The Two Swords Read online

5. TOO HIGH A CEILING

 

  Galen Firth paced furiously, every stride showing his mounting impatience. He muttered under his breath, taking care to keep his curses quiet enough so that they wouldn't disturb the dwarves, who were huddled together in a great circle, each with his arms over the shoulders of those beside him. Heads down, the bearded folk offered prayers to Moradin for the souls of Fender and Bonnerbas. They had run a long way from the hole they had cut out of the tunnels to escape the troll ambush, but they were still outdoors, sheltered within a copse of fir trees from a heavy rain that had come up.

  When the dwarves had finished - finally finished, to Galen's thinking - General Dagna wasted no time in marching over to the human.

  "We'll be considering our course this night," the dwarf informed him. "More'n a few're thinking it's past time we got back into tunnels. "

  "We just got chased out of tunnels," Galen reminded him.

  "Aye, but not them kind o' tunnels. We're looking for tunnels deep, tunnels o' worked stone - tunnels to give a dwarf something worth holding onto. No trolls're gonna push Battlehammer dwarves out of stone tunnels, don't ye doubt!"

  "You're forgetting our course and our reason for being here. "

  "Them trolls're onto us," Dagna replied. "They'll catch up to us soon enough, and ye know it. "

  "Indeed, if we continue to stop and pray every . . . " Galen's voice trailed off as he considered Dagna's expression and realized that he was going over the line.

  "I'll forgive ye that, but just this once," the dwarf warned. "I'm knowin' that ye're hurting for yer losses. We're all knowin' that. But we're running out o' time. If we're staying here much longer, then don't ye be thinking we'll find our way back to our home anytime soon. "

  "What do you mean to do?"

  Dagna turned around slowly, surveying the landscape. "We'll head west, to that high ridge there," he said, pointing to a line of elevated ground some miles distant. "From there we'll take us the best look we can find. Might be that we'll see yer people. Might be that we won't. "

  "And if we don't, then you intend to turn back for Mithral Hall. "

  "No other choice's afore me. "

  "And where for Galen, then?" the man asked.

  "Wherever Galen's choosing to go," Dagna answered. "Ye've proven yerself in a fight, to me and me boys. They'll keep ye along, and not a one's to complain. But it might be that ye cannot do that. Might be that Galen's got to stay and look, and die, if that's to be. Might be that Galen's doing better by his folk if he goes off to Silverymoon or some other town that's not being pressed by orcs and can spare more of an army. Choice is yer own. "

  Galen rubbed a hand over his face, feeling stubble that was fast turning into a thick beard. He wanted to yell and scream at Dagna, truly he did, but he knew that the dwarf was offering him all that he could under the present conditions. Somehow, the trolls were dogging them, and would find them again. How many times could Dagna and his small force hope to escape?

  "We begin our march to the ridge this very night?"

  "See no reason to be waiting," Dagna replied.

  Galen nodded and let it go at that. He got his gear collected and his boots tightened as the dwarves formed up for their march. He tried to focus on the present, on the duty before him, for he knew that if he tried to think ahead, his resolve would likely crumble. For every question in Galen Firth's life at that point seemed to begin with, "What if?"

  * * * * *

  "I will not tolerate a retreat into the tunnels until we have discovered the disposition of my people!" Galen Firth grumbled as he pulled himself over the last rise of rock to the top of the windswept ridgeline. The man brushed himself off and stared at Dagna, looking for some reaction to his insistence, but found the dwarf strangely distracted, and looking off toward the southwest.

  "Wha - ?" Galen asked, the word catching in his throat as he turned to follow the dwarf's line of sight, to see the light of fires - campfires, perhaps - in the distance.

  "Might be we done just that," Dagna said.

  More dwarves came up around them, all hopping and pointing excitedly to the distant lights.

  "Durn fools to be lighting so bright a burn with trolls all about," one dwarf remarked, and others nodded their agreement, or started to, until Dagna, noting the erratic movements of the flames, cut them short.

  "Them fires're against the trolls!" the general realized. "They got themselves a fight down there!"

