The dwarfs had been travelling for over a day, traversing Dibna’s guild hall without incident, through long vaulted tunnels and numerous halls and were already at the second deep with still no sign of opposition.
Uthor had planned it that way, instructing Ralkan to take them down seldom trodden paths least likely to be infested by skaven and to the Great Hall in the third deep. On no less than three occasions though, the lorekeeper had led them to dead ends or cave-ins, his recollection of the hold growing increasingly unreliable the farther the dwarfs delved. Often Ralkan would stop completely, and peer around, perplexity etched on his face as if he had never been in the tunnel or chamber in which the throng was standing. Strangely, a word from Drimbold in the lorekeeper’s ear and they were on their way again. The Grey dwarf merely said he was “urging the lorekeeper to concentrate” when asked what he’d said to Ralkan.
Another day from their goal, according to Ralkan, and Uthor had decided to make camp in a huge hall of deeds — the entire throng, almost two hundred dwarfs strong, barely took up a quarter of it such was the immensity of the room. Mosaics, like those upon the long stairway to the King’s Chamber, were etched onto the walls and he and Halgar regarded one as most of the other dwarfs were setting up camp.
“From before the War of Vengeance then?” Uthor asked.
The image was that of a huge dragon, a beast of the elder ages. Red scales like incandescent flame covered its massive body and a yellow, barrel-ribbed chest bulged as it spewed a plume of black fire from its flaring nostrils.
“Galdrakk,” Halgar murmured beneath his breath.
Uthor’s look was questioning.
“Galdrakk the Red. It was a creature of the ancient world, old beyond reckoning,” the longbeard said, deigning to elucidate no further.
Uthor was reminded of the dire words in the dammaz kron, “A beast is awoke in the underdeep…”
A dwarf hero, wearing archaic armour, was depicted warding off the conflagration with an upraised shield. A host of dwarf dead lay around him, rendered as charred skeletons.
“…it is our doom.”
A second image showed the hero and a group of his kinsdwarfs sealing the dragon in the bowels of the earth, a great rock fall entrapping it for all time.
“It stirs the blood to think of such deeds,” said Uthor proudly.
“And yet it reminds me of our faded glories,” muttered Halgar with resignation. “I will take the first watch,” he added after a momentary silence.
“As you wish, old—” Uthor began after a moment, but stopped when he realised the longbeard was already walking slowly away.
“You’d think he would remove that grobi arrow,” said Drimbold to Thalgrim.
The two dwarfs were taking second watch, sat outside one of the two grand doorways into the hall of deeds, and to pass the time were observing their comrades.
“Perhaps he cannot,” Thalgrim replied, “if the tip is close to his heart.”
Halgar was laid on his back, the snapped black arrow shaft protruding upwards. Apparently the longbeard was asleep, but his eyes were wide open.
“How does he do that?” Drimbold asked.
“My uncle Bolgrim used to walk in his sleep,” offered Thalgrim. “Once he excavated an entire mine shaft whilst slumbering.”
Drimbold looked back at his companion incredulously. The lodefinder shrugged in response. His face was illuminated in the blue-grey glow of a brightstone; a fabled piece of brynduraz hewn from the mines of Gunbad. Several chunks of it were set throughout the hall; though the dwarfs could see quite well in the dark, a little additional light never hurt.
Uthor had forbidden the lighting of fires, and ordered the few torches set in sconces around the chamber to be doused as they slept. They would impair the dwarfs’ otherwise excellent night vision and they needed every advantage they could get against the rat-kin. The stink of smoke or cooking food might also attract the skaven and he wanted to fight them on his terms only, once they had reached the Great Hall. No cooking also meant the dwarfs were reduced to eating only stone bread and dried rations. Thalgrim fed a hunk of the granite-based victual into his mouth and crunched it loudly.
Drimbold had no taste for it — he’d been on stone bread for the last two days having consumed all of his other rations — and made a face. Then he watched as Thalgrim reached underneath his miner’s pot helmet, a clump of stubbed out candles affixed to it by their waxy emissions, and produced what looked like a piece of moulding fungus.
