“They’re behind the second boulder from the front,” said his friend calmly, spying out between the legs of his befun. “Can you see them? Their white cloaks make them nearly invisible against the snow.”
Ireheart had to screw up his eyes to make out the figures, which bobbed up occasionally above the rocks they were hiding behind just long enough to fire their arrows before ducking down again. Again Ireheart was amazed by Tungdil’s eyesight. “It’s at least forty paces to that first rock,” he calculated. “Time enough for them to finish us off with forty arrows.” He turned to Balyndar. “Suggestions?”
One of the ponies collapsed with a whinny; an arrow had struck it in the eye. The alfar were changing their tactics and were going for the dwarves’ cover. One small horse after another was killed, kicking out wildly, sometimes injuring their own riders with their hooves.
Ireheart grabbed a handful of snow and pressed it into a ball of ice. “Three shields on top of each other and we storm them? Scholar? We could make our way forwards like that.”
“The patrol is galloping this way,” called someone. “They’re attacking!”
“This’ll be getting crowded,” muttered Ireheart.
A loud scream came from by the boulders.
Ireheart was quick enough turning his head to see one of the alfar swaying behind his rock, falling forward and plunging from his vantage point, his bow and arrows falling with him.
“What happened? Did his bowstring snap and strike him?” Ireheart noticed the snow had turned red where the alf lay.
“Didn’t you hear the crossbow?” asked Tungdil.
A click and a second alf lay dead.
“Huzzah! It seems Frandibar has given us a damn good marksman.” Boindil laughed and jumped up, lifting his crow’s beak and ordering the dwarf-warriors to form a protective wall with their shields to defend themselves against the riders’ attack. “Now I feel better.” He kept an eye out in the fray for the fourthling archer who had protected them from further losses. The marksman lay pressed close to the corpse of his pony and was calmly reloading his crossbow as the patrol came thundering up. The noise of their hooves grew louder and the group of dwarves prepared themselves for the full force of their attack.
The archer rested the stock of his crossbow on the saddle of his dead animal for support, lay down at full length on his stomach and focused his sights on the leader of the fast-approaching troops. From this distance he could easily see their insignia.
Another bolt whirred and the group’s commander jerked backwards from the impact; his feet slipped out of the stirrups and he fell. The riders storming along in his wake were too late to swerve and he was swallowed up under flying hooves and a glistening whirling cloud of snow.
“Attack!” yelled Ireheart with a whoop of delight, rushing forward and circling his crow’s beak overhead. The rage he would have directed against the alfar now needed a new target.
The troop followed him and raced toward the enemy with no thought of their own safety.
The cavalry group’s riders fanned out, their attack formation disintegrating. So loud were the bloodcurdling cries of the dwarves that three of the attackers’ number failed to hear the order to halt, instead continuing forward at full tilt while the rest of the mounted company fell back and prepared to retreat.
“Hey! Get over here so that I can run you through with the spike of my war hammer!” Ireheart ducked under the oncoming spear tip and struck the rider with the flat end of his weapon. The impact tore the man out of his saddle, leaving a large dent in his breastplate and blood pouring out of a gash.
Ireheart employed the remaining impetus to swing round in a circle, delivering a swipe with the spiked end to the next rider’s thigh.
“Gotcha!” He took a strong wide-legged stance in the snow and held the handle of his crow’s beak in both hands. “You’re not going anywhere, long-un!”
At first the dwarf was pulled a few paces forward across the snow, but then he found stone underfoot. Now he could pull the man’s leg sharply backwards, dislocating it at the hip-joint.
Balyndar propelled the third rider out of the saddle with a blow from his morning star. The spike-studded balls hit him on the neck and breast and the man fell gurgling to the snow.
Boindil towered over his fallen prisoner, crow’s beak in one hand as he pushed down on the man with his right foot. “How long have you been following us? What’s your business?” he barked. “If you tell the truth you will live.”
“We followed your tracks,” the man groaned, pain distorting his voice and features alike. “We’ve been coming after you for two orbits. The alfar wanted you drawn into an ambush, so we could interrogate survivors to find out what you’re up to. We were told not to attack you until they had opened fire.”
Balyndar came over to join Ireheart. “Did you drop a messenger off first to send news of having found us?” he asked the captive, dangling the bloodied globe of his morning star above his face.
“No,” he moaned. “We’re the only ones who know about you being here.” Tungdil stomped over through the snow, his eye on the patrol retreating into the distance. “It makes no odds,” he said darkly. “They’ll be off to the nearest garrison to make a report. By that time we’ve got to be in the Gray Mountains. The alfar will be able to work out for themselves that a large dwarf-party will have something serious in mind that’s not going to be good news. Those were the days, when we had the old tunnel system.”
“What we need is the good old tunnel system,” said Ireheart with regret.
“The tunnels are all flooded. I told you,” said Balyndar. “We think that’s where the water from Weyurn’s dried-up lakes has ended up. It can’t all have gone through to the Outer Lands.”
Tungdil gave the order to remount and then placed Bloodthirster’s tip at the nape of the captive’s neck. “Anything else we should know?”
“I’ve told you everything!”
“Then you’re no more use to us.” His arm jerked forward, the blade he held slicing through skin, muscles and sinews; vertebrae cracked apart. “Right. Let’s deal with the black-eyes,” he said calmly to Balyndar and Ireheart.
“I promised I would spare his life!” Boindil blurted out incredulously.
“If he told the truth. That’s what you said,” retorted Tungdil, going over to his befun, climbing into the saddle and heading over to the rocks where the dead alfar lay, sprawled in unnatural postures. “How would you know if he was lying to you?”
Balyndar watched the black-armored dwarf go, then turned his gaze to the corpse on the ground, the blood still welling. “I’m not wasting any sympathy on the long-un,” he said thoughtfully. “But I can’t go along with Goldhand’s action either. We could just have left him. The winter would have finished him off.” He walked away to get his pony.
Ireheart pulled the end of his crow’s beak out of the man’s leg, cleaned it on the fellow’s cloak and marched over to the rocks. The old Tungdil would never have done that. “Yes, he would,” he muttered. “We had to do it. The Scholar was right. It wasn’t nice, but it was necessary.”
“Did you say something, General?” the dwarf with the crossbow turned to ask. “I didn’t catch it.”
Ireheart stopped and looked at the fourthling. Under an open mantle he was wearing light armor composed more of leather than of mail. The resultant lightness made for ease of movement; he wore a broad metal strip over the breast to protect heart and lungs. Shoulder-length brown hair was visible below the helmet; his beard, of the same color, was braided along the jaw line, with silver wire around the individual plaits. It gave him a dandyish air.
At his side hung a quiver with crossbow bolts and a device for anchoring the loading mechanism when he retightened the bow. The thick bowstring of the long-range weapon had to be cranked by hand. The firing force was immense, as the alfar and members of the mounted patrol had learned to their cost.