  "We must go to them!" cried Galen.

  "A mile. . . . " a dwarf observed.

  "Of tough ground," another added.

  "Mark the stars and run on, then!" General Dagna ordered.

  The dwarves lined up the fires with the celestial constants, and began to stream fast down the back side of the ridge. Galen Firth sprinted off ahead of the pack, foolishly so, for his human eyes weren't very good in the darkness. Before he'd gone half a dozen strides, the man tripped and stumbled, then ran face long into a tree branch and staggered backward. He would have fallen to the ground had not Dagna arrived with open arms to catch him.

  "Ye stay right beside me, long legs," the dwarf ordered. "We'll get ye there!"

  With their short, muscled legs, dwarves were not the fastest runners in the Realms, but no race could match their stamina and determination. The force rolled past and over rocks and logs, and when one tripped, others caught him, up righted him, and kept him moving swiftly along his way.

  They charged along some lower ground, splashed through some unseen puddles and scrambled through a tangle of birch trees and brush, a snarl that got so thick at one point that several dwarves brought forth their axes and began chopping with abandon. As they came through that last major obstacle, the lights of the fires clearly visible directly ahead, Galen Firth began to hear the cries of battle. Shouts for support and calls of pain and rage split the night, and Galen's heart sank as he realized that many of those calls were not coming from warriors, but from women, children, and elderly folk.

  He didn't know what to expect when he and Dagna crashed through the last line of brush and onto the battlefield, though he surely expected the worst scenario, a helter skelter slaughter ground with his people trapped into small groups that could offer only meager resistance. He began to urge Dagna to form up a defensive ring, a shell of dwarves to protect his people, but when they came in sight of the actual fighting, Galen's words caught in his throat, and his heart soared with renewed hope.

  His people, the hearty folk of Nesme, were fighting hard and fighting well.

  "They're in a double ellipse," one dwarf coming in behind remarked, referring to a very intricate defensive formation, and one, Galen knew, that the riders of Nesme had often employed along the broken, tree-speckled ground north of the Trollmoors. In the double ellipse, two elongated rings of warriors formed end-to-end with a single joining point between them. Worked harmoniously, the formation was one of complete support, with every angle of battle offering a striking zone to more defenders than attackers. But it was also a risky formation, for if it failed at any point, the aggressors would have the means to isolate and utterly destroy entire sections of the defending force.

  So far, it seemed to be holding, but barely, and only because the defenders employed many, many flaming torches, waving them wildly to fend off the trolls and their even more stupid partners, the treelike bog blokes.

  "Dead trees must fall!" Galen shouted when he realized that the common allies of the wretched trolls were among the attackers. For bog blokes resembled nothing more than a small and skeletal dead tree, with twisted arms appearing as stubby limbs.

  As he spoke, the man noted one part of the Nesme line in serious jeopardy, as a pair of young men, boys really, fell back before the snarling and devastating charge of a particularly large and nasty troll. Galen broke away from the dwarves and veered straight for the troll's back, his sword leading. He hit the unwitting creature at a full run, driving his sword right through the beast and m
aking it lurch forward wildly. To their credit, the two young men didn't break ranks and flee, but just dodged aside of the lurching troll, then came right back in beside its swiping arms, smacking at it with their torches, the fires bubbling the troll's mottled green and gray skin.

  Galen pulled his blade free and spun just in time to fend off the clawing hands of another troll, and another that came in beside it. Hard-pressed, and with the troll he had skewered behind him hardly out of the fighting, Galen feared that he would meet an abrupt end. He breathed a bit easier when the troll before him and to his left lurched over suddenly and tumbled away. As it fell, a heavy dwarven axe came up over its bending head and drove it down more forcefully. That dwarf pressed on, right past Galen to take on the wounded beast behind the man, while another dwarf leaped into view atop the fallen troll, using it as a springboard to launch him headlong into the other troll standing in front of Galen. His flying tackle took the beast around the waist, and as he swung about, the dwarf twisted his body to give him some leverage across the troll's lower half. The dwarf tugged mightily with his short, muscled arms, his momentum taking him right past the surprised troll. When the diminutive bearded warrior used that momentum, combined with his powerful arms, he compelled the troll to follow, the creature rolling right over him as he fell.

