His Dwarf

“What was—!”

Karneth came awake reaching for an axe, his fingers closing around the haft before sleep had entirely left his eyes. Beside him, Beeps lurched upright with a heavy snort, ears already pitched toward the open field beyond the dying fire.

Neither moved after that. Karneth listened while Beeps stared into the dark, the two of them fixed upon whatever had disturbed the night.

Moonlight flattened the meadow into a pale sheet of grass, broken only by the dying fire behind them. Nothing crossed it. Nothing stirred beyond the slow wind. Behind them, a coal settled softly in the fire, while Gaz and Oesora remained near Navian, untouched by the disturbance and deep within their meditation.

Beeps’s ears twitched.

Karneth turned slightly, listening past the whisper of grass and the faint crackle behind him. At first there was nothing, then something carried to them from far across the field—too distant to make out, but clear enough to draw the last of the sleep from his face.

“Aye,” he murmured. “They followed us after all.”

Karneth rose and gathered Gwenneth and Mason from the grass. Beeps immediately began hauling himself upright as well, his broad shoulders rolling beneath the wool, but the dwarf caught the movement before he had made it halfway.

“Ah, no ya don’t.”

Beeps stopped there and answered with a low, disgruntled sound.

“You stay here.” Karneth settled the axes into his hands and tipped his chin toward the others. “Watch those three. And keep the paladin warm if need be.”

Beeps followed his gaze toward the fire. Navian remained motionless beneath the blankets, while Gaz and Oesora sat nearby, untouched by whatever had called Karneth into the dark.

“I’ll be back.” Karneth gave the bramblehorn a hearty pat along the shoulder. “With some meat.”

Beeps huffed through his nose.

“Good boy.”

Karneth hooked the axes into his belt, turned toward the open field, and broke into a run. His boots tore through the grass with a speed few would have expected from a dwarf, and within moments the darkness had swallowed him.

Quiet settled over the clearing again.

Beeps remained where Karneth had left him, staring into the field long after the dwarf disappeared. His ears worked at every faint sound moving across the open downs, but whatever Karneth had heard had gone with him, lost somewhere beyond the reach of firelight and moon.

Eventually, the bramblehorn lowered his head. Grass tore softly between his teeth, and he chewed with the slow concentration of a creature for whom eating had never required much persuasion. Another mouthful followed, then another, until he wandered several steps nearer the dying fire.

Gaz and Oesora had not moved. A low purr of energy passed between them, so faint it seemed less like sound than vibration, rising and falling beneath the occasional crackle of embers.

Navian lay where Karneth had left him. For most of the night the paladin had been as still as the blankets beneath him, but now a deeper breath moved through his chest and his head rolled slightly to one side. It was hardly anything at all, no more than the lazy turn of someone sinking further into sleep, and after a moment he became still again.

Beeps watched him for a while. Then went back to the grass.

His ears snapped upright, his broad head lifting toward the field, every trace of grazing forgotten.

Nothing moved.

He drifted several steps away from the fire and stopped with his nose raised to the night. Wind moved over him carrying damp grass, cold earth, the stale edge of smoke—and beneath it, something too distant to understand.

Then came a sound. Small at first. Nearly lost to the open downs.

A shout.

Beeps stared into the darkness, nostrils flaring as a plume of breath curled pale beneath the moon. One heavy step carried him farther from camp. Behind him, the faint resonance between Gaz and Oesora continued undisturbed.

Another shout crossed the field. Closer now. Or louder.

Beeps answered with a sharp bleat that flew far into the dark.

No answer came back.

He waited, listening as the grass whispered around his legs and a coal collapsed softly behind him. Navian shifted once beneath the blankets, but Beeps never turned.

The field gave him nothing. Still he listened.

Another step.

Then Karneth’s voice tore across the downs, long and hard enough to strip the stillness from the night.

The bramblehorn bolted.

