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Chapter 1
The Ambush

Gork, crown prince of Dwarfholm Bastion, peered out of the surveillance slot from the cavern high on the cliff face. A thousand glints of sunlight sparkled from the snowy valley below. The stark beauty of the towering cliffs and frozen waterfalls was broken by a host of dark objects moving up the canyon.
Gork furrowed his brow as he tracked the hundreds of Ravager orcs stomping their way through the snow, heading for the ice barrier at the summit of Barrel Roll Pass.
From behind him, Gamfir, a dwarf three times Gork’s age, gave a grunt of concern. “They aren’t stopping?”
Gork shook his head.
Something wasn’t right. Certainly by now the orcs knew that Dwarfholm Bastion was defended by traps. The Dark Consul’s warlords would never commit that many orcs to battle unless . . . Gork turned at the sight of motion off to his right. Farther up the perilously steep slope and scarcely visible in the white haze of wind-driven snow that curled over the mountain ridge, a patrol of orc scouts had reached a wind cornice. Already their axes were swinging as they cut into the icy barrier that held back the weight of several weeks’ snow.
No, Gork thought. No! He motioned quickly for Gamfir.
“Look.” Gork pointed to the ridge. “That vanguard unit is going to trigger an avalanche to bury our traps in the valley. The main force will be able to approach the ice wall undeterred. In numbers like that, the orcs will crush the ice wall and have unfettered access to the terraces and towers in Barrel Roll Pass.”
“They must have climbed the ridge in the storm,” Gamfir stammered. “We couldn’t have seen them.”
Gork looked into Gamfir’s eyes, where for the first time he saw the grey uncertainty of fear. Gamfir tugged anxiously at his beard. “Can we stop them?”
Gork surveyed the perilous glacial slope. It would take even experienced climbers an hour to summit the ridge. “It’s too late.” His head spun. All the careful plans, the traps, the patrols—everything was failing. “Gamfir, we have to do something—now.”
“The attack on Foruk’s Falls has drawn most of our men,” Gamfir warned. “We have only the palace guard to hold off those orcs in the canyon.”
“Against that many—” Gork shook his head. “It’s suicide.” He checked his silver pocket watch and tucked it back into his well-tailored vest that did little to draw attention away from his comparatively short, neck-length beard—far shorter than a typical belt-length beard. “I give us less than five minutes before the orc scouts trigger the avalanche. Then there’s no stopping the entire horde from climbing right up the canyon.”
Gamfir lowered his dark-tinted spectacles. “Not since we joined with the freyjans to defeat The Destroyer have we faced such a dangerous foe. But this level of cunning is beyond demons . . . my heart tells me we have a traitor.”
That possibility did nothing to settle the anxiety worming in Gork’s gut. The dwarf prince was not as bulky as other Hearthsworn Dwarf warriors. Granted he was only fifty years old, and not even a full-grown adult. But his father was overseeing installation of defenses at the west buttress and his brutish younger brothers had gone to free Foruk’s Falls, leaving him to watch the booby-trapped pass. He was the officer of the watch.
This battle was his responsibility.
“If we could only keep the avalanche from burying the trigger for the rigging.” Gamfir pressed his fist into his palm. “We could take them by surprise from the skies.”
Gork had only a second to consider the near-impossible task of saving the trap. It would mean reaching the base of the hill before the avalanche and somehow surviving the mountain of crushing snow.
There was a slim chance, which meant a far greater chance his short life would come to an abrupt end.
Gork considered the few notable accomplishments of the first half-century of his youth. The air seemed to hang around him, the moment frozen as he weighed his own fate. If he perished, would his family even miss him? Would his father simply be glad that one of his brutish younger brothers had become the next in line for the throne? Or was this his moment, his chance to finally prove himself?
There is no one else.
“Loyal to the light,” Gork whispered, his breath fogging on the chill air. “To the end.” He turned to Gamfir, his strong hands forming into fists. “Order the palace guard to the top of the winch. Have them suit up in the harnesses. Blow the war horns when the orcs reach the trigger point. I will release the trap manually.”
