Riders, up the road. A few hundred paces carried them around the last bend before the pass, where the High Clerist’s Tower rose before them in all its majesty.
“We won’t want to get too close to the walls; the ogres on the battlements keep launching boulders at anyone who comes within range. But I can show you everything you need to see from here.”
He pointed out the great, self-contained fortress that was the south gatehouse, and indicated a wall of mountainside that was below the gatehouse, several hundred yards away and, thus, out of range of the ogre- thrown boulders.
“What about it?” Dram wondered aloud.
“Your dwarves brought picks and shovels, I presume?” the emperor asked.
“Of course. We never go far without them.”
“Then I’d like you to get them started digging-right there. And don’t stop until you have a tunnel extending all the way under the south wall, beneath the courtyard behind that gatehouse.”
“You’re going to try and mount an attack out of a tunnel?” Franz asked when no one else seemed inclined to question the mad plan. “They’ll just drop rocks on us when we try to climb out! The first man out of the hole will have to face a dozen ogres!”
The emperor smiled, taking his objection in stride. “No, the tunnel will be a dead end,” he explained. “There’s no need even to break the surface into the gatehouse. But I want the tunnel big enough and deep enough to hold all three hundred casks of the black powder.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The dwarves set to digging with a vengeance, working around the clock, each team of miners putting in a twelve-hour shift. The tunnel began as a simple shaft bored straight into the mountainside. Only a dozen or so dwarves could work at a time, but as the hole grew deeper, more and more picks and shovels could be brought to bear. They made steady progress and after a week had progressed more than three hundred yards straight into the rock.
There the diggers began excavating a path breaking away to the right at a perpendicular angle. That tunnel would bore toward a large section of the curtain wall beside the south gatehouse. At the same time, the dwarves continued the original straight shaft, with even more workers chopping away at a time. When the original shaft had grown to six hundred yards long, a second tunnel to the right began to creep toward the tower. Both shafts were extended and widened, the second one pushing through the rock directly underneath the great gates.
In the lightless tunnels, the distinction between day and night was meaningless, but that was no obstacle to the doughty dwarves. Dram was omnipresent, supervising the excavation with a keen eye and curt instructions to “shore up that archway” or “smooth off that knob.” Under his direction the tunnels grew deeper and wider and stronger, with many hidden passages expanded.
The ogres and humans in the High Clerist’s Tower watched the surface work from the walls but made no effort to interfere. All they could see were the periodic shift changes, as two hundred dwarves trooped out of the mountainside while another two hundred trooped in. They took note of the ever-mounting pile of tailings spilling from the mouth of the shaft and wondered at the excavation.
As a deterrent to interference from the garrison in the tower, Jaymes maintained several companies of infantry and cavalry units within a quarter mile of the southern gatehouse. If the enemy made a sortie out to attack the miners, the troops would counterattack immediately. But Ankhar obviously scoffed at dwarves digging holes and decided not to risk his precious troops in a fight outside the lofty walls.
If, in fact, Ankhar were really in charge. Despite the magical obfuscation created by the Thorn Knight and the Nightmaster, Coryn had continued her scrying of the enemy. Sometimes her searching could penetrate through the veils of secrecy, and several times she had reported arguments between du Chagne and Hoarst, or Ankhar and the black-masked cleric. The siege was taking its toll on the enemy, even before the first clash of arms.
Outside, the troops staged competitions and games in plain view of the walls. They marched back and forth in maneuvers, singing martial songs, and generally acting as though they were happy to be there. And the dwarves were truly happy; the diggers were all experienced miners, and the work was very much to their liking. The thought that they would strike a devastating blow against the hated ogres-the same ogres who had destroyed their town- only added to their pleasure and fervor.
As a result, some nearly four weeks after the mine was started, the shaft was completed to Dram’s, and the emperor’s, satisfaction.
It was time, Jaymes declared, to bring in the black powder and to set a very long fuse.
Ankhar paced the small circle of the High Lookout. That was as high up as he dared to go in the great fortress. The Nest of the Kingfisher, perched on its spire some fifty feet over his head, he judged to be too small to accommodate his size and weight. Anyway, from where he was he could see everything he needed to see. With Pond-Lily at his side, he watched the fortress and the enemy army and left the planning of the defenses to the others.
Despite his bluster about hiding behind walls, he had quickly concluded that was a very good place to live. There was plenty of food, and the officers of the Solamnic Knights had maintained a splendid wine cellar that had been requisitioned by the dark forces. When he and Pond-Lily went inside, they spent their time in a couple of very nice rooms high up in the tower. He had hobgoblins bring up his food and drink, so he never had to bother himself going up and down the long flights of stairs.
Occasionally he grew a little wistful, remembering Laka or the heady days of his great invasions out in the open air. He truly missed his stepmother, but when he cradled the Shaft of Hiddukel in his arms, he felt the presence of the Prince of Lies and that brought Laka very much into his thoughts and feelings. She had been, and would remain, the central Truth of his life.
Wandering through the wilds, living outside in the wind and rain, trying to maintain order in a large, chaotic band of barbarians-those old Truths entailed a great deal of work, a significant amount of discomfort, and massive aggravation. He had realized during the weeks in the tower that he was really very tired being a great leader. Being there with Pond-Lily in the comfort of his fine rooms, was a much more comfortable existence.
On that gloomy late-summer afternoon, clouds glowered low across the Vingaard Range, and the threat of an impending storm crackled in the air. But the half-giant’s rooms in the tower were rainproof, and Ankhar suspected that, come winter, they would prove quite snug as well. So he wasn’t worried about the weather, or much of anything else, as he propped his foot on the parapet. The rampart was waist high to a human, but it came up only to Ankhar’s knees and made for a comfortable brace as he looked out over the fortress.
There was the great gatehouse in front of him, manned with a hundred ogres and an equal number of Dark Knights, commanding the approaches from the south. The ogres had stacked great piles of boulders on the upper platforms and were prepared to rain those down on any attackers who came within fifty or sixty paces. Every once in a while, an ogre tossed one of those rocks in the direction of the dwarf miners laboring some three or four hundred paces away. The dwarves were well out of range of the impulsive attacks, but throwing the stones gave the ogres a bit of useful target practice as well as the grist for wagers and other amusements.
Protecting that garrison were two massive outer gates, a pair of portcullises that could be dropped at a moment’s warning, and an interior set of gates that were just as massive as those in the outer wall. If an attacker somehow managed to penetrate inside, he would find himself in a deep courtyard, with commanding positions on all four sides where the defenders could pour a murderous fire of arrows, rocks, and burning oil down upon him.
The half-giant had learned that at the time Hoarst and the Black Army attacked the place, the emperor and his Solamnics had garrisoned the tower with only three hundred knights, far too few to defend the place. The Knights of Solamnia had paid the price when the Dark Knights flew up and landed atop the walls then opened the gates for their comrades outside. With that history in mind, Ankhar was glad for the more than two thousand ogres and Dark Knights who now patrolled the walls.
The half-giant spotted the Nightmaster, clad all in black, walking among the troops down there on the gatehouse ramparts. The priest had diligently overseen the preparation of the defenses, and Ankhar was pleased to
