Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (12 page)

The largest giant, the one-eyed fellow Rikus had heard called Patch by the others, braced
his enormous hands at his sides. He pushed down, and a gentle tremor rolled through the
field. The orange dirt bulged slightly upward around his hips. The dwarves peppered him
with crossbow bolts, but he only twisted from side-to-side, trying to loosen the ground
and free himself.

Before the battle, Rikus had made a point of reminding Neeva to leave the one-eyed giant
alive so they could interrogate him about Agis and what would happen if the Dark Lens was
not returned to them. Now, the mul was beginning to worry that it would be the titans who
left no one alive.

“Caelum, I want to stop the giants as much as anyone,” Rikus said. “But your dwarves can't
do it.”

“Kled's warriors are as brave as any in Tyr,” the dwarf replied sharply. “Wait until you
see their axe-charge”

“Neeva wouldn't waste good warriors like that!” Rikus considered his objection for a
moment, then started forward. “Maybe I'd better go talk some sense into her.”

Before the mul had taken his second step, Magnus's huge fingers dug into his shoulder and
brought him to an abrupt halt.

“If you go out there now, Rkard will have another sleeping Tyrian to look after.” The
windsinger looked across the valley to the top of the bluff, where the young mul was
hiding with Sadira's unconscious form. “Wait until you're stronger.”

“I'm ready now.” Rikus tried to pull free, but the windsinger's powerful fingers held firm.

“Save your strength,” advised Magnus. “If this doesn't work-”

A tremendous rattle sounded from the battlefield as the ground around Patch's hips
loosened. Bellowing with delight, the titan leader stretched forward and slapped his palm
down with a thunderous clap. Three dwarves died instantly, lacking the time even to scream.

Rikus saw Neeva barking a command, though it was impossible to hear her over the din of
the battle. He reached for the Scourge's hilt, but Magnus had already tilted his eloquent
ears forward to catch her words.

“She's come to the same conclusion as Rikus,” the windsinger reported. “Signal the
retreat.”

The dwarf raised his hand. A pillar of crimson light shot from his palm and arced
westward, casting a luminous glow over the battlefield. The Kledan militia disengaged
instantly. They rushed toward the signal, assembling themselves into loose squares as they
moved.

“At least their discipline's good,” Rikus commented.

Caelum shrugged. “Yes, but what now?” he asked. “We've lost our best chance to stop the
giants. They'll raze every farm in the valley.”

“Not if we keep them busy with us,” Rikus said.

Patch grabbed another handful of rubble and hurled it at the fleeing dwarves. A hail of
stones rained down on the trailing company, denting more than a dozen helmets and leaving
dazed warriors scattered over the field. Magnus began one of his ballads. A powerful wind
howled down out of the mountains. It swept just a few feet above the dwarves' heads, with
enough force to drive any more such barrages back the way they came.

Rikus continued speaking to Caelum. “I have an idea, but it'll mean leaving Rkard alone
until Sadira wakes.”

“Rkard will be fine. He has a sun-spell he can use to summon us if he has trouble,” the
dwarf said. “What's your plan?”

“There's a dead-end gorge on the other side of Pauper's Hope where I hid once, after
escaping from Tithian,” the mul said. “It's full of ancient mines. If we can make it into
the canyon and harass the giants enough to keep their attention focused on us, we might
keep them busy until morning.”

“And by then, Sadira should be well enough to help us.” Caelum nodded. “Let's give it a
try.”

They waited a few moments for Neeva and her dwarven militia to arrive. Without the dwarves
harassing them, Patch and the other giants concentrated on digging their legs free. Soon,
they were each ringed by mountainous heaps of dirt, and Rikus knew that reaching the gorge
would be an uncertain proposition.

When the first company of militia arrived, Rikus saw by their clenched jaws and narrowed
eyes that retreating grated on the dwarves' pride. He waved his arm at them, yelling, “The
battle's not over yet. Follow me! I have a plan.”

Neeva winced, no doubt remembering his disastrous plan to invade Hamanu's city during the
war with Urik Nevertheless, she took a long breath and ordered her dwarves to obey. The
mul started toward Pauper's Hope 'f a sprint, padding over the ground in near silence.

