The merchant thane brought his attention back to Dunrik. It was clear that he too had his own travails.
“I heard your screams when we last made camp,” said Hakem, his tone abruptly serious. “Your scars go deeper than the flesh, don’t they? I have seen their like before…”
Dunrik didn’t bite.
Hakem persisted, anyway.
“…from the barbed whips of a grobi slave master.” Dunrik twisted sharply to face him, his expression fiery.
Borri overheard and was turning around, about to intervene, when Dunrik’s fierce gaze stopped him.
“I mean no disrespect,” Hakem said calmly, noting that Borri had continued on his way, albeit slightly uncomfortably. Gromrund, who walked on the other side of Dunrik, shifted a little in his armour, too.
“My great, great grandfather was captured by grobi for a short time, taken whilst driving a caravan to one of the old elgi settlements before the War of Vengeance,” Hakem went on. “The greenskins ambushed them and slew many of our warriors. They turned the wagons into cages for our kin and were taking them, my three-times grandsire included, to their lair when a party of rangers found them. Three days my kin had been on the road before they were rescued and in that time the grobi had visited much pain and suffering upon them.”
Gromrund, having heard the entire recounted tale, turned to regard Hakem with newfound respect but stayed quiet.
“His face and body were scarred much like yours,” Hakem said to Dunrik, “he showed me just before he passed on into the Halls of the Ancestors.”
Dunrik’s anger drained away and a look of resignation passed across his face.
“I was held at Iron Rock,” he said, voice low and full of bitterness, “taken whilst patrolling the Varag Kadrin.” Dunrik breathed deep as if recalling a dark memory.
“Of the twenty-three of my kin brought there in chains, only I escaped the urk fortress alive.” Dunrik was silent for a beat as he revisited the stinking dungeon, heard again the tortured screams of his brethren, felt anew the savage beatings of his vindictive captors.
“I did not do so unscathed,” he added, not just referring to his lasting physical injuries.
The Everpeak noble’s face was wretched with the greenskin’s “attentions”. A long, jagged line ran from forehead to chin; some of Dunrik’s beard was left patchy in its path. Weals of still reddened flesh pockmarked the right side of his face, burns left by the brander’s iron, and he was missing three teeth.
Gromrund, who had respectfully remained silent throughout the exchange, could not help but be moved by such tales of honourable forbearance and grievous loss, gripped the dwarf’s shoulder. As he did, he caught sight of where Dunrik’s left ear had been almost chewed off — a wound kept mostly hidden by his helmet.
“Dreng tromm,” the hammerer muttered. “Dreng tromm,” echoed Hakem.
Dunrik stayed silent.
Hakem, suddenly aware they had fallen into solemn lamentation, and slightly regretful of his questioning, sought to quickly lighten the mood.
“Tell me,” he said to Dunrik, eyes brightening, “have you ever seen a more magnificent hammer than this?”
“A fine weapon,” Dunrik remarked.
“Indeed, it garners that reaction often,” Hakem replied, a little perturbed as he noted the smirk on Gromrund’s face just visible below his massive warhelm.
“It is the Honakinn Hammer,” he explained, aware of Gromrund’s sudden interest, “and I bear it proudly as an ancient symbol of my clan. As heir to the fortune of my father, merchant lord of Barak Varr, it is my great honour to carry it into battle. Make no mistake, this is a very serious undertaking,” Hakem told them, indicating the thick leather strap that bound the weapon to his wrist. “This cord has never been cut, for if it ever was and the hammer was lost, the prosperity of my clan and my line would be lost along with it.”
“A noble undertaking,” said Dunrik solemnly.
“Indeed,” Gromrund muttered reluctantly.
“Certainly, the fall of the Honaks would dull the lustre of the hold,” Hakem went on. “Tell me, Everpeak dwarf, have you ever seen the wonder that is the Sea Gate?”
Gromrund grumbled loudly. “Whether you have or have not, you are about to be regaled of its splendour,” he barked. “I have no stomach for it,” he added gruffly and stormed off, shouldering his way further up the column to find out what was causing the delay.
“Put your backs into it,” Thalgrim chided, standing atop a flat stone so he could see his miners working at the door impeding their path.
