The Half Dwarf Prince: 02 - The Dwarf War (9 page)

Three of them had long
, white beards that hung down over their chests. The fourth’s hair still was gray, and he had a clean-shaven face showing skin that didn’t quite hold to the bone like it used to. One of the white-bearded men in the middle spoke to him in a weak voice.

“Brother Rundo
, would you mind telling us what brought you here?”

“Of course, but can I ask why people keep calling me
‘brother’?”

The old man smiled. “I apologize
. I forgot you are a self-trained druid; they are not common. All druids are the children of Kalise, so in that sense we are all brothers and sisters.”

Rundo nodded. “I came here to warn you that there is an army marching north from Tiefes Loch. We won back the mountain of Shinestone
and killed most of the orcs that had infested the place, but then the dwarves of Tiefes Loch turned on us. They are going to march north, in force, to take Shinestone. The mountain is preparing for the attack, and I came to advise you to move your people out of the path of the army, because it will be too large for you to deter.”

The gr
ay-haired man spoke next. “How long until this army will be here?”

“It is a month
’s trip on foot, but it will take an army closer to two months to make the distance. If they haven left yet, we predict they will in the next few weeks. So, by our estimation, you have two to three months before they reach these woods. I am going to Patria next. When we find out the army is close I will fly back to Shinestone and warn them. I can stop here and let you know if you want. That would give you a few weeks’ notice to move the community,” Rundo told them.

The one in front who had spoken
first spoke again in his raspy voice. “That will not be necessary, Brother Rundo. We will send out our own scouts. But you are welcome back to the community anytime. Thank you for bringing us this warning. We need some time to talk this over and figure out how we should deal with this.”

Evelyn led Rundo back out of the clearing. People continued to point and whisper as they walked back through the camp, but no one approached them. Brother David was waiting with Erica when they got back.

“Brother Rundo, I have told the camp not to bother questioning you about the elders. The Elders will choose how they want to deal with this situation. But we would appreciate it if you would share your news with the others.”

Rundo nodded his head. “It is your community. I will do as you ask.”

“Thank you,” Brother David said before walking away.

“Erica
, we will be back in a little while,” Evelyn told her sister.

Erica smiled and nodded. Evelyn took Rundo’s hand and led him off into the forest. “Where are we going
?” he asked.

“I thought we would get away from there for a while. Everyone is watching us. It is a bit uncomfortable, and I like it out here
,” she said.

Rundo walked next to her through the forest
, opening himself to the magic around him. The forest was full of it. The auras completely surrounded him. The magic was amazing. He walked through the forest in awe, just taking in the life of it. It was untouched here.

“Rundo
, I am worried,” Evelyn said beside him.

He stopped and looked up at her. “About what?”

“I am worried about you. I know we will be safe. If it gets too dangerous, I know we will get out of danger. The community moves easily. This isn’t even where the main community is located; we just placed a small community here because of all of the orc movement. It seems like every time you leave me, you’re running off into danger. I don’t know how you feel, but I have feelings for you. Feelings I have never had for anyone. I think about you a lot. I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she told him.

Rundo stood staring at her. “I have feelings for you
, too. I just don’t know how to deal with them. I would love to stay with you, but I just can’t. I have a responsibility to my friends. This war could go on for a long time. I just don’t know how to deal with all of this. I want to be with you, but I can’t abandon them.”

She looked into his eyes. She was holding back tears. “I could come with you. I want to give this a chance.”

He took her hands in his. “I can’t let you do that right now. It is just too dangerous. I will try to come see you as often as I can. When this is over, we can try to figure something out. I can’t ask you to wait for me, and I will understand if you move on to someone who can be there for you, but this is how it has to be for now.”

Evelyn bent down and kissed him
, a long, passionate kiss. He felt her tears on his lips when she pulled away. She reached down and gently wiped them from his mouth with her fingers. He looked up and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“I will wait for you,” she told him.

They stayed out in the forest until the stars began flickering through the treetops. Erica was sitting at her fire with a couple of other younger members of the community when they returned. Rundo sat on a log with his arm around Evelyn, listening to the conversations of the younger druids. After a short time Evelyn led him into the second of the two shelters he had raised that afternoon. They both took off their outer layers of clothing, balling them up on the ground. Rundo set his weapons against the wall, and then he lay down behind Evelyn with one of his arms tucked under her neck and the other wrapped around her stomach. He fell asleep with the flowery sent of her hair in his nostrils.

