That night, the snow fell harder than it had ever before.
Above the jagged and impassable peaks of the Great Mountains, the pitch-black clouds were so thick not even a sliver of moonlight could break through their oppressive, swirling wall. Wind screamed through the narrow gullies and craggy pathways that criss-crossed the faces of Ulan-Dûz, Basrad-Fol, and the peak that Men called the Skytalon, along with the hundreds of other mountains in the huge range. Their cracks and fissures were quickly lost beneath a flawless blanket of white, becoming death-traps hidden beneath a curtain of cold white – a single misstep would mean certain death for anyone foolish enough to risk the passes in such weather.
Yet, cloaked and hooded, Gidwyn Greylocke weathered the storm. Heavy crook in one hand and the other keeping his cloak wrapped around himself, he forded the snow-swathed mountains he knew so well. The snow and wind burned his face, though his thick, dusky-blonde beard protected his cheeks from the worst of the winter’s onslaught. He even hummed a jolly song to himself as he pushed through the waist-deep sea of snow – though none could have heard his quiet singing over the wind’s scream.
There were few Hrudun Dwarves permitted to spend time in the Upper-World. Though in recent years the Synod of the Flame had allowed more and more Halflings to leave the Underkingdom and return from surface lands beyond, it was rare to find a Dwarf who lived on the surface and so frequently made passage to the Old City. But that was part of Gidwyn’s job.
The plucky Dwarf raised a hand to shield his small, beady eyes from the onslaught of slashing snowflakes. ‘Kunyiera!’ he cried in a sing-song voice, the final syllable a high-pitched, musical inflection. ‘Kunyieri, mythrela commen!’
My loves, come back to me, Gidwyn thought as he cried out his strange, song-like call. He paused to listen as the roaring wind plucked and carried his voice high over the mountains, silencing him in moments. This storm; t’is no place fer ye.
For a few moments, the Dwarf held his breath and leaned hard on his crook. He focused all his attention on the blaring wind around him and tried to listen through it. He closed his eyes, strained his ears, and focused with all his might.
A sound: singular, faint, distant. It was little more than a quivering cry, almost completely lost to the wind and snow, but Gidwyn could hear it.
There.
The Dwarf set off at as much of a run as he could manage. He pulled his heavy fur cloak around his shoulders and adjusted the hood as he went, barrelling head-first through the snow. His huge, heavy leather boots sent great clouds of white flying into the black wind as he ran. I’m comin’, he thought as he went. I’m comin’.
Gidwyn knew the crags of the Hrudun Druria – the Great Mountains – as well as the braids in his beard. He knew that three more paces to the right was a fissure hidden by snowfall that, should he misstep, would swallow him up and shatter his body. He also knew that, up the sharp stone rise to his left, was a particularly loose-looking wall of rocks. He watched them as he ran past, getting ready to dodge and roll should they come tumbling down upon him – but they did not. Praise the Fire that they do not fall this night, the Dwarf thought as he ran.
The inhospitable, jagged landscape that touched the clouds above could support precious little life, but Gidwyn had found a way. In fact, he saw a great beauty in the hostility of the land: the razor-like peaks and jagged gullies were more beautiful than any statue the masons in the Underkingdom could forge, and Gidwyn loved how first thing in the morning the sun danced in the ice that froze like glass around the grey stone of the mountains. It was all part of the wonder for the stocky Dwarf.
The sharp, cry-like noise came again, much closer this time. After a few more moments of near-blind advancement through the battering wind and snow, Gidwyn could see his goal. Faintly highlighted against the great white sea all around them, and clinging to the edge of a crag, was a small shape. It was, perhaps, the size of a dog, though the small knobbles on the small beast’s forehead and its cloven feet identified it as otherwise.
Gidwyn raced through the swirling snowstorm to the edge of the deep crag. ‘There y’are, m’ love,’ he said as he laid flat on his stomach, dangling his arms over the edge of the rise.
The baby greatgoat before Gidwyn was terrified; its eyes were wide with fear and it shivered in the freezing cold. Somehow – a miracle of Fire, Gidwyn thought – the small creature had managed to balance itself on a jutting stone a few feet below the edge of the precipice. The Dwarf had no idea how it had manged to get out of his sturdy stone barn, let alone how the creature had managed to get itself stranded in such a place.
The Dwarves of the Great Mountains had a long and rich history of empires, kingdoms and conquest. Wealth flowed like blood through the hallways under the mountains, yet few realised the importance of one simple animal to the survival of the Hrudunni. Without the greatgoat, there would have been no kings, queens, palaces or temples. The greatgoat was the humble animal which carried the Underkingdom on its back: providing everything from milk, leather and meat, to muscles that could bear burdens and backs that could be ridden. Peace and gold may have been plentiful in the Underkingdom, but Gidwyn knew that it was the broad shoulders of the greatgoat that had carried it to prosperity.
‘Too clever fer yer own good, eh?’ Gidwyn muttered into the snowstorm as he shuffled towards the edge of the precipice, his arms and hands extended below him. He ignored the two-hundred foot drop before him; he had seen much deeper, after all. Throatslash Crevasse ain’t all tha’ scary, aside from its silly name, Gidwyn thought as he reached out towards the baby greatgoat once again.
With more than half of his short frame jutting out into the nothingness of the crevasse, Gidwyn finally placed his large hands on the goat. The small animal let out a bleat of joy as it felt the well-known, rough hands of the Dwarf on its small body. Despite the urgency and danger, Gidwyn carefully picked up the small animal and cradled it for a moment, before tucking it inside his thick cloak, retreating back over the edge, and making a run for home.
It took the Dwarf little more than a half-hour to reach the robust stone structure he called his house. The farmhouse in which the greatgoat herder lived was shaped like an iron pot: squat and round, with bulging sides and a heavy, timber-reinforced roof. It was a large building, set in the shadow of a large rocky rise. A fat chimney stuck from the centre of the roof, though the house lacked windows which, in the cold of the Great Mountains, did little more than let warmth escape. Beside it was a structure of similar shape, size and build in which Gidwyn kept his goats. It even had its own chimney, for on cold nights like this, Gidwyn would light a furnace in the centre of the room to keep his greatgoats warm.
When he had built his home, Gidwyn had done so with nights such as this in mind: every greatgoat herder knew a story of a distant friend or relative who had built his home with windows and had them shatter in a wind, slicing his face up, or who had built his house too high, just to have it topple onto him during a storm. But Gidwyn knew he was safe – his home was a veritable fortress which the screaming cold and furious wind would never breach.
Gidwyn rushed to the thick wooden door and hammered on it with his fist. ‘Eoina,’ he called out, ‘it’s me. Let me in afore I freeze!’
There was a clunk from the far side of the door and the heavy wooden bolt was drawn back. Golden light spilled out into the snowstorm for a moment as Gidwyn rushed inside, and seconds later the mountains were once more plunged into darkness as the door was slammed and bolted behind him.
Gidwyn paused for a moment on the other side of the door to catch his breath. Blessed heat washed over him and he felt himself smile. It was strange to step from such boreal savagery into the gentle warmth of home; a large fire-pit sat in the middle of the single, circular room that made up the house, over which a dinner of sausages and bacon was cooking, filling the warm air with a rich and salty smell. Around the fire sat a number of figures: three large, wolf-like dogs, five greatgoats, and a single Dwarf-man. To one side of the home was a large bed covered in furs and cushions, and beside it was a small shrine to the Fire: a stone altar no larger than a loaf of bread, atop of which sat a candle of deepwax, a thick, herb-scented blood-red stick of wax that took months to burn down. The rest of the home was undecorated, for its character came from the dried meats and herbs that hung from its rafters and shelves, and from the pots and pans that were hung from a large rack over the fireplace.
‘Did ye find ‘im?’ Eoina said from behind Gidwyn.
Gidwyn turned to look at his wife – A finer and more ‘andsome woman I ne’er saw, he thought as he looked at her. Stout and strong, with arms that could wrestle a boar and a face ringed with fire-red hair that could make hearts melt, Eoina’s expression was one of concern. Gidwyn let her wonder for a few more moments, enjoying the way her small nose twitched as she waited anxiously.
‘Aye,’ the Dwarf said gently, opening his cloak and letting the greatgoat kid hop onto the stone floor. The small greatgoat bleated appreciatively before rushing off to join the others around the fire, where it nestled in amongst its pony-sized kin.
‘Course lil’ brother found ‘is goat!’ A voice cried from the fire. ‘It is wha’ ‘e does after all!’
Gidwyn smiled at the Dwarf-man beside the flames. ‘Ye didnae worry fer me even a lil’, Galahad?’
The other Dwarf-male, Galahad, waved a hand. He was a broad fellow, with heavy shoulders and arms, a head full of braids and a beard plaited into a great, ornate rope. ‘Nae,’ he said, picking up a large tankard and taking a long glug. ‘Ye woo ‘em goats like ye wooed Eoina – not sure ‘ow ye do it, but yer damn good at it, Fire be praised!’
Eoina clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. ‘Pipe down Gally, ye cheeky sod,’ she said, picking up a blanket and crossing the wide, warm space to find the stray kid. ‘When are ye gonna ask Torith to marry ye, anyway?’
‘Eh,’ Galahad grumbled, ‘probably never if ‘er pig-‘ead father gets in the way any more.’
Whilst his wife and elder brother discussed Galahad’s struggling love-life, Gidwyn removed his cloak and filled himself a mug of mead from a barrel he and his wife kept close to the door.
‘Any other visitors recently?’ Galahad was asking Eiona as Gidwyn sat down by the fire amongst his three wolf-like dogs: Karveth, Coren, and Synera.
The three animals were enormous by the standard of both dogs and wolves: closer to ponies in size, Hrudun Vjalhindes were exceptionally rare and highly intelligent creatures – allegedly the forefathers of werewolves. Gidwyn had found the trio when they were pups, abandoned by their mother, and reared them as his own.
‘Visitors?’ Eoina responded, reaching down to pat Karveth – the largest and shaggiest of the three wolf-dogs, with mismatched, gold and blue eyes. ‘Oh aye. Had a Human party from Altmeria a few weeks back, remember Gid?’
‘Oh, nice bunch,’ Gidwyn said, sipping his mead, enjoying the warm flavour spreading down his throat. He reached down and scratched Coren’s chin in the spot he liked it. Coren was the smallest of the three wolf-dogs, with a soft, light brown coat and a sharp face. The enormous animal let out a low, happy grumble. ‘Shame, awful shame.’
‘Aye, t’is,’ Eoina said with a sigh. ‘We always try an’ dissuade ‘em, but tha’s the thing wit’ them Humans: they’re determined t’ ‘ave a first person t’ do everythin’.’
Gidwyn nodded his head reached across to where the silver-coated female wolf-dog, Synera, lay and slowly ran his fingers through her shaggy haunches. She was his favourite – Although a father shouldnae ‘ave favourites, he told himself.
‘Aside from them, nae,’ Eoina continued. ‘Explorers getting’ fewer an’ fewer. Those Vidorians rarely get far either, oft not beyond Axefall Canyon.’
Galahad laughed. ‘Really? I know Dwarf-lads still wet behind the ears and wi’ no hair on their faces who could make it further than tha’!’
Gidwyn shrugged. ‘At least the Empire’s boys turn around an’ go ‘ome. Others don’t.’ Gidwyn chewed his lip for a moment. ‘Sometimes find ‘em frozen stiff out by Axefall a few weeks later.’
‘Y’ ever search further?’ Galahad asked. ‘Go up to the Last Cairn?’
‘No,’ Gidwyn said, shuddering. ‘Ne’er beyond there.’
There was a moment of melancholy silence as the weight of Gidwyn’s words sank in. The Great Mountains were a notoriously inhospitable environment, even amongst the hardly Halfling-folk. The Humans of the Empire and its adjacent provinces, however, had a fascination with the Great Mountains. Legends of trolls and wyverns, of giant wolves and dragons guarding ancient treasures often attracted parties of adventurers to try and scale the Great Mountains. They would struggle through the snows up beyond Axefall Canyon, towards the Last Cairn and then head beyond it towards Orthân Vaarl. After that, none of them ever returned.
Some of the Halfling-folk told stories of a curse upon the mountains; those who were not pure of heart and light of soul would be cast down from lofty heights, to fall and be broken on the rocks below, a punishment for their transgressions. Others told tales of terrible creatures that dwelt in the black crags and encircled the mountainous peaks: ancient basilisks and wyverns, creatures of pure frost and snow with a hatred for all life that would torment and destroy any warm-blooded creature that dared enter their frozen realm. Gidwyn put little faith in such folklore, but he himself never dared to take the highest paths around to the north side of the Great Mountains. Occasionally, he lost a goat up that way – but when he reached the Last Cairn, he would go no further. The crags and fissures of Orthân Vaarl wait beyond the Cairn, and nowt but death lingers there.
Gidwyn’s farm was, as far as he knew, the highest-altitude settlement on the southern side of the Great Mountains – he knew little of the north-facing side, for the crags and gullies he would have to navigate to get around the mountains were too dangerous even for him. As a result, every now and then, a party of adventurers would appear at their door. Some simply wanted to spend a night in the warmth, whilst others often threatened loot and plunder, having realised the Great Mountains held nothing but snow and death. Gidwyn and Eoina never had a problem with the looters, though; one snarl from Karveth, Coren or Synera often saw off any would-be thieves – even some of the older greatgoat rams could get extremely aggressive. An’ no-one wants a goat the size o’ a bear buttin’ ‘em.
‘Any thoughts on when yer gonna ‘ead back to the Old City?’ Gidwyn asked his brother in order to break the silence.
Galahad shrugged. ‘Not outstayed me welcome already, ‘ave I?’
Gidwyn laughed. ‘Yer always welcome, brother.’
Galahad grinned at his younger sibling. ‘Few days,’ he said. ‘Wait fer the worst o’ this storm t’ pass, then ill ‘ead back with the convoy tha’ delivers yer next load o’ supplies. Sound good?’
‘Very good,’ Gidwyn said with a nod. ‘No campaigns?’
‘Nae,’ Galahad said and shook head slowly. ‘Queen Ffyon’s like ‘er mother – peaceable. Though rumour ‘as it there’s trouble in the south.’
‘Above or below?’ Eoina asked.
‘Above,’ Galahad responded. ‘Tha’ Empire o’ the Vidorians ‘as been on-an’-off at war wit’ itself for the last year or two. Looks like things may be heatin’ up again.’
Gidwyn sighed and shook his head. ‘Well, ye jus’ be careful, brother,’ he said to Galahad. ‘Ye an’ Eoina are all the family I got left, an’ I’ll no be seein’ either o’ ya taken away jus’ yet.’
Galahad grinned at his little brother and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Ye’ve nowt t’ worry ‘bout, Giddy,’ he said with a broad-faced grin. ‘Nowt at all.’
The rest of the evening was spent sitting around the golden-glowing firepit amongst the snoring greatgoats and Gidwyn’s wolf-dogs. Light-hearted tales of old were told, and laughter was had as more mead flowed and the small family spoke of happy times shared together. They were oblivious to the chaos outside the walls of the squat home, and of the darkness that the screaming wind brought to the mountains.
*
Gidwyn and Galahad arose early the next morning, leaving Eoina to rest. Clasping wide-bladed shovels in their hands and dressed in thick fur cloaks, and with Gidwyn’s three wolf-like dogs at their heels, the two brothers stepped out into the beautiful, white-light of the stunning new day.
The storm had passed and left only the thinnest, fluffiest clouds in the sky. The cold sun shone down on the Great Mountains, making the ice-capped tips of the jutting, jagged rocks that surrounded Gidwyn’s home glitter like stars. The snow, almost up to the brothers’ shoulders, was untouched and lay like a flawless carpet across the flat places amongst the mountains. The white world shone like the sky, and Gidwyn sighed happily.
‘Yer a lucky fella, Giddy,’ Galahad said to his little brother as they stood in the doorway together. ‘Very lucky indeed.’
Galahad smiled. He and his brother were looking south. Through the gaps in the jagged peaks and a few scudding dregs of cloud below them, lay the land known as the Imperial Heartlands. Long, rolling green pastures stretched out below for hundreds of miles, basking in the sunlight of a bright winter day. Miles below them lay a patchwork of fields, villages, estates, and towns, all so perfectly placed Gidwyn often found himself wondering if he was looking down upon a painting drawn by a divine artist.
Gidwyn and Galahad stood for a few moments longer, following the thin, vein-like rivers and tributaries that wove their way across the emerald green lands miles below, before eventually Galahad pointed to a large, white shape on the horizon, glittering under the sun like the new snow.
‘Is that the Imperial Capital?’
‘Aye, Vidoropolis the Humans call it.’
The two stood in silence for a few moments longer, drinking in the incredible view. ‘How come I’ve ne’er seen it before?’ Galahad asked.
‘Rare t’ get a day this clear,’ Gidwyn replied. ‘C’mon; the goats ain’t gonna wait forever.’
Shovels in hands, the two Dwarf-brothers set to work clearing the snow outside the wide, round, stone-built home and its adjacent barn. They laughed and joked as they went, jolly in the crisp-cold morning. As soon as they had carved a pathway to the stone barn in which Gidwyn kept the rest of his herd, the younger of the two Dwarf-brothers pulled back the heavy bolt on the wide wooden doors and flung them open before standing to one side.
The herd of sturdy, pony-sized goats with heavy, curved horns and wide, cloven feet began to pour out into the snow, gambolling and kicking as they went. One Dwarf-brother stood either side of the doors and began to count as the large goats spilled out into the fresh snow, kicking and leaping as they went.
‘How many did ye get?’ Gidwyn called to Galahad once the final kid was out.
‘Twenty-four,’ the elder brother called back.
‘Praise the Fire, ye can count.’
‘Cheeky sod.’
Gidwyn directed Galahad to the heavy sacks goat’s feed – a mixture of dried grains and the hardy lichen and bracken that the goats foraged beneath the snow that the goats ate when wild – then set off with his three dogs at his heels to find the kid that had been lost in the storm the previous night. He found the young animal close to its mother’s hooves, standing in the snow she had already stamped down. Gidwyn was glad to see the kid was unharmed and apparently unfazed by the traumatic events of the previous evening, and bleated happily when it saw him.
‘Did y’ hear tha’?’ Galahad called suddenly, his voice quietened by a sudden hiss of mountain wind.
Gidwyn turned to look at his brother, who was carrying a large hessian sack out of the house. ‘Hear wha’?’
Galahad held up a hand for a moment, a heavy frown on his brow. ‘Tha’!’ he called again.
Gidwyn’s eyes narrowed. He pricked up his large ears and held his breath, listening hard through the chorus of bleating and hoof-stamping around him.
And there it was. Far-off and just caught on the gentle wind that blew through the peaks, was a high-pitched, pained cry. To Gidwyn, it sounded like a greatgoat kid in distress. But tha’s impossible, he thought as he listened to the strange, distant sound. I’ve counted ‘em all – I’m no short.
It came again and Gidwyn’s eyes narrowed. It was too high-pitched to be a greatgoat of any age. ‘Somethin’ ain’t right, Gally,’ he said darkly. ‘Somethin’ definitely ain’t right. Stay ‘ere wit’ the herd, I’m gonna go ‘ave a look.’
Without another word, Gidwyn set off through the snow, heading north-east. Soon, his home was far behind him and he could barely hear the sound of the bleating greatgoats and Galahad’s curses as he struggled to empty the feed-bag into the large wooden trough attached to the side of the stone barn.
Soon, the only sounds Gidwyn could hear was the whistle of the winter wind through the high peaks and crags around him, the sound of his heavy boots in the deep snow, and the strange, faint cry borne to him on the whistling wind.
It was definitely getting louder the further northwards he headed. He passed Iron Peak, the twisted spire of stone that jutted like a spearhead from the mountainside, and soon had gone as far as the fissure he called the Devourer – a massive, maw-like opening in the stone that swallowed up anything that did not know of the small, rickety rope bridge built across it a half-mile from where Gidwyn was standing.
Gidwyn never went beyond the Devourer unless he could not help it – it was his border with the North Passage, the deep, rocky gulley all adventurers went into and never returned from. But still the high-pitched crying was on the wind, and it was perilously close now. Gritting his teeth, Gidwyn hurried onwards, a chill colder than ice touching his heart – that of fear.
The Dwarf soon found the rickety, swaying rope-bridge, and the cry was louder than ever before. On the other side of the wobbling wooden structure lay a flat, snow-covered plain the likes of which Gidwyn infrequently walked upon and did not know so well. There could be all manner o’ new cracks an’ fissures formed since I was last ‘ere, the Dwarf thought as he hesitated. Yet the cry came again – piercing and shrill. With a growl of anger, Gidwyn stepped onto the swaying, ice-covered bridge.
It was wide enough for a wagon to fit across, though why anyone would bring a wagon this far northwards in the Great Mountains was incomprehensible to Gidwyn. Gripping the rime-scarred rope to his left, Gidwyn carefully made his way across the ice-covered wooden planks that made up the bridge. ‘Whoever built this was a bleedin’ fool,’ the Dwarf muttered as he went. He was not afraid of heights, but the dizzying drop down into the Devourer below him was enough to make even Gidwyn’s stomach turn. Fang-like rocks glittering with ice and frost thrust up towards him, promising to tear his fragile form apart. Yet still the strange cry continued.
Gidwyn breathed a sigh of relief when he made it to the other side of the bridge and immediately began his pursuit of the strange noise again, doing all he could to forget about the nauseating trip across the bridge. Treading carefully, Gidwyn made his way across the wide, flat, glittering plain of snow that stretched away from the Devourer and towards another set of rising and falling peaks. ‘Ow much further? he thought as he went, but he knew it would not be long, for the cry was almost piercing now.
But even though the sound was close, his courage began to wane. As he hurried over the darkening mountainside, pushing through the thickening fog of cloud that closed in around him and began to sap his breath from his lungs, he saw a squat, pillar-like shape slowly materialise through the mist before him.
The Last Cairn.
Gidwyn felt his heart beat a little faster. Framed through the clouds against the dark stone of the mountainside, the Last Cairn was little more than a large stack of heavy rocks around which someone had tied a long length of blue cloth that snapped in the wind like a whip – a crude effigy for the mountainside, its ancient meaning long since lost. But behind it loomed Orthân Vaarl – the terrible maze of ice-scourged and frost-entombed crags and canyons that twisted and writhed in between the great peaks to the north.
But Gidwyn had given the Last Cairn a new meaning. The Last Cairn was, for Gidwyn, the point of no return. Nothin’ lives beyond there, he told himself as he slowly walked up the steep mountainside towards it. Crags and gullies that could swallow entire armies, creatures left long-undisturbed, and a world scarred by an aeon of unbroken and infallible cold.
Then Gidwyn put his foot on something. He frowned, for it did not feel like the snow-covered stone. Alarmed, he fell to his knees and began to frantically dig away at the snow beneath him with his hands, tossing great white plumes into the air as he went.
As he dug through the recently fallen layer, the snow at his fingertips began to change colour: first, there were a few spots of red, but before he knew it, Gidwyn was scooping whole handfuls of red snow and tossing them aside. This is no’ good, he thought as he dug. Really, really no’ good.
Suddenly, his fingers touched something that felt like cloth beneath the red-dyed snow. Gidwyn closed his fists and pulled. The object was heavy, but Gidwyn was strong – decades wrestling greatgoats had left him as sturdy and dependable as the creatures he farmed, and that was in addition to the natural brawniness most Dwarves developed from adulthood.
Rising to his feet and clutching whatever lay beneath the snow in his strong fists once more, Gidwyn gave the object one more heave and felt it come loose. The snow shifted, like a sheet of fresh parchment being crumpled in a fist, and Gidwyn almost leapt back in horror.
Gidwyn found himself looking straight into the frozen-blue face of what looked like a Human. A pair of cold-hardened green eyes stared up at Gidwyn, the frost transfixing them into an expression of shock and horror. A snow-filled mouth hung open, and twisted, icy fingers grappled at a long, heavy arrow buried in the figure’s stomach.
For a moment, Gidwyn was at a loss. He stared at the corpse, dressed in a heavy green cloak and wearing ornate, fur-lined leathers and with the crude arrow embedded deep into his stomach. When Gidwyn went to put the corpse down, the figure’s hood fell back, revealing long, brown hair and a pair of pointed ears.
‘An Elf…?’ Gidwyn breathed. He looked like a soldier, but Gidwyn had never seen an Elven soldier before so he did not know for sure. There was an empty scabbard at the figure’s waist, though other than that there was no signs of looting on the body.
The cry came again. This time, it was extremely close.
Gidwyn sprang to his feet and began to run through the snow as fast as he could. Great flakes of white stuck in his beard and the sunlight breaking through the clouds onto the snow before him made his eyes hurt, but he was determined.
Suddenly, he noticed an odd shape sticking up out of the white carpet before him – ornately decorated and green-painted wooden sides with a canvas covering straining under the weight of the night’s snow. A wagon? Here? Gidwyn thought, continuing to hurry forwards.
