Again Thork pulled the Princess free. And then he crawled upon hands and knees to Digger’s head, and standing, the Dwarf tried to get the pony to its feet. Yet Thork had not the strength to do so, and he fell back into the snow, Digger’s head in his lap. Ten, fifteen more breaths the pony drew, and then, with a sigh, stopped. And even as Thork watched, the great soft brown eyes glazed over. And in the shrieking, yammering wind, Thork reached out a gnarled hand and scratched the little faithful steed one last time between the ears, and then turned back to the Princess.
Struggling, snow and ice blasting into him, Thork managed to hoist Elyn across his shoulders, and stumbled upward, fighting onward, his mind dazed by a fatigue beyond reckoning. Yet on he went, and the yowling night raged about him, howling, yawling, yammering.
Time and again, Thork fell, each fall taking an immeasurable toll. Yet each time the Dwarf managed to gain his feet and hoist Elyn up again. No longer did he know his goal; no longer did he know why he strove to ascend the slopes of this Mountain; no longer did he know that a blizzard raged across the range and thundered down upon him. The only thing that he knew was that he must go on, with Elyn, upward.
And still the snow hurled into him, the wind sucked at his diminishing heat, the ice stung his unseeing eyes. The buffeting, pummeling shriek knocked him down time and again, and he would get to his feet, each time more slowly, gather up Elyn, and go on yet once more. And his world was filled with nought but screamings and yawlings of the blast.
Yet in the yammering of the storm he seemed to hear a voice calling. Sounding out his name. Was it his father? Urging him on? This way, son. This way. And, his breath sobbing in great gasps, his vision blurred, his legs but barely under his control, pressed to his uttermost, he pushed onward, his progress measured in yards, in feet, in steps. This way, son.
“Yes, Father, I am coming!” he called out, his sobbing words whipped into the night by the wind.
And the hurtling ice and raging shriek slammed at him and tried to hold him back, and hip-deep snow clutched at his legs and feet like a massive hand barring his way; yet Thork, son of Brak, DelfLord of all of Kachar, struggled forward, his breath rasping outward in blasts of white vapor, his beard laden with the crystalline ice of its freezing. And Elyn was a forgotten burden across his shoulders, yet a burden nonetheless; and he reeled and staggered and lost his footing to fall at last before a carven iron gate in a hidden fold of land.
And the blizzard hammered down upon his still form, clawing at his unmoving figure, tearing at his winter cloak, trying to rend the scant protection from him.
Finally, the Dwarf moved, struggling up to his knees, slumping back to a sitting position, leaning sideways against the iron portal. And underneath the howl of the wind, an eddying moan seemed to calclass="underline" My son. My son.
His mind a maze, Thork looked up uncomprehendingly, not seeing at first. But then perhaps by instinct alone, he pulled himself to his feet, using the great studs riveted into the metal to do so. And he peered across the expanse of iron, but no door-ring, no handle did he see; yet even had there been one, he would not have had the wherewithal to comprehend its use. And the raging wind howled down into the fold of land where he had gotten to, and its frigid blast mauled him.
My axe, my hammer, I will whelm upon the door, knock for entrance. But neither weapon was at hand, lying buried in the snow somewhere behind, buried with all their goods, buried with Digger, buried with Wind.
Thork hammered upon the gate with the butt of his fist, yet he had no strength and made no impression.
“Father, let me in,” he cried, weeping, leaning against the metal, clutching at the studs, pounding ineffectually upon the cold iron. “In the name of Adon and Elwydd, Father, let me in.”
At the invocation of the Allfather’s name the portal began to open outward, soft yellow light streaming forth through the widening crack and out into the ravaging wind and hurling ice.
Thork staggered backwards, falling, sprawling in the snow, barely conscious, the wind-shattered amber luminance scattering over him. Groaning, Thork rolled over and lay with his face pressed into the cold whiteness. And the wind howled in fury. Finally, he managed to get to his hands and knees. Yet he did not know what to do, nor did he even know where he was. But at last he began to crawl forward, toward the light.
Yet wait! Something was. . wrong, but his fatigue-’wildered mind could not fathom its nature. Blearily, his eyes swept right and left. And there at hand lying in the snow was a female, a Human, her red hair splayed about pallid features, a wind-driven drift even now spilling across her inanimate body, burying its victim. Elyn!
Thork crawled to her unmoving form, and after a seemingly endless time he forced himself to stand, trembling with exhaustion beyond all accounting. With an unimaginable effort, he managed to scoop her up-reaching the very last limit of his strength. Turning, reeling, he staggered toward the light, gasping and sobbing in the extremity his struggle, bearing a Princess, noting the whiteness of her face, the blueness of her lips. And agonized words moaned out past his labored rasping-“Don’t die, my Summer Queen, don’t die”-as Thork, on the verge of foundering, tottered forward, faltering step after faltering step, lurching, stumbling, until at last he reeled into the chamber within, staggering sideways to fetch up against a marble wall where he collapsed into total oblivion.
And behind, the great iron door began to swing shut; and the blizzard raged and the wind shrieked and ice hurtled against the closing portal. Yet the gate swung to Boom! leaving the Hèlspawned storm to howl and yawl and whelm upon the great shut door, as if it were a vast amorphous creature shrieking for entry, a squalling demand that would not be met.
And in the very moment of the portal’s closing, in a dark fortress to the north, the invisible aura of a hammer, of a warhammer, of the Kammerling ceased to pulse, for even that mighty token of power could not sense aught within the warded Wizardholt of Xian.
CHAPTER 30
Early Summer, 3E1602
[This Year]
In the midst of the morn at the foot of the vale before the gates of Kachar, Aranor rode Flame through the dew-wet grass out upon the empty field and reined to a halt, his eyes sweeping the length of the coming battleground. And the thick stench of death oozed down the swale and pooled at its bottom. In the distance, up the valley to its head, great flocks of vultures and ravens and crows squabbled upon the carcasses of the slain horses, pecking at one another, rushing forward with necks and beaks and wings extended, battling o’er the choicest feeding, though there was more than enough for all. Now and again when fighting became too fierce, great squawking black clouds of the scavengers would rise up and then settle back to greedily resume the rending and tearing and tossing of torn flesh down bottomless gullets.
Lord Death’s familiars, thought Aranor, revulsed by the raucous gluttony, the stripping of the bones of steeds once noble.
Riding a black, Gannor joined Aranor, and the two eyed the distant grisly feast. “Damned gorcrows!” cursed Gannor.
“Aye,” said Aranor. “But think upon this, cousin of mine: Ever do the tides of combat shift from one side to another, yet ’tis the scavengers who reap the folly of battle. If there be victors in War, then yon be the eternal victors, for they risk nought, yet gain all to their liking.”