“What is that?” The pungent aroma made the Grey dwarf’s beard bristle, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“Lucky chuf,” Thalgrim explained. The ancient piece of cheese in the lodefinder’s hand looked half-eaten.
“I’ve only needed to use it once,” he said, taking a long, deep whiff. “I was trapped for three weeks in a shaft made by the Tinderback miners… Weak-willed and thin-boned that lot, much like their tunnels.”
Drimbold licked his lips.
Thalgrim saw the gesture and put the chuf back under his helmet, eyeing the Grey dwarf warily.
“Perhaps you should get some sleep,” he said. “I can manage here.”
It wasn’t a request.
Drimbold was about to protest when he noticed the stout miner’s mattock, one end fashioned into a pick, at Thalgrim’s side. He nodded instead, and dragging his pack with him — now burgeoning with loot once more — went off to find a suitable alcove out of the lodefinder’s eyeshot.
Drimbold sat down against one of the massive columns that lined the edge of the hall of deeds. So massive was it that he was shielded from Thalgrim’s view. Satisfied, he went back to surveying the slumbering throng.
Almost everyone was asleep. Dwarfs were lined top to toe, despite the fact they had the room to spread out — gregariousness and brotherhood amongst their own kin was ingrained since the time of the ancestors. One or two were still awake, smoking supping or talking quietly. The majority of the Grim Brotherhood looked comatose, having swigged enough beer to kill several mountain oxen. It seemed the slayers had a nose for alcohol and had discovered another hidden ale store in the deep. “Brew stops”, as they were sometimes known, were not uncommon — the holds were vast and should a dwarf be forced to undertake a long journey, he would have need of such libations. Of course some were merely secret stores left by forgetful and aging brewmasters.
Azgar was the only one of the Grim Brotherhood still up. He was sitting at the perimeter of the camp, axe in hand as he stared at the outer darkness. The tattoos on his body seemed to glow in the light cast by the ring of brightstones nearby, giving the slayer an unreal quality. Drimbold recognised some as wards of Grimnir, he’d also heard the slayer mention that he bore one for each and every monster he had ever slain. The Grey dwarf suppressed a shudder — Azgar was nearly covered head to foot. Drimbold looked away, in case the slayer caught his eye.
Reverberant snoring emanated from the prone form of Gromrund through his mighty warhelm that the hammerer — for reasons unknown to the rest of the throng — still wore, his head propped up on a rock. He was divested of his other armour, which sat next to him in careful and meticulous order.
Hakem was close by — it seemed the two had reached some kind of understanding — laid with his hands across his chest, one clamped over his gold purse. The ufdi wore beard-irons clasped over his finely preened braids and softened his sleep with a small velvet pillow. Rather unnervingly, the merchant-thane had one eye open and was looking directly at Drimbold! The Grey dwarf quickly averted his gaze again.
Deciding he was finished observing, he began to settle down for what was left of the night. His eyelids felt heavy and were sloping shut when a shallow cry snapped him awake. He reached for his hand axe instinctively, but relaxed when he realised it was Dunrik, waking from some night terror. Borri was quickly at his cousin’s side, a few other dwarfs who had been disturbed by the sudden commotion grumbling as they got back to their own business.
The beardling was whispering something to Dunrik, so low and soothing that Drimbold could barely hear it. His interest was piqued when he caught something about a “lady” and “a secret”.
Was Borri marrying into money and he didn’t want the others to know? Drimbold then wondered if the dwarf had joined the mission to Karak Varn to secure part of his bride’s dowry. The thought made his blood run cold. It meant that Borri was a salvager, just like him!
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The Great Hall should be just ahead,” Ralkan announced.
The two hundred-strong throng had reached as far down as the third deep, eschewing the use of scouts as the lorekeeper was the only one who knew where they were going and he couldn’t be risked sent ahead with only a small bodyguard. Should they be slain or the rest of the army cut off from them they would surely meet with calamity. Strength in numbers: that was the dwarf way. The dwarfs need not have worried, for they had got this far without encountering any resistance. That very fact unnerved Halgar who peered anxiously into every shadow, stopping and raising his axe in readiness at any incongruous sound or tenuous sign of danger.
