Chapter 18
Fortress Infested
Dartimien the Cat took good advantage of the momentary confusion following Graywing’s flight into the brush. Dashing directly beneath the belly of a knight’s rearing mount, he whirled and pointed back the way he had come. “That way, Sir Knight!” he shouted. “Don’t let that man escape!”
As the armored rider and his followers veered to follow his point, Dartimien scuttled aside, disappeared beneath the flaps of a wares tent and reappeared a moment later swathed in the long, dark robe of a Gelnian priest.
He bowed solemnly as a company of footmen raced by, then swung flat-handed at the officer bringing up the rear of the line. The edge of his hand took the man in the throat, and Dartimien caught him as he fell. In the space of a heartbeat he had dragged the armsman into the wares tent. When he emerged again, a moment later, it was as a platoon officer of the Gelnian guard.
For a moment he watched the wild, blind search in the nearby brush, then he turned away and harshly beckoned to a pair of stragglers. “I want each of these sheds and tents searched, immediately,” he ordered them. “Those thieves may have hidden contraband here. Look for a carved ivory stick, three or four feet in length. It’s tapered and curved, much like a maenog’s horn. Search for it, then report back to me here.”
The guardsmen saluted, and began their search. With that part of the encampment covered, Dartimien marched across to the main armory and searched that himself. The two guards at the gate had hardly noticed his approach, and didn’t notice anything at all thereafter.
There was no sign of the Fang of Orm. The Cat emerged into sunlight, clad now in the bright cloak, plumed helm and light plating of a captain of lancers. Thus attired, he approached the headquarters pavilion of Chatara Kral and confronted the captain of guards at the entrance. “Why was I summoned here?” he demanded.
The huge frostman stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “How should I know?” he rumbled.
“If you don’t know, then who does?” Dartimien pressed, squaring his shoulders and managing to look down his nose at the big Icelander, who towered head and shoulders above him.
“Ask them inside there,” the giant said. “They don’t tell us anything.”
As though the hulking brute didn’t exist, Dartimien strode forward, and the big man hastened to step out of his way. The other guards, seeing their leader pass the visitor, also gave way.
Once inside the great tent, Dartimien ducked aside and disappeared among the bales of provisions stacked there. In the open center of the place, Chatara Kral herself was directing a conference of commanders who were planning their assault on Tarmish. But none of them saw or heard the silent intruder as he made his way around the pavilion, poking here and prodding there.
He was just completing his search of the place when there were shouts and screams outside. “Dragon!” someone shrieked, and other voices joined in. The conference in the pavilion broke up as people there rushed to look outside, then scurried back in, their frostman guards nearly trampling them in their panic.
“Dragon, huh?” Dartimien muttered to himself. “Wonder how the barbarian managed that? Well, one diversion is as good as another.” He crept through an unguarded flap, and straightened his cloak. He watched with surprise as a great, green, or almost green, dragon swept away toward the forested hills. “There really was a dragon,” he muttered. “How about that?”
Pausing only long enough to glance toward the wares tents, where his appointed searchers cowered under a tilt-up shed, he turned and went the other way. They hadn’t found the Fang, either. They would have had it in hand if they had found it.
“You, there!” a voice called. Dartimien turned to face the giant from the pavilion, one of the frostmen of Chatara Kral’s personal guard. The huge man wore a long necklace of steel chain over his bearskin jerkin, and held a heavy axe in his hand as lightly as Dartimien might have clutched a dagger. “You didn’t identify yourself,” the frostman growled. “Who are you?”
The encampment around them still was a scene of panic. People and animals were still reacting to the fearful passage of the dragon. But apparently this monster had a one-track mind. It was not at all distracted.
Dartimien gazed up at the brute, curiously. “Did you see a dragon out here?”
“Yeah,” the giant rumbled, frowning. “They didn’t say there’d be dragons when we took this job. If any more of those things show up, I’ll look for work somewhere else.” He paused, and his frown deepened. “Who did you say you are?”
Dartimien was tempted to gull the giant with some elaborate tale, but decided against it. Within a minute or so, the camp would be settling into its routines again, and it wasn’t worth the risk. So he merely shrugged. “I’m an intruder,” he admitted. “I don’t belong here and I’m probably an enemy. But I’m just passing through.”
