The Fate of the Dwarves - By Markus Heitz Page 0,168

be with you,” she repeated quietly. And with my own children, above all things.

Kiras followed close on Boëndalin’s heels.

They ran forward, passing through the gap in the barrier. The undergroundling felt pain for a fleeting moment as they did so.

“Take out the big machines by the walls first, and the tents,” Boëndalin ordered, telling the archers to prepare their fire arrows. While the unit moved over to the right, their burning missiles shot in the opposite direction to keep the monsters occupied extinguishing the flames. Then they confronted their first opponents.

Kiras was struck by the ease with which they were able to rampage unopposed. They had caught their foes unawares at their midday meal—indeed, how could they have possibly guessed that Goda was going to open the barrier?

In the course of all the turmoil created by the attack more fires broke out as cooking stoves were kicked over in the general confusion.

Before long all the machines by the gates had been destroyed; the largest ones now were three hundred paces away. From the direction of the gates impressive numbers of strangely diverse monsters came surging toward the dwarves.

“Archers! Fire!” Boëndalin ordered the rest of the company to continue advancing. Arrows skimmed overhead from behind, targeting the monster horde, bringing some of them dead or injured to the ground. “And now have at them! Down with them all! Over there, get to the catapult!” the dwarf shouted as he rammed the sharpened edge of his shield into an opponent’s neck. Slicing through leather protection the metal opened the monster’s throat all the way to the spine. The beast went flying, as good as decapitated.

The commando troops slashed and bashed their way through the enemy. Kiras, dispatching many opponents herself, had to admire Boëndalin’s skill, whether in giving orders or fighting. She would appreciate a partner like that at her side, but a sense of tradition made it an unsuitable match. Undergroundlings and dwarves did not mix. Not for long, anyway.

They had reached the tall catapult towers. Two-thirds of her group gave covering fire while the others hacked at the guy ropes, smashed the supports and inflicted so much damage on the device that there was a loud crash as the construction shuddered and fell.

“Get out of here!” Boëndalin commanded. Like Kiras, he had seen that the enemy was regrouping. “We’ll withdraw back to the gate. We have done well!”

The undergroundling looked at one of the odd poles that stood apparently isolated on the plain, a taut chain leading back from it down the Black Abyss. It was only a couple of hundred paces away. “What about that, Boëndalin?” Kiras called out. “Can’t we get that one, too?” Success had gone to her head. “We can do it!”

The dwarf looked at the beasts. Behind a furrowed brow his brain was working furiously. They still had not found out what the masts were for, and there were about four dozen of them planted round the entrance to the ravine.

“It’s not far,” she said, enticingly. “Whatever they’re for, we can easily get rid of them. And we haven’t seen hide nor hair of their magus yet.”

Boëndalin glanced at his siblings, who both indicated their approval.

One of the ubariu protested, wary of the long distance back to safety; their retreat could be cut off. Their armor had grown no lighter in all that fighting and running was getting more difficult now. For all of them.

“Let’s attack,” was Boëndalin’s decision finally. He charged off. “Archers, fire to the left and right! Undergroundlings, bring up the rear!”

In this formation they reached the first of the mysterious metal poles. The foundations, made of solid lumps of cast iron, were almost impossible to dislodge.

“Get the ubariu to bend the poles back toward the chasm—they are already under tensile stress.” Boëndalin gave the command and reconfigured his troops.

Kiras was following the action out of the corner of her eye, watching the powerful warriors thronging around the pole, some pushing, the others pulling.

The metal creaked and gave way. The huge chain, which had the diameter of a tree trunk, suddenly went slack and dropped to the ground. Two of the ubariu failed to leap to safety swiftly enough and were crushed to death in their armor, squashed like insects by the heavy links.

“Come on! Let’s get the next one!” Boëndalin pointed over to the right.

This time the ubari expressed his objections forcefully. “Your mother said we were not to cross a line that’s over three hundred paces behind us now. Sir!”