Defense Minister Ganzesh bursts into the forge. He does not bother to knock, just shoulders the door and turns it into a shower of splinters. Runethane Thanerzak spins around, but Ganzesh cuts off whatever he was about to say.
“Runethane! You must listen to me this time! Our force... The ram is still active. They’ve failed. Dead or captured!”
“I am—”
“They will break through! And my spies say...”
He swallows in fear.
“Say what?” Thanerzak asks, his voice cool.
“They say Runethane Broderick himself will lead the attack. Please, my Runethane...”
He gestures to two runeknights in the corridor. They walk in solemnly, holding between them a long object draped in gray silk.
“I beg you, lead our forces yourself. They cannot stand against a Runethane, not one backed by an army of his own.” He sweeps the silk away to reveal an axe of tungsten inlaid with a dense script of platinum. Although four hundred years old, it is as polished as the day on which it was forged. “Take up your old weapon, and lead us.”
Runethane Thanerzak lays down his hammer on the anvil. He smiles gently behind his helmet.
“There’s no need to fear, young dwarf. I was not totally unprepared for this possibility. But I won’t take up my old axe.”
“My Runethane, please!” Ganzesh is on the verge of tears. “You have to help us.”
“I’m not saying I won’t.”
“What?”
The Runethane picks up his unfinished axe.
“What? My Runethane, there are no...”
Thanerzak walks forward. As he does so the axe glitters brightly in all possible and impossible colors. He rotates it slowly. Ganzesh gasps.
“After I became Runethane,” says Thanerzak, “I came to understand something.”
The ordinary colors glittering on the axe come from the plain alloy; the impossible ones from tiny runes, so small as to be unreadable, that have already been worked into the metal.
“A rune can only truly be part of the craft if it given heat and pressure to grow along with it. Adding them after, you will perhaps one day learn, is crude.”
“How?” Ganzesh whispers.
“It would take a decade to explain. Let’s just get rid of Broderick first.” He swipes his axe downward very slowly, and power shivers through the room. “Even unfinished, Starcleaver is enough for the upstart.”
----------------------------------------
The thuds continue. It’s been six hours since they started and they have not slowed in pace one bit. I turn to look at Hayhek. His wrinkled face is pale and sweat is dripping into his gray beard, darkening it. I pat his shoulder.
“They won’t reach us, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Of course he’s more nervous than me. He has a family, after all. Yezakh, plus a wife and two daughters. What awful nightmares are running through his mind right now? What is he imagining happening to them all, to the family he’s dedicated his life to, when Runethane Broderick’s men enter the city?
If, I tell myself firmly. If they enter the city. It is not inevitable.
Yet it sounds more and more inevitable with every passing minute, with every thud against the tall gray walls. Now the quality of the sound is changing, becoming harsher, a little harder, a little more like cracking.
“Look!” hisses one of the dwarves. “Look at that!”
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A fine line has appeared, running down the center of the wall vertically. When the next thud comes it becomes a little darker.
“They’re going to break through!” a dwarf screams. His face is white and he’s clutching the parapet hard with both hands. His arms and shoulders are trembling.
“Silence!” shouts the commander. “Shut up!”
“What happened to the counterattack?” asks one of the woman soldiers. “Did they not get through? What’s the news?”
“I don’t know,” says the commander. “Just stay calm, everybody. Even if they break the wall, they’ll still have to bridge the chasm. And our forces won’t let them do that. Just stay calm!”
He doesn’t sound calm. We continue to watch as the crack grows darker and darker. Other cracks spread from it, especially from a point near to the base where a circular impact-pattern has formed. Dust showers from the cracks with each thud, and a gray cloud creeps through the streets.
“They’re going to break through,” Hayhek whispers.
It seems that Defense Minister Ganzesh has come to the same conclusion, for a legion of gleaming metal now forms up on the main road directly in front of the wall—though a good few hundred feet back from it. The column, at least a thousand strong, is steel toward the back, then turns to a multitude of shades as the armors get progressively more advanced, then there is a cap of dark gray tungsten where the most elite stand.