“But the avalanche will certainly destroy the trigger point at the hunting cabin. The trap will be sprung before the orcs are in range—it’s hopeless.”
“It’s never hopeless.” Gork lifted his ax. With the back end of the ax, the dwarf took three well-aimed swings, breaking large chunks of stone away from the surveillance slot as if he was paring cuts of roast boar. He traded the ax for a flat-bladed snow shovel, climbed into the crack, and squeezed out into the breezy Frostbyte air.
“Gork—no!”
He leapt.
The first thirty feet passed in one and a half seconds. Gork gripped the shovel handle, placed his feet in the scoop of the blade, and braced for impact. His momentum blasted him through the deep snow like a ball from a gnomish musket.
Dusted from beard to boots in icy snow, Gork hurtled down the steep slope, his shovel throwing up tall rooster tails to either side as he plummeted at a speed that scarcely differed from free falling.
Gork’s fingers, strong from years of work in the forges beneath Dwarfholm Bastion, held the shovel handle in a white-knuckled grip.
Snow blasted his eyes. And over the roaring of wind in his ears came a sound that sent a chill to his very core.
CRACK.
Gork looked back to see the top of the ridge suddenly drop.
A dull rumble commenced as the sheet of sliding snow gathered momentum while Gork slid directly into the fall line of the avalanche.
“Come on!” Gork screamed, bellowing a challenge to the mountain over his home.
Gork leaned back as he sailed off another drop-off and over a rocky chute between two tall pines. He landed with another blast of powder snow.
In the corner of his vision, hundred-foot trees snapped like toothpicks, and boulders joined the frothing wave as the force of the avalanche plowed over everything in its path, closing the distance with frightening fury.
Gork navigated through the sparse trees, leaning to one side and the other as his shovel cut a weaving path through the snow. He had to reach the trigger point at the cabin before the avalanche—for his country and for his own life.
Gork spotted a thin trail of smoke rising through the trees.
The cabin.
He was almost there.
Gork’s momentum ran out as he came to a gentle incline. He leapt from the shovel and ran forward, plowing through the chest-deep powder as the unstoppable tidal wave of snow rushed up behind him.
The trigger point was made to look like a hunter’s cabin, further masked by smoke bearing the scent of roasted meat piped in from a dwarven mess hall several hundred feet below.
The orcs could not resist the smell of meat, nor ignore the threat of an ambush from the cabin. They would naturally attack without orders and trigger the rigging—a precisely timed trap. But the cabin was about to be destroyed, and the trap would be triggered well before the orcs climbing the canyon would be in lethal range. All would be wasted without the element of surprise. The orcs could stop and hew wooden planks as shield walls to block attacks from above and simply walk under the trap.
The roar of the tidal wave of ice, debris, and snow thundered in Gork’s ears as he plunged through the last few feet of snow and dove under the porch, avoiding the booby-trapped door.
The wave of snow hit like a molten mountain being dragged over him, drowning out all light. As the mass of sliding snow broke up the cabin’s flooring, chill snow poured in around Gork, leaving him with only a little wiggle room, which shrank by the second. His body was immobilized in complete darkness under a groaning, shifting mass of snow. With both his hands, Gork clung to the trigger rope. The strong downward pull of the rope told him there was nothing above him keeping it from slipping into the ground and releasing the gears on the rigging.
The moment he let go, the trap would be sprung. But if he let go before the orcs were in position, the surprise would be wasted.
Dwarfholm Bastion would fall.
With the weight of the survival of his entire people in his ice-covered hands, Gork prayed to the Goddess of light, creator of all Crystalia.
Give me strength to hold!
He had to start digging out soon, or the snow, wet from its turbulent descent, would begin to freeze, trapping him yards below the surface where there was precious little air to breathe.
But Gork had to wait for the war horn. He would not hear it from above, rather from below, through the pipe from the mess hall. From nearby came the hissing of air escaping the shorn metal piping of the geothermal vent. Gork wondered whether the warm air ascending through the pipe would keep him alive or kill him with mine gas.
