The Fall of Dorkhun (17 page)

Then, she fell silent, and the two continued down the mountain without speaking. In the distance, flickering torchlight signaled the town. Feeling exhaustion overtaking him, Krondious focused on the trail only at the ground immediately in front of him. As the path flattened and curved towards the first building in town, he turned to thank Aleichan, but she was no longer there. He paused and stared back up the mountainside, wondering if she had been something real or part of his imagination.

***

The first year above ground was the worst. Most nights he barely slept more than a couple of hours because he would start awake with an unnamable anxiety and spend the rest of the night looking at whatever ceiling he happened to be under. There was nowhere to call home, so mostly, he roamed from town to town, rarely staying in one place long. Food had little taste and ale no pleasure, and since the incident with the farm boy, he was scared to get in another fight. He regretted the lives he had taken, and the last thing he wanted was to shed more innocent blood. Every day became a gray blur, and more than once, he contemplated suicide.

Over time, however, living on the surface became easier. After the first year, most days the sunlight was bearable, and once he settled in the small logging town in the south, Krondious quickly realized he was perfectly suited for felling trees. His powerful arms and chest could swing an axe for hours without tiring, and as he chopped, he concentrated on his technique. Finding a niche gave him something to focus on, and slowly, he climbed out of the deepest end of the depression. Small joys, like a well-prepared meal, again became pleasurable, and he found himself sleeping through the night. While he wouldn’t call himself happy, he found this existence tolerable.

As years passed and he grew from a young dwarf into adulthood, he perfected his swing to the point that he could fell twice as many trees in a day as anyone else. He could also split any block of wood, regardless of diameter, with one stroke. Many a stranger had lost a week’s wages betting against him with the locals, and among loggers, his physical strength and agility with his axe were legendary. For his part, Krondious mostly kept to himself. He would drink in the tavern with his crew, and he would sometimes eat with them, but most of the time, he would go deep into the forest to work alone.

Often, as he worked, focusing on his swing, he would think about Aleichan and wonder if she had really been with him on the mountain. Part of him was convinced she had merely been a pain-induced hallucination, something his mind concocted to get himself down the trail and into town. Then, there was the other part that remembered the leaves she had crumbled onto his wounds. Within a couple of days, those wounds had healed completely with hardly a scar. That part believed she was still there and that he would see her again. Regardless, he never spoke of her to anyone, and even if he had wanted to, he wouldn’t have known what to say or where to begin.

Life continued, day after day, season after season, for several years, and while it was tolerable, he missed home. Sometimes, he would dream about the darkness of the deep but wake up disappointed by the faint light of the stars. Two dwarves in the logging town were also from the deep, and occasionally, they would commiserate about life on the surface, usually over several pints of ale. On those nights, Krondious would cry himself to sleep, so miserable he couldn’t stand the feeling of his own flesh.

Then, one afternoon, he returned from the forest to find a group of soldiers from the Great Empire in town. The humans had never bothered with Rugraknere, so it was a start to see them. A large crowd had gathered in the center of town near the shame cage used for drunks, and Krondious moved to the edge and listened to what the human in charge was saying, which was a lot of nonsense about reasonable taxes and honest labor, so Krondious nudged the dwarf beside him and asked what was happening.

“They’re looking for that old man and the dark beard that stay with Shaman Bokey, but they’ve gotten out of town.”

“What’s this about taxes?”

“These jokers are gonna stay and ‘protect’ us from renegades and murderers like the two that escaped. We’ve gotta pay them for this privilege.”

“That’ll be the day,” Krondious said gripping the handle of his axe.

“Listen to me,” the female Ghaldeon who had arrived in town with the escapees said. “I’m from the conquered lands. Whatever they ask for, go along, or they will do terrible things to some of us to make examples.”

Krondious studied her face for a moment, and there was a look in her eyes he recognized. He couldn’t place it, but it was real, so he decided to trust and listen to her. For the next few days, he told every dwarf he met not to make trouble, and given the legendary stories of his prowess in the forest, everyone paid heed.

But life under these soldiers quickly became unbearable. Every night they collected taxes, and those without money were beaten and usually handed over to the slave traders who had arrived with the humans. The old and the weak worked themselves to death trying to satisfy the greed and protect their families, but nothing could satiate the soldiers. Among the dwarves, there were grumblings of standing up to the humans, but Krondious knew that they were too poorly armed and too poorly trained to face soldiers from the Great Empire, so every time someone talked of uprising, he would remind them of the Ghaldeon’s warning. Though she had disappeared shortly after the soldiers arrived, Krondious still trusted her.

So for months, he and the others endured, and their lives were miserable. While Rugraknere was a pale shadow of the Kiredurk kingdom, the logging town had at least been somewhat cheerful. Now, all vibrancy was gone. Every dwarf spent the day with heads down and shoulders slouched, and Krondious resented the soldiers for taking the small measure of contentment he had found. Often, as he chopped, instead of remembering Aleichan, he would imagine striking down the humans.

One afternoon, the two Kiredurks from the deep found him in the forest and asked him to move deeper into the woods. They pushed through the thick growth and found a small clearing far away from any dwarf or human.

“What’s this about?” Krondious asked when the other two were convinced they hadn’t been followed.

“We can’t take it anymore,” one returned. “We’re dwarves, not pigs. They can’t treat us like this.”

“It ain’t right,” the other agreed.

“I know,” Krondious said, stroking both braids of his beard. “What do you have in mind?”

“We need to fight,” the first said, his eyes burning with hatred.

“It’ll take time to train enough to fight,” Krondious responded.

“We can surprise them.”

“These are professional fighters,” Krondious said, putting his powerful hand on the other’s shoulder to calm him.

“You can lead us,” the other said. “You are better than any of them.”

