Valkyrie's Shadow

Stone and Blood: Act 3, Chapter 10

Stone and Blood: Act 3, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

A band of frost ringed the underway exit, creeping down the passage to stop a metre in front of Falagrim’s feet. It was followed by a carpet of crackling electricity that advanced no further than the previous attack. The banging of metal against metal filled the air with a deafening clamour as the Death Knight formation weathered the unrelenting assault from the armies of Khazanar.

Occasionally, a steel bolt clattered past him, sent skittering down the pavement by the heel of one of the Death Knights holding its position in the formation above. A Dwarf scooped up the latest arrival when it came to rest against the first bend of the passage, giving it a quick examination before tossing it into one of the rail cars parked nearby.

“How many is that now?” Falagrim asked.

“Just over two hundred, my prince,” the Dwarf answered.

Falagrim nodded with a grunt. Thus far, things have mostly gone as expected, and the few unexpected things turned out to be welcome events.

After his forces butchered their way through the hordes of battle thralls sent to wear them out, they broke into the underway, cutting off the coalition army from the harbours below. Not only did they have the fortune of setting upon thousands of poorly-positioned council troops in transit to the city layer, but they also came across thousands of Felhammer clansmen who had been captured and were being transported to the slave markets in other parts of Khazanar.

Now, not only did he have an army of Undead, but also an army of Dark Dwarves eager to return the humiliation visited upon them by the council. For the time being, they were undergoing reorganisation in the reclaimed mines before being set to their respective tasks.

A wave of heat washed down the passage, blowing lightly at his beard. The course of events was all too predictable, though it wasn’t because his opponents were stupid. They were simply limited to a handful of useful tactics given their present situation and they weren’t fools who would deliberate over their options for too long.

Once they understood what they were up against, all they could do was swallow their losses and withdraw as quickly as possible. Their next move was to prepare a battlefield where they could confront the Undead at range. Making their stand at the underway entrance was the optimal choice, as it was where the greatest amount of force could be brought to bear on a single point.

The council forces didn’t disappoint. Going by the sheer volume of artillery rounds being sent their way, they had several hundred siege engines set up to repel their unwanted guests. Unfortunately, most of the ballista bolts ended up bent or broken so it was taking a while for Falagrim’s side to stockpile ammunition.

A Death Priest came forward, its dark vestments sweeping lightly over the pavement. It raised its corrupted censer in the direction of the shield wall.

“?Mass Open Wounds?.”

What damage had accrued over the past five minutes was instantly reversed as a wave of negative energy washed over the formation. That was probably another thing that the council wasn’t expecting. The Undead, while known for commonly having draining attacks, usually didn’t come with their own healers. With the additional mana regeneration provided by the ‘maintenance crew’, the council coalition would run out of ammunition without anything to show for it.

With the situation stable, Falagrim returned to the tunnels below. The first large chamber on the way down – a garage for the mining network’s trains – had been repurposed into a temporary command post and rest area for his living troops. He found Agni standing around a heatstone lamp with the Human girl and her menagerie.

“Our new companies are starting to form,” Agni said. “We have plenty of equipment to go around and no shortage of volunteers, but there are too few with officer experience.”

“That’s to be expected,” Falagrim pulled a flask of water from his belt. “They’re mostly going to keep the city in order while the Undead do most of the fighting, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Good thing too, since we barely have any Clerics.”

“What have you gathered about what’s going on in the city?”

“A purge, basically,” Agni replied. “They were in the process of breaking up the clan and shipping them off to the slave markets when we broke in from below.”

“How long have they been in the city for?”

“About a day. Our people fought like hell to keep them out. They took who they could afford to into the holds to dig in for an extended siege.”

“And the disposition of the council forces?” Falagrim asked.

“Unknown,” Angi answered. “They’re fighting city by city, street by street. Anyone who was captured only knew about their local situation. Our information goes about as far as Hardar Way, so it looks like they’ve only made it a third of the way across the principality. From this end, at least.”

Falagrim dredged up the memories of his home, recalling the layout around the underway entrance.

“Is the closest hold still a kilometre west of here?”

“Deepingstone, yes.”

He wrinkled his nose at the mention of the name.

“We should skip over that one,” he said.

“They’ll come after you anyway,” Agni noted.

There was no arguing that, but his mind worked to figure out how to avoid them anyway.

Their next move after shattering the council’s attempted encirclement was to head for Felhammer Citadel, breaking the sieges of the holds along the way. The citadel probably had the strongest council forces arrayed against it, so putting an end to them would transform the rest of the battle into a giant cleanup operation.

“Have the Elder Liches completed their assignment?” Falagrim asked.

