“Hold!” Cinabinathi whispered. Runagir swept his arms out to bar the others, solid as a stone bollard.

Falflets sang from her scabbard. The skymetal scimitar drank the light from their torches and cast the corridor into a deep midnight. A shudder ran through the hawkbows, even some of the men could feel it. The azure blade was forged from a fallen tear from the blue moon. Sorrow spread with every slash. Only the dwarves were unaffected.

In the sudden dark, the men and the dwarves who’d tarried too long on the surface groped for their weapons. Thinking themselves hidden, their masks slipped. Cinabinathi saw all. They were afraid, they were angry, most of all, they were uncertain. They did not trust her leadership.

It stung her deep, all the more because she agreed. Too many were gone, without their friends, the ragtag company felt like a mouthful of missing teeth. She could not shame the dwarves with mad valor, as Barak could, nor could her voice crack like Gunnag’s to whip the Halberdiers into line. Her own troops stared at her with undisguised contempt, all had heard of her scandalous vigil. The army needed a real leader, but the war raged on. No one else was left.

“They’re still behind us. Grasp arms and follow. We’ll throw them off. Relay this message,” Cinabinathi commanded. The orders leapt through her troops, no louder than a moth’s wing. The Hawkbows each lead a string of dwarves and halberdiers who followed blind.

Cinabinathi lead them through a series of turns that would baffle a minotaur, humming a note for each so they were locked into a melody. At last she found what she was looking for, a place to make their stand.

The chamber was once a workroom, there were mine carts in various stages of service. The Halberdiers filled three of these with heavy stones and wedged them against the entrance to serve as a baricade. The Hawkbows upended others to serve as roosts behind the defensive line. The warband that dogged their steps would be forced into a narrow vein, they would bleed it green.

“Hold this wall until we return. Not a sound until you see the gobbos approach. Then, fire the torches and curse them. The first wave will rush in blind,” she instructed the squad leaders. Here, even the Shieldbearers grunted approval. The elf knew goblins.

“I need six. You, you, and you. You two, you, me.” She pointed first to Runagir. Then, to her second-in-command, Swyllev. The best halberdier, Maro. Hilg and his son, Blohki. She set a steadying hand on young Bobbert’s shoulder and another over her own heart. Hilg and Blhoki squinted hard in her direction, but she was not fooled. To be nightblind was a great shame for a dwarf. The others called them ‘dandelions.’ She needed tact.

“We go by dark. Step with stealth, follow my steps. Take care when we engage. When the blade tastes blood, Falflets will grow very bright,” she warned. It was a tactful way to reassure Hilg and the humans they would not fight blind.

With a last look at the makeshift fortification, she stepped to each hawkbow and recited the Cada Canta. This might well be the last time. She left them with her bow and all her arrows but one. If the warband found them, they had to hold or this was all for nothing. Bhloki shouldered a heavy coil of rope and Hilg kept his pack full of tools. The rest of the picked six left behind all but their weapons. They set off into the dark.

Cinabinathi set Swyllev at the rear to correct Hilg and the humans if they fell out of step. Cinabinathi crept forward at the van and tested every step with her last arrow. Dwarves meant traps, always. Beside her, Bobbert’s eyes rippled with oily gray in her nightsight, he searched for sorcery. She was surprised at his strength. She knew the cantrip was taxing, the elven magi she’d served with could not keep it going for long. Bobbert was just as weary as the rest of them, but hardly seemed to notice the strain.

It was two days since any of them had slept. The Bla’claw warband caught their trail four days north of Wintermore Wall. Every night after, outriders rode around their camp, screaming and beating on pots. Their wolf-mounts howled along. At last, Cinabinathi and her Hawkbows posted in the trees and waited in ambush. Wolf by wolf and goblin by goblin, the ruckus fell silent. Not a single outrider survived.

Still, they could not sleep. The troop broke camp by moonlight, laid a false trail to the west, then waded upriver for a league to throw the goblins off. It bought them enough time to reach Blagg Bore. Cinabinathi had hoped to disappear into the mine before the Goblins could pick up their trail, but a landslide covered the adit. It was a day of hard labor to dig it out, and as dusk fell the familiar howls rose at their backs. This was goblin country.

They sealed the entrance behind them, certain it would not hold for long. They’d have liked to collapse the shaft behind them, but in typical dwarven fashion it was built to last until the end of time. Massive slab arches held up the low vaults and oak-thick pillars reinforced the chambers. It would take a team of sappers a week to bring a section down.

Though he would not say it outright to outsiders, Hilg intimated there would surely be a secret exit. In the same breath, he made clear there was no way to tell if it was buried worse than the adit.

Blagg Bore was uneasy in their presence. Tremors tickled their feet and twice the mountain grumbled so fiercely that even the dwarves seemed worried. As they delved deeper, the tale writ upon the walls fed their fear. Rich bands of black anthracite ran through the hewn walls and hints of lode glittered in the torchlight. No quake could have driven dwarves away from such riches. Something else waited in the dark.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Cinabinathi crept forward with care and spied a skeleton separated from its skull by two strides. Ancient stains marked the intruder’s abrupt beheading.

“Hold.”

She soon found the cause. Where the shadow of a reinforcing beam would be, there was a slit, just above shoulder height. She had the whole party drop to their knees to crawl under the necker. Traps mean they were on the right track. A bit later, they came across the bones of two long-dead goblins with rusted daggers jabbed in their ribs. It was strange, who would leave their weapons behind? There was a perfectly gobbed explanation, the pair had fallen into an argument and stabbed each other. Cinabinathi grinned at their fatal embrace, wishing every other greenskin might share their fate.