He tore into the darkness with the camp falling quickly behind him, hooves pounding the earth hard enough to send tremors through the grass. Each stride gathered more of him beneath it until the night wind dragged through his wool and the meadow seemed to rush backward beneath his charge.

His breathing grew harsh before it should have. Saliva threaded briefly from the corner of his mouth and disappeared behind him, and his foreleg came down wrong enough to break the rhythm of his stride. He caught himself without slowing and drove harder toward the sound.

A crash sounded somewhere ahead. Beeps drove harder.

The land rose gradually before him, hiding the darkness beyond its crest until he thundered over the top and the field opened below.

Karneth was there.

Two enormous direwolves had him between them, creatures far larger than anything that belonged in the ordinary woods and warped further by whatever the Orath had made of them. Moonlight found the pale coat of one as it circled wide, black corruption slick around its muzzle and eyes. Beneath its natural jaws, a second mouth had split through the flesh, smaller but crowded with hooked teeth that worked hungrily beneath the first.

The other seemed built from the dark itself, heavier through the shoulders and tall enough that its back nearly reached the dwarf’s head. Tar threaded its black fur and dripped from both jaws as it rushed him, the lower maw opening beneath the first until the whole front of its face seemed to come apart.

Karneth gave ground beneath the charge, boots carving through torn grass. His axe swept across the larger beast’s muzzle, turning both mouths aside just as the pale direwolf came around his unguarded flank.

It had nearly reached him when its attention broke.

Beeps stood atop the rise.

The pale direwolf slowed beneath the moonlight, hackles lifting along its spine. Both jaws remained open, the second flexing wetly beneath the first, but whatever hunger had carried it into the fight seemed to falter there, faced with the broad silhouette of the bramblehorn and the lowered crown of his horns.

Beeps took one heavy step down the hill.

The wolf measured him for a heartbeat. The hunt had changed. Whatever instinct still survived beneath the Orath reached its conclusion first, and the wolf wanted no part of him. It wheeled into the dark and fled. Karneth looked after it, bewildered, before the black direwolf crashed into him and sent him stumbling sideways. He caught himself, brought his axe up, and then his eyes found the shape charging down the hill.

His face split into a grin beneath his beard. “Glad to see you, boy! These ain’t shadowhounds!” He lifted his axe and pointed it at the corrupted beast.

“DRÁK VORRÛN KHAZ!”

Beeps covered nearly fifty feet in two enormous bounds.

Then he hit the direwolf like a landslide.

Both beasts left the ground.

The direwolf rolled twice through the grass before clawing its way upright, its two jaws snapping independently as it found Beeps again. Karneth was already on it. One axe bit deep into the beast’s shoulder as the bramblehorn wheeled around behind him, hooves carving black furrows through the earth. The wolf lunged for the dwarf, its upper jaws reaching while the lower maw opened beneath them for his belly.

It never reached him. Beeps crashed into its flank hard enough to throw its weight sideways, and Karneth barked a laugh as he tore the axe free.

“Aye! Again!”

The direwolf twisted toward the bramblehorn, its muzzles opening into a grotesque double bite, but Beeps gave it no space to gather itself. He drove beneath the ribs with his head low and shoulders square, forcing the beast backward into Karneth’s reach.

Dwarven steel found it from the other side. The wolf snapped between them in mounting fury, two mouths turning every bite into something wrong and difficult to read, but every turn only exposed it to the other. Between the dwarf and a bramblehorn bred for war, the direwolf had nowhere to settle. Steel waited on one side, two thousand pounds of horn and wool on the other.

Karneth was shouting now—orders, encouragement, profanity, perhaps all three—but Beeps needed none of it translated.

Forward.

Again.

Protect.

At last the direwolf broke from between them, black tar trailing from its jaws as it bounded aside and chose distance over another collision. It fled toward the trees at the edge of the field. Beeps went after it.

The direwolf had distance, but distance meant little once the bramblehorn found his stride. He thundered after it with the night rushing past as the wolf reached the trees first and cut hard at the last instant.