As he reached the snow-battered wagon, he stumbled into the remnants of a campsite. The handful of tents had collapsed in the snowstorm, and around the guttered-out campfire in the middle of the small ring of ropes, poles, and torn cloth, were more bodies. All were Elven, all were dressed like the first, and all were full of arrows and criss-crossed with bloody slashes.
For a moment, Gidwyn stood in the snow-covered camp utterly dumbfounded. He had seen the dead before – sometimes he would happen across unfortunate climbers or Dwarves who had mistimed their voyages – but he had never seen anything like this. There was so much pain. So much blood.
The cry came again, long, pained, frightened. Gidwyn turned and looked at the snow-covered wagon. Partially hidden beneath the fallen snow he could see two dead horses, their flanks and throats full of the same crude-looking arrows that peppered their frozen masters. Gidwyn took a step towards the wagon as the cry came once more and carefully clambered onto the driver’s step, then poked his head inside.
Gidwyn’s heart sank as his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom within. It was a large space, full of furs, cushions, and a few boxes and barrels of foodstuffs. There were two adult figures Gidwyn could make out: a man wearing a fine silver-blue robe, his body covered in stab-wounds and a long dagger in his frozen fist, and beside him lay a woman, her dress torn where she too had been slashed and stabbed.
The two Elves held one-another in death, their faces frozen in pain and sadness, their bodies covered in blood and wounds. Between them, wrapped in a thick bundle of furs, was the source of the piercing wail Gidwyn had heard from his home.
On the edge of tears, Gidwyn stepped into the wagon and crossed to the back where the couple were sprawled. He looked down at the bundle that lay between them and into the bright-blue eyes of a tiny baby she-Elf, wailing and bawling in fear and sorrow, knowing that something was terribly wrong yet unable to comprehend the tragedy written in blood around her. The hair on her head was as white as the snow through which Gidwyn had charged to find her, and her ears were long and narrow, pointed at their tips.
Gently, smiling as best as he could despite the tears in his eyes, Gidwyn reached down and picked up the bundle. ‘Hush now, lil’ snow-child,’ he said gently, rocking the baby in his beefy arms. ‘Giddy’s got ye, ye’ve nowt t’ fear anymore.’
The baby girl looked up at Gidwyn with her enormous blue eyes and let out a happy squeal, before reaching out of the furs around her with a tiny hand and taking hold of his beard. Despite the horror wrought around them, Gidwyn could not help but laugh.
‘You’re a wee thing,’ he said gently, getting to his feet, ‘but don’t ye worry. Giddy’s ‘ere. Giddy’ll look after ye, little gift o’ the snow.’
With one last glance around, Gidwyn tucked the baby girl inside his cloak and leapt from the wagon. He set off at a run back the way he had come, going as fast as he could. He left the slaughter behind, cradling its only survivor in his arms.
*
‘Because, sweetheart,’ Gidwyn said, standing beside where the ten-year-old Elf-girl knelt, ‘it’s our way o’ sayin’ thank-ye to the Fire. ‘Tween Fire an’ Stone, the whole World ‘as been made; tha’s includin’ ye and me. So we keep this lil’ candle as a way o’ sayin’ thank-ye.’
Kiryae nodded slowly. ‘But the Syladrian Dwarves don’t agree with you, do they?’
Gidwyn sighed. She’s too damn smart fer ‘er own good. ‘Aye, they don’t,’ he said. ‘They believe in the Great Creator, or the Maker; a great celestial bein’ who works at ‘is anvil all day forgin’ worlds and folks to live on ‘em.’
‘That’s not so different from what the Dwarves of the Great Mountains believe about the Fire, is it?’ Kiryae asked, affixing Gidwyn with her piercing, innocent eyes. ‘You believe that all things come from the Fire, which crafts the world from the Stone, and-…’
‘Kiryae,’ Eoina said gently from beside the fire-pit, ‘leave yer pa alone, ‘e’s ‘ad a long day!’
‘But I want to know!’ the she-Elf girl protested.
‘It’s alright, Eoina,’ Gidwyn said, sitting down beside Kiryae. ‘What d’ye want to know, exactly?’
At ten years old, Kiryae was already taller than both of her Dwarven foster-parents by at least a hand-and-a-half’s height – perhaps two hands if Gidwyn measured by the long, pointed ears that extended past the crown of her head. In fact, Gidwyn was pretty sure she was the tallest person living within the lands of the Underkingdom. She was lanky and gangly, stuck in the extended period of near-adolescence that long-lived Elves suffered for a good decade, with silver-white hair that every Dwarf on the Hrudun mountains secretly envied. For hours, Eoina and Kiryae would sit by the fire pit together whilst Eoina cared for Kiryae’s hair. The Dwarf-woman would tell Kiryae stories of ancient Halflings – and Elves, if she could think of the right tale – and comb, plait, and braid Kiryae’s long, silver cascade of hair until it was a glittering work of woven art.
As soon as she had been old enough to ask why she did not look like other Dwarves, Gidwyn and Eoina had told her the truth of how she had come to be with them. They had told her they had not known her name, or who her parents were, or what they were doing so far north in the Great Mountains on such a stormy night. They had told her that her name Kir-yae meant ‘Winter’s Gift’ in High Dwarven. She had only been five or six years old at the time, but Gidwyn had been proud of the maturity with which Kiryae had handled the truth. She had never asked about it again, though.As Gidwyn sat beside the pretty Elven girl with ice-blue eyes and a wit as sharp as a honed dagger, he found himself looking back on the days that followed her rescue. Whilst his lips told the young Elf-girl of how the Flame Pontiff and his Burning Deacons had once upon a time been little more than a cult, but now played a direct role in the governance of the Underkingdom, images of walking through the snow, desperately searching for any sign of the strange killers of the Elven party, flashed through his mind.
‘What do the Men believe, Father?’ Kiryae’s question brought Gidwyn back to reality.
Gidwyn let out a chuckle. ‘Careful wit’ yer questions, girl: Humans ‘ave fought wars o’er less.’
Kiryae looked at Gidwyn, puzzled, but was interrupted by a knock on the door.
‘Open up, Giddy, ‘s cold as a greatgoat’s arse out ‘ere, and the company smells about as good as one!’ a voice said.
Eoina was at the door before anyone else and quickly pulled it open. The bright light of the early afternoon day outside flooded in, and was followed quickly by a stocky, cloaked figure.
Eoina embraced Galahad as he stepped through, and he kissed her forehead. ‘Not frozen yet?’ Galahad asked with a laugh, as he always did every time he came to visit.
‘Nae,’ Eoina replied. ‘How’s Torith?’
The last decade had been unkind to Galahad. A year after Gidwyn had found Kiryae in the frozen wilderness, Queen Ffyon of the Unerkingdom had passed a writ allowing for certain members of the Synod of Flame to hold both secular and ecclesiastical offices, which came at the expense of the seats of some old aristocratic families. A rebellion had begun that had taken six years to be put down. As a loyal soldier of the queen, Galahad had been called upon to do his duty – a duty which had almost cost him his life.
‘Uncle Gally!’ Kiryae cried, jumping to her feet and crossing to embrace the bald-headed but magnificently-bearded Dwarf. ‘Can you tell me the story of how you lost your arm again? You make it so exciting!’
Galahad gathered Kiryae up in his one good arm and squeezed her tightly. He’d be a great father, Gidwyn thought as he watched on with a smile. Although Galahad had married Torith, the woman of his dreams, she had fallen terribly sick whilst he had been away on campaign, and when Galahad had returned, she had been unable to bear any children. The couple had been heartbroken.
‘Kiryae, he’s barely through the door, give the fella a chance!’ Eoina cried.
Galahad kissed Kiryae’s cheek – it was as high as he could reach – then turned to his younger brother and embraced him.
‘Too long,’ Gidwyn said as he held his brother to him. ‘Far too long.’
‘Bein’ a commander ‘is ‘ard work,’ Galahad said, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Farmin’ goats ‘is ‘arder.’
Gidwyn’s eyes fell to his dear brother’s left arm. He still was not used to seeing Galahad with no lower-left arm – though he had grown tired of listening to the tale of how he lost it fending off a score of Yaghu alone. Instead of let the limb go to waste – or so Galahad had said – he had a solid metal buckler with a long spike protruding from its centre belted to the end of his handless forearm.
Another figure stepped into the doorway, a large number of Dwarf-folk in armour and heavy cloaks behind him. ‘Good afternoon, Mister Greylocke,’ a higher-pitched, nasal voice said.‘Ramscoldt,’ Gidwyn said, stepping away from his brother and bowing his head cordially. ‘Your journey was easy, I trust?’
Phineaus Ramscoldt and Gidwyn had known one-another for a long time, though the length of their relationship was not reflected in any kind of amity. Ramscoldt, a sour-faced Gnome, was head of the Queen’s Caravans; as such, it was his job to ensure that all farms in the Upper-World from which the queen demanded tithes remained stocked at all times. Passage down from the various farms dotted over the Great Mountains was extremely difficult and hazardous – many of the Halflings that made the journey died. Gidwyn himself had not been down to the Old City and the rest of the Underkingdom since he had found Kiryae, though Eoina tried to make an annual trip to see her father.
Although there was a small village called Sky’s Anvil roughly three miles down the mountains, where travelling merchants from the Underkingdom and the Halflings who lived upon the mountains regularly convened, it was no trade hub and could not support the hundreds of Dwarf men, women, and children who lived on the mountains by necessity of the kingdom. And so, because of the dangerous journey, every month or so, Ramscoldt would appear by the queen’s instruction outside Gidwyn’s home with his greatgoat-drawn wagon and his small army of hired Dwarven mercenaries to supply goods to Gidwyn – for a price. He was, as Gidwyn often called him, a glorified travelling merchant.
He was small, even for a Gnome, with a hooked nose and large, outward-sticking ears. His eyes were hidden behind a thickly-rimmed pair of brass spectacles, and his relatively feeble, thin body was encased within at least half a dozen layers of furs. He wore an expression Kiryae once described to Gidwyn as looking like “someone who has just had a fistful of snow dropped into their britches.”‘D’ ye ‘ave much stock left, Ramscoldt?’ Gidwyn asked, eager to see the unpleasant little Gnome on his way.
‘There’s no rush, Mister Greylocke,’ Ramscoldt said in an infuriatingly flat voice. ‘I invoke the Right of the Queen’s Sanctuary. As her representative, I am hereby legally allowed to spend one night at your home and-…’
‘I bloody know, ye sod,’ Gidwyn grumbled, ‘ye pull the same thing every time ye come ‘ere. Get ye and yer boys’ backsides inside an’ close the door behind ye before ye let all the warm out.’
Ramscoldt narrowed his beady eyes. ‘Very well,’ he snapped. He looked over his shoulder and waved a hand. Sound erupted from outside as Ramscoldt’s mercantile wagon was driven into Gidwyn’s barn and the two large greatgoats that drew it were unharnessed. A few moments later, eight hefty Dwarf-folk – four men and four women, all dressed in leather and chainmail beneath layers of thick fur – entered the farmhouse and closed the door.
‘How ye manage a six-day trek wit’ ‘im is beyond me, Gally,’ Gidwyn said with a grunt.
Galahad shrugged. ‘His hirelings ain’t so bad. He’s too aloof t’ talk wit’ ‘em anyhow; spends most o’ ‘is time hidden in ‘is cart, complainin’ about the cold.’
Gidwyn rolled his eyes. ‘Ye won’t mind spendin’ evenin' wit’ ‘im, then.’
Galahad’s face fell. ‘I didnae say tha’!’
Gidwyn was already on his feet. ‘C’mon Kiryae, let’s go an’ see ‘ow the kids are doin’.’
Kiryae, who had settled amongst Karveth, Coren, and Synera near the fire-pit in the middle of the large room, looked up, her brilliant blue eyes shining as she scratched Coren’s chin in the spot he liked. ‘Of course, father,’ she said. She rose with an effortlessness and grace no Dwarf could ever muster, picked up her heavy cloak from beside the door, and joined Gidwyn.
‘Father?’ Gidwyn heard Ramscoldt say. ‘She still hasn’t accepted she’s not a Halfling, then?’
Gidwyn gritted his teeth as he whistled for his three wolf-dogs, all of whom obediently rose and followed him. ‘She knows well wha’ she is, Ramscoldt,’ the Dwarf said as Karveth, Coren, and Synera padded over to him. ‘Family is more than blood – ye’d know if ye ‘ad a friend.’
There were a few muffled chuckles from the Dwarves around the fire as Gidwyn led Kiryae out through the heavy doors and into the thick snow below. Gidwyn could feel Ramscoldt glaring at him as he left, as the irritable little Gnome always did.
Gidwyn had little choice but to offer Ramscoldt shelter for the night, as much as he despised the Gnome. He was the Gnome’s last call on his passage through the mountains, and he would never make it back to the Sky's Anvil before nightfall – and the mountains were not a place to be caught in the night. If something were to happen to Ramscoldt, Gidwyn knew the blame would probably fall on him.
Still, Gidwyn knew he was going to need a few moments of quiet before facing Ramscoldt that day. He took a deep breath of the freezing-cold but blissfully sharp mountain air and enjoyed the mist and cloud-fogged view. The day had been overcast and the clouds above were heavy and grey as the sun sank towards the horizon. Light snow tonight, nae doubt, Gidwyn thought as he hoisted his crook and stepped forwards.
‘Father?’ Kiryae said as she stepped through the door behind Gidwyn and pulled it closed. ‘What did Ramscoldt mean?’Gidwyn began to walk through the snow, grumbling and muttering to himself for a moment. ‘Ramscoldt’s an ol’ coot,’ he said.
‘He doesn’t like me, does he?’ Kiryae said without as much as a hint of resentment in her voice.
Gidwyn sighed, looking into the churned-up snow at his feet. ‘Herd’s gone eastward, as usual,’ he said, hoping to ignore Kiryae’s question – though he knew better than to try. ‘We should probably round ‘em up an’ get ‘em back in if there’s t’ be snow this eve.’
‘Why doesn’t he like me?’ Kiryae said, gliding through the snow as if it was a fog. Her blue eyes sparkled, her pretty face quirked in curiosity.
Gidwyn sighed. ‘Some Halflings are like tha’,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Lots o’ us believe tha’ we’re better off without the Upper-World.’
‘But we live on the Upper-World,’ Kiryae said. ‘If we did not have the Upper-World, the Underkingdom would get no greatgoats. Then what would they do?’
Gidwyn tramped through the snow, his large dogs around him and Kiryae at his side. His home disappeared behind a rise as he walked further and further away. ‘Tha’s a question I don’t know ‘ow t’ answer, Kiryae,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I’m a greatgoat herder, no’ a politician.’
‘I’ll ask Ramscoldt,’ Kiryae said airily, turning her gaze to the clouds around them. ‘I’d be interested to see what he has to say.’
Gidwyn sighed again. Strange girl, he thought to himself as he whistled for his three large dogs. He and Eoina often asked one-another if they were raising Kiryae right. She was unlike any Halfling or Upper-Worlder the Dwarf couple had ever met. She was reserved, quiet and insightful, yet simultaneously seemed very detached from reaity. It were as if there were a pane of glass between her and the rest of civilisation – she was standing outside looking in.
But, as Gidwyn was reminded as he followed the greatgoat’s tracks with the she-Elf child beside him, there was a wisdom to her that he could not put his finger on. There was a depth in her piercing blue eyes that was almost a world-weariness. She looked at Esdaria through melancholy eyes that seemed distant and far away - as if she had seen it all before ten-thousand times before.
Maybe it’s just what Elves are like, Gidwyn thought as he ascended a steep bluff and paused at the top to allow Kiryae to catch up. She strode effortlessly, her heavy hide-sewn dress and thick boots worn as lightly as she stepped.
It did not take the two of them long to arrive at their destination: a huge, icy plain tucked in the cleft between two peaks. Tall, jagged rocks rose and fell like trees across the tundra-like space. Here and there, a few of the hardiest birds circled, including what looked like a rock-tailed falcon to Gidwyn’s eye.
‘Father?’
‘Aye, Kiryae?’
Kiryae, blue eyes flashing with their strange, icy beauty, smiled. ‘May I sing for the greatgoats?’ she asked.
Gidwyn’s smiled broadened. ‘Always.’
Kiryae turned to face the eastward horizon. Snow-covered peaks rose high and wide above the skittering clouds, and the few rays of sun that made it to the snow danced and shone upon the sea of snowflakes. She took a breath and began to sing a sad tune in High Dwarvish.
‘Kunyiera, mythrela commen!
Kunyiera, mythrela rugel!
Kunyiera, mythrela commen;
Fyr thundaarstel foult ist commenel.’
Kiryae’s voice was crystal-clear and high-pitched, echoing around the mountainside, carried far by the whistling wind. ‘My loves, come back to me,’ Gidwyn repeated after his foster-daughter, ‘My loves, to me come running. My loves, come back to me, for a terrible storm is coming.’
Hearing Kiryae sing the old herder’s song brought a tear to Gidwyn’s eye every time. As he watched the young Elven girl call over the mountains, sure enough, a few far-off, dark specs appeared in the distance and began to quickly move towards where he, Kiryae, and his three enormous wolf-dogs were standing.
‘Perfect every time, eh,’ Gidwyn said, wiping his eyes. ‘Best voice in the Underkingdom.’ Best voice in the World.
Kiryae turned to face Gidwyn and gave him one of her rare, genuine smiles. As she turned to face Gidwyn, the three dogs who had walked around him all the way from the home crossed to Kiryae and sat by her feet. Karveth, the alpha, even nuzzled Kiryae for affection. The Elf-girl laughed and patted the huge dog’s nose.
Strange girl, Gidwyn thought fondly and turned back to look at where his herd of greatgoats were making quick progress towards where they stood. Karveth ne’er pesters anyone else for a fuss.
Quite suddenly, Kiryae interrupted the silence. ‘Have you ever seen the world that lies below the mountains?’
‘You mean the lands o’ Men?’ Gidwyn shook his head. ‘Only from upon high where we live. I’ve ne’er walked the roads tha’ criss-cross the Upper-World.’
Kiryae nodded slowly, peering down through the clouds around them at the Imperial Heartland below. ‘It seems sad.’
Gidwyn frowned. ‘Wha’ makes ye say tha’?’
Kiryae’s gaze almost seemed to glaze over for a moment. Her fingers tickled Karveth’s ear-tips absent-mindedly and a forlorn expression passed across her smooth features. ‘Human-folk are so short-lived,’ she said. ‘They are born into the wars of their fathers and their grandfathers and fight for people they’ve never met. They toil and suffer in the names of kings and emperors, and then they die, never once seeing the fruits of their labours. They leave the toil to their children, and the cycle continues.’
‘Aye, but,’ Gidwyn said, taking Kiryae’s slender, pale hand, ‘Humans are a driven folk. Many achieve more afore breakfast than some Dwarves will in a decade.’
Kiryae looked pained. ‘But their wars,’ she said. ‘Why do they fight so long?’
Gidwyn shrugged. ‘So do Dwarves an’ Elves,’ he said, patting Synera’s head as the huge wolf-like dog nuzzled his free hand. ‘We fight an’ bleed jus’ as much as Humans.’
‘But we live long,’ Kiryae said. ‘We see our wars come to an end; the Humans die before any resolution is reached, and their kin blindly fight too!’ The Elf-girl seemed almost distraught for a moment. ‘Why, father?’ she said. ‘I don’t see the sense in it!’
‘And nor do I,’ Gidwyn said gently, a small smile on his lips. ‘Yer a very clever girl, Kiryae, with a heart o’ gold an’ more love to give than all others. Don’t let yerself be pained though, m’ love.’ He lifted his foster-daughter’s hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘I’m very proud o’ ye.’
As the herd of greatgoats flocked around them, enticed by the sound of Kiryae’s voice, the young she-Elf smiled down at Gidwyn, her yes still sad. ‘Not everyone is like you, though, are they, father?’
Gidwyn sighed, casting his eyes over the animals flocking around the Elven girl. ‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘No, they aren’t.’
*
As Gidwyn and Kiryae made their way back towards home, the goats keenly following Kiryae who sung to them every now and then, the wind brought grim tidings to them. Voices were on the air – angered, raised voices.
‘Oh, Fire preserve,’ Gidwyn growled and set off at a jog back towards his home. Soon, the wide, squat stone building and its stone barn swung into view, and the raised voices grew even louder. Gidwyn hurried towards his home, dogs at his heels, and threw the heavy oaken door open.
‘All I’m saying,’ Ramscoldt snapped as Gidwyn opened the door, ‘is that Queen Ffyon and the Council of Flame have a right to know that there is an Elf living within the jurisdiction of her kingdom!’
‘And ye’ll wha’?’ Eoina growled, pointing a fat finger into the Gnome’s chest. ‘Tell ‘er? Ye’re a coward, Ramscoldt.’‘It’s simple bureaucracy,’ the Gnome said, putting his hands in the air. Around the room, the armed mercenaries the Gnome had brought with him began to fidget. ‘Queen Ffyon has a right to know-…
‘Wha’s all this?’ Gidwyn yelled as he strode out of the evening and into his warm home, Kiryae and his three dogs with him. ‘I could ‘ear the yellin’ ‘alf a mile away!’
Eoina, her face flushed with fury, span to glare at Gidwyn. ‘This hook-nosed rat,’ she spat, ‘this spineless, snivellin’ piece o’ dung wants to take our daughter away from us!’
Gidwyn looked from Eoina to Galahad, who was standing with his fist clenched behind her. ‘He wha’?’ Gidwyn said, eyes wide.
‘What I said,’ Ramscoldt began, his lips tight, ‘was that, as a form of due process and as an observation of judicial laws in the Underkingdom, yourself and your good lady wife-…’
‘Shut up, y’ worm,’ Eoina spat.
‘…have a duty to the kingdom to inform the queen that there is an Elf living amongst us!’ Ramscoldt concluded and folded his arms, glaring at Eoina.
‘Ye’ve known about Kiryae fer a decade, Ramscoldt!’ Gidwyn said through his teeth. ‘Why bring this up now?’
‘I thought you’d informed the queen of-…’
‘Mister Ramscoldt,’ Kiryae said, stepping forwards and cutting the Gnome off. ‘May I ask something of you?’
The Gnome’s eyes widened and for a moment, he looked taken aback. He visibly shook a little under the scrutiny of Kiryae’s ice-blue eyes. ‘What is it?’ he said, his tone sharp.
‘What is it that I have done to offend you so?’ she asked in a kind, gentle voice.
Ramscoldt went red. ‘You have done nothing, so to speak,’ he stammered. ‘It’s more that Upper-Worlders have no place in Halfling society.’
‘I have never visited the Underkingdom that lies beneath the Hrudun Druria,’ Kiryae said, her gaze strange and thoughtful, yet completely unperturbed. ‘I have never looked upon the Old City. The furthest I’ve ever been from home is to the village of Sky’s Anvil, where I have broken bread with your Halfling-kin, shared in your songs and your tales, played with your children, and prayed to the Fire, just as you have.’
Ramscoldt looked visibly uncomfortable. He glanced back at his hired men but found no consolation from those sitting by the fire. A few shrugged their shoulders, but none spoke. ‘You are an Elf, though,’ Ramscoldt said slowly. ‘I’m not trying to imply that makes you any less of a person or-…’
‘Tha’s exactly what yer tryin’ ta do!’ Eoina cried. ‘Yer actin’ like ‘cos she’s no Dwarf she ‘as no right to be ‘ere!’
‘She doesn’t!’ Ramscoldt cried. ‘The Underkingdom is for Halflings! The Upper-World is for the Upper-Folk, and that is what she is!’
‘She lives in the Upper-World, are ye thick as stone?’ Gidwyn yelled, waving his arms wide. Around him, his three dogs, sensing their master’s anger, began to snarl, their long, sharp teeth bared and their hackles raised.
Slowly, Karveth, the largest of the wolf-dogs with his one golden and one blue eye, stepped forwards. The enormous wolf-dog loomed over the Gnome, his jaws large enough to close around the small figure’s head. It was at this point that Ramscoldt’s guards stood up, their hands on their weapons and began to cry out. ‘Control tha’ animal!’ one said. ‘Control ‘im or we’ll put ‘im down!’
‘Call your beast back,’ Ramscoldt cried, his voice trembling, ‘call them back or I’ll-…’ he swallowed, stepping backwards towards his mercenaries – none of whom looked particularly comfortable putting themselves in-between their master and the enormous dog, but knew well enough that should the hand that payed their salaries be bitten off by a gigantic dog, they were unlikely to receive any gold for their services. The mercenaries instead continued to yell and brandish their weapons, ready to leap forwards should the source of their money be put in further danger.
‘Karveth!’ Gidwyn cried, taking hold of the huge animal’s scruff and trying to haul him away. ‘Back, boy, back!’
