The steel tide hits in an avalanche of war-screams, razor sharp blades, and crushing hammer blows. Wharoth feels a blade cut into one of his pauldrons with a hideous screech and bright flash. He rams out with his shield and feels resistance, but instead of his opponent flying backwards, the runeknight doesn’t move a single inch—the press of enemies is too thick.

Someone pushes into him from behind. Although this road is relatively wide, it is still a road, and not a place where hundreds can stand comfortably at arms length. And there are at least a thousand crammed onto it by Wharoth’s estimate, all pushing against each other, a tight mass of steel.

And the rocks continue to rain.

He attempts to get his axe up. His arm is pressed tight against the shoulder of another enemy, and the pressure is like from a vise. Even with runes enhancing the strength of his already powerful arms it takes extreme effort to lift it out.

The pressure finally releases and his axe is up in the air. The titanium glints in the noon sun. Now to swing. He waits for a moment when the press loosens then strikes at his enemy’s helmet. His enemy cuts his sword upward in a reverse-grip-slash at the same instant.

The press tightens—from the addition of enemy forces, their own forces, or just from random chance, Wharoth cannot tell. His strike falls past the target’s head and chops only empty air. His opponent’s sword stalls halfway up his breastplate. Wharoth cannot tell if it cut or not, but thinks it unlikely.

He is stuck once more. A rock crashes into his helmet, dizzying him. A spear pokes at him and he only just manages to twist his head out of the way. Vanerak, tungsten mirror-helm dulled by rock dust, shoves forward next to him and penetrates his own opponent’s breastplate with the spike of his halberd. With difficulty he extracts it.

The dead runeknight does not fall. His corpse slumps back against the dwarf behind then in another sudden tightening of the press becomes jammed against Vanerak.

Another rock clangs into Wharoth’s helm. The same spear from before jabs and nearly gets into his eye.

“What do we do?” Wharoth shouts at Vanerak. “Is there no plan?”

“We keep pushing!” the elite behind Wharoth answers.

Wharoth growls in frustration and pushes forward hard. It has no effect.

“Vanerak!” he shouts again as a different spear shoots out at him. This time it catches into the center of his helmet, and it’s damn sharp: it pierces and pricks his skin with a sting of pain.

“Patience,” Vanerak replies.

Wharoth scowls behind his visor. How many times has he told young runeknights to be patient in mastering their craft? Yet a battle is a time for speed. Progress is measured not against oneself from yesterday, but against one’s enemy today.

Nevertheless, if Vanerak says to be patient, patient he must be.

He shifts his grip so his hand is right below his axe's blade. He forces his shield up high—the speardwarves are having to hold their weapons up out of the press and angled downward to get a clear path to their targets, and with his shield raised they won't have an easy job of it.

The next time the press ebbs, he surges forward and shoves the blade of his axe up under his shocked opponent’s chin. The runeknight struggles to pull his own blade back and up, but the press is already squeezing. Wharoth pushes his titanium blade hard against the runeknight’s neck and feels it bite into the metal.

“Get off me!” shouts the runeknight.

“No forgiveness!” Wharoth shouts back.

He grinds his blade harder into the armor. A sudden vanishing of resistance announces that it’s through, then the runeknight screams in pain. Wharoth senses the not-halat rune shiver as frothing blood streams over it. The runeknight’s eyes roll up and he sags against Wharoth dead, and stuck fast.

“There we go,” Vanerak says. “Keep going like that, dwarves.”

The press loosens again. The body pressed against Wharoth falls at his feet. He steps over it, feels a spear stab ineffectually into his shield, and charges his next opponent. This one’s sword is sharp, Wharoth feels the vibration as it grinds into the plate at his left ribs. He curses and punches his axe hard into the runeknight’s visor. It splits open.

The press crushes harder and he is unable to pull his hand back. A spear comes from his left, attempting to snake around the edge of his high-held shield, and misses by a hair.

A spear from a runeknight behind Wharoth slams through the broken visor of the swordsdwarf in front. Blood pours from the hole where his eye was and he dies standing. The press ebbs, he falls, and Wharoth is onto his next opponent.

The enemy dwarves are yelling in anger and fear. Even with the slope to their advantage, they are being pushed back. The rocks have stopped also. They are not an infinite resource, after all. They must be broken off the mountainside and generally speaking dwarven warriors are not so keen to use their well-crafted hammers like common picks.

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“We’re winning!” Wharoth shouts at his next opponent, whose eyes are wide with fear. “Winning, you damn scum!”

Yet doubt suddenly assails him. Runethane Broderick has made no appearance, nor his golden guard.

And neither has the silver legend.

----------------------------------------

Braedle violently hammers on the door of the forge. It shivers at the blows of her golden fist but does not budge.

“Cut the lock,” she orders Ulrist, a cruel old member of the golden guard with reddish eyes. “Hurry!”

He slashes through the padlock with one of his gleaming scythes. Both halves clatter to the mosaic floor and the chain follows a second later, curling into a pile like a metal snake. Braedle wrenches the door open and storms through.

