Klugnak himself examined the building's interior. Despite the dwarves' short stature, the door was more than high enough to accommodate the towering voitu nicely, and two human soldiers could pass through it side by side if they chose. He wondered why. Actually it was to permit dwarves to hurry out with their weapons, including spears and poleaxes.
In back, the door leading into the mountain was little more than five feet high. To pass through it, a human would have to bend or crouch, a serious problem if it was defended from the other side. It opened into a large chamber with two rear entrances. One was an upward-slanting tunnel, polished slippery smooth, and too low for even a dwarf to stand in. The other was about six feet high, at the foot of steep stairs that climbed into darkness. All of which should have told Klugnak several things, as should the faint lingering odor of lamp smoke in the room. But his arrogance got in the way, and at any rate the die had been cast.
Outside the guard station, the rakutur destroyed the wooden bar that blocked the road, and the column moved on.
An hour later, a short stocky figure emerged from a tunnel eight hundred feet higher, and half a mile south of the gorge. The dwarf carried a trumpet as long as himself, and raising it, blew a single long piercing blast. Then he sat down to wait.
A short while later, a vulture-sized black bird arrived, resembling a large-headed raven with a crimson cap. It settled on a nearby pine.
"Everheart?" the dwarf called.
"Himself," the bird answered.
"How are yer nestlings?"
"Grown, flown, and on their own, I'm grateful to report. I am ready for another twenty-year vacation from parenting." The bird cocked his red-crowned head. "Why have you called on the great ravens?"
Like the dwarves, the great ravens were disinclined to involve themselves in politics. They didn't need enemies. But they had an agreement with the dwarves. The surface of the Silver Mountain kingdom was almost entirely wilderness. And there all the great ravens in that half of the continent built their nests and raised their young, untroubled by human predators.
"I've a report for the King in Silver Mountain," the dwarf said, then described the skirmish at the bridge.
Everheart didn't need to fly it to the king; the great ravens had their own hive mind. He simply needed to get the attention of others. Another of his kind, located near the palace, could deliver it much more quickly than he.
By late on the second afternoon, the river, though still boisterous, was smaller than it had been. From that, Klugnak judged that the lead battalion would reach the head of the pass late the next day, and start down the other side. After days of unbroken hazy sunshine, there now were tall clouds in the sky. He hoped it wouldn't rain. He felt a vague anxiety, and wanted to get out of the mountains as soon as possible. Again he did not halt for the day until dusk had thickened nearly into night.
Again they slept in the road, and again it did not rain.
A great raven had given the report to the King in Silver Mountain. The king had given him one in return, which the bird relayed to the entrance of the Great Northern Copper Lode. Production there was not what it had been a century earlier. But still there were more than three hundred adult male dwarves within a five-hour speed march of the head of the pass, and as many more within nine hours. The speech of message gongs sounded throughout the networks of drifts, dwelling areas, and utility and connecting tunnels, inspiring swift but organized activity.
Shortly after noon the next day, the lead battalion approached a third suspension bridge. There the river was a relatively modest stream. The road was cut into the south side, forty or fifty feet above the river, and the gorge walls, though still precipitous, were not so high as before. Clearly they were near the head of the pass.
The scouts had already crossed the bridge when their trumpeter blew a warning peaclass="underline" danger!
It was a signal to more than the army's commanders. Within seconds, a swarm of crossbow darts hissed down from the opposite rim. Soldiers fell, along with voitar, horses, cattle. Nor did it seriously abate after the first volley. The dwarf physique is ideal for stirrup-cocked crossbows, providing a rate of fire not so inferior to that of an ordinary bow skillfully used. And their accuracy was excellent. Soldiers and animals panicked, filling the air with screaming, whinnying, bawling, and shouted curses. And trumpet blasts, which stopped the rearward battalions where they were. The panicked cattle were especially dangerous because of their horns. A number of men and horses were crowded off the edge of the road, to fall to the broken rocks along the river's edge.
Until the whole army could stop and turn around, there was no place to go except ahead. The first unit of the command battalion was the prince's company of mounted rakutur. Without conferring with Chithqosz, General Klugnak ordered them to charge, to take and hold the bridge. They charged.
As if the charge were another signal, a barrel-sized stone started down from the gorge top, rolling and bounding to the road, where it killed two men, squashing one of them. It hadn't yet landed when others started down, then still others.
All remaining order dissolved. The men who could, crowded against the gorge wall, hoping the stones would land farther out, as most did. For two or three minutes the bombardment continued on the lead battalion. Then it stopped, only to begin farther down the column a few minutes later.
Between the assault of boulders and crossbow darts, the only voitik eyes that had followed the charging rakutur were Klugnak's. He watched the lead squads make it across the bridge without drawing fire. Then a swarm of darts slammed into them, and on those jammed up on the bridge behind them. The bridge span began to sway from side to side, as wounded and panicked animals reared, trying to escape. Some got their forelegs over the hand line, and overbalancing, fell to the rocks and water below. On the far side a block of stone-half a ton or more-struck the top of a bridge pier. The upper part of the pier shattered, releasing the great ringbolt that held a suspension cable. The bridge span fell sideways, dumping horses and men into the gorge. A few rakutur held on, dangling from the hand lines and targeted by sharpshooters.
That was the last that Klugnak saw. A block somewhat smaller than most, perhaps a hundredweight, struck and killed him, instantly and messily. Chithqosz stood five feet away, flattened against the cliff, his eyes pinched shut. He saw none of it. Then his communicator gripped his arm and pulled him back down the road.
The lead battalion was a shambles. Although many were dead, a large majority had survived, but their morale had been demolished. More by the crashing rocks than by crossbow bolts, though the latter had caused most of the casualties. And the way ahead was destroyed. The army's only option was to get back downstream, out of the gorge. They'd taken something more than two and a half days to get where they'd gotten. If asked, they'd have said a day and a half would get them back out.
The entire dwarf attack had been concentrated on the first two battalions in the column, but word passed swiftly backward. Within two hours, the final battalion in the ten-mile-long column had heard what had befallen the first, a report enriched with exaggerations. By then, all of them had seen the two dead dwarves lying by the gatepost of their barricade, their beards plaited in war braids.
Now the legend felt real.
Meanwhile the command lines had begun to function. The rear battalion became the lead battalion, and its voitik commander sent mounted scouts out "ahead," back the way they'd come. It was downhill, and the scouts rode briskly. At length they rounded a bend from which they could see the guard station-and the second suspension bridge. They stopped, staring. Its oaken span had been burned; its cables hanging loosely in sagging arcs. Feeling ill, they rode down to it and looked long, then started back to report.