“Can’t you feel it?” he hissed to Uthor, as the throng marched though what must once have been a mighty feast hall, its hospitality long since eroded.
“Feel what, venerable one?” Uthor asked, genuinely curious.
“Eyes watching us…” uttered the longbeard, squinting at the darkness clinging to the edges of the hall, “…in the blackness.”
Uthor followed Halgar’s gaze but could feel or see nothing.
“If they are,” he said assuredly, “then we will put them out, one by one.” Uthor gave a bullish smile at the thought, but the longbeard seemed not to notice and continued his paranoid vigil.
The throng left the feast hall and proceeded down a short, but broad passageway. As they rounded a corner, Ralkan leading them, the lorekeeper said, “Just beyond this bend and across the gallery of kings, there lies the Great Hall…”
Peering through a wide arch as he joined a dumbstruck Ralkan at the threshold to the room, Uthor saw a massive, open plaza stretch away from them. Immense stone statues of the kings of Karak Varn lined both flanking walls, though some were diminished by time and bore evidence of dilapidation. Magnificent though the statues were, it was the gaping chasm rent into the cracked and crumbling flagstones that got his attention. Like a vast and jagged maw torn in the very earth, it filled the entire width of the room, exuding thick trails of smoke, and blocked the dwarfs’ progress.
“It’s deep,” muttered Halgar, “all the way down to the mountain’s core. Likely a wound made when Karak Varn was wracked by earthquakes and the Black Water first flooded its halls, so the legends hold to be true.”
Uthor and Rorek stood beside the longbeard and peered over the edge of the chasm. Darkness reigned below; only a hazy, indistinct glowing line in all the blackness dispelled the myth that the tear in the earth had no end and yawned into eternity.
Uthor imagined a great reservoir of lava at the nadir of the gaping pit: bubbling and spitting, venting great geysers of steam, chunks of molten rock dissolving in its heat and carried by a thick syrupy current. Briefly his mind wandered to what else might lurk in that abyss, kept warm beside the cauldron of liquid fire. He dismissed the thought quickly, unwilling to countenance such a thing.
“We have to find a way across this,” he said instead. “Is that strong enough to bear our weight?”
Uthor pointed towards a wide, but ramshackle, bridge spanning the mighty gorge. It was crudely made, seemingly bolted together without design or care. Such slipshod construction was anathema to the dwarfs, especially an engineer.
“Umgak,” Rorek muttered. The engineer was crouched down next to the bridge, which was little more than a roped affair with narrow struts of weather-beaten wood. He turned to Uthor. “Not of dawi manufacture,” he added, much louder. “Likely it was made by grobi or rat-kin.” The engineer curled his lip in distaste.
“We should find another way,” Gromrund stated grimly, having joined the dwarfs at the precipice of the chasm. “I do not trust the craft of neither greenskin nor skaven, and I have no wish to fall, honourless, to my doom.”
Uthor chewed it over. Crossing the bridge was not without risk.
“We cannot go back,” he said after a momentary silence. “And I doubt the lorekeeper could even recommend an alternative route, let alone lead us to it.” He gestured to Ralkan, who was stood off to one side of the throng with Borri and Dunrik, muttering incessantly.
“I don’t understand…” he garbled. “I don’t remember this being here.” The words spewed from his mouth repeatedly like a mantra, his gaze lost and faraway.
“It’s all right,” Borri said, trying to soothe the addled dwarf but without success.
“I will not trust my fate to a grobi bridge,” Gromrund asserted, planting the pommel of his great hammer into the ground as if that was an end to the discussion. “This is folly,” he added, “and I am not the only one who thinks it so.”
Uthor moved his glowering gaze from the hammerer and swept it over the throng waiting behind him.
The warriors mustered close together, banners resplendent with their ancestral badges touching. Dour faced clan leaders stood at the forefront; ironbreakers, their grim faced masks unreadable, were alongside. Slightly removed from them were the slayers — wild-eyed and bellicose of demeanour. There were dissenting voices, Uthor heard them grumbling to each other.
