Archmage (35 page)

The dwarf squatted fast and scooped up his devastating morningstars. He meant to grab them and burst ahead to pummel the demons, but Ambergris tackled him before he ever really started. And a good thing she did. A wall of fire appeared right in front of Athrogate, lining the left-hand wall of the tunnel and running down almost to where Penelope and the others had gone. Flames leaped out from the conflagration, filling the corridor, and terrible shrieks came from within the roiling flames as demon flesh curled.

Athrogate and Ambergris had to fall back a couple of steps, almost to Catti-brie, who stood with her staff upraised, the gem glowing an angry red, reflecting in her eyes. She seemed a part of the weapon and it a part of her, one being bathed in communal magic, controlling the flames, bringing forth the flames, reveling in the cleansing fires.

“Girl,” Athrogate breathed, hardly believing the strength of the wall. Catti-brie didn’t blink, her focus pure. She was drawing straight from the primordial then, her own arcane magical powers enhanced greatly by her kinship with the preternatural godlike creature, and by the powerful weapon it had helped her to fashion.

“Guessin’ our work is done,” Ambergris said, shaking her head with similar disbelief.

Even as she spoke, though, the giant nalfeshnee strode out of the flames and roared.

“Guessin’ not,” Athrogate said, and with a wink at his girl, he launched himself at the behemoth.

He swatted the giant demon with a swinging morningstar, and it grunted as it swatted him with its own club, a black, metallic, evil-looking thing. The weight of the blow threw Athrogate against the right-hand wall.

Right behind the departing Athrogate came Ambergris, though, Skullcracker smashing against the nalfeshnee’s forearm before it could pull back.

Another grunt escaped the beast and it charged forward, kicking out, and Ambergris had to throw herself backward so that she wasn’t launched halfway up the tunnel.

The demon paid Athrogate no more heed as it continued for the woman, apparently figuring Athrogate to be crumbling against the stone.

It wasn’t the first monstrous enemy to underestimate this particular dwarf.

Athrogate came out from the wall swinging, and now with one of his weapon heads coated in liquid. He struck with his other flail once and again, forcing the behemoth to turn toward him, and as soon as it did, around came the coated ball, squarely into the demon’s knee.

The oil of impact exploded on contact.

The nalfeshnee’s knee exploded on contact.

How the demon howled!

And now the dwarves struck wildly, in perfect harmony, Ambergris cracking the beast on the other hip, Athrogate’s morningstars spinning in a blur and whacking the demon wherever the furious dwarf found an opening.

At one point, the demon bent over and swept its heavy club around in a wide and low sidelong sweep, cleverly trying to drive Athrogate farther down the corridor and into the still-burning wall of fire.

But Athrogate, recognizing the deadly aim, caught the club with a great “Oof!” and held it at bay, stubbornly, mightily, holding his ground.

The behemoth pressed on, and the dwarf, for all his strength, found his feet sliding on the blood- and brain-slickened floor.

“Girl!” he cried.

He needn’t have bothered. The demon was so focused on Athrogate that it remained in its crouch, bent low and over, hands engaged.

Whether or not Athrogate had called out, Ambergris wasn’t about to let that beautifully presented target go to waste. She ran back up the hall several steps, turned, and charged, leaping high, Skullcracker up and over her head. The huge mace came over as she descended.

The demon looked back just in time to see the weapon’s descent.

That blow would have shattered the skull of a hill giant. It did drive the demon to one knee, staggering it, but only temporarily.

Long enough for Athrogate to press back against the shoving weapon, though, even to wrench it from the demon’s grasp.

The nalfeshnee started to rise, but Skullcracker hit it on the head again. Stubbornly, the beast growled through the blow and tried again, but now came Athrogate’s morningstars, one after another.

And the nalfeshnee was dazed again, and now the dwarves were climbing all over it, striking and leaping, climbing and striking again and again, battering the beast with an incessant rain of heavy blows, any of which would have felled an ogre.

