The Dreaddrac Onslaught (Book 4) (45 page)

“They’re going to use it to reopen the tunnel under the mountain,” the duke said, wide-eyed.

“That would be my guess.”

“We’ve nothing to stop it.” The duke wheeled around to the aide. “I think King Ormadese’s messenger is still with us. Find him; bring him here.”

The aide disappeared and returned with the elegantly attired dwarf noble, who remained in the shadows. When the dwarf saw the whingtang, he dropped his official bearing and, leaning forward, stared at the approaching whingtang. Without waiting for Duke Jedrac to comment, the dwarf raced back down the tower stairs and disappeared.

* *

“Majesty!” exclaimed the dwarf noble, bursting into King Ormadese’s audience hall. “Dreaddrac has a monstrous burrowing pangolin-like creature. It’s coming this way right to the mountain below Hador.”

“Nonsense, there’s nothing to fear from a pangolin; they don’t burrow through our granite mountains,” King Ormadese said, sitting on his throne, interrupted from his dealings with officials, courtiers, and petitioners. The Hadorian dwarf king put aside a petition he was considering as a buzz of chatter erupted in the hall. He laughed, looked around, then fixed his glare on the noble messenger. Ormadese nodded to the chamberlain.

The official promptly clacked his staff on the granite floor. “Court dismissed!”

The court bowed as King Ormadese rose and retired from the hall to his private audience chamber. His messenger followed.

“How dare you burst into the hall like that and nearly panic the court,” Ormadese said. “What’s this pangolin thing?”

“Majesty, this creature is a thousand times the size of a pangolin. It has sword-edged claws several feet long and tusks like a boar hog also long as my arm. It’s been bred to dig, tunnel specifically.”

“Tunnel!” Ormadese said. “But pangolins don’t tunnel in rock.”

“It’s just beyond the mountain where we collapsed the enemy passageway. I think it’s been brought up to reopen the passage. You’d have to see this thing to believe it. No, it won’t burrow through granite, but it could reopen the existing tunnel now filled with mud and rubble.”

“If it could do that, it could break the retaining wall, dig through to our ancient halls and into our kingdom, destroying everything.” Ormadese eyes glazed over. He stared off into space.

“We must stop it before it breaks into the ancient halls,” the aide said to the dazed king.

“What of Jedrac? What’s he doing about this monster?” Ormadese asked, turning back to the noble messenger.

“No one seems to know what to make of the beast, much less how to destroy it.”

Ormadese ordered his chamberlain to summon his high council. As they convened, the sounds of rock crunching, smashing, and grinding rumbled through the granite base of the mountain in chilling reverberations. The sound of panicking dwarves rushing about outside the hall strained the messenger beside the king, who was starting to explain what a whingtang appeared to be and what they suspected it was up to, to the council.

The king was restless, clearly agitated. “Close the doors,” Ormadese ordered. “What are your suggestions as to how to deal with this creature?”

There was much chatter in the room among the high councilors. The messenger heard military attack ideas, poisoning options, endless perspectives passed around the room as the grinding intensified. He recognized one noble at the far end of the table who seemed less frenzied or involved in the chatter, who then spoke.

“The beast tunnels; it will have defense from the orcs at this end. It will be vulnerable at the head.”

“A good point,” Ormadese said, raising his hand to silence the chatter. “Continue.”

“If we could kill it in the tunnel, it would block further penetration until it rotted. Between dwarves and that wizard up in Hador, we could use magic to turn it to stone before that happened and seal the tunnel.”

“Yes, that would work, but our magic will not kill the thing first,” another councilor said. “It must be dead for its elements to be transfixed into petrified stone.

“A noose,” the wise councilor said. “We can braid steel cable that could strangle the beast. Make a noose inside a small opening in the retaining wall that seals our ancient tunnels from our current halls. The small opening would lure the beast to take that path of least resistance.”

“Yes, but should it break through the noose, it would rampage through into the current halls unabated,” another councilor protested.