With an oath, the giant raised his axe and swung it, but it clove only thin air. Dartimien had ducked under the cut. Before the frostman could reverse his swing, the Cat dived between legs the size of tree trunks, catching the giant’s dangling steel necklace as he went. Behind the giant he rolled, sprang to his feet, planted a soft boot against the brute’s buttocks and kicked, at the same time heaving at the necklace. With a roar, the giant did half a somersault and crashed to the ground, headfirst.
It took the frostman only seconds to recover, but it was enough. Dartimien the Cat had disappeared.
In the rope corrals near the brushland, chaos lingered. Hundreds of horses, still in panic from the dragon’s approach, were racing around, pitching and rearing, breaking their hobbles and charging the ropes. The melee was beyond the capability of a few dozen horse-handlers, so other men from several sub-camps had run to lend a hand.
All around the encampment, mercenaries of all kinds scowled at one another. “Nobody told us there’d be dragons,” several muttered, over and over. “Definite breach of contract, bringing in dragons,” others pointed out.
In the general turmoil, no one noticed one more volunteer, helping with the horses. Dartimien moved among them, carefully selecting a fine pair of plains-bred mounts already wearing saddles and gear. These he collected by their reins. He calmed them by whispering in their ears and breathing in their noses as he had seen plainsmen do. Then he led them away. Once in the heavy brush bordering the sloughs, he turned northwestward, following faint tracks in the sand.
Gully dwarves scattered here and there as he intercepted the Bulp migration, but he ignored them. After a moment, they ignored him, too … or forgot about him. Leading his horses, he rounded a bend in the dry watercourse and found Graywing waiting for him.
“I wondered where you’d gone,” the plainsman said. “I don’t suppose you found the Fang.”
“It isn’t there,” Dartimien shook his head. “I looked.”
“Well, these little Aghar don’t have it, either.” Graywing took the reins of the two horses, looking them over with expert eyes. “Good,” he muttered.
* * * * *
Inside the tower, Tunk fidgeted on Lord Vulpin’s cushy chair. “Talls don’ sound too happy,” he noted.
“I think we’re trapped,” Thayla Mesinda said.
“This a nifty thing!” Bron chortled, still playing with the telescope. “Highbulp ought to see this.” He swung the glass this way and that, then stopped, staring. “Hey!” A wide grin spread across his face. “There Gandy! An’ ol’ Glitch an’ Lady Lidda an’… there Pert, too!” He jumped up and down on the chest, waving his bashing tool. “Hi, Pert! Hi, Dad! Hi, ever’body!”
“Oh, hush!” Thayla said. “They can’t hear you. They’re not here. They’re way out there.”
“Oh,” Bron subsided, his grin fading. “Not here, huh?”
“No, they’re not here.”
“Wish they were,” Bron said.
In his hand, the “bashing tool” glowed faintly.
* * * * *
Dartimien leaned over the loaded shield-sled and pulled back a flap of blanket to peer at the shriveled face of Clonogh. “Is he still alive?” he asked.
“I don’t know how, but he is,” Graywing said. “But I guess we don’t need him anymore. It looks like the Fang of Orm is lost for—”
As though a curtain had been drawn, the world around them winked out and they were in another place. Stone walls framed large, open portals, overlooking broad fields beyond. And the place was packed with gully dwarves. The horses went wild. “What the blazes?” Graywing stepped back, drawing his sword, then gaped as his eyes fixed on the most stunning young woman he had ever seen—fixed, but only for an instant. For standing next to her was a gully dwarf, holding the Fang of Orm. There seemed to be gully dwarves everywhere.
“There it is!” Graywing hissed, focusing on the Fang.
“That’s it!” Dartimien said.
“Run like crazy!” a gully dwarf shouted.
Someone was pounding at a heavy door, but now the rending of timbers and the rasp of parting hinges were drowned in bedlam as a room full of gully dwarves ran for cover, bounding and leaping, tumbling and rolling in a packed chamber with nowhere to run.
Graywing saw Dartimien go down beneath a tumbling pile of Aghar, and leapt aside as a tide of terrified little people swept past. He reached the human girl, got an arm around her and lifted her just as a tumble of flailing gully dwarves boiled beneath her. With a leap, the plainsman gained the top of a tall, teakwood chest, and from there the saddle of a pitching, kicking horse.