Soon enough, the demon spent less time trying to stand up to its full height than in trying to grasp at the troublesome dwarves.

But it couldn’t catch up to them, in their coordinated fury, and anytime the beast got near to grabbing Athrogate, Ambergris changed its mind with a crushing blow from Skullcracker. And anytime it got near to grabbing Ambergris, Athrogate introduced its ugly face to Cracker and Whacker yet again.

Demon blood and ichor splattered the floor all about the hunched creature, and that only spurred on the ferocious dwarves.

By the time they had finished—and that only when Catti-brie cried out in horror—the creature hardly resembled a nalfeshnee demon, seeming more like a mound of boneless jelly.

“Break!” Bruenor yelled and the Fellhammer sisters caught each other by the wrists and whipped about left and right, each flinging the other aside. And through that gap leaped Bruenor, and through the vrock’s outstretched arms, as well, as the confused creature grabbed at the two fleeing dwarves it had been fighting.

Inside its defenses, Bruenor had one clear attack, and he struck true and struck hard, his powerful axe burying deeply into the vulture demon’s chest.

Its screech came out as a blood-filled gasp, and the destroyed vrock fell away. Another took its place, coming at Bruenor but catching a faceful of Mallabritches instead, the furious dwarf leaping high and battering it with her fine sword.

Across the way, Tannabritches dispatched a manes with a stab and a twist, then flung herself across in front of Bruenor just as Mallabritches landed on her feet and leaped at the vrock again. The creature was more ready for her this time—or would have been, except that Tannabritches barreled into the back of its legs just as Mallabritches hit.

Over went the demon and over went Mallabritches atop it, living up to her nickname of Fury as she continued her assault, using an offense of pure fury to keep the demon from beginning to counter.

Bruenor turned to follow the tumbling duo, but stopped short and set himself in a defensive crouch. The glabrezu rushed in, pincers leading. Bruenor called to Tannabritches, but too late—she was well on her way to leaping upon the downed vrock. Into the air she flew, and from the air she was plucked by the powerful glabrezu.

“No!” Bruenor roared, leaping forward, axe swinging for the pincer arm that had caught his dear friend Fist. He scored a clean and deep hit, but on the demon’s chest and not its arm.

He brought his shield up as the demon’s left hook pounded home, the balled fist hitting Bruenor’s buckler with the force he would expect from a mountain giant.

The blow sent him skidding, his feet churning to send him back the other way.

His progress halted when the demon’s free pincer caught him by the shield and began to tug him all around, his feet flying off the floor. He was in trouble, off-balance and seemingly overmatched.

Then Tannabritches cried out in pain as the pincer closed around her waist.

“No!”

Bruenor’s roar came from somewhere inside of him, came from a place of utter denial and utter outrage. He felt the dwarf gods then, as he had on the ledge on that long-ago day when he had battled a pit fiend in the primordial chamber.

The pincer yanked Bruenor’s shield arm out to the left, opening his defenses, and a heavy punch came in right behind it, hitting him squarely in the face. His head snapped back from the devastating blow.

But he accepted it and countered cleanly, turning, his axe chopping across his body to hit the forearm of the pincer limb grasping his shield.

The shield was freed, the pincer fell free to the floor.

Tannabritches screamed in pain, the remaining pincer arm digging at her waist.

A lightning bolt from Catti-brie flashed above Bruenor, striking the glabrezu and sending it staggering back—not fast enough to evade the howling Bruenor, though, the dwarf charging in.

Again the glabrezu punched at him, this time striking the shield once more. But this time, the weight of the blow did not halt the dwarf or move him backward. The strength of Clangeddin flowed through him now as he swelled with rage and terror for poor Tannabritches.

The demon threw Tannabritches at him and he instinctively ducked, then winced as he realized the truth of the missile. With a roar of denial, he crashed into the glabrezu and sent his axe spinning forward and up, then right back over his shoulder.