But Karveth would not listen. The huge dog loomed, slavering, snarling, his eyes fixed on Ramscoldt. ‘Karveth!’ Gidwyn cried again, but it was no use. The yelling of the Dwarven mercenaries was upsetting the huge dog further, and beside Gidwyn, both Coren and Synera began to slowly pad forwards, following their lead of their alpha.
‘Gidwyn!’ Eoina cried through the noise. ‘Gidwyn, stop ‘im! Stop ‘im afore he kills someone!’Gidwyn hauled on the dog’s scruff to no avail, but as he did so Kiryae called out. ‘Karvie,’ she said in a gentle voice that was almost lost to the din in the room. ‘Karvie.’
Very suddenly, Karveth lowered his hackles, stopped his growling, and padded over to where Kiryae was standing. The huge dog nuzzled her outstretched hand before curling up at the she-Elf’s feet as if nothing had happened. Both Coren and Synera followed his example, sitting either side of Kiryae, their shining eyes fixed on Ramscoldt.
Silence fell.
Gidwyn looked from his brother, to his wife, to his foster-daughter, his mouth hanging open. He had never seen Karveth be subdued so easily. Once, when Gidwyn had taken him to Sky’s Anvil on one of the sparse market days the small village held, Karveth had locked his teeth around a stray wolf-dog. It had taken six brawny Dwarven farmers and an ox-bone the size of a Human leg to wrench the enormous beast from his prey – who had died within moments.Ramscoldt broke the silence. ‘That thing,’ he said in a shaking voice, ‘that monstrous beast almost killed me! I demand compensation from you, Gidwyn Greylocke! I demand-…’
Gidwyn was about to yell when Galahad walked forwards and stood square in front of the Gnome, his one hand balled into a fist. ‘Ye’d best take yer cart an’ be gone, I think,’ he said in a low, dark voice. ‘An’ ye’d do well to leave yer good hosts something by way o’ a token as an apology for yer rudeness.’
Ramscoldt seethed. ‘I invoked the right of-…’
‘I don’t care,’ Galahad said with a curl of his lip. ‘If ye want to stay in my brother’s house, ye show his daughter some respect. She’s more goodness in ‘er lil’ finger than you’ve in yer whole wretched body. Get out, or per’aps next time Kiryae won’t call the dogs off fer ya.’
Ramscoldt twitched, glaring at Galahad for a moment, before spinning on his heel and marching out into the snow. His mercenaries followed him. One of them muttered an apology to Eoina and thanked her for her hospitality as he went.
As the door was closed, Galahad turned to Gidwyn. ‘This ain’t finished,’ he said.
‘Nae,’ Gidwyn sighed. ‘Nae, it ain’t.’
*
The unusual trio who followed the three wolf-dogs were dressed in their thickest, warmest greatgoat-fur tunics and trousers and the hardiest leather boots Gidwyn could find. All three of them were wrapped in thick bearskin cloaks – expensive rarities, heirlooms passed down by Eoina’s grandfather and his brothers on the day of her wedding to Gidwyn.
Galahad had left the Greylockes two days before after his short visit, making his way back down the mountains with a herder taking a small flock of greatgoats to the Old City for butchering. Gidwyn was always sad to see his dear brother go and worried terribly for him – especially since the loss of his arm. But on a bright day, with a whistle on his lips, his wife and foster-daughter beside him and his dogs loping along with them, nothing could keep a smile from Gidwyn’s face.
As Gidwyn looked at his beloved foster-daughter, he had to admit that there was just something about her that he could just not put his finger on. She glides across the path as if there were nae a stumblin’ rock or trippin’ crack before ‘er. An’ she barely seems to be payin’ heed to where she treads. The Dwarf-man shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the road ahead - and the last turn in the path into Sky’s Anvil. Must jus’ be an Elf thing.
Sheltered from the worst of the chaotic storms that could sweep through the Great Mountains without so much as a moment’s warning, Sky’s Anvil was protected on all sides by tall, jagged rocks. It was an odd settlement – the last port-of-call for many of the surface-bound traders from the Hrudun Underkingdom – but an important link for the mountain-dwelling farmers such as Gidwyn to the rest of their world.
It was a large village: set against the broad chest of Mount Hysaris, several clusters of stone-walled houses that could withstand any weather were collected upon a plate-like ledge overlooked on all sides by the jagged range. The two-dozen or-so domestic buildings collected around a central market-place made of wooden stalls that could be set-up and packed-down at a moment’s notice. A narrow, winding track snaked from the market, down through the jagged natural wall around the village’s edge, and away into the crags and snow-covered bluffs below.
As Gidwyn led Eoina and Kiryae into the village, he pointed to a large hall situated on a small, snow-covered rise at the back of the village, pressed up against the sheer rock of the mountain’s chest. ‘Tha’s where the village jarl or jarlessa lives,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Kiryae said in her faraway voice. ‘I saw Jarlessa Tiritha last Midfire’s Eve. Do you remember, Mother?’
Eoina nodded her head. ‘She liked ye – mayhap we’ll see ‘er today at market.’
‘I hope so,’ Kiryae said. ‘She had a beautiful hunting-hawk.’
On the whole, Gidwyn preferred to steer clear of Sky’s Anvil, particularly on market days. He had grown up in the Old City with markets that lasted weeks – thousands upon thousands of Halflings from across the Underkingdom would flock to the lofty, arched boulevards beneath the Great Mountains to peddle wares most could never imagine: from lavish jewellery set with gemstones the size of a man’s fist, to complicated mechanical devices that whirred and twitched when a little water was passed through them, and from weapons so mighty and fierce that the very stone seemed to quake in anticipation of their blows, to traded beasts from the Upper-World, the likes of which Gidwyn could not describe in words. Sky’s Anvil’s little collection of stalls draped in salted meat, heavy hobnail boots, and other necessities was a far-cry from the magnanimity of the Old City’s markets, and when Gidwyn stepped between those low wooden stalls, he found himself wistful and longing to see the Old City again. Streets alive wit’ stalls so vibrant and beautiful, it were as if a silken rainbow ‘ad been draped through the Kingdom. Oh, t’ see it again!
‘Giddy?’
Pulled away from his memories by Eoina’s voice and a tug on his hand, Gidwyn looked about. ‘Sorry, I were daydreamin’.’
‘I know,’ Eoina said, her round face creasing into a smile. ‘But come on, let’s get sorted so as Kiryae can go ‘an look at Ol’ Darla’s cob.’
Gidwyn nodded. ‘Aye-aye.’
It was unusual for Gidwyn and his small family to visit Sky’s Anvil’s small market so soon after a visit from Ramscoldt, but there were certain things the Gnome’s caravan could not provide him with – certain things Gidwyn had to order especially. Plus, the Dwarf thought as he led Eoina, Kiryae, and the three dogs into the snow-strewn village centre, Garris’ oxen-beef steaks are well worth the quarter-day’s walk.
Despite the sparseness of the market – and the fact that anyone who did not have to be outside was indoors, sitting beside their fire-pit – Gidwyn found Sky’s Anvil’s meagre centre surprisingly busy. Folk from the village and the few farms beyond had come for the day’s pickings, and the low hubbub of several dozen Dwarven voices mixed with the whistle of the mountain wind and the smell of cooking.
Perhaps it ain’t so terrible ‘ere after all, Gidwyn thought as he strode into the market.
A host of familiar faces awaited around the snow-touched stalls: brawny, bearded Dwarf-men beamed at Gidwyn as he passed; the ladies, wrapped up in huge, heavy cloaks and covered with hoods, smiled and waved at him as he passed.
‘Father?’ Kiryae said suddenly from where she walked behind Gidwyn. ‘Why are there so few Gnomes here?’
Gidwyn looked around. It was true, there were few Gnomes this far up the mountain, and the two that Gidwyn saw shivering beside a stall neatly arranged with delicate hand-tools – scissors, tweezers, needles – were wrapped up in so many layers they looked as if they could barely move.
‘Not had yer fill from Ramscoldt, eh?’ Gidwyn said with a half-laugh. ‘They ain’t so hardy, the Gnome-folk; we Dwarves are a stocky sort. We weather the cold much better than they do.’
Kiryae nodded her head slowly, her piercing eyes fixed on the two Gnomes behind their stall of hand-tools. Not far away, a handful of Dwarf-children played in the snow, chasing each other with sticks and throwing snowballs. Kiryae did not so much as spare them a glance.
Gidwyn had got used to Kiryae’s odd behaviour. Although she was of an age with most of the village children, she only ever joined in their games when told to by Eoina, and even then she presided, preferring to watch others play and step in when someone got hurt or upset than play herself. Gidwyn looked over his shoulder at his beloved foster-daughter to see that her gaze had moved from the two Gnomes to where an elderly Dwarf-man was driving an ox-pulled cart into the small village centre, his wagon piled with root vegetables. Kiryae’s eyes were fixed on the animal.
‘Father, could I-…’
‘Yes, go on,’ Gidwyn said with a sigh. ‘But leave the dogs here – we don’t want ta spook Denmar’s ol’ ox, do we?’
Gidwyn and Eoina stopped in the centre of the village, Karveth, Coren and Synera obediently sitting beside them. The three enormous wolf-dogs watched as Kiryae swept across the snow-covered cobbles through the crowd of Dwarves to stop before the wagon. She spoke for a moment with the driver before turning to the large, horned oxen and stroking its nose. The beast seemed enraptured by her touch, and nuzzled her hand fondly.
‘D’ya think it’s an Elf kinda thing?’ Eoina said from beside Gidwyn.
Scratching Coren’s chin just where he liked it, Gidwyn shrugged his shoulders. Eoina had asked him the same question dozens of times before. ‘She loves the animals. They love ‘er. Must be, no?’
Gidwyn turned to look at Eonia. Beneath the hood she wore, her face was thoughtful. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, as she always did. ‘We’ve always said, there’s just somethin’ ‘bout ‘er-…’
‘…That we cannae put our finger on, aye,’ Gidwyn finished. ‘But she’s kind, m’love,’ he said, putting his arm around Eoina’s shoulders and moving his hand to scratch Synera’s muzzle. ‘And there’s an absence o’ kindness in this world. But c’mon.’
Taking Eoina by the hand, Gidwyn led her and his three wolf-dogs through the Dwarf-folk coming and going across the village centre. He made straight for a wide wooden shed just in front of one of the stone homes, tucked behind a ledge of rock to protect it from the elements.
Gidwyn could smell the pungent tang of urine and leather before he was even inside. He paused outside the door and turned to Eoina. ‘D’ya mind waiting out here with the dogs?’
Eoina scoffed. ‘Nae, I was lookin’ forward to standin’ in a shack tha’ stinks of cattle-piss!’ she cuffed him on the arm and grinned. ‘Jus’ be quick, ye ol’ lump.’
Gidwyn grinned and kissed his wife’s forehead before turning to the door. As he pushed it open, a great wave of foetid air washed over him and he hand to stop himself coughing.
Inside, the room was dark. Lit only by a few candles and a small fire-pit in the centre of the floor, long shadows were cast of everything – and everyone – in the room.
‘Hello, Fyori!’ Gidwyn called as he walked into the room.
‘Oh, they’re beautiful!’ Gidwyn walked towards the elderly woman. The shoes she held were made of fine leather with thick laces up the front. The insides were lined with thick rabbit’s fur, and the soles reinforced with heavy iron nails. ‘Kiryae will love ‘em!’
‘Pah,’ Fyori snarled. ‘Making shoes for an Elf. I never thought I’d see the day.’
Gidwyn took from inside his heavy coat a large, clinking pouch and passed it to Fyori. ‘What we agreed – an’ a little extra as a special thank-ye.’
Fyori snatched the purse from Gidwyn’s hand. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Now, off you go.’
Gidwyn turned to leave, but had gone less than a step when raised voices from outside drew his attention. As he paused to listen, the door to the shed was flung open – and a familiar-looking figure walked in.
‘Ramscoldt,’ Gidwyn said coldly.
The sour-featured Gnome paused in the doorway as he saw Gidwyn standing in the shack. His face curdled with dislike. Behind him walked his knot of guardsmen. ‘Greylocke. I thought those were your mutts I saw outside.’
‘I’m surprised ye got so close after last time, eh?’ Gidwyn shot back.
‘What?’ Ramscoldt said, a look of feigned confusion on his face. ‘Oh no, not the dogs. I was talking about your wife and that thing you call a daughter.’
Gidwyn’s grip on the boots he had just purchased tightened in anger. ‘What are ye doin’ ‘ere? Ye were supposed to be back at the bottom of the mountain days ago.’ he snarled.
‘I was held up,’ the Gnome said, ‘and I’m obviously here for some shoes. I know you think me a snake, but I do have feet and I walk these paths just as you do,’ the Gnome said, his voice icy.
‘A snake? Nae,’ Gidwyn said. ‘A worm is more fittin’.’
Behind Ramscoldt, his men bristled, touching their swords and axes. The Gnome, however, simply smiled and waved them down. ‘There’s no need,’ he said. ‘Mister Greylocke isn’t worth our time. I do, however, have a question for him.’
Gidwyn laughed. ‘An’ wha’ makes ye think I’ll answer it?’
Ramscoldt shrugged. ‘Just hear me out,’ the little Gnome said. ‘What happens when Kiryae gets older?’
Gidwyn’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wha’ are ye getting’ at?’
The Gnome shrugged. ‘Elves, though long-lived compared to Humans, still do not live as long as we Halfling-folk,’ Ramscoldt said. ‘What will you do when she grows old? When she gets to, say, one-hundred and forty? You’ll be, what, nearing two-hundred and still have a few decades in you at the least.’ Ramscoldt’s mouth twitched into a cruel smile. ‘Will you be able to watch her wither and die?’
Gidwyn clenched his jaw behind his thick, dusky-blonde beard. Anger boiled in his chest, hot and furious. ‘Ye shut yer mouth right now,’ he snarled. ‘Or I’ll-…’
‘Or you’ll what, Greylocke?’ Ramscoldt sniggered. Behind him, his guards began to touch their swords and axes again.
Gidwyn said nothing. He was not a violent men, but the Dwarf had to fight the urge to hurl Kiryae’s boots aside and throttle the Gnome – he desperately wanted to feel his thin neck contort and crack in his hands, watch him plead to take back the words he had said about Kiryae. My daughter, he thought as he glared at the Gnome. My only daughter. Ye cowardly little…
Glaring at the Gnome as he went, Gidwyn stormed out of Fyori’s shed without uttering another word. He found Eoina outside on the other side of the small village centre, Kiryae by her side, the three wolf-dogs calm.
‘We saw ‘im go in,’ Eoina said as Gidwyn approached. ‘Wha’s he doin’ ‘ere?’
‘Delayed, apparently,’ Gidwyn said, his voice grating. He looked away from Kiryae, trying to shield her from the fury on his face. He did not want to upset his dear daughter.
‘Fer five days?’ Eoina pulled a face.
‘Tha’s what I thought,’ Gidwyn said. The anger still boiled in his stomach and made his hands tremble, but he did what he could to hide it from his family. He took a deep breath and turned to face Kiryae. ‘But enough about Ramscoldt,’ the Dwarf-man said and turned, beaming up at his foster-daughter. ‘How was tha’ ox?’
Kiryae’s face lit up. ‘Happy,’ she said, her face breaking into a smile beneath her heavy hood. ‘He likes having his ears scratched. Not many people do it for him.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ Gidwyn said, the light in Kiryae’s eyes making his own grin come easier. After a moment, he held out the boots in his hands. ‘These ‘ere are fer ye.’
Kiryae looked at the boots for a moment, her eyes wide. ‘For me?’ she said.
‘Aye,’ Gidwyn said and nodded his head. ‘Yer getting’ too big fer yer current boots – ye’ll need new ‘uns come winter. We won’t be journyin’ far from th’ house fer a few months, so there’ll be no way to get ye some new ‘uns then.’
Gidwyn had expected Kiryae to be over them moon – for her face to light up and for her to laugh with joy. But instead, the young she-Elf held the boots in front of her face for a moment, her features pensive. ‘They’re so well-made,’ she said, her large blue eyes drinking in every detail of the craftsmanship, her features almost forlorn. ‘But does it not make you sad, Father, that they’re made from animal-flesh?’
The question caught Gidwyn off-guard. ‘Er,’ he stammered, glancing at Eoina. ‘Well, a little, aye. T’is always a shame when somethin’ ‘as to die, eh Eoina?’
Eoina nodded and put her hand on Kiryae’s arm. ‘Aye, but when us ‘ere on the mountain put a creature to death, we do it wit’ dignity, aye? We don’t waste it, no – its pelt keeps us warm and its flesh fills our bellies. We even use its bones an’ its hooves and horns for everythin’ from broth to drinkin’-cups! Nae, t’is always sad when an animal ‘as to die, but if we put it to death we ‘ave a responsibility to the animal to make proper use of it.’
Kiryae continued to look at the boots for a moment longer, then smiled. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Thank-you, Mother and Father.’ She turned her piercing blue eyes to Gidwyn again, her smile widening. ‘Thank-you for everything.’
Despite Ramscoldt’s cold words still ringing in his ears, Gidwyn was unable to stop himself from beaming. Kiryae’s sensitivity had touched him, and he felt tears in the corners of his eyes but quickly wiped them away – any moisture would freeze in the mountain chill. Instead, he threw his arms around his foster-daughter and held her tightly in a warm embrace. ‘I love ye, sweetheart,’ he said as he held Kiryae in his arms. ‘I love ye so much.’
Kiryae laughed as Gidwyn’s beard scratched her neck. She buried her head in the thick padding of his heavy, fur-covered leather coat and wrapped her arms around his back. ‘I love you, Papa,’ she said.
And in that moment, everything was perfect.
*
As Gidwyn led his small family and three wolf-dogs back the way they had come, they followed their tracks from the morning. They were easy enough to spot – two small, squat pairs of boot-prints, side-by-side, accompanied by more slender prints surrounded by the tracks of a dozen large paws. They ran like a frozen river across the snow-buried mountain paths Gidwyn knew by intuition, occasionally crossed by the tracks of a mountain hare or bird.
The two Dwarves and their Elven foster-daughter said little as they walked – there was no need to. The trio walked in a comfortable silence through the crags and gullies and across the rope-bridges and frozen streams that lay across their passage home.
Gidwyn was unsure when he had last felt so happy. As he looked to Eoina at his side – his life-partner, his soul-mate – to the she-Elf who had been gifted to them by the mountain. There was a wide, silent grin on Kiryae’s face as she walked through the shin-deep snow, kicking great clouds of white up before her with her new boots. Eoina watched her with loving eyes and a warm smile on her face as Karveth, Coren and Synera padded around them.
Gidwyn was unsure if he would ever again feel as happy as he did that afternoon, walking in silence through the snow with his family. Is it even possible? he thought as he squeezed Eoina’s hand through the heavy leather mitten she wore.
She turned to look at him. ‘Aye, m’ love?’
Gidwyn leaned forwards and nuzzled Eoina, touching their noses and foreheads together. ‘I love ye.’
She reached up into his beard and gently held his face, closing her eyes for a moment as they paused in the snow. ‘Nae as much as I love ye.’
Somehow, I’m happier, Gidwyn thought as he stepped back and continued to lead his small family onwards.
‘Ach, I hate it in there,’ Gidwyn muttered as he turned to make sure Eoina and Kiryae had made it alright.
Gidwyn paused a moment to look away from the snow-covered, boulder-strewn plain that stretched away from him, and looked up at the enormous mountain in the shadow of which he stood. It was one that rose above all – a towering monstrosity of ice and rock, dwarfing the peaks that rose and fell like waves around it. ‘Kûrthalag,’ Gidwyn said – Colossus.
The snowy plain that ended with the crack that was Hammersmote Pass was little more than a fingernail on the enormous mountain. Although he lived in its shadow, and had done for decades, the sheer scale of the spire of rock still snatched his breath away. T’is a god of stone and ice, Gidwyn thought. The head and shoulders of a being large enough t’ make the whole of Esdaria its lap.
It was only when he looked around and readied himself to continue onwards that he realised Synera was growling. The noise was low and quiet, still caught in the back of her throat. As Gidwyn looked at his favourite wolf-dog, the bleat of the lost greatgoat came again – but this time it was different. Pained.
‘G’wan, Syn,’ Gidwyn said to the wolf-dog beside him. ‘Find it. Find it!’
With a single bark, Synera leapt forwards into the snow, her large snout raised into the air. She ran across the snow, loping and bounding through the deep, untouched carpet, sending great plumes of white skyward.
Gidwyn set off at a run behind Synera, kicking through the knee-deep snow with his heavy boots. ‘G’wan, girl!’ he called as he went. ‘Find ‘em! Find ‘em!’
Synera shot ahead, bounding through the snow. Gidwyn ran to keep up, tripping and stumbling on unseen rocks as he went, always aware of how close he and Synera were to the yawning chasm beside them.
Then, quite suddenly, another bleat came again – far closer this time, strained and strangled as if the creature were in great pain. Oh, Fire, don’t let it ‘ave a broken leg, Gidwyn thought. A lame greatgoat was a greatgoat he could not afford to look after – especially this close to winter. Don’t let it be one o’ the big ones, oh, Fire please…
But when Synera stopped dead in the snow in front of Gidwyn, the Dwarf knew something was afoot. A wild mountain-wolf? he thought. A snow-lynx? Nae, none o; them have been seen in these parts fer ages – Karveth keeps ‘em away. Surely it’s not something worse? Surely not an ogre or… or a troll…? He felt a chill that went beyond the cold of the mountain go through him, and he began to wish for the axe he kept next to the door of his home. By the Fire, if it’s a troll or an ogre…
Gidwyn drew next to Synera who stood stock-still in the snow, staring at a lone boulder in the plain before them. Gidwyn could see tracks around the rock – hundreds of hoofprints where dozens of greatgoats had walked, churning up the snow, and large brown patches where their droppings had soiled the pristine white.
But Gidwyn could see that something had scattered the group. Their tracks were unclear and ran in all directions as if they had fled in panic.
Then Gidwyn saw flecks of red around the lone boulder.
Oh, Fire…
Stepping up beside Synera, Gidwyn and his huge wolf-dog slowly began to walk towards the boulder as quietly as they could. The Dwarf held his breath, trying to still his racing heart, but with every pace he took he found himself trembling more and more. The closer he got to the boulder, the more bloody flecks he could see in the snow – they were thick and heavy now, whatever was bleeding had been badly wounded.
And then he saw it.
Lying on its side just in front of the boulder was a dead greatgoat. Partly hidden by the thick snow, the creature was lying in a slowly-thickening pool of its own blood, turning the snow around it red.
From where he stood a few feet away, Gidwyn could see no beast had killed the greatgoat: its hide and tendons were covered in long, cruel cuts, and its throat had been slashed wide open. The way a butcher might with a knife – but the wounds in its hide…who would do such an unkind thing to such a defenceless creature?
And then, before Gidwyn could even cry out, something stepped from behind the boulder.
It was Man-sized, perhaps a little shorter. Its face was completely covered by a heavy hood, and it carried itself with a bent back. Gidwyn barely saw the bow in the creature’s hand, nor the thick, snow-white leathers it was clad in before Synera attacked. He heard the twang of a bowstring, the whizz of an arrow, and Synera’s furious roar.
Blood sprayed through the air as an arrow tipped with ragged feathers tore into Synera’s flank, but the wolf-dog was unperturbed. Rearing onto her hind legs, Synera was taller and broader than the figure was. The creature’s nerve broke and they turned and tried to run, calling out as it did.
Enormous teeth flashing in her maw, the figure let out a guttural screech as Synera sank her dagger-like fangs into the fleeing figure’s side. Gidwyn saw thick, dark, blue blood well from the wound and splatter in the snow as Synera wrenched and worried the creature from side to side. Gidwyn watched on in horror and revulsion as Synera tore at the creature, who fell into the snow screaming in a thin, hissing voice.
The crack of a second arrow shattering on the boulder from which the first figure had leapt yanked Gidwyn back to reality. He ducked and covered his head instinctively, lifting his gaze. There, not sixteen paces to his right, stood another of the white leather- and fur-clad figures, completely covered from head-to-foot, a bow in its gloved hand.
And it was going for another arrow.
As the thin, pallid fingers of the mysterious figure’s ungloved right-hand went to the quiver of crude, ragged-feathered arrows on their back, Gidwyn charged.
The figure got closer and closer with every step Gidwyn took. He watched as the leather-clad creature took another arrow from their quiver and nocked it to a crude, dark-wood bow. Gidwyn was almost there, but the snow was thick and pushed against his legs as he ran, freezing and stiffening Gidwyn’s knees. Fire, grant me strength! Fire, grant me strength!
Gidwyn forced his way through the snow, his arms swinging frantically, great clouds of white exploding before him as he frantically kicked as he ran. Six paces, five, he counted as he closed on the mysterious figure.
They nocked the arrow.
Four, three. I’m not goin’ to make it!
A gnarled bow was raised before Gidwyn; a savage, barbed arrow of dark iron aimed squarely at his face.
Two, one…
Gidwyn hurled himself forwards.
