Rurik's Arc

Chapter 21 of 22

The stone held, but Rurik could not see behind it. The enemy dug on the far side, hidden by the choke of rubble. He heard picks bite rock. Scrapes. A grunt. But he could not tell if they had cleared one stone or ten. He stood at the iron door with his ear to the seam and learned nothing. "They could break through in an hour," Rurik said. "Or a day. I can't see how close they are." Thorin came up the rock with his father's axe across his back. The old dwarf pressed his palm flat to the fallen slab and held it there. He closed his eyes. "Feel it," he said. "Don't look. Feel." Rurik set his hand beside Thorin's. The stone hummed under his fingers. Each pick strike traveled through the rock as a small shock. Thorin counted them under his breath. "Close," he said. "Too close. They're at the last course." Bjorn spat. "Then we wait for them to fall through and take us one by one." Rurik's belt-knife still hung at Bjorn's hip. He did not soften it. "That's a bad death." Rurik would not wait. If he could not see them, he would make them show themselves. "Gunnar," he said. "Can you unseat the door fast?" Gunnar knelt at the hinges, hammer in his fist. He had driven the pins that closed this door. Now Rurik wanted them out. "Aye," Gunnar said. "But you open that, they pour in." "That's what I want." Rurik pointed at the choked gap. "They think they dig into a blind wall. When the last stone drops, they'll rush it. Blind, in a line, one after another. We open the door beside it and hit their flank as they climb through." Thorin nodded once. "Trap the trappers." Gunnar tapped the first pin loose but held it. They set the line. Rurik put his best men at the door, shields low. He kept his own place at the front. He waited with his hand on the humming stone and counted the strikes. The blows quickened. Then a stone tumbled loose on the far side. Daylight and dust spilled through the gap. The first enemy shoved his shoulders into the hole and started to climb. "Now," Rurik said. Gunnar knocked the pins. The door fell open. Rurik's line struck the flank of the climbing men. The enemy came through blind and bunched, just as he'd said. His warband cut them down in the choke before they could form. The mountain men pressed from the high rock. It was short and ugly. The gap filled with the enemy's own dead, and the digging stopped. Rurik stood in the settling dust. The trap had worked. But the bodies now jammed the gap worse than the stone had. He could not see past them either. And from the north, a horn sounded. The main column had come up behind their diggers, in full strength, and now they knew exactly where his door was.