Tungdil adjusted the golden eye patch, and the polished metal flashed in the sunshine. “So the change was gradual?”
Ireheart looked at his friend and started wondering, despite himself. Did he always wear the patch on the right side? Wasn’t it the left eye that he’d lost? He could not be sure, but the thought did nothing to put his mind at ease. He pulled himself together to reply.
“That’s right. Until he tried to teach Goda some magic spells that she thought were just too cruel. When she refused to cooperate he fell in a rage and walked out. After that, a few letters came, asking her to go to him in Girdlegard so that they could talk it all through, but she did not want to leave the artifact unattended. The last letter was full of threats and said some dreadful things. We took it as confirmation that we’d made the right decision.” Ireheart caught sight of a mountain hut on the road to the pass where travelers could shelter rather than spend the night out in the open. “Look! It’ll be a bit basic, but much better than sleeping in the snow.”
“And Girdlegard just sat back and watched him conquer the Blue Mountains?” objected Tungdil, unable to believe it.
“But what could they do against a magus, Scholar? After he’d been freed from petrification by bathing in the magic source his strength grew greater with each coming orbit. You would have thought he had the skills of two magi.” Boindil clenched his fists in helpless anger. “That was how he managed to wipe out nearly the whole of my tribe. He subjugated the very rocks to his commands. And with that power he defeated the dwarves.”
“What do you mean? He made the tunnels fall in?”
“Exactly, Scholar. He sent one earthquake after another and our halls and strongholds collapsed. Passageways filled up with molten rock and water flooded the shafts. Thousands lost their lives, and then he lay in wait for the wave of refugees at the fortress Ogre’s Death, and struck them down with magic spells.”
Ireheart’s eye filled with tears of anger and grief that rolled down his cheeks into his beard, where the freezing wind turned them to gems of ice. “There are hardly a hundred of them left. They took refuge with the freelings.”
Tungdil grimaced. “That doesn’t sound like the man who brought me up,” he muttered. “I’ve no reason to doubt you, my friend. Something in the past must have contaminated him with evil. Perhaps the source that awakened him?”
Ireheart wiped the pearly tears away. They melted in his fingers. “No one knows. You’re the only one who would dare take up arms against him. You, and maybe the Emperor Aiphaton.”
“The High Pass-is it open?”
“He closed it up after the black-eyes from the south marched through. He didn’t want to let too many of Tion’s monsters in, I suppose,” said the dwarf dismissively. “Are we sticking to your plan, Scholar? Or have you thought of another way to defeat an adversary like him so that we can force him to serve us?”
Tungdil did not answer. He stared straight ahead at the hut. “Someone’s expecting us,” he said quietly. “I wonder why they haven’t got a fire going.”
Ireheart’s eyes widened in anticipation. “Here we go! You think there are some footpads waiting to ambush us?” Secretly he was wondering how Tungdil could have spotted the enemy. The wind was blowing away from the hut, there were no tracks in the snow and he himself would have heard the tiniest of sounds in the stillness. He supposed it was down to the constant experience of battle sharpening his friend’s senses. He got ready to wield his crow’s beak, but Tungdil motioned him not to.
“I don’t know how many they are. We’ll act as though we haven’t seen anything. That way he, or they, will think we’re an easy target,” he suggested.
“Because if they have crossbows they could shoot us out of our saddles. I get it,” said Ireheart, pretending to be checking the buckles on the harness. “I hope the place is full of robbers,” he said. “Ho, this’ll be fun!”
“Not much fun for whoever’s going to have to fight us.” Tungdil patted his befun’s neck. “Shall we have a bet?”
“No, not this time,” said Ireheart with a grin.
VII
The Outer Lands,
Seventy-six Miles Southwest of the Black Abyss,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
The oddly assorted dwarf-pair continued to ride toward the apparently deserted hut.
It was a mystery to Ireheart how Tungdil had sensed someone was lying in wait. He squinted over to his friend, looked ahead and shifted in the saddle.
They were thirty paces from the hut now and there was no sign of anyone.
“Are you sure, Scholar?” Ireheart enquired, laughing out loud as if they were telling each other jokes; that should fool anyone watching them. He saw that a couple of the runes on his friend’s dark armor were glowing.
There was a smile on Tungdil’s lips. “You’ll see. Get ready.”
“What if it’s just some innocent travelers?”
“Sitting in the cold? Travelers who haven’t stepped outside for orbits?” a disdainful Tungdil retorted.
“They…” Ireheart did not know what to say. Whatever he came up with made no sense at all.
Their animals halted some way off from the cabin and the dwarves dismounted.
“And now?” Boindil wanted to know, slipping his pony’s reins over a post. He didn’t tie them in case they needed to leave in a hurry. “Do we storm in?”
“No,” said Tungdil firmly, drawing Bloodthirster. “Go and knock.” He grinned and tapped on the head of Ireheart’s crow’s beak. “With that.”
“Good idea! Off we go!” Ireheart laid his pipe on the ground near the door so that it wouldn’t get damaged in the fighting. He took his faithful weapon and smashed it against the door. The lock splintered away from the wood and the door flew open so violently that the hinges broke off. It crashed to the floor.
Ireheart stormed in with a roar-and stared at the empty tables and benches; it was icy cold in the hut and there was no sign that anyone was or had recently been there.
“Well, then,” he muttered, disappointedly. “Hey, Scholar! Did your senses fool you? Come and see!”
Behind him all was quiet.
Boindil turned round, but Tungdil had disappeared. “What, by Vraccas, is happening now?” he thundered, catching a noise at his back. He whirled round, crow’s beak raised high. “Scholar?”
He moved carefully into the room, one step at a time.
He checked the fireplace for ashes, the wooden floor for footprints. Not a single trace.
“It’s the spirits of the mountain haunting us,” he told himself silently. His gaze fell on a lonely dried sausage hanging above the stove. “Scholar? Tell me where you are? I don’t want to clobber you by mistake.”
Ireheart moved cautiously around the corner to the cooking stove. There was a thick layer of grease on it. No meals had been cooked there recently.
The string the sausage hung on, suspended from a rafter, made a rustling noise. The dwarf, surprised, noted there was no obvious draft in the cabin, but the string swung forward and backwards.
If he looked closely he could see the ceiling boards move slightly, and he grinned. That’s where the rat is hiding! Whoever was waiting for them had crept up to the hayloft, to give the dwarves a false sense of security.
“Scholar?” he called again, before leaping onto the stove and hacking through the ceiling boards with his crow’s beak. He jumped up and pulled at the handle with all his strength until the planks gave way.
Dried grass fell into the room, showering Boindil; dust blurred his vision. But he thought he spied a movement in the hay. Certain that Tungdil would have made himself known if it were him, he struck out without mercy.