The Black Ravens despised outsiders more than any Uthgardt tribe. They had special hatred for any tribe that bore the taint of civilization, and that meant the Thunderbeasts. This was the Ravens' Runehunt—they had challenged themselves to achieve the utter ruin of another tribe. They never could have laid siege to Grunwald when the tribe was strong, no matter how many times the Thunderbeasts besieged their strongholds and destroyed their aeries. But times had changed, and the Ravens now believed that the Thunderbeasts were weak and ripe for destruction. Such was the natural order. Just as the weaker members of a wolf pack were removed by violence or winter, so too were tribes eliminated. The Black Ravens considered it a sacred duty to cull the weak.
In a flash Grunwald became a battlefield. The huge ravens dodged the arrows and hammers of the Thunderbeasts while swooping in to snap and slash at their faces. Massive beaks claimed a number of eyes as the beating of great wings disturbed the fog that hung over the dead settlement. War cries blended with the birds' incessant squawking and mixed with screams of pain as arrows arced down from the King's Lodge, embedding in warrior flesh.
Brandishing a mighty warhammer, Sungar charged forward up the stone stairs to the entrance of the King's Lodge, its thick stone door firmly shut. Other warriors surged forward to join him in banging and slashing at the door.
Keirkrad chanted a few syllables and raised his hands. A wind boiled up that tore through the fog and disturbed the air above. Though not strong enough to blow the ravens from their places, it was enough to surprise and slow them so that a well-placed spear and a hail of arrows brought two ravens plummeting from the sky. When they hit the ground, Thunderbeast warriors were ready to finish off bird and rider.
The raven riders were not so many that the Thunderbeasts could not defeat them, but the arrows raining from the King's Lodge were a serious threat. What had been the Thunderbeast's strongest defense was now potentially their destruction.
"Train your weapons to the Lodge!" Thluna shouted, hurling one of his hammers at the upper window. It sailed neatly through, though whether or not it met its mark on the other side, he could not tell.
Vell focused on one detail amid the confusion—a single blue eye staring out from an arrow slit in the fortress. He concentrated and threw his spear at it, but it missed, striking just to the left of its mark and bouncing off the wall. Below the eye, he saw thin lips twist into a smile, and an arrow flew from the window directly at Vell. He didn't have time to blink before it struck him between the eyes.
But Vell barely felt it. The arrow bounced off his skin as if it had struck iron. Vell gulped in confusion and whirled to face Keirkrad. The shaman's skin was covered with brownish, gnarly scales, for he had invoked a power the Thunderbeast bestowed on its priests. Keirkrad gasped and mouthed Vell's name through the noise. When Vell looked down at his hands, he realized that they too were covered with brown scales. His heart jumped at the shock, but he felt something else flowing from his core, overwhelming his fear. His senses began to cloud, and the confusion of war faded, replaced by the perfect clarity of rage.
Keirkrad made slow steps toward Vell, and with each step, the ground around him shook—an effect of his shamanic power. The walls of the King's Lodge vibrated and trembled, dust rising from the ancient dwarven blocks.
A giant raven swooped down and snapped the neck of a Thunderbeast warrior in its thick beak. Sungar's hammer blows began to crack the stone door of the Lodge. Another Thunderbeast cried out as an arrow sank into his skin. The Black Ravens above cursed the name of Gundar and called for the tribe's destruction.
Vell stared intently at his hand and the inhuman skin that coated him like a suit of armor. But he was not wearing it—it was him. Vell turned his back on Keirkrad and faced the King's Lodge. He knew what he had to do.
Vell marched up the stone stairs. One of the orc skulls above him slipped from its hook and shattered on the ground.
"Get clear of the Lodge," Vell said, pushing men aside. He locked eyes with Sungar and said, "Trust me." Vell walked up to the stone door. Unflinching, he walked through the damaged portal, which crumbled and fell all around him.