He held his breath just in case.
He couldn’t check his pocket watch in the dark, but to Gork it seemed that at least ten minutes had passed with both his hands holding the fate of his people. He estimated he still had two or three minutes of air before he passed out.
Then a deep thrumming sounded through the vent pipe.
The horns!
The orcs had arrived.
Gork told his fingers to let go of the rope, but the muscles seemed to be knotted and frozen. Slowly, his aching, frozen fingers cracked open and the braided cord slashed down through his fingers and disappeared into the machinery below.
Clanking sounds began, and a moment later, Gork was thrust upward with a face full of sloppy snow, through fragments of wood, and rocky debris until he emerged at the top of a rising pillar right in the middle of an army of orcs.
By Gork’s side, a steel cord passed over a pulley on the tower, rising with the structure as it emerged from the snowy landscape below.
This was just the first phase—pulling the buried cable free of the ground.
High above, in a secured room along the ridge, winches whirred, rapidly taking up the slack in the wire as it was lifted clear of the snow.
Gork turned to see the end of the wire disappear into a crevice only a hundred yards away on the downhill side. Once the cable was taut, it would lift free of the tower, and Gork could slide to safety.
A thrown spear narrowly missed Gork’s neck.
That got his blood hot fast. He seized the wire with his hand and rose slowly with it as the cable came taut.
The tower beneath Gork rang with the sounds of orcs three times his size pummeling the scissor jack linkages. If the tower fell, Gork would be hanging twenty feet over the orcs’ heads—a hanging duck.
Motion on the ridge drew Gork’s eye.
Like dew drops falling down a thread, one by one, the dwarven guards took to the cable with their oiled bearing harnesses.
In moments, Hearthsworn Dwarves armed with powerful multi-bolt crossbows would be hurtling past on the cable zip line. Each would get several shots, and these were royal guards. They rarely missed.
The tower lurched and began to descend. With the cable taut, it made sense to ratchet it down so the orcs couldn’t climb up to hack at the cable. That left Gork with a problem. He needed a way to slide down the cable, or he was going to get knocked off by the first dwarf to arrive.
Gork quickly pulled off his belt, only to have his trousers fall to his knees.
Great gravy!
He hastily looped the belt over the cable and began to slide slowly toward the cliff wall on the opposite side of the canyon ravine, keenly aware of the fact that he was mooning several hundred orcs, all wielding sharp weapons.
This turned out to be a grand distraction from the real attack, and his hide was only spared by an orc scout who shouted frantically, pointing up the slope to the rapidly approaching dwarves. As he picked up speed over the ice falls of the canyon stream below, Gork looked back to see the first wave of cable-sliders glide into range. The dwarves on the zip line had ample time to pick their targets from among the scattering orcs. In quick succession, they fired well-aimed bolts at the enemy. But the orcs, with their bulky spears, swords, and axes, were unable to track the fast-moving dwarves. And the loose snow and ice from the avalanche hampered their escape.
The orcs’ attempts to cut the braided steel wire were equally useless. Their weapons merely missed completely or bounced off.
The screams of the enemy were all Gork could hear until a voice behind him bellowed a sharp, “Look out below!”
He wasn’t going to make it to the safety of the cave before the archers caught up to him.
With another prayer to the Goddess, Gork let go of one side of his belt and fell twenty feet into a snow bank as the first dwarf on his sliding harness hurtled past. Pulling himself and his trousers free of the snow, Gork secured his breeches and climbed quickly to the cave entrance.
At last, the shrieks and grunts calling for retreat sounded through the thin alpine forest and the orcs fled in droves.
He nodded approvingly.
Disaster averted.
From nearby, where the descending guards were unbuckling their harnesses, Gork heard his name. It was Hamdrel, captain of the palace guard. “Three cheers for Gork Moon-Orc!”
Gork’s face boiled with instant embarrassment.
. . . disaster almost averted.