surprise.
That night, however, even the dwarves were taken by surprise.
A great blast of intense flames seemed to explode from one of the tall, slender central towers of the castle. The blast hurled the tiles of the cone-shaped roof of the tower in all directions, great slabs of slate that were intended to deflect flaming arrows and even common dragonfire. The timbers and wood floors within the tower began to burn furiously, and even some of the stones of the outer wall began to crack and loosen from the intense heat. The sentries hardly needed to ring the watch bells to sound the alarm; the blast had shaken the castle to its core. The ranks of dwarvish warriors leapt from their beds, pausing only long enough to grab their armor and weapons as they hurried to the defense of the castle.
The top of the second tower of the main portion of the castle also exploded in flame. Then a couple of the lesser towers along the outer wall of the pass were all but shattered in sudden bursts of fire. The massive tower above the circular gate fort proved more solid than the others, withstanding three blasts before it began to burn like a great torch in the night. Only moments after the first attack, the dwarves began to rush out onto the upper walls, ready for battle. But there was no enemy to be seen; indeed, the assault upon Karrak Castle seemed to be over.
There was, of course, only one enemy who could have come and gone again so quickly in the night. The sentries who had witnessed the attack pointed to the sky and spoke of great winged shapes that had moved quickly across the stars of the moonless sky as they had hurtled along the twisting length of the pass.
The sudden and seemingly unprovoked attack was a dire mystery to Daric, son of Kuric, the young commander of the garrison at Karrak Castle. There was little he could do at first except to have the fires brought under control and repairs begun on the damaged towers. The garrison remained at full battle alert; catapults and large crossbows, at least all such weapons that were on hand, were brought out onto the walls and made ready. But Daric had to doubt that a second attack would come any time soon. This had obviously not been an attempt to capture or destroy the castle. The damage to the defenses of the castle had been minimal, and there had been no loss of life. He was inclined to believe that this had been a warning, although he did not understand the intended message.
Although dwarves considered dragons to be their special enemies, born of a certainty that every dragon in the world coveted the deep caverns and vast treasures of the dwarves, actual conflict between them was rare. Although renegades often attacked the caravans coming in and out of Rockhome, even the great renegade king Kardyer had never dared to attempt an attack on one of the underground cities of the dwarves. All raids had come to an end in the months since the Dragonlord had slain Kardyer and his cohorts. Also, the flames that had destroyed the castle's towers had been much more intense than was usual for dragonfire. Even Dark knew that much about dragons.
Only an army of dragons would dare to attack a major stronghold of the dwarves, and only the greatest of the world's dragons would command magical flames of such intensity. Dark was reminded of the time just before the coming of the Dragonlord, when Rockhome had been all but under siege from the armies of rogue dragons patrolling the northlands. Now that there was no longer a Dragonlord to maintain the peace, the dragons might be harboring new plans of conquest, encouraged by their easy defeat of Alphatia.
As morning approached, Daric had to make his decisions quickly, and he felt trapped between two duties of great importance. If the attack had been only a prelude to an invasion, he needed to do what he could to hold Karrak Castle against the dragons, as impossible as that seemed. And yet he also needed to carry his warning to Dengar immediately, so that preparations to defend all of Rockhome could begin. He decided that he was needed more in Dengar; if he left at once, he could be back by nightfall of the following day, and his lieutenant could command the castle and garrison as well as he could during that time.
Because speed was important, he elected to ride one of the few horses kept by the dwarves for delivering urgent messages. That gave him several hours during the ride to Dengar to reflect upon this new development, and for once he was glad to have Korinn Bear Slayer and the Syrklist dwarves leading
Rockhome at such a time. Daric was himself of the warrior Torkrest Clan, but he was still fairly young for a dwarf and had in the past been a companion, even a friend, to Dorinn, the elder son of King Daroban and at that time the clear heir to the throne. When Dorinn had been wounded in battle against the ores in the West, Daric had helped to get him home again. Since that time, Daric had also come to respect and trust the younger son of Daroban, Korinn, now that he was something of a hero and the likely heir.
As he made the final climb toward the gate of upper Den-gar, he saw that his warning of an attack by dragons was a little late. Several of the small watchtowers along the massive wall had been blasted, and some had been shattered altogether. Crews were already at work repairing the damage, but the greatest attention was being given to preparing the city for a second and possibly far more serious attack. Daric had to wonder just how many cities and fortresses in Rockhome had been hit the previous night.
Leaving his horse at the stables of the garrison near the inner gate, he hurried down to the lower city and presented himself at the palace. Under the circumstances, he was not surprised to find that the king's throne room was packed with more than a hundred dwarves, representatives of every clan and many leaders of the military, all talking together furiously in small groups. His old friend Dorinn saw him as soon as he entered and hurried to greet him, although with no joy for the anticipated news that Daric carried.
'Karrak as well?' Dorinn asked, and sighed heavily. 'You must speak with my father at once.'
Dorinn lead the way through the crowd, still walking with an awkward limp from the injuries he had suffered in battle years before, although he stood somewhat straighter and looked less thin and wasted than he had. He hurried not to the throne but to a quiet corner, where his brother Korinn and King Daroban were talking quietly with a tall young man in the uniform of a Thyatian officer. For a moment, Daric noticed only that the king looked older and more frail than ever, noticeably older than when he had last visited Dengar the previous autumn. Although Daric was of a rival clan, he found himself hoping that the king would retain his strength long enough for Korinn to come of age and assume the throne uncontested. Rockhome could hardly survive war with the dragons if the dwarves were fighting among themselves for the crown.
Daroban turned to him. 'We had feared that Karrak Castle had been hit as well.'
'The damage was only superficial,' Daric said. 'No worse than what I saw in the city above. But I had no way of knowing that the dragons had struck anywhere else, so I thought it best to bear the warning as quickly as I could.'
'It is well that you did,' the king said, then glanced up at the Thyatian. 'General Daric, this is Captain Darius Glantri of Thyatis. He arrived by griffon this morning, on his way to the Flaemish realm to confer with Solveig White-Gold. He has kindly paused on his journey so that the two griffon riders in his company might survey Rockhome's damage for us.'
Darius bowed politely. 'This matter affects us all, I fear. The shipyards of the Thyatian fleet were attacked as well, and the damage was rather more severe. The dragons were very busy indeed last night. I wonder who else they may have attacked.'
'Who indeed?' Daric asked. 'My impression was that we've been given a warning, considering how little damage was actually done.'
'It probably was only a warning,' Darius agreed. 'It's just that the warning we received in Thyatis was much sterner than the one they saved for the dwarves. But that defies explanation. If it was a warning of their intent to attack us in greater force, then why would they warn us? And if it was retribution, then what have we done to deserve it?'
'According to all our legends, dragons have their own ways, often mysterious to us,' King Daroban said. 'When the rogue dragons attacked just before the coming of the Dragonlord, their attacks seemed to be more a matter of harassment, as if they felt so secure in their own strength that they sought to slay their enemies by slow torment. Now that there is no longer a Dragonlord to stop them, perhaps they once more feel strong and secure. If this is a matter of retaliation, then could it be for the humiliation the dragons suffered when the Dragonlord humbled them in our defense?'
'As far as I know, there still is a Dragonlord,' Korinn said. 'The dragons couldn't take that away from him. All they did was incite our own hatred and mistrust, causing us to send him away from us.'
'You make it sound as if the fault were our own,' Daric commented, not so much in anger but in honest confusion. 'Didn't the Dragonlord leave us to go back with his own kind, once he learned that he was a dragon?'