Neeva joined him and ran just as quietly at his side, but Caelum's feet slapped the ground
loudly with every step, and Magnus's heavy footfalls actually shook the ground. The four
companies of militia spaced themselves out across the field and followed at a short
distance, armor clanking and booted feet stomping.

By the time they reached the edge of the field, Ral and Guthay had risen. Both moons were
in a crescent phase. The flaxen light they cast over the broken ground was so pale Rikus
found it difficult to distinguish between shadows and stones. Nevertheless, he continued
to run at his best pace, finding his way as much by feel as by sight. The queasiness in
his stomach was fading with the exercise, but the bouts of dizziness came more often.
Several times, Neeva had to reach out to steady him, not because he had stumbled, but
because he had lost his balance and was listing to one side or the other.

As Rikus entered the faro field near Rasda's Wall, Patch dug himself completely free.
Instead of chasing after the fleeing warriors, the titan went over to his companions and
began pulling them out of the ground like a crop of tubers.

Keeping a wary eye fixed on the giants, Rikus turned to Neeva, “Have your warriors drop
their shields and whatever else they can discard on the run-aside from their weapons.
Right now, speed's more important than armor.”

Neeva shook her head. “They're well disciplined, but they
are
dwarves,” she replied. “That equipment came from Kemalok's armory. They'll die on the spot
before they cast any of it aside.”

“I was afraid of that,” Rikus grumbled, starting down one of the paths between the faro
rows.

Behind them, Patch's voice cried out in an angry howl that seemed to shake the sky. Rikus
looked back to see him kneeling over Yab's body and remembered that Tay had said something
about the young titan being the leader's brother. The rest of the giants were racing after
Rikus and the militia, their heavy steps reverberating through the valley like thunder.

The ground between the faro rows was packed hard. Rikus and his followers crossed the
orchard at an all-out sprint, quickly passing around the shoulder of Rasda's Wall. If
Rikus had possessed any regrets about the fate of Yab or any other giant, they quickly
faded when he saw what had happened in the farm buildings of Pauper's Hope.

The night air was thick with the stench of corpses that had lain rotting in the sun all
day long, and it was apparent that Patch's brutes had taken great delight in killing the
inhabitants. The bodies of men and women lay heaped at the bottom of Rasda's Wall, while
dark smears of blood, barely visible in the pale moonlight, speckled the cliffs above. As
if mere slaughter were not enough, Patch and his warriors had also stomped every building
flat, usually with the inhabitants inside. They had even destroyed the irrigation dam,
leaving a shallow depression of cracked mudcakes where once the pond had been.

A short distance beyond the farm lay a moonlit wall of foothills. Covered with little
except jagged stone and flakes of clay-rich soil, they rose steadily upward to form the
lower slopes of the Ringing Mountains. A narrow gorge twisted its way into the hills, the
blackness of its depths creating the impression of a snake crawling up the steep scarps.

As the militia neared the far side of the compound and started toward the dark canyon, the
giants reached the other end of Rasda's Wall. The titans stopped long enough to lift
several boulders off the outcropping and hurl the huge stones at the fleeing dwarves. Two
of the rocks landed just ahead of Rikus and shattered harmlessly into a hundred pieces,
but the others were better aimed and came down in the midst of the trailing company.
Several of Neeva's warriors died amidst the crinkle of steel armor.

“Loose formation!” Neeva called. “Spread out!”

As the dwarves scattered, Rikus saw the giants start forward again. They covered half the
distance across the compound with a single stride, then stopped to pluck more boulders off
the cliff. The mul was tempted to fight them here, on the site where the brutes had slain
so many helpless people, but resolutely resisted the temptation. Nearly a decade earlier,
during the war with Urik, he had learned the foolishness of allowing emotions to guide his
tactics.

Instead, he waved the dwarves on toward the canyon, but stopped Magnus near the dry
irrigation pond. “Can you slow them down?” he asked. “We're two hundred paces from the
canyon, but they'll cover the distance in ten.”

The windsinger nodded. “I have a powerful song that will give you time,” he said. “Go on.”