Leaning to gather the beast’s reins, he hauled the girl up behind him, just as the heavy door ahead of him burst open. Beyond it were armed men, crouched to enter, but he saw them only for an instant. They were bowled over and swallowed up by a bounding tide of gully dwarves spilling out the door and across the landing beyond.
Somewhere near, Dartimien shouted, “Get off me, you little dolts!” A pile of gully dwarves erupted upward. Graywing tried to hold the horse, but it shrilled in terror and charged the open door, and all he could do was hang on. Behind him, the girl clung like a monkey, her arms wrapped around his middle. A second horse, riderless, was just behind them.
In the space of a heartbeat they were pounding across the plank landing and down a steep, curving stairway, engulfed to the hams in a rising tide of fleeing gully dwarves, bits of armament and tumbling, inverted Tarmite soldiers.
Somewhere behind him, the plainsman heard Dartimien’s angry shout: “Graywing! Get back here, you barbarian! I saw her first!”
* * * * *
Somewhere on a distant plane, Orm blinked huge, slit-pupiled eyes and hissed in frustration. Again the lost fang had called, but again the call had lasted only an instant.
Great, scaled coils writhing in serpentine irritation, Orm waited. The call had come. It would come again. Sooner or later there would be a long moment of life, stimulated by someone’s concentration. It would be enough. Orm needed only a moment, a lingering, consistent moment of wishery by whoever held the fang. Then Orm would have the path across the planes. Then Orm would strike.
Frustrated and seething with dark anger, the great serpent waited.
When Bron crawled out from beneath the Tall chair, everything seemed relatively peaceful. There were gully dwarves scattered here and there, picking themselves up and staring around in puzzlement, but most of the sudden crowd seemed to have gone somewhere else.
Bron took a deep breath, shook dust out of his hair and his clothing, and picked up his bashing tool. “Wow,” he muttered.
Somewhere above him, Tunk said, “That some kin’ party, Bron. Didn’ last long, though.” The chubby Aghar extracted himself from the chair’s cushions and stood up, jumping on the seat. “There what’s-’is-name,” he pointed. “Th’ Highbulp. Hi, Highbulp.”
A cabinet drawer hung open across the room, and Glitch the Most peered out of it, rubbing his eyes with a grimy fist. “What goin’ on?” he grumbled. “What kin’ place this?”
Nearby, a fallen tapestry seemed to be coming to life. Its folds twitched, humped and muttered. An edge of it lifted, and the Lady Lidda crawled out, followed by Gandy and several others. The last one to appear from there was Pert, who gawked at her surroundings, then smiled happily at the sight of Bron. “Hey, Bron,” she chirped. “Been lookin’ all over for you! Where you been?”
“Bein’ a hero,” he explained.
“Bein’ what?” Pert started to lean against a large, iron turtle, then jumped back as the turtle moved behind her. It was the legendary Great Stew Bowl, and under it was the dour Clout. He looked more unhappy than usual.
Bron helped Clout out from under the iron shield, and knelt to look the shield over, carefully. It seemed to be unharmed. As an afterthought he glanced around at Clout, who seemed unbroken as well. “Here, hold this,” he handed the ivory bashing tool to the Chief Basher, and raised the Great Stew Bowl by its leather strap. It was almost as big as he was, but he was used to carrying it around.
“This a pretty good bashin’ tool,” Clout judged, brandishing the ivory stick. “Where Bron get it?”
“Found it, someplace,” Bron answered, then turned abruptly as a groan sounded from a heavily-loaded metal “sled” resting aslant against one wall. Carrying his shield, Bron approached the object cautiously. On top of the rig rested a large, bright broadsword with strings tied to it. The bindings served as lashing for a blanket-wrapped package beneath, and it was this package that seemed to be groaning.
Curious, Bron untied some of the lashes and lifted off the broadsword. It was as long as he was tall, and quite heavy, but it fascinated him. “This a Tail’s bashin’ tool,” he told the others, who were gathering around him. “Talls call it ‘sword.’ ”
“Clumsy thing,” Lady Lidda pointed out. “Too big for rat killin’.”
“Maybe good thing for hero, though,” he lifted the sword high, panting at the effort. It was heavy, but Bron was strong.
