Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers (8 page)

As he came to terms with the blizzard of choices and options that faced a
traveler in this labyrinth the sheer beauty of the place unfolded before him like a rose opening to a spring morning. Everywhere the Dwarven penchant for craftsmanship and sober decoration revealed itself. Seldom was bare stone seen on floor, wall, or ceiling: the floors were covered by tiles set in various patterns, diamonds, herringbone, axe-head, scores of others; the walls were covered in panels of cut and polished stone or ceramic tile, more rarely with carved wood (even more uncommon was for such wood panels to have gone unlooted). The ceilings were plastered and either painted or decorated with swirling filigrees or other fanciful patterns. Doors were handsomely carved planks bound in decorated metal bands and hung upon hinges formed into images of hands, distorted Goblin faces, tree branches, and hundreds of other designs. Pillars, buttresses, and supporting brace-work were left bare of tiles, but instead were beautifully sculpted or deeply engraved. Those places where the stone was bare, such as the lips of the cart-gutters, the frames around doors, the rims of fountains, boasted the same fine engraving work that the monk had seen back in the
argalt
, and stemmed from the same source, he guessed.

Just as good troops in defensive works never saw a day pass without improving their positions, the Dwarves seemed to never cease decorating their city. Aware that this city had been young by Dwarven
standard, Arian wondered at what the ancient holds must be like. He also wondered what the city must have looked like when it was lived in, and loved, by the Dwarves.

Gradrek Heleth
was showing the decades of neglect, warfare, and pillaging; although the city area was far vaster than the factory areas, and thus was not nearly as defaced and pillaged, still no area was free of the signs of the place’s tragic past and sorrowful present. The floor tile’s colors and pattern were often hidden under layers of dust and grime, with tiles broken or missing. Many wall-panels had been pried off and carried away, and many others had been smashed or defaced by symbols of the Void and Gobliniod graffiti; the ceiling plaster had suffered heavily from a lack of maintenance and damage from hurled objects. The stone fountains and decorated pillars and buttresses had weathered the years the best, being too heavy of construction to damage without serious effort and suitable tools, although several had been attacked and ruined by persons willing to expend the energy and time.

The looting was more prevalent:
few portable items could be seen in any of the areas they had traversed, including metal fittings such as the moss baskets and brackets. Nearly all the doors and their hinges and latches were missing, although the longer-serving Badgers said there was still quite a bit of loot for the taking further off the main hallways, safe because only a few raiders dared travel too far off the primary passages.

Along with the signs of looting was the debris of the p
lace’s violent present and past: frequently they saw walls scarred by arrow and slung shot’s impact, scatterings of bones, broken weapons, fragments of clothing and ruined armor, shattered shields, and all the detritus of battle. More than one corridor stank of death and corruption, sober reminders of other raiders who had come to the city and never left.

At mid-day
Durek called a halt in a large chamber at the intersection of two main passages; a cheerful fountain whose spout was carved into the likeness of a Orc’s noose-contorted face splashed ice-cold water into a basin whose bottom was carved to resemble lily pads, the carvings barely visible under the thick layer of feathery green growths that were choking off the drain, causing the deep basin to back up to within an inch of its rim.

“
We’ll take an hour’s break here, so unsaddle the pigs and make yourselves comfortable. We’ll head down to the third
cidhe
soon, cross much of it, and make camp for the ‘night’. Tomorrow we’ll go to the fourth and get the tiles. Any questions? Bridget, light a time-candle for the guard watches.”

Arian
gratefully laid his bedroll, shield, and steel helm down against a likely section of wall and worked his shoulders. Rummaging in his ration bag, he drew out his mug and two trail biscuits, each a hard cracker a half inch thick and three inches square. He hacked off a four-inch piece of sausage, considered the package of dried fruit and then decided to save it. Filling his mug at the Orc’s mouth, he took a long drink and then dumped his biscuits into the mug to soak.

