his op ponent warily.
Again the savant seized the iron amulet that hung at his neck and raised his fist toward Flint. With a sharp hiss, like hot rocks dropped into water, a line of blue sparks erupted from the Theiwar's hand. The embers seemed to hunger for
Flint's flesh as they rushed toward him. Swirling like living things, the sparks formed a ring around him.
Desperately the hill dwarf raised the Tharkan Axe and stumbled backward. The gleaming blade bit into the blue fire as if the flame were a solid body, striking true with the keen, avenging steel. Once, twice, and again Flint chopped, each time with growing force, breaking through the circlet of magic, knocking the stream of sparks to pieces. Slowly the pieces settled to the ground, and the arcane magic of the amulet lay as twisted ringlets of harmless smoke on the ground.
Both dwarves sprang at the other, and once again the fight became a test of physical strength and endurance.
Blinking his eyes to clear the sweat away, Flint ignored his fatigue. He saw only the hateful face of his enemy before him, and his own hatred coalesced with Pitrick's to form a cocoon of berserk rage around them. The derro smashed his axe again and again against Flint's blade, but suddenly the hill dwarf saw his opening. Ducking backward before the
Theiwar swung, Flint waited until the derro's attack swished harmlessly past his face.
Then he stepped in, putting every bit of the strength in his toughened muscles behind the blow. All his hatred and fury, all of his overpowering grief came together, focused by the driving power of his weapon. Pitrick tried to twist away, to turn or parry the punishing blow, but in his last instant he knew he would not succeed. Finally, for a brief second, Flint saw those mad eyes grow still madder, this time from stark terror.
It was a sight he would savor for a long time.
The Tharkan Axe cut a silver streak through the air, meet ing the savant's neck below his helmet and above his breast plate. The blade made a clean cut, severing the heads of his amulet, then his skin and muscle.
The blade finally came to rest near Pitrick's heart, jammed tightly into his collarbone and breastplate. The Theiwar commander staggered backward, tugging the weapon out of Flint's hand. Pitrick's blood soaked the once shiny blade of the Tharkan Axe, sizzling and scorching from the fiery heat of the metal. As he watched in disbelief, Flint saw the blade grow cherry red.
Pitrick's body twisted, then sagged to the ground. He dropped to his knees with a groan, looking in disbelief at the blood that spread in a growing circle around him. Finally he collapsed on his face in the mud, the pool of his blood grow ing ever larger.
And the world went mad.
The first rays of sun crept over the eastern ridge, spilling light into the town. Flint scarcely breathed as he reached to retrieve his weapon. The Tharkan Axe in Pitrick's chest, nestled against the remains of the five-headed amulet, glowed red, so hot that Flint could not even touch it through his gloves.
Suddenly it burst into flames. White smoke billowed from the fire. The cloud hissed forth, snaking upward and rapidly spreading into the sky.
Simultaneously, the severed heads on the amulet began to writhe like snakes, hissing, spewing a great cloud of black smoke. This dark vapor, too, poured into the air, growing like a living thing, writhing and twisting its way upward.
The two clouds met, spuming around each other, but each remained separate in a shocking contrast of light and dark.
The dawn sun reflected from the white smoke with a bright glare, but the black vapor seemed to absorb the light, suck ing the energy from the air and giving nothing back.
Flint stumbled away from the clouds, stunned by their sudden incarnation. The sight frightened him in some sub conscious fashion with a terror he could not articulate but that chilled him to his soul.
The warring dwarves in the courtyard watched in amaze ment and backed away in fear. The dense trails of smoke, both white and black, grew larger and larger and began to coalesce vaguely into the shapes of humanoid heads: a beautiful, dark-haired human woman with blood red lips and almond-shaped eyes; and a gray-bearded, fierce looking harrn dwarf, his eyes radiating anger. The two foggy shapes hovered above the brewery.
The clouds writhed together and apart, almost as if in combat — though an eerie, silent, and ephemeral battle it was. They grew still larger, filling the sky above the entire town. At the base of the intermingled black and white clouds, the amulet and the axe crackled with white hot fire, an arc of hissing power sizzling between them. The heat drove Flint still farther back, though he could not avert his eyes from the spectacle.
Suddenly, there came a terrific rumbling sound, and then slowly the earth beneath the dwarves' feet began to shake and tremble. The ground rippled like water, shaking stones loose from the brewery walls, knocking Flint and every dwarf in view off of their feet. Many of the wooden build ings began to fall like matchstick shelters.
Wisps of the black smoke trailed through the town, touching off fires where they struck the dry timbers of buildings whole, or ruined. In moments the flames roared upward, and Hillhome became a nightmare of hungry, crackling blazes.
The dwarves in the courtyard of the brewery scattered in fear, trampling each other to get through the gate first. The
Theiwar were the first out of town, running through the wreckage for the hills. Not a living one of the derro re mained to face the rage of the vengeful hill dwarves.
The earth shook again, a convulsive tremor that wracked the town from one end to the other. Great cracks appeared in the ground, exploding outward from the white fire of axe and amulet. Flint watched, still stunned to immobilty, as these fissures erupted to either side of him. He saw hill and gully dwarves disappear into the cracks, and he could not move to help them. The stone walls of the brewery crum bled and split, collapsing into heaps of gravel.
Screams of panic shrilled through the air. Mad stampedes erupted, as hill and gully dwarves scrambled through the ruins, seeking an escape from the convulsions that wracked the world around them.
Flint shook off his numbness.
But before Flint could gather his family and escape, the trembling of the earth stopped. The black and white smoky forms cast one more stony glance at each other and then dis sipated into thin wisps in the morning air. The hissing fire between the two artifacts slowly faded. There was no sign of Pitrick's body, nor of his amulet.
Flint's attention fell upon what remained of the Tharkan Axe. It was now a thin sheet of fragile foil in the shape of the axe. Of the weapon's original form, only the runes remained.
'The Tharkan Axe,' said a soft voice beside him.
He turned to look at Hildy's blood- and dirt-streaked face in surprise. 'How did you know it's name?'
'My father taught me the Old Script,' she explained, pointing to the runes. Flint nodded dumbly, watching as the runes themselves started to fade.
'The Axe of Tharkas, it says,' repeated Hildy. 'Crafted by the god Reorx in honor of the great peace among dwarves. Its magnificence shall last — ' Hildy looked softly at Flint, sympathy welling in her eyes before she concluded,
'— until it is used by a dwarf to shed a dwarf's blood.'
In the courtyard, now full of the stillness and death that follows war, the sheet of foil caught the wind and fluttered away.
Epilogue
Hillhome became a ghost town in less than a week
What the battle had left standing had been leveled by the earthquake. Not a single family had escaped losing at least one member in the Battle of Hillhome, and most of them wanted to start anew elsewhere in the hillcountry, where the memories would fade more easily with time.
Diehards, like the Fireforges, whose families had been in the village since before the Cataclysm and whose homes had been at least partially spared from the devastation, chose to stay around and rebuild their town as best they could.