“We’ve no better options,” the wise councilor said. “One can kill a pangolin by slashing in their tender underside, in the gut.”

“The floor is granite, we’d have no way to turn the beast over to expose the gut,” another protested.

The noble in charge of the meeting raised his hand to silence the chatter.

“Suppose while we braid the steel cable to make the noose, others could chip out a hollow in the tunnel floor. With a spell to seal the scent of a dwarf, a volunteer could lie in the hollow. As the beast becomes stuck in the noose and struggles, the dwarf could thrust up a sword into its belly. Then, if we don’t strangle it, we can kill it with a gut slash.”

“Done!” King Ormadese shouted and rose from his seat. “Get a volunteer for the pit. You devised the solution, noble councilor. You’re in charge of organizing this. It must work. You have full authorization and may commandeer any resources, dwarf or material, you need.”

The noble councilor dispatched the messenger to Duke Jedrac, requesting the Wizard Hendrel’s assistance. While the dwarf kingdom devoted its resources to make steel cables, construct the noose, and hammer out the hideout in the tunnel floor, the messenger headed across the face of the mountain to Hador and Hendrel.

* *

Duke Jedrac assigned Hendrel to the dwarf messenger at once when the situation was explained to him of the monster burrowing out the tunnel under the mountain. Jedrac summoned Hendrel. The dwarf and wizard retired to the wizard’s workshop in the tower for consultation.

“You want me to find a spell to transform the elements of a dead pangolin into granite to quickly petrify it?” Hendrel repeated to be sure he understood the dwarf’s request.

“Yes, Wizard,” the dwarf said, his ruby eyes flaring.

“But shouldn’t that be a function of dwarves?”

“We work elements, but changing one to another is beyond us.”

“Let me look through the books here. I’ve no idea if I can do that, but I’ll try to find such a spell.”

“I’ll leave you to it then, Master Wizard. I’ll be close by should you need me.” And with that, the dwarf left the tower room and went into the dungeon under the Hadorhof, where he felt more comfortable in the rock.

Hendrel scrounged through the current wizard lore and incantations but found no such transformation spell for turning organic matter into rock quickly. He was about to give up when he spotted an old, dusty copy of the Wizard Wars Chronicles in a back corner of the storage closet. In it, it mentioned such a spell used once in the third war at the Wizards’ Hall. More research and Hendrel did discover the spell and hurried to find the dwarf. The two rushed across the face of the mountain, through the dwarf’s secret entrance to the halls below, and to the noble overseeing the whingtang trap. The sound of the whingtang so close ripping out the rubble blocking the tunnel was nerve racking. They’d gauged the point where the whingtang would be when the dwarves had their trap ready, and the two were about to meet. All was in place when the whingtang’s digging unearthed the opening in the wall blocking off the old dwarf halls. It sniffed the air of the hall, sensed an opening, and took it for the best way to continue.

When it stuck its snout through the opening, the dwarves gasped. They muffled their mouths. A hundred dwarves grabbed hold of the noose cables and waited.

The whingtang stuck its massive claws into the opening and slashed out the rock retaining wall where the dwarves had weakened it. Rock and dust flew everywhere. Hendrel noted the dwarves on the cables were visibly tense, checking and rechecking their grips on the cables. When the whingtang’s head finally popped through the noose, the noble gave his signal, and the dwarves hauled back on the steel cables, pulling the noose tight around the whingtang’s neck. The noose slid up under the armored plates, strangling the beast. The whingtang battered the walls and tugged the noose, trying to free its head from the hole in the wall, but the noose tightened more.

The dwarves strained to hold the lines tight. They had strung them through pulleys to ease, yet strengthen, the pull securing the cables. The noose looked secure, but then dwarves began to slide over the stone floor, the beast dragging the hundred dwarves in a tug of war.

“Hold tight!” the clever councilor commanded. “Hold the cables securely.

The beast thrashed, attempting to tear at the noose with its hind feet, but the tunnel was tight and prevented the beast from scrunching up to reach the noose as it scratched madly. Dust and gravel billowed through the warren. Then the cable snapped. The dwarves holding the cables flew back in a heap onto the ancient hall floor. Panic ensued.