The next morning when he woke
, Evelyn was already up. Rundo never did understand why people found the need to get up so early. Sleep was so wonderful; why would you get up so early unless there was something pressing that forced you to? When he walked outside he saw her sitting by a small cook fire with her sister. They had a small pot set over the flames.

“What are you making
?” he asked them as he walked over.

“Erica wanted to make you something to eat before you left,” Evelyn told him.

“That wasn’t necessary, Erica, but thank you,” he said, turning to Evelyn’s sister.

“Some boiled oats is the least I can do for the shelter you made me,” she responded.

Rundo took the wooden bowl that she offered him and ate the oats. When they had finished their food, he stood.

“I am sorry, but I really have to get going now. I promised that I would meet my friends today, and I still have to find them.”

“It was great to meet you, Rundo, I hope to see you again soon,” Erica said, hugging him.

“I will come back as soon as I can. It was great to meet you
, too, Erica,” he told her as she pulled away.

He turned to Evelyn
and hugged her. “I’ll come see you as soon as I can,” he told her. She wiped away the single tear that began to run down her cheek, and he got on his tiptoes and kissed her gently. He heard a quiet “awww” from Erica behind him.

He stripped down right there in front of them and wrapped his gear up in his belt. “Come back to me,” Evelyn said
, stepping back from him.

“I will,” he said, and then he linked with Messah and began shifting into a hawk. He had seen how small Evelyn had made herself when she had turned into a squirrel, but he just didn’t have the time to practice that. Once he was fully shifted
, he bent his head down, took up his bundle in his beak, and flapped into the air.

Rundo took off into the air with Messah flying close by. He could sense the direction of Bumbo through the bond. He had a pretty big head start, so after two days his friends were still more west than east. He could have stayed with the druid community for a few more days and still met his friends before they reached Patria, but he had made a promise, and they were a very small group, so he didn’t want them traveling without him. He had only been flying a couple hours, and he was almost to them. What he saw just before he got to them made him glad he had come when he did.

Grundel was riding along on the seat of the wagon. His mother was riding next to him. Hellen was right: the constant bouncing up and down was torture for him, but there was nothing he could do about it. Eventually he got used to the constant pain, and now he barely noticed it. All of a sudden he heard Bumbo pulling at her rope, trying to stop. Grundel stopped the wagon.

“What is it
?” one of the dwarves asked.

“We are going to stop and wait here,” Grundel responded.

“For what?” the other dwarf asked. He never could remember which one was Dobo and which was Gobo.

“For Rundo,” Jerrie answered
, coming up behind them. “See how Bumbo is staring back off to the west? He can sense Rundo coming. If the pony wants to stay, we need to stay instead of dragging it along until Rundo gets here.”

The dwarves looked over at the pony. All the dwarves
knew by now that Rundo was a druid, but that didn’t mean they understood what he did. Rundo didn’t even understand half of what he did. It didn’t take long; less than half an hour passed before a huge hawk with a bundle of clothing in its mouth landed fifty paces from the cart. They all stood and watched as the bird turned into a naked halfling.

Rundo undid his bundle
, put on his clothes, strapped on his gear, and walked to Bumbo. He rubbed the pony’s muzzle.

“
I am glad he stopped you,” Rundo said. “I pushed out with my mind, asking  him to stop. I was scouting something, and I didn’t want you to run into it until I got to you.”

“You were scouting what
?” Jerrie asked.

“There is a pack of orcs moving to cut you off. They are moving with a purpose. It looks like they already know where you are, and are trying to get in front of you,” he said.

“Can we get around them?” Anna asked.

“Not with the cart. We could probably get past them if we rode hard, but I don’t think we should abandon the cart just yet.
There are only about twenty-five of them, and we know where they are,” Rundo said looking to Grundel.

“How far ahead of us are they
?” Grundel asked.

“It looks like we will run into them in about three miles,” Rundo answered confidently.

“Okay, we will keep going. Rundo, if you could keep an eye out with Messah, and tell us when we are almost to them? Once Rundo gives the word, Jerrie, Dobo, and Gobo, I want you all to push out wide. I will ride out where they can see me. When they charge at me, you will attack from the side. Rundo, I’d like you to stay with me and make sure they don’t get too close. Mom, if they make it to the cart, you run. It will be a good distraction. Rundo can pick them off as they chase after you.”