“Good thing for what?” his mother asked.
Attracted by the repeated groans, Gandy hobbled to the blanket-wrapped package and pulled back a flap. Beneath it, a hairless old human blinked rheumy eyes and groaned again. Gandy whacked him on the head with his mop handle and dropped the flap. “Nothin’,” he muttered. “Jus’ a Tall.”
A thin shriek of anger grew beneath the blanket and they all backed away. The blanket sat up, fell away, and there was an ancient man there, rubbing his aching head and muttering curses as he glared around at them.
“Oops,” Gandy said.
“Maybe bash him again, with this?” Clout suggested.
The old human gaped at the gully dwarf’s bashing tool and lunged to his tottering feet. “That’s it!” he rasped.
“Right,” Glitch the Most declared. “That ’bout it. Ever’body run like crazy.”
Clonogh stood, aching, swaying and naked atop a travel-scuffed shield as the big room suddenly emptied itself. Before he could react, the gully dwarves were gone, out the broken door and down unseen stairs beyond.
Blinking and swaying, Clonogh stared around him. He recognized the big room with its stone-framed portals. It was Lord Vulpin’s tower chamber. “How did I get here?” he wheezed.
But just at the moment there was no one around to explain it to him.
* * * * *
The tower stairway, from loft to ground level, made three complete circuits of the tower and ended in a wide alcove lined with guard quarters and facing on the courtyard. All the way down, the great flood of fleeing gully dwarves had picked up speed, carrying the horses and riders along with them. As a result, when they reached ground level they shot through the alcove and burst out into the crowded courtyard like a flash flood, bowling over everything and everyone in front of them.
They were halfway across the main court before their momentum slowed and the gully dwarves in front had a chance to look around. When they did, they saw surprised human warriors everywhere they looked.
“Talls!” one of them shrieked. “Ever’body run like crazy!”
Gully dwarves went everywhere, spreading like a ripple of chaos as they went. Men shouted, draft horses reared and pawed the air, a team of oxen bolted and a wagonload of hot oil vats overturned, scalding people right and left.
Graywing finally managed to get his horse’s attention by sawing at the reins, and gaped at the spreading havoc all round. In all his years, he had never seen anything like it.
Behind him Thayla gasped. “Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I’m afraid Lord Vulpin isn’t going to like this at all.”
“Lord Vulpin?” Graywing started, then stopped as a deep, angry voice rang over the chaos of the courtyard. Just ahead and above, on the ramparts between the main gate battlements, a big, dark figure stood—a large man encased in dark steel armor, plumed helm and flowing cloak. The man was pointing directly at them, and shouting.
“He has the girl!” Lord Vulpin roared. “Get him!”
Despite the chaos of the courtyard, armed men heard the command and drew their weapons, closing in on Graywing.
“Mercy!” the girl chirped.
“Mercy is where you find it,” Graywing growled. Hauling at the reins, he kneed the horse into a belly-down turn and headed back toward the sheltered alcove beneath the tower.
With attention diverted from them, the gully dwarves of Bulp sought shelter, and took it where they found it. Dozens of them plunged into gutters and sumps, seeking the storm sewers below. Others took refuge in the larders, the armories, and in every crack or crevice of the old fort’s foundations. Within moments, Tarmish was completely infested by Aghar, as thoroughly as though they had been living there for years.
In the shadowed alcove, Graywing set the girl down, then wheeled the horse and charged the open portal just as a platoon of foot soldiers reached it. He hit them like a summer storm, a thundering fury of singing sword blade, flashing hooves and Cobar battle cry. Through their ranks he swept, then turned and hit them again before they could recover. Once more through the ranks, and the area outside the alcove was free of belligerents. There were still soldiers there, but those that remained were down and not likely to get up again.
Once more within the alcove, Graywing swung down from his horse. “That should hold them for a few minutes,” he muttered. He found the girl cringing in the shadow of a doorway. “Is there another way out of here?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a prisoner … or I was, anyway. Who are you?”
“Graywing,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Thayla. Thayla Mesinda.” Wide, unreadable blue eyes gazed up at him, and he felt as though he might drown there. “Are we trapped here?”
“I’m afraid we are. But I’ll think of something.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I have a hero, you know. His name is Bron.”
“Bron?”
