The rocky outcropping shuddered beneath her feet. Lightning arced between unnatural black clouds gathering along the high ceiling. Booms and distant shouts echoed on the air. All in all, it was shaping up to be a spectacular show, but one she’d have much preferred to watch from a safer distance.
Not that they were going to be right in the thick of it. Not yet, at least. Saskia and Ruhildi and Rover Dog and Baldreg stood on a lookout high on the walls of the prime passage; a spot from which Ruhildi could work her dark magic without immediate danger of being overrun. And without having to explain her actions to the other dwarves gathered below.
“You know, if I were an elf—”
“Don’t even suggest such a terrible thing, Sashki!” said Ruhildi.
“If I were an elf,” she repeated, undeterred, “I’d just build a giant dam upstream, and use it to flood the passage. Wash away all the defences—and defenders—in one go.”
“They already tried that greatspans ago,” said Baldreg.
“Oh. Did it work?”
Baldreg snorted. “’Course not. You think we didn’t have to deal with natural floods afore that? We built shunts all along the passage that drain the river if too much water flows down it. The passage aren’t so easily breached by mere water.”
Not water, perhaps, but there was a definite liquid quality to the sight of the elves beginning their charge; a tide of green and gold and silver, pouring across the barren rocks with inhuman grace.
Oh, this was no Helm’s Deep or Pelennor Fields. Not yet. The incoming elves numbered in the low hundreds, not the thousands. But this was only the first wave. The bulk of the elven army stood silently behind them, waiting. Saskia didn’t know much about military strategy, but she could only assume they were testing dwarven defences; waiting for them to reveal any nasty tricks they had up their sleeves before they fully committed to the battle.
If that were the case, they didn’t have to wait long.
Along the tunnel walls came a series of shouts. Great chains rattled and then swung free. Borne on the ends of those chains, immense balls of spiked steel swung down across the invaders. A grinding roar assaulted her ears as the giant flails carved huge furrows into the ground—and the elves—sending mangled bodies and chunks of stone and billowing clouds of dirt and dust flying outward.
Those who made it past the wrecking balls were by no means safe. Huge boulders flung by catapults and stoneshapers descended upon them, smashing down in their midst. Ballistas fired giant spears that tore through armour and flesh with equal measure. The ground fell away underfoot, and elves plunged screaming onto sharpened spikes. Then came a rain of crossbow bolts, and exploding shrapnel, and quagmires of quicksand.
Baldreg’s crossbow triple-twanged, and a trio of explosions ripped through a line of elves. With a flick of his staff-sling, Rover Dog sent a rock the size of an elf’s head on a collision course with an elf’s head.
Saskia took aim and flung Jarnbjorn. She quickly lost track of her target amidst the chaos, so she didn’t even see it strike home. But when the axe returned to her hand, its blade was covered in blood. She hurled it again, and tried very hard not to hurl up her breakfast at the same time.
Crouched beside her, Ruhildi surveyed the carnage with an eerily calm expression. Saskia could feel the gathering of essence around her friend. It kept building and building, until the air buzzed with unreleased potential.
The elven vanguard slammed into the line of waiting dwarves. Spears and swords, glaives and axes, hammers and flails slammed against shields and armour and flesh.
Another wave of elves swept forward, larger than before. A third, bearing wands and staffs and bows, followed close at their heels, firing arrows and spells at the dwarven backline. Siege engines exploded into billowing clouds of toxic fumes. Dwarves fell from guard towers and ran screaming from buzzing swarms.
An arrow came flying up at her. And then another. One went wide. The other, which would have hit Ruhildi, she snatched out of the air. A flick of her wrist sent Jarnbjorn hurtling down at the one who had fired them. It returned to her hand covered in purple gore. The arrows ceased.
As the druids and archers advanced across the rubble-strewn craters and scattered corpses, Ruhildi finally unshackled her command dead spell. The dead quietly rose to their feet.