Seeing that the Captain was alone, he stepped over and asked if he could speak to him.
Durek grunted an affirmative around a lump of cheese. “I’ve been impressed by the way you Dwarves are able to navigate in this place without maps,” the monk sliced thin strips off his chunk of sausage as he spoke. “I was wondering if it would be a breach of protocol to discuss it.”

The Captain grinned. “Ask away.”

“There are clues in the patterns of the tiles, aren’t there; clues which tell you where to go or what leads where.”

Durek
eyed the Human with interest. “Yes, in part. There are also the placement of fixtures such as the moss baskets, the patterns of carving of the stonework, and so on, as well as the fact that
cidhe
follow a very general pattern.”

“Has a Human ever lea
rned the ways of these patterns?”

“Yes and no. I’ve heard of scholars who have lived with Dwarves for a decade or more that got a real feel for it,
and Human children who were raised in Dwarven halls learned it to a very workable degree, but it is something you would need to be taught while living in such a hold to really absorb. Remember, a Dwarf will live nearly fifty years before achieving what Humans would term young adulthood, all of which is spent in these type of conditions. It would be very difficult for a Human to equal this, even though your people learn far faster than ours.”

“Human children hav
e been raised in Dwarven cities? How has that come about?”

“Oh, we’ve put up refugees on many occasions, often for two or three years at a stretch, and just as we have Dwarves who sell their skills to Humans we also employ Humans on occasion who have skills we
need. These hirelings often bring their families with them, as Dwarven contracts are long ones.”

“Fascinating.
I must say, I envy them. How do you Dwarves map your holds, since everything is such a bird’s-nest of layers?”

“The best maps are built upon a solid base, using colored wire for passages, and
blocks for rooms and chambers; it’s an exacting art to build them to scale.” The Captain pulled his map case over and dug a sheet of parchment out, unrolling it between himself and Arian. “See, we use colored symbols to indicate slope and depth.”

The monk studied the chart while working a slice of greasy sausage around in his mouth. Swallowing, he tapped the map. “Six colors, and I counted over forty symbols, plus this rosette I assume replaces the compass as a reference system.”

“Very good; in a Dwarven hold we navigate by proximity to the
Ead Gluais
.”

“The central stairway.”

“Exactly. Yes, six colors, and eighty-six symbols to be exact, with a few others specific to each Dwarven city just to make things difficult to non-Dwarves who might capture these maps. And, of course, the defense works have their own maps and symbols.”

“And I’d guess that some symbols have two meanings depending on the proximity of other symbols, w
ith one meaning being deceptive?”

The Capt
ain laughed. “Half a day in
Gradrek Heleth
and you already think like a Dwarf. Yes, that is so. We have many clever enemies, Arian, very many, and our cities change very slowly. We must take every precaution. And yes, before you ask, we make false maps, both parchment and the wire sort, and see to it our enemies acquire them.”

“Still, even possessing perfect maps, seizing such a hold would be near impossible.”
Arian explained his exercise with his imaginary Goblin brigade.

“That is why there are still Dwarves alive today. We are a wealthy race by any standard, perhaps the wealthiest on this world, rich in metals and crafted goods. When you have things your
enemies desire, you do not last long unless you can defend yourself. Storming a Dwarven city is like sticking your head in a beehive: you won’t enjoy the honey for long.”

Arian
thought of the drifts of yellowing bone he had seen below the crude bridge at the entrance to this
cidhe
and nodded thoughtfully. Like a spider’s web, the Dwarves’ homes were traps for their enemy, baited with the treasures they carved from the mountains and the goods they manufactured.

Using his spoon to break up the soggy biscuits in his cup, the monk shook his head. “You know, I don’t think I really understood Dwarves before today. Your way of living is very different than
ours, but very straightforward, too. I find it all very interesting.”

