Gradually, the Clanlords of Kobur assembled, summoned by the great bell and by the traditions they could not deny from their individual broodings upon betrayal and rulership. Once they were seated around the table, Hildraft spoke to his companions in a whisper, pointing out each of the Clanlords and briefly describing them.
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Ivhold Crusher, Clanlord Bogadun. He they all knew; gruff and grumpy though he was, they knew they could rely on him when it came to serious matters. |
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Kagnar Hastein, Clanlord Hastein. Older than the other clanlords, he was High Chancellor under Earthstar and nominal head of the Regency Council. He disliked humans and hates half-orcs; he appeared quite sure Sack killed Earthstar, and outraged that non-dwarves should dare to be present at the Regency Council of Kobur. |
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Veran Gothorm, Clanlord Gothorm. Younger than the others, he was a little diffident and lacking in confidence but more open-minded. |
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Ferin Saemir, Clanlord Saemir and Thorir. Clan Thorir found themselves without a Clanlord, and allied themselves to Saemir by marriage. Ferin looked permanently tired, and was not an optimistic dwarf; popular word had it that he was not up to the job of ruling two clans. |
At first the clanlords merely argued about obscure precedents which made this clan or that clan more eligible to claim the throne, but after a while, Veran hesitantly brought up Surya's offer to discover what had actually happened to Earthstar.
Kagnar was violently opposed; Veran was in favour, and Ivhold voted with him. There was a brief and spirited discussion, which ended in Ferin approving as well, and so permission was given.
The whole company moved to the rear of the hall, where the King was laid in his coffin prior to his official lying in state. Two of the Iron Guard reverently unlatched the coffin's brass fittings, and lifted the lid away.
The last time the party had seen Hrolf Earthstar, he was a vigorous dwarf in his mid-600s, with a keen brain and strong personality. It was quite a shock to see the change. Lying in the coffin was a body, recognizable - just - as the King of Kobur. Dressed in a light garment, evidently some sort of night robe, he had plainly died as a result of multiple massive slash and stab wounds in widely-seperated parts of his body. Sack leaned a little closer; his trained eye determined at once that the wounds were not those of blades, but of claws and teeth. The wounds indicated that the attack had come from above - in other words, from a taller opponent - but as Sack reminded himself, given the victim was a dwarf this wasn't enormously surprising.
Sack stepped forward and, looking around at the Regency Council and the Iron Guards, explained what he was about to do. "I am about to speak with your dead King, and ask him what happened," he said. "This will not be pleasant for him, and it will not be pleasant for you. I advise anyone who does not like the idea to leave now." He paused. Nobody moved.
Drawing the Sword of the Dead Legions, the Tellaran extended it out over the King's corpse and focussed his willpower. With a terrible groan, Hrolf Earthstar opened his eyes and looked around. He seemed to know why he'd been called back, and needed prompting to tell his tale.
He related how, having read some documents in his private study the evening before, he'd taken his candle and headed for bed. He recalled walking down the passage to his bedroom, opening the door, and -something- leaping at him out of the darkness. A lizard man of some sort, he was sure, clad in some kind of close-fitting black armour.
Surya urged him to describe better what he'd seen, and as he did so, a peculiar phenomenon occurred. Before his eyes appeared a small, transparent scene; it moved, both internally and in its' point of view. As a hand reached out for a door-handle at the bottom of the image, he realized he was seeing what the dead dwarf saw in his last moments as if through his eyes. The door opened, and -wham- in a terrifying tangle of limbs and spraying blood, something lightning-fast, with elongated limbs clad in form-fitting armour of some sort, equipped with terrible claws, lashed out at 'him'. There was a moment's glimpse of rows and rows of terrible teeth - and then blackness.
The psychological impact of this sudden graphical display of the violent death of his subject was too much for the Necromancer. With a gasp, he let his grip on Earthstar slip, and the dwarf's soul slipped back into death with gratitude. The effect on the watching dwarves was equally powerful; several were white and shaking, and Kagnar was weeping unashamedly.
Once the coffin was re-assembled, the impropmtu investiagtors moved to the King's Chambers, where the party had a good look around to see if there was any evidence. In the doorway was a large pool of blood, almost dried, with marks showing where the King's body had been dragged away by the valet who'd found it in the morning. Leading from this to the majestic baronial fireplace were footprints tracked in the blood. They were not human. Man-sized, they bore a strong resemblance to lizardman prints, and also to the Dragon prints Sack had seen in Khundrukar.
Kobort and Sack studied the chimney with interest. Appropriating a small dressing mirror from a nearby table, the half-orc angled it under the opening and looked up the chimney. Satisfied nothing was lurking up there, he ducked under and looked up.
There seemed to be far less soot up the chimney than he'd have expected; maybe the dwarves had a secret coal which created less mess? What he did find, however, was spatters of blood and small areas of damage in the stonework. By the looks of it, someone - or something - covered in blood had climbed the chimney by digging its' claws into the stone walls.
Shedding his armour, the ranger carefully lifted himself into the 3' diameter chimney shaft and cautiously began to climb. After about 20', the shaft dog-legged about 45° and converged with several others. A single, larger shaft rose staight upwards; the blood trail continued into that. He climed further up, and reached another junction where the single shaft broke into five horizontal ones that fanned outwards. Following again the blood trail, he crawled along until he reached the end.
