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!
Brilliantly 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.