“They are still in the process of conveying your Rangers to their designated locations,” the sergeant in the camp said. “Survey teams have located multiple points ideal for incursion along the way.”

“What have you seen of the council’s forces?”

“The disposition of enemy troops is sparse. Several major fortified structures appear to have been abandoned entirely to support the containment of our forces.”

He wondered how long it would take the Felhammer defenders to come out on their own. They would naturally be wary of a ruse to lure them out of their positions, but, at the same time, the lot of them would be thirsting for blood.

The leading crack of an explosion ripped down the underway and into the chamber. A scream filled the air as the Human ducked and hugged herself, trembling like a leaf.

“I take it you’ll be staying here?”

“N-no,” the Human replied. “I’m coming with you.”

She clearly wasn’t cut out for the battlefield, so what was the point in putting on a brave front?

“I actually had a question,” the Human said as she rose and smoothed out her skirts.

“It had better not be a stupid question,” Falagrim said.

“The soldiers that you captured on the way here. I saw them getting herded into cells. When I asked what was going to happen to them, the people said that they would become slaves. Is that true?”

“Aye, that’s true. What of it?”

He took a long draught out of his flask. It sounded like a stupid question.

“…aren’t they your people? Your countrymen?”

The sound of Falagrim’s coughing echoed from the walls and the ceiling.

“Is there something wrong with your head, girl?” He croaked, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all those Felhammers being led down to the harbour were also being shipped off as slaves.”

“I just…the way that it sounded on the way down here was that slavery was a thing for everyone but Dark Dwarves, while the Dark Dwarves took up positions of power.”

“We don’t discriminate. Don’t Human countries enslave their own citizens?”

“…they do.”

“And what happens to captives taken in war?”

Falagrim wiped off his beard while the Human visibly gathered her thoughts.

“If a captive is valuable enough – a Noble or a valuable retainer, for instance – they would be ransomed back to their allies.”

“And if they aren’t?” Falagrim asked.

“If they aren’t…” The Human hesitated for a moment, “Honestly, Re-Estize hasn’t been in a war that has resulted in captives since it outlawed slavery. But back when House Vaiself was still unifying the country and conflicts between Humans were common, captives that couldn’t be ransomed were either sold as slaves or taken as them.”

“With that bit in your history,” he said, “I have to wonder why you asked your question in the first place.”

“I’m not sure myself,” the Human admitted. “Maybe it’s because I thought that the first step of turning from a system of slavery was the decency to at least not enslave one’s own people. But it seems that nearly everywhere I turn, the world is a horrible place.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Falagrim told her. “The world just is. If you think that it’s the way that it is for the express purpose of offending your sensibilities, then you’re just full of yourself.”

The frequency at which logical contradictions spewed forth from the Human’s mouth strongly suggested that she lived in a society where people were accustomed to living a life filled with problematic falsehoods without facing the consequences for them. He struggled to imagine just how coddled a society would have to be to reach that state of delusional wilfulness, however.

“My prince,” a Dwarf came in and lowered his head. “The rail car’s just about full.”

Falagrim looked away from the unhappy-looking Human and left the chamber. Out in the underway, several makeshift companies of his clansmen had already collected. Closer to the city entrance, the four Death Warriors included in the Undead lease were already picking out ballista bolts, making a show of testing the weight and balance of their selections.

“Any changes at the front?” Falagrim asked.

“We have noted no major alterations to the enemy forces’ disposition,” the Elder Lich sergeant reported. “The infantry squads continue to maintain nominal operations.”

“Then it’s time to force some alterations,” Falagrim said. “Start by taking out those floodlights.”

“Understood.”

The first of the Death Warriors cocked a ballista bolt over its shoulder like a javelin, taking a running start before hurling it over the shield wall toward the fortified encirclement five hundred metres away. Falagrim squinted into the distance, but it was impossible to make anything out in the blinding glare.

“Get anything?”

“The summon positioned over the area reports that the projectile struck a building behind the target.”

“Well, keep going. They’re sending us more ammunition than we’re throwing back at them.”

It took several attempts before one of the Death Warriors found its mark. Falagrim nodded in satisfaction as a beam of light pivoted up toward the cavern ceiling as one of the towers collapsed, going dark when it crashed into the street. The Death Warriors eventually established a mostly steady rhythm, sending projectiles flying out of the underway at a rate of one every two seconds. Occasionally, a large alchemical round would catch one of the Death Warriors as they were making their attack and they would pull back for healing.

“You have anything to deal with that?” Falagrim asked.

“The enemy has not been favouring any particular element,” the Elder Lich sergeant answered.

“Figures.”