Cunningly disguised as part of the mountain, the chimney ended in a rock grille, formed of apertures cut through the rock to the outside air. Through this, a hole had been smashed. Inwards. Outside, there was no sign of the assassin.
Sack climbed out, and ranged down the mountainside, following the creature's tracks, and ascertaining that it had set off in a dead straight line northwards. He met the others down at the highest normal opening and returned to the city. The general consensus was reached that the assassin must have been sent from some outpost of the dragonrealms; after all, no-one else used lizardmen. The party's attempts to remind the Council of the probability that someone must have provided directions to allow the assassin to reach the King's chambers so directly fell on deaf ears. It did not seem to be the sort of issue the Regency Council wished to think too much about.
So life returned pretty much to normal within the Dwarven city. The party arranged for a large amount of their gold treasure to be converted to gems and platinum, and finally took delivery of their adamantine armour. Then, one day, word flashed through the city that an army was approaching the Western gate. Come up out of the Desolation, it was rumoured to contain humans, lizardmen, and many other creatures strange and terrible.
It was ten times the size of the army that had attacked Gloiran.
Two days later, word came that the army had started up the Tegan Vale that led to the Gate; the same route the band had taken when they first came to Kobur, two months ago. Regiments of dwarvish troops began to muster and move to the west of the city.
Next day came the startling news that the army ... had stopped. A day away from the city, in the valley that led only there, the dragon's forces stopped. A strong cordon was thrown across the valley just ahead of them; but what they were doing behind its' cover no-one was sure for a while. It was only the next morning that the scouts realized that the troops of the army were disapearing to somewhere, and that the generals put two and two together and realized that - somehow - the lizard forces had breached the dwarfcastle's secret tunnel network.
At this point, the party decided to offer their swords to assist the defence of the city. Joining themselves to the Bogadun clan host, they assembled at the place the generals considered most likely to be the flashpoint; the Western Gatehall. There all the secret tunnels lacing the Tegan Vale came out, just behind the main gate itself. The hall was large enough to muster a significant force in, unlike the tunnels themselves, and here the dwarves hoped to hold back the intruders.
As the chosen troops marched in, Iron Guard and elite warriors all, our heroes set about preparing themselves for a major battle. Kobort provided Mage Armour spells, Hildraft called down the Aid of Kord to their assistance, each drank his Bull's Strength potion, and Sack also quaffed his last Enlarge potion, causing some confusion among the dwarves as he rapidly bulked up to eight feet tall.
And then the army settled to wait. Drawn up into ordered ranks, the hundreds of stalwart dwarves stood ready, gripping their various weapons, and straining their eyes and ears towards the dark entranceways of the secret tunnels the enemy was approaching along.
Finally, sounds of battle could be heard from several of the tunnels, as the last of the brave sappers sent in to try and collapse the tunnels were overwhelmed by the invaders. It had been an unwise tactic, because dwarf-made tunnels are intended not to collapse, and the sappers were now paying the price.
After a while the sound stopped, and silence fell. The waiting warriors shifted their grip on their weapons and glanced around nervously. Then, slowly, they became aware of a sound. Fading in from below human perception, it started as a vibration in the mastoid and slowly swelled to a hum, a whine, a scream, an ear-splitting shriek of shattering volume. Brave dwarf warriors writhed on the ground, clutching their ears, screaming themselves in futile silence at the noise.
Hildraft wove a spell of Silence over the heroes and their immediate neighbors, blessedly cutting off the effect, though they could still feel the vibration through their boots. Quite suddenly, the sound reached a crescendo, and with a crack the mighty stone gates of Kobur split from top to bottom, and began to topple from their hinges.
By chance, however, the hinges caught, and the gate didn't quite fall down. A space was opened between the halves, however, and through this came streaming Dragonarmy troops, waving their weapons and screaming their battlecries. Simultaneously, the hidden foes in the tunnels sprang forth. The dwarves, recovering, charged forward, and with a rolling crash the battle was joined.
Dark One |
The first few minutes of the battle were a terrifying indistinct blur. Among the enemies ranged against the dwarves and their allies were humans, lizardmen, giant lizardmen nearly eight feet tall, lizard figures enwrapped in constant flame that grappled and roasted their foes, and horrible dark creatures, obviously of lizard stock, but covered in a ridged and armoured black skin, with massively elongated heads and terrifying claws and jaws. These, Surya realized, were the same as the creature which had slain Earthstar. Inhumanly fast, they tore and slashed through the ranks. Men who slew one stared in horror as their pale yellow blood dissolved the weapons that had killed them into sludge - and woe betide a warrior who was splashed in their gore! |
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The Axe of Durgeddin was one of the casualties of this terrible attack, to Hildraft's horror and fury. Forewarned by this, the party hastily adjusted their weapons so as to preserve the Sword of the Dead Legions and the Dyvka, both Kobort and Surya choosing lesser blades instead. |
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The dreadful free-for-all went on for several minutes, and then there was a pause, as both armies drew back to take breath and stock of each other. Panting, the heroes gazed at the almost undiminished wall of Dragontroops before them. Suddenly, the dark ranks parted, and a single figure made its' way to the front to confront them; evidently a champion come to challenge the obvious heroes in the dwarf army...