The mountain rumbled and a fierce tremor wiped her smile away. A century from now, some fool might stumble over her bones and crack the same idiot leer. There was no time for mirth. She picked up a step and hummed to remember Prescote’s directions. Three more turns and they found the fissure, just where the sage said. The air throbbed against their ears. A split ran through the corridor, the tunnel yawned into a natural rift that sloped down at a sixty degree angle. It looked like a stone mouth, stalactites and stalagmites jutted from the decline like crocodile teeth.

Cinabinathi went first with the rope around her waist. She threaded the line through the maze of teeth and the rest of her force rappelled down after.

It was impossible to be silent, her hackles rose at every boot that scraped and rock that rattled down. Cinibinathi stood at the bottom with Falflets bared, but no foe came. Pink and purple light glowed through the jagged entrance to the lower passage. Clusters of crystals lined the walls, in every shade of allium. In places the stones glowed deeper than violet, tiny sparks sprang off the facets like fleas. Pretty as it was, the wind from within was hot and stank of brimstone. She waited for Hilg, he arrived last, pale and wide-eyed. Hilg was not fond of heights.

“Just the nose I need,” Cinabinathi said, hoping to bolster him.

Hilg held his head over the passage and snuffled. His hairy nostrils flared wide. Pink light gleamed in his eyes as he drew from a thousand generations of hard-learned lessons.

“Air’s all right for dwarves, I suppose. Elves and men, best not tarry,” he warned.

The picked six lowered themselves into the passage, the men and dwarves were relieved to see again. The cavern was far larger than it seemed from above. Once they got their bearings, the dwarves gasped. A tremble of avarice ran through Hilg and Bhloki. Runagir shook his head at the others, unaffected. Worldly wealth had no savor for a berserker.

“Cobalt!” Hilg breathed. “Argent azureite! By the bellows, it’s the motherlode! We’ve got to get this mine going again! We could arm an entire legion in Bluebane steel!” Gripped by greed, Hilg was so excited his hands shook.

“It’s our great sport, to come up short. How long did our fathers grub for coal and galena, never knowing the fortune beneath their feet?” Bhloki wondered. Hilg rolled his eyes in disapproval of the young dwarf’s philosophical bent.

“Ware. Doom finds those who delve too deep,” Runagir rumbled. The Shieldbearers flinched and hid their hands behind their backs, caught. Runagir motioned with his axe. Splintered bones jutted from the glittering dust underfoot. They were not the first to come this way.

“Just a bit farther,” Cinibinathi urged, remembering the rusted daggers. She was keen to avoid a row between the dwarves. They slipped through a dark passage where the heat mounted and the sulfur stench grew dire. Cinabinathi’s head swam, but she refused to admit weakness before the dwarves. If the boy could do it, so could she. They cheated along a narrow ledge over a black gap that fell farther than even Cinabinathi could see. Amber light glittered ahead. It was a long, precarious shuffle along the ledge and the heat was almost unbearable. At the end they broke through into another hallway. Maro, Bobbert, and even Swyllve wilted and laid gasping on the floor. Only pride kept Cinabinathi upright as the world wheeled around her. When she caught her bearings, she found the dwarves muttering amongst themselves, on edge. The hall was dwarven work, but three times taller than any dwarf would build. Orbs were set in the vaults, they blazed with slow-shifting, honey colored light.

The walls were stack-bonded square slabs, which was bad luck, and the floors were checkered white quartz against jet, which was bad taste. None of the dwarves could recognize the clan who’d laid the stones.

“We can’t say how old this is,” Hilg said, deeply unsettled.

Cinabinathi could, but she kept mum.

“This is is pre-kingdom stonework. Laid by dwarf slaves, held in thrall to black elves,” Bobbert informed them.

Cinabinathi resist the urge to cuff the back of Bobbert’s head, as Prescote had so many times. The apprentice told it true, but now was not the time. Three sets of angry eyes found her, no one could hold a grudge like a dwarf.

“We denounced them and fought a thousand year war over this,” Cinabinathi explicated. The glares burned on.

“This way,” she pointed.

They trooped on down the ancient hall, following her lead. Distant from the breach, the air grew very still. Past the abhorrent hall, they came to the crypts. Stone tubes were stacked in honeycomb rows, sealed by thick discs of obsidian. The lives of the dead were recorded in spirals of script that began with their birth at the center of the each seal. Passing them, Cinabinathi began to understand the dwarves’ discomfort. The script of the ancient race was just close enough to grate.

At last, they reached the vault. A sigh of disappointment slipped from every mouth. Two life-sized obsidian sentinels stood on either side of a massive bronze door, graven with an enormous life-spiral. The left door was cracked just wide enough for someone to slip inside. Some thief had beat them to the punch. Cinabinathi felt her gut churn with regret. She’d led them all into a terrible position, they might all die for nothing. Her eyes fell on the stone sentinels. The black elves had a sinister beauty, it seemed their flawless features might come to life at any moment. She felt an urge to smash them.

“Hilg, give me your hammer,” Runagir said, thinking the same. Hilg’s eyes were up, squinted at the ceiling.

“Don’t. There’s old magic here. It’s terribly strong,” Bobbert warned.

“Stone’s wrong, Hilg announced. He pointed to the rusted remains of shims wedged into the edges of the slab beneath the arch. If they’d put weight onto it, the stones above would have buried them all.

“Bless you, Hilg. I’d have never seen it,” Cinabinathi said.

“Few would. Our feet are rooted in stone, no matter how far we roam,” he said. “Back away, all of you.” He drew a hammer and spikes from his pack.

“Why, bother? We can just hop over,” Bhloki suggested.

“Then when some foe follows after us, and we’re all sealed within, what then? Lazy churl,” Hilg chided. Bhloki lowered his eyes in shame. They all backed away but Hilg knew his trade. The trap would not trigger.

“Let’s see what’s inside,” Hilg said. The hammer shook in his grip.