Naturally, if an army was shown to favour a particular element, its opponents would employ the appropriate abjurations and enchantments as a countermeasure. This showed that, as powerful as the Sorcerous Kingdom appeared to be, they were still beholden to the same rudimentary combat principles as everyone else.

As the minutes passed, the glare from the floodlights gradually diminished. The intensity of the council’s assault did not, however, and that was the next thing they would need to address. That part of their strategy had already been laid out in advance, so it was simply a matter of waiting.

When the last few of the light towers started to go down, dozens of flares streaked toward the underway entrance. The Death Warriors faltered in visible confusion, sending looks over their shoulders at him. Falagrim snorted.

“Those aren’t ours, obviously.”

Eventually, flares from the Felhammer Deepwardens flown in advance to the cavern walls above the underway entrance started coming down, marking the siege weapons straight out from the tunnel entrance. The Death Warriors wasted no time pummelling the council lines, breaking down constructs and skewering crews of Dwarven engineers two and three at a time. At long last, shouts of confusion started drifting over from the enemy soldiers across the field.

Now, what will you do?

The answer, apparently, was nothing. Artillery rounds kept coming in, just as ineffective as before. He supposed it couldn’t be helped. The council army probably never expected to get into an artillery duel with the Undead, never mind lose in one.

Once the artillery emplacements in front of them were destroyed, the shield wall advanced slightly to give the Death Warriors space to attack the positions to the sides. It took a full hour from there for the council’s attacks to finally cease.

“What took them so bloody long to withdraw?” Falagrim muttered.

“Don’t tell me you expected me to fail.”

Velgath appeared in front of him with a hurt look.

“Who were we up against?”

“Prince Ironfist was in command,” his daughter told him. “Haughr Darksteel was there with the old fossil. They had Shadowforge, Cindermount, and Axehold making up the rest of the encirclement.”

“Any idea how many survived to withdraw?”

“Around ninety per cent of their forces, maybe? They were sticking to their orders for a good long while after I killed off their Generals. The officers finally got a clue around the time they lost half of their siege engines.”

“Which way did they go?”

“Away,” Velgath shrugged. “Loar and them should have the specifics once they get back to us.”

In other words, there wasn’t any sense of unified command any longer. Or at least for the time being. Given how things usually went between Dark Dwarves, it would take a long time to consolidate and reorganise with the Generals disposed of.

Falagrim turned his head toward the Elder Lich sergeant.

“It’s time to stir the pot,” he said. “Proceed with the next step of Phase Two.”

“Acknowledged.”

There was no point in not taking advantage of their enemy’s disorganised state. The twelve Elder Liches he had leased had been ordered to use summons to keep the council’s forces off-balance after the battle at the underway entrance was over. With the way things were now, a dozen Fifth-tier summons would wreak unbridled havoc.

“Overhear anything useful from the officers while you were out there?” Falagrim asked.

“The usual things,” Velgath answered. “Figuring out how to outmanoeuvre the other clans and nursing their grudges when they weren’t issuing orders. Things haven’t changed much since the last time you were here.”

“The last time I was here was fifty years before you were born.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t change what I said.”

Khazanar was as constant and unmoving as the stone formations upon which its principalities were built. The strength and stability that resulted had served the Dark Dwarves well over the centuries, but the new power that had arisen on the surface demanded change. At least the Sorcerous Kingdom didn’t seem all that difficult to keep at bay, at least if one went by the way their Human representative presented things.

“So,” Velgath said. “Where to next?”

“Deepingstone.”

His daughter’s expression soured.

“Do we have to?”

“It’ll be more of a pain if we don’t,” Falagrim told her. “We’re short on officers for all of our freed clansmen, too.”

Thirty minutes later, the first set of scouts returned from their investigation of the surrounding city. Falagrim called together the Elder Lich sergeants and the few officers that they had freed from the slave trains.

“The council’s shorthanded,” one of the Deepwardens reported. “Looks like they pulled together everything they had to resist us at the underway exit. The siegeworks around Deepingstone are all but abandoned.”

“What’s the condition of the hold?”

“Untouched, by the looks of it. The council must’ve lost a ridiculous number of troops by just trying to get as far as they did.”

Still, the freed slaves were coming from as far as Hardar Way. Assuming that the council attacked through both underway entrances, it meant that all of Felhammer had been suppressed outside of the holds.

“Any sign of movement from the other half of Felhammer?” Falagrim asked, “The council probably split their forces not knowing which hole we’d come out of.”

“My orders were to go about three kilometres out,” the scout answered. “Loar and some of the others are going further.”