  "Give me yer torch!" Galen heard the first dwarf cry to someone in the defensive line.

  Galen turned and glanced over his shoulder to consider that scene, then fell back with a yelp as a torch flew right past his face. He followed the line of the fiery weapon, left to right, to the waiting hand of the complimenting dwarf, who caught it deftly and quickly inverted it. As the troll below that dwarf rolled around to counter the attack, the dwarf put that flame into its eye, and stuffed it right into the troll's mouth as the creature opened its jaws wide to let out an agonized roar. The troll flailed wildly and the dwarf went flying away, but he landed nimbly on his steady feet and brought a warhammer up before him in a single fluid movement.

  Other enemies moved to engulf the dwarf and Galen, but Dagna and his boys were there first, fiercely supporting their comrades. They formed into a tight fighting diamond quickly to Galen's right, and to the man's left, the remaining dwarves similarly formed up. The two groups quickly pivoted to bring their lines together.

  "Yer folks ain't no strangers to battle, I'm thinking!" General Dagna remarked to Galen. "Go on, then," Dagna offered, "join with yer folk. Me and me boys're here for ye, don't ye doubt!"

  Galen Firth spun around and smashed the stubborn troll behind him yet again, then rushed past the falling beast to find a place in the human defensive line. He knew that at least some of the Riders must be among the group, for its coordination was too great for untrained warriors alone.

  He spotted the central figure of the defenders even as that young man noted him, and Galen's gaze grew more stern. The young warrior seemed to melt back under that glare. Galen sprinted past his townsfolk, moving to the joint between the two coordinated defensive formations.

  "I will assume the pivot," he said to the apparent leader.

  "I have it secured, Captain Firth," the man, Rannek by name, replied.

  "Move aside!" Galen demanded, and Rannek fell back.

  "Tighten the ranks!" Galen called across the Nesme position. "Bring it in closer so our dwarven allies can facilitate our retreat!"

  * * * * *

  "Good choice," muttered General Dagna, who had watched the curious exchange between the two men. Even with the arrival of two score dwarf warriors, the group of humans could not hope to win out against the monstrous attackers. Already the fires were dying low in several spots along the line, and wherever that happened, the fearsome trolls were fast to the spot, clawed hands striking hard and with impunity. For trolls did not fear conventional weapons. Cutting a troll to pieces, after all, only increased the size of its family.

  "Form up, boys!" Dagna called. "Double ranks! Three sides o' chopping!"

  With a communal roar, the disciplined dwarves spun, jumped, tumbled, and hopped into proper formation, forming a triangle whose each tip was tightly packed with the fiercest warriors. Clan Battlehammer called that particular formation the "splitting wedge" because of its ability to maneuver easily against weak spots in their enemy's line, shifting the focus of its offensive push. Dagna stayed in the middle of the formation, directing, rolling the dwarves like a great killing machine along the perimeter in support of the human line. They did an almost complete circuit, driving back the trolls with torches and splitting bog blokes like firewood with great chops of heavy axes. On Dagna's sudden order, and with stunning precision, one tip broke away and rushed past the human line to the north, back toward the higher ground, pummeling the few trolls blocking that particular escape route.

  "To the north!" Galen Firth cried to his charges, seeing the plan unfolding. He shoved those people nearest him that direction, urging them on.

  Across from him, Rannek did likewise, and between the two, they had the bulk of the human force moving in short order.

  Dagna watched the haphazard movements, trying hard to time his own pivots to properly cover the rear of the retreat. He noted the two men working frantically, one seeming a younger version of the other, but with the calm one would expect of a trained and veteran soldier. He also noted that Galen Firth pointedly did not glance at his counterpart, did not acknowledge the man's efforts at all.

  Dagna shook his head and focused again on his own efforts.

  "Damn humans," he muttered. "Stubborn lot. "

  * * * * *

  "The rescue mission succeeds," Tos'un Armgo remarked as he and Kaer'lic watched the continuing battle from afar.