It is dark within, then a flash of orange illuminates all for an instant, casting long shadows, vanishes. Braedle's long angry strides take her across the chamber quickly. The next flash comes, lighting her coldly beautiful features in fiery tones. Flash—Hardrick’s hammer falls again. Now she is right in front of him and he does not even deign to glance at her.

“You are meant to be on the mountainside! My father gave you the orders!”

He continues to ignore her.

“Put your hammer down, pick up your sword and get out there!”

“When I’m finished,” he grunts.

“Not when you’re finished. Now.”

“When I’m finished,” he repeats.

Braedle snarls and makes to grab for his hammer just as it impacts once more. Flash—and what it illuminates on the anvil makes her stop and gasp. She steps back.

“What...”

“It’s a breastplate,” Hardrick grunts, eyes still firmly focused. “You’ve seen one before, I’m sure.”

She takes another step back.

“What?” Hardrick grunts. “Nothing special about it. Been struggling at this one for weeks, sure, but I’ve finally cracked it.”

“Cracked it?” she says faintly.

“Yeah. The trick to making it proper hard. Nothing to do with runes, funnily enough. Just the way you hold the hammer... Needs to be aligned exactly. Metal shouldn’t be too hot either.”

She blinks as the hammer hits again. Aligned exactly? There is more to it than that. She is no amateur at forging: young she may be, but she had the best teachers, the best books, and of course her father gets for her only the finest metals and reagents. Nothing less would be fitting for his favorite daughter, despite the human blood running through her veins.

She knows skill when she sees it, and watching this dwarf—this miner—at work is like watching a master. A true master, not merely someone very good. He forges with two hundred years of experience behind each blow, and yet if the rumors are true he has less than one under his diamond studded belt.

“What are you?” she hisses. “What?”

Ulrist scowls and narrows his reddish eyes. “Something wrong. Miners aren’t able to forge like that.”

“Well, I am,” Hardrick spits. “Just in my blood, maybe.”

“No,” Braedle says. “There’s more to it than that. There has to be. What are you, miner?”

“Fuck’s sake, it’s only a breastplate. Won’t be nearly as good as your father’s armor.”

Only a breastplate? Only a breastplate? Every angle of it is perfect. Each plane is flat, eerily so. The sound that rings out each time the hammer makes contact has a profound and mellow depth to it: it is a sweet music only the greatest smiths can make. She can tell that the metal's crystalline structure down to most fundamental particles of titanium is fine-grained and interwoven for maximum strength, a feat accomplished through an incredibly expert balancing of heating and cooling.

Her eyes are drawn to a pile of failures a dozen feet away. Even these are great pieces of art—yet to this miner they were but rough drafts, each taking only couple of days at most to create and milliseconds to judge unworthy and toss away like scrap.

“I’ve heard tales,” Ulrist whispers. “Sometimes a demon steals up from the magma oceans and gets into a dwarf’s soul. Uses it to forge something powerful, then leaves them a husk.”

“Demons aren’t real,” Braedle snaps. “And does he look like a husk to you?”

“Wish he was.”

At this comment Hardrick looks up scowling, showing off his ugly golden teeth. “I’m busy, girlies. Bugger off and leave me alone. I’ll be done when I’m done.”

“Your orders are to fight up top!” Braedle snaps.

“And I will. When I’m ready! Or do you want to face Silverslash, do you?”

“How dare you threaten the daughter of the Runethane!” Ulrist shouts. “Obey your orders!”

“I’ll obey them—when I want to. Now fuck off. If you want to win the battle that quickly, go ask Broderick to quit his lockpicking and help you out.”

“How dare you insult the Runethane!”

Ulrist makes to lunge forward, but Braedle pulls him back by the shoulder.

“Don’t bother with him, Ulrist. Doesn’t matter what he is, possessed or whatever. My father will have him punished suitably.”

“Wouldn’t be so sure,” Hardrick sneers. “He knows how valuable I am.”

Braedle scowls—it’s true. Her father has turned a constant blind eye to his stealing and cheating, deciding that his skill outweighs every black mark set against him. He's even forgiven his failure to find the diamond key, deciding that one of Thanerzak's runeknights probably escaped into the forest with it.

“I’ll punish him right now,” Ulrist spits. “Bend him over and whip his arse ‘till the skin comes off!”

“Come on!” Braedle snaps as she yanks him back further. “We can win the battle without him. We have the other trick up our gauntlets, remember?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Later Hardrick, you freak of a miner. When the Runethane hears about your lip...”

Hardrick’s focus is back to the hammer in his hand and the metal on his anvil, and his expression is blank as if he hears nothing but the ring of steel on titanium.

“Come on!” Braedle hisses.

She hurries with him out of the forge and across the great mosaic depicting Thanerzak’s conquest of the dragons. As she takes long strides across the tiles, her heart is beating fast. Hardrick unnerves her, to say the least. His skill is uncanny, unnatural. Demonic, even? She shakes her head. Demons are not real, and yet...

All his talk about discovering some natural talent, just having a knack for forging discovered in middle age, being inspired: it’s all bullshit. Lots of dwarves have natural talent. Some even have enough to skip a few ranks. But to go from initiate to Runethane’s favorite in less than a year...

Unnatural is the only word for it. That, or demonic.

She shivers.