The pincer snapped down at him, catching only shield, and the axe came around and up, right between the demon’s legs and into its crotch, driving the beast up high on its clawed toes.

Bruenor bore in, cursing it, bashing it. He stopped and sent his axe across, chopping the inside of the glabrezu’s right knee. He reversed his swing, spinning the axe in his hand as he went and bringing the weapon back across to strike at the left knee, but now with the weapon’s head farther back, behind the leg.

The glabrezu was still backing, but Bruenor went the other way, tugging powerfully, the axe-head catching behind the demon’s knee and twisting it off balance.

Bruenor came back in again, behind a second lightning bolt cast by Catti-brie, crashing into the demon and sending it tumbling backward to the floor.

Bruenor also fell, face first, and fell hard. His nose bleeding and broken, Bruenor just kept on charging, using his axe as an ice-climber might use a pick, repeatedly chopping it into the demon and tugging himself forward.

By the time the axe descended into the demon’s chest, the glabrezu was no longer defending, and by the time the next swing came down on the creature’s canine face, the husk was already beginning to smoke and disintegrate, the destroyed thing melting back to the Abyss.

Hot winds buffeted Bruenor as he tore his axe free, scrambled up to his knees, and lifted the axe in both hands up above his head to hit the thing again. For a moment, the dwarf thought another demon had come.

But no, it was instead another devastating fireball from Catti-brie, filling the corridor farther along, melting the next group of demons and opening the way to where the tunnel wall neared the inner complex, the place where Kipper’s passwall had brought them through: the way home.

But Bruenor couldn’t think of that then. He drove his axe down on the already destroyed demon, and used the leverage of the embedded weapon to help him hop back up to his feet. He ripped the axe free with a sickening sound as he leaped around, calling out to Catti-brie to call the goddess to Tannabritches’s side.

His words stuck in his throat as the scene in front of him took shape.

Mallabritches cradled her fallen sister in her arms tenderly. The blue mist already swirled around Catti-brie’s right arm as she reached for healing spells for the fallen dwarf. Farther along the corridor, Athrogate and Ambergris had turned sidelong, waving at Emerus, Ragged Dain, and the Harpells to hurry along.

Other than the footfalls and Mallabritches’s sobs, the tunnel was silent once more, and Bruenor knew that
Comragh na Tochlahd
, the Battle of the Mines, had ended.

Looking at Tannabritches, though, at sweet Fury, a teary-eyed Bruenor couldn’t rightly declare victory.

W
hen they returned to the main recaptured complex in the upper halls, the group from the mines found Drizzt resting a bit more easily, though he remained far, far away, his eyes closed, his fingers not responding when Bruenor or Catti-brie took his hand. Still, after a quick check on him, measuring his breathing and sensing the peace within the darkness, Catti-brie took hope that her husband would survive, though whether he would ever again be a great warrior, none could know. Catti-brie had learned from bitter personal experience in her previous life how debilitating some injuries could be, no matter how much magical healing the priests might apply.

She had never been the same warrior after the defense of Mithral Hall, when that giant-hurled stone had caught her. She had survived, but could not bear children, and could not hope to fight as well with the sword as before.

But she had survived, and she had thrived for years afterward, turning her thoughts to arcane magic. Perhaps it could be so with Drizzt, she pondered, and a smile found its way onto her pained face as she fantasized about having Drizzt as her student, reading the texts beside him at the Ivy Mansion in Longsaddle, laughing at him good-naturedly when his first spells fizzled—much as he had taunted her in the early days of her martial training.

“It will be all right,” she said to Bruenor, squeezing his shoulder and bending low to peck him on the hairy cheek. “The sun will rise.”

Bruenor’s stubby fingers patted her hand and he nodded. He was too choked up to respond, though, and so Catti-brie kissed him again and left him alone with Drizzt in the room.

