The Covenant of The Forge dnt-1 Read online

  In the silence, another sound grew. Far below, metal grated against stone, a series of sharp, hissing noises, each ending in a final-sounding thud. It seemed to go on and on, then ended with a heavy, metallic thump that echoed up the shaft. Around and behind Kilane, men gazed about in confusion. A dozen or so on the second stairway crowded the rim of the stairs, peering downward, and a man screamed as he lost his balance and fell, disappearing into the gloom below. A long moment passed, then the rest heard him land — not with a thud, as on the stone floor of the entry tunnel, but with a ringing, rattling thump, followed by clatters of small things falling.

  From somewhere below, voices came: “Gods! That one is done for!” “What is that down there? What did he hit?”

  And from farther down: “They’ve closed the shaft! Look at that, will you? We’re sealed off in here! There are iron bars clear across, wall to wall. The whole stairshaft is blocked off at the second level!”

  Sith Kilane swore under his breath. It had been expected that the dwarves might have some surprises, but to slide cage bars across the whole shaft?

  “We’ll have to go on,” he told those behind him. “The dwarves are just ahead. They’ve sealed themselves in here with us. Find them! We’ll make them let us out!”

  With anger added to their energies, the horde of humans sped upward, a spiraling mass of armed men racing around twin pillars of stone, and came out on the highest enclosed level of Thorin Keep. Overhead, skylights flooded the wide hall and the corridors beyond with brilliant light.

  And they were alone. There wasn’t a dwarf in sight, anywhere. The invaders spread out to search. Sith Kilane stalked the bright halls in a fury. All the way up Thorin Keep, there had been dwarves ahead of them. They had seen them, had clashed with their rear guards. They had been in hot pursuit. There had been dozens of dwarves … many dozens of them. But now they were just … gone.

  “There must be secret passages!” Kilane shouted. “Find them!”

  Long minutes passed in frantic search, then one of the men swept aside a tapestry on the back wall of one of the stair pillars and gawked at what he saw there. He shouted, and others came to look. It was a doorway, cut into the stone of the huge pillar. A small doorway — to humans — less than six feet high and about four feet wide. The closed door was of finely finished wood, highly ornamented.

  Men pushed at the door, pried at its edges, and strained against it, but it would not move.

  “Stand back!” Sith Kilane ordered. Raising his bloodstained sword in both hands, he swung downward at the center of the door. The blade struck and broke. The impact made Kilane’s teeth rattle. With the others, he peered at the gouge in the wood where his sword had hit it.

  The wood was a veneer. Beneath its decorative surface, the door was solid metal.

  When the humans first entered the stairways of the keep, Tolon the Muse had made up his mind — the invaders might get in, but none of them would ever get out alive if he could manage it. With guards fighting delaying battles at each level, Tolon rushed to get all the dwarves in the keep to the highest level, where the lift-stages opened. The human mob was still far down the stairs when Tolon assembled his survivors and opened the lift doors.

  He held position there, on the upper level of the keep, while people streamed past him, entering the lifts nine at a time, packing the suspended stages one after another for their trip downward through the hollow pillars surrounded by the stairs.

  Many of them were injured. At the lower levels the guards had fought, had held the stairhead long enough for other dwarves to stream upward ahead of the invaders. Some had died, and many were bleeding. Tolon had no idea how many Calnar had been in the keep when the attack came, but he guessed there were more than a hundred. Yet, when the last of them arrived in the upper hall, and he herded them toward the cable-lift, he counted fewer than fifty who had made it to the top. Grieving and dark-browed with a smoldering anger, the second son of Colin Stonetooth saw the last of them into the lift stages and shared the next stage with two injured guards. He sealed the portal behind him as he stepped onto the platform. Could the humans break through that door, into the lifts? He didn’t know. It depended upon the tools they could find. But it would not be easy.

  In the meantime, he had a surprise for them.

  Normally, only Colin Stonetooth himself could have ordered the keep sealed and had his orders obeyed. But the chieftain was not here, and looking at the fierce scowls of the armed Calnar with him — the remnants of an entire company of keep guards — he knew that they would follow his plan.