Everyone nodded their understanding and agreement with the plan. Dobo and Gobo started strapping metal bracers on
to their forearms. Each of the bracers had two rows of four spikes on it. Jerrie looked at one of the dwarf’s bracers and smiled. Grundel thought that one was Gobo. Gobo looked up at Jerrie and said, “For when they get in close, ya know.”

Jerrie slid his knives out. “I know close,” he responded
, and the two of them smiled at each other excitedly.

They
had been moving for about fifteen minutes when Rundo called out. He was looking through Messah’s eyes. “They’re coming toward us. They are less than a mile out. We are about to enter the clearing they’re in.”

Jerrie, Dobo, and Gobo climbed off their horses and tethered them to a tree, then the three of the
m sprinted ahead and to the right. Rundo got off Bumbo but didn’t tether the pony. Grundel knew he was probably communicating his intentions for the pony through their mental bond. He remembered Rundo had told him once that it was more mental images and feelings than verbalized thoughts. Whatever it was, Bumbo stood where he was as Rundo climbed into the cart. Grundel gave the other three a few more minutes to get ahead and find a good spot before getting the horses to start pulling the cart forward. He slid his axes off his back as the cart started moving, setting one between his legs and the other on the seat to his right. His mother was on his left, and Rundo stood in the cart right behind him.

When they came out of the tree line they saw the orcs. The orcs saw them
, too, and charged. Grundel stopped the cart. Still holding the reins in his left hand he reached down and grabbed the handle of the axe between his legs as he stood. He grabbed his other axe in his right hand and threw it. The orcs were still a hundred paces away, and even without his stomach muscles being all messed up he would never have been able to make that throw with a normal axe—but his axes were no normal axes. Anwar had enchanted these axes and linked them together back in Evermount. He called on that magic now. The axes were nearly weightless in his hands, but the motion of throwing still hurt. He ignored the pain.

The axe flew
through the air at the orcs. They were running wildly, so the axe hit only one of them. But then he called on the magic to bring it back to him, and the axe cut into the back of the head of another of the big orcs on its return trip. By the time his axe returned to his hands, he saw Jerrie, Dobo, and Gobo coming out of the trees to the right of the orcs. Three of the orcs fell as the two dwarves fired their crossbows and Jerrie threw one of his daggers. The first eight or ten orcs tripped and fell all of a sudden, and Grundel realized that the ground in front of the orcs had risen up about a foot high right in front of the charging orcs. The orcs behind them stepped over it easily enough, but before the fallen orcs could get up, the two dwarves and Jerrie were on them. Grundel realized all of a sudden how he used to tell the two dwarves apart when he was younger: Gobo was the one with the war axe. He used it to cut the head off one of the orcs; his backswing drove the spike on the opposite side of the blade into the face of an orc that was trying to stand up. Dobo was the one with the war hammer. He drove the spike on the backside of his hammer into the back of an orc who was already on his feet, and then spun in a circle, ripping the spike out and slamming the head of the hammer into the orc next to him. Jerrie moved with his usual finesse. He had buried his daggers in the backs of two orcs’ heads before they could even get to their feet. He had opened the throat of a third as it was standing. The fourth orc swung a big club at his head. Jerrie ducked the blow, stepping inside and cutting through the tendons on the inside of the orc’s knee as he moved past it. The orc tried to turn on him but the wounded leg wouldn’t hold his weight. As the orc fell, Jerrie leaped back towards him and drove his knife into the orc’s eye.

“I got the left,” Rundo said behind Grundel.

“What?” Grundel asked, looking back at the halfling.

Rundo smiled and nodded towards the orcs. When Grundel looked back he saw a wall of earth rise up in front of the charging orcs. He threw his axe to the right of the wall
just as the first orc came around the wall—just in time for the orc to catch Grundel’s axe square in the chest. Grundel released the magic and let the axe fall with the orc still impaled on it. The next orc came around the wall right behind the first, and Grundel called on the magic of the axe again, ripping it free of the fallen orc and cutting one of the orc’s legs off as it flew back to him.