“Ah, elf, it’s harder than I thinked,” Bruenor said to his friend when she was gone. “I’m needin’ ye, elf. But ye get yer sleep, aye, and when ye come back, a dwarf’ll be on the throne o’ Gauntlgrym, don’t ye doubt!”

He glanced around, noting Drizzt’s weapon belt hanging over the back of a chair, along with the rest of the drow’s equipment. Bruenor went over and slid the repaired Twinkle back into its sheath. He paused before the scimitar went all the way in, inspecting his handiwork. He had to nod, for it had been a solid repair.

But of course, the formerly magical weapon would never be as powerful.

Bruenor glanced back at Drizzt and wondered the same for his friend.

The dwarf’s hand slid down the weapon belt to a pouch, and from it he lifted a familiar onyx figurine.

A twinkle came to Bruenor’s eye as he brought Guenhwyvar up for closer inspection. Might he take her with him? Would she come to his call and serve him as she had so well served Drizzt? Or perhaps he could give the cat to Catti-brie.

But it didn’t seem right to him.

He shook his head and moved to the bed, placing Guenhwyvar down gently on Drizzt’s chest, then lifting the drow’s arms up to hug the panther. This was where she belonged. Only.

“Ye come back to us, elf,” Bruenor whispered. “Ain’t ready to say farewell to ye just yet!”

He gave a last pat to Drizzt and left the room, considering the dark road in front of him and wondering if he’d get his wish, because it seemed very possible to Bruenor that he’d never speak to his dear elf friend again.

In the next room over, he heard the quiet voice of Mallabritches Fellhammer, whispering encouragement to her fallen sister. Tannabritches was in far worse shape than Drizzt, and Catti-brie, for all her efforts, could not give Bruenor any assurances that the young dwarf lass would survive her brutal wounds. The glabrezu’s pincer had crushed and gashed her midsection. If Catti-brie hadn’t been right there with powerful healing magic, Tannabritches would never have gotten out of those mines alive.

Even now, her hold on life seemed tenuous indeed, her breathing shallow and raspy, her only sounds profound groans that came without conscious thought.

Bruenor pulled a chair in from the hallway outside the room, placing it right beside the chair holding Mallabritches, the two of them close enough to Tannabritches as she lay on the small bed to hear her labored breathing and the quiet, pained sounds.

“Not wantin’ to lose her,” Mallabritches said quietly past the obvious lump in her throat. “All me life, been me and her, Fist’n’Fury. Not wantin’ one without th’ other.”

“Aye, girl, but she can’t be leaving,” Bruenor said, and he snorted as he did, his emotions pouring forth. He couldn’t stand seeing Tannabritches like this. His head and heart careened back to Citadel Felbarr, to the early days of his second life when he had trained beside the wild Fellhammer duo, when he had served beside them, when he had fought beside them—beside Tannabritches in particular, in one wild battle in the Rauvin Mountains.

Tannabritches had been badly wounded in that fight, too, struck in the chest by an orc spear. All she had thought about as she fell was the safety of the others, of Bruenor, whom she knew as her friend Little Arr Arr. She had told him to get the others and run away, to leave her to her grim fate.

“Bah, but I didn’t save ye then to watch ye die now, girl,” Bruenor growled in a harsh whisper. “Ye don’t be leavin’ me, ye hear?”

Mallabritches took his hand and squeezed it tightly.

He looked up at her, meeting her gaze, and tears streamed from his eyes.

Mallabritches shook her head, overwhelmed.

“I can’t be lettin’ her go,” Bruenor gasped, and surely he was overwhelmed then, with Tannabritches lying here and Drizzt in the room next door. He was as surprised by his reaction as was Mallabritches, for the depth of his pain cut straight to his heart. He really could not stand the thought of losing Tannabritches now!

When Emerus had given over the Fellhammer sisters to serve as part of Bruenor’s elite guard, the red-bearded dwarf’s heart had leaped— more than he had truly understood. But now, seeing Tannabritches lying there, so pale and near to death, he did understand, and surely his heart broke as he came to believe that she was slipping away from him forever.