  "For now, perhaps," the priestess replied.

  Tos'un read the nonchalance clearly in her tone, and indeed, why should Kaer'lic, and why should he, really care whether or not a group of humans escaped the clutches of Proffit's monstrous forces?

  "The dwarves will turn for home now, likely," the male drow said. As he finished, he glanced over his shoulder to the bound and gagged Fender. With a sly grin, the drow kicked the dwarf hard in the side, and Fender curled up and groaned.

  "That is but a small number of Nesme's scattered refugees, by all reports," Kaer'lic countered. "And these frightened humans know that they have kin in similar straights all across the region. Perhaps the dwarves will link with this force in an effort to widen the rescue mission. Would that not be the sweetest irony of all, to have our enemies gather together for their ultimate demise?"

  "Our enemies?"

  The simple question gave Kaer'lic pause, obviously.

  "In a choice between humans and trolls, even dwarves and trolls, I believe that I would side against the trolls," the male drow admitted. "Though now, the promise of finding a vulnerable wayward human is a tempting one that I fear I will not be able to resist. "

  "Nor should you," the priestess said. "Take your pleasures where you may, my friend, for soon enough, striking at the enemy will likely mean crossing lines of wary and battle-ready dwarves. "

  "Perhaps that pleasure might involve a few vulnerable orcs, as well. "

  Kaer'lic gave a little laugh at the thought. "I would wish them all, orc, troll, dwarf, human, and giant alike, a horrible death and be done with it. "

  "Even better," Tos'un agreed. "I do hope that the dwarves decide to remain in the southland openly and with a widening force. Their presence will make it easier for us to persuade Proffit to remain here. "

  The words silenced Tos'un even as he spoke them, and seemed to have a sobering effect upon Kaer'lic, as well. For that was the gist of it, the unspoken agreement between the two dark elves that they really did not want to wander the tunnels leading back to the north and the main defenses of Mithral Hall. They had been sent south by Obould to guide Proffit through that very course, to urge the trolls on as the monsters pressured the dwarves in the southern reaches of the complex. But the thought of going against fortified dwarven positi
ons and into a dwarven hall accompanied by a horde of stupid brutes was not really an appealing one, after all.

  "Proffit will turn his eyes to the north, as Obould bade him," Tos'un added a moment later.

  "Then you and I must convince him that the situation here is more important," Kaer'lic replied without hesitation.

  "Obould will not be pleased. "

  "Then perhaps Obould will slay Proffit, or even better, perhaps they will slaughter each other. "

  Tos'un smiled and let it go at that, perfectly comfortable with the role that he and his three drow companions had made for themselves. Prodding Obould and Gerti Orelsdottr to war from the beginning, the drow had never really concerned themselves with the outcome. In truth, they hadn't a care as to which side emerged victorious, dwarf or orc, as long as the drow found some excitement, and some profit, in the process. And if that process inflicted horrific pain and loss to the minions of Obould, Gerti, and Bruenor Battlehammer alike, then all the better!

  Of course, neither Kaer'lic nor Tos'un knew then that their two missing companions, Donnia Soldou and Ad'non Kareese, lay dead in the north, killed by a rogue drow.

  * * * * *

  They found their first break in a shallow cave tucked into a rocky cliff behind a small pond more than an hour later, and there, too, their first opportunity to bandage wounds and determine who was even still among their continually thinning ranks. Nesme had been an important town in the region for many generations, strong and solid behind fortified walls, the vanguard of the Silver Marches against intrusions from the monsters of the wild Trollmoors. That continual strife and diligence had bred a closeness among the community of Nesmians so that they felt every loss keenly.

  The day had brought more than a dozen deaths, and had left several more people missing - a difficult loss for but one band of less than a hundred refugees. And given the seriousness of the wounds that many resting in that shallow cave had suffered, that number of dead seemed sure to rise through the remaining hours of the night.

