Dragonhammer: Volume II (29 page)

I don’t know how far I run.  I don’t know how much time it takes.  I know that he is gone.

The realization captures my mind and holds it captive.  I stop running. 
He is gone
.
  He escaped.

I yell at the sky and drop to my knees.  The sun breaks over the horizon and light shines over the world.

Anger overtakes every ounce of my being.  Anger at Archeantus.  Anger at Hralfar.  Anger at the idiot men who call themselves guards.  Anger at Sythian.  Anger at myself.

Anger that I am powerless.

Powerless to protect my friends and family.  Powerless to protect myself from grief, pain, and anger such as this.  Powerless to destroy the one man responsible for the death of my brother.

And the one responsible for the doom of my father.

I recall the conversation I had with Lucius Swordbreaker before I knocked him out of a third-story window.

It wasn’t me!  That order came from Ollgorath!

The leader of Diagrall?
I had questioned.

He commanded it!
the frightened man had said. 
I only carried it out!

Sythian isn’t the prize.  Ollgorath is.  It’s because of him that I’m fighting.  Because of him my home was taken and destroyed.  Because of him my mother is now a widow and my brother lies underground.  Because of him there is pain.  There is war.  There is destruction.  All for what?  What is the purpose?

That’s what I will ask him
, I decide. 
When I have him strung up by his innards on the end of my hammer.  Why?  Was it worth it?  Was it worth every life you spent, every life you took, every home you destroyed, to end up where you are?

The tyranny must end.  There is no good in this world as Ollgorath will make it.  I will always fight against him.  When all is said and done he will have me to answer to, as will all others who dare try to perpetrate his values.

I rise and gaze over the brightening plains to the east.  The sun has risen, oblivious to the death and destruction that is wrought every day and night underneath its reign.

Slowly I turn back towards the city.  I will make for the gate rather than the tunnel.  I’ve had enough of darkness for one day.

My hammer rests on my shoulder, stabilized by my right hand.  It bounces with every step I take.  I look at the monstrous weapon and study the metalworking I had done months earlier. 
I can do better.

I wipe the sweat from my brow and welcome the breeze that cools me.  Something inside me is renewed.  I know why I am fighting.

I am Dragonhammer.

Bad Tidings of Great Misery

T
he guards seem deathly afraid of my approach and open the gate to the Bastion before I get within fifty feet.  I hardly glance at them, but they try very hard to make themselves disappear into the air, as if my gaze will incinerate them on the spot.  My hammer still bounces menacingly on my shoulder.  My strides are long.

“Kadmus!” says the Jarl when he sees me in the entrance hall.  “Did you catch him?”

Oh good.  At least he managed to put it together.  “Does it look like I caught him?” I growl, doing my best to refrain from disturbing the gods with a voice of thunder.

The Jarl quickly senses my animosity and inhales slowly, tightening his lips, choosing very carefully what he is about to say.  He decides on, “I see.”  The words come out quietly, like a child reluctantly confessing to his mother that he ate all of the pastries.

I force my jaw to relax as I push down the hall, but unfortunately as I do so a flurry of words is unleashed.

“Because I seem to be the only one who is capable of doing
anything
in this gods-forsaken war!  Why is it that nobody can simply do what needs done in a timely manner?  If we didn’t have the dingfly-brained soldiers downstairs, or at the gate, or the tunnels, or anywhere else that was an even slightly viable exit, we would have gotten him!”  My words reverberate through the halls and shake the stone.  “I knew we should have killed him when we had him!”

“Captain,” Hralfar says feebly. 

I ignore him and my rage continues, “We held him with his neck between our fists and yet we let him waltz away!  Better we had killed him and had done, because now, not only will Diagrall have one of their most powerful leaders back in his slimy place, but he knows exactly what information he has given out and that may well have lost us our next strategy!”  My hammer swings through the air, breaking a candelabrum hanging on the wall.  The clang echoes through the stone of the castle, stamping a fantastic exclamation point onto the end of my statement.

Dead silence.

Soldiers stand rigid on the balconies, scared that making the smallest step would click on the stone and again unleash the fury that is mine.  Genevieve holds her breath in the corner.  The Jarl looks down at my steel-clad feet.  He is speechless.

I glare at him, as if expecting a response, but I do not anticipate or want one.  Without another word I turn and storm further into the castle.

As I leave I hear Genevieve clear her throat uncomfortably.