A frenzy of hacking and stabbing and biting and screaming ensued. Caught between the dwarves and a growing undead horde, the elves began to drop like flies—and rise again like zombie cockroaches.
Saskia watched the scene unfold with a mixture of awe and revulsion and…hope. For though there were plenty more elves where these guys came from, the carnage had been pretty one-sided so far. Maybe the dwarves stood a chance, after all.
That hope was short-lived. As were the dwarves.
A wall of fire erupted across the lines of dwarves and elves and undead. The fire swept back across barricades and siege engines and towers of stone, which glowed red and began to sag before her eyes.
“What the hell just happened?” whispered Saskia, exchanging a horrified glance with Ruhildi.
She needn’t have asked. The violet marker on her minimap told her all she needed to know. Her eyes picked him out among the advancing column of elves: a towering form in a grey cloak, holding aloft a blazing torch.
This Chosen was some kind of fire mage. Fantabulous. Just what they needed.
He turned and looked straight at her. She caught the gleam of a pale mask beneath his hood.
“Guys, we need to leave,” said Saskia. “Right now.”
She all but shoved Ruhildi back down the tunnel ahead of her. Baldreg and Rover Dog followed close at their heels. The tunnel ran down the wall of the prime passage, eventually linking up with the one she and Ruhildi had taken on their way to the Underneath. They followed that same path today, emerging out onto the snow-covered slope, shivering with more than just cold.
A small garrison stood outside, guarding the hidden entrance. They’d come close to shooting Saskia and Rover Dog on their way in, but Ruhildi’s guildstone had convinced them to stand down. Then one of them had recognised her and…
“Vindica, ’tis you!” cried one of the guards, his face lighting up at the sight of her. “What’s happening in there? A moment ago, they lit the fallback signal.”
“Chosen,” said Ruhildi simply. “Fair powerful one.”
“Och,” said the guard. His face sagged.
The ground shuddered again. To the north, dwarves were streaming out of the mouth of the prime passage. Giant slabs of stone fell in their wake. The ceiling buckled, then sagged, then came crashing down. As the dust began to clear, Saskia found herself looking upon a wall of jagged rock.
“Won’t hold them back for long,” said Ruhildi. “I suggest you take heed of the signal and fall back to Torpend.” She turned to Saskia and Baldreg. “We must decide what to do next. Mayhap we should join them. But methinks we may be more useful outside the city walls. For a time, leastwise.”
“We can’t face the entire army by ourselves,” said Saskia.
“I weren’t suggesting that,” said Ruhildi. “A frontal assault were never the Vindical way, even afore I met you, Sashki. And now that we have you, it gives us…flexibility.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it, Sashki. You and your trow friend can run faster than most any alvar or dwarrow. You can sense their approach afore they can see you. We can use that to our advantage. Find where they are weakest. Strike them where they least expect us. Set their dead against them. Then we away afore their kin even kenned we were there.”
“Guerrilla warfare,” said Saskia. At their blank stares she added, “Hit-and-run tactics. It could work. As long as we don’t get ourselves boxed in.”
“Aye. So what say you? Stay out here and harry their back lines and supply chains? Or try to defend the walls?”
“You saw what that Chosen did,” said Saskia. “I don’t think walls are going to hold him back for long. But if we can destroy enough of the army behind his back—or better yet, turn them into zombies… Yeah, let’s see what we can do out here.”
“It may be our best chance,” agreed Baldreg. “Though I want nothing more than to be by my bonnie’s side, I ken as well as you do that out here is the best place for us.”
“I just want to stomp tree-humping squishies,” said Rover Dog. “Inside, outside, make no difference.”
“’Tis settled then,” said Ruhildi. “Let’s—”
A loud boom cut off her next words. They all stared at the chunks of red-hot stone tumbling away from the mouth of the prime passage. A pile of half-melted rubble now lay where the wall of collapsed stone had been. Steam jetted from the newly-cleared opening as the river water flowed out onto super-heated rocks. It would be a little while before they cooled enough for anyone to walk over them, but the dwarves weren’t waiting around for that eventuality. Swarms of tiny figures fled southward, leaving only a few stubborn defenders to man the fortifications.