“We have a saying,”
Durek smashed a biscuit against the conical point of his steel helm, breaking the cracker into four pieces. “ ‘Our doors are always open both to our enemies and to our friends.’ ” The Dwarf grinned. “ ‘But only our friends leave.’ ”

Using a pry bar
Kroh finished dredging the last of the green muck from the basin’s drain and was gratified to see a swirl pucker the water’s surface as the excess began to be carried off. It went against his nature to leave the effects of a lack of maintenance unrepaired. He would like to have diverted the fountain’s flow long enough to empty the basin and kill the algae that was responsible for the blockage but he lacked the time. Carefully cleaning and drying the pry bar before he washed his hands, he returned it to the packsaddle and went to sit by Starr. The little Lanthrell was a picture of misery akin to a cat forced to stay in the open during a pouring rain, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, her Forest-loving spirit badly depressed by the weight and confinement of the stone around her. A Lanthrell was raised in an environment where travel through the branches was nearly as easy as that upon the ground, and movement was possible in nearly every direction. The stone hold’s stark regimentation of its passages bore heavily upon her morale and confidence.

Sitting beside her, the Dwarf clumsily patted her shoulder
with one tattooed paw. “It’s not so bad as you think, little one: you’ll get used to the place, and in any case we’ll be out in just a few days. Here, eat some sausage, you have to keep your strength up.”

She nodded miserably and obediently began to gnaw upon the slices he pressed upon her. He filled her cup and canteen, and checked the cords on her bedroll, fussing about to have something to do with his hands, the role of comfo
rter an alien one to his nature, as Kroh dealt best with problems that could be killed with an axe-swing, not the subtleties of the inner spirit. His inner self held few complexities and fewer doubts: he knew that Death awaited him, and saw it as something to be put off, not fled from, a delay he intended to fill with the deaths of as many of his race’s foes as he could manage.

He had always had the fire within him for as long as he could remember, the burning heat that erupted into the killing rages that made him a warrior of intense ferocity in battle and left him exhausted and spent afterward. They had been banked coals when he was young, coming more to
light when he had seen his sister slain in the big Goblin raids when he had been just a ratling clinging to his mother’s skirts, and growing hotter and stronger with each year. The day he had taken an axe into his hands, a fighting axe, he had known where his future would lead. The Guardians of the Way knew, too: they had recruited him early, years before the norm, and taught him how to channel the fire, to control the red mists of rage so that he could derive the benefits of fury while retaining his battle-wits, to choke back the rage when the exhausting, strength-sapping aftermath would be detrimental. Humans called his kind berserkers after the frothing madmen who haunted the battlegrounds and died young, but it was a misnomer: the difference between a berserker and a Waybrother was the difference between a peasant with a sword and a master fencer.

And
Kroh was a master of his art in every sense of the word. He lived the Waybrother’s creed, seeking out the foes of Dwarvenkind wherever they were to be found, bringing the fight to them, slaying again and again until the battles began to blur in his memory, a pure, dedicated killing machine disguised as a Dwarf. Proof positive of his abilities (besides the fact that he was still alive and at the stage of life which for a Human would be nearer to thirty than twenty, old for a Waybrother) was the enchanted long axe he bore, called a Named Axe for the twenty-four gold bands on its shaft, each bearing the name of a Guardian of the Way who had died bearing the weapon. Such weapons were named for the greatest bearer who died wielding the axe, and when the haft was fully covered, the axe would be retired to the Hall of Honor. This axe, Azaghal’s Axe, was among the best of its kind in service and had been awarded by the Guardians to Kroh over twenty years before. Someday it would be called Kroh’s Axe, after the twenty-fifth ring was added.

The command to move out was given when the time-candle had melted to the fourth colored band, indicating the passage of an hour.
Durek briefed Kroh while the pack saddles were replaced on the pigs, and the Waybrother took the lead, paired with Arian Thyben.