Rundo threw both of his magical daggers. The first buried in the face of the first orc to come around
the left side of the wall, and the second buried in the neck of the next orc. His daggers immediately reappeared in their sheaths. He threw his daggers again. Four more orcs had come around the wall, trampling their fallen companions. Both of his daggers found the faces of charging orcs, but the other two orcs were barely ten paces away when his daggers reappeared. He reached out, linking with the air, and pushed with his mind, knocking the orcs backward. As they began getting back to their feet, his daggers found them.

More orcs were charging around the wall over the first two
that Grundel had killed, and he threw his axe again. Now that the orcs were being channeled to a single point he was able to line up his throw so that his axe took out two orcs on its way out and another on its way back, but there were still two orcs that were getting close to the cart. His axe made it back to his hand and he threw it at the closest. He raised his other axe, preparing to cut the last one down, when a dart appeared in the orc’s face. The orc fell forward right in front of the cart. Grundel looked down and saw his mother holding a bamboo tube.

Jerrie charged after the orcs that were running toward the cart. Dobo and Gobo were surprisingly quick in their armor
—he could barely keep up. He saw the earth wall go up and saw the first couple orcs to go around it on each side get cut down. But some orcs had run directly into the wall, and Dobo and Gobo were running to the right to deal with them, so he sprinted off to the left. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the dwarf with the axe throw it as he approached the wall and then leap onto the back of another orc, slamming the spikes on his bracer into the back of the orc’s head. Most of the orcs were focused on charging the cart, which meant they weren’t paying any attention to him. He drove his dagger into the back of the neck of one orc and drove his other blade into the back of the next orc, paralyzing its lower body. Jerrie didn’t stop to finish him off, though; he moved on to the last two, who were already making their way around the wall.

As
Jerrie charged around the wall, he saw two orcs falling a dozen paces ahead, right in front of the cart. He caught up to the last two orcs in two strides, leaping into the air and bringing both knives down toward the back of the orcs’ heads. The knife in his right hand punched through into the skull of the orc. The knife in his left hand was slightly off-target, so Jerrie only cut the side of his head. It was enough to make the orc turn, though. Jerrie hit the ground rolling and came to his feet facing the orc. The orc was already coming down with an overhead slash that was intended to cut him in half. He leapt forward and to the side. He wasn’t able to score a hit, but he was closer now. When the orc turned, swinging low at him, Jerrie was already leaping back high, then he shot out his knife with his left hand and landed in a roll. He spun around, staying in a crouch, watching the orc. Blood was squirting from the orc’s neck, and he stared at Jerrie for a moment, confusion in his eyes, before he finally reached up and tried to stop the flow of blood with his hands. A second later he was on his knees, and a couple seconds after that he was facedown in the dirt. Jerrie scanned the area. He saw the Gobo and Dobo walking back to the cart. They were both covered in blood—they had obviously “gotten in close.” The other three were still in the cart. The fight had gone really smoothly. Jerrie retrieved his dagger from the neck of the orc he’d killed with it, and on his way by he finished off the orc he had paralyzed.

“That one
’s good,” he heard one of the dwarf brothers saying as he walked over to the cart.

They all looked up at Jerrie. “What
?” he said, raising his hands.

Grundel laughed. “Dobo and Gobo were just commenting on how dangerous you are with those knives of yours.”

Jerrie looked over at the two dwarves. “You mean the two dwarves who look like they just took a shower in orc blood?”

Dobo and Gobo laughed. They unbuckled their
spiked bracers and they both pulled towels out of their packs to clean them.

“We should hit the river in a couple of hours if we push west. We can follow the river south until we get to a bridge,” Rundo said
, nodding to the two dwarves covered in black blood.

It was late afternoon when they mad
e it to the river. They all washed themselves in the clean water and then pushed south along the river until the sun began to set. They had passed a footbridge, but they hadn’t found anything they could get the cart across. They set camp for the night, and Rundo scouted ahead with Messah. He sat there for a few minutes with his eyes rolled back into his head. He blinked a couple of times and looked at the others.

“
There is a stone bridge an hour or so south of us,” Rundo told the group. “We can cross first thing in the morning.”

The next six days of travel were uneventful. The day after the fight
, Grundel was very sore, but by the time they made it to Patria he hardly noticed the soreness in his abdomen. On the afternoon of the sixth day, he saw for the first time the city his mother came from.