Beeps did not. His stone-heavy horns struck the young trunk with a crack that split the night. Wood burst beneath the impact, the whole tree shuddering before its crown began to lean.

The direwolf looked back, both jaws hanging open. For one brief, terrible instant, it seemed to understand.

It scrambled for open ground, claws ripping furrows through the earth, but the branches were already sweeping down. A howling shriek rose from beneath the falling branches, sharp enough to tear through the night, before the trunk struck with enough force to tremble through the meadow. Leaves and broken twigs exploded across the grass in its wake.

Then everything went still. Beeps stood amid the settling leaves, sides heaving, bits of branch caught in his wool. Karneth stared at the fallen tree and listened.

His gaze moved to Beeps. Then slowly back to the tree. Nothing.

The dwarf threw his head back and laughed. Beeps snorted as Karneth crossed the churned ground toward him, dragging one axe free from what remained of the direwolf.

“You ridiculous great bastard!”

The bramblehorn met him halfway. Karneth threw both arms around the thick wool of his neck and buried his face there for a moment, laughing as Beeps leaned into him hard enough to shove the dwarf half a step through the grass.

“Aye, aye.” Karneth thumped his side. “I’m glad to see you too.”

Another heavy snort answered him.

Karneth pulled back, still grinning, and glanced toward the crushed direwolf as its ruined body began to soften into black tar beneath the fallen tree. “Remind me never to stand between you and one of those.”

They started back toward camp together, Karneth keeping one hand against Beeps’s shoulder while Gwenneth and Mason hung loosely from the other. He talked most of the way, recounting a fight Beeps had already witnessed and improving several parts of it considerably with every retelling.

Beeps kept pace beside him, though his breathing never quite settled. Karneth did not notice.

They had covered perhaps half the distance when the familiar weight at his side suddenly fell away. Karneth walked several more steps before looking back with a puzzled smile.

“Come, boy.”

Beeps stood where he was.

Karneth returned and gave one of the saddle straps a gentle tug. “Don’t start with me now. We’ve got to check on—”

Still Beeps did not move.

The smile left Karneth’s face. “What is it?”

He stepped closer, running both hands through the heavy wool along Beeps’s shoulder and flank, searching for blood, torn flesh, anything that might explain the sudden refusal. He found nothing. Frowning now, he circled him and checked again, slower this time.

“What the… you dinna even get hit. I took every one.”

Beeps lowered his head. Karneth’s fingers moved slowly beneath the saddle straps, working through wool thick enough to hide half a hand. He had nearly reached the far side of Beeps’s neck when his knuckles brushed against something that did not give.

He froze.

For a moment he simply felt around it, brow furrowing as his fingers traced something small and hard buried close against the skin. It was too round for a thorn, too solid for a knot in the leather, and when he pressed deeper Beeps flinched beneath his hand.

Karneth looked up at him.

“Oi. What is this?”

The bramblehorn gave no answer beyond a shallow breath.

Karneth pushed the strap aside and parted the wool with both hands. What lay beneath had been hidden so completely that even now he could make little sense of it—dark, hard, tangled in dried blood and matted fur. He worked his fingers around it and pulled.

Beeps cried out. Karneth froze, but the thing had already come loose.

It dropped heavily into his palm.

A head.

No larger than a clenched fist, black and misshapen, with several dead eyes collapsed into its shell. One broken mandible still gleamed wetly where it had been buried in Beeps’s flesh. Karneth’s mouth parted.

An oakweaver.

The world seemed to narrow around him.

“No.”

Beeps shifted his weight.

“No. No, no.”

The bramblehorn’s front legs bent first. Slowly, with none of his usual stubborn resistance, he lowered himself toward the grass. One hind leg followed, then the other, until his great body settled heavily onto the earth.

Karneth was already at the wound.

He drove both hands back into the wool, spreading it as far as he could, searching for something he might have missed. The flesh beneath was swollen around the puncture, the blood there no longer bright but thick and almost brown where it had dried deep within the coat.