  How many of the invading humans were in the keep? There was no way of knowing. Hundreds, probably. But it didn’t matter. Tolon had made up his mind that those who were there — who had invaded the very home of the leaders of the Calnar — were not going to leave.

  Tolon did not know where the rest of his family was now. He had seen his father, retreating with the Ten on the first terrace, making for the gates. The chieftain must be inside now, maybe in Grand Gather or beyond. He had last seen Handil on his way to Grand Gather, carrying his drum as always, with Jinna Rockreave beside him. Cale Greeneye, of course, was gone — off on some adventure of his own choosing, with the pretext of seeking a lost patrol — and Tera Sharn had been on her way to the main concourse earlier in the day. Tolon wished them all well and muttered a prayer to Reorx for their safety as he lent a hand at the stage winches, inching the endless belt of the lift downward.

  Of the family of Colin Stonetooth, only Tolon was present here, where human barbarians streamed upward through the keep. For here and now, Tolon the Muse would take charge of defenses.

  “All able guards off at second level!” he called, his voice carrying downward to the stages below. “We’ll make for the winch chamber.”

  Beside him, one of the guards grinned darkly. He had been thinking the same thing himself.

  Not in living memory had the keep been sealed, but the mechanisms were sleek and ready. It was typical of the Calnar, with their loathing of rust and tarnish, that all metal artifacts in Thorin were kept in good repair. This included the racks of iron bars — some of them thirty feet long — in the winch chamber at second level, and the two-inch-wide holes drilled into the stone of the frontal wall at eight-inch intervals. Beyond the wall was the keep’s big stairshaft, and in its opposite wall, or in the stair pillars themselves, were sockets — one for each hole in the frontal wall.

  Working swiftly, Tolon Farsight and ten sturdy dwarven guards lifted the long bars, fed them through their sleeve holes, and drove them home. Beyond the stone, each bar emerged into the stairshaft, slid across, and thumped into its socket. It took them less than two minutes to put all of the bars in place. Dimly, from beyond the stone, they heard a scream, and some of the bars rattled in their sockets.

  With the bars in place, the eleven lifted a great, hewn timber and dropped it into iron stays at each end of the line of sockets. The mass of it completely covered the holes, sealing off the bars beyond. Now nothing more than eight inches wide was going anywhere past the second level of Thorin Keep.

  With that done, Tolon led his guards back to the lift shaft, where his other charges — fewer than forty dwarves from the keep, mostly women and wounded guards — waited in the shadows.

  From far above, they could hear the sounds of humans at the top level, beating on the steel door there, trying to force it open.

  “I’m glad Handil isn’t here to see this,” Tolon muttered, staring up the great shaft with its endless, vertical row of lift stages. “This lift is his pride and joy. Next to that vibrar of his, it’s the best thing he ever invented.”

  From a cabinet at the base of the shaft, they took tools — prybars and wrenches — and began dismantling the lift belt.

  The last coupling had just been pulled when they heard the upper door, far above, crash open and the shouts of humans ringing down the shaft. By sound alone, they could almost see the humans up there, crowding into the chamber, beginn
ing to haul on the pulley cables to descend.

  Tolon pointed at the giant pulley wheels on each side of the lift base. “Spring the cables,” he said.

  Guards on each side hefted prybars and slipped them under the rims of the wheels.

  “Everybody stand back,” Tolon said. The little crowd shuffled away, into the shadows beyond the lift port.

  The guards secured their prybars, heaved at them, and the cables jumped from their tracks on the wheels. The guards threw themselves back, one falling and rolling, as pandemonium erupted above. Abruptly the lift shaft was a chaos of falling debris — uncoupled stages slamming down, crushing the stages below, loose cable whirring and slapping in the confines of the shaft … and piercing screams. As the dust settled, Tolon tried to make out how many of the invaders had come down with the lift debris. But it was impossible to tell for sure. There wasn’t enough left of the men to sort out the pieces.

  “So far,” Tolon the Muse muttered, “so good.”

  The keep was sealed, and the humans within it would wait. With the lifts destroyed, there was nowhere for them to go.

