Sirka bent and kissed Tungdil wordlessly, then smiled at him. “Just in case one of us doesn’t make it out of the caves alive,” she said, whirling her staff. “Shall we?”
He nodded and stormed ahead. Those few words of Sirka’s echoed round his head and threatened to distract him from the task at hand. He pulled himself together and ducked to avoid the grasp of the machine’s snapping fingers, feeling the draught as the blow narrowly missed. He attacked with Keenfire.
To his inordinate relief the ax head flamed into life, gathering power to strike the foe.
The blade hit home above the iron ankle. Lightning flashes blazed and the runes on the armor shone dark green. A jerk went through the machine and a new noise erupted inside like the twanging of a breaking bow string.
“It’s still alive, Scholar!” Ireheart screamed from behind. “The thing in the glass case. It’s still there. And I think it’s laughing!”
Furious now, Tungdil drew back his weapon, there was dark green blood, nearly black, sticking to it. At least Keenfire was able to injure it. Then he saw the elf runes on the monster’s right breast. The word he read was deaths.
“Take care,” Sirka warned, but it was a second too late.
The flat iron hand hit him and catapulted him away. He lost his helmet and his belt came loose, tangling itself round his boots. Caught upside-down like a bound gugul he could see the monster stomping toward him, sharp iron nails underneath its boots, with fragments of bone and armor from previous encounters hung between them.
“Come here and I’ll slit your tin can open!” he taunted the colossus, raising his ax.
Then Sirka was there, dragging him along by his belt. Their giant adversary followed them-and stepped into the trap.
Hardly had Tungdil and Sirka passed than the rope was tautened and the ends fastened round a rock.
It caught the monster’s iron foot; its pace slackened. The rope burst apart but the beast had lost its balance. It managed to bring its arms forward to break the fall and to prevent itself falling onto its porthole.
“Now!” bellowed Ireheart sprinting off and using his momentum to swing the crow’s beak upwards with tremendous force.
The blunt end hit the thick porthole in front of the monster’s face. Clunk! Four cracks appeared in the curved pane of glass. The three iron balls of Goda’s night star completed the destruction. Shards fell down on her and Ireheart.
Sirka had freed Tungdil from his involuntary bondage. “Everything all right? Or have I dragged the skin off your bones?”
“No, you have stolen my heart.” This time he was the one who planted a kiss, then he sprang up to help Boindil, looking on in fury as the machine struggled up.
“Stay where you are, infernal bucket!” raged Ireheart, whacking the iron arms, in an attempt to break them, in spite of being underneath. “You have killed your last dwarf!” He struck an elbow joint.
The combination of the creature’s massive weight and this well-aimed blow caused the material to yield. One of the holding bolts snapped, and the forearm broke off. The machine toppled and could not right itself.
“You’re mad! Get out from under there!” called Tungdil.
But Ireheart was too far gone in his battle-lust to hear. “I’ll smash your ugly nose and the rest of you to boot!” he promised the beast, thumping his crow’s beak into its face. Blood sprayed out and the deformed features disappeared in a sea of black. The whole machine shuddered as if sharing the pain the creature within was suffering. “Ha! Now it’s…”
The left arm gave way and the three-pace-long torso fell with a thud. Its fate was sealed.
Tungdil saw his friend disappear under the massive black armor. His cry of horror was drowned out by the terrible clanking and rattling, a noise that eclipsed any other sound in the tunnels. He did not dare look down to check for blood. “We’ll have to hoist it up, to…”
“That was close,” they heard Boindil laugh. His helmet appeared on top of the armored monster, then he was up and standing on it swinging his crow’s beak. “Ha! That’s what Vraccas likes to see!” he called happily. “Now the unslayables have lost two of their beasts.”
He stamped on the creature’s metal back. “It wasn’t actually the magister’s weak point they told us about. But it wasn’t bad, was it?”
Tungdil gestured him to come down. “Get off there before the altitude gets to your brain and you attempt more stupid suicidal stuff.” He hid his relief behind the seemingly harsh words.
“Coming, Scholar.” Ireheart stroked his weapon. “Crow’s beak and I are in just the mood to take on another of these monsters.” He looked down between his feet. “There’s something like a lock here. Shall we break it open? It’ll take us to the cogwheel innards, for sure.”
With a high-pitched shriek steam gushed out of a vent next to Ireheart.
“No, let’s get on.” Tungdil did not like the sound at all. His own people’s steam machines had valves to release a build-up of pressure. He did not know if this contraption had the same. “If the boiler blows I don’t want to be next to it.”
“Got you.” He stepped over the iron hip, walked down the leg and jumped off the foot, brown eyes gleaming with a mixture of war-rage and triumphant delight: a dangerous combination of light-headed boldness and unshakeable self-confidence. “Do you know what? We’ll have another of these down before the day is out.”
“You are incorrigible,” said Tungdil and left it at that. “Come on.”
“Of course I’m incorrigible. But hesitation never gets you anywhere.” He winked at Goda, who was gazing at him admiringly. She was proud he was her trainer and had completely forgotten the argument they had had in the barn.
Together they walked along the passage until they reached a fork. Tungdil mentally arranged the elf runes in the most likely order: your deaths have. Two more creatures were needed and they would have the riddle solved.
“And now?” Dergard wiped the sweat from his brow. He was the one least able to cope with the sultry heat, and these Toboribor caves were extremely hot, affected by the steaming simmering pools they found everywhere they went. The dwarves were not enjoying it much, either. It smelt too strongly of orc. Tungdil indicated a passageway where cooler air was emerging. “That one.” He took the lead.
With every stride they took it got colder. Damp settled on their chain mail and the chilliness-welcome at first-soon had Dergard shivering.
“It’s like a crypt.” He spoke his thoughts out loud. “I don’t like it here.”
“Who do you think is enjoying this?” retorted Ireheart. “Just because I am a child of the Smith doesn’t mean I feel happy in this pig-sty. Caves aren’t all the same, you know, magus.”
Tungdil had reached a cavern and realized that Dergard had not been far off the truth with his suggestion. “Quiet, he hissed back over his shoulder. A vague feeling of unease warned him against entering, but there was no choice. The diamond could be anywhere. “Come on, but quietly.”
This cave was a good fifty paces long and broad and the walls curved above them in a dome at least forty paces high. Exactly in the middle a dark stalactite hung down; it was the length of two grown human men and the girth of an ancient tree.
The stalactite’s tip pointed down to a woman with long black hair lying on an altar of basalt, her hands folded on her stomach and her eyes closed. Her black silk robes draped to the right and left of the bier partially obscured the alfar rune ornaments on the stone.
Under her crossed hands lay two long slender swords that Tungdil recognized at once. The unslayable siblings had used similar weapons to attack the eoil in the battle on the tower.
A bluish light was emanating from the diamond on her breast. From time to time a silver flicker illuminated the signs and the countenance of the recumbent figure.
They had found the unslayable sister… and the stolen diamond.
On the floor round about them lay the skeletons of orcs: the remains of five hundred or more. The cut marks on the bones made no other interpretation possible: they had died by the same sharp blade.