Then the shadows moved.
Brandon opened his mouth to cry out a warning, but a black-cloaked figure behind his brother was already lunging, wielding a black steel blade. Nailer grunted, sounding surprised, and Brandon saw the blade emerge from his brother’s chest and felt drops of liquid spatter his face.
“Nailer!” the younger Bluestone shouted. He pulled his axe from its belt sling even as he caught the slumping dwarf and felt his brother’s warm blood soaking through his shirt.
Already there were more shadows moving, dark-cloaked dwarves attacking from his left, and he was forced to let Nailer fall while he defended himself, his axe clashing into a pair of thrusting blades, snapping one off at the hilt and deflecting the other.
The attackers were strangely silent, breathing harshly as they closed in. Brandon counted five of them and quickly dropped one, splitting his skull with an overhand blow. He parried attacks from both sides, standing over Nailer’s bleeding form. When the four dark dwarves pulled back for a moment, he rushed forward two steps, swinging his axe through a half circle.
The two to his right backed away, a clear attempt to get him to charge and expose his back, and it almost worked. A red haze of battle seemed to film Brandon’s vision, and he lowered his head, ready to charge. Only as he started to lunge did he realize the danger, halting then spinning around to parry the double stabbing blades slicing toward his back. With a resounding clang, he knocked the blades away.
“Assassins!” he cried at the top of his lungs, his voice ringing out even louder than the dueling steel weapons. “Help!”
It was a futile plea in those abandoned passages, and he knew this fight would come down to his own prowess. He charged the two dwarves to his right, but they fell back, and Brandon was forced to pivot again to avoid exposing his back. One of those black blades sliced into his arm, and he grunted in pain, at the same time swinging his axe hard, severing the swordsman’s arm at the elbow. With a shriek of pain, the stricken attacker dropped away.
But the three who remained were skilled, and they worked together to push Brandon back. He stepped across Nailer’s motionless form, his heart breaking even as he struggled not to slip on his brother’s slick, rapidly expanding pool of blood. His boot stopped at the edge of the chimney as he used the niche as some measure of flank protection. The attackers pressed hard, blades slashing in high and low, and Brandon’s elbows banged against the walls of the narrow confines as he tried to swing his axe.
He teetered at the brink; then his boot slipped. He felt himself falling backward as three black blades lunged for him. The tumble into the chimney was the only thing that saved him, even though he bashed painfully into a protruding rock and dropped his axe as he clawed to arrest his fall. The precious weapon, a family heirloom more than four hundred years old, clattered into the darkness below, while Brandon clung precariously to a ledge of rock in the narrow vertical passage.
A large stone, thrown from above, bashed into his head, and he slipped, skidding another dozen feet downward. More rocks followed, a punishing barrage, and before he could wriggle out of the gap at the bottom of the niche, a heavy boulder clanged off his helmet, knocking him into a blackness that was even darker than the lightless caverns under the world.
Brandon gradually became aware of a consuming, pounding pain in his skull, and it was that agony that finally told him he was still alive. He lay still for a very long time and gradually reconstructed the events that had brought him to that place. Groaning as he remembered his brother, stricken in the corridor a few dozen feet overhead, he tried at last to move and cried out as a searing pain stabbed through his shoulder.
Gritting his teeth, cursing his attackers, pleading for strength from the great god Reorx, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He tried to open his eyes, but they would not respond, and he was terrified at the thought that he had been blinded. It was only when he had finally pushed himself to a sitting position, freeing his hands, that he was able to touch his face and find that his forehead was crusted with dried blood. That sticky fluid had dribbled over his eyes, and his lids were sealed shut.
Each scrape was agony, each probing finger brought renewed stabs through his skull, but he slowly clawed the dried blood away until he could open his eyes. Though it was pitch dark in the deep delving, he tried looking around in the murk and was almost pathetically relieved to see the blurry silver glow of his axe blade-the weapon that had once been Balric Bluestone’s axe. He pounced on it and picked it up, ignoring the pain provoked by the sudden movement, and he began to feel a little better.
He felt better, at least, in that anger was beginning to supplant grief in his churning emotions. He slung the axe onto his back and stood, shakily at first but with growing strength. The chimney was full of rocks, blocking his escape, but he set to work pulling them away. Dragging and clawing until his fingers were raw, he cleared away the blockage, aided by gravity as the last of the stones finally rolled free into the deep cavern. Hand by hand, his boots jamming against the walls for traction, he pulled himself upward, finally emerging into the upper corridor, the ancient connection to the Zhaban Delving.
As his head reached the floor level, he found himself staring directly into Nailer’s lifeless eyes. He groaned a choking cry of grief. Pulling himself out of the shaft, he collapsed on his brother’s body, cradling Nailer’s motionless form and sobbing uncontrollably. The lamp still flickered, and he angrily knocked it away, as if the darkness could block him from acknowledging the stark truth of his brother’s death…
The truth that the Bluestone luck remained as bad as ever.
Only after several minutes of grieving did he start to consider the potential danger to himself. Belatedly, he looked around, but there was no sign of the mysterious assassins. He remembered the arm he had severed, but even that limb was gone, the wound marked by only a smear of dried blood on the floor. Also removed was the body of the slain attacker.
Brandon slowly rose to his feet, resolute and grimly determined. He reached down and hoisted his brother’s body into his strong arms. Staggering under the weight, gritting his teeth against the pain that still wracked his body, he began to walk home.
For many long hours, he trudged through the abandoned passages, making his way ever upward. He had to stop frequently to rest, and in these intervals he thought of his mother and father, his heart nearly breaking at the thought of their grief when they heard his news. All of their hopes, the whole future of the clan, had been vested in the two brothers and their bold exploration.
Remembering the goal of their mission while he caught his breath, Brandon wondered if that vein of gold, somehow, had led to his attack. He didn’t see how it was possible. But then, who had killed his brother and why? He growled deep in his chest as he pondered the question and vowed that, when he had the answer, that person would die a miserable death. Then he hoisted his brother’s body in his arms and once more started trudging upward.
Eventually he came to a rail tram used for hauling ore out of the still-working parts of the delving and two kindly miners allowed him to place Nailer’s body on top of their cargo of ore. Brandon trotted along beside the cart, still moving upward, until they reached the large smelting plant at the summit of the extensive Zhaban Delving. There were a number of dwarves around, and several who were just getting off work offered to help him cart his brother’s body toward Bluestone Manor, on one of Garnet Thax’s midlevels.
“Thanks, friends. I’ll do it myself,” Brandon said. He did gratefully accept the loan of a two-wheeled wagon, and with that simple machine bearing Nailer’s corpse, he began the last long climb.