Inside, four Black Raven warriors gasped at the approaching figure covered with dust and scales. Before they could react, Vell grasped two of them by the necks and slammed their heads against the wall with a hard crack. The other two drew their swords, but Vell fended them off barehanded, grasping a sword arm in each hand and squeezing with inhuman strength. The Black Ravens fell to the floor squealing in pain.
Vell ignored them and walked through the vacant stone hall that was once the tribal feast hall. The structure now trembled and crumbled with each of Vell's thunderous steps. As he passed huge depictions of the Thunderbeast adorning the walls, the totem seemed to look on as Vell moved. A few Black Ravens slipped into his wake, but he paid no attention to them or their arrows, which simply zipped past him. Vell made his way into the next room, which he remembered as Gundar's throne room. A simple stone seat, long unoccupied, was the only furniture in the chamber.
Vell picked up the throne, held it high over his head, and threw it at the wall. It broke through, dislodging stone blocks and sending streams of dust from the floor above. Vell didn't even blink as the ceiling caved in on him.
* * * * *
The assembled Thunderbeast warriors watched in awe as the whole face of the King's Lodge crumbled and collapsed in a deafening waterfall of stone. A few screams from the Black Ravens punctuated the noise, but were silenced quickly. Stray pieces of debris bounced toward the Thunderbeasts, but the bulk of the building fell inward and away from the onlookers. A huge cloud of dust billowed up and coated all of Grunwald in a white cloud, thick and oppressive.
The shock felt by the Thunderbeasts was nothing compared to that of the raven riders above them, who watched so many of their tribesmen disappear in the rain of debris. Their birds spooked as the terrain beneath them vanished. The creatures circled uneasily, leaving them unprepared for the hail of arrows that emerged from the dust, and letting missiles plunge into their wings and underbellies. Some threw their riders and flew off into the Lurkwood. Finally, the rest of the Black Ravens retreated, demoralized.
One of the raven riders fell through the dust and landed hard on the ground. A Thunderbeast readied an axe, but Sungar cried, "Halt!" The chieftain ran to study the enemy, whose blood gurgled at his lips. Sungar held a warhammer at the ready.
"You are impure," the Black Raven rasped through his failing breath. "You are weak."
"Not so weak as you think, it seems," said Sungar. He sank his hammer into the Black Raven's brain.
As the dust settled in Grunwald, and the skies cleared of Black Ravens, a mighty cheer rose up from the tribe. Soon after, all eyes turned toward the rubble of the King's Lodge.
"Is this why the Thunderbeast gave Vell its power?" asked Thluna. "So that he might save us on this occasion?"
"Truly, songs will be sung of his sacrifice," Sungar said.
"He might still live," said Keirkrad. He rubbed his skin, now restored and supple.
The tribe set upon the rubble, digging through it for any trace of Vell. They detected a quiet weeping, like the mewing of a kitten. The strongest of the tribe's warriors were needed to lift the rocks that pinned the youth. Although Vell showed no visible injuries, tears stained his cheeks. The tribe stood staring at him, not knowing what to say.
Sungar and Keirkrad stepped in. "Arise, my son," the chieftain said. "You are our salvation this day, and there shall be mead and flesh to celebrate." But Vell lay still and silent, his brown eyes darting. Not a scratch marked his body, but he was wounded, as if he had witnessed all the pain in the world.
* * * * *
"A thousand lines of doggerel and I'm no closer to understanding this axe," Geildarr complained. His study was littered with handwritten notes scattered on tables and pinned to the walls, and the subject of it all—the battle-axe—still lay across his desk. Ardeth lingered on a few notees.
"Black feathers fall at the open blade," Ardeth read. "With the name of Uthgar on the lips of both friend and foe, eggshells shatter under the kingly might. A revenge is repaid near the sacred site." Then another: "Tharkane's hands on the shaft as the nations clash under tree the eldest. Blue Haloan's blood spoils the foliage. The people of the forest look on but do not present themselves."
