“He is without doubt something special and until I turned up he was the only dwarf in the blackness of the other side.” Tungdil shuddered. “If you could see him, Boindil, you would understand why the name made sense to me. And he saved me from the orcs.” He dropped his gaze and stared at the mug of tea. “He took me to his refuge, an old stronghold abandoned by Tion’s hordes. He had reinforced its defenses as necessary and had installed a giant forge there. It was just the way I’d always imagined the creator’s eternal smithy! He has forges hot enough to melt anything, Boindil! Stone, ore, everything! I saw it with my own eye. Dragon’s Breath is merely a warm breeze in comparison.” Tungdil stood up, restless now. “He passed the time thinking up types of new armor and perfecting them. If you like, I was his apprentice.”
Boindil rubbed his beard. He did not like the sound of this. “And these runes? Did the false Vraccas think them up, too?”
Tungdil nodded. “He knew a lot about magic, I think. But it was a different art from that of the magae and magi in Girdlegard. On the one hand, spells are compressed into the runes and you can bring them to life by the use of particular words. On the other, sometimes they can function on their own.”
“I remember,” grumbled Ireheart. “The first time was enough for me.” He glanced at the ceiling, where snowflakes were drifting through the hole in the roof before melting on the floor. A hole in the roof is better than an arm torn off. He leaned on his elbows and put his chin in his hands. “So he was your master?” Tungdil was walking up and down. “He showed me forging techniques that were new, and I made my own armor using these new skills. It had not escaped my notice that he would be visited every so often by monsters, and that he was quite polite to them. Horrific creatures, Ireheart. They were messengers from the kordrion and other monsters who are worse still. They would order armor and weapons for their troops. And some of them wanted to get him to lead their own armies. They’d have given him whatever he asked. You know, there was constant war among the beasts, because by nature they were so violent and bloodthirsty and couldn’t get out of the Black Abyss, so they would fight each other.”
Ireheart’s imagination was working overtime, creating terrifying images. He saw crudely hewn passages full of monsters, slaughtering each other and covering the walls and ceilings with blood and guts; enormous caverns filled with vicious fighting forces, roaring and rampaging and at each others’ throats; black fortifications that they charged and rammed, the walls shaking from the impact and from the hail of missiles.
Boindil felt Tungdil staring. His friend smiled knowingly.
“Nothing you can imagine is bad enough to describe what I saw,” said the one-eyed dwarf softly, as he took his seat again. “What wouldn’t I give for a good gulp of brandy and a barrel of black beer,” he sighed.
“Me too,” muttered Ireheart, in spite of himself. His friend’s story had affected him deeply. “What happened to you after that?”
“My master, if we can call him that, never took up their offers. He did not wish to lead armies-why would he? They weren’t his wars and they weren’t his people.” “And where was he from?” Boindil wanted to know.
Tungdil ignored the interruption. Perhaps on purpose? “He provided arms for all sides. He made everything they asked for, but never gave them armor as good as his own. After thirty cycles with him I had won his trust and complete confidence. He would send me as his agent to negotiate with the forces of evil. They started to make those same offers to me.” He swallowed and looked down. “I didn’t resist. Reason told me it was a good thing to send as many beasts as possible to their deaths and I could do that best by leading one lot against another. And I had to get to the Black Abyss-what better way to get there than at the head of an army?”
“A wise decision, Scholar,” commented Boindil.
“But it brought down the anger of my master on my head. I had always let him think that I was sticking to his own principles: Never take sides and make everyone pay.” Tungdil was about to take another sip and saw his cup was empty. “A mercenary. For one hundred cycles I was no better than a mercenary, serving the rulers who offered the best wages. I had my own domain, Ireheart.” He smiled, but it was a thoughtful smile and a cruel one. “Thousands followed my command, my two fortresses were impregnable. But that made the princes in the underworld mistrust me. The ones I served got together to try to defeat me.”
“You had to escape?”
Tungdil laughed and the sound of his laughter sent shivers down Boindil’s spine. He noted the deep malice in the voice of his friend. “No. I defeated them all and seized their realms. My warriors were the best because I had trained them in the way of dwarves. They were able to cut great swathes through the lines of the enemy. My power lasted about thirty cycles and I was the undisputed overlord on the other side.”
“And your former master had turned against you,” Ireheart assumed. He could not banish the chill from his body. The shadows were making Tungdil’s face harder, the furrows deepened and the scar on his brow darkened.
“Because there was no more money to be made. I had ruined trade for him.” Tungdil took a deep breath. “Let me stop there for now, my friend. I am tired and pained by the memory of all those orbits in Girdlegard I had wanted to forget. They pain my heart and mind.” Tungdil got up and walked to the beds. “Can you take first watch?”
“Of course, Scholar.” Boindil hid his disappointment as best he could. He had a thousand questions to bombard his friend with, but he took pity on his old comrade-in-arms, noting how stiff and tortured he seemed to be-like a dwarf of eight hundred cycles.
Ireheart got up, placing a few more small logs on the fire and in the stove so that they would not freeze. The vital heat they needed was escaping all too quickly through the gaping hole in the roof. When he turned round he saw that Tungdil had closed his eye and was already asleep.
The dwarf rubbed his beard. He stood in the middle of the room, at a loss. Time passed slowly.
Eventually he went over to where his friend lay.
He studied the familiar face closely. Slowly he stretched out his right hand, the fingers approaching the golden eye patch.
When his fingertips were a hair’s breadth away, Ireheart hesitated. It is not right, he said to himself. He balled his fist and forced his arm away, turning around and making his way back to the table.
You’ll regret this one day! That was an opportunity that won’t come round again. The doubting voices in his mind were shouting and screaming at him, but Boindil ignored them.
He stared up through the gap at the stars and prayed to Vraccas-to the true Vraccas-and this Vraccas did not live on the far side of the Black Abyss, among fiends and monsters.
IX
Girdlegard,
Northeast of the Brown Mountains,
In the Realm of the Fourthlings,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
Ireheart and Tungdil made their way to the outlying fortress, Silverfast, built to protect Girdlegard against threats from the northeast.
The stronghold had been reinforced with basalt stone by the fourthlings two hundred and eleven cycles previously because it had to serve as the primary barrier should the beasts from the Black Abyss ever encroach on this territory.
The tall walls and watchtowers with their topping of snow blocked the view of the yet more imposing second line of defense: The fortress Goldfast. These two strongholds were intended to repel any invaders and deny them access to the Brown Range of mountains.
Looking at the blocks of stone, Ireheart could easily tell they had been cut by dwarf-hands, but the fourthlings had not been granted the same skill as masons that Vraccas had given to his own race. The fourthlings were masters in the art of working with precious metals.