The stone barrier sat right at the end of the bottle-necked section of the tunnel and Thalgrim assumed the Great Hall was beyond it, this lesser door a secondary way into the room. The lodefinder realised now that the Wide Western Way was narrowed by design, to make it easier to defend should it be invaded. A wise strategy and one he applauded, only not right now.
Most of the throng were grouped together in the narrow defile, shoulders touching with a wall at either flank. The stone door being pushed by the Sootbeards wasn’t particularly tall or broad, but it was obviously thick and heavy. Rorek, with Uthor at his shoulder, had already released a series of stone bolts by carefully manipulating the door’s ingenious locking mechanism. Much of its resistance came from the fact that it hadn’t been opened in many years, but eventually the door yielded to the miners’ exertions, and ground open noisily.
“At last,” breathed Uthor, finding the closeness of his kinsdwarfs around him and the enveloping darkness disconcerting. “This tunnel is the perfect place for an ambush.”
Thundin saw a strange globe-like object fly overhead then heard the gurgled warning of his kinsdwarfs before he saw the billowing cloud of yellowish gas. Bordak, one of his fellow ironbreakers fell back clutching his throat as bloody foam bubbled down his face and beard.
They were wedged in the bottle-neck of the Wide Western Way, many other dwarfs of the throng having already moved through the stone door and into the Great Hall beyond it. Thundin and his ironbreakers were trapped with the rest, shoulder-to-shoulder with their kinsdwarfs and strangely vulnerable.
“Gas!” cried the ironbeard. The acrid taste of the noxious fumes was upon his tongue before he could clamp his mouth shut. He watched as three more filth-stained globes soared out of the darkness and into the packed ranks of the dwarfs. He was powerless to intervene as they shattered on raised shields and unsuspecting helmets, disgorging their foul contents amongst the throng.
The dwarfs retreated instinctively, and those that remained on the near side of the door were herded back into the bottle-neck.
Thundin caught a snatched view of the Great Hall through the small portal and massing bodies. He could only guess at its immensity as the others, seemingly so far away and oblivious to the attack, gathered inside.
“Back into the Wide Western Way,” he bellowed, risking another mouthful of the gas, his voice croaking as the virulent poison wracked his throat and insides. Head reeling, he felt the press of warriors at his back moving steadily out of the bottle-neck. He vaguely saw the opening through his blurring vision when two concealed alcoves opened up on either side of him. Ratmen wearing strange, sacking hoods tied at the neck with a filtered muzzle and dirt smeared-goggles, poured out brandishing knives.
One came at him with vicious abandon, cackling with malevolent glee as all around Thundin his ironbreakers died, their armour no defence against the invasive poison.
Choking on his own blood, Thundin smashed aside the skaven’s dagger thrust with his shield and hacked off its head with his axe. A loud crack echoed inside his helmet as he caught a flash of fire in the darkness and the whiff of burning. Another ironbreaker fell, a smoking wound in his chest plate.
Thundin was slowing now. He couldn’t breathe, tasted blood in his mouth and felt it trickle from his nose and ears. He clutched at his throat, dropping his shield to claw at the metal gorget around his neck. An immense flare of green and incandescent flame surged
from an alcove further up the bottle-neck to his left. Thundin was blinded for a moment. In his disorientation he thought he heard screams, as if he were listening to them from the bottom of a deep, dark well. Through the mucus and blood in his nostrils, he caught the stench of burning flesh. The ironbeard wanted to retch but couldn’t. He slumped to his knees, his armour heavy and removed his helmet. The effort to hold his breath with it on was suffocating. As he gazed bleary-eyed at the carnage of dead dwarfs all around, something large loomed over him. Thundin’s nerveless fingers let the axe slip from his grasp.
“Valaya,” he croaked with his final breath as the beast crushed him.
Dunrik rolled; the lumbering rat beast tore into the ground with its claws in the dwarfs wake as he desperately tried to reach Thundin who lay prone in a rapidly expanding miasma of sulphurous fog. Trapped in the bottle-neck, the fighting was fierce and close. All around him his brothers fought hammer and axe against a seemingly endless tide of skaven.