After reassigning the returned scouts to act as screens for the Undead, Falagrim ordered his forces to march for Deepingstone. As the reconnaissance report had claimed, all that was left of the council’s encirclement was the abandoned siegeworks ringing the fortress. He stared up at the colossal stalagmite and the sprawl of structures embedded in its surface.

“Velgath,” he said. “Go and get Deepingstone.”

“What!”

“Don’t ‘what’ me! Get your ass moving.”

His daughter let out an exasperated breath before rendering herself invisible with a psionic field. Not five minutes later, the main gate of the hold rolled open. A dark figure dashed out at a startling pace, barreling straight toward him.

“Falaboiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…”

Shit! How did he spot me so quickly?

He already knew the answer to that. Falagrim glanced at his surroundings. Every Dwarf around him had taken at least five steps back. He sighed and braced himself.

“…iiiiii!”

An uncharacteristically large Dwarf with a fiery beard careened forward with arms opened wide. Falagrim received the newcomer with his own greeting: namely flipping him over his shoulder as he came in. Shouts rose from the column as the flying Dwarf knocked over a dozen fully armoured soldiers before coming to a stop.

Hopefully, he’s comatose.

He had no such luck. The Dwarf got back to his feet with a kip-up that belied his rotund form.

“I knew ye’d come for us!” The Dwarf said.

“I didn’t come for you, at any rate,” Falagrim growled through his beard.

“Who is this delightful gentleman?” The Human asked with an insufferably bright smile.

“Huh? What’s that? A mutant? A Dire Halfling?”

“I’m a Human.”

Falagrim held in a sigh. This was not a pair he wanted to stick together.

“This is Daergor Deepingstone,” he said, “Lord of Deepingstone. Clan Felhammer has the great misfortune of having him and his ilk as kin.”

“Misfortune?” The Human tilted her head, “But he seems so wonderfully jovial.”

“A birth defect, I assure you.”

Daergor let out a great guffaw.

“You get what you pay for,” he said before leaning in to speak to the Human. “Back when my great-grandpappy was still but a squirt in my great-great-grandpappy’s bearded ballsack, Clan Felhammer got it into their heads to go and fuck their cousins.”

Groans rose from all the Dwarves within earshot. The Human’s smile slid straight off of her face. Falagrim wasn’t sure what the Elder Lich at her shoulder was writing down, but he was almost certain that it should be burned.

“Y-your cousins…?” The Human asked in a tentative tone.

“Aye, our cousins,” Daergor answered with a nod. “The Hill Dwarves just to the south of here. They’re the best Rangers out of all of us Dwarves, you see. Clan Felhammer figured that they could produce superior Deepwardens by mixing in some Hill Dwarf blood. After a bit of raiding and a war that lasted maybe two centuries, they got what they were looking for.”

“Not quite,” Falagrim muttered.

“I see,” the Human said. “So that’s why your beard is red? All of the Dark Dwarves I’ve met so far have had white or grey hair.”

“My beard ain’t the only thing that’s red,” Daergor hooked his thumbs behind his belt.

“We need to move on,” Falagrim told them. “Daergor, how many in your hold are battle-ready?”

“They’re all battle-ready,” Daergor straightened and saluted. “Twenty thousand of Felhammer’s finest Deepwardens await your command, my prince.”

Once Deepingstone’s Deepwardens swept across the principality, their reconnaissance would be as perfect as reasonably possible. With them working in conjunction with the Undead army, it was simply a matter of time before the council’s stooges were eliminated.

“Loar’s people will brief your soldiers on the Undead and how they operate,” Falagrim said.

“We watched your standoff from here,” Daergor cast an eye to the columns of Wights and Zombies as they made their way past. “We weren’t sure what the hell they were fighting, but we couldn’t believe the sheer volume of steel that they were throwing out. They must’ve depleted the entire stockpile meant for sieging Felhammer’s holds against you. How’d you survive that?”

Falagrim gestured to the Death Knights in the Human’s escort.

“The ones with the shields here may as well be walking walls,” he said. “They come with their own healers, so the council was wasting their time with that attack.”

“That so? Well, then, it looks like we have quite the hunt ahead of us. You go on ahead – we’ll be overtaking you soon enough.”

With that, Daergor turned to jog back to his hold, vanishing from sight partway. Falagrim and his escort put Deepingstone behind him, following the Undead columns southwest to the next hold. Another one of Loar’s scouts found him on the way there.

“Report,” Falagrim said.

“We’re advancing uncontested,” the Deepwarden saluted before falling into step beside him. “The council’s forces aren’t even stopping to lay any traps. Well, that might be because of the crazy buggers those Elder Liches sent after ‘em.”