He heard the bowstring twang. Time seemed to slow and the Dwarf saw the iron-tipped arrow hang in the air between himself and the second attacker: every detail of it, from the jagged barbs on its tip to the matted flight-feathers, spun as it tore towards him.
And then everything happened at once.
Gidwyn felt the arrow scrape past his cheek, opening a long cut beneath his eye and splitting through the lobe of his left ear. He let out a cry of pain and felt blood stream over his face, but he was already flying through the air himself. Before the last of his shout of pain had left his lips, he collided with his attacker, the whole weight of his body crashing into the figure’s chest.
The two of them sprawled in the snow, but before Gidwyn could recover, the figure was on top of him, its hands around his neck. He felt two long-nailed thumbs pressing through his beard and into his windpipe and tried to gasp, but was already losing breath.
Raising one of his large fists, Gidwyn aimed a flailing punch at the figure’s hooded head. The blow landed hard and square, a satisfying crunch split through the freezing air of the snow-covered plain.
The attacker reeled backwards from Gidwyn’s blow, its hood slipping from its head. Two gleaming eyes as black as cut jet glared out at Gidwyn from either side of a pair of long, slit-like nostrils. A lipless mouth of sharp teeth snarled out from a bone-white face, and two short, point-tipped ears stuck out from either side of the figure’s head.
Oh, by the Fire, Gidwyn thought as he watched a long tendril of blue blood snaked from the figure’s nostril where he had hit him. Not a troll, not an ogre. Something worse. Something much worse.
There was no more time to lie in the snow and stare. Using all his strength, Gidwyn hurled the ghastly creature off himself and leapt to his feet. The thin-faced creature with its pitch-black eyes was up moments later, and from its belt it drew a long, hooked dagger. A cruel smile played on its thin lips and as it raised the dagger above its head, it opened its mouth to snarl at Gidwyn.
But the snarl was drowned out by a roar.
Like a fanged streak of silver moonlight, Synera came racing across the snow and leapt into the air. She hung above the attacker for a moment, jaws wide, then snapped shut her fangs around the arm in which it held its dagger.
The creature howled and tried to pull its arm away. Gidwyn watched as the dagger fell from its fingers and blue blood gushed from the creature’s arm wounds. Synera snarled through her blue-bloodied teeth and wrenched on the creature’s arm, pulling it off balance. Screaming in agony, the attacker tried to pull away, but Synera’s jaws were locked tight.
With a final heave from the enormous wolf-dog and a wet ripping sound, Synera tore off the creature’s arm.
Gidwyn had seen a lot in the snow: pregnant greatgoats haemorrhaging their insides over his hands as he tried to save the kid; mangled, frozen bodied at the bottom of cliffs; emaciated corpses, decades old, trapped in glaciers – milky eyes of the long-dead boring into him. But there was something about the sight before him that made his stomach weak – the writhing creature, howling and shrieking in a hissing voice, clutching at the ragged wound at its shoulder as its blood turned the snow blue; the way Synera stood with its arm clamped between her jaws, her bright eyes fixed on the writhing figure as it slowly bled out in the snow; the reek of evacuated bowels.
Eventually, the creature stopped writhing and fell still, its jet-black eyes glazing over, its corpse still gushing blue blood into the snow. Gidwyn bent and picked up the terrible hooked dagger from where it had been dropped in the snow and tucked it into his belt. ‘We might need this, Syn,’ he muttered to the wolf-dog, though his voice shook like a snowflake in a screaming gale. ‘Yaghu always travel in groups.’
Gidwyn had never seen a Yaghu up close before. Old enemies of the Dwarves, the ghastly, bone-pale creatures had once upon a time lived in the Cold North – the frozen wastes that lay beyond the Great Mountains. But thousands of years ago, Humankind had appeared upon the tundra – a larger, stronger, more warlike race, and they had driven the Yaghu into hiding in the mountains before migrating south, through the Throat of the North and into the lands that would become first be ruled by the Tyralii, then be known as the Free Kingdoms of Men, and was now in-part called the Vidorian Empire.
Since then, the Yaghu prowled in the shadows of the most hostile crevasses on the mountains’ faces, or hidden in the deepest, darkest caverns that even the Halflings dared not to venture into. Occasionally they would raid settlements or villages, maybe the odd caravan. Gidwyn had heard terrible tales of the cruelty of the Yaghu – of captives flayed and left to die amidst the ruins of their carts, of Dwarves and Gnomes stripped naked and left to freeze in the snow. Most of the time, though, the warriors of the Underkingdom stopped them. Galahad had told Gidwyn the tale of how he had lost his arm to a Yaghu raiding party during the rebellions years ago dozens of times.
As Gidwyn breathed heavily, looking down at the mangled corpse in front of him, he remembered the first attacker. ‘Synera!’ he cried and turned to his beloved wolf-dog. There, protruding from her flank, was one of the long, dark, barbed arrows the Yaghu had attacked with. Blood welled from around the wound, but there was nothing Gidwyn could do – not out here.
‘We have t’ get ye home, girl,’ he said, placing his hand on her head.
Synera seemed to understand, fixing Gidwyn with her bright, golden eyes and dropping the Yaghu arm that had remained clenched between her teeth. It landed in the snow with a wet, dull thump.
‘We have t’ get ye back to Eoina,’ Gidwyn said, fussing her ears, ‘she’ll know wha’ to do wit’ ye.’
Gidwyn’s heart almost stopped.
‘By the Fire,’ he whispered, ‘Eoina. Kiryae.’
*
Gidwyn ran down the narrow and treacherous path that led down
from Hammersmote Pass. He slipped and tripped as he
went, twisting his ankle and straining one of his knees, but he could not care.
I have to get back, he thought,
ignoring the soreness and pain in his legs. I
have to get back to the girls.
Synera
ran at his side, apparently unaffected by the arrow-wound in her flank – much
to Gidwyn’s relief. She was a fierce sight: fangs barred, long teeth sticky with dark-blue Yaghu blood. Steam rose from the wound at her flank and her blood-slathered snout as she ran at Gidwyn's side, unfalteringly loyal to her master.
Who was unspeakably terrified.
Gidwyn's heart hammered in his chest as he ran. He felt no exertion, no sting of the cold in his limbs and none of the scratches to his hands and fingers from where he had slipped and grabbed on to whatever jagged piece of rock was beside him. He felt only fear - a terrible, cold terror that would not abate, that only worsened with every passing step.
They've got them. They've got them, the Dwarf thought as the air ripped from his lungs. What if they've hurt them? What if they've not managed to escape? What if they've...
...What if they've killed them?
Soon,
Gidwyn and his beloved wolf-dog were on the long plain that led to where his
family farm lay. He could see Eoina, Kiryae, Karveth and Coren’s prints clearly
in the snow – fresh and deep in the thick snow. He followed them at a run,
constantly looking down at the tracks at his feet. They were movin’ slowly, they didnae rush, nothin’ were chasin’ ‘em –
good, they must be safe, they must be-…
Then
Gidwyn saw one of the dark, barbed arrows in the snow.
‘By the
Fire, no…’ he breathed, stopping to look down at the arrow. He desperately
willed it to be an illusion, to be nothing more than a trick of the light – a
chance shadow cast by a drift of snow, but it was not. It was real: cold, hard
and deadly.
‘Eoina!’
Gidwyn yelled, setting off at a mad sprint through the snow. ‘Eoina! Kiryae! Kiryae!’
The
house was not far now, just beyond his herd of greatgoats – which he could see
was parted as if they had fled in two directions. He could make out the
chimney, the rounded walls, the thin trickle of smoke from the permanently-lit
fire-pit. They must have made it, Gidwyn
told himself as he ran, Synera by his side. They
must have. Please, Fire, please…
Gidwyn
was running so fast he almost fell over Coren’s corpse.
‘No!’
he cried, pausing for a second beside the wolf-dog, unsure of what to do.
Coren’s light-brown coat was peppered with arrows and vicious slash-wounds, and
his tongue lolled from his mouth into the bloody snow around where he lay. ‘No,
Coren! No!’ He wanted to collapse at the side of his beloved pet and weep, but
he could not wait. He had to find Eoina and Kiryae. He had to know they were
safe.
‘I’m
sorry, my sweet boy,’ Gidwyn whispered, fighting back tears and scratching
Coren’s chin just how he liked it one last time. ‘I’ll be back fer ye, I
promise.’
He set
off at a run again, and as he did he saw movement in the distance.
Between
where the greatgoat herd had split, two creatures were fighting. Running at a
flat-out sprint that set his lungs and his legs aflame with fatigue, Gidwyn
neared the skirmish to see the white snow had been turned blue and red with
blood.
There,
in the middle of the snow-covered plateau, Karveth fought with one last Yaghu
attacker. This one, Gidwyn noticed, wore pieces of plundered Dwarf-made armour
around his chest, shoulders and thighs, and carried a long spear in his hands.
Around him, the snow had been dyed blue with the blood of his kinsmen, who lay
torn and broken in a gory arc around where the final Yaghu faced Karveth.
The
largest of the wolf-dogs, with his thick, shaggy mane, loomed over the last
Yaghu fighter. His hide was peppered with arrows and a broken spear was jammed
into one of his shoulders, but Karveth stood strong and furious, his coat
saturated with Yaghu blood. As the final Yaghu lowered his spear and slowly
began to pace around the wolf-dog, Gidwyn realised that Karveth was standing
over something – a small, bundled shape, curled into a tiny ball, almost hidden
by the bloody snow that had been kicked everywhere during the skirmish.
Eoina. Kiryae.
‘Ye
bastard!’ Gidwyn yelled, rushing headlong towards the final standing Yaghu. ‘Ye
murderin’ bastard!’
The
Yaghu spun to face Gidwyn, and as he did, Karveth struck. Like a bolt of
midnight-black, fang-tipped lightning, Karveth tore into the final standing
Yaghu. There was no time for the creature to scream as the wolf-dog’s bloody
fangs ripped first through his throat, then through his neck, tearing his head
clean from his shoulders.
Synera
and Karveth both fell on the corpse of the Yaghu in fury, unperturbed by their
wounds. Gidwyn looked away as a cloud of blue blood erupted into the air,
followed by greyish entrails and pallid lumps of flesh. He looked away, choking
back a disgusted sob, and ran towards the bundle he had seen in the bloody
snow.
Trying
not to look at the mangled Yaghu corpses littering the snow, Gidwyn ran to the
small, cloak-covered lump Karveth had been guarding and fell beside it.
‘Please!’ he cried. ‘Please, please be alive! By the Fire, please!’
The
bundle lifted its head. A round, tear-streaked face framed by matted ginger
hair looked out of a fur-lined hood. ‘Oh, Gidwyn!’ Eoina sobbed. ‘Gidwyn!’ she
threw her arms around him and sobbed. ‘Gidwyn!’
Prizing
Eoina’s arms from around his neck, Gidwyn pulled his wife to her feet. ‘Eoina,
look at me. Don’t look past me, I dinnae want ye t’ see…’ He took her cheeks in
his hands and turned her around to face away from the bloody carnage littering
the snow.
Eoina,
more tears pouring from her eyes and freezing on her cheeks, clutched Gidwyn’s
hands in her own. ‘My Gidwyn,’ she whispered through her sobs. ‘My sweet
Giddy…’
‘Eoina,’
Gidwyn said, his voice shaking. ‘Eoina, where’s Kiryae?’
Eoina
swallowed. ‘She’s with Coren,’ she managed to say through choked sobs. ‘Coren
was protecting her.’
Gidwyn
felt as if someone had just reached into his stomach and squeezed it. ‘Wh-…what?’
He managed to say. ‘C-…Coren?’
Eoina
nodded. ‘We were runnin’, then…then those things
attacked. They got ‘tween us, split us apart, there musta been ten o’
‘em. Kiryae was running back to you to
get Synera an’-…’
‘Eoina,
Coren’s dead!’ Gidwyn howled. ‘Coren’s dead!’
What
little colour left in Eoina’s cheeks abandoned her face. ‘Wh-…what?’
‘He’s…’
Gidwyn gestured to the faint, dark shape lying in the snow several dozen paces
away. ‘He’s…’
Eoina
let out a choked cry and began to run through the bloody snow. Gidwyn tried to
grab hold of her and stop her, but she was fast – far quicker than he was.
Dragging his weary limbs, Gidwyn chased after his wife across the bloody snow,
Karveth and Synera limping behind them.
When
Eoina arrived at Coren’s side, she screamed in horror, her eyes affixed on the
dozens of arrows peppering his body. Gidwyn ran to her side and gathered her up
in his arms, turning her away from the gory sight – the snow around the dead
wolf-dog was now saturated with his blood.
‘Ye said…’
Gidwyn began, choking on his own barely-held sobs. ‘Ye said Kiryae was wit’
‘im.’
Eoina
managed to nod.
Gidwyn
let go of his wife and looked at the bloody snow beneath them. There was a
single Yaghu corpse nearby – one of the hideous, pale-faced creatures had bled
out in the snow, its stomach torn wide by a savage claw-strike; its entrails
led to Coren’s bloodied pads. The snow around where Coren lay was drenched in
blood and so disturbed that Gidwyn could not tell a wolf-dog pad from a Yaghu
footprint.
Wait.
Two
sets of regular Man-like prints led away from the ground where Coren had
fallen. They were equidistant but struggling – for they were dragging something
between them. Whatever was being dragged had kicked and fought, cleaving great
crevasses into the snow as they were dragged away. North, Gidwyn thought as he followed the tracks with his eyes. Towards Axefall Canyon.
‘No…’
Gidwyn whispered as realisation set in. ‘No…’
‘Giddy,
what is it?’ Eoina said, grabbing hold of his hand and turning him to face her.
‘Where is she? She’s hiding somewhere, no? She’s cowerin’ in the snow, away
from those horrible beasts’ black eyes, no?’
Gidwyn
could only shake his head. His tears were coming too fast.
‘…Giddy?’
Eoina said in a voice that was almost lost to the rising wind.
‘She’s gone!’ Gidwyn cried
falling to his knees in the bloody snow. ‘Eoina, she’s gone!’
Gidwyn could not bear to look
into Eoina’s eyes – the choked sob in her throat was too much for him to bear.
He fell face-first into the snow and howled. ‘My Kiryae,’ he sobbed. ‘My sweet
Kiryae…gone…’
He felt
Eoina collapse beside him, her arms draped over him – not for warmth and
reassurance, but to try and support her collapsing frame.
‘I
cannae…’ Gidwyn wheezed through his sobs, pushing himself up to his knees,
taking Eoina’s hands in his own. ‘I cannae let ‘em take ‘er – not the Yaghu. I
cannae let this happen, I have tae find her…’
Eoina
lifted her tear-streaked face to look into Gidwyn’s. ‘No, Giddy!’ she pleaded,
clutching at his hands. ‘Ye’re no warrior, ye cannae go after ‘em! They’ll kill
ye!’
‘I’ll-...I’ll
take Karveth an’-…an’ Synera,’ Gidwyn said, trying to stagger to his feet.
‘Eoina, we ‘ave tae ‘elp ‘er! She’s our daughter!’
‘Giddy,
no!’ Eoina cried, clutching to Gidwyn’s arms as he tried to pull away. ‘The
dogs are hurt! Karveth can barely stand!’
‘Eoina,
our sweet Kiryae, our little gift from the snow…’ Gidwyn said, tears pouring
from his eyes and freezing in his beard. ‘We cannae let ‘em take ‘er!’
‘I cannae lose ye as well!
Giddy!’
‘An’ I
cannae lose ‘er,’ Gidwyn said, heaving his hands away from Eoina. ‘My love, I
cannae let this ‘appen, I’d nae forgive myself!’
The two
Dwarves stood in the blue blood-stained snow only a couple of paces apart.
Their tears were freezing on their cold-reddened cheeks; blood from the wound
to Gidwyn’s face had mixed into the ice frozen into his beard. Synera and
Karveth panted close by, their hot breath and steaming wounds forming misty
clouds in the blood-reeking air as they licked at one-another’s wounds.
‘Giddy…’
Eoina breathed. ‘Giddy please…’
‘Eoina,
I cannae leave ‘er,’ the Dwarf-man said. ‘I cannae let ‘er be taken by ‘em. An’
I need ye t’ stay ‘ere an’ make sure Karveth and Synera are healed properly. We
cannae lose them as well.’
‘But
wha’ if they kill ye?!’ Eoina screamed. ‘Wha’ if they take ye from me as well,
Giddy? Wha’ is I never see ye again?’
Gidwyn,
tears still freezing on his face, stepped towards his dear wife and cupped her
face in his hands. ‘Then know I died doin’ wha’ I thought were right. Know I
fell chasin’ down monsters, fightin’ fer wha’ little good is left in this
world.’
Eoina
took hold of Gidwyn’s wrists in her hand and screwed up her face. She understands, Gidwyn thought. She understands I cannae let this ‘appen.
‘I love ye, Gidwyn,’ Eoina said
in a breath.
‘I love
ye, Eoina,’ Gidwyn said, his voice cracking. ‘Til the Fire takes us all back t’
where we came from an’ beyond then into the dark.’
Gidwyn
gathered Eoina up in his arms and held her to him as if it were to be the last
time he ever felt her. He pressed her into his body in the hope some of her
stuck, so they could never truly be parted, and she clung to him as if she were
ice upon a wind-scourged mountain rock. But they both knew it was folly.
As soon as Gidwyn loosened his
grip and stepped back, he knew there was nothing he could do to take his
beloved with him. Not that I even want
to, he thought as he looked into her tear-streaked face. I cannae drag her into this. I have to do
this. I have to bring Kiryae back.
Gidwyn
took a step back from Eoina as Synera and Karveth padded to her side, both
covered in wounds but unbowed. He looked at the three of them; there was so
much he wanted to say. But now is no’ the
time for words, he reminded himself as he gazed into the face of his
beloved wife. Now is a time for action.
‘I’ll
see ye again,’ Gidwyn said as he turned and began to follow Kiryae’s tracks
northwards at a jog. ‘Even if I ‘ave to move mountains, or part the seas. If I
‘ave to make the moon shine in the day an’ the sun rise at dusk, I swear I’ll see
ye again.’
Eoina
said something as he began to run, but Gidwyn did not hear it. No more words, he told himself, for he
knew they would break his heart.
*
By the time Gidwyn reached Axefall Canyon, the weather had
turned. Black clouds had drawn in around him as he ran northwards, following
the tracks of the Yaghu that had taken Kiryae. They had dogged him all the way,
swooping in from the south like an ink-black cloak attached to Gidwyn’s
shoulders – no matter how hard he tried, he could not escape them.
Soon,
with wind ripping at him from every side and the thick shroud of dark
cloud wrapped around the Great Mountains, Gidwyn could barely see twenty paces
ahead of himself. He clutched the Yaghu dagger he had taken in his fist as he
staggered onwards. It was a savage blade: serrated iron, hooked at the tip, and
the size of a short-sword in Gidwyn’s hand – and his only defence against any
Yaghu lurking just beyond his vision.
He was
no warrior, not like Galahad. By the
Fire, wha’ I’d give fer ‘im to be ‘ere right now, Gidwyn thought as he
shivered in a particularly frozen gust of wind. But Gidwyn was completely alone
on the mountainside, and there was no time to wait for help. With every passing
moment, with every laughing howl of wind and flurry of sleet and snow, the
tracks Gidwyn was following – his only hope of ever finding Kiryae – faded.
The
disappearing tracks, slowly filling with fresh snow and being blown level by
the wind, led Gidwyn to the narrow rope bridge that spanned the gaping rift in
the earth he knew as Axefall Canyon. The narrow construction of knots and
timber slats rocked and shook and rocked in the savage gale as if it were a
lock of hair. By the Fire, Gidwyn
thought as he paused on the edge of the precipice, trying to ignore the yawning
maw before him and focus on the bridge, ‘ow
am I t’ cross tha’?!
On any other day, Gidwyn
would have stopped, turned around and given up the crossing as hopeless. He had
heard stories of intrepid farmers chasing lost goats being lifted from cliffs
and ledges by the wind and being cast down to their deaths. But Axefall Canyon was
different – it was no cliff or plateau edge. It was a gaping chasm, a yawning
pit, a descent into utter darkness. If I
fell, I’d ‘ave so much time, Gidwyn thought as he lingered on the edge of
the precipice, clutching the wooden post that anchored the narrow bridge to the
mountainside, so much time t’ think about
everythin’, about everythin’ I’ve done. About ‘ow much I failed. About Eoina.
About Kiryae.
But he
knew he had no choice. If the Yaghu had made it to the other side, then he told
himself he could as well. Taking a deep breath of freezing air that stung his
throat and tucking the Yaghu dagger into his belt, Gidwyn walked forwards.
He
seized hold of the wind-whipped guide-ropes that ran across the gaping
canyon – they were cold, frayed with age and strain, and writhed like trapped
animals in his fists as the gale yanked them this way and that. Clutching at
the ropes, Gidwyn gingerly lifted a foot forwards towards the rime-blistered
wooden slats that made up the bridge's footway. The snow lashed at his face, the wind tore
at his clothes and pulled the bridge this way and that beneath him.
Now or never.
Gidwyn
stepped onto the bridge. The frozen board beneath his feet slipped and slid as
he tried to put his weight onto it. He staggered forwards, clinging to the
ropes either side of him, dragging himself forwards as the bridge writhed and
bucked in the wind.
Below
him, Axefall Canyon laughed: a pair of enormous stone lips parted in frozen
mirth as Gidwyn struggled across the bridge one step at a time, clinging to
the simple construction spanning the massive gap. The canyon’s great spires of
tooth-like rock glinted with frost, sharp as nails, ready to impale Gidwyn
should he fall.
Oh, Fire, Gidwyn silently pleaded as,
wide-eyed and white-knuckled, he clung on to the bridge for dear life. Oh, Fire, preserve me. Don’t let me fall,
don’t let me-…
Gidwyn
had no idea if it was the wind or the ice beneath his feet that made him slip.
The gale seemed to scream with joy as he clutched at the ropes both sides of him and
shrieked in terror. He twisted as he stumbled, his foot catching between two of
the wooden, rime-blasted boards at his feet. Pain shot through his ankle, up
his shin and into his knee, but Gidwyn dare not let go.
For a
moment, all he could do was hold on as his leg throbbed with pain. He was a
lone sailor upon a shattering sea, standing atop the deck of a miserable
wood-and-rope ship, clutching the hempen wheel for dear life. Oh, by all the gods and wha’ ever there is
waitin’ beyond… Gidwyn thought as he screwed his eyes shut. Please, I cannae fall, I cannae…
Slowly,
as the wind continued to whip around him, Gidwyn opened his eyes. The pain in
his leg had lessened – though whether through rest or the numbing of the cold
he could not tell. The bridge still stretched before him, bucking and rolling
like a sea torn by waves, but he had to continue.
‘I
cannae fall,’ he breathed, his voice lost in the wind. ‘I cannae fall, I willnae fall!’
Slowly,
he began to creep forwards, clutching the rope either side of him, feeling each
board with his feet before stepping onto it. ‘I willnae fall…I willnae…’
Gradually, Gidwyn made his way across the bridge. The wind threw him from side to side and
the snow and sleet drove at him as ten-thousand ice-cold darts. But Gidwyn
refused to let go – refused to give up.
‘I
willnae fall,’ Gidwyn yelled into the wind as he struggled across the bridge,
hand over hand, foot over foot. ‘I willnae fall! Kiryae! Kiryae!’
It felt
as if a lifetime had passed. Gidwyn dragged himself across the bridge as the
indefatigable wind blasted leaden clouds and blinding snow around him.
Eventually, just as his knees were rubbed raw from crawling and his knuckles
and arms ached from clinging on to the rope bridge, through the whirling,
blackened mist around him he saw the far side of Axefall Canyon.
Spurred
on, Gidwyn dragged himself forwards, slipping and sliding on the frozen wood
beneath him. Axefall Canyon seemed to scream the wind up at him in a last
desperate attempt to dislodge and swallow him: the wind, like ten-thousand
invisible hands, struck and grabbed at him, pulled at his clothes, his hood,
his beard, but Gidwyn would not let go, would not give up. Not now, not this close…
And when he stepped from the rope bridge and
into the snow on the northern side of Axefall Canyon, Gidwyn could have wept
for joy. He fell forwards, collapsing into the waist-deep snow and feeling for
the solid rock beneath with his hands. Even as he knelt there, his fingers and
knees pressed into the stone, he felt as if his whole body were swaying, as if
he were still being bucked and thrown from side-to-side on the terrible bridge.
After a
moment, he dragged himself to his feet and looked around. The tracks of the
Yaghu that had taken Kiryae were fading fast, almost lost under new-fallen snow
and shrouded by blizzard. Still, though, they headed north. ‘Ow much further can they possibly go? Gidwyn
asked himself as he set off again, lifting an arm above his head to shield his
eyes from the driving snow. There’s
nothin’ this way – absolutely nothin’.