The creature before him had come with the rat-kin, lumbering out of the shadows like some cruel experiment. It was huge and grotesquely muscled; a horrific fusion of ogre and skaven. Its body was wrapped in thick, pus-soaked bandages and ravaged by sores and overly distended muscle growth. Dagger-like claws extended from fingers encrusted with dirt and dwarf blood. Blinded, the beast tracked the dwarf by smell alone and with lethal efficiency. The rat ogre sniffed for his prey and came at the Everpeak dwarf again, its savage backswing sending a hooded skaven screaming backwards into the melee.
Dunrik ducked the swiping arm of the rat ogre, its claws digging four deep furrows into the bottle-neck wall. The dwarf came forward quickly, beneath the creature’s guard and rammed the spike of his axe into its frothing jaw, so hard that it punched straight through and came out of the rat ogre’s skull. Dunrik ripped the axe free, with a roar of defiance, gore and brain matter showering from the gaping wound. In its death throes the beast came on still. It was about to lunge for Dunrik with the last of its fading strength when Hakem, who was also trapped with the skaven attackers, shattered its wrist with a blow from the Honakinn Hammer. The weapon’s runes glowed dully as the merchant thane fought, a second blow crumpling what was left of the rat ogre’s skull.
Dunrik nodded a hasty thanks and then pointed to the door to the Great Hall. Nearly half the throng had already filed through, but the tail end was being ravaged by poison gas as they struggled to turn and fight the skaven massing behind them, realising slowly they were under attack.
Hakem nodded his understanding and the two dwarfs ran to the stone door, covering the short distance quickly. They held their breath in unison as they plunged into the cloud of poison gas eking through it. A few dwarfs of the Firehand clan were battling furiously against a horde of hooded skaven at the threshold to the room. Borri, having been pushed further down the bottle-neck in the press of the fighting, was amongst them just beyond the door arch and inside the Great Hall itself.
He met the gaze of Dunrik across the open doorway, hacking down one of the ratmen with his axe. Borri’s eyes were pleading when he realised what Dunrik was about to do.
Anguish crushing him, Dunrik heaved against the stone door with Hakem at his side and a few of the Firehand dwarfs, the rest of the clan warriors forming a hastily arranged shield wall to protect them. The door yielded quickly this time and scraped shut with a thudding echo of stone on stone, the thick bolts sliding into hidden recesses automatically. Dunrik looked down at the locking mechanism and smashed it. There would be no opening it.
“Magnificent…” Uthor gazed in wonderment at the Great Hall of Karak Varn. As leader of the throng, he was the first through and was vaguely aware of the others amassing in his wake.
By far the biggest chamber they had been in yet, the Great Hall was supported by a veritable forest of symmetrically arranged columns that stretched down its full length. At one end of the mighty room there was an immense hearth fashioned to resemble the ancestor god, Grungni, his wide open mouth giving life to the flames that must have once blazed in it. Statues lined the walls, interposed with bronze brazier pans made into the image of the engineers who had fashioned them, immortalising the dwarfs for all time, their outstretched hands cupping the dormant coals within. Shadows hugged the walls and pooled thickly around each of the columns. The Great Hall was gloomy, despite the firelight. There were stone tables throughout. The king’s resided at the top of a rectangular plateau — broad stairs leading up to it — and overlooked the rest.
“Here, it begins,” Uthor murmured beneath his breath, privately congratulating himself. “Here, we take it all back.”
“Dunrik!”
Uthor heard Borri’s cry from the front of the throng before the thunderous, booming retort of the stone door to the Great Hall slamming shut, and was arrested from his brief moment of vainglory.
Skaven infested the doorway behind him, cut off from the rest of the horde, and tendrils of gas evaporated around it. Several dwarfs littered the floor of the Great Hall, spitting blood and snot.
“Turn!” he bellowed. “Turn, we are under attack!”