Traveling through
Gradrek Heleth
was painful to Kroh, a constant and harrowing reminder of the validity of his violent creed and the desperate need for offensive action to hold the forces of the Void at bay. His only consolation as he moved through the desecrated halls was that the loss of the city did not involve much loss of life for the Dwarves, and virtually none amongst the noncombatants, a nebulous term for a race where every member old enough to heft a weapon is trained to fight, at least at a basic level. Every Dwarf is made a warrior, and every male and many females will have served in the fighting ranks at one time or another in their lives. When a hold is breached, no place within is truly safe until the enemy is repulsed or slain.

The raiders crept down a seco
ndary ramp way to the third
cidhe
, which differed very little from the second. Moving at a steady pace, the Badgers began the task of working their way across, and through, this ‘level’, aiming ever deeper into and beneath the mountain.

Kroh
was crouching in the lee of a roof-buttress, axe leaning against his shoulder, while Arian positioned an arrow cloth when they first heard the noise coming from somewhere ahead of them. Both froze at the first sound, ears straining to confirm that it was real and not imagined;
Gradrek Heleth
was a quiet place, the silence usually broken only by the splashing of the fountains and the noise of their passing. When the noise repeated itself the two exchanged glances, hefting weapons to a better grip.

“Somebody yelling,”
Kroh observed, turning his head in short arcs as the sounds echoed again. “From there,” he pointed at a door-less portal. “But a ways off.”

Pulling a piece of chalk from his pouch, he drew a simple symbol on the lintel, a sign used amongst the Badgers to indicate that the scouts went this way to check into suspicious activity. The monk at his heels, the Dwarf eased down the passageway towards the source of the noise, pausing at each side-corridor to listen, and to mark the way for those who would follow, secure in the knowledge that
Durek would send a fighting patrol after them as soon as he reached the point they had turned off the primary path.

The scouts crossed through a small artisan’s quarter and emerged into a wide corridor; peering out from th
e archway that opened onto the passage, Kroh motioned for Arian to join him and pointed down the hall. Ten feet from their archway was a heavy pack and a half-dozen traveler’s shoulder bags made of worn, greasy animal hides scattered around a particularly large fountain. A few half-eaten pieces of dried meat littered the floor, and a wineskin leaked yellowish fluid into the crystal waters of the wide catch basin.

Moving silently for one so burly,
Kroh slipped past the fountain and down a side-corridor, pausing to mark the lintel as he passed. Twenty feet into the narrow service corridor, with the noise growing louder with each step, the Dwarf paused and indicated splatters of blood on the wall and floor, and picked up a crude single-edged knife whose blade was flecked with red.

“Slave weapon, ground from a chisel,” the Way brother passed the bloody iron to the monk, who shook his head at the hours spent grinding the tool against stone to make it into a weapon, however rudimentary.

The noise was coming through a door-less entry into what used to be a work area of some sort; as the two Badgers slipped up to the opening they noticed a steady trail of blood droplets leading to, and through the entrance. A ruined table half-blocked the entrance and Kroh got down on all fours to hide behind it as he peered into the room, while Arian looked around the door frame.

The room had been a warehouse-sized workplace with a double row of elegantly sculpted and engraved pillars running through its center, and a scattering of stone work benches here and there. The room was occupied in the main by a half-dozen Felher warriors, stooped and twisted humanoids who stood
a bit over five feet tall, dressed in shapeless, filthy tunics and leather wrappings on their stubby legs. They were covered in gray-brown fur except for their arms, which were a ugly expanse of course gray skin covered in swirls of tattoos and ritual scarring, their faces all warty skin, bat’s ears, Goblin snouts, and watery yellow eyes that seemed to glow from within. All carried one or more stirrup-knives, called
hekka
, which consisted of a metal bar gripped in the fist and a heavy knuckle-guard from which sprang a long, thin, and slightly curved blade; and an adze-like war hammer called a
theeb
. Three had bundles of javelins, one had a sling and bullet pouch, and two carried quivers of two-foot-long darts and a throwing stick. None wore armor or bore shields, and all six were filthy, unkept, and appeared half-starved.