“Ye got yer Gutbusters,” Mallabritches said, but in a leading way that told Bruenor she was fishing deeper. “King Bruenor’s to be surrounded by fighters, eh?”

“Not about that!” Bruenor snapped. He sucked in his breath to steady himself, shook his head ferociously, and leaned forward, staring at the wounded lass, silently imploring her to live. “Not about fightin’,” he said. “About needin’ her aside me when the fightin’s done.”

“When ye take the throne, ye mean?”

The shock of Mallabritches’ words jolted Bruenor upright, and he turned to regard her curiously.

“It’ll be yerself,” she said. “Aye, but ye’re the proper choice, I’m sayin’. The great Emerus is so old, and even if ye gived him the throne, he’d not hold it for long. We’ll be rid o’ the damned drow, don’t ye doubt, and Bruenor’ll be King o’ Gauntlgrym one day not far along.”

Bruenor didn’t respond, but neither did he blink.

“Ye’re thinkin’ her yer queen, ain’t ye?” the Fellhammer girl asked.

Again, her words shocked Bruenor, for he hadn’t carried his thoughts and his pain that far along. His initial reaction was to shake his head in denial. The whole proposition sounded ridiculous to him. He was a long way from claiming Gauntlgrym’s throne, after all.

But as he considered Mallabritches’s question, which sounded more like an accusation, Bruenor’s biggest surprise was that he came to recognize that she wasn’t wrong. He stammered something undecipherable under his breath and his head swiveled back to consider the poor lass lying on the bed.

“Do ye love her, Arr Arr?” Mallabritches asked.

“Aye,” Bruenor said, surprised by his honest answer.

“And yer heart’s breaking in seein’ her in the bed like that, eh?”

“Aye,” he weakly answered.

Mallabritches grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him around, forcing him to look her in the eye once more. “And ye tell me true, me friend, what if it was meself in that bed, and me sister sittin’ here with ye? Where might Arr Arr . . . where might Bruenor Battlehammer be then, I’m askin’?”

Bruenor’s face started to twist up in confusion, but his answer came from a place of clarity when he said, “Same place.”

His gray eyes opened wide as the weight of his words sank in, as he came to realize that he had just professed his love to Mallabritches—and to her sister.

Mallabritches yanked him closer then, and put her arm around his shoulders, lifting her hand to press Bruenor’s head onto her own strong shoulder for support.

“Don’t ye be worried, me friend,” she whispered in his ear. “Fist ain’t leavin’ us. She just ain’t.”

“I done all I could,” Bungalow Thump pleaded to the two dwarf kings and the others gathered in the throne room.

Word of the disaster in the lower chambers had preceded him, but few details had come forth, other than the deaths of a hundred Battlehammer warriors . . . and the Twelfth King of Mithral Hall.

Bungalow Thump, himself wounded and battered, had come to the throne room to offer a full recounting to the leaders. Toliver Harpell stood behind him, head bowed respectfully, with Penelope and Kipper beside him.

Bungalow Thump didn’t leave out any details. He glanced back at Toliver Harpell and offered an apologetic shrug before he told of the failure of the Field of Feather Fall, as he described poor dwarves bouncing onto the stone floor, or onto the bodies of their fallen comrades.

The dwarf’s voice soared as he recounted the heroics of those trapped on the ground, and again, he didn’t exclude the Harpells, taking great pains to accurately describe Kenneally’s brilliant improvisation.

“Aye, but she saved the lot of us,” Bungalow Thump said. “And gived her own life in doin’ it!”

“Huzzah for Kenneally Harpell, then!” Ragged Dain offered, drawing a stern look from Bruenor—but one that didn’t hold, and indeed, Bruenor joined in the cheer for Kenneally.

“It seems as if it was more demon than drow opposin’ ye,” Emerus Warcrown offered at that break.