Saskia and Rover Dog and their dwarven passengers headed east, moving well clear of the path the elves would no-doubt take to the city. They spent a cold first dark in the hills, taking turns sleeping and watching the elves, who made short work of the last remaining defenders and set up camp outside.
Maybe a third of the invaders had been wiped out inside the prime passage. What remained seemed more than enough to overrun the city. Or maybe the golems would utterly crush the elves. She could only hope…
Come morning, the bulk of the elven army began to push south, while various smaller groups fanned out into the countryside.
Picking out one such group that had halted atop a nearby hill, they bounded toward the target on all fours, as fast as their long troll limbs would carry them. When they got close, Ruhildi and Baldreg dismounted and they all dropped low to the ground and crept slowly forward. Elven eyes were sharp. They couldn’t risk being spotted.
Through the trees, she counted at least ten elves. Most of them carried bows or spears at the ready, but one held a wooden wand with the telltale glow of arlium at its tip. The druid stood before a tall tree, and as she watched, the trunk of the tree began to straighten and grow taller, reshaping before her eyes. Several wide, flat platforms emerged near the top of the trunk—which was now much taller than the surrounding trees.
He was growing a watchtower. One with a good view of the surrounding countryside.
Exchanging a glance with Rover Dog, Saskia nodded at him, and they each swallowed a pinch of arlithite. Today, they were leaving nothing to chance. Taking it pre-emptively was the best way to ensure their blood would be ready to heal themselves or either of the dwarves at a moment’s notice.
Crawling up the hillside on elbows and knees, they spread out as best they could. Baldreg took careful aim at the druid in the centre of the group. Lying in the snow a short distance in front of him, Saskia raised her fingers, counting down. Three. Two. One.
Zero.
She sprang into motion, and as she did, she heard the twang of a loosed crossbow bolt.
A concussive thump filled the air. Broken bodies tumbled like ragdolls away from the point of impact.
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Shouts rang out, and bows twanged. A single arrow came at her, easily dodged as she bounded forward.
Reaching throwing distance, she hurled Jarnbjorn at the nearest archer. The blade sunk deep into his chest, sending him flying. Before he’d even hit the ground, the axe was back in her hand, answering her silent summons, and she was in the midst of the elven party, tearing and stomping, with Rover Dog at her side, doing likewise.
It was almost too easy. Saskia was left surveying the gory aftermath, trying to dispel the nausea that swept over her.
After some debate, Ruhildi decided to raise the dead and bring them along as cannon fodder. All but two of them had wounds that wouldn’t diminish their ability to fight, gruesome though they were. Saskia and Rover Dog wouldn’t be able to move as fast with the undead entourage running alongside them, but they could always abandon the zombies if and when they had to skedaddle. Until that happened, these minions and any others they might acquire would allow them to stand toe-to-toe against a larger force.
The next band of elves they encountered were setting up camp on a riverbank in a secluded valley when they were ambushed. And not by Saskia’s party.
She saw it play out on her minimap. A small group of orange markers crept toward—and slowly encircled—a larger clump of yellow and orange markers. As she watched, the noose closed, and the separate groups merged into a chaotic jumble. One-by-one, the dots began to wink out.
By the time she got close enough to witness the battle in person, it was half over. Half of the combatants were dwarves, which led her to wonder why they too were showing on her map as orange dots. Dwarves as a whole hadn’t exactly been kind to her, but it’d sure be nice to have a way to distinguish them from the elves at a distance.
Though they hadn’t come through unscathed, these dwarves seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Exchanging wordless looks with her companions, Saskia gave a shrug, and leapt into the fray.
Only after all of the elves lay bleeding across the snow did she take a good look at the ragged band of dwarves and realise that she’d seen them before. A growl escaped her lips. The dwarves took a step back, levelling crossbows and swords and spears at her.