"Interesting spell, this one," Ardeth said. "I thought you'd simply cast it and it would tell you what you need to know about the item. Naive of me."
"Divinations, my dear," said Geildarr, "are like Alaundo's Prophecies. They always make perfect sense in the clear light of hindsight. Understanding them beforehand is more difficult. The problem here is that this axe obviously has a very long history. I think it goes back as far as Delzoun, and it hasn't been lying in the dust for all those years, by any means. It's had a very active life. Many stories." He rested his hand on the axe head, curling his fingers over the blade enough to feel its sharpness.
"Learning the stories is just the beginning," he went on. "The legending spell doesn't always tell the truth—just the legends people tell, or used to tell."
"And those can be untrue," said Ardeth.
"Right. And sometimes the legends leave out the most important parts of a story. Each new casting gives me a fuller understanding and allows me to ask more probing questions, but the problem in this case is that there's so much story to cover."
"You do have quite a library on the next floor," said Ardeth. "Is more research necessary?"
"I've called you here for research," said Geildarr, "but not the kind that uses books. Let me show you what I know. I've sorted the notes into several categories." He indicated a pile of scribblings on the desk before him. "First, my discoveries about the axe's creation. It was forged in Delzoun and given as a gift to somebody who helped rid the dwarves of an enemy. But the rescuer had powerful enemies of his own." Geildarr rubbed his chin. "I'm going to try some other divinations about this figure, but I suspect that he's the one called 'Berun.' There's a Berun's Hill south of Longsaddle, related or otherwise,
"But here's what interests me the most. There are various hints that Berun is some sort of leader of men, guiding his people west from 'fallen skies, dead gods, and rising sands.' Sounds like Netheril to me—some mass migration after Karsus's Folly. This one—" Geildarr scanned his desk and snatched up the appropriate note "—may describe new dweomers being woven into the axe that ties it to something else, some kind of object or artifact that alters the axe's power." Geildarr read his scribbling aloud. "Joined as one the axe and heart by the stout folks' spells, a link forged cannot be undone. Swells the power of both, and both in Berun's hands now leave the underland." Geildarr smirked. "Bad poetry, but intriguing divination."
Ardeth giggled. "A Netherese artifact?" she asked. "Do you know anything more?"
"I'm still attempting some divinations. But beyond the important bits about the axe's creation, most of the legends describe typical adventuring stories—beheading dragons, slaughtering giants, that kind of thing. The clear majority of what I've uncovered is of this sort. Who knows if they're true?"
Geildarr drummed his fingers on the table. "But it scarcely matters. The sheer volume of the tales means the axe has had a very active history. I've even gleaned that it's been in the hands of one of the barbarian tribes from up north," Geildarr said with a smile, and he produced an old book called Tulrun's Totem Tales of the Beast Shamans from amid the piles of notes. "I think I've identified it as the Thunderbeast tribe."
"An Uthgardt tribe," Ardeth said. "But don't they shun magic? Isn't it unlikely that they're hoarding Netherese magic after fourteen hundred years?"
"They had this axe until fairly recently," said Geildarr. "How they lost it and how it ended up in the Fallen Lands is still a mystery to me, but my spells have given me a few references to fairly recent events. And while axes are a fairly standard barbarian weapon, Tulrun's book talks about the chief of the Thunderbeasts—who called himself King Gundar—owning an impressive axe, the symbol of his leadership." Geildarr closed his hand around the axe's shaft. "Perhaps this is the very same."
"So the other artifact that's linked to this axe," Ardeth mused. "What do you know about it?"
"I'll keep trying," said Geildarr. "I don't know much about it yet. Perhaps I'll have more answers once you get back."
"Get back? From where?"
Geildarr smiled. "There's an old friend of mine I haven't thought about in some time. Arthus Tyrrell. He knows plenty about the Uthgardt. That's if you don't mind a trip outside of Llorkh."
"Not at all," said Ardeth.