  Tolon led his little band into a side tunnel and sealed its entrance behind them. It was only a service way, a maintenance tunnel for the elaborate water system that supplied this part of Thorin. But it led to where he wanted to go.

  A hundred yards of dimness, and the dwarves emerged into a narrow, ill-lighted cavern where rough wooden shelves lined the walls. Tools of all sorts were on the shelves, and Tolon easily found what he was looking for. There were hammers, delvers’ shields, and slings. And in a corner was a rack of three-inch iron balls. The heavy balls were intended for aqueduct cleaning, but Tolon had another use in mind. Every tool had a left side.

  Leaving his injured in the hidden cavern with some of the women to care for them, Tolon and his guards made packs of sacking and filled them with cleaning balls. Each took a pack, a pair of web slings, a hammer, and a shield, and Tolon led them up a dark, winding tunnel that opened into a maze of windshafts. He looked back and found he had more help than he had expected. Fully a dozen of the dwarven women had armed themselves as the guards had and followed along.

  Tolon nodded his approval. “Everybody pick a shaft,” he told them. “Follow it to its end, and feel free to kill any human you see.”

  Some of the shafts led to the upper walls of Grand Gather, some to the vents of the first concourse, and some to the intakes on the outer wall of the keep. The airshafts would be almost impossible for a human to negotiate, but to the Calnar they were easy. The vents — always high above the floor beyond — would make fine ambush holes, and there wasn’t a dwarf in Thorin who was not deadly accurate with a sling.

  Aqueduct cleaners! The ubiquitous three-inch iron balls would be lethal weapons when propelled by delvers’ slings. It was, however, unfortunate that one of the first humans killed by an iron ball that day — out on the first terrace — was Bram Talien of Chandera. The trader had just put a sword through the gullet of one of his captors and was trying to get back to his family when the ball smashed his skull. Shena Brightiron, whose sling propelled the missile, was a young Calnar maiden whose home was deep within Thorin, near the markets. In her entire life, she had seen only two or three humans, and to her they all looked alike.

  They were the enemy.

  10

  Bloody Solstice

  Reinforced by members of Willen Ironmaul’s elite guard, Colin Stonetooth and the Ten held the human onslaught at the gates for long minutes, while the lower keep households, pavilion workers, and a hundred others who had survived the first rush fled toward Grand Gather and the city beyond. Then with the corridor behind them clear, the chieftain and his fighters wheeled and raced away, past the stairways to the keep, into the winding, rising corridor that led to Grand Gather. Behind them, growing numbers of invaders stumbled over their own dead at Thorin’s gaping portal.

  It would take the humans’ eyes moments to adjust from the sunlight beyond the gates to the dimness within, and Colin needed that time to spring his next defense. There was nothing he or his warriors could do about the keep, except to hope that those within could hold out long enough to escape. Tolon was there … Tolon with his dark moods and his devious mind. He had been atop the keep when the attack began and had not emerged with the refugees.

  Colin prayed to Reorx for his second son, at the same time baring his teeth at thoughts of the sort of havoc “Tolon the Muse” might dream up for those humans unfortunate enough to face him.

  He did not know where Handil was, or Tera Sharn. Somewhere in the city, he hoped, away from the invaders. The chieftain feared for them. Tera — thoughtful, logical Tera! Faced with murderous enemies, Tera might try to reason with them. It would be her way. He understood well the reliance upon reason and logic that guided his daughter. It was her legacy from himself, and now he cursed the tendency. Tolon had been right. Colin should not have counted on reason and logic. Because he trusted his friends among the humans, reason had told him to trust humans. He had been wrong, and now Thorin was paying the price.

  And Handil! Where was Handil? Colin did not doubt his oldest son’s courage, or his ferocity in battle. Handil was a fighter, for all of his indifference to rule. But what could one do against invaders, with a drum?

  Within moments, the humans would be after them, and Colin Stonetooth cursed his own stubborn naivete as he spurred his horse on. There had been warnings. There had been ample warnings. But he had chosen to believe that Balladine would be respected. Pools of lensed daylight showed the path ahead, where the entry to Grand Gather was now in sight at the end of the big, rising tunnel.