  "Daylight ain't no friend o' trolls, even in tracking," Dagna said to Galen Firth when he met the man at the cave entrance a short while later. "Me boys're covering the tracks and killing any trolls and blokes wandering too close, but we're not to sit here for long without them beasties coming against us in force. "

  "Then we move, again and again," Galen Firth said.

  Dagna considered the man's tone - determination and resignation mingled into one - as much as his agreement.

  "We'll cross shadow to shadow," Galen went on. "We'll find their every weakness and hit them hard. We'll find all the remaining bands of my townsfolk and meld them into a singular and devastating force. "

  "We'll find tunnels, deep and straight, and run headlong for Mithral Hall," General Dagna corrected, and Galen Firth's eyes flashed with anger.

  "More of my people are out there. I will not forsake them in their time of desperation. "

  "Well, that's for yerself to decide," said Dagna. "I come here to see how I might be helping, and so me and me boys did. I left six more dead back there. That's eight o' fifty, almost one in six. "

  "And your efforts saved ten times the number of your dead. Are not ten of Nesme's folk worth a single dwarf's life?"

  "Bah, don't ye be putting it like that," Dagna said, and he gave a great snort. "I'm thinking that we're all to be slaughtered in one great fight if we make a single mistake. More than two score o' me boys and closer to a hun-nerd o' yer own folk. "

  "Then we won't make a mistake," Galen Firth said in a low and even tone.

  Dagna snorted again and moved past the man, knowing that he wouldn't be getting anything settled that night. Nor did he have to, for in truth, he had no idea of where the force might even find any tunnels that would take them back to Mithral Hall. Dagna knew, and so did Galen, that this band would be moving out of necessity and not choice over the next hours, and even days, likely, so arguing about courses that might not ever even become an option seemed a rather silly thing to do.

  Dagna crossed by the folk of Nesme, accepting their kind words and gratitude, and offering his own praise for their commendable efforts. He also found his own clerics hard at work tending the wounded, and he offered a solid pat on each dwarf shoulder as he passed. Mostly, though, Dagna studied the humans. They were indeed a good and sturdy folk, in the tough general's estimation, if a bit orc-headed.

  Well, he supposed, orc-headed only if Galen Firth is an accurate representative of the community.

  That notion had Dagna moving more purposefully among the ranks, seeking out a particular man whose actions had stood above the norm back on the battlefield. He found that man at the very back of the shallow cave, reclining on a smooth, rounded stone. As he approached, Dagna noted the man's many wounds, including three fingers on his left hand twisted at an angle that showed them to certainly be broken, and a garish tear on his left ear that looked as if the ear might fall right off.

  "Ye might want to be seeing the priests about them fingers and that ear," Dagna said, moving up before the man.

  Obviously startled, the warrior quickly sat up and straightened his battered chain and leather tunic.

  "Dagna's me name," the dwarf said, extending his calloused hand. "General Dagna o' Mithral Hall, Warcommander to King Bruenor Battle-hammer. "

  "Well met, General Dagna," the man said. "I am Rannek of Nesme. "

  "One o' them Riders?"

  The man nodded. "I was, at least. "

  "Bah, ye'll get yer town back soon enough!"

  The dwarf noted that his optimism didn't seem to lift the man's expression, though he suspected, given the reception Galen Firth had offered Rannek back at the battlefield, that the dourness wasn't precipitated by the wider prospects for the town.

  "Ye done well back there," Dagna offered, eliciting a less-than-resounding shrug.

  "We fight for our very existence, good dwarf. Our options are few. If we err, we die. "

  "Ain't that the way of it?" asked the dwarf. "In me many years, I've come to see the truth in the notion that war's the time for determining the character of a dwarf. Or a man. "

  "Indeed. "

  Dagna's eyes narrowed under his bushy and prominent eyebrows. "Ye got nearly a hunnerd o' yer kin in here looking to ye. Ye're knowing that? And here ye be with a face showing defeat, yet ye got most o' yer folk out o' what them trolls suren thought to be the end o' yer road. "

  "They'll be looking to Galen Firth, now that he has returned," said Rannek.