One of those tungsten figures steps forward and turns to face the legion. He raises an axe above his head which gleams like a star of a hundred colors. It’s just a spark in the distance, but it draws my eyes, like all the light of the cavern is being pulled toward it.
“That’s him!” someone shouts. “The Runethane!”
Everyone cheers. It looks like he’s giving a speech, though of course we can’t hear any of it. At several points everyone in the shining legion raises their weapons, and a faint shout reaches us, and we all shout in turn, as do the defenders in the other positions.
There’s one last shout from the legion. Then Runethane Thanerzak raises his axe higher—it shines even brighter, a speck of starlight, like a pinprick in the world through which shines pure and ancient magic.
He turns to the wall, axe still raised. He brings it down. Its light burns a streak through the fabric of the mundane world. A second later the wall explodes outward in a burning torrent of magma.
There’s a shocked silence. Our commander breaks it.
“Genius!” he cries. “Pure genius!”
The counterattack through the tunnels was a diversion, and the wall a trap. The Runethane knew it could never hold. He had it built up, pumped full of magma, just so he could slice it down the middle and rain burning death and crushing stone upon his foes.
A roar of victory goes up from the legion down in the streets and from us and every other defender on the mountain.
“We’ve wiped them out!” the dwarf who before was shaking shouts out. “We killed them!”
Hayhek sags in relief. “Told you it would all work out,” he says hoarsely. “Told you, didn't I?”
“Yeah.”
I crane forward and squint to get a better look at what’s happening. The orange glow of the magma makes it difficult to see how much destruction has been caused on the other side. I can make out hints of what might have once been machinery: great lengths of wood burning and falling down. Not all of it is falling down, however. Some is resting on a great stone bridge. Chunks are falling off it, but it’s still wide enough that there’s plenty of space to cross.
Slowly the smoke clears enough that we can all have a clear view of Runethane Broderick’s side of the city. The cheers of victory die. While the ram is now nothing but burning wreckage, the enemy still has a clear way across the chasm.
“Not to worry,” Hayhek says. “Our attack will have wiped out most of them.”
A bright golden dot appears in the dark drifting smog, backed by five more. Runethane Broderick. Those behind must be his first degrees.
And he’s backed by a gleaming legion marching down toward the bridge in lockstep. There’s gaps in their ranks where flying stones and magma have obliterated dozens at a time, yet there are still several thousands of them, far more than those arrayed at our side.
At their head is a silver dot.
“Don’t worry,” Hayhek mutters to himself. “The Runethane will deal with them. He’ll crush them.”
Runethane Broderick accelerates across the cooling magma and burning splintered wood in a golden blur. His first degrees follow nearly as fast. We can’t see what weapons they’re raising, but surely they’re deadly enough to cut through tungsten.
Runethane Thanerzak meets his foe. Bright flashes of color shine out, blinding us a dozen times a second. Hayhek cries out and shields his eyes. I shade mine, tighten my grip on Heartseeker, try to see the flow of the battle. For now it’s just a skirmish, Broderick and his elite against Thanerzak and his.
The silver legend raises his longsword—even in the far distance we can all tell what it is—and whirls it around his head in a shining blur. The army behind him lets out a shout in unison and accelerates to double-time.
Thanerzak’s plan isn’t looking so genius anymore. The silver legend and his army step onto the bridge and walk over the burning wood and cooling magma like it’s nothing.
“No...” Hayhek hisses.
Thanerzak’s plan wasn’t quite finished, though. A bright red glow appears at both edges of the broken walls just after the silver legend crosses through, at the exact moment the spearhead of his army is in the gap. Magma sloughs down from both sides in a river of fire. The front three dozen or so dwarves accelerate out in time to avoid the rain of death, but many do not. The river splashes backward along the stone bridge, burning to death what must be several hundred.
Another roar from us defenders as Thanerzak’s legion charges down past their dueling Runethane to smash against the silver legend and the broken-off tip of his force.
The brutal battle begins in earnest.