“These are the donkholes who sold me to the fighting pit!” she growled.
“What are you waiting for, you shites?” bellowed their leader, the woman who had snatched Thorric. “Shoot—”
Rover Dog stepped on her.
“Who’d you think she wanted us to shoot?” said one of the mercenaries, backing hurriedly away from Rover Dog, who was absently scraping the dwarf woman from his foot.
“Don’t matter now,” said another one, eyeing the broken body. He lowering his crossbow. “Never liked her anyway. Save your bolts for the leaf-ears, lads.”
“Wise choice,” said Ruhildi, stepping among the corpses, surrounded by her zombie retinue. There was a whisper on the wind. Her long tangles flailed across her face.
The newly dead twitched and rose up off the ground, turning as one to face the now-leaderless mercenaries.
Backing away so fast he almost tripped over his own feet, one of the dwarves stammered, “I…er…I t-think I speak for all of us when I say, er, thank you for the assistance, best of luck and, er…run!”
The rest of the mercenaries didn’t need any further prompting. They hightailed it faster than Saskia could say, “Seriously, Ruhildi, you look like you just stepped out of a Japanese horror film.”
“Sometimes I wonder whose side we’re on,” muttered Baldreg.
“Squishies cage princess,” said Rover Dog. “Deserve thorough squishing.”
“Thank you for defending me, Rover Dog, but I think we’ve done enough dwarf squishing,” said Saskia.
Several more elven parties had fallen by the time they called it quits for the day. Ruhildi now had more than fifty minions at her beck and call; a small army in its own right. It was hard to manoeuvre such a large force about without being seen though. Maybe they should stash the bodies in a hidden nook for later use, and travel lighter.
Well whatever. They could decide in the morning once they’d gotten some sleep.
Ruhildi prodded her awake barely an hour after she’d closed her eyes. Her friend pointed at the sky, where a small, dark cloud was drifting toward them. That was no ordinary cloud.
“Tempests,” she said.
“Like as not,” said Ruhildi.
Sure enough, a large swarm of dots moved swiftly down the stream below their campsite.
“Maybe a hundred mer,” said Saskia. “What’s a force that large doing all the way out here?”
“Looking for us, mayhap,” said Ruhildi. “Or mayhap they just want to keep clear of the other alvari. They aren’t exactly the best of friends.”
“So what are we gonna do?” said Saskia. “Fight or run?”
“Fight,” said Rover Dog.
“Fight,” said Baldreg.
“Fight,” agreed Ruhildi.
Saskia sighed. “Why did I even bother asking? Okay, let’s do this.”
Ruhildi hid her zombie archers on either side of the stream. The rest of them ducked behind a high rock further up the slope. Several minutes later, the mer came into view, splashing through the shallow stream, completely naked despite the cool night air. At the head of the pack, a circle of five mer women seemed to be gliding across the rippling surface of the water, held aloft by a swirling sphere of air.
Baldreg took aim at the tempests.
“Not them,” she whispered. “They have an air shield that’ll repel your crossbow bolts. Aim for the middle of the main group.”
He adjusted his aim—and on her signal, fired three times in rapid succession. At the same moment, over a dozen zombies loosed their arrows, and Rover Dog and Saskia each made use of their respective missile weapons, before leaping into the fray.
Explosions ripped through the centre of the mer formation. Many more fell to the hail of arrows. Rover Dog’s boulder turned a head into red mist. Saskia’s axe sliced through three arms and one chest before returning to her hand. Then she was in their midst, hacking and tearing and stomping. The screams of the wounded and dying tore her more deeply than any sword or spear or arrow. But her friends would die if she stopped now. She had to fight on. Had to…
An orange glow appeared beneath Rover Dog’s feet, rapidly turning red.
“Rover Dog, try to leap over the tempests!” she screamed.
The troll’s bushy brows creasing in puzzlement as he crushed another spearman beneath his great clawed feet.