But
still the tracks went north, and so Gidwyn continued to follow them. The
further north he went and the higher up he climbed, the more and more reluctant
the wind and black cloud seemed to be to follow him. Soon, when Axefall Canyon
was a good few miles behind him, the screaming wind had diminished to a
whisper and the dark cloud through which he had struggled was little more than
a faint fog hanging in the air. Above him, the sky began to darken as the day
slowly drew towards its end, but what little light from the setting sun crested
the mountains drew their shadows long made the snow around Gidwyn shine
like millions of minute pearls.
Despite
the darkening day, the tracks were clearer beyond the falling snow and the
wind. Behind and below Gidwyn, back the way he had come, the long rock- and
snow-covered slope was partially obscured by a low layer of cloud, though he
could just faintly make out the long crevasse he had carved through the snow,
up across and along the crags and bluffs that had led him up the face of the
mountain he was now on.
Gidwyn
had barely paused to think – he had been so driven on charging forwards through
the snow, fog and wind that he had barely taken stock of where he was. Kûrthalag loomed before him, massive even at this
altitude, stretching a shadow dozens of miles long across the mountainside, but
he was on a lower peak. Morthassu, Gidwyn
thought. Skyline, on Kûrthalag’s
east. Twinned with Gyrahaal –
Horizon, rising on Kûrthalag’s west.
As Gidwyn turned his eyes
westwards and saw the sun sinking beneath the mountains, he realised just how
far he had travelled in his blind, panic-stricken run. By the Fire, he thought as the last sliver of the fiery globe in
the west sunk below the mountains, I’ve
gotta find shelter – I’ll freeze t’ death if I’m out ‘ere at night!
Gidwyn
looked around. There were dozens of cracks and crevasses littering the
mountainside, but he could not bring himself to stop. Kiryae an’ the Yaghu that ‘ave taken ‘er can’t be far, he thought
as he looked at the tracks stretching away across the snow, still north-bound. If I stop now an’ there’s new snow in the
night, I’ll never find ‘er. Oh, wha’ am I to do?
As he
stood in the snow, desperately trying to decide how to proceed, Gidwyn could
already feel the cold of the night sinking into him, pricking his flesh through
his heavy clothes like frozen daggers. I
cannae stay out ‘ere, he thought, but
then, neither can the Yaghu. I ‘ave to follow ‘em. At some point, they’ll ‘ave
to stop an’ find shelter ‘emselves. An’ tha’s when I’ll get ‘em. Tha’s when
I’ll find Kiryae.
Touching
the hilt of the Yaghu dagger tucked into his belt, Gidwyn set off again,
pushing onwards through the thick snow. The last light of the day turned the
sky above his head a bloody red, then faded to a bruised purple, and before
long became a tapestry of glittering stars.
The
snow around Gidwyn shone in the light from the moon and stars, lighting his way
across the mountains. Despite the fatigue in his limbs and the hunger gnawing
at his belly he soldiered on, crossing crags and bluffs, skirting crevasses and
canyons, clambering sharp walls of rock and icebound glaciers. And still the
tracks continued – two pairs of Yaghu prints, either side of a set of
stumbling, staggering prints. The Yaghu had led him on a chase through the
mountains, veering east and west in the hope of throwing off any pursuers, but
Gidwyn was not so easily perturbed.
It was
nearing midnight and the cold had become truly bitter by the time Gidwyn saw a
shape appear against the snow ahead of him. Still following the tracks of the
Yaghu who had taken Kiryae, it took him a moment to realise just where he was –
but when he did, a chill beyond the cold of the midnight mountains set itself
into his bones. Blasted with snow and riddled with rime, a stack of stones
wrapped with a length of dark cloth stood silent and stoic ahead of him – a
silent guard to a dark and terrible world beyond: a land of labyrinthine frozen
crags, of howling creatures known only to myth, and of certain death.
The Last Cairn.
And the
Yaghu’s tracks were making straight for it.
‘Fire,
don’t let it be so,’ Gidwyn whispered to himself, his breath clouding in the
freezing air before him. ‘Fire, please don’t let it be so.’
But
still Gidwyn marched on, following the Yaghu’s tracks. Each step brought him
closer and closer to the Cairn – the point of no return. They cannae ‘ave passed it. Nothin’ good lives beyond the Last Cairn –
surely the Yaghu know tha’, surely they wouldnae go this far…
Soon, it was right beside him – a
terrible guard to a world Gidwyn never dared visit. The last stop before Orthân
Vaarl.
And the
Yaghu tracks passed it, disappearing into the thick snow that coated the
terrible maze of mountains, crags, gullies and caves beyond.
Gidwyn
stopped beside the cairn. Tucked into the cracks in the rock were small frozen
offerings: coins from the Underkingdom, the Vidorian Empire, even a handful
from the Free Kingdoms where adventurous souls had eased their superstitious
spirits by tucking small discs of copper and silver between the rocks.
Tha’ willnae save ‘em from wha’ lies beyond,
Gidwyn thought. Tha’ willnae save
no-one from Orthân Vaarl.
All the tales he had heard of
Orthân Vaarl came back to him: of intrepid climbers being cast down from the
highest peaks to be dashed on the rocks below for their fell deeds in life; of
creatures borne of ice and frost, of rock and rime with a hatred of all
warm-blooded life; of ancient wyverns and terrible frozen dragons that wrapped
themselves around the peaks, preying on whoever was foolish enough to climb so
high.
As Gidwyn stood beside the last Cairn, staring at the jagged, fang-like
rocks and groaning crags beyond, he believed every single one of the old tales.
But he could still see the Yaghu’s tracks heading further and further north,
deeper and deeper into the mountains. He followed them with his eyes across the
snow before him and up into the spiralling crags beyond. Oh, Kiryae, he thought, wha’
am I to do?
But
Gidwyn already knew the answer. Taking a deep breath, he took a step forwards
and, for the first time in his life, passed the Last Cairn.
‘Daddy’s
comin’, sweetheart,’ he whispered to himself as he set off once more, a tiny
figure striding towards the black mountains before him.
*
The jagged wasteland beyond the Last Cairn known as Orthân
Vaarl had another name in the Common tongue: the Black Crags. So called for the
onyx-black, fang-like rocks that rose from the snow like gigantic skeletal
fingers, the Black Crags were a maze of
gullies, caves, chasms and clefts that snaked between wind-scourged spires of rime-scarred rock. A permanent blanket of snow hid the deep, wound-like crevasses that criss-crossed
the crags’ stone flesh, themselves snarling mouths waiting to swallow up
whoever crossed them.
In the
east the sun was rising, and Gidwyn was exhausted. He had not eaten for hours,
and he had not allowed himself the chance to stop and rest, for the Yaghu’s
tracks continued onwards before him.
Gidwyn
had walked through the night, staggering through the frozen wasteland. His feet
and lower legs were numb from the snow, and the rest of his body was freezing
with cold. He had pulled his heavy hooded cloak around himself, but the cold’s
daggers had struck true time and again, and now as the sun reddened the eastern
horizon, rising towards Orthân
Vaarl’s blackest rock-spires, he felt
his body beginning to give up on him.
His
legs stiffened as he walked and his whole body shook with cold. He could barely
feel the ground beneath his feet for his toes were so numb, and the whole world
before him was a dizzying blur of white snow and black rock. But he dare not
stop – could not stop – for the Yaghu’s tracks still led onwards, deeper and
deeper into Orthân
Vaarl.
The
Yaghu, it seemed, had walked through the night just as Gidwyn had. Gidwyn was
sure they had slowed, though, for their tracks were getting fresher and fresher
with every passing hour. They ‘ave to
stop soon, Gidwyn told himself as he staggered onwards. They cannae keep goin’…they cannae…
For he knew he could not.
The
tireless pace the Yaghu had set was killing him, and he knew it. He was so
cold, so hungry, and so tired – yet he could not pause, for he knew that if he
did he would never see his sweet Kiryae again. He longed for home, to be by the
fire-pit in the middle of his stone-built house, Eoina and Kiryae by his side,
the three wolf-dogs at his feet. But now
there are two, Gidwyn had to remind himself. They took poor Coren…
The
memory of Coren lying dead in the snow, his pelt riddled with arrows and
steaming blood pooling around him drove Gidwyn onwards. Taking a deep breath,
he drove himself forwards, onwards through Orthân Vaarl.
Enormous
walls of black stone hundreds of feet high rose around Gidwyn on either side;
terrible, face-like clefts in the rock leered out at him, frozen in mocking
laughter as the lonely Dwarf struggled onwards through the narrow gullies below,
doggedly following the tracks before him. Gargoyle-like overhangs of rock
weighed down by thick snow jutted above him, threatening to break and come
crashing down onto him as he passed beneath them - like a gigantic palm crushing an ant.
But the
Yaghu tracks were fresher than ever before. Less
than an hour old, Gidwyn told himself and he knelt to inspect a fresh
track. I’m catchin’ up.
He set
off again with renewed vigour, jogging through the snow in spite of the fatigue dragging at his limbs. The blanket of white
that covered the Great Mountains was not as thick in Orthân Vaarl, for the high
walls of rock and the shadows of the mountains looming on all sides helped
shelter the gullies from the worst of the snow.
Then,
quite suddenly, there they were.
Gidwyn
rounded a corner in the gulley and saw, perhaps two-hundred paces ahead, three
figures. They were climbing a steep, snow-covered slope together that led up
out of the gulley and onto a narrow shelf of rock winding its way around the
neck of a mountain above them. Two were dressed in white furs and leathers and
were tall, similar in height to Men, but stooped and long-limbed. Between them
they dragged another figure wrapped up in a dark cloak and brown leathers. They
were perilously still, being dragged by their wrists, and putting up no fight.
Kiryae.
Gidwyn forgot about his freezing
limbs and the hunger in his belly. He forgot how tired he was, and how much his
body ached. He focused instead on the rage boiling inside him, making his blood
run hot, shaking the snow from his beard and guiding his hand to the hooked
Yaghu dagger at his belt.
‘Kiryae!’ he yelled at the top of his
lungs, setting off at a sprint towards where the three figures were. ‘Kiryae!’
The
figure between the two Yaghu flinched and began to struggle. ‘Father?’ a voice
came. ‘Father! Father!’
‘Kiryae!’
The first
arrow whistled past Gidwyn’s head and cracked against one of the jet-black rock
walls that loomed up beside him.
Oh no ye don’t, ye murderin’ bastards!
The
three figures were half-way up the snow-strewn slope. One of the Yaghu now held
Kiryae in both its hands whilst the other was aiming its bow at Gidwyn and
readying a second shot.
Gidwyn
ducked to the right and continued rushing forwards, the dagger he had taken now
clenched in his fist. The second arrow whistled past him, thudding into the
snow behind him. He was closing the gap, charging towards the slope. Hundred paces. I can do this.
‘Father!’
Kiryae’s voice came again. ‘Father, look out!’
Gidwyn
kept running forwards as another arrow whistled past him. ‘C’mon, ye bastard!’
he roared, his voice bouncing off the sheer, black cliffs on both sides of him.
‘Ye’ll ‘ave t’ do better than tha’!’
He could see Kiryae and her
captors above him now, just a short dash away. I can make it, I can do it! ‘I’m comin’, Kiryae, I’m comin’!’
‘Father!
No!’
Gidwyn
heard the sudden panic in Kiryae’s voice as he ran forwards, now a matter of
paces from the bottom of the slope. ‘I’m comin’, Kiryae, I’m-…’
The
ground disappeared from beneath Gidwyn’s feet. He fell forwards, the dagger
flying from his hand. Snow fell around him and he grabbed for something –
anything – to hold on to.
A crevasse, only a few feet wide and previously
hidden by a blanket of snow, opened up around him. He heard Kiryae scream and
the Yaghu burst into thin laughter.
Through
more luck than anything else, Gidwyn managed to grab on to the lip of the
crevasse with one hand. His fingers wrapped around a thick lump of rock and as
he swung for a moment, his eyes were drawn downwards.
The
crevasse into which he had stumbled, even though it were no wider than a man
was tall, extended down hundreds upon hundreds of feet. Dizzying, whirling
blackness awaited below, a thick, inky fog between the two jet-black stone lips
to which he desperately clung. Gidwyn felt his stomach drop and his throat go
dry as he looked into the shadows spinning beneath him.
Gidwyn
swung his other hand up to try and grab on to the ledge above his head, but
instead his fingers closed around something else. He lifted his eyes and looked
up to see one of the two Yaghu looming over him – his fingers closed around the
hideous creature’s ankle. It seemed large by Yaghu standards: a male, Gidwyn
guessed, with broad shoulders and sinewy limbs beneath the white furs and
leathers it wore. Its pale face was criss-crossed with scars, and there were a
number of crude iron loops in its lips and along its brow.
It
grinned down at Gidwyn, displaying two rows of sharp, fang-like teeth. Its
black eyes bored into Gidwyn's face. ‘You’re far from home, little Dwarf,’ the Yaghu said in the Common tongue. ‘I’m impressed. My name is Saark. I want you
to know that, as I shall be the one who kills you.’
Gidwyn
tried to heave on the creature’s ankle and toss it into the crevasse behind
him, but it was no good. The Yaghu’s feet were planted firmly, and it was far
stronger than he was.
The
creature let out a thin, hissing laugh. ‘Pathetic,’ it said through its sharp
teeth. ‘Utterly pathetic. And to think you’ve kept a creature suh as this,’ it
gestured back towards Kiryae, ‘squandered for so long. You are a fool as well,
it seems.’
‘That’s
my daughter,’ Gidwyn snarled in
response. ‘Ye’ll let ‘er go!’
The
Yaghu leaned forwards until its face was only a hand’s length from Gidwyn’s.
‘You truly have no idea, do you?’ Saark said, his voice thin and cruel. ‘And
you shall die not knowing.’
‘My
daughter,’ Gidwyn snarled, trying to drag himself up from where he hung. ‘Ye’ll
no take ‘er, ye’ll no ‘urt ‘er!’
Saark scoffed.
‘I’ll do all of those things,’ he said. ‘And you shan’t stop me.’
Gidwyn
made one last attempt to heave himself out of the crevasse, but as he did
Saark’s heavy, booted foot came crashing down onto his face. He let out a
muffled cry and he heard Kiryae scream in the distance. Still, he hung on,
clinging to the Yaghu’s ankle and the knobble of dark rock on the edge of the
crevasse.
But
Saark’s foot came once more, then again and again until Gidwyn could feel blood
pouring from his nose and his head was spinning. Then, with one final strike
from the large Yaghu, Gidwyn could hold on no longer. His hands slipped from
the two holds he had and he fell back into nothingness.
Kiryae’s
scream followed him down, as did dozens of droplets of blood from his nose. He
plummeted downwards, the thin sliver of light from the world above fading fast
as he fell further and further. The blackness that had swirled in the deep crevasse beneath him rushed up to greet him, and soon Gidwyn was completely
lost to the dark.
*
For a moment, he wondered if he had died, and the flames were the sacred Fire awaiting to greet him. But nae, surely the Fire would be larger ‘n far hotter…No. Am I home? Surely not…
As Gidwyn slowly opened his eyes and found the world around him swathed in a deep, dark blur, he began to wonder if, through some divine will, he was indeed back home. He could see low stone walls, firelight dancing on wooden seats, a small tale and could smell food.
‘Eoina…?’ he managed to croak. ‘Eoina…?’
To Gidwyn’s amazement, a figure appeared above him. But even in his near-death haze, he could tell it was not Eoina.
The thing that appeared over him was enormous: a huge, dark shape that blotted out the light in the room with an enormous shadow. Gidwyn blinked, suddenly terrified, and tried to recoil as he saw firelight dance upon stone-grey skin, tusk-like teeth, a fat, squat nose and stubby, twisted ears. ‘By the Fire!’ Gidwyn cred, reaching for the Yaghu dagger – only to remember he had dropped it when he fell into the crevasse.
The thing loomed over him, stepping closer to the fire. Shoulders as broad as a cart squared themselves, legs and feet that looked as if they had been cut straight from the grey rock walls that rose around Gidwyn began to walk towards where he lay. He tried to wriggle away. Two hands the size of cartwheels descended towards him, and as the arms came towards him, Gidwyn realised the enormous figure was covered in huge plates of heavy armour.
Gidwyn screamed. ‘Troll!’ he cried, trying to scramble away, clawing at the stone floor. ‘T-t-troll!’
Head spinning, body wracked with pain, Gidwyn tried to roll onto his front and drag himself away from the enormous troll. I cannae be eaten! his mind screamed at him. I cannae! I cannae! No, no’ like this!
As his fingers grabbed at the stone beneath him, he felt a huge hand wrap itself around him and roll him back onto his back as if he were nothing more than a kicking baby. He screamed again, his eyes wide and staring, his beard showered with spittle.
‘Ssssh!’ a huge voice, its tone stern, echoed around the chamber. ‘Hush, little Snow-Dwarf, hush!’
Gidwyn thrashed and writhed as violently as he could. Quite suddenly, he became free from the huge hand – though he did not know if he had scrambled out from between the fingers of the huge hand that held him, or if the stone-like grasp had let him go. He scrambled backwards until his back was pressed firmly against the wall and could scuttled no further. The huge creature lumbered towards him still, stepping fully into the firelight, its hands raised, its wide, flat, tusked face twisted with irritation.
‘Little Snow-Dwarf,’ the creature said sternly, ‘hush! Hush!’
Gidwyn stared up at the creature. ‘By the Fire,’ he whispered. ‘You’re a…a…’
‘A troll?’ The creature said, raising itself to its full height – as tall as a large Man with another sitting on his shoulders and three times as wide. Firelight danced upon the creature’s stone-grey skin and the surprisingly ornate armour it wore – heavy shoulder-plated, large bracers around its wrists, heavy plates on its legs and a massive chestplate covering its torso. An’ torso wit’ a surprisingly cinched waist, an’ a pair o’ breasts…
‘I suppose I am now, yes,’ the creature said. ‘Just a lowly troll,’ the enormous creature said. ‘But a troll that saved your life, no-less.’
An’ remarkably well-spoken. Gidwyn looked up at the huge creature. ‘A she-troll?’ he said. ‘A real-life she-troll?’
The enormous she-troll folded her arms across her wide chest. ‘A she-troll who can understand your words, little Snow-Dwarf,’ she said, her voice grating. ‘Have cordiality and good manners died out in the Upper-World?’
‘S-sorry,’ Gidwyn stammered. ‘I-…it’s just…’
The she-troll raised her enormous slab of brow expectantly. It was then Gidwyn noticed the thick, dark hair she had stretching down her back, pulled into a painfully tight braid, and a small, surprisingly dainty diadem of metal wrought around her forehead. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘you were going to say?’
‘I’ve ne’er seen a troll before,’ Gidwyn said. ‘They’re rare in the Upper-World, an’ the stories that are told-…well, they dinnae do ye justice-…’
‘Stories?’ The she-troll scoffed. ‘Stories of my kin? And how do they go?’
Gidwyn slowly got to his feet and swallowed. His whole body ached and his nose felt as if someone had tried to pull it off. As he reached up to touch it, he realised a thick, creamy balm had been rubbed all over it. ‘I, well-…’ he coughed. ‘They’re no’…they’re no’ so flatterin’, I ‘ave t’ admit.’
The she-troll scowled, her braided hair falling over her slate-grey cheeks. ‘How do they go?’
Gidwyn swallowed nervously. ‘Ye see, trolls are known to be solitary creatures, oft not as…astute as yerself, an-…’
The she-troll sighed and shook her head. ‘They tell of monstrous creatures, covered in fur and pelts and swinging clubs of wood and rock, no? Of grunting, inbred brutes, dragging their knuckles as they walk, eating the flesh of sentient creatures, barely capable of stringing a sentence together?’
Gidwyn swallowed. He could only nod his head.
The huge she-troll sighed and shook her head. ‘Then it is as I feared,’ she said, her voice rolling through the shadows. ‘We have fallen far further than I ever dared imagine.’
‘Fallen?’ Gidwyn grumbled through his beard. ‘Don’t ye dare talk t’ me about fallin’.’
The she-troll let out a grunt of bitter laughter. ‘I suppose you have me there.’
For a moment, Gidwyn stood before the enormous she-troll, wrapped in her ornate heavy armour, utterly unable to process what was going on. ‘Wha’ ‘appened to me?’ he said eventually. ‘How did I get ‘ere?’
The she-troll beckoned Gidwyn back towards the fire, where he noticed a large iron pot was suspended above the flames. ‘I heard you screaming as you fell,’ the she-troll said, leading Gidwyn to the fireside and picking up a huge, ornately-carved iron ladle. She spooned the contents of the pot into two bowls and passed one to Gidwyn, who sat on a low stool beside the warming flames, his whole body groaning with ache as he did so.
‘I clean up you travellers when I find you,’ the she-troll said. ‘If you lie around too long, you start to smell and attract all manner of things.’
‘You…clean up…?’ Gidwyn swallowed and looked down at the bowl of food in his hand. It smelled of earthy herbs and meat. A lot of meat.
The she-troll seemed disgusted. ‘It’s snow hare and aromatic undermoss. You think I’d serve you…?’ She let out a bitter laugh that rolled through the dark cave. ‘Then it is true. The Fall.’
‘I-…I didnae mean to offend. It’s jus’-…’
‘You’ve never supped with a troll.’
Gidwyn shook his head.
The she-troll shook her head. ‘Your ancestors would be horrified – that is, if it was not for the Fall.’
Wha’ ever d’ ye mean?’ Gidwyn said. ‘I mean, ‘bout the Fall?’
The she-troll’s face broke into a small smile, her large, tusked teeth jutting between her dark lips. ‘My name is Aolodaia, little Snow-Dwarf,’ the she-troll said, ‘but if that’s too much of a mouthful, you can call me Daia. It’s an ancient name, carried by my mother, her mother, and her grandmother. A proud name. It was given to the women of my family by the First Dwarves, who carved our ancestors from the very stone itself.
‘The trolls were once a majestic people,’ she said quietly. ‘We were willing servants of the Ancient Dwarves thousands of years ago – back in a time when the World was young, long before Men, when only Elves walked Esdaria, forging great empires and exploring the seas beyond.’ The she-troll paused. ‘We were the Dwarves’ everlasting servants, creatures who lived thousands of years, guarding their cities and fighting side-by-side with them in their great wars beneath the mountains. But we also joined their families, ate and drank with them. To be assigned a Trûlhalan or Trûlhale – a troll-ward – was a great honour for a family.’
The she-troll let out a long sigh, memories eroding the wistful smile upon her stony features to a deep frown. ‘And then it fell apart, almost overnight. The First Dwarves crumbled, broke into clans and fell to war. Their cities went to ruin and were slowly abandoned – there are thousands of miles of streets, roads, and houses far deeper beneath the Esdarian Mountains than anyone can imagine. The First Dwarves retreated eastwards, their numbers dwindling until there were so few left. The Trûlhalan and Trûlhale were either slaughtered or forgotten. Those left behind tried the Upper-World, searching for a new life. I am one of the few who remained.’
‘Who remained?’ Gidwyn said, his eyes wide. ‘Ye were there with the First Dwarves…? How old are ye, if ye don’t mind me askin’, tha’ is.’
Daia nodded her enormous head slowly. ‘Nine-thousand four-hundred and seventy-six.’ Her half-smirk appeared on her face again. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen.’
Gidwyn’s mouth fell open; he almost lost the mouthful of stew he had been chewing whilst Daia spoke. ‘How?’
‘I am one of the last pure trolls,’ Daia said. ‘Not one of these inbred, hideous things you spoke of. We were built to last, and, like these halls, lasted I have.’
As Daia finished, she raised her hand and gestured to the walls around them. Gidwyn looked away from his bowl of warm stew and saw the walls properly for the first time. They were etched with great carvings: an enormous smith wearing a crown of stars and planets, smote a great anvil from which creatures came: Elves and Dwarves, who walked in long columns across the walls, through forests, beneath mountains, beside the seas. And then there were Dwarf-kings and queens: bearded Dwarf-men and fair Dwarf-women in great crowns, carrying swords and shields wrought with bronze.
‘Where am I?’ Gidwyn managed to say, his spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘Wha’ is this place?’
‘The fortress-city of Skurgasz-Jolturas,’ Daia said, her stone-grey face creasing in a look of melancholy. ‘Jewel in the crown of the old Hrudunni.’ Daia took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Halls that once rang with song now only hiss with the whispers of the Yaghu.’
‘Yaghu?!’ Gidwyn started, setting aside his bowl. ‘The Yaghu are here?’‘Yes,’ Daia said slowly, her slab of brow descending low over her dark eyes. ‘What business does an Upper-Worlder have with the Yaghu?’ Daia shook her head. ‘You’re the second these past weeks.’
‘If ye’re nae gonna ‘urt me,’ Gidwyn began nervously, ‘I dinnae suppose ye could ‘elp me get back to the surface? Ye see, I’m after me daughter. She was taken by the Yaghu, an’ I was trackin’ ‘em when I fell down the crevasse an’-…’
‘And any tracks you were following will be long gone, my little Snow-Dwarf,’ Daia said. ‘You’ve been unconscious three days.’