Falagrim glanced at the Elder Lich sergeant nearby.

“What did you end up using?” He asked.

“Lesser Graveyards,” the Elder Lich answered. “We concluded that they were optimal for the scenario.”

“Lesser Graveyards…” Velgath murmured, “You mean those piles of animated bones that grab people and suck their skeletons out of them?”

“Yes.”

“Nice!”

“Indeed,” the Elder Lich replied dispassionately. “Due to the target-rich environment, several of the summons have grown to gargantuan size. On that note, what do you wish to do with the available mass?”

“The available mass?” Falagrim frowned.

“The bones subsumed by Graveyard-type Undead may be reassembled into various skeletal Undead and skeletal Constructs. They act as servitors of the Graveyard for a limited duration.”

“Can Lesser Graveyards make more Lesser Graveyards?”

“No.”

Well, it was worth a shot.

“I’ll leave it to the Elder Liches’ discretion,” Falagrim said. “Try to avoid anything that’ll cause too much collateral damage. We’re the ones cleaning up after this mess, after all.”

Falagrim’s attention returned to the scout.

“Any sense for where the council forces are headed?”

“By the looks of it, sir, Felhammer Citadel. It’d be the one hold they didn’t want to loosen their grip on, so it makes sense that everyone’d end up consolidating with the army there.”

He grunted and dismissed the scout with a gesture. The idea that invaders were gathering around his seat of power was a displeasing one, but it was convenient for the purpose of exterminating them all at once.

As claimed, Deepingstone’s soldiers started appearing well before the Undead forces arrived at the next hold. Daergor strolled up beside him with a self-assured smile and no sign of any exertion on his part.

“So, we’re rallying the clan, eh?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t try the same,” Falagrim said, “given how many troops are at your disposal. The council’s numbers are greatly thinned out.”

“Aye, that they are,” Daergor nodded. “The fools had half our number laying siege to our hold and we even convinced them that they weren’t in range of our defences. But, before we could get started, the council’s armies started acting all strange so we settled in to see what was goin’ on.”

It was in line with how Deepingstone operated. As a sub-clan of Deepwardens, they excelled in asymmetrical warfare. The council’s forces may have believed that they had Clan Felhammer contained, but, once Deepingstone broke out, they would end up with a renewed and uniquely brutal battle on their hands.

“Any idea who the council assigned as the head of their armies?” Falagrim asked, “We took out Ironfist back at the underway entrance.”

“Hmm…if it’s not Ironfist, then my bet’s on Dirgehall.”

“Dirgehall? It’s been too quiet here.”

The only way a clan renowned for its Bards could end up on top of the council was if Khazanar hadn’t seen any major conflict – domestic or otherwise – for an extended period.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Daergor grunted. “Things now aren’t like back in the day when you were still around. They’ve even gone so far as to seal the passages to the Middle Realms.”

“What!”

“Yeah. Supporters of the holdfast faction sprouted like mushrooms once they did away with you. We haven’t had a good war since – it’s all about industry and intrigue, now.”

That was a bad sign. The section of the Middle Realms under Khazanar was a place where threats had to be culled on a regular basis. Sooner or later, they would pay for their complacent behaviour.

“Since we’re on that topic,” Falagrim said. “Velgath said the magnitude of the council’s response was far out of line with Baerwynn’s expectations. Were their armies meant for something else?”

“That’s a good question,” Daergor replied. “It’d explain how they could respond with such a large punitive force so quickly. But even if that’s the case, we haven’t caught the slightest whiff of it.”

“Could be that you have,” Falagrim told him. “Felhammer’s spies reported all sorts of activity, didn’t they?”

Daergor drummed his fingers on his belly with a thoughtful look.

“So you’re saying that what we thought was meant for us was, in reality, meant for someone else?”

“I can’t think of any better explanation.”

“Then why didn’t they inform us of the threat? If everyone else fights aside from us, that just improves our position over the other principalities militarily.”

“Who knows? You said the holdfasts have taken over the council. They probably thought they had everything under control.”

“Including us,” Daergor chuckled.

“I don’t understand how that can be funny,” the Human said from behind them.

The Lord of Deepingstone looked over his shoulder.

“A bit o’ Dark Dwarf humour, lass,” he said. “There ain’t anything much more satisfying than watching someone’s scheming bite ‘em in the ass.”

“But doesn’t what you’re talking about put all of Khazanar at risk?”

“Sure, but it doesn’t make it any less funny.”

As the next hold came into view, Falagrim looked beyond it to where the dimly-glowing stalactite of Felhammer Citadel loomed in the distance. It wouldn’t be long until they could rip all the answers they wanted out of their enemies’ heads.