“He’s a gully dwarf. He’s here to rescue me from all this.”
“A gully dwarf?” He gaped at her, thinking he must have misunderstood. “Gully dwarves aren’t heroes, girl. Gully dwarves aren’t much of anything. They’re just … just gully dwarves.”
“This one is different,” Thayla assured him. Then her eyes widened. “Look out!”
Graywing spun around. A green-clad Salacian mercenary had crept into the alcove, and was drawing his longbow. The steel-pointed arrow was aimed straight at Graywing’s heart, point blank from three paces away.
Before the draw was completed, though, the man’s throat was full of flashing dagger. The bow and arrow slipped from numb fingers and the man pitched forward, facedown in his own blood.
“You should try watching your back, now and then,” Dartimien suggested wryly, stepping from the stairwell. “You can’t count on me to save you every time.” The Cat stepped past Graywing then, brushing him aside as though he wasn’t there. He executed a courtly bow to Thayla Mesinda and when she returned the curtsy he grinned and took her small hand. “Hello,” he purred. “I’m Dartimien, and you’re beautiful. I assume you have been waiting for me all your life.”
“Now, hold on!” Graywing snapped, and the girl gasped, looking past him.
A pair of soft-footed Tarmite axemen had crept into the alcove, and now launched themselves from the shadows, broadaxes aloft.
The first one had Graywing cold … until he tripped over a knee-high iron shield and crashed facedown on the pavement. Like a panther, Graywing was on him, dispatching him with a whistling swordstroke. The second Tarmite ducked aside, swung back his battle-axe … and toppled like a tree. From behind the iron shield, a broadsword had appeared, flashing in a roundhouse swing that took the Tarmite across his shins. The toppling man began a scream, which ended abruptly as one of Dartimien’s daggers found its mark.
Then the two warriors’ jaws dropped open in unison. From behind the shield, a young gully dwarf emerged, dragging a bloody sword that was far too big for him. “Pretty good bashin’ tool,” he said, indicating the broadsword. Several other gully dwarves, peering at him from the stairway, nodded their wide-eyed agreement.
“You? You did this?” Graywing goggled at fallen Tarmites, and the little person with the shield and sword.
“Dunno,” Bron said, raising the big sword. He stared at it in fascination. “Must have.”
“Look at that!” Dartimien pointed at the second fallen Tarmite. “Look at his legs … his feet!”
The gully dwarf’s swing had amputated both of the man’s feet. The severed feet still stood where they had been.
“Oh, yuck!” Thayla shivered.
“Forget feet,” Graywing growled. “You,” he pointed a stern finger at the puzzled gully dwarf. “You had the Fang of Orm. I saw it. Where is it?”
Bron looked around, vaguely puzzled, then he shrugged. “Beats me,” he said.
From beyond the alcove, a bull voice roared, “I want that girl! Now!”
“Here they come,” Dartimien pointed.
Just beyond the alcove, shielded footmen were advancing quickly in a solid rank, closing on the tower arch.
Graywing braced himself for combat, and a flashing dagger from Dartimien’s hand found a gap in the shield rank. A man there fell, but soon others took his place. Bron gaped at the advancing humans, and quickly disappeared behind his big, iron shield. In the shadows of the stairway, small feet scampered as gully dwarves hiding there scurried for the cover of a storm drain.
The stone that fell from the sky then was the size of a fat shoat. It crashed among the advancing footmen, smashing some of them, and showering the rest with shards of stone as it exploded loudly against the pavement. A few yards away another huge stone fell, then came several more, here and there in the courtyard.
Men shouted and screamed, and their voices were drowned out by a thousand battle cries just beyond the high walls. More stones fell, lofted by catapults and trebuchets beyond the walls, and thrown spears whistled through the sky and clattered down among them.
Bron poked his head out to see what was going on, then headed for the storm drain, carrying his shield and dragging his sword. He looked like a two-legged turtle with a long, steel tail. “Run like crazy!” he shouted.
“Best advice I’ve heard lately,” Dartimien muttered. He reached for Thayla’s hand, but missed it. Graywing was already lifting the girl, flinging her across his shoulder. Graywing ran off. With an oath, the Cat followed.
The Gelnian army had begun its assault on the fortress of Tarmish, and the open courtyard and its alcoves were not healthy places to be.