Old blood.

Karneth stared at it.

Not the wolves.

Not tonight.

His eyes dropped to the thing still clenched in his fist. With a roar, he brought both hands together around it. Chitin cracked between his palms. He crushed it again, harder, until black fragments and pieces of broken mandible spilled through his fingers into the grass.

“No!”

He ground what remained beneath his boot, once, twice, then wheeled back toward Beeps as though destroying it might somehow have undone what it had already done.

“It’s all right, boy.” Karneth dropped to his knees beside him. “It’s all right.”

Beeps looked at him.

“The priestess is nearly done, aye?” Karneth’s words came quickly now, each one chasing the last. “She’ll fix ya. That’s what she does. We get you back and she puts a bit of that holy nonsense in you and you’ll be right as rain.”

He reached beneath Beeps’s jaw and tugged gently.

“Come on.”

Beeps did not rise.

Karneth pulled again, harder this time. “Come on, you stupid beast! Camp’s right there!”

Nothing.

The dwarf’s hands remained against him.

Then his eyes wandered back to the wound.

He saw the dried blood again. The swelling buried beneath days of wool. The thing that had ridden beneath the saddle straps all the way from Ilvarin’del.

And suddenly the forest was around him again.

“Come on…”

Oakweavers pouring through the dead trees. Smaller ones bursting from the bodies of the Hellves. Beeps crashing through them with Karneth on his back while the whole cursed wood came apart around them.

Days ago.

Karneth’s grip loosened.

“Not like this…”

Beeps had carried it out of Ilvarin’del. Carried it through every mile since.

Karneth looked at the animal before him—the heavy chest still working, the legs that had crossed field after field without complaint, the great wool-covered body that had hidden the wound so completely that not one of them had seen it.

Bramblehorns were hard creatures. Stubborn things. Too stubborn, Karneth had always said, for anything sensible to kill. Beeps had proved him right for longer than he should have been able to.

And then, tonight, Karneth needed him somewhere in the dark. Beeps had run. The dwarf bowed his head.

“Oh. Oh, no…”

Karneth moved around in front of him and lowered himself fully into the grass. He took Beeps’s great head between both arms and pulled him close, beard disappearing into the thick wool along his cheek.

“Ya should’ve stayed like I told ya!”

His voice broke.

Karneth looked toward the forest far on the horizon and squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears came anyway, disappearing almost at once into his beard. Beeps remained still against him for several breaths.

Then something warm dragged slowly across Karneth’s cheek.

The dwarf opened his eyes.

Beeps’s tongue disappeared back into his mouth.

Karneth stared at him.

In all the miles they had traveled, through every shove and snort and indignant bleat, Beeps had never once done that. A laugh escaped Karneth, though there was nothing of laughter in it.

“Aye.” He pulled Beeps closer. “Never known one quite like you, boy.”

The bramblehorn’s breath passed warm against his neck. Karneth held him there, one hand buried deep in the wool behind his head, his thumb moving slowly across the coarse fur as though repetition alone might keep the moment from changing.

Something dark caught the moonlight.

Karneth stopped. At first it was only a thin wetness at the corner of Beeps’s eye. Then it gathered, too black and too thick to be tears, creeping slowly into the wool beneath it.

Karneth’s hand went still.

“No. No, you’re stronger than this…”

Another dark line formed beneath the other eye.

“No, no…”

Beeps looked at him. Karneth knew that black. He had seen it run from mouths and wounds. Seen what came after. Seen living things disappear behind it and rise as something else.

His arms tightened around Beeps’s head.

“Please…”

The noble bramblehorn from the mountains of Taarn Castali grunted, then shifted. For one terrible instant, the dwarf’s eyes widened as he thought Beeps was trying to stand, but Beeps only leaned forward. His heavy head settled against the dwarf’s shoulder, neck curving close until Karneth was nearly buried beneath the warmth and wool of him.

Karneth held him.

And with what strength remained, Beeps held his dwarf back.