“More demons and hordes o’ goblins and orcs,” Bungalow Thump confirmed. “Saw a drow or two from the shadows and throwing spells, but none other.”

“Goblins and orcs,” Bruenor muttered, for surely he had seen his fill of the wretched orcs in recent months. “Slaves o’ the damned drow!” As he said that aloud, he realized that much of it was likely true for the War of the Silver Marches, as well. His thoughts careened to Lorgru, of the line of Obould, and those orcs who once more rallied around that name and their professed desire to live in peace.

Might the treaty of Garumn’s Gorge have held if not for the damned drow?

Bruenor shook the thought away.

“And them demons?” Oretheo Spikes offered. “Demons in the entry hall, demons in the mines! Durned Gauntlgrym’s more full o’ demons than dwarfs and drow together!”

“I ain’t seeing much difference between demons and drow, meself,” Emerus growled.

“Aye, to the Abyss with ’em all!” Ragged Dain added, and a great cheer went up all around the throne room, one rolling from bravado to a muted confusion, it seemed.

The starkly mixed results of the three battles fought this same day had them all off balance. They had won in the entry hall, slaughtering demons by the score. Every defense had held strong and every plan had been executed to near perfection, and the hero of that battle, Oretheo Spikes, deserved every cheer and honor offered to him.

And Connerad Brawnanvil, too, would garner much of the credit for that battle in the entry cavern, for the defenses of that hall were his doing, offered with insight he had gained on the Throne of the Dwarf Gods.

But they had been defeated badly in the lower chamber, and it simply could not continue that each side could hold its own ground. For the drow had the Great Forge.

That could not stand!

As the cheering died away, Bruenor rose and approached the throne, nodding, but with his expression grave.

“Ropes, I say!” Emerus called. “Yerselves should’ve used the rappel to the cavern floor and not some wild magic!”

“You cannot lay the blame with . . .” Penelope Harpell started to protest, but Bungalow Thump held up his hand to silence her, and did it for her.

“Nay, King Emerus, and sure to know that I’m yer loyal servant here, pledged in fealty and acceptin’ o’ yer judgments,” he said. “But I can’no agree—nay, for the plan was a good one, and oh, but we were hitting the floor in full charge.”

“Until the magic fell away,” Emerus reminded.

“Aye, but we could no’ know the power o’ the enemies below us,” Bungalow Thump replied. “Ah, but they were thick with wizards and thick with demons. Big demons by the score. By rope or by Harpell magic, we’d’ve lost many of our boys today, and we’d’ve ne’er gained the lower hall.”

“Well said, Master Thump, and I’d not expect less o’ ye than that,” Bruenor replied before Emerus could—and with almost exactly the same words Emerus would have used.

All eyes went to Bruenor and many bushy eyebrows, Emerus’s included, lifted in surprise to see him sitting on the throne once more, hands solidly on the burnished arms of the great chair, eyes closed, and his whole body slowly swaying back and forth.

And nodding, as if he was in a conversation with some unknown beings—given the throne upon which he sat, he likely was.

“But now we’re knowin’,” Bruenor said at length, his gray eyes popping open. “Aye and they be thick in the lower tunnels, eh, and with hordes of demons and a swarm o’ goblinkin.”

He swept his gaze across the room, a sly smile creasing his fiery red beard. That stare settled on Emerus, who nodded his approval then swerved to lock stares with Bungalow Thump.

“And we got an army o’ dwarves with blood kin to avenge,” Bruenor explained. “So tell me, me boys, which corner’s getting yer bettin’ pouch?”

That brought the biggest cheer of all, of course, and Penelope Harpell put her hand on Bungalow Thump’s shoulder, squeezing tight. For Bruenor had just absolved the Harpells and the force Connerad had led below of any blame for the defeat, accepting Bungalow’s explanation without question.

And now Bruenor had sworn vengeance, and woe to those below.

“Huzzah and heigh-ho!” the cheering went on, all in the room joining in exuberantly—save two.