  The tunnel ahead was empty, except for a company of Willen’s guards at the arena portal. Just beyond, large, square shapes, surrounded by workers, were slowly moved. Those who had made it past the keep would be there now, and Willen would be setting his trap for the pursuers. It had seemed an excessive thing when they had first discussed it — eight-foot cubes of stone on low rollers, in place to block the portal. Now Colin realized that it would not be enough. The stones would delay the humans, but not stop them. The invaders were simply too many to be held.

  Colin glanced back for the first time since passing the keep. Jerem Longslate rode just behind, his bearded face grim beneath his polished helm, and behind him came the Ten.

  But they were no longer ten. At a glance, Colin saw that Chock Render and Balam Axethrow were missing. They were dead, then. Only death could separate any member of the Ten from his chieftain.

  Abruptly, the chieftain’s tall horse shied and spun half around to lash out with its rear hooves. Colin clung to his saddle and raised his blade, peering around.

  There was no one there, just himself and his escort. But the other horses were excited, too, as though they could see an enemy that their riders could not. Colin gave his mount its head and muttered, “Schoen, attack!”

  The big horse turned, reared, and lashed out with front hooves, slashing at empty air, its ears laid back. The scream of its battle cry echoed from stone walls, and beneath the sound was another, like scurrying footsteps … like someone scooting away, trying to escape the flailing hooves. And for an instant, two bright orbs, like glowing eyes, turning away. Then there was nothing. Schoen pranced and bristled, the golden hide beneath his white mane quivering. But whatever the horse had seen, or thought it saw, was gone.

  “Did you see anyone here?” Colin asked. “Or anything?”

  “No, Sire,” Jerem Longslate said, as the others shook their heads. “The horses did, though.”

  Behind them, the sounds of pursuit grew. The invaders were in the tunnel, and some were now in sight, rounding the bend a hundred yards back — a howling, kill-crazed torrent of humans filling the big space from wall to wall. There were hundreds of them, and more behind.

  “To Grand Gather,” Colin rasped. He spurred Schoen, and the horses thundered to the portal, past the guards there and into the vaulted space of the great assembly hall. Beh
ind them, guards’ slings whistled. There were cries from the charging human mob as thrown missiles scored hits there. Colin Stonetooth drew rein and wheeled, pointing with his bloody sword. “The stones will not hold them! There are too many! Willen!”

  Instantly, Willen Ironmaul was there, beside his leader’s horse. “Aye, Sire!”

  “Turn the stones, Willen. Face the rollers outward.”

  A lethal grin spread across the big dwarf’s face. Willen understood instantly, and the idea pleased him. “Aye, Sire. Workers! To your prys! Turn the stones!”

  Spotting Frost Steelbit among the milling crowds nearby, Colin shouted, “Frost! Take charge of the wounded and the weak! Get them out of here, into the concourse. We’ll make a stand there, at the inner gate!” He swung down, and Jerem Longslate and the others also dismounted. The horses were led away, toward the far portal of Grand Gather and the city beyond. There would be no further need of horses now. What must be done would be done afoot.

  Wight Anvil’s-Cap, the old delvemaster, appeared at Colin’s side. “Has it come to that, then? Must we close the inner gate?”

  “I am afraid we have no choice,” Colin rasped. “This is no barbarian attack. It’s an invasion. Nothing less will keep those people out of Thorin.”

  “Reorx help us,” the delvemaster muttered. “No one knows whether that thing will even work. It has never been tried.”

  “I know that, Wight. Pray that it does, because if it fails, we’ll be fighting that mob in the streets of Thorin itself.” He turned away, toward the portal. The second of the two huge blocks of stone was just being steadied in place, pointing outward. Beyond, the howling of the human tide was deafening. Arrows were flicking through the opening, between and around the stones. “Willen, is it ready?”

  “Ready, Sire.”

  “Then let them go and close these doors.”

  At Willen Ironmaul’s command, burly dwarves stooped behind the stones, heaved at prybars, and the stones moved. For an instant they seemed to hang suspended in the portal, then they pitched outward and began to roll down the corridor beyond, their rollers rumbling as they picked up speed, twin juggernauts bearing down on the packed masses of humans charging upward.