NOVEL FROG Runeknight: The Search Begins
When I went up the mountain path to the castle before, I passed through several deep and darkly shadowed gorges. My plan is simple: hide in the darkness, wait for Runethane Broderick’s army, and when they are passing us slip surreptitiously into their ranks. It’s far too big for everyone to know everyone else, and though they have yellow bands wrapped around their arms to signify their side, many have been likely ripped off in the clash of weapon on armor.
We shouldn’t stand out. I worry slightly that one or two enemies might have taken note of Heartseeker’s peculiar dark glow, but it’s unlikely. Plenty of other weapons glow to some degree, after all, and Broderick's dwarves were probably more concerned with those being slashed at them.
Into the dark of a gully we duck. We back against a cool wall, some distance from the path, and watch as our fleeing army passes in singles and small groups, shouting in fear, loose armor plates clattering.
The very last passes limping: a young initiate with blood running from his ankle. Hayhek raises a hand to his mouth as if he’s about to call him to join us, but I press it down and shake my head.
“That blood will lead them right to us,” I hiss. “And I can hear them.”
The sound of the approaching enemy is getting louder. It’s loud and solid—individual footsteps cannot be heard. It is also coupled with laughter and joyous primal cries, and an undertone of chanting, like some still are keeping up their discipline with their song of hazhulam.
They really overwhelmed us, I think to myself. I’d known the army Thanerzak sent on the dragon hunt had been big, but I didn't think it had been the majority of his runeknights. It really wasn’t a wise move. He got overconfident. And where is he now, anyway? He didn't retreat along with his army, but neither did Broderick appear before us, shining in all his gold. Does their duel continue? If it does, they must have taken it underground, for no runic power is flashing and sharply illuminating the stalactites far above.
The enemy army reaches us. We press instinctively back against the wall. First are the most enthusiastic, berserks with armor coated in gore through which glow redly runes of speed, pain-numbing, damage-turning and fire-touch. To move out now would be suicide—in their eyes I can see they’re happy to cut anything.
Next comes the main body of their army, led by the silver legend and Broderick’s golden elites. It’s the first time I’ve seen the silver legend up close, and his armor is fearsome. It is indeed silver, grafted with platinum runes of speed that shiver and blur with each step. His helmet is ornate; wings sweep back from it.
A few minutes after he passes, once the quality of the soldiers’ armor has diminished somewhat and also grown more battered, I motion to father and son and begin to creep up toward the path. At the point where the shadow is deepest, I jostle into the marching mass of metal.
“Watch it there!” someone spits at me.
“Watch yourself!” I spit back.
I tilt Heartseeker down—if it was to stick right out of the ranks it really would be conspicuous—and keep pace with the march. It’s not so fast, for these dwarves are damn tired, stinking badly of sweat as they stumble up the steep path, their heads bowed and breath coming heavy.
Just as I predicted, several have also lost their brassy armbands. I glance back and see that Hayhak and Yezakh are a few marching bodies behind me. I breath a sigh of relief. So far, unlike the limping initiate whose hewn body lies a few steps off the road, we’re still alive.
And headed to the castle.
This is my chance to get the key. My only chance. My relief dies and worry roils up in its place. I look up to the peak of the mountain, and see the castle standing there as solemnly as a gravestone. Step by step it grows larger. The last steps are steepest, just as I remember. At the top of them some dwarves will make their last stand.
Halfway up I hear it. It is very short. Forty minutes or so later I see it in the form of severed heads and accompanying headless bodies.
I ascend over the red-dyed final steps and march into the castle in the midst of the steel tide. In the antechamber I stand on something round and hard—it’s part of the chair of the lone guard I remember being up here. Of him there is nothing to be seen.
The antechamber is a bottleneck, so I’m pushed and jostled. Someone grabs me by the shoulder. I clench my fists, fearing I’ve been found out, but of course it’s just Yezakh.
“Where are we going? Shouldn’t we find a way back to the city?” he whispers, barely audible over the swearing and insults and grind of armor-clad bodies shoving against each other.
“If we hurry back too soon, it’ll be suspicious. And there’s gold down here too, bound to be.”
“We’re up here to loot?” Hayhek says in a dark voice.
Yezakh nods. “I get it. Stay up here, get gold for better equipment, and get down at the same time as everyone else. That’ll be when our family’s in real danger anyway.”
“Exactly.”
“I see,” says Hayhek, but I can see a touch of suspicion in his eyes alongside the nerves and fear.
It makes me feel a little ill, lying to them. But they would understand. They’d lie to protect their family, wouldn’t they? I’m lying for nearly the same reason.
“So which tunnel do we head down?” Yezakh asks.
“Follow me,” I say.
Of course, I really don’t have any idea of where to go. I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears even above the scrape of metal and loud swearing. What if the silver legend, or even Runethane Broderick should get the key first? And there’s an infinitely higher chance that they do, with so many searching for whatever they can rip up and sell, or melt down to forge. I jostle my way down to where the tunnel entrances are.
“The forges are this way!” someone shouts out. “This way, they’re saying!”
“Who’s saying?”
“The bastards coming up holding rods of titanium and gold, that’s who!”
Like iron filings to magnetite, everyone rushes at once to a tunnel where several of the gore-encrusted berserker dwarves are pushing their way up with armfuls of precious metals and gems. We’re caught up in the tide, squeezed. I feel my iron chestplate bend under the pressure, and someone treads on my toes so hard it hurts even through my boots.
Inexorably we're forced toward the tunnel to the forges. Seems we don’t really have much choice in where we’re headed, but then again, the forges are as likely to hold the key as anywhere. Yet how hard is it going to be for someone else to find an artifact of dazzling diamond as long as an arm before me?
I narrow my eyes and begin to plot a way to take it from that someone else.
Runethane Broderick has his prey in his sights. He chases him, his old tungsten clad commander—hell, how he used to hate having to wear that stuff! A dwarf should be free to choose his own equipment, and make his own judgments about what’s fit to fight in.
And Broderick has made the right judgment. He flies down the steep stone stairs while his old commander thunders down heavily and slowly—in just a few minutes he'll catch him. A firey glow illuminates them both, and Broderick feels sweat oozing through the golden rings embedded into his skin. Must be sweaty hell encased in all that dark metal. Another disadvantage to stubborn tradition.
“Where are we headed, old Thanerzak?” he shouts. “Where are you leading me, on this merry chase of ours?”
Thanerzak does not answer. He makes a sudden turn into a dark side-cave, and there’s a crash. Broderick cleaves his axe into the wall to slow himself, bringing up sparks and fine gravel, and swings around where Thanerzak disappeared. In the floor is a square hole framed with iron, with splinters sticking from it. The remains of a trapdoor. He kneels and peers down, and sees nothing.
“A trap, is this?” he shouts, then he shrugs. His next words he speaks to himself: “Well, trap or none, can’t let him get away, can I?”
He dives down, pressing both palms to the walls to slow himself by friction as he shoots down the narrow shaft. His hands hiss as they heat up, their golden cover begins to glow, but each tiny ring is runed. So tiny are the rings that each has space for only one rune, but together they form a magnificent poem of immortality and protection from any kind of damage you care to imagine.
When Broderick hits the bottom his feet and legs take the impact with superb ease, like he dropped one story rather than twenty.
“Now,” he says to himself as he looks around the circular chamber, with its many exits carved into the walls. “Where to go now?”
He sniffs the air, and smiles. From one exit he can smell the unmistakable scent of dragon.