The door into the barracks bunkroom rattles as it hits the wall.  I enter and watch James leap a foot in the air, (which was quite impressive as he was lying flat on his back), and for the first time Aela jolts backward.  She almost trips over a helmet lying on the floor, but flings her arms out wide and catches her balance before she falls over.  Nobody dares say anything to me.

“Where’s Percival?” I interrogate sharply when I notice his absence.

“I think he’s still out,” James answers, his wary tone giving away the fact that he feels my fury.

“Know where?”

James shakes his head.  “I hardly had time to get suited but Percival was out there searching the castle like the rest of the soldiers.  He hasn’t come back yet.”

I nod.

There’s an awkward silence.

“So…” James says slowly.  “Can I ask what you’re mad about?”

My head cocks to the side and my tongue presses against my teeth as my jaw clenches.  “Sythian escaped,” I blurt, shutting my mouth immediately after.  I fear keeping it open too long may result in a recurrence of the incident in the entrance hall.

James opens his mouth, but the only sound that comes out is a slight “Ah.”  Then he shuts it.

“Yeah,” I reply sarcastically.  “Ah.”

“So why are you looking for Percival?”

I glance at Aela, who is fiddling with something behind the headboard of her bed.

“Wanted to talk,” I reply.

A pair of black eyes flashes from the back of the room.  A looming form stands from his bunk and clomps a few long strides forward.  Ullrog’s deep voice rumbles, “I will talk.”

I leave without a word and the orc follows me out, though I had not agreed to anything.

He wears no armor and no shirt, but his sword is sheathed on his back.  The hilt, I realize, must be almost as long as my forearm.

“Where you going?” the orc asks.

“Don’t know.”

“Me lead,” he says.

I stop and look at him.  He waits for my permission.  When I nod, he returns the gesture and steps in front of me.

I follow him up a flight of stairs and into a large corridor, where we turn right and head towards the end.  There, he opens a large door and holds it open for me, gesturing for me to go through.  I do.

I stand on a big open pavilion, a little smaller than the square between the temples in Terrace.  The right side is enclosed by the wall of the Bastion, but the left and far edges of the pavilion are open and I can see most of the city.  We are in shadow, as the sun lies to the east, on the other side of the Bastion.  There are no soldiers; it is yet too early for them.

Along the far crenellated wall there stand multiple archery targets.  Along the right wall there stand dummies stuffed with straw, wearing buckets for helmets and holding wooden swords and shields at the sides.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask bluntly.

“What you do when angry?” he retaliates.

I’m bewildered by his question. “What does that have to do with-”

“You fought trees,” he says simply.

“What of it?”

“I am tree.”  He turns and pulls his enormous sword from its sheath, and then takes a stance across from me.

My eyebrows rise.  “You want me to fight you?”

“No fight.  I am tree.”

I feel my hammer hanging limply by my side.  My grip tightens.  “You sure about this?” I ask.  “I won’t break your sword?”

A smile pulls at his lip.  “You don’t know orcish steel,” he growls. 

I eye the serrated edge.  “Very well,” I reply.

The first strike I throw is one that arcs from my lower right all the way up to his opposite shoulder.  He deflects it easily.

Our eyes make contact.  He makes no movement, but readies his titanic sword once again.

My next strike exactly mirrors the first; from my bottom left, up to my high right.  Again he deflects the blow with no trouble.  “Come on,” he says.  “
Thürk thiem, Khroll'verär.
”

My nose flares. 
Thürk thiem, Khroll’verär.

Then I attack.

I strike from every direction, but he blocks every swipe, uppercut, or any other move I try to pull on him.  I find I am pushing him back, but as we near the crenellations and the archery targets, he nimbly dodges the next swing and leaps around me so that we now head back towards the center.

Let’s put him on his toes
.

I feint low, as if to knock his feet out from under him, but maneuver my hammer up and around his lowered sword to come down on his chest.  He merely takes a step back, and there’s a quick
whoosh
as the heavy head swings through empty air.

The corner of his lip goes up again as he takes his stance.

His sword moves only slightly to block the next hit, his left hand positioned behind the flat of the blade.  Upon the next however, he suddenly lunges with a quickness I did not expect.  It’s all I can do to throw my weight backward and away from his quickly advancing sword.

Before I can gain my balance, he throws another blow; this one he meant to throw me off balance.  He could easily have won the spar right there, but instead he allows me to regain my footing and center my weight.

“I thought you said you were a tree,” I say with a hint of sarcasm.