  "Bah, that's not a good enough answer. "

  "It is the only answer I have," said Rannek.

  He slid off the rounded stone, offered a polite and unenthusiastic bow, and moved away.

  General Dagna heaved a resigned sigh. He didn't have time for this. Not now. Not with trolls pressing in on them.

  "Humans. . . . " he muttered under his breath, giving a shake of his hairy head.

  * * * * *

  "They are helpless and they are scattered," Kaer'lic Suun Wett said to the giant two-headed Proffit soon after the human band had temporarily escaped from the troll and bog bloke pursuit. "The hour of complete domination over all the region is at hand for you. If you strike at them now, hard and relentlessly, you will utterly destroy all remnants of Nesme and any foothold the humans can dare hope to hold in your lands. "

  "King Obould wants us in the tunnels," one of Proffit's heads replied.

  "Now!" the other head emphatically added.

  "To help with Obould's victory in the north?" Kaer'lic said. "In lands that mean nothing to Proffit and his people?"

  "Obould helped us," Proffit said.

  "Obould showed Proffit the way out, with all the trolls behind him," the other head added.

  Kaer'lic knew well enough what Proffit was referring to. It had been none other than Donnia Soldou, in fact, who had orchestrated the rise of Proffit, through the proxies of King Obould. All that Donnia had hoped was that Proffit and his force of br
utish trolls would cause enough of a distraction closer to the major human settlements to keep the bigger players of the region, primarily Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, from turning her eyes and her formidable armies upon Obould.

  Of course at that time, Kaer'lic and the other dark elves had no idea of how fast or how high King Obould would rise. The game had changed.

  "And Proffit helped Obould close the back door of Mithral Hall," Kaer'lic reminded.

  "Tit," said one head.

  "For tat," the other added with a rumbling chuckle.

  "But dwarves are left," said the first.

  "To," said the other.

  "Kill!" they both shouted together.

  "Dwarves of Mithral Hall to kill, yes," agreed Kaer'lic. "Dwarves who are stuck in a hole and going nowhere. Dwarves who will still be there waiting to be killed when Proffit has done his work here. "

  The troll's heads looked at each other and nodded in unison.

  "But the humans of Nesme are not so trapped," Tos'un Armgo put in, right on cue, as he and Kaer'lic had previously decided and practiced. "They will run far away, out of Proffit's reach. Or they will bring in many, many friends, and when Proffit comes back out of the tunnels, he may find a huge army waiting for him. "

  "More. "

  "To. "

  "Kill!" the troll said, both heads grinning stupidly.

  "Or too many to kill," Tos'un argued after a quick, concerned glance at Kaer'lic.

  "The human friends of Nesme will bring wizards with great magical fires," Kaer'lic ominously warned.

  That took the stupid and eager smile from Proffit's faces.

  "What to do?" one head asked.

  "Fight them now," said Kaer'lic. "We will help you locate each human band and to position your forces to utterly destroy them. It will not take long, and you can go into the tunnels to fight the dwarves confident that no force will mobilize against you and await your return. "

  Proffit's two heads bobbed, one chewing its lip, the other holding its mouth open, and both obviously trying to digest the big words and intricate concepts.

  "Kill the humans, then kill the dwarves," Kaer'lic said simply. "Then the land is yours. No one will bother to rebuild Nesme if everyone from Nesme is dead. "

  "Proffit likes that. "

  "Kill the humans," said the other head.

  "Kill the dwarves," the first added.

  "Kill them all!" the second head cheered.

  "And eat them!" yelled the first.

  "Eat them all," Kaer'lic cheered, and she motioned to Tos'un, who added, "Taste good!"

  Tos'un offered a shrug back at Kaer'lic, showing her that he really had no idea what to add to the ridiculous conversation. It didn't really matter anyway, because both dark elves realized soon enough that their little ploy had worked, and so very easily.

  "I remember when Obould was as readily manipulated as that," Kaer'lic said almost wistfully as she and Tos'un left Proffit's encampment.

  Tos'un didn't disagree with the sentiment. Indeed, the world had seemed so much simpler a place not so very long ago.