One
Felher was sitting on a work bench binding a deep gash in its arm and the rest were gathered around one of the pillars, chattering and making a choking rattle that apparently served them as laughter. The source of the noise which had led the Badgers to this place was bound to the pillar: a tall, dark-skinned woman of indeterminate age. She was naked save for badly worn boots, her garments in a shredded pile at her feet. Her wrists were bound together with copper wire, the loop of the wire passing through a ring set discretely amongst the pillar’s engraving, the height of the ring and the length of the wire forcing the woman onto her toes.

Her screams came from the quirts two of the Felher had fashioned by twisting
several three-foot lengths of copper wire into a yard-long braid; by flicking these stiff scourges at the woman’s legs and buttocks the Felher inflicted short, deep, and painful cuts which had left their captive’s legs and hips glistening in fresh blood. The cuts themselves were incidental to the entertainment, however: no matter how she tried to steel herself, the sudden, stinging shock of a blow to her legs made the woman jump, and the resulting jerk caused the wire manacles to saw ever deeper into her wrists, as evidenced by the runnels of blood which had reached her shoulders. As the blood dripped and splattered off her legs onto the floor, the captive’s footing was growing uncertain; should she slip, her body weight could slice off one or both hands before she could regain her feet.

Holding his elbows out from his sides so that the protective studs on his
leather arm bracers would not strike his felt-covered breast-and-back plates and make a noise, Kroh glided across the floor with an easy grace, a grin distorting the lay of his braided beard. The wounded rat-man looked up incuriously as the Waybrother’s axe licked out, the jolt of the axe’s back-kick from the decapitation causing the Dwarf to break stride in mid-step.

The nearest Felher in the group of spectators was beginning to turn to see what had made the noise behind him when the axe’s blade caught him on the right side of the neck, splitting
a vertebrae horizontally and tearing out a great chunk of muscle, sending the convulsing Felher crashing into its left-hand comrade. Spinning the axe with the skill born of decades of experience, Kroh disemboweled a second Felher with his return swing as the warehouse erupted into shrill screams and shouts.

Catching a wire quirt’s slash with the blade of his broadsword,
Arian knocked the improvised weapon aside and lashed out with his shield, stepping into the blow; the iron rim caught his foe at the shoulder, sending the short creature sprawling with an arm hanging useless, the bone broken.

Kroh
ducked as the second quirt-wielder flicked the braided end of the whip at his eyes, letting the sharp wire-ends screech across his helm as he stepped in with a strong but controlled swing that sent the Felher’s hand, still clutching the quirt, tumbling across the room. The rat-man thrust the fountaining stump into the Dwarf’s face as it clawed its
theeb
free, but the Waybrother sidestepped nimbly, the hot pulses of blood splashing across his face but missing his eyes. He caught the
theeb’s
hooked beak with his axe-shaft and jerked the Felher off-balance, finishing the fight with a powerful strike to the temple with the steel-shod butt of his axe.

Arian
was pulling his sword out of the third spectator as the other quirt wielder made a break for the doorway, one arm hanging at an odd angle. Kroh grunted a phrase and heaved his axe; instead of tumbling across the room and crashing uselessly into the wall as would be expected from a three-foot war axe, the weapon, runes glowing under the blood on its head, flipped through the air like a throwing axe half its length and planted its head between the fleeing rat-warrior’s shoulders with an impact identical to that inflicted by the Dwarf’s best swing. As the dying Felher crashed to the ground, the weapon ripped itself free and flew back to Kroh’s waiting hands, the glowing light within the runes flickering away to nothing.

Stepping up to a dazed Felher who was sitting on the floor trying to push its intestines back into its body,
Kroh swung his axe with careful precision, lifting the creature’s head off its shoulders with one sure stroke. The first spectator he had cut down was still alive, its contorted limbs still twitching as it lay paralyzed on the dusty floor. The Waybrother killed it with a single stomping blow, the heel of his boot sending shards of nasal bone into the Felher’s brain.