‘Three days?!’ Gidwyn gasped, leaping to his feet. ‘My Kiryae will be gone! Long gone!’
The she-troll frowned. ‘Kiryae?’‘My daughter,’ Gidwyn said, panic rising in his chest. He looked around the carved chamber he was in with Daia. ‘I ‘ave t’ find ‘er! The Yaghu took ‘er!’
Daia’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘What colours did they wear?’
‘Colours?’ Gidwyn cried, gesturing wide with exasperation. ‘Wha’ does it matter? The Yaghu ain’t like Men, Elves or Dwarves, wearin’ colours to identify ‘emseves! I need to be lookin’, scourin’ the snow for any sign! I cannae lose ‘er!’
‘It matters a great deal, little Snow-Dwarf,’ Daia said, her gaze hardening into a disapproving glare. She folded her enormous arms across her broad chest and glared down upon Gidwyn. ‘For in this area of the mountains, even this deep underground, the snow-hare proliferates. Your meal,’ she gestured to the bowl, ‘is filled with snow-hare. What colours were the Yaghu who took your daughter wearing?’
Gidwyn blushed and looked at the floor. ‘They were wearin’ white furs to be disguised against the snow,’ he said quietly.
‘And you must know what colour snow-hares are?’
Gidwyn swallowed. ‘White,’ he whispered.
Daia’s hard face cracked into a sly grin. ‘Then it appears you may be in luck. Skurgasz-Jolturas is home to a large group of Yaghu who call themselves the Sy’ith Feld.’ The enormous she-troll pulled a face as she said the words. ‘I’ve no idea what their name means in their foul tongue, but I doubt it to be anything pleasant.’
Gidwyn clasped his hands together and wrung them in front of the she-troll. ‘Thank-ye for yer ‘elp, Ma’am,’ he said, ‘an’ thank-ye fer the meal, but I really must be goin’, I cannae leave my sweet Kiryae in the ‘ands of the Yaghu.’
Daia nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said, her voice suddenly gentle, ‘but you will not survive your journey through Skurgasz-Jolturas.’
‘I ‘ave nae choice,’ Gidwyn said, looking around the room for an exit – there, on the far side of the chamber, he could see an enormous, carved door. ‘I willnae survive the rest o’ my designated days if I do not find ‘er. I’ll nae be able to live wit’ meself.’
Gidwyn’s attention was drawn back to Daia as the sound of something heavy being lifted echoed around the chamber. ‘I understand,’ she said as she lifted a warhammer as large as a man from beside the fire and slung it over her shoulder, ‘which is why I, as the last guardian of Skurgasz-Jolturas, would be honoured to escort the only Dwarf currently in this ancient city to his destination.’
Gidwyn’s mouth fell open. ‘Ye’d-…ye’d ‘elp me?’
‘It would be an honour,’ Daia said. ‘You would be the first Dwarf to do me such kindness in several thousand years.’ She paused, her dark gaze suddenly becoming wistful. ‘Those more recent encounters with travellers and adventurers have been somewhat hostile,’ she said, touching a spot on her plate armour where Gidwyn noticed there was a chip. ‘I swore an oath long ago never to harm the Halflings, so I could do little more than flee…’
Arrows, maybe, Gidwyn thought as he looked at the dent in Daia’s heavy armour. Or per’aps a sword-blow. He managed an aching smile up at the she-troll. ‘Well, I’m very grateful fer yer assistance.’
Daia smiled down at Gidwyn, her lips twisting around her stone-like tusks. ‘I am touched, little Snow-Dwarf,’ she said. ‘It has been too long since I walked side-by-side with one of your kind. Please, allow me to show you the way.’
The she-troll turned and lifted a large burning length of wood from the fire. She held it above her head: her black hair, braided like that of a Dwarf, shone in the glow, whilst the flames cast long shadows of her grey-dark skin, the mottles, scars, and nicks in her flesh all harbouring deep shadows. She was truly fearsome to look upon.
The she-troll crossed the dark chamber to the door Gidwyn had noticed. Hoisting her hammer over her shoulder, she pressed her free hand against the enormous door and pushed. A huge, groaning creak sounded as ancient wood scraped over old stone, and echoed away through the darkness beyond.
And what a darkness it was. Beyond the doorway, Gidwyn could see nothing more than shadows. Darkness untouched by the light of day or that of a torch for thousands of years pressed thick on all sides as a lightless world stretched away before him. He felt a shiver run through him as he thought of the terrors that lay in the shadows beyond. Sharp teeth, black eyes, bone-coloured skin, all hidden by the gloom. Gidwyn shuddered.
‘Once upon a time,’ Daia said from where she towered over Gidwyn, ‘Dwarves could see in the dark. Legend has it you all also had black eyes and skin as dark as coal. But time changes a great many things.’Gidwyn swallowed. ‘I’m glad yer on my side,’ he mumbled.
‘And who else’s side would I be on?’ Daia said, her enormous, grey face creasing into a small smile. ‘It has been ages since I last saw a Dwarf, but I remember my oaths. Come now, little master, let us find your daughter.’
And so, hoisting the brand aloft in one hand and carrying her huge warhammer in the other, Daia led Gidwyn into the darkness, the light from their torch pushing against the ink-black shadows around them.
*
Gidwyn had never known darkness like that which infested Skurgasz-Jolturas.
It was palpably thick, almost like water. Gidwyn felt as if he were having to push through it. An’ jus’ wha’ does it hide? he found himself wondering as he looked at the blackness swirling around them. A cavern the size o’ a city, most like? Or does it go on forever? ‘Ow far down are we, even?
As he walked through the tunnels and streets, Gidwyn could only just be aware of the enormous expanse of long-dead civilisation around him. Though the light from Daia’s burning brand was bright and wreathed the passages and halls through which they travelled in golden light, Gidwyn could tell it revealed but a pinprick of the world lost beneath the mountains.
And what passages and halls they were. Squat buildings wrought in smooth stone carved with intricate geometric patterns rose and fell on either side of where Gidwyn and Daia walked. Their walls were studded with lead-lined windows of dust-covered glass. Through the cracks, Gidwyn could make out tables and chairs, unused for thousands of years. There were carved pewter dishes, thick with dust, and cutlery of the finest craftsmanship.
Then a statue would loom through the gloom, enormous and indomitable, as tall as twenty Men. A Dwarf, beard bejewelled and gilt in gold and silver, would tower above them, the precious metals wrought across its complexion catching the light thrown by Daia’s torch.
‘D’ ye know who these folk are?’ Gidwyn said, stopping to look up at one of the enormous statues.
Daia shook her enormous head, her braided hair bouncing around her shoulders. ‘No,’ she said, her grating voice wracked with sorrow. ‘When I was made, the First Dwarves were already breaking and their numbers dwindling. Tales of old, of paragons and kings, of queens and heroes, were already fading from memory.’ She paused to look up at the huge statue. ‘What I would give to have lived and fought in the times of the First Dwarves…’ She trailed off for a moment, her eyes wistful, but then turned to look at Gidwyn. ‘But my mission today is an honour itself.’
Gidwyn grinned. ‘Thank-ye, Daia,’ he said.
‘But come,’ she said, ‘and take a look at this.’
Daia led Gidwyn further into Skurgasz-Jolturas, their footsteps echoing endlessly through the darkness. Despite the pressing blackness around him, Gidwyn felt less afraid with Daia by his side. The enormous she-troll appeared to be keeping anything creeping through the ruins at bay. Or they’re jus’ waitin’, bidin’ their time.
In the light of the torch, the armour Daia wore took on new life. Each plate of the dark, masterfully-forged iron was covered in bronze carvings depicting great battles and monstrous creatures, many of which Gidwyn could not name. The head of the great warhammer she carried was also decorated with similar markings – including an open-mouthed Dwarf-face on either end.
A subtle change in the sound their echoing footsteps made drew Gidwyn’s thoughts away from Daia’s armour and back to the present. Before him, the she-troll was lifting her torch and Gidwyn realised they had stepped from the streets of Skurgasz-Jolturas and into a long, wide tunnel, its walls carved with a gold-plated scene that seemed to stretch on for miles.
Beside him, Gidwyn could see a familiar, enormous figure at work with a hammer upon an anvil. The Great Creator, he thought. If Kiryae were ‘ere, she’d no-doubt tell me the Fire is the Great Creator or wha’ ever. He was unable to stop a sad sigh escaping his aching nose. By the Fire, I miss ‘er so…
Gidwyn turned his gaze back to the walls and fixed his eyes on the carvings there to try and stop the despondency setting in. I’m ‘ere, an’ I can only go as fast as Daia’ll let me. We’ve gotta be careful, there could be Yaghu about an’…
‘See here?’ Daia interrupted Gidwyn’s thoughts, pointing up at the carvings. ‘These are the First Dwarves.’
Gidwyn was surprised, for the Dwarves who stood around the great anvil did not carry weapons, nor did they fight. Instead, in their stone-carved hands they held great scrolls and tomes.
Slowly, Daia led Gidwyn down the long, cavernous hallway, and so the story of the First Dwarves unfurled before Gidwyn’s eyes. The First Dwarves walked amongst the hills and the mountains, side-by-side with tall, elegant Elves, recording all they found until one day they headed beneath the mountains in great droves to build. Great kingdoms and empires were formed, and Dwarves wearing crowns rendered in gold and jewels rose to rule – and fell again.
‘This is amazin’…’ Gidwyn breathed, looking up at the enormous carving before him. ‘So amazin’…’
‘Over the many millennia they have lived, the Dwarves have built thousands of miles of empire, kingdom, province, and duchy beneath the surface of the World,’ Daia said, pausing beside Gidwyn to look up at the enormous wall-carving. ‘But the Dwarves fell to fighting one-another, and Esdaria was rocked by catastrophes. Their numbers dwindled and they fled, abandoning swathes of their former lands. It has only been in the last few thousand years that the Halflings have started to find their old lands again.
‘But this place,’ Daia said, ‘is dark and deep. It is tucked away and far beyond the reach of most. I remain here as its guardian in the hope that one day a new Halfling lineage will discover it, and I shall be granted the purpose I was long ago denied.’
‘Wait,’ Gidwyn said, brow furrowing. ‘Wha’ catastrophes are ye talkin’ about?’
Daia gave Gidwyn a long, sad look and continued walking. As she went, the flame from her torch continued to illuminate the enormous carvings along the hallway. After a while, she stopped and turned her gaze up to the wall again. ‘I was as yet unmade before this time,’ she said, lifting a huge, grey hand up to gesture at the wall. ‘Apparently, the whole of Esdaria bled until there was almost nothing of it left.’
Gidwyn looked up at the wall. Images of Dwarves in crowns, of Gnomes creating delicate jewels, and of Dwarves marching to battle, side-by-side with gigantic trolls disappeared. Instead came fire. Huge tongues of gold and amber wreathed the walls, devouring stone-carved forests and washing over chiselled mountains. Figures – both Elven and Halfling from what Gidwyn could see – burned in the flames, whilst over all hung an enormous black shape with golden eyes.
‘A dragon,’ Gidwyn breathed.
Daia nodded. ‘And that was not all,’ she said, gesturing beyond the dragon to where, quite suddenly, the carving stopped and the wall became bare. ‘Terrible wars broke out across the Upper-World some three-thousand years ago. The Elves quite suddenly annihilated each other in a terrible conflict that dragged on for centuries. In the aftermath, there was almost no-one left. Then, Men appeared. But it was too late for my charges.’ Daia paused. Pain flickered across her features. ‘They were long dead.’
Gidwyn nodded. ‘Incredible,’ he breathed. ‘Absolutely incred-…’
‘Hush,’ Daia said suddenly, her voice low.
Gidwyn froze. In the expanse of darkness and silence around him, the only thing he could hear was the crackle from Daia’s torch and the hammering of his own heart.
Until he heard something scrape.
It was the faintest sound – like a nail along a stone ledge. Gidwyn slowly turned, suddenly prickled by a cold sweat. Behind him lay only darkness – shadows that reached high up the enormous carved wall that ran behind him.
And then, one of the shadows moved.
Before Gidwyn had time to scream, a figure leapt from the shadow. He saw bone-pale flesh, white snow-hare fur, and a horrid hooked dagger. Sharp teeth barred at him, black eyes shone through the gloom, the Yaghu raised its dagger to stike.
But before the Yaghu’s weapon could find its mark, Daia’s huge hammer swung past Gidwyn and caught the Yaghu square across its chest. A terrible, churning smack rung through the darkness, and gore burst around Daia’s hammer as if she had struck a goat-bladder full of blood.
Gidwyn let out a shriek as the Yaghu burst in front of him, the stones around them becoming slathered in blue blood. His scream was drowned out by hissing cries that came from everywhere at once as more Yaghu emerged from the shadows, all dressed in white furs.
Suddenly desperate and afraid, Gidwyn grabbed the Yaghu dagger his attacker had dropped and held it before him. The creatures were closing fast, stepping from the pressing darkness just beyond Daia’s torch and into the ring of light thrown around the hallway. Their teeth were barred and their clawed fists were clutching a variety of barbed weapons: swords, daggers, spears, axes.
Oh, Fire preserve me! Gidwyn thought as one of the spear-wielding Yaghu charged for him. But as it did, a colossal roar shook the hallway and again Daia barrelled into view, her enormous hammer swinging in one hand, the burning torch whirling in the other. The Yaghu that emerged from the shadows were sent spinning back into the darkness as fast as they came – the spear-wielding Yaghu attacker was struck in the side of the head by an enormous blow, his skull collapsing in an explosion of blue that splattered across Gidwyn’s face.
More came. Dozens of Yaghu burst from the shadows, wrapped in white rabbit-furs, clutching razor-sharp, barbed weapons. They hissed and howled as they swarmed towards Daia, lifting their savage weapons. Gidwyn was forgotten as the swarm of Yaghu came surging towards the she-troll.
But Daia was unfazed by the surge of attackers. Her huge hammer swung from left to right, sweeping through the Yaghu like a farmer’s scythe through ripe barley. They fell in droves, dozens of mangled bodies and twisted faces reeling back into the darkness of the tunnel.
Gidwyn could only watch on, mouth open in awe. He had never seen such raw strength before in his life.
Quite suddenly, the Yaghu stopped their advance, hesitating on the edge of the light thrown up by Daia’s torch. Then, as a single body, they turned and fled yelping and shrieking into the darkness. The sound of their footsteps retreating into the shadows quickly faded to nothing.
Gidwyn looked around at the twitching carcasses: shattered limbs attached to wrecked bodies spasmed out the last vestiges of the life-forces still bound inside them. The carved walls were splattered with blood, and the Yaghu’s many bodies were mangled into wretched piles of pulp, the white furs they wore stained blue with blood. Their pale corpses were scattered across the hallway, the whole scene lit in the eerie orange glow from Daia’s torch.
‘Tha’ was-…’ Gidwyn stammered, his wide eyes scanning the carnage. ‘Tha’ was amazin’! Ye jus’…jus’…’
‘They know we’re coming,’ Daia said, hoisting her bloody hammer back over her shoulder. ‘We need to move quickly.’ She paused to wipe some blue gore off her arm and pulled a disapproving face before turning to continue onwards, leading Gidwyn by the light of her torch. ‘Why anyone would want to do business with such disgusting creatures is beyond me.’
‘Business?’ Gidwyn said, rushing to catch up. ‘Wha’ d’ ye mean?’
‘Did you not hear me earlier?’ Daia said as she led Gidwyn onwards through the darkness. ‘I said that there have been a number of travellers this way recently, the last only a few days ago.’
‘Were they adventurer sorts?’ Gidwyn asked. ‘I sometimes ‘ave ‘em come to me farm on the surface before they set off to search the mountains.’
Daia shrugged her massive shoulders. ‘They did not look like adventurers to me,’ she said. ‘They looked a little like you – Snow-Dwarves.’
Dwarves? Gidwyn thought, his brow furrowing. No Dwarf would go this far north without comin’ upon my farm. We’d ‘ave seen ‘em passin’ through, for sure!
‘But come, little Snow-Dwarf,’ Daia said, ‘we’ll get nowhere standing here, and every moment we wait sitting here, the closer the Yaghu shall get.’ She paused for a moment, her jet-black eyes searching the shadows, her slab of brow furrowing dangerously. ‘And make no mistake, they are coming.’
Gidwyn opened his mouth to speak, but as he did he heard something hiss in the distance. His fist tightened around the dagger in his hand as he lifted his gaze to meet Daia’s.
The sound grew larger and larger as the Dwarf and the she-troll stood in the light of their torch listening. What began as a hiss – as tranquil and quiet as a summer breeze caressing the snow – slowly grew. It came slowly at first, rolling like a wave over the darkness-shrouded buildings beyond the hallway and gathering like a cloud over the ancient city. It rumbled and snarled, its echoes growling down the carved corridor where Gidwyn and Daia stood listening.
But then it moved. A wall of noise burst into the corridor, getting louder and louder as it got closer and closer, until it became a roar – a roar in which Gidwyn could hear hundreds of snarling voices.
‘Run!’ Daia roared.
Gidwyn did not need telling twice.
He turned and fled down the long carved hallway whilst the light from Daia’s torch shone in the dark eyes and on the glistening white fangs of the horde of Yaghu behind them.
Gidwyn would have screamed if he could, but the terror that gripped him choked him into silence. His legs whirled as fast as they could, carrying him further and further down the carved tunnel as Daia stormed off ahead, her long legs carrying her away twice as fast as Gidwyn could run. The light cast by the torch she carried began to fade as she pulled further and further ahead.‘D-…Daia…!’ Gidwyn tried to wheeze. ‘Slow! Slow-…I cannae…I cannae keep-…’
The first arrow clattered past him, skidding across the shadowy stones to his right. Gidwyn let out a cry of terror as another whizzed past him – then another and another.
In front of him, Gidwyn saw Daia turn as his cry rang down the hallway. Her rock-grey face fell in horror and she turned and began to charge towards where he ran.
Pain washed through Gidwyn.
The Dwarf screamed as he felt something struck him in the back. He stumbled forwards as pain blossomed up and down his spine. An arrow, he thought. I’ve been hit! But he could not stop running, for the Yaghu were closer than ever.
But then another arrow struck Gidwyn – this one punching through his heavy cloak and the layers of wool and leather he wore beneath and lodged itself firmly between his shoulder blades. Gidwyn could only gasp as he fell forwards, collapsing onto the cold stone floor.
He was aware of Daia roaring as she arrived at his side and stood over him, her enormous hammer swinging. He could smell blood and gore on the cold, still air – could feel Yaghu blood and entrails splattering over him. But it was all numbed by the agony blossoming from the two arrows stuck firmly in his back.
He tried to reach around and get hold of the shafts, but could not. Every move he made sent waves of pain through his body, and nausea and dizziness washed over him.
Not now, Gidwyn thought as he tried to grasp the arrow in his back. No, not now…we must be so close…Kiryae…
‘Daia…’ Gidwyn managed to gasp. ‘Daia, ‘elp me…’
But there was little Daia could do. She swung her enormous hammer and her burning torch, scattering Yaghu in every direction, but there were hundreds of them. Her hammer was drenched in blood and Yaghu entrails slathered the walls and the floor, but the creatures did not stop coming.
Soon, they were overwhelming the great she-troll, grabbing hold of her arms and legs, tripping her and forcing her to stumble. As she did, from somewhere in the whirling melee around the great she-troll, one of the Yaghu produced a thick chain with a savage hook on the end of it.
Daia roared as the hook was sunk deep into her thigh and, at last, fell hard onto the stone. The Yaghu leapt onto her like wolves upon a carcass: her hammer and torch were torn from her hands and cast aside, and with the heavy chain entangling her, the Yaghu set to work binding her arms and legs.
Twisting in pain and fury, Daia fought her captors for as long as she could, but it was no good. The Yaghu’s rope was strong and the hook in her thigh was deep. Every move, every writhe and desperate turn she made dragged the hook in her thigh further and further through her flesh.
Gidwyn, for a moment, found himself forgotten. Pinned by the arrow between his shoulder blades, there was little he could do to move. As he lay on the stones, he began to hope he had been forgotten. A she-troll is a greater reward…per’aps they’ll drag ‘er off an’ I’ll be forgotten…then I can…I can…
I can what?
Agony rippling through his body, Gidwyn could barely lift his head. He tried to drag himself into the shadows, clawing at the stone with his hands, but every movement sent more and more pain burning through his back. I’ve got nae choice, he told himself. Putting one hand in front of the other, slowly but surely he began to drag himself away from the pack of screeching Yaghu whom were dancing around where Daia lay roaring, struggling against her bonds.
Every inch sent pain lancing through Gidwyn’s body. He clenched his teeth and screwed up his face to stop himself screaming in pain. But he was moving, slowly yet surely. Just a lil’ further, he thought as he tried to drag himself away, deeper into the shadows. Just a lil’ further…
Something placed a foot on his back and pressed. Hard.Gidwyn screamed as the wound between his shoulder blades throbbed with renewed vigour. Behind him, someone laughed – a long, low, hissing laugh.
Gidwyn managed to lift his head up to look at the figure standing over him. A bone-white face leered down at him, a thin-lipped mouth full of sharp teeth was surrounded by crude iron rings. A thick brow above jet-black eyes was lined with the same crude rings that bounced and dangled as the familiar-looking Yaghu laughed.
‘You…’ Gidwyn breathed.
‘I did not expect to see you again, little Dwarf,’ Saark said, his pierced face twisting into a horrible sneer. ‘I am surprised. Next time I shall have to make sure I kill you properly – put a knife in your belly, perhaps, or maybe just cut your bearded head clean off your shoulders.’
‘Wha’-…wha’ ‘ave ye done wit’ Kiryae…?’ Gidwyn wheezed.‘That Elf-thing you call your daughter?’ Saark said, his black eyes narrowing. ‘I wouldn’t worry about her, you’ll see her soon enough – provided you survive the trip.’
Saark began to laugh again as someone began to wrap a rope around Gidwyn’s ankles. There was nothing he could do to fight back, only mumble pained protests as he felt his legs bound. Beside him, Daia continued to roar and struggle, the hook in her thigh tearing deeper and deeper into her flesh with every convulsion and flail of defiance.
Before Gidwyn knew what was happening, three of the Yaghu had taken hold of the rope around his legs and he was being dragged along the cold stone floor, back through the carnage Daia had wrought upon the Yaghu ranks. Bits of body and great pools of blue blood soaked the stone floor, but it had not been enough to save them. Beside him, a good three-dozen Yaghu grabbed a number of ropes attacked to Daia and began to haul her along, the she-troll continuing to roar in pain and anger as she was dragged.
The burning torch Daia had carried with them was left discarded amidst the corpses of the Yaghu the she-troll had slaughtered. Its flickering light cast long shadows of the mounds of blue-blooded Yaghu flesh and broken, gore-seeping bodies. It was a grim and disgusting scene, but as Gidwyn was dragged off into the darkness, clawing at the bloody stone, he longed for the fire – longed for the light. For he knew all that awaited him wherever the Yaghu were taking him was darkness.
*
By the time the Yaghu party finally stopped, Gidwyn was sure he was going to die.
It had been agonising. The Yaghu had lashed his wrists together when they had grown tired of him clawing at the stone and then taken it in turn to drag him along. They had not allowed him to walk – not that Gidwyn could. His whole body felt weak and enfeebled, and the Yaghu had kicked and prodded the two arrows in his back as they had dragged him across the stone floor, sending waves of pain coursing through his body – each eliciting a helpless moan from Gidwyn's lips.
The rubble-strewn ruins of the ancient Dwarven city were completely lost to darkness and Gidwyn saw nothing of the journey he was forced upon. Though the Yaghu could see without light, they had made no effort to spare dragging Gidwyn across the fallen rocks and jagged boulders that lay in their path.
In fact, they seemed to relish the opportunity. They took glee in dragging Gidwyn through sharp shards of broken stone, through the scattered rubble of fallen statues or buildings, and over the rough and splintered timbers, laughing as they did so – their hissing voices reverberating through the darkness. Gidwyn had been able to do nothing but groan.
But Daia had thrashed and fought the whole way. Twice she had almost broken free – the first time she had managed to crush one of the Yaghu that held her; the second time, her efforts were rewarded by another serrated hook being buried into her uninjured leg. The roar of pain and fury she had let out had made Gidwyn’s head rock.
But they had stopped.
And there was light.
It was painfully bright and brilliantly white. As Gidwyn lifted his cut and battered face to look, he saw that the ancient Dwarf-city had disappeared. They had passed through a number of tunnels and out into the bottom of a glacial fissure.
Daylight poured in through the mouth of the great crevasse, hundreds upon hundreds of feet above Gidwyn’s head. Rays of brilliant white light fell onto the dark stone around him. The walls on either side of the great chasm were covered in great tendrils of ice and knots of rime that glinted like jewels in the daylight – as did the terrible, jet-black eyes of hundreds of Yaghu that packed the chasm’s floor.
