor of a fight broke the stillness.

“I’ll has your head for that, wormslime,” came a low, snarling voice. A firearm went off, followed by a grunt and the sound of a heavy body falling.

“Now that’s done it, Amogth. What’s gotten into your head? He meant no harm.” Another guttural snarl.

“He’s the one what flung his dagger at me. I didn’t start this.”

“You has finished it, though, fool. Now we has to answer to Burlag.”

“A curse take him and his high speech. I got no use for his likes.”

“He commands here, scumbreath, don’t forget. And you knows how he treats those what crosses him.”

The voices faded, the two Gorgolac soldiers moving away, out of hearing of Dwarf or his companions.

“Good, good,” gloated Dwarf. “They’ve begun. Now they won’t be thinking so much of their precious supper.”

“One killing ain’t going to hold them up long, sir,” corrected Cranfallow. “They don’t think nothing at all of killing or fighting. As like as not, they’ll have him up for supper, too.”

“No doubt they will,” agreed Dwarf, “but the excitement has only begun. You’d see some real fireworks if only I had my dragon stone.” Dwarf bitterly regretted the loss of that precious heirloom, for he’d carried it long, like all his father’s fathers before him. It was of mighty powers of old, although not as powerful as the magical powers of the wizards, but on occasion, and performed right, the spells of the dragon stone could dazzle the eye with a bursting, brilliant display to stand any but the wizards themselves in stupefied, wondering amazement.

Many roaring and dreadful-sounding voices raised themselves at the gates of the town, calling loudly their promise of death to the Gorgolac soldiers there.

Their captors rushed back and forth about the compound, shouting and shrieking oaths in their own tongue, and firing their weapons into the air.

Dwarf allowed himself a quick giggle.

“What’s happening out there. Cranny?” Thinvoice strained to see over Cranfallow’s figure at the window, where Dwarf perched atop his shoulder still.

“It sounds like an army at the gates. A whole bloody army out of nowhere,” answered Cranfallow, trying to see more of what was happening beyond the gates. At the other end of town, a brilliant, flaming shadow had begun to move from that direction toward them.

“Have you done all this, sir?” asked Thinvoice respectfully.

“Some of it, although most of it is merely illusions my two friends have conjured up. But our jolly fellows outside there don’t know that.”

The crash and din of weapons going off grew to a deafening roar. Shouts and cries rose, and as the plunderers of the city set about defending their front, the blazing, molten red-gold flames leapt high and besieged their rear flanks. The fray was shortly over; those that yet lived fled away over the mountains, to be eaten or maimed by the wild dogs there. No enemy had in truth attacked them, but their fear at what they thought was an opposing army had driven them mad with rage and terror, and those who were slain were felled by their comrades in their blind fits. Soon the noise and screams died away, leaving the sudden silence behind heavy and complete.

“Well,” said Cranfallow at last. “We’s done the bloody lot of them, or they’ve fled, but here we sits locked up as right as doomsday, and here we’ll sits till then, I wager.” He looked reproachfully at Dwarf, who had gotten down and walked to the great, massive steel door.

Dwarf made the sign of the sacred alder, touched the lock, and the door swung loose on its hinges.

“My kin are masters at doors and their secrets,” he explained. “And it’s a rare door that has runes I can’t undo, or at least not upon this world.”

Cranfallow and Thinvoice gratefully followed after Dwarf, who was poking about the area, trying to find his gear. Unable to find his own sword, he took a firearm from one of the slain beast soldiers, and began searching for food and a drink of water. Working his dwarf spells always parched his throat, and his lips and tongue felt dry and cracked. Cranfallow guided him to the storeroom and well house, and soon the three sat down to a meager meal of potatoes and cabbage, but to the hungry company it was a feast, and before the meal was through, their three plates had been polished clean, and the supper washed down with cold, pure water.

Cranfallow lowered his water bowl and looked steadily at Dwarf.

“What path draws your feet now, sir? Would you minds if Ned and I tags along? Or at least until we can get back to our army?”

“I’d welcome your company, friends,” said Dwarf courteously. “Three together might keep us from harm from the likes of those.” He indicated the fallen body of one of the Gorgolacs.

“With magical powers like yours, sir, what use would two fellows like us be?” asked Ned.