The haft, a bar of solid steel, extended through the widest part of the head and out the top. At that end, the smith had capped the hammer with a tiny silver anvil, a perfect match of the little icon that topped Gretchan’s staff.
“Would you like to feel its heft?” Bardic asked.
Brandon nodded and took the hammer by the handle. He lifted it, feeling the solid weight of the mighty stone head. It was a good weight, and as he took a few practice swings, it seemed to glide forward with the energy of his blow, as if the hammer itself were eager to move, to strike … to smash.
“It’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time,” Brandon said, surprised to realize he was whispering.
He felt a warm hand on his shoulder and realized that Gretchan had come up to stand beside him. Her eyes were focused on the artifact, and they seemed to shine in reflection of the three colors. Her staff was in her other hand, and Brandon didn’t know if it was real or his imagination, but the anvil on the head of the shaft of wood seemed to glow with a silvery shimmer brighter even than the moonlight that still washed the mountain valley. Reverently he handed the weapon back to the smith, who accepted it in the same awed way. His eyes gleamed, reflecting the light of the three-colored stone.
“I’ll go up there alone,” Bardic said matter-of-factly. “You’ll need to give me plenty of room to swing it.”
“I will but I’ll be close by with the Bluestone Axe,” Brandon replied. He turned to face Gretchan soberly. “Tankard will be two hundred paces behind us with the vanguard of his legion,” he said, trying once again to make the argument that had failed him the evening before. “You should stand with him. That way, if anything happens-”
“I’ll be too far away to do anything other than recover your remains,” she said simply. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m going to be close by your side.”
He felt a lump in his throat and was too moved even to be irritated by her stubbornness. “All right,” he replied. “Are you ready to go?”
She was. They all were.
The advance column of the army moved out, dwarves marching two by two behind Bardic, Brandon, and Gretchan. The Kayolin commander started out with the Bluestone Axe in a sling on his back, but he found himself desiring the sturdy feel of the weapon in his hands. Quickly he freed it from its strap and continued along, holding the smooth haft in both of his hands, grateful for the comforting presence of his trusty blade.
The two hundred dwarves who followed directly behind him were all volunteers, all sturdy veterans of the First Legion. They wore steel breastplates, helmets, and greaves, but otherwise were garbed in leather. Each carried his weapon of choice, including swords, spears, and axes in their number. None bore a shield since, in the close-quarters combat they anticipated, even a small buckler could prove to be more of a hindrance than an advantage. They were the shock troops, the men who would advance into the first breach and hold the position for the rest of the army.
They followed the hammer, the general, and the priestess up the trail grimly, as silently as an army could move. The plans had been made and repeated to all the night before, so there was no need for discussion. They would go in quickly and violently, Brandon had explained, streaming into the gatehouse as reinforcements made their way up the sinuous trail behind. When the bulk of the First Legion had made it through the gate, they would advance, leaving the Second and Tharkadan Legions to follow along.
The sun would linger long behind the eastern ridge in that deep cut of the mountains, but the sky had brightened to a pale orange horizon and finally to a faint shade of blue as the assault force marched steadily up the trail. Brandon and Gretchan reached the place where they had stopped on the previous day’s scouting mission, but that morning they continued on without hesitation. The climb was steep, and it should have been arduous, but Brandon felt his energy, his anticipation, and his determination only increasing as they continued upward. Every once in a while, he heard Gretchan murmur a soft prayer, and he knew that she was calling upon their immortal god, Reorx of the Forge, for strength. He hoped fervently that the Master of All Dwarves was listening.
He cast a glance upward, knowing that Tankard’s scouts were stationed on the heights to either side. That was a reassuring thought as they passed beneath overhanging shoulders of cracked rock or under cornices of ice and snow that looked ready to break free, to fall and sweep the dwarves off the mountainside like a person might swat at a bunch of ants.
Finally the shadowy terminus of the trail loomed before them, much wider and taller than it had looked from below. Even so, it seemed like a very narrow and constricted passage, when Brandon considered that for centuries it had been the main point of access and egress to the great underground realm. The path ended in a solid plug of stone, the gate that merged seamlessly with the wall of the cliff on all sides of it.
Only the perfectly smooth face of that huge plug suggested that it was something other than a piece of the natural mountainside. It was impossible to discern any more details of the entryway until Gretchan held up her staff and cast the bright light of Reorx across the gate. That revealed the outline of the entryway. The ceiling arched some twelve feet above the ground and the sides of the portal were a similar distance apart. Brandon felt strangely relieved by the vast size of it, as it meant that Bardic would have all the room he needed to swing the hammer with all of his might.
“Looks like we might as well get on with it,” the smith said calmly.
Brandon took one last glance behind him, holding up his hand to halt the initial vanguard of the column several dozen paces behind him. Gretchan remained at his shoulder, though they both backed up enough to avoid the backswing of the mighty artifact, which Bardic intended to drive upward and over his head in a straightforward blow.
The cleric started to chant, invoking the name of Reorx, speaking words in an ancient tongue. Brandon did not recognize the words, but they seemed to infuse him with strength, causing the blood to pulse through his veins, the energy of his body to hum and crackle in his ears. The head of Gretchan’s staff glowed, so bright he couldn’t look at it.
Bardic Stonehammer stood still, with the artifact resting on his shoulders. His face was peaceful, eyes half closed, and he seemed to be listening very carefully to the priestess’s prayer. Brandon took a half step forward, unable to restrain his eagerness, until the smith breathed a long sigh and shook his head.
“Don’t try to help me,” he warned. “I will do this alone.”
So instead, Brandon stepped back alongside the priestess and waited. The face of the gate was outlined brilliantly in the glow from the cleric’s anvil, and in that light he discerned a faint line, a crack no wider than a blond hair, running vertically through the surface of Thorbardin’s gate.
Bardic apparently saw that possible crack too. Taking the Tricolor Hammer in both hands, he drew a deep breath, raised it high, and let the artifact drop slightly to swing it low behind his shoulders. His muscles tensed until, with a smooth exhalation, he whipped the hammer upward, impossibly high, and drove it with all his strength into the granite surface of the gate. The three stones of the hammerhead met the gate exactly above that hairline crack.
Then a storm broke around them all.
TWELVE
Kondike paced around the upper wall of Pax Tharkas. Frequently he stopped at one of the crenellations in the battlement, rose to rest his forepaws on the stone, and stared anxiously along the winding southward road. She, his mistress, his beloved Gretchan, had gone that way, accompanied by a countless swarm of other dwarves, all girded for war. And she had bade him, Kondike, to stay there and wait for her.