Garfist reached one shovel-like hand out of the darkness of a side-passage and swept her past him. Then he put his shoulder against a tall stack of wooden crates where it had been before and waited.
"Stay. Catch yer breath," he muttered. Iskarra reeled against the wall and bent over to gasp in earnest, nodding thankfully. She just needed a moment or two.
Dark Helms came thundering up, not slowing. They were headed for the next side-passage, where the lantern light was coming from.
With a grim smile on his face, Garfist Gulkoon leaned forward, grotesque false breasts bouncing and bobbing, and toppled the crates.
They crashed down on the shoulder of the nearest Dark Helm, smashing him to the floor instantly. The Dark Helm right behind him ran into them with his upper body, lost his racing feet forward out from under himself, fell hard, and got the rest of the crates crashing down on him just as the next Dark Helm ran into him, and the one behind in turn crashed into them all.
Broken-bodied and senseless, the four Dark Helms said nothing at all, and by then, no one was paying them the slightest attention, because the crates had been full of ball bearings that were now flooding out into the passage with a thunder of their own, as a small, sprinting army of Dark Helms ploughed into them, shouted wildly, raising up arms and swords in a vain attempt to keep from falling, and skidded helplessly… everywhere.
"Come on!" Garfist snarled to Iskarra, turning and peeling her off the wall with one great sweep of his arm. "I can scarcely see down here, but there're crates all along both walls, full of all sorts of-"
With a wild shout, a skidding Dark Helm made it around the corner into the passage, fetching up against one wall with a crash. A second Dark Helm struck the wall right beside the first, narrowly missing impaling himself on the first Helm's sword.
Garfist spun around, caught hold of a tall stack of crates, and heaved.
The stack crashed down across the passage with a roar mingled with shrieks of splitting wood as the crates burst open, spilling forth a clanging metallic chaos of hasps and handles and hooks, dark and smelling strongly of oil. The Dark Helms fought for balance among this slithering metal, and the foremost caught hold of the next stack of crates and tried to swing his legs over and past the ironmongery.
He got halfway through his swing before the crate he was clinging to came free of its stack and pulled the stack over in his wake; helplessly he slithered feet-first into the darker passage beyond, that crate slamming into his head.
Garfist was already stepping forward, to almost delicately drive his dagger up under the warrior's helmet, into his foe's throat and up behind the jaw. Ignoring the fountaining blood, the fat ex-procurer grimly twisted his knife in deep before wrenching it forth again.
Iskarra shoved another stack of crates over the already-fallen ones, in a flood of debris that filled the passage chest-high. "We should go," she hissed. "'Twould be a pity if that next passage ran down and cross-connected with this one up yonder, and the Dark Helms just ran around and came at us that way."
"Indeed, Viper," Garfist growled with mock flourishes of dignity. "The same thought had occurred to me."
He hefted the boar carcass in his hand to make sure none of it had torn free in all the tumult, then nodded, bent to wipe his dagger clean on the leather war-harness of the Helm he'd just slain, and started off down the passage. "Isk, are ye… unharmed?"
"Only my pride, Gar. To think these young louts almost ran me down, in all that armor, too. Let's go. And before you ask: somewhere deep, cold, dark and deserted in these cellars, where we can hide for a bit and let these crazed Galathans fight their battles over our heads."
Her brisk stride turned into a trot to keep up with Garfist, before she asked, "Carve me a slice of cold, raw boar to chew as we walk, hey?"
"That's my Viper," Garfist grunted. "Any chance to sink yer teeth into raw meat."
He set to work with his dagger, and then grunted, "Come to think: ye can claim this crawlskin back any time right soon, mind. There's raw meat, if yer jaws need some work."
"Gar," Iskarra said coldly, "that's not amusing. Not at all."
Garfist shrugged. "Killing folk, I'm good at. Making them laugh, less than good."
He strode on for a bit, and then asked, around a mouthful of boar, "These Dark Helms; think ye they were sent here by 'our' wizard, since he vanished from inside the wagon?"
The woman trotting beside him stopped abruptly and put a hand on his arm, her face going pale.
"Oh, steaming dragon shit," Iskarra cursed slowly, staring up into his eyes. "Yes. He came here to open a gate, to bring them through. And he's managed it. This keep could be doomed from within, even before the siege begins!"
Korryk's feeble screams stopped not long after his struggles. He hung limply from the spheres he was now bonded to, too weak and helpless to do anything else.
The youngest of Arlaghaun's apprentices stood calmly watching the captive warrior shrivel and wither away. From time to time, Yardryk stroked his curly, dirty gold beard, his dark purple eyes thoughtful.
It would not be long now before the insatiable gate took the last of his life-force, and when it was drained, the gate would flicker violently with bloody consequences for creatures caught in it, and then fade out.
And the flow of running Dark Helms and swooping lorn would end, long before the Master desired it to. Which would have grave consequences for Yardryk, even "fresh waiting grave" consequences, one might say.
It was time to find Korryk's replacement.
Turning his back on the gate, the unkempt apprentice stalked away, murmuring a spell over the glass eye cupped in his palm. The glass started to sear his flesh as it liquified, and then, just before the pain would have made him sob and fling it away, shaking his hand to be rid of the agony but not the blisters and later scars, it vanished, and he could scry.
It was as if a curtain was drawn back in his mind, enabling him to see rooms and passages around him at will, spread out in his mind while his eyes saw only darkness and solid stone walls all around.
Yardryk first saw the Master's forces; not so many lorn, now, but Dark Helms beyond counting, streaming forth from the gate, rushing along the largest passages and ascending every stair or ramp they saw. They were like a river, all rushing together, so he looked elsewhere. Were there other folk down in these cellars? Guards on patrol, coming closer, perhaps?
No, nothing like that. A few stray bands of Dark Helms, chasing and slaughtering Bowrock folk, a few cellarers, far away from the sound and the rushing Dark Helms, shifting some kegs and oblivious to the fighting… hold! What were these, much nearer?
A pair, standing alone, conferring in the darkness. A tryst? One of them small, a boy or a slender woman, the other, huge! Yes, huge and hairy, but breasted like a woman, both of them standing eating something in the darkness.
Never mind what or who they were; that large one should have life-force enough in her or him to feed the gate for a good long time. More than enough time as would be needed to bring through all of the Master's forces, anyway.
Yardryk smiled and stepped forward to hail and command the next few lorn to appear Out of the gate. Five or six Dark Helms, too: force enough to fetch back this new gate-fuel alive.
And more or less unharmed.
Rod Everlar fetched up against yet another wall, this time bouncing off it more than bruisingly slamming into it. Swallowing a sigh, he ran on.
If this was one of his own fantasy novels, he should-would-now do something bold and heroic, something Falconfar-shattering. Turning his modern real-world knowledge of eclipses or electricity or the tactics of Talleyrand into some dramatic, decisive, witnessed-by-all act that would make Falconaar stop and gasp in awe and then kneel before him.