Azgar throttled the skaven warrior with one hand, right in the thick of the fighting at the edge of the bottle-neck and the broader section of the Wide Western Way, trying to battle a way out for his kin. The ratman’s eyes burst with the sheer pressure exerted by the muscle-bound slayer, coating the inside of its goggles in sticky crimson. Discarding the creature like an unwanted rag, Azgar freed up his hand to disembowel a second onrushing skaven with a brutal upswing of his chained axe.
The fighting was close; so close he smelled the sweat of his brothers around him, tasted blood on the air, and heard their deathsongs in his ears. The sound of killing became a macabre chorus to the doleful dirge as ratmen funnelled into the churning blades of the Grim Brotherhood, held in the bottle-neck and unable to get out. From the Wide Western Way the skaven came at them in their droves, hemming the dwarfs in.
Azgar cursed loudly as one of his tattooed kinsdwarfs was dragged silently to his doom by a vicious swarm of rats. No way for a slayer to meet his end, he thought bitterly, hoping that his own death would be more glorious.
A muted scream and a wash of hot fluid splashing against the side of Azgar’s face got his attention — the stink of copper filled his nostrils and the slayer realised it was blood. He turned and looked up as a gargantuan rat ogre loomed over him, the beast casting aside two wet hunks of armoured flesh that had once been a dwarf warrior.
Metal plates, ravaged by rust, were fused to the monster’s body like scales and it wore a cone-like helmet with a perforated grille at the muzzle — but hinged so that it could still bite — and two holes for its malevolent, red eyes. It swung a gore-splattered ball and chain that had been bolted to its wrist; a serrated boar spear was grafted to the other in place of a hand.
Azgar’s flesh burned. He noticed the tattoos of Grimnir blazing brightly on his body and then the glowing, black-green rock studding the rat ogre’s torso from between the cracks in its scale-armour.
Roaring a challenge, spittle frothing from beneath its helmet, the beast loped forward, with ball and chain swinging.
Azgar smiled, gripping his axe as he fixed the hulking mutant in his sights. “Come on,” he said. “Come to me.”
“Open the door,” Uthor demanded. “I will not leave them to be massacred.”
The half of the throng inside the Great Hall of Karak Varn had slain the meagre few skaven that had got through before Dunrik and Hakem had shut out the rest.
The throng waited in pensive silence behind the thane of Karak Kadrin, listening to the muted sounds of battle, dulled by thick stone, through the closed entry door.
“The locking mechanism is ruined, I cannot release it,” said Rorek, one of those to have made it through, crouching by the doorway and replacing his tools in his belt.
“Can it be broken down?” Uthor asked desperately, switching his attention to the lodefinder, Thalgrim, all of the Sootbeard
miners having made it into the Great Hall.
“Given several days…” said Thalgrim, rubbing his chin. “Perhaps.”
“We must get through,” urged Borri, a slightly high-pitched, hysterical tone to his voice. “My cousin is on the other side. I saw the rat-kin hordes through the fog, they couldn’t possible prevail against such numbers. We must get to them.”
“We cannot!” Uthor snapped, enraged at himself more than the beardling. His face softened abruptly at the pain on Borri’s face.
“I’m sorry, lad,” he said, placing his hand upon the young dwarf’s shoulder and looking him in the eyes. “Their names will be remembered.”
It was not supposed to be this way: desperate, divided… defeated. The thane felt his shoulders sagging as the burden of his oath exerted itself upon him. Had he been wrong? Was Gromrund right? Had he led them to folly? Aware of all eyes upon him, Uthor found inner steel and straightened up to address the throng.
“Secure the Great Hall, make barricades and set guards on every exit,” he ordered the clan leaders. “We are but a hundred dwarfs,” he added, “let them come in their thousands. They are but the rancid surf that breaks upon our rocks; each of us is a link in a suit of mail. Stay together, remain strong, and their blades will blunt and break against us.”
Chittering, squeaking laughter filled the massive room, coming from everywhere at once.
Uthor had heard it before.
Like miniature balefires, hundreds of eyes flashed in the outer darkness ringing the room. No, not hundreds… thousands.
Uthor gaped at the sheer size of the skaven horde closing in on them, rusted blades held ready in a vast sea of wretched, stinking fur. He had been wrong; this was folly.
“Valaya preserve us,” he breathed.
[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker Page 14