As Gidwyn lowered his head again, the last of the strength gone from his neck, he realised the floor was covered in shattered black and white tiles that slowly led towards a wide dais in the middle of the Yaghu-filled chasm. Upon that dais was an ancient stone seat of Dwarf origin decorated in the bones of more animals than Gidwyn could think of.
And in that seat sat a single frail Yaghu woman.
She wore a ragged black robe and a hood that covered her head. In her bony fist she clutched a wooden stave adorned with feathers, gemstones, and bones that rattled and clicked in the cold wind that blew through the chasm. Gidwyn could make out little of her face behind the hood that covered her head and through the haze of weakness settling in front of his eyes.
‘We found a Dwarf, Chief!’ Saark said, swaggering forwards from his warband and gesturing his arms wide in triumph. ‘A real-life Dwarf! Put a few arrows in him, but he’s alive!’
A rumble of appreciation passed through the Yaghu present, but the female figure in the stone seat did not move.
‘And we got that she-troll that’s been stalking these ruins for years!’ Saark yelled, turning to where Daia lay, still twisting against her bonds and the hook-ended chains in her legs, and leaping onto her back.
A hiss of cheers reverberated through the canyon. Gidwyn could see white fur-clad Yaghu leaping up and down in celebration.
But still the figure sitting in the stone seat did not move.
It was a throne, Gidwyn was sure: the ancient seat of a long-forgotten king or emperor, the remnants of whose once glorious throne room were scattered around them. The shattered tiles beneath Gidwyn, covered in arching cracks as fat as his arm and as long as ten men, made him wonder. The mountains…he thought. The place is so old…the aeons-slow shift o’ the mountains…they tore it apart…
This place…it’s…ancient.
Gidwyn managed to swallow. He could feel blood tricking over his back.
Not trickling. Pouring.
An' I will be the first Dwarf t’ die ‘ere in millennia.
The hissing cheers of the Yaghu died away to silence, but the figure in the stone seat still had not moved. Gidwyn managed to lift his head and saw the slight figure was different to many of the others – smaller, thinner, with more pointed features and sharp eyes. She's old, Gidwyn managed to think through the pain. Very old.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Saark jumped off Daia's back and spoke again. ‘Have I pleased you, Chieftain?’
The female Yaghu in the stone seat rose to her feet slowly. She was wrapped in a long cloak and robe of matted rabbit fur. Leaning heavily on her wooden stave, she shuffled through the silent mass of her clan and arrived before Gidwyn and Daia.
She looked from one to the other, then back at Saark.
Saark swallowed. ‘Chieftain?’
The female Yaghu’s face did not twitch. ‘This was a valuable use of your time?’
Saark’s thin lips twisted. ‘We-…’ He stopped. ‘Gifts. They’re gifts. For you.’
‘Gifts?’ the Yaghu female said slowly. ‘Interesting.’
Gidwyn heard the female Yaghu shuffled across the shattered tiles to where he and Daia lay. ‘Tell me, Dwarf,’ she said in her thin voice, ‘in your culture, what sorts of gifts do you give?’
‘G-…gifts…?’ Gidwyn managed to croak. ‘Please…’
The thin creature waved her hand. ‘Tell me. What was the last gift you gave?’‘B-…boots…m-…my daughter.’
‘Boots to your daughter?’ the female Yaghu said slowly. ‘Were they nice?’
‘Please…’
The female Yaghu let out a small huff of amusement. ‘I imagine I know the very boots,’ she said. ‘I imagine I’ve seen the pretty creature they were adorned upon. They are lovely. Well-made. A brilliant gift.’
Gidwyn managed to raise his head enough to look up into the wizened face of the ancient female. One of her eyes was glassy-white, whilst the other was pitch-black. Her face was criss-crossed with more scars and mottles than the back of a flogged criminal, and each feature – her twisted, pointed ears, her snarling mouth, her heavy brow – was studded with dozens of bone piercings.
‘Kiryae…’ he said, his breath short. ‘M-…my…’
The female Yaghu turned away and glared at Saark. ‘The troll is too wounded to make a good sport, and the Dwarf is almost dead,’ the female Yaghu said, her voice cold. ‘Congratulations, Saark, you’ve proved that, once again, you are a fool.’
Saark let out a low snarl and clenched his bony fists. ‘But Chieftain Ozytala,’ he cried, ‘I found the girl!’
‘After you lost her a decade ago!’ the female Yaghu’s voice split through the gloom of the crevasse. ‘And you had to ask outsiders for help! Outsiders, you fool!’
Somewhere through the agony he felt, Gidwyn heard the words. A…decade? They…lost her?
Outsiders…?
‘Once again,’ the female Yaghu – Chieftain Ozytala – began, her dark eyes fixed on Saark. ‘You’ve put your own enjoyment above the safety of the tribe.’ She looked around at the assembled Yaghu. ‘You seem to be a few dozen kin-warriors short. Tell me, where are they?’
Saark let out a low growl.
The chieftain’s thin, scarred lip curled. ‘I see the troll’s hammer which you have needlessly dragged with you is slick with blood. Our blood.’
Saark’s growl intensified.
Chieftain Ozytala let out another small huff of amusement. ‘And now you stand here grumbling like a hungry cave-frog.’
Saark raised a hand as if to strike the chieftain, but as he did a sharp shard of rock rose from beside Gidwyn’s head and shot through the air with blinding speed. It sliced through Saark’s wrist and whizzed off into the back of the cave, clattering to the floor somewhere behind the assembled clan.
With a scream that echoed around the chamber, Saark fell. He howled in agony as his hand wheeled away from his body, spinning through the air and landing on the shattered stone floor with a wet thud.
Chieftain Ozytala shuffled forwards and stood over Saark, looking down at him with cold, terrible eyes. ‘If you raise a hand against me again,’ she said slowly, ‘you shall meet the same fate as the Dwarf.’
‘Shot in the b-…back…?’ Gidwyn croaked. ‘That seems…appropriate…’
Chieftain Ozytala turned and walked to where Gidwyn lay. With a small, sharp-toothed smile on her thin lips, she bent down and placed her thin hand on his back.
‘No,’ she said slowly as a warmth spread through Gidwyn. The Dwarf could feel his strength returning, the pain in his back lessening. He felt the arrows slide out of his flesh and heard them clatter to the ground beside him. ‘No, definitely not.’
‘Wha’ are ye doin’ to me?’ Gidwyn said from where he lay as he felt life sparking back into his limbs.
‘Healing your wounds,’ Ozytala said. ‘I have something much worse than arrows in the back in store for you and your troll-friend here. But you’ll need to be in top condition if you ever want a chance of seeing your daughter again.’
Kiryae.
Gidwyn, his strength returned and his fury a fire in his limbs, rolled over and hurled himself at the Yaghu chieftain, his teeth barred and his blonde beard flying about him. He was barely off the ground when a fist-like formation of stone rose up from beneath him and wrapped three fat fingers of solid rock around him.
Gidwyn gasped, suddenly suspended in the air, trapped in solid rock. ‘Wha’ is this?!’ he roared, kicking his legs and flailing his arms to no avail. The rock had closed around him, and he could not get it to move. ‘Wha’ ‘ave ye done?!’
A roar of laughter went through the assembled Yaghu as Chieftain Ozytala folded her thin arms across her chest and stepped towards Gidwyn – just out of his reach.
‘It is true, then,’ Ozytala said. ‘The Snow-Dwarves have forgotten the art of Stoneshaping.’ She let out a dangerous laugh and tapped the tip of her bauble-adorned stick to the arm of rock. Gidwyn felt the fist of stone tighten around him. His ribs buckled and his breath was squeezed from his lungs. He fought and writhed against the stone to no avail, and was about to scream in fresh pain when the tightening stopped.
Ozytala’s fang-toothed grin was inches from Gidwyn’s face. ‘Stoneshaping,’ she said.
Gidwyn gasped for air. ‘Why…would ye…heal me…jus’…’
‘If I’m just going to torture you again?’ Chieftain Ozytala said.
Gidwyn managed to nod.
Ozytala’s grin widened. ‘I’m not going to torture you,’ she said in a whisper. ‘You’re going to A’kala sin Kysz – the Ring of Death – and my whole clan will watch you die.’
Ozytala stepped away from Gidwyn and began to shuffle towards her throne. ‘And my whole clan want sport – where’s the fun in watching you be eaten by an obsydioth if you’re already half-dead?’
*
As Gidwyn looked up at the ancient, tiered seats and tower-like columns of the Ring of Death, he could not help but feel the chieftain had somewhat undersold her arena.
The ovular amphitheatre was situated in the middle of a vast, dark cavern. Many of its pillars and arches had cracked and collapsed, but enough of the ancient Dwarven arena still stood to make it an impressive, imposing ruin. Statues of Dwarven ancestors, ten-times the size of the warriors they immortalised, stood outside the grand archway that led into the coliseum; their hands held swords, axes and hammers, and their stone bodies had withstood the inscrutable writhing of the mountain over thousands of years.
Gidwyn, his hands bound with rope and two Yaghu spears at his back, was led between the statues of ancient champions and through the gaping archway that led into the arena. Behind him, Daia was dragged by her barbed bindings, two-dozen of the largest Yaghu the Dwarf had seen pulling her along. She thrashed and roared all the way, the terrible wounds in her legs oozing blood. Where Chieftain Ozytala had decided Gidwyn’s wounds would make the spectacle she was planning boring and had just healed his wounds with magic, apparently Daia’s condition would add an element of entertainment to whatever was about to happen.
And when Gidwyn was led onto the arena floor, he felt his stomach drop.
Hundreds of Yaghu crammed the stone seats and sat on the fallen pillars that lay like enormous bones across the amphitheatre’s tiers and facades. They opened their thin-lipped mouths and barred their fangs, filling the cavern with terrible hissing cheers as Gidwyn and Daia were dragged into the middle of the bone-strewn arena floor.
Once they were in the middle of the oval-shaped arena floor, the spear-wielding pair of Yaghu escorting Gidwyn cut the bonds about his wrists and backed away from him, their weapons raised, whilst their companions tossed down the ropes they had been using to pull the she-troll along and walked away, retreating back the way they had come to the ravenous cries of the Yaghu in the stands.
Without a thought, Gidwyn rushed to Daia. ‘Here!’ he said to the enormous she-troll, seizing hold of one of the hooks in her flesh and pulling on it. ‘I’ll get these out o’ ye!’
Daia roared in pain and writhed. ‘No!’ she bellowed. ‘It hurts! It hurts!’
Gidwyn staggered away from the thrashing troll. Even with her arms bound, she rocked and twisted like a ship upon a wave, her huge shoulders and bound legs swinging dangerously towards Gidwyn.
‘Daia, I’ve gotta-…’
‘No! I’ll do it, I’ll…argh!’
Blood spurted from one of the deep, ragged wounds in Daia’s legs.
‘Daia!
‘She won’t get free.’
Gidwyn spun and looked straight into the face of a battered and bruised Yaghu.
‘Saark,’ Gidwyn said through his teeth.
The Yaghu managed a cracked-toothed grin. His thin lips were covered in dried blood and there was a tendril of the same blue ichor dripping from one of his slitted nostrils. One of his cheekbones was broken, and his right wrist was bound with a filthy rag. He had been stripped of all but his smallclothes. Saark’s face was dark and malicious, and despite the dagger he held in his left hand, he made no move to attack Gidwyn.
‘You,’ the Dwarf snarled.
The Yaghu responded with a growl of his own. ‘You did this to me.’
Gidwyn spat. ‘You earned yer place ‘ere, by the sounds of it.’
Saark laughed. ‘No. You and your accursed Elf-thing got me here,’ he said. ‘That monster you call “daughter”.’
Gidwyn bristled. ‘Ye leave ‘er alone,’ he snarled. ‘She’s done nowt to ye!’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Saark said with a shrug. ‘Ozytala wanted her. She got her eventually.’ The Yaghu glared up at his chieftain, sitting in a high-backed stone seat upon a balcony high above them. ‘She always gets what she wants in the end.’
Gidwyn took a step forwards and balled his hands into fists. ‘Wha’ do ye want with Kiryae?’ he demanded.
Saark’s thin lips curled into a grin. ‘You’ve got stomach, Dwarf,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that. But right now, we need each other. If any of us want to leave here alive, we’ve got to stick together.’
‘Oh aye?’ Gidwyn said through his teeth. ‘And why’s tha’?’
‘Because you’ve never seen an obsydioth before.’
Gidwyn opened his mouth to demand answers, but the arena suddenly went silent.
Two figures had appeared on a stone balcony set into the arena tiers. Both were small and slight of stature, with pale skin and large eyes, but one was twisted and cruel, dressed in rags and carrying a staff; the other was dressed in thick furs and had snow-white hair falling around her shoulders.
‘Kiryae,’ Gidwyn breathed.
He could feel her looking at him.
‘Kiryae!’ he roared, running forwards. ‘Kiryae! Kiryae!’
‘Father!’
The cry was lost beneath a stone-shaking roar.
Gidwyn skidded to a halt and spun. He was greeted by a monster.
The thing walking into the arena – no, being dragged in by dozens of Yaghu – was unlike anything Gidwyn had ever seen on the surface-world before. He had heard tales of monsters, of men who turned into great dogs, or corpses that walked and mangled themselves into horrific knots of rot and muscle. He had heard of scaled things that slithered, but were large enough to swallow houses, and beasts that sunk ships with tentacles. But this was none of them.
It was as high as ten men and its broad, humped back was covered in shifting plates of stone. The head that sat between its boulder-like shoulders was like that of some horrible fanged beetle – two long, stalactite-like antennae protruded from its forehead and flicked in the air before it, and a pair of saliva-dripping mandibles clacked and clicked dangerously. The thing pushed itself forward on two squat hind legs with enormous, onyx-like talons on its stumped feet, and lashed out around itself with four insectoid forelimbs topped with pincer-like appendages covered in more dark spikes. Its forelimbs were encased in granite-like stone plates akin to those on its back, whilst its underside was snow-white and fleshy.
‘Fire save me,’ Gidwyn breathed.
The obsydioth roared and began to thrash its four forelegs wildly. Gidwyn watched as the ropes that held it began to fray, and when the first snapped he could tell it was going to get free.
The Dwarf turned to Saark. ‘Wha’ do we do?!’ he cried.
The Yaghu gestured to Daia. ‘Free her.’
‘But ye said we couldnae!’
Behind Gidwyn a terrible chorus of screams and yells came from where the Yaghu were battling to keep the obsydioth under control. The Dwarf span and saw the creature break from its bonds and begin to lash out at the Yaghu with its pincered forelimbs. Flesh flew, blue blood arced through the air and landed amongst the dust and bones covering the arena floor – and more Yaghu fell, adding their broken bodies to those already littering the floor.
‘I said you won’t get her free,’ Saark snarled, running to Daia’s side, ‘but I made these damned hooks – I can get them out of her!’
‘Get away!’ Daia roared as Saark rushed to her side. ‘Get back from me, you fiend!’
Saark ignored Daia and grabbed one of the hooks. She howled in agony as the Yaghu – with surprising deftness for a one-handed creature – pulled the hook back on itself and slowly began to wrench it loose.
Gidwyn’s head spun between where Saark was wrestling with Daia’s bonds, and where the obsydioth was slaughtering the Yaghu hopelessly trying to control it – much to the enjoyment of the onlookers. ‘Saark!’ he cried as the obsydioth crushed the last Yaghu between its pincers. ‘Saark, its coming! Its-…’
Two milky-white, globe-like eyes the size of shields affixed themselves on Gidwyn.
Oh, Creator…
A pair of antennae twitched.
Oh, Creator please. Please no.
Terrible, barbed mandibles clacked.
And the Yaghu cheered.
The obsydioth leapt into the air and charged, its antennae quivering like arrows fired into a target. Its bloody mandibles were wide as it propelled itself forwards on all six of its limbs, kicking up loose stone, bones and Yaghu body-parts. It rushed forwards, bounding through the air like a giant hare, making the ground tremble and the ancient arena shake.
Gidwyn hurled himself sideways as the enormous monster charged past him and straight for where Daia and Saark were struggling with the she-troll’s bonds.
‘Look out!’ Gidwyn roared.
Saark looked up at the last moment and dived aside, a bloody hook in his hand. In a swift move, the Yaghu buried the tip of the rbarbed hook into the inner-thigh of the obsydioth. Daia roared and scrambled to her feet, blood flowing freely from her leg wounds. She fought with her bonds for a moment and her arms were free. Staggering towards the monster, she grabbed hold of the chain attached to the hook in the obsydioth’s leg and pulled as hard as she could.
The enormous creature staggered, knocked off balance for a moment, but brought one of its stone-plated limbs around in a huge arc and struck Daia across her chest. The wounded she-troll reeled back, a huge hand over her chest. When she removed it, Gidwyn saw an enormous dent in the carved armour she wore - bent as if it were little more than a cheap pewter plate.
The Yaghu watching on roared as Daia fell backwards, blood still pouring from her terrible leg-wounds. On the balcony, Chieftain Ozytala smiled.
The obsydioth turned back to Saark, Daia forgotten for a moment, as the one-handed Yaghu dashed between its legs, slashing left and right wildly with the dagger he clutched in his only hand. Pitch-black blood poured from long wounds in its legs, and the creature roared in pain and anger, raising its four forelimbs high into the air. Then, as the Yaghu slid out behind it, the obsydioth spun with surprising speed and lashed out with its pincered forelegs.
Gidwyn could not make out what happened, but blue blood filled the air and Saark went flying backwards, his body looping through the air. He crashed down hard on the arena floor and lay still – much to the joy of his onlooking kin, whose chants and howls of enjoyment shook the cavern with the same force as the obsydioth’s footfalls.
Footfalls that were now coming towards Gidwyn.
The Dwarf froze in fear as the enormous creature lumbered towards him, its mandibles and rock-covered pincers snapping at him. Its antennae felt the air in front of itself, flicking backwards and forwards like dry branches caught in a whipping wind. It loomed over him, the largest living thing he had ever seen, its mandibles and pincers dripping with blue Yaghu blood.
‘Kiryae!’ Gidwyn cried. ‘Kiryae, I-…’
Gidwyn was cut short by a terrible roar.
Daia, the enormous troll dwarfed in size next to the huge creature, hurled her battered body into the side of the stone-covered creature with enough force to topple it. The obsydioth let out a horrid hiss as it rolled sideways, curling up like a weevil for a moment and wrapping its six limbs around Daia. Its mandibles flashed and Daia’s heavy fists fell.
Gidwyn wanted to help, he wanted to do something – but he had no idea what he could do as he watched Daia and the obsydioth roll away together, pummelling each other with their limbs. The Yaghu watching from the stands screamed in excitement at the spectacle, raising their fists and punching the air.
‘Daia!’ Gidwyn cried, looking around desperately. Do something, ye fool!
There.
A spear, as long as two arms and tipped with a twisted, barbed head, lay a few feet away from a dismembered Yaghu. Gidwyn ran across the bone- and blood-covered arena floor and seized hold of the spear in his trembling hands. He spun to face the obsydioth.
Just as it tore Daia in half.
The she-troll made no sound as the obsydioth clenched her arms and legs in its pincers and tore her in two. Thick, red blood and steaming innards sloughed out of Daia’s rent body and cascaded onto the arena floor.
‘No…’ Gidwyn breathed. Even with his spear, he knew that without Daia there was no way he could possibly defeat the obsydioth.
The Yaghu’s excitement rocked the cavern. They leapt up and down and pounded their seats with their hands and feet, screaming at the top of their lungs as the she-troll died. They began to chant a word over and over again until it rang in Gidwyn’s ears. ‘Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath!’
Gidwyn swallowed. He could guess what the word meant.
Kill.
The obysdioth turned to face Gidwyn once more. Its pincers and mandibles were drenched in blood – red and blue. Its antennae twitched erratically, and its milk-white eyes bulged in their stony sockets.
‘Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath!’
The obsydioth growled and stepped towards Gidwyn, gnashing its mandibles. Blood flew, splattering Gidwyn across his face.
‘Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath!’
Gidwyn would not die like a coward before Kiryae. He would not let her last memory of him be of how he cowered and wept, and the part of him that was Kiryae’s father refused to give up – he would fight until the very last ounce of life was crushed from his limbs. I’ll no’ leave ‘er, he thought as he gritted his teeth. I’ll ne’er give up on ‘er!
‘Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath!’
The obsydioth stepped forwards again, a horrible, wet growl echoing from behind its bloody mandibles. It raised its four forelimbs and charged.
Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath! Ula’ath!
Gidwyn leapt forwards and jabbed upwards with the Yaghu spear with all the might he could muster. The obsydioth made no move to defend itself – perhaps, Gidwyn wondered, it had not expected the sudden aggression from the tiny Dwarf. The spear went upwards, burying itself deep into the snow-white fleshy underside of the obsydioth. Gidwyn saw blood well from the new wound and mingle with that already pumping from the hook-wound to its leg.
But it was not enough.
The obsydioth lashed out and Gidwyn felt himself tossed into the air. The spear flew from his hand as he cartwheeled through nothingness. The Dwarf would have cried out had all the air not been knocked from his lungs, and he could do little more than flail helplessly as he soared over the arena floor.
He crashed down amidst the bones and dust and tried to drag himself to his feet, but was too dazed. He writhed on the floor, blood trickling from his nose and over his lip from his bitten tongue. Get up, he told himself. Get up, get up, get up!
He could not.
As Gidwyn felt a huge shadow settle over him, he had no choice but to give up.
The Dwarf managed to roll onto his back and look up at the enormous creature looming over him. Its sharp mandibles opened and closed, and he saw that they were lined with barb-like teeth.
Oh, brilliant, Gidwyn managed to think though the haze clouding his brain.
He tried to tell himself he would not scream, that he would not do that to Kiryae. He would not make her listen to her father weep and beg. ‘C’mon, ye big bastard,’ Gidwyn spat through blood seeping over his lips. ‘Do yer worst.’
The obsydioth reared up on its hind legs, its four terrible forelimbs raised, its mandibles gnashing, its horrific eyes boring into him.
And then did nothing.
The obsydioth seemed to go limp for a moment. It staggered as if struck, stumbling forward in a sudden daze and stepping over where Gidwyn lay. It let out a long, low groan and stood completely still, its forelimbs limp at its stone-clad sides.
Gidwyn staggered to his feet and scrambled backwards, away from the creature that stood as still as a statue, staring into the amphitheatre’s tiered seats, straight up at the balcony where Chieftain Ozytala and Kiryae stood. Gidwyn followed the creature’s gaze over the packed tiers of seating where the Yaghu stood screaming in indignation and fury – Gidwyn should be dead, how dare he still be walking around the arena?
Gidwyn found the balcony where the two women were standing. Except one of them was no-longer standing.
Kiryae was floating.
She hovered a pace or so from the ground, her mouth wide and her eyes rolled into her head. Her silver-white hair blew around her narrow frame and a faint scream echoed in the back of her throat. Her hands were twisted and contorted, and as they twitched so did the obsydioth’s pincers.
‘Kiryae…?’ Gidwyn breathed, unable to believe what he was seeing. She’s…
…She’s controlling it?
The Yaghu in the stands exploded into chaos. Half grabbed for their weapons, the other half ran for the exits, shoving each other aside as they ran. Yaghu fell over one another in their frantic attempts to either fight or flee. They cascaded over the tiered seats like an avalanche of pallid flesh and white furs, hissing and shrieking as they came
Gidwyn found himself suddenly forgotten. With nowhere to run and no idea what to do, he watched the white tide of Yaghu come flooding into the arena floor – hundreds and hundreds of them, blocking his path to Kiryae who was still floating and twitching beside Chieftain Ozytala, whose wrinkled and lined face was twisted in a sharp-toothed grin.
The obsydioth suddenly moved, staggering into life as if it had just been struck again. All four of its forelegs whirled before it in a blur of razor-sharp barbs and furiously slicing claws, and its mandibles slashed like deadly twin cleavers. It staggered into the Yaghu swarming to attack it, limbs lashing left and right in a blur of blue blood.
Gidwyn had to bite his tongue to stop himself vomiting and blood washed up around the obsydioth in waves. The creature was unstoppable: a spiked, tower-sized boulder given life that rolled through the Yaghu and towards the balcony where their chief stood beside Kiryae, a trail of broken Yaghu bodies lying behind it, its stone-covered hide studded with harmless spears.
The Yaghu fought it hard, throwing their jagged javelins and slashing at its legs and stone-covered limbs with their savage swords, though for every blow that drew blood on the monster, the obsydioth killed a dozen Yaghu.
Just as Gidwyn was beginning to think he had been forgotten, one of the Yaghu pointed at him. It shouted a word that was lost beneath a cacophony of shrieks and yelling – and the obsydioth’s ground-shaking stamping – before breaking from the swarm of Yaghu and running towards him, a number of its pallid-faced, bald-headed kin at its back.