“Don't get yourself-”

“I have no intention of dying tonight,” Magnus replied.

Flecks of dried mud stung the mul's face as a rock crashed into the irrigation pond just a
few yards away, then he heard a crumple as heavy stones crushed the armored forms of
several more dwarves. Magnus raised his voice in a thunderous song, summoning a
tempestuous wind from the depths of the desert night. It roared down from the mountains in
the blink of an eye, bringing with it a thick fog of cold mist. The blast surged across
the compound, hurling broken mudbricks and dead livestock high into the air. It slammed
the debris into the outcropping with a deafening boom, loosening a slide of rock to come
pouring down on the giants' heads.

Magnus pushed Rikus toward the canyon. “Go! This will hold them for only a few moments.
You must show the others what to do when they reach the canyon.”

The mul obeyed, sprinting for cover. Once, he was overcome by dizziness and fell.
Nevertheless, with his longer legs and lack of heavy armor, he caught up with the dwarves
easily and led the way into the gorge.

The place was really more of a gash than a canyon, a sheer-sided crevice of crumbling rock
that twisted its way less than a mile into the base of an enormous mountain. There were no
smooth bends or gentle curves in the entire course. It changed directions at unpredictable
intervals and at sharp angles. In some places, an entire dwarven company could have stood
in dress formation across its breadth. Then, less than a dozen paces later, it grew so
narrow that a giant would have to turn sideways to pass between its towering walls.

At last, Rikus came to a bottleneck in the gorge, where the cliffs stood so close together
that he could have leaped from the brim of one to the other without a running start.
Although it was not possible to see much in the pale moonlight, the mul knew that those
cliffs were pocked with dozens of caves, the portals of ancient mines that had been
worked, abandoned, and forgotten centuries ago-perhaps even before Kalak had conquered Tyr.

On the other side of the bottleneck, the canyon opened into a large circular valley. It
was enclosed on every side by sheer walls of red-stained stone, many times the height of a
giant. Like the cliffs of the bottleneck, these were pocked by mine openings. Those near
the top could be seen as dark circles on the moonlit rock faces. Rikus knew that there
were also several mine tunnels near the bottom of the cliffs, though they were hidden
behind huge mounds of waste rock that covered most of the valley floor.

An angry bellow echoed up the stony canyon, then the walls began to shake with the steady
crash of heavy footsteps. Rikus looked back down the gorge. The dwarves of the first two
companies were beginning to peer nervously over their shoulders. The mul could not see the
two companies bringing up the rear, for the gorge took a sharp bend.

Rikus joined Neeva, telling her, “There's a huge tunnel on the far side. I think it
connects to most of the others, so lets go over there. Once the giants think they have us
trapped, we can duck inside, then come out the other mines and harass them from behind.
With luck, we may even be able to circle back and block the canyon.”

Neeva nodded and passed the order back. The mul entered the valley, picking his way
between mounds of red-stained waste rock and the stone foundations of several huge
buildings. Neeva and the dwarves came close behind him, their armor filling the still
valley with a clatter such as had not been heard there in a thousand years.

Finally, upon reaching the back of the gorge, they slipped from between two piles of
rubble and came upon a small area of open ground. It was located beneath a towering cliff
that seemed to rise straight to the crescent moons. At the base of the scarp, a tunnel ran
toward the heart of the mountain. Though the passage was easily broad enough for three
dwarves to walk down, and high enough that an elf could have stood inside it at his full
height, it was not so large that a giant would be able to do more than thrust an arm
inside.

From the far side of the valley rumbled Patch's deep voice. “There they are, Fosk!”

Rikus looked toward the entrance in time to see the giant's immense form stepping into the
valley, his shoulders turned sideways so he could fit through the narrow gap. He was
pointing toward the open space in front of the tunnel, where the dwarven companies were
gathering.

“Let's draw them closer,” Rikus said. “Make it look like we'll fight here.”

Neeva traced a line in front of the cavern entrance. “Form ranks by companies!” she
ordered.

The dwarves rushed toward the place she had indicated, milling about purposefully.
Although the scene seemed one of utter confusion to Rikus, each of Neeva's warriors seemed
to know exactly what he was doing.