WARLORDS IV – STORY

Chapter Four: . . . Then Hunted

Despite his glib arrival, Arvad took care to examine Kurgen's wound and consider Terrwyn's exhaustion. Concluding that both were on the mend, he turned his attention back to the shaman.

"I suppose," the wizard said, kneeling down beside the prisoner, "this is where one should say, 'Surprise!'" He reached to pull the gag out of the Goblin's mouth, but first warned, "I have warded you from your magic. If you seek it, you will find only more pain." He pulled the gag free and the Goblin sputtered and gasped for air.

"I'll get our answers," Kurgen growled, pulling a long dagger from his boot, "and take much pleasure in the asking."

"Hold, Kurgen," Arvad responded. "Let us see if our guest wishes to save himself the trouble."

The Goblin's yellow eyes bulged and flicked swiftly from one face to the next, finding sympathy in none. When he spoke, his voice trembled. "Let me free, let me free, and I show gold! And magic, even magic that mighty wizard would love."

"I have no need for more spells, and it is not gold we seek, but answers," Arvad replied.

"Enough!" Terrwyn snapped. She was still pale, but her face had returned to frozen mien. "Arvad, we did not come to bandy words with a lying greenskin. Let the Dwarf do his work, and while this creature exhausts its lies through pleading screams." She knelt down beside the shaman. "Or else I can do it myself."

The Goblin trembled and scooted back. "I not know," he pleaded, "not know anything."

Arvad had turned away and was poking at one of the Orkish corpses. "Start with this answer," he demanded, dragging the body to the Goblin. He pointed at harsh symbols tattooed across the Orc's skin. "These are not tribal symbols, and they are not in any language of Kor."

The Goblin covered his face and whispered, "Not know, not know."

Terrwyn struck him across the face with her gauntleted hand, and the Goblin's head snapped backwards, blood splattering from its mouth.

"Answer him," Kurgen added, moving forward with his dagger. Daerec, for his part, only watched the grim scene unfold.

"Mistress give them," the Goblin said softly. "Power-words to protect, to make strong."

"Who is the Mistress?" Arvad asked, and now it was his words that had power, that resounded in all the listeners, compelling an answer.

"Not know, not know, not know. . ."

Before he could say more, a terrible sound filled the air, half-whooping, half-barking. It came from all about, twisted by the mists.

"Gnolls!" Kurgen roared, freeing his axe.

As Daerec rushed to recover his sword, Terrwyn drew her own. "Wizard, how did they come upon us unawares? You said you could sense --"

"They were shielded!" Arvad spat. "I still cannot find them."

"Come you dogs!" howled Kurgen, raising his axe over his head in a shaking arm. "Come and meet your doom on Dwarven steel!"

"Stop you fool!" Arvad cried. "We must escape. They are guarded by one with enough power to confront me. It will be our doom if we stay."

Daerec hurried back to the wizard's side. "And the goblin?"

"It will not matter what we know if we are dead." Terrwyn pointed her sword at the shaman's throat. "He will only slow us down."

Arvad nodded sharply and Terrwyn slashed the Goblin's throat. "Kurgen! Come closer. Illusion is not my domain, but by the ancient gods, let this sorcerer of Kor test himself against my arts!" Arvad began chanting as soon as the Dwarf was close by, and Daerec could see that the air began to shimmer around them.

But the barking of the Gnolls was everywhere, and growing louder. "Swiftly now, follow me!" The wizard ran forward and the other three rushed to follow, keeping within the spell's twisting boundaries.

"This will fail," Kurgen hissed. "Gnolls hunt by smell, not sight."

Arvad only answered, "I am no petty charlatan with naught but sleights of hand. Have faith."

And so they ran, surrounded by the fog and the maddening sound of Gnollish laughter.

The ground was still no more than mud churned thick, and the way was hard going. But exhaustion was easy to overcome, with the whip of certain death cracking against them each time the laughter echoed again. Once, Daerec could see shapes in the mist, little more than shadows, distorted and enlarged.

"They are all around us," he whispered to Arvad.

The wizard gave no reply save a finger over his lips, and continued his weaving course. Whether he ran them in circles, Daerec could not say, for everywhere seemed the same -- mist and mud -- and everything seemed different, for the mists swayed and twisted.

They were all soaked, whether by sweat or the cold fog, and Kurgen and Terrwyn shook with chills. Daerec saw that Kurgen's convulsions were growing, and that his mouth hung slackly open. He grabbed Arvad's shoulder, but the wizard shook him off. "Arvad, Kurgen is dying!"

"We will all die if we do not escape," the wizard answered, continuing on.