Gidwyn swallowed and looked around. Another Yaghu spear lay by his feet, its long haft cracked and worn, slathered in the dark blood of its former owner – a tell-tale hand lay a pace away.
The Dwarf seized the spear just as the first Yaghu leapt towards him – its mouth wide, its eyes shining with malice. It’s no’ so different from me ol’ shepherd’s crook, Gidwyn thought as he swallowed and raised the spear. He braced his legs, and struck.
Gdwyn had no martial expertise. He had never fought with a weapon in his life before, but a lifetime of wrangling goats had granted him one thing: a great strength.
The blow landed hard and true. Gidwyn’s spear-thrust tore through the chest of the Yaghu as it jumped and severed his spine, breaking out of its back again. Gidwyn had to fight the urge to cry out in shock and horror as he held the spear upright, a gasping Yaghu slowly sliding down it, scrabbling at the spear sticking through its body.
With a cry – intended to be a battle-roar, but more like the whimper of a terrified man – Gidwyn whipped the spear backwards and threw the Yaghu off the weapon. The creature was slight and slid off the spear’s haft and landed hard on the floor, where it twitched and heaved for a moment before falling completely still.
Another broke away from the chaotic melee surrounding the obsydioth and rushed Gidwyn with a hooked dagger. Again the Dwarf struck, lashing out with the spear, throwing all his weight behind it. The Yaghu sidestepped and whipped the dagger at Gidwyn’s face, but his aim was short and he only opened a small cut across Gidwyn’s cheek.
Gripped by a sudden surge of rage, Gidwyn dropped the spear and aimed a huge, heavy-fisted haymaker at the Yaghu. His blow landed on the creature’s jaw and a crunch reverberated from the hit. The Yaghu made a gulping sound and fell sideways, clutching its shattered face, spitting blood and teeth, and Gidwyn stamped down on its head and neck again and again and again.
Shocked by his own sudden outburst of rage and violence, Gidwyn staggered backwards, blue blood soaking his fur and leather trousers, and looked up.
A huge group of Yaghu were rushing towards him. They howled and shrieked, brandishing hooked swords and barbed daggers.
Gidwyn had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. He scrambled for the spear he had dropped and lifted it up, bracing himself for slaughter.
‘I’ll no’ beg,’ he breathed, tears suddenly stinging his eyes, ‘an’ I’ll no’ give up. I’ll make Kiryae proud o’ her Da.’
He never got the chance.
The obsydioth barrelled through the group, its stone hide peppered with spears and its pale underside dripping with black and blue blood. The Yaghu group fell under the slashing, flailing limbs of the rock-clad creature. Gidwyn closed his eyes and raised his arms, blood splattering all over him as the enormous creature decimated the group.
As the obsydioth charged, the Yaghu that remained scattered and broke, running for the exits. The enormous creature continued to lash out as it ran, cleaving through the bodies of dozens more fleeing Yaghu as it went, filling the air with a fog of rancid blue blood. The creature was unstoppable.
The arena emptied, leaving only desolation and four figures: Gidwyn, Kiryae, Ozytala, and the obsydioth. The huge creature hurled aside fallen stone pillars as if they were sticks as it hurtled towards the balcony, crushing bones and bodies as if they were nothing. It opened its mandibles and shook the cavern with a roar that made the very stones shake.
And just as Gidwyn was beginning to hope, just as he began to think that by some miracle he and his daughter may be saved, a huge lance of stone shot from the stone of the arena floor, up through the obsydioth’s gut, and out of its back. Shards of rock-plate from the creature’s back flew high into the air, and on the balcony Kiryae collapsed.
The obsydioth gurgled, a sea of blood pouring from its wound as it writhed on the end of the stone spike. With one last twitch of its mandibles, it fell still. On the balcony set in the tiered seats high above, Chieftain Ozytala gathered Kiryae up in her arms and disappeared down a narrow passage set into the seats behind her.
‘No!’ Gidwyn cried, clutching the spear in his hands, he began to run across the arena towards the now empty tiers of seats. I cannae lose her again! he thought as he rushed across the bloody arena floor. Not now, not after this! I cannae!
‘Dwarf,’ a voice croaked.
Gidwyn skidded to a halt.
‘Dwarf.’
He looked through the carnage. Blood and Yaghu bodies painted the amphitheatre’s every tier. The carnage made his stomach twist and he thought he would vomit.
‘Dwarf.’
Gidwyn felt a hand on his leg and almost yelped in fright.
Saark’s grasp on his knee was firm but not cruel – it could not be; the Yaghu had no fight left in him. His legs were gone, one below the hip and the other below the knee. There was a terrible wound to his gut and blood was gushing over his fanged teeth. That he was still alive – let alone conscious – was incredible.
‘Fire’s breath,’ Gidwyn gasped as he looked over the ruined form before him.
Saark managed a half-smile. ‘She’s a sage,’ he said.
Gidwyn’s eyebrows slowly rose up his forehead in shock. ‘A wha’…?’
‘A sage, you deaf fool,’ the Yaghu snarled before erupting into a fit of bloody coughs. ‘That’s why Ozytala wants her. Magic stuff. I don’t know. Go save her.’
‘Why would ye…?’
‘Because she killed me.’
Gidwyn swallowed and nodded. ‘Aye.’
Saark did not hear. His eyes had glazed over and he had fallen still. The hand around Gidwyn’s leg had gone limp and fallen away.
Turning away from the bloodbath, Gidwyn picked up Saark’s dagger and turned towards the tiered seats where Chieftain Ozytala and Kiryae had been sitting. He gritted his teeth and, without a backwards look, set off at a run towards the narrow doorway through which the Yaghu leader and Kiryae had disappeared.
*
Cheiftain Ozytala seemed to have disappeared into thin air – Or walked into the damned stone, more like, Gidwyn thought with a dark growl. His heart was hammering so hard he could feel the thick leathers he wore around his chest shifting with the movement.
There was no light in the dark passage. None of the Yaghu had lit any torches or braziers along its length, and Gidwyn could barely see a thing. Shadows pressed in around him, and the faint light of the cavern behind him was all he could use to see the faint outline of the walls either side of where he walked. He held a Yaghu spear ahead of him, feeling in the shadows for any walls, doors, or traps that the Yaghu may have left for him.
He turned a corner and suddenly saw a faint light flickering in the distance. It was weak – likely from a single candle or a dying torch. But it was light.
Gidwyn hurried towards it as fast as he dared, his face wet with fearful sweat and sticky with dried blood. His big blonde beard was matted and filthy, and his hands shook as he gripped the spear he had taken.
Be brave, he told himself. Think o’ her. I canne leave her down here. I cannae-…
A scream echoed through the passageway.
‘Kiryae!’ Gidwyn roared, all his terror forgotten.
‘Father!’
‘Kiryae!’
Gidwyn set off at a wild charge towards the faint source of light in the distance, his feet thudding on the stone floor as he went. ‘I’m comin’!’ he cried. ‘I’m comin’, Kiryae! I’m comin’!’
Within moments the light broke over him and Gidwyn found himself in a dark, featureless chamber lit only by a single torch abandoned on the uneven stone floor. Only shadows greeted him – no Kiryae, no Ozytala, only stillness.
‘Wha’…?’ Gidwyn breathed, looking into the shadows. ‘It cannae be…’
There was nothing – only shadows and bare, featureless stone. Gidwyn lifted his spear in one hand and looked left and right, then took Saark’s dagger from where he had tucked it into his belt and held it in his other fist. ‘Where are ye?’ he said in a trembling whisper. ‘I know yer ‘ere somewhere. Let go o’ my daughter!’
Something beneath Gidwyn’s right foot shifted.
He looked down at the floor just in time to see the rock beneath him open up. Firelight dazzled his eyes for a moment, and then he fell.
Gidwyn cried out in shock and surprise as he tumbled downwards, spinning in the air for a few moments before landing hard on another stone floor. Saark’s dagger shot from his fist and his spear clattered away from him. For a moment he lay groaning on cold stone as his senses returned to him.
He was in another chamber, almost identical to the one above, only this one was well-lit by a large brazier to one side. Similar featureless walls stared down at Gidwyn as he writhed on the floor for a moment, struggling to get up – but this time, four eyes also looked down on him.
‘Father!’
Gidwyn looked up, seizing his spear from where he had dropped it and scrambled to his feet. Kiryae stood at the back of the chamber, her back pressed against the stone wall behind her. Her hair was matted and dirty and her face flecked with filth and streaked with tears. Her lips hung open and her eyes shone in the firelight – but as far as Gidwyn could tell, she was unharmed.
As was Chieftain Ozytala, who stood between them.
The Yaghu woman was of a height with Gidwyn – small, perhaps, at least compared with the males that Gidwyn had seen, but she radiated power and malice. Each flick of her bony fingers or tap of her bauble-draped staff could send stone shooting towards Gidwyn or Kiryae. Yet none came.
So Gidwyn planted his feet firmly apart and affixed Ozytala with a fierce stare and clutched his spear. ‘Let her go,’ he said, his voice no longer trembling with fear – instead, quaking with rage.
The Yaghu woman smirked. ‘No.’
Gidwyn ground his teeth. ‘Ye want nothin’ from us,’ he said, his voice deep and furious. ‘We’re ‘umble folk an’-…’
‘Oh, I’m not going to argue for a moment that you’re a simple little creature, Snow-Dwarf,’ Ozytala said, her lips peeling further back from her fanged teeth in amusement. ‘You’re most definitely a humble thing, bumbling your way through the mountains and staggering here. But the she-Elf child,’ Ozytala said with a long backwards look at where Kiryae cowered, ‘is far from simple.’
‘Leave ‘er alone!’ Gidwyn yelled, his voice echoing around the chamber. ‘She’s nowt to ye!’
‘And she’s nothing to your people either,’ Ozytala hissed. ‘You think the Halflings of the Great Mountains – or anywhere else in the world – care about her? You think anyone cares about her? No. No one cares more than I do.’
Gidwyn shook with rage. ‘How dare ye,’ he said. ‘I am ‘er father an’-…’
‘No you aren’t,’ Ozytala said. ‘Her father was killed a decade ago when Saark – the fool – tried to take the she-Elf child as she and her family tried to cross the mountains. If it hadn’t been for that terrible snowstorm, he would have succeeded.’ Cheiftain Ozytala sucked air through her sharp teeth with a long, horrid hisssss. ‘So long I’ve looked for one such as her. So long I’ve waited.’
‘Well, ye’ll ‘ave t’ wait a little longer,’ Gidwyn snarled, ‘because she’s comin’ wit’ me.’
Ozytala laughed. ‘What, back to the land of the Dwarves and the Gnomes? The underground kingdoms and empires of the Halflings? No, she’d be safer here with me.’
Gidwyn scoffed. ‘Nonsense,’ he snarled. ‘Ye dragged her here for whatever it is yer plannin’, an’-…’
‘You were betrayed,’ Chieftain Ozytala said.
The words hung in the air between Gidwyn and Ozytala for a moment. The Dwarf’s eyes narrowed. ‘Betrayed?’ he said quietly. ‘Wha’ d’ye mean?’
The Yaghu chieftain’s mouth widened into a hideous leer. ‘One of your own,’ she said. ‘One of your own gave me the Elf-child.’
Gidwyn’s fist tightened around the spear he held. ‘Liar,’ he said.
‘I do not lie,’ the chieftain said. ‘And you know of whom I speak.’
Ramscoldt.
Gidwyn gritted his teeth. ‘Shut up,’ he said, ‘an’ give me back my daughter.’
‘He was quick to strike a bargain,’ Ozytala said. ‘He came to me, you know; he said how much he hated you, how much he hated the she-Elf child, how she should be hurled back to wherever it was she came from. He wanted us to take her, to dash her head against the cliffs, to leave you all dead. But,’ Oytala said, turning to look at Kiryae, ‘he doesn’t know what you are, does he?’ She raised a hand and touched one of her soft cheeks with a long, talon-like fingernail.
Kiryae whimpered and tried to shrink further back into the rock.
Gidwyn snarled and stepped forwards, but as he did Ozytala raised her staff threateningly. ‘I think not,’ she said, not taking her eyes of Kiryae. ‘You won’t have her again. She has something I want. I just have to work out how to take it. And besides,’ Ozytala turned and looked back at Gidwyn, ‘the Gnome trader – Ramscoldt, I believe his name was – is right. She’s not a Halfling and she never will be. She’ll never be wanted. She’ll never be welcome.’
‘Shut yer twisted mouth,’ Gidwyn snarled. ‘She belongs, an’ she belongs wit’ me. She is my daughter, and I love ‘er-…’
‘Do you?’ Chieftain Ozytala said. ‘Do you truly? You care so much for her, yet you know nothing of her – of the power that courses through her body, that has wrapped itself around her soul.’
Gidwyn lifted his gaze from the Yaghu chieftain to where Kiryae stood. ‘It doesnae matter t’ me,’ the Dwarf said. ‘She’s my daughter, an’ I love ‘er.’
‘She is a sage,’ Ozytala hissed. ‘Can your simple little mind comprehend what that means? She has a gift, an exceedingly rare gift. The arcana that flows through her lets her reach out and control beasts!’ She turned to where Kiryae stood, her back pressed against the wall her face streaked with tears. ‘Such a gift – one I could sorely use. Think, I could raise an army of obsydioths, I could march them wherever I wanted. I could crush every Dwarf-realm, slaughter every single Halfling, and claim all their lands as my own.’
Ozytala’s face twitched into a sadistic leer. ‘Then, when I have done so, I can take to the surface. I can drive the Men from their fields and the Elves from their forests, a horde of beasts at my back. I can shatter the walls of their cities and dominate them all. I would be a god.’ The Yaghu’s face twisted into a sudden look of frustration. ‘If only I could find way,’ the Yaghu reached out a hand toward Kiryae, who flinched as if she had been struck, ‘to take her power from her.’
Gidwyn took a step forwards and lifted his spear. ‘Ye willnae touch her!’ he snarled. ‘Ye willnae lay another foul finger on her, ye monster!’
Chieftain Ozytala hissed and turned to face Gidwyn, her miscoloured eyes narrow. ‘You saw her with the obsydioth,’ she snarled. ‘You think such power should lie in the hands of a child?!’
Gidwyn’s eyes narrowed and he barred his teeth. ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said. ‘But it should never be in the hands o’ one such as ye!’
With a cry, Gidwyn charged forwards, rapidly closing the gap between himself and Chieftain Ozytala. He knew he would never reach her in time, that some magic-warped shard of stone would burst from the rock at his feet and skewer him through the stomach before he was anywhere near her.
But he had to try.
For Kiryae.
Ozytala’s hand moved.
Gidwyn felt the rock at his feet shift. The Dwarf drew back his arm as far as he could and hurled the spear with all his might, just as he felt a huge hand of rock reach up towards him and grab him around the middle.
The spear seemed to hang in the air between Gidwyn and the Yaghu as it span towards her, soaring through the shadows of the dark chamber. Its bloody tip glinted in the faint light as it flew towards Chieftain Ozytala.
And straight past her.
Gidwyn would have cried out in fury if he could, but the arm of rock had closed around him, holding him in place, pinning his arms to his sides and squeezing the air from him. He could not breathe, and he watched on in horror as the spear clattered uselessly to the floor behind Ozytala.
The Yaghu chieftain took a step towards where Gidwyn stood, held in place by her stone-twisting magic. She let out a small laugh. ‘A worthy effort,’ she said in a hiss. ‘But you shall watch as I take her power from her – or, at least, try to.’
Gidwyn fought and writhed against the impossible grip of the stone tendril, trying to breathe. ‘I’ll…stop….ye…’ he managed to gasp. ‘I’ll…I’ll…’
Chieftain Ozytala’s laugh was shrill and grating. ‘You shall be doing nothing of the sort,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re going anywhere, in fact-…’
The Yaghu chieftain’s words were cut short by a vicious crack. She staggered forwards, her staff falling from her hands as she clutched her head.
‘Get away from him!’ Kiryae screeched, raising the rock she held in her fist again and bringing it down on Ozytala’s head again. ‘Get away! Get away!’
She struck again and again, forcing Chieftain Ozytala to the floor. Kiryae fell atop her, straddling her and pinning her down with her free hand. Her hair fell around her face as she struck again and again and again, the Yaghu chieftain too surprised and disoriented to fight back.
The magic that held the rock around Gidwyn flickered and weakened, the rock shifting and sliding back into its former position. Gidwyn suddenly found himself free to move and hauled himself clear of the shifting stone. He ran to where Kiryae was hunched over the Yaghu woman, striking her again and again and again with the rock. Her hands and arms were blue with blood, her face was splattered with gore and ran with tears. ‘Leave us alone!’ she howled. ‘Leave us alone!’
Gidwyn could see Ozytala was dead. Her arms were no longer raised over her head in an attempt to defend herself, and her skull moved in ways no bone should with each blow Kiryae struck. The thick blue blood that poured from her face obscured all her features – save her long, sharp teeth.
‘Kiryae!’ Gidwyn cried as he ran towards the she-Elf.
Kiryae dropped the bloody rock and staggered to her feet, advancing towards Gidwyn, her face wet with blue blood and tears. ‘Father!’ she shrieked through her tears.
Gidwyn opened his arms and Kiryae collapsed onto him, her body rocking and convulsing uncontrollably as she howled tears into his shoulder. Slowly, Gidwyn lowered himself to the floor and sat with his back against the wall as Kiryae sobbed into him. He squeezed her to him and buried his face into her hair, shaking with his own sobs.
‘I thought…’ Kiryae managed to choke after a while, ‘I thought you…you wouldn’t come…’
Gidwyn squeezed Kiryae tight. ‘Never,’ he breathed, his voice trembling. ‘I’d never leave ye. Never.’
‘But I-…’
‘I dinnae care,’ Gidwyn said. ‘I dinnae care ‘bout buts.’
Kiryae lifted her huge, shining eyes to Gidwyn. ‘Mister Ramscoldt, he said that…that because I’m not your real daughter you’d leave me,’ Kiryae sobbed. ‘They said that you’d leave, like my real parents…like…’
‘Now ye listen t’ me,’ Gidwyn said, lifting Kiryae’s tear-streaked face to his. ‘When I found ye that night, alone in the snow, lost on the mountain, I took ye in ‘cos I couldnae leave ye. I couldnae abandon ye to die in the snow – what kinda man would tha’ make me? No, I took ye in, ‘cos ye deserved the chance. Ye deserved a fair shot at the life ye’d been born intae.’
Gidwyn cupped Kiryae’s face in his hands and looked hard into her eyes. ‘We cannae choose the family to which we are born, an’ we cannae choose the path tha’ fate sets us upon – but we can fight to forge the bonds tha’ we make with others. What we lack in blood ‘tween us, we make up for a thousandfold in the love we share.’
Kiryae buried her face into Gidwyn’s beard and sobbed until she could cry no more. Gidwyn simply settled back into the shadows that embraced them and held Kiryae to his chest.
Daughter. He thought. My daughter.
*
Karveth and Synera lay where they always did, in their usual spots by the fire-pit, but the space where Coren would have been remained empty and bare. It was as if neither wolf-dog were willing to move into the gap the other had left; as if they were leaving his space out of respect for him.
‘I’m glad all worked out, though,’ Galahad said from where he sat on the other side of the fire pit. ‘Fer better or worse.’
Gidwyn nodded. ‘It ain’t settled, though, is it.’
Galahad sighed and shook his head. ‘Nay.’
The name hung unspoken between the two Dwarf-men, a presence in the room as cold as the faint draft hissing under the heavy front door.
Ramscoldt.
Galahad looked at the stump where his lower-left arm had been, then to his side where the heavy spiked shield that he strapped around the limb lay. ‘I brought an axe,’ he said, ‘if ye want it.’
Gidwyn shook his head. ‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something else.’
The two brothers sat in silence for a time until the door to the stone home opened. Cold air blew into the building as Eoina and Kiryae stepped in, wrapped in their thick furs and heavy cloaks. Both carried bundles of firewood in their arms and wore smiles on their faces.
‘Hello, boys,’ Eoina said with a wide grin. Her cheeks were ruddy with the cold. ‘All well?’
Gidwyn nodded and managed a smile.
It had been several months since Kiryae had been taken, and as the snows of winter had passed and the bright sunlight of spring had lit the snows of the Great Mountains, she seemed to have forgotten the worst of the harrowing events. Though she had wept for most of the journey home, once she was back in the thickly-walled house she had grown up in, Kiryae seemed to begin to recover. The dogs loved her as ever, and the goats remained drawn to her. Gidwyn knew little of what it meant to be a sage, but Kiryae’s strange talents seemed to go some way to explaining why the animals seemed to adore being around her so much.
And in truth, Gidwyn did not care. She was his daughter, and he loved her no matter what.
What he did care about, though, was closing the chapter.
Kiryae carefully placed her bundle of firewood down by the door, next to where Eoina left hers. She spoke to Galahad, her beloved uncle, for a few moments, though Gidwyn was not listening. His mind was elsewhere.
When Eoina placed a hand on his shoulder, he came back to reality.
He looked into the eyes of his beloved wife and managed another smile, though it was thin. She made no move to rebuke him for his absent-mindedness, nor did she try to and drag him into the conversation Kiryae and Galahad were sharing. She knew what was going on inside Gidwyn’s head.
She understood.
For an hour or so, the wind howled outside and the snow fell as it always did. Inside Gidwyn, Eoina and Kiryae’s home, it was warm and safe. At some point, a meal appeared – a hotpot of greatgoat meat and tough vegetables brought from the market in Sky’s Anvil a few days before. Gidwyn was sure it tasted brilliant, but was too unfocused to enjoy it.
Ramscoldt, he thought.
Just as the meal was nearing its end, a noise from outside the house drew Gidwyn’s eyes up from the fire-pit in the centre of the home and towards the door. It was a slow, rumbling sound – that of a cart being dragged through the snow.
Gidwyn looked from the door to Kiryae, who had not heard the sound. Still she spoke to Galahad, asking him to tell yet another of his many war-stories. Her eyes were bright and all her attention was on her uncle.
Good, Gidwyn thought.
He looked to Eoina, who met his eyes.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, slowly, Eoina nodded and got to her feet.
The Dwarf-woman set aside the small bowl which held her serving of near-finished hotpot and crossed to the heavy door to the home. Quietly, she reached for the heavy bolt and drew it back, then opened the door a crack.
She peered out of the narrow opening. ‘It’s him.’
Gidwyn nodded and set his bowl aside. ‘Alrigh’.’ He looked across the fire to where Galahad sat.
His brother had stopped mid-sentence and nodded once. Beside him, Kiryae looked confused.
‘Kiryae,’ Gidwyn said, ‘will ye go an’ help yer ma wit’ the tidyin’ fer jus’ a moment?’
Kiryae looked up from her dinner. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Is everything alright?’
Gidwyn nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said with a smile. ‘Uncle Galahad and I are jus’ gonna ‘ave a word with our visitors.’
Kiryae’s eyes widened. ‘Visitors?’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘Who is it?’
Gidwyn swallowed. He couldn’t lie to Kiryae. He could not look into her brilliant eyes and keep anything from her – he loved her too much.
‘No-one, sweetheart,’ Eoina said, stepping away from the door with a wide grin. ‘Jus’ some travellers goin’ t’ the peaks. We’re havin’ a quiet night wit’ family tonight, not openin’ our door to any ol’ folk that come through.’
Kiryae nodded. The answer seemed to satisfy her. ‘Okay,’ she said with a small smile and got to her feet. As soon as she turned her back, Galahad stood up and deftly strapped his spiked shield onto his stub of forearm.
Gidwyn crossed to the door and placed his hand on the bolt, Synera and Karveth at his side. The huge dogs seemed to sense something was wrong – Synera raised her hackles and Karveth lowered his head and barred his teeth. Gidwyn simply hoped Kiryae would not notice.
‘Alrigh'?’ Galahad said as he arrived beside Gidwyn, hand on the axe he had tucked into his belt.
Gidwyn nodded. ‘Aye.’
He took from beside the door a long, heavy spear with a shimmering, leaf-bladed head attached to its end. He hefted it over his shoulder and pulled the door open, holding it for his brother.
Galahad stepped out, Synera and Karveth following him. Gidwyn could see past them a cart pulled by two greatgoats, half a dozen armed Dwarves around it, and a small figure sitting on the driver’s shelf at the front.
Gidwyn felt a dangerous, cold anger spread through him.
He looked back over his shoulder at where Kiryae and Eoina stood, gathering up the bowls and spoons from dinner. The warm light from the fire fell on their faces, and the rage inside Gidwyn hardened – tempered by love.
Anything for you, he thought. For both o’ ye.
Kiryae looked up and met his eyes, a small, innocent smile on her lips.
My daughter, Gidwyn thought as he looked at her. My beautiful daughter. My gift from winter.
‘Father?’ Kiryae said. ‘Is everything alright?’
‘Aye, sweetheart,’ Gidwyn said with a wide and gentle smile. ‘I won’t be long.’
He closed the door.