“Run for your lives,” screamed a dwarf, scrambling to get on its feet again.

“The beast is free!” another yelled.

Hendrel began backing up but kept his eyes on the massive charcoal head. The red eyes changed from agitated fear to a cold anger stare, locked on wizard and councilor.

When the whingtang recovered from its sudden release, it first froze. Then enraged and seeing its tormentors ahead, it thrust its whole body forward, ramming its head through the tunnel opening to snatch a dwarf in its fangs. Wizard and dwarf stumbled backward. Tusks screeched on the stone. The hot foul breath choked them as gaping jaws opened with a hiss.

In the rush forward, it exposed its belly. The dwarf volunteer in the pit thrust up his sword, slashing the whingtang up the gut. Blood and gore spilled over the tunnel floor, nearly drowning the dwarf trying to stay out of the way of the ripping claws on the whingtang’s hind feet. Soon the bulging eyes became fixed. Blood ceased to flow and coagulated on the cold stone. The beast thrashed less and finally kicked in its death throes. It collapsed dead on the floor, still blocking the tunnel.

The dwarf in the pit scrambled out from under the armor plates of the dead whingtang. Dwarves on the other side of the retaining wall chipped out enough of an opening for him to crawl through to safety in the old halls.

“Now, do your work, Wizard,” the noble dwarf director said, his hands fixed firmly on his hips in triumph. “We’re not safe until that beast is granite.”

Hendrel went to work and cast the long lost spell. Before their eyes, moving minerals filtered from the sludge in the tunnel floor, displacing tissue in the whingtang until the beast blocked the tunnels completely with solid stone.

Hendrel returned to Duke Jedrac with the news the beast was dead and the tunnel blocked once more. Hendrel and the duke stood on the battlements overlooking the Hador Pass one night shortly thereafter. They discussed what Dreaddrac would try next, when they saw in the moonlight rock-dwarves coming down the plain once more to the tunnel entrance.

“I suppose they’ll try to mine out the new granite plug,” the duke said.

“Well, that will take them some time, at least until we can think of something else to stop them.”

Later, Hendrel sent a winged messenger to Memlatec with news of the thwarted attempt to reopen the tunnel and updates of the latest developments.

* * *

At Hoya, Saxthor decided to lead what forces he could spare north to reinforce Duke Heggolstockin’s defenses against the goblin general on the western border. He’d sent orders to the garrison at Talok Tower to relocate around the end of the Talok Mountains to Tossledorn Fortress. He instructed them to occupy Tossledorn when the Graushdem general left to reinforce Graushdemheimer based on King Grekenbach’s requested date of exchange.

The lack of adequate boats to transport his army up river to Girdane left Saxthor no choice but to march up along the river, cross at Girdane, and follow the border with Sengenwha to the battle front on the Akkin. Saxthor could only spare one legion. The march was slow through Graushdem’s rough forested lands along the river and the situation urgent.

* * *

Tarquak’s army descended out of the mountains and crossed the plain of eastern Sengenwha. Unable to accept the unthinkable threat, the stubborn, but now panicked, Sengenwhan farmers abandoned their farms. They rushed just ahead of the orc legions to get behind Botahar’s walls. Herdsmen drove the last of their animals ahead of them through the portal before the soldiers slammed the gates shut. The defenders filled the road behind them with rock and soil to hold the gates against assault from a battering ram.

Tarquak arrived just after dusk and surveyed his army before taking a fresh orc host. He ordered the disposition of the legions, massing the forces near Botahar’s central gate.

“They’ve hidden behind their walls; all the easier to wipe them out concentrated like that,” the general said, looking left and right at his top aides and commanders. None responded, which made him less confident.

“Do we attack the city, General?” one commander asked from down the line.

Tarquak pulled on his gelding’s reins, causing the horse to stamp about in pain, but giving the general a diversion to think of his response.