Daerec turned to Terrwyn, who shook her head. "I cannot do more."

Now Daerec supported the Dwarf, crouching low as he ran to give Kurgen his shoulder on which to lean. "You can make it, Kurgen," he told the Dwarf softly.

The old warrior's wheezed back, "Better to die, with axe in hand." He grunted and cleared his throat, spitting thick phlegm flecked with blood into the mist. "Better to take some of these dogs with me to hell." But he continued his wobbling gait, and the two struggled together to keep up with the wizard.

At last, after time interminable, the wizard raised a hand. "We are here." He advanced slowly now into the mists, and the others, following him, saw that they had made their way back west, to whether the mountains split Kor from the civilized lands. Known as the Wall, the mountains had for centuries been all that kept that Orckish hordes at bay.

"Do you know this place, Kurgen?" Arvad asked.

Kurgen shook his head, his eye unfocused.

"Focus now, Kurgen," the wizard insisted. He waved his hand outward and the mists parted. There, before them, was an enormous stone gate, sealed shut. "It is one of the gateways along the road to Khaz Argoth, ancient, hidden, and long-sealed."

The whooping of the Gnolls, which had before faded into the distance, was now growing in volume.

"It can be opened only by the proper cipher, spoken by a Dwarf-lord," Arvad continued. "You must focus now!" he snapped. "Or else we all die here."

Kurgen nodded and approached the gate. The writing upon it was faded, in some places gone entirely. The angular Dwarven runes were nearly illegible, and the designs linking them were all but gone. Kurgen closed his eye and breathed heavily. "Light, Arvad, give me some light."

The wizard's open hand filled with bluish fairy-fire, which slowly floated to where the Dwarf stood. "Quickly now," he hissed.

"Dûr. . ." Kurgen began, tracing one rune. "Khanak, kalal urtâgen." He paused, then turned sharply to face Arvad. "Wizard, do you know the warning written here?"

Arvad nodded. "I know the Dwarven tongue, Kurgen. But there is death assured awaiting us in Kor, and only the threats of an ancient calligrapher upon these tunnels. Complete the cipher."

"Dûr khanak, kalal urtâgen, ghur ûrakhas, dûr khanak, vatana kalal, ghur nolveim!" The first ring of runes began to glow a warning red, and as the Dwarf moved his hand to the inner ring, a grinding sounded from the stone gates. "Neiblung Duernoth, garran Argoth!" With the final words, Kurgen pressed his palm into the center of the inner ring.

Stone scraped against stone and the angry screech of ancient gears poured from the gates. Terrwyn looked about frantically. "Wizard, the Gnolls will surely hear this."

"Indeed." Arvad nodded. "But it will be no worry. The gates will only obey a Dwarf-lord. We will have only the dangers of the tunnels to contend with once we are through."

If the wizard had meant to say more, he never had the chance. A howl came from the gateway, almost like a creature in agony, and then a terrible crash. The movement of the gates stopped, and the great stone doors stopped half-open.

Arvad sighed. "Well then. I rather imagine those will not be closing at our beck either. We must hope that the snares of Khaz Argoth will do more harm to foe than they do to friend. Come on."

Kurgen stopped the wizard at the entryway. "You know the warning as well as I. 'Be warned, and turn away, foul Orc; be warned, and turn back, foul Gnoll.'"

Arvad nodded. "And what of it? Move, Kurgen, we must enter."

The Dwarf scowled. "Do not play the fool, wizard! If these paths were meant for use, they would too have said, 'But friend shall find solace.' This tunnel has been condemned."

"We, too, are condemned. As I said -- we must hope that whatever dangers await prove the worse for our enemies." He turned to Terrwyn and Daerec. "Now into the tunnel. We will rest when we are safe."

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If ever the tunnel had been beautiful, if ever the Dwarves had worked with patient hand and careful chisel, that had been lost. If ever there had been serenity and calm to them, the peace of the children of stone living within their chosen home, that too was gone. Instead, the tunnel was a dank place of dark and dripping stone, with distorted echoes and rock formations that lurked threateningly in the shadows.

"We should not be here, Arvad," Kurgen's tired voice warned. "And we should not have breached the gate. We have opened a door that the people of Khaz Argoth have long forgotten, and if the Orcs and Gnolls can find their way through the tunnels to my people's home, there will be terrible slaughter."

Arvad shook his head. "Your worries race too far ahead, Kurgen. The gates were but the first of many trials, as we both know. Your people never placed but one lock, when seven would serve better." The wizard had summoned more dancing flames to light their path, and he cast one forward down the musty tunnel.

