“And my homeland, too,” added Sirka.
O n the left more and more beasts were breaking through, heading for the artifact. Tungdil rode back and forth, felling one creature after another, but there were far too many. Three dozen were coming their way.
Sirka pillowed Lot-Ionan’s head on her mantle, then she took her combat stick and nodded to Ireheart. “I think we’ve got work to do.”
Rodario broke the arrow off close to the entry wound and got to his feet. “Well, you’ll be needing me, as well. I can’t miss a third opportunity to be a hero.”
Ireheart gave Goda a tender kiss. “Hurry. But not too fast. Leave a few for me and my crow’s beak.” He turned to face the foe. Again the world seemed to waver in front of his eyes and he needed to blink before his sight cleared.
“Irrepressible,” was all Goda said. She went to the nearest ring and sought a hold for her fingers as she started to climb.
“Just you try,” shouted Furgas. “I’ll kill you.”
Sirka twirled her weapon and looked at Ireheart. “Can I ask a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me the joke about the orc and the dwarf?”
“Now?”
“Might be our last chance.” Sirka grinned. The first monster was ten paces away, swinging a huge sword.
“Hurry.”
“Well, one orbit, a dwarf meets an orc at the Stone Gateway.” Ireheart raised his crow’s beak. “The orc saw him and said, ‘Little man, can you tell me where…?’ ”
Sirka’s adversary arrived and grabbed her attention with a hefty swipe.
“Later,” she called to Ireheart as she put her heart and soul into the fight.
Tungdil spurred his befun across the battlefield, striking at the monsters’ heads with Bloodthirster. Each strike took a life.
The refashioned alfish blade raged amongst the enemy throng. It seemed as if the sword were helping of its own accord, directing its own attack, and seeking out the most vulnerable places to strike. The weapon was uncanny but fascinating.
But whatever efforts the ubariu and the undergroundlings made, more and more creatures broke through the defenses, as soldiers were lost.
The winged monsters could not be stopped. They seemed immune against attack by arrow or crossbow bolt and had overturned two of the armored wagons, falling in swarms on the others. Swift as the wind they tore off the heavy plating to slaughter the crew inside.
The remaining vehicles gave the infantry some cover and kept up a spear attack, but they too were damaged.
“Curses!” Tungdil halted his befun to study the artifact. He saw Furgas was at the top and that a small figure was making its way up on the outside ring. “Goda?”
The befun cowered and emitted a furious roar. All at once it was dark round Tungdil, and a foul-smelling wind touched him. Claws slashed to the right and the left, lodging in the flesh of his steed, then up he soared…
The ground fell back and he was hovering over the battlefield witnessing the butchery on both sides of the chasm; it was a miniaturized version of what he had been experiencing himself.
“What…?” Tungdil turned to see the hideous face of one of the winged monsters, its muzzle agape.
His first thought was to plunge Bloodthirster between the teeth of the beast to kill it. But it would have meant his own death. From one hundred paces up in the air a fall was certain death.
Instead, he leaped off his injured steed to land on a claw of the flying beast, who dropped the befun and uttered a fearful cry. The animal tumbled to earth, smashing four ubariu beneath itself as it fell into their own ranks.
“You won’t shake me off,” snarled Tungdil, stabbing the monster in the belly, making a gash half a pace long, out of which a stinking liquid gushed to drench him.
Screeching, the dying beast tried to land, coming down over the line of undergroundlings and skimming over the spears of the Black Abyss army before it came to earth with widespread wings, blundering through the ranks and killing or maiming maybe fifty.
Vraccas protected Tungdil. Apart from a few scratches and a shallow gouge on his right calf from a spear tip, there was nothing. So he struggled out from under the wing and found himself standing right in the middle of the opposing army. He had not been noticed.
The foremost ranks of the ubariu and undergroundlings were an arrow’s flight away, and the entrance to the chasm fifty paces from him.
“Well, Vraccas, whatever your plan is,” he said, looking round, “I’m very keen to know how it all ends.”
Again he heard the sound of the kordrion. Stone cracked and a landslide of rubble buried several beasts. Immediately there was stillness and the warriors’ eyes all turned to the entrance to the ravine.
A pale claw as wide as three fortress gates shot up out of the blackness of the abyss and took hold of the outer edge of the ravine, trying for a hold. Cracks formed and rock crumbled under the pressure and weight of the creature that was still down there in the dark attempting to free itself. Its claw fastened into the rock again, the long nails taking hold.
The most dwarven of Tungdil’s virtues came to the fore. When all about him was hopelessness, he kept his head and drew on the qualities of steadfast stubbornness and pigheadedness or whatever other folk thought of when they spoke of the dwarves.
He climbed up the corpse of the winged beast so that both friend and foe should see he was there. He took his bugle from his belt, placed it to his lips and replied to the call of the kordrion, sounding the battle signal into the horrified silence.
“I shall not allow you out of your prison,” he bellowed down into the chasm. He raised Bloodthirster, drenched as it was with the black lifeblood of all the creatures he had vanquished. “The weapon I snatched from evil shall be the one to stop you, whatever you are. Fire fights fire.”
He stormed straight through the ranks of the beasts, and hacked to pieces every assailant that dared to cross his path; it was as if their armor was but butter and their bodies but straw.
Behind him he heard Flagur’s voice, then the ubariu yelled and the undergroundlings hallooed, joining their efforts with his own.
Hope began to blossom.
F lagur saw Tungdil suddenly appear between the enemy ranks and the cadaver of the monster. He had sounded his horn as fearlessly as if standing in safety behind the walls of Letefora. His words resounded clearly, echoing over the death-filled field. Then he sprang forward.
“Ubar, you have sent us a true hero, whose courage surpasses even that of an acront,” he avowed, lifting his sword. “Let us follow him!” He sent his rallying cry to right and to left. “We shall be the first to defeat a kordrion. For Ubar!” Stepping forward, his weapon grasped in both hands, he cut the beast that reared up before him into two halves, slicing from skull to groin. He was covered in its dark blood and the smell of it spurred him on.
His warriors joined their voices to his own and sallied forth. Turning their enormous shields they charged ten paces deep into enemy lines. There they halted: the first ubariu formed a protective metal wall, cutting off the antagonists now behind them from the main army of monsters.
Following in the wake of the ubariu, the undergroundlings bombarded this isolated section, felling monsters so swiftly with their combat batons that the creatures could not coordinate any defense.
Meanwhile, pressure was increasing at the shield barrier where the Black Abyss hordes were menacing the ubariu.
“Again!” yelled Flagur, calling for the lance with his banner affixed. They repeated the maneuver: turn shields aside, let some of the assailants through, hem them in and butcher them.
“Take care!” called Flagur to the front line overlooking the field, holding his banner aloft to ensure the enemy knew what name death bore.
At that moment he felt a searing pain in his side. Suddenly there was an arrow sticking out between his ribs, making breathing a torture. Yet Flagur did not surrender to the pain. His fingers contracted around the shaft of his lance and he used it to support himself. Show no weakness. The battle must first be won. “And change… now!”