Too late. For an instant, Saskia saw nothing but white. Her eardrums called it quits, and she staggered and almost fell. Clutching her head, she willed herself to action. Her minimap was still there, albeit flickering slightly, so the lightning probably hadn’t hit her directly. Rover Dog groaned and hauled himself to his feet. There were scorch marks across his body.
“Are you okay?” she shouted. Her ears were still ringing.
He shook himself, and a toothy grin spread across his face. “Good fight!”
Then he turned and leapt into the midst of another group of mer, ripping into them with his claws and sending them flying.
Saskia looked at the tempests, steeling herself for the next lightning bolt that would—
Huh. Okay, maybe not. One of the tempests wailed and clawed at her ears. She twitched and shivered and went still and silent. Blood dripped from her nose and mouth.
Then in a single motion, she turned and shoved her spear up through her companion’s chin and out the top of her head. A bone spider skittered out of her ear and leapt at another tempest’s face, while the two dead mer proceeded to skewer the others.
Retching, Saskia turned to Ruhildi, who surveyed her handiwork with an unreadable expression. That was just…she didn’t have words.
Moments later, the vortex of air stilled, and the crackling cloud above their heads dissipated.
With the tempests out of the picture, the remaining mer were quick to fall. The army of the dead had become an unstoppable tide, chopping and stabbing, biting and tearing at the terrified warriors.
It was over within minutes. Ruhildi raised the last of the slaughtered mer, and Saskia sighed inwardly. Zombies were bad enough, but naked zombies? She’d never get used to this. Controlling this many minions was also beginning to take its toll on the dwarf. Her eyes were bloodshot, her breathing laboured.
“You might want to go easy on the zombie-raising,” Saskia told her. “There’s no need to keep all of them as pets. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and we can’t have you dying on us halfway through.”
Ruhildi just looked at her and said, “I’ll be alright. We’ll need every sword arm we can get in Torpend.”
Sighing, Saskia looked at the tempests, now reduced to garden variety zombie spearwomen. The undead didn’t retain any magic they’d wielded in life. Those spears though…
Saskia took one of the spears from the unresisting hands of its owner. The arlium inset below the spearhead seemed to be calling to her. She reached for the glowing amber-coloured shard…
It slithered into her hand like liquid fire, vanishing into the skin of her palm. Heat surged through her. She fell into the water, gasping, as steam roiled around her.
The next thing she knew, she was blinking up at the worried faces of Ruhildi and Baldreg.
“What happened, Sashki?” asked Ruhildi.
“The arlium—I just absorbed it,” said Saskia.
“Mayhap you shouldn’t go near another focus,” said Ruhildi.
“Actually, I think my body needs this,” said Saskia, rising to her feet. She felt…not stronger, exactly, but fuller, as if she’d just eaten a really satisfying meal. And yet…she wanted more.
“Another fight coming our way, princess,” said Rover Dog, pointing up at the hill overlooking the river.
A chill swept over Saskia as she saw the cluster of markers gathering on her minimap. Silhouetted by the first light of the morning, a swarm of giant spindly bugs with oversized forelimbs came clattering over a nearby ridgetop. Sitting astride a striped bear in the midst of the swarm was an elf-shaped figure with the same pattern of fur as his mount. He held a longbow, already nocked and pointed at her. Arlium shone from the arch of the bow.
“Beastmaster!” she shouted.
A bright line appeared in the air, intersecting with her body. She stepped aside. The arrow streaked past, splashing into the water behind her, sending a spray of steam billowing skyward.
Baldreg quickly loaded his crossbow and fired three shots at the beastmaster. They fell short of their mark, carving chunks out of the hillside below him. Dirt and dust billowed into the air, obscuring him from sight. This didn’t seem to deter the beastmaster, who fired another arrow at Saskia through the haze. Again, she just barely managed to evade it.