“I’m a woodcutter,” Krondious scoffed. “Not a warrior.”

“You’re the toughest dwarf I’ve ever met. You’re a natural warrior.”

“Look, the Ghaldeon told us not to make trouble or they’d retaliate.”

“Forget her, and forget that. She skipped out. For all we know, she’s one of them, like some of them slave traders are.”

“No, she went after her friends. She’s not one of them.”

“Come on, Kron. I’d rather die than live like this.”

“The timing isn’t right,” Krondious said, his voice hinting that he was tired of discussing the matter. “We need to plan and organize.”

The other two relented and agreed to organize a group. They would find dwarves willing to follow through, and they would develop a surprise attack. Krondious was satisfied with that arrangement, so the three left the forest and returned to town to recruit the members of their uprising, but that night Roskin entered the tavern, climbed on a table, and made his speech. As he talked, Krondious remembered what Aleichan had said about luck, and he knew there would never be another opportunity like this, a group of trained dwarves here and ready to overthrow the humans. Then, when Roskin offered to pardon any who stood with him, Krondious’s heart nearly jumped through his throat.

***

A half day’s walk from Dorkhun, Roskin stopped Krondious and Bordorn outside a small township. They had caught and passed the king, but a few platoons were still ahead. Roskin had said he wanted to get to the capital first to see the state of things, so Krondious was confused by the stop.

“Something’s not right,” Roskin said, taking his swords from the pack on the horse and strapping them to his waist. “I’ve got a bad feeling.”

Bordorn and Krondious retrieved their weapons and moved to each side of the heir.

“Everything seems okay to me,” Bordorn said, fastening the shield to his left arm.

“I smell something,” Krondious said, barely more than a whisper. The scent was familiar but he couldn’t place it.

Roskin strode forward, his right hand gripping the pommel of Grussard’s blade. Krondious and Bordorn moved with him, and they entered the township.

“That smell,” Krondious said. “It’s driving me crazy.”

“I smell something, too,” Roskin said. “But I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s from the deep.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes. For some reason it reminds me of my papaw.”

“If your papaw smelled like that,” Bordorn said, trying to ease the tension. “No wonder you became an outcast.”

Krondious chuckled, but in a flash, he remembered where the smell came from. It reminded him of his papaw because the old dwarf had taught him as a boy that the smell was a portent of extreme danger and if he ever smelled it he should hide until the smell was gone. Then, he should find an adult as soon as he could.

“Cave troll,” he said, his voice quivering slightly. Even now, twenty-seven years since his last encounter with one, the memory terrified him.

“Cave troll?” Bordorn asked, raising an eyebrow. “Not this high in the kingdom.”

“He’s right, Krondious,” Roskin said. “There’s not been one this high up for hundreds of years.”

“There’s a cave troll close,” Krondious insisted, composing himself. “I’m certain of it.”

Roskin and Bordorn looked at each other, and the Ghaldeon shrugged, as if to say he would follow Roskin’s lead. The heir faced the center of the township and told his friends to ready their weapons. They resumed their march, and as they neared the middle, shouts and screams to their left caused all three to jump. They rushed in that direction, and Roskin, the fastest, got ahead of them. Krondious shouted for Roskin to slow down, and though he was an outcast from the deep with no status, the sound of his voice caused the future king to stop.

“Stay behind me,” Krondious ordered. “Bordorn, make sure he does.”

“He’s right, Pepper Beard. You don’t need to go charging into a cave troll’s arms.”

Roskin gritted his teeth as his temper flared, but he stepped behind Krondious and followed.

“It’s on the next street over,” the white beard said, lifting his new axe to his shoulder in anticipation.

They moved swiftly but carefully, searching for any sign of the troll. The cacophony of shrieks was getting louder, but with the sounds reverberating off buildings and rocks, they couldn’t tell exactly where. Then, as they stepped around the corner and onto the next street, it loomed before them, less than twenty yards away. Dozens of Kiredurks, soldiers and civilians, surrounded it, and several lay in heaps at its feet and against the walls of nearby buildings. The troll was disoriented, scared, and angry, swinging its long arms at anything near that moved.

In Erycke the Just’s day, cave trolls were plentiful, and living in competition with each other kept them reasonably small, rarely more than fifteen feet in height. By this time, there were so few so far apart some bodies had been found twice that size. This one was still fairly young and was just over twenty feet tall. Its gray skin was nearly identical to the stones of the deep, and its head was bigger than Vishghu’s buffalo. As it swung at the terrified dwarves, large strings of slobber dripped from the corners of its mouth.

The soldiers stabbed at it with pikes, and some civilians had grabbed long-handled tools, but even accurate blows bounced off its skin. With each strike, the troll grew more enraged. Krondious stopped and turned to Bordorn.

“Make sure he stays right here,” Krondious said, pointing at Roskin. His eyes were wide and wild as he spoke.

“Where are you going?” Roskin asked, raising his shoulders back and assuming an air of someone in charge.

“These fools don’t know how to fight a cave troll.”

“You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“Just make sure he stays here,” Krondious repeated to Bordorn before turning and charging in the direction of the troll.

***

Roskin tried to go with Krondious, but the Ghaldeon blocked the way with his shield, stepping with him each way he moved.

“You’re my friend and the heir to this kingdom. He’s right. You aren’t going anywhere near that thing.”

“I liked you better in the wheelchair.”

“You gonna stay here?” Bordorn asked, smiling.

Roskin nodded, glancing over Bordorn’s shoulder as Krondious turned down an alleyway just before the troll. With agility that defied his thick stature, the white beard scaled a building beside the creature and jumped from one roof to another and yet another until he was directly behind his prey. The dwarves on the street fighting couldn’t see him above and continued their futile stabs at its legs and torso.