“We have come this far,” he said, addressing the throng, “and endured much. The names etched in the book of remembering are testament to that,” he added, pointing to Ralkan, who wore the tome on his back. “I would not be thwarted by a lowly bridge and have those names besmirched; the honour of their deeds — Nay! Their sacrifice, be for nought.”
Silence descended at Uthor’s impassioned rhetoric. Several shame-faced dwarfs looked back at him; others couldn’t meet his fiery gaze and looked down at their boots instead.
Uthor stood there for a moment, basking in this victory and then turned to scowl at Gromrund, the hammerer almost livid.
“We take the bridge,” Uthor stated.
Rorek was getting to his feet, fairly oblivious to the tension and the speech. The engineer took a good, long look at the bridge and sucked his teeth.
“I’ll need to test it.”
Rorek yanked on one of the guide ropes, attached to a broad metal stake rammed into the rock and earth, and the entire bridge shuddered. But it held.
He was aware of the charged silence around him as he took his first faltering step onto the bridge itself. The engineer felt for the rope around his waist to make sure it was still there. He daren’t look back to see if Thundin and Uthor were still holding onto it. The rope was his. At least he knew that would hold.
After what seemed like an hour, Rorek had reached the middle of the bridge. It creaked menacingly with every step and swayed slightly with the warm air currents emanating from below. As far down as it was, the dwarf could still feel the heat from the subterranean lava stream; smell its sulphur stink faintly in his nostrils. Some of the wooden struts were placed far apart, or were simply missing, and the engineer needed to concentrate hard on his feet to prevent any mishap. He stared downward and swallowed as the abyss stared back.
Having got this far and with a hand on each guide rope, Rorek was growing more confident and progressed steadily. Relieved, he reached the other side at last and waved the others on.
“No more than four at a time,” he called back to the throng, “and watch your step, the way is perilous.”
Thundin’s expression darkened as he turned to Uthor, who was gathering up the rope.
“This is going to take a while.”
Uthor had posted lookouts at the entrance to the gallery of kings, and at the edge of the chasm to watch the exit to the vast plaza. Whilst they crossed the bridge the dwarfs would be vulnerable. He did not want to be caught unawares by skaven saboteurs lyin
g in wait for them on the other side, or ready to spring out and cut the ramshackle structure from under them as they were crossing en masse.
Steadily, in groups of four, the throng made its way across the bridge. The dwarfs crossed without incident and soon there were many more warriors on the far side than the near. Uthor instructed the guards at the edge of the chasm to cross. It left him, Halgar and two miners from the Sootbeard clan, Furgil and Norri, who’d been stationed at the gallery entrance. As he called them over Uthor noticed a straggler, hunting around the statues on their side of the chasm.
“You too, Grey dwarf.”
Drimbold looked up from his rummaging, having detached himself from the main throng long ago to explore the vast room, and started to wander over.
Uthor turned to face Halgar. “I will guard the way,” he said.
The longbeard grumbled and went to step onto the bridge, but missed the guide rope, clawing air as he fought to snatch it. The bridge swayed violently with his displaced weight.
“Venerable one!” Uthor cried, reaching out for Halgar’s arm. The longbeard found the guide rope at last and smacked Uthor’s hand away.
“I can cross well enough unaided,” he snarled and started to tramp gingerly away, feeling for the rope with his hands, rather than looking for it with his eyes.
Uthor turned back to Drimbold, who was getting ready to set foot on the bridge, the Sootbeards waiting behind him.
“I will follow the great beard,” he whispered, with a glance at Halgar who had already reached the halfway point. “Wait until he is safely across before you proceed.”
Uthor hurried on after the longbeard, but in his haste misjudged his footing and trapped his boot between two struts. He swore out loud and by the time he’d freed it, Halgar was on the other side, rudely refusing any offers of help and bustling past the clan dwarfs in his way.
Nearly two-thirds of the way across and with his boot now loose, Uthor made to move on, aware that the rope bridge was creaking ominously. He glanced back. Drimbold was at about the halfway point, his massive pack thumping up and down on his back with every step. Furgil and Norri were a short way behind him.
[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker Page 12