Together with Ruhildi, Baldreg and Rover Dog, Saskia ran behind the cover of a rocky outcropping and crawled up the slope as best she could while staying out of the archer’s line of sight. While they were doing this, Ruhildi sent her zombies swarming up the hillside to meet the bugs head-on.
The beastmaster turned his attention to the corpses rushing toward the elves, firing arrow after arrow into them. What the arrows struck, they ignited, turning zombies into undead torches that set adjacent bodies afire. It only took a few seconds for the flames to revert a charging corpse to a still one. And those arrows fell upon them like rain.
Ruhildi’s minions reacted quickly, spreading out and weaving from side to side as they ran. This seemed to slow the attrition, but they were still falling at an alarming rate. There were less than fifty zombies left by the time they collided with the charging bugs.
By this time, the rest of them had made their way halfway up the hillside, and were now close enough to have a go at the beastmaster with their own ranged weapons. His bear mount leapt out of the path of Baldreg’s explosive crossbow bolts and Rover Dog’s flicked boulder. As for Saskia’s axe, he disdainfully snatched Jarnbjorn out of the air and flung it back.
As it curved through the air toward her gauntlet, she saw with dreadful certainty that its trajectory was going to take it through Baldreg’s body. She dove forward, arms outstretched. And in that moment, another line of light appeared in the air, intersecting with the spot where her head would be just as…
The axe landed in her gauntleted hand. She sprawled into the snow. For a moment, she had no idea what had just happened. Surprisingly, she still had a head.
Then she saw him, crouched before her, his hand afire. Rover Dog had caught the arrow. Just as she might have done. Except unlike her, he had no oracle interface to tell him where the arrow would go.
“How did you…?” she whispered.
“Squishy strong but predictable,” he said through gritted teeth.
Saskia leapt to her feet. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She brought her axe down on his wrist. Once. Twice. The burning hand flopped onto the snow. Unnatural flames continued to pour from the blackened flesh, sending jets of steam into the air.
The troll eyed his spurting wrist with an expression that turned from surprise to what might just be fury.
With a growl that set her heart hammering in her chest, Rover Dog turned and clawed his way across the snow toward the archer. Saskia raced to catch up, and together they closed the remaining distance to their foe.
The beastmaster had momentarily turned his attention to the undead charging up the slope from the other direction. His army of bugs had fallen and risen again and now ran alongside the ones they’d been fighting. Now facing both the trolls and the undead, the guy seemed to have lost his will to fight. His mount spun about, carrying him off down the other side of the ridge.
Until the ground gave way beneath them.
Ruhildi crouched atop the ridge, palms to the earth. Her face strained with the effort of casting another spell while maintaining her hold on this many minions.
Rover Dog lunged forward, reaching for the beastmaster, who had fallen from his mount, and was struggling to extricate himself from the quagmire to no avail. The troll’s claws plunged into his chest, jerked, and emerged holding a large blob of glistening, pulsating flesh. With a sigh, the beastmaster slumped forward. His bear, still trapped in the sinkhole, let out a groaning whimper, then collapsed, stone dead.
A moment later, the beastmaster and the bear had joined the rest of Ruhildi’s minions.
“Let’s get out of here, before more of them show up,” said Saskia.
Rover Dog’s hand would take a while to grow back, even with a steady supply of arlithite. On the other hand, they’d taken out some seriously tough foes, and Ruhildi’s growing horde had become a force to be reckoned with. If Torpend could hold out for just a while longer, maybe they could win this thing after all.
Once they were clear of the site of battle, Saskia took the time to absorb the arlium from the beastmaster’s bow, and the remaining tempest spears, as well as a couple of druid staffs. She didn’t know how it might help her, but she was ninety percent sure it wouldn’t do her any permanent harm.
That night, Saskia sent her consciousness leaping south to the city walls, where the defenders stood watch over the army of elves and beasts gathering below. A dozen horns sounded across the enemy lines. Globes of shimmering fire smashed against the walls, hurled by catapults grown from living trees.
Voicing a warcry that shook the earth, the elves surged forward.