"Could we not have crossed the mountains, rather than die in these catacombs?" Terrwyn asked. She glanced back to the entry. "There may still be time to go back."

"Over the Wall?" Arvad asked, raising an eyebrow. "Perhaps with months worth of supplies, mountaineering equipment, expert guides, and the luck of a Fey gamesman. But not with a wounded Dwarf and two fools who would rather leap crevices than reach their aim. No. We will find our way through the earth."

Kurgen sighed. "Then I will lead. This one eye can still see clearer than even a wizard's, when it is the secrets of Dwarven work for which we must watch. Follow me."

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The silence of the caverns was profound, broken only by the rare dripping of water. In the damp darkness, Daerec felt an overwhelming sadness rise up in him. He could not say whether it had come from within him or without, for in every Dwarven tunnel, there was despair enough to last till the end of time.

"There are too many memories here," Kurgen muttered. "And no one to remember them. Not even me, for this tunnel is unknown to me." He pointed to a gash on the wall. "Something chipped away," he said. "Perhaps a gemstone had been left here and Goblin raiders pried it loose. Or a message. Or some small thing, carved out of joy. Gone." His voice echoed back in a ghostly whisper.

It was a haunted place, not by ghosts, but rather by their absence. Kurgen had said there were too many memories, and perhaps for the Dwarf there were. But for Daerec, it was instead the desolation that stunned and silenced him -- for this had once been a thoroughfare, guarded, traversed, filled with the bustle and rush of life. But now, now there was nothing, and the signs to which Kurgen pointed could just as well have been chance formations in the stone walls.

Daerec had seen one future for his people when the Dwarves had stretched their prisoner upon the rack -- a fate in which they swore fealty to the darkness and were twisted and broken by it until they were little more than animals. Yet here, too, he saw a future, the fate promised if they resisted and yet failed: oblivion. He knew that over the centuries in which the Dwarves dug these tunnels, they imagined that they would endure eternally, a monument not simply to their creators, but also to the very act of creation. "When we vanish," they must have thought, "still our handiwork will stand, as the mountains stand and the rivers ever run."

But that was not so. The Dwarves had fought to preserve that dream, bled to preserve it, died here by the score to preserve it, before, at last, they sealed the dying dream in this tomb. The Dwarves still did many things; but dream of eternity, they did not.

Daerec was stirred from his thoughts as a distance sound broke the sepulchral silence. Kurgen, who was forging ahead, seemed not to have heard, and Arvad was muttering to himself. Daerec turned to Terrwyn. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she snapped. Her ever-swift temper had quickened all the more in the oppressive tunnels.

"Listen," he told her.

There, faint, distant, came the sound again. Shrill and mocking, the laughing bark of the Gnolls.

Arvad had been convinced that they had left the creatures behind, and the others had slowly come to agree. But clearly, they had been mistaken. "Arvad!" The wizard turned. "The Gnolls still follow!"

Kurgen spun. "By Duergrim's blood axe, do they ever quit?"

"Can you set a trap?" Terrwyn asked the wizard. "Some rune that will consume them in flames as they past?"

Arvad shook his head. "I am not a Runemaster, and any spell I leave behind will be unworked by whatever has been shielding the Gnolls from my second sight. Better that I save my flames for battle."

"Aha!" shouted Kurgen. The others turned quickly to look. The Dwarf pointed to another scratching on the wall. "This I can read -- we near the second gate. If it is sound, we can seal it behind us, and leave the Gnolls to howl themselves hoarse against these stone walls!"

He set off in a run down the tunnel.

"Kurgen!" Arvad shouted after him, but the Dwarf did not stop. The wizard, Terrwyn, and Daerec ran after him, Arvad casting light ahead to guide their path. "There may be traps, you fool!"

But the howling of their pursuers was once again drawing nearer, and all knew that there was need for haste. As they rushed on, Terrwyn abruptly cried out, staggered, and fell.

Daerec quickly dropped down beside her. Arvad ran a bit more, then stopped. "Get her up!"

"Terrwyn, what's wrong?" Daerec asked.

The paladin was shaking and her eyes were wide. "There is something terrible behind us. We must hurry." She pushed herself to her feet. "Run!"

So they ran, harder now, catching up with the Dwarf even as he hurried forward. "We're almost there!" Kurgen shouted. "Then we'll show --"

As he rounded a curve in the tunnel, the Dwarf fell silent and staggered back. The others turned a moment later and froze. There was indeed a second gate, far better preserved than the first. But before it stood an enormous creation of stone and iron, covered in spikes and chains, blades and armor: a golem.

And it was awake.

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