“I fighting tree,” he shrugs.

When I see he will not make the first strike, I aim a quick blow at his shoulder.  Easily he knocks the hammer aside and crouches slightly to lunge his sword directly at my gut, but fortunately my reflexes are just fast enough to knock the blade so that it pierces the air a few inches away from my waist.

This may be a little dangerous
, I think. 
If I am not able to stop his blows, could he stop himself before I die?

Our weapons scrape together and he pushes us apart with a forceful shove.  This time he swings first with a downward swipe that I block with the shaft of my hammer, throwing his weapon to the right.  My hammer follows a course similar to the one his own weapon had traveled:  downward.

He sidesteps and his sword comes at me in a wide sideways arc.  I evade it by ducking beneath the singing weapon and kicking out at his ankle.  I manage to knock him off-balance, but only just.

My hammer finds an arc upwards towards his hip, and he falls backwards onto his back to evade it.  I step forward to help him up, but to my surprise he rolls backwards onto the balls of his feet and comes up with a vicious uppercut of his own.  His strike answers the question I had thought to myself, and fortunately the answer is in my favor. 

I barely raise my hammer in time, and only to deflect his blow rather than stop it.  He had withdrawn the blade before it could hit me.  Both of us stumble back.  He readies his stance again, but I drop my hammer to the ground.

He nods his understanding, rising to his full height and lowering his weapon.  “Fight good,” he says, offering his hand.  I take it and he pulls me towards him, hitting his shoulder roughly against my own.  Then he bends down and picks up my hammer.  He offers it to me and I take it.

“
Rheyoth
,” I say.

He nods.  “
Freyash
,” he says.

Then we walk inside.

Breakfast is quiet.  Despite the fury that worked itself out during the fight with Ullrog, I quickly find that my wrath is far from gone.  Everyone avoids me for this reason; even Percival seems apprehensive about approaching me.

“Captain,” a messenger says as I tear a chunk from a slice of bread.

“What.”  My tone is flat and cold.

“You’ve been summoned to a council with the Jarl, sir.”

“Can it wait?”

“No, sir.  It’s urgent.”

“Of course it is.  It’s always urgent.  Never anything that can wait.”  I make no move to get up and take another bite of my breakfast.

The guard is unsure what to think.  “Sir?”

“What.”

“Shall I tell them you are not coming?”

I sigh.  “You can ask them why it wasn’t urgent to keep Sythian from escaping in the first place.  I’ll be there.”

The plates and silverware rattle on the table as I push against it and lift myself from the bench.  The others watch me leave.

What this time?
I think.  Instead of voicing this to the guard, however, I state, “But I’m bringing my breakfast.”

He doesn’t object.  Not like I would have listened to him if he had.

I enter the room with half a slice of buttered bread still in my hand.  As if to prove a point, when the Jarl looks up at me, I take the largest bite that I can.

He blinks and shakes his head.  “I thought you might want to know that the messenger from Archeantus is here.”

“Oh good,” I say sarcastically without bothering to swallow.  “You mean the one that was supposed to tell us what to do with Sythian?”  I follow my comment by crunching on the crust.

The Jarl takes a deep breath.  “Yes.  That one.”

A thin wiry man stands on the other side of the room.  “Would you like me to deliver the message now?” he asks.

“You haven’t told him?” I ask accusingly.

“I have,” Hralfar says patiently, “but he has more to say.  I thought he might actually survive if I told him rather than you.”

“Good judgment,” I comment.  “Let’s hear it then.”

The messenger pulls out a letter and opens it.  “Lord Jarl Hralfar of Gilgal,” he begins.  I watch his eyes spin back and forth as he reads the next few lines silently, probably skipping the bit about Sythian.  He resumes with, “I would have you join the fight in Watervale as soon as you are able.  Fortify Balgr’s Fall as you see fit, but remember that we have need of you here.  Our numbers dwindle and we are in need of fresh reinforcement.  I agree completely with your decision to take Fort Rocksabre.  I care not how it is done, but be wary.  They may be equipped to defend against an invasion by ship.  I look forward to your imminent arrival in Watervale.  Lord Archeantus.”

“When do we move out?” I ask bluntly, brushing the crumbs from my tunic.

“Tomorrow,” says the Jarl.  “I don’t know if you’ve taken the time to notice, but we’ve repaired the ballistae at the front gate and have constructed a few of our own at the dock.  They will be in for a surprise if they try to take this port.”