Stone splintered as the ball and chain smashed against the ground. Azgar leapt back to avoid its deadly path and then ducked swiftly as the rat ogre swiped at him, the boar spear spitting sparks as it raked the wall. The beast swung again with the spiked ball. Azgar cut the chain in two with a blow from his axe and, stepping past the fierce swipe, reversed his cut to lop off the rat ogre’s arm at the shoulder despite the armour plate. The creature howled in pain, the sound muffled and tinny through his cone-helm, and drove at Azgar with the boar spear, blood fountaining from its ruined stump. The slayer avoided the strike, which embedded deep into the flanking wall and held fast. The monstrosity heaved at the weapon impaled in the stone but couldn’t free it.
Azgar regarded the rat ogre darkly as it struggled… and cleaved off the other arm. The beast fell back with the impetus of its own exertions. The slayer went to finish it but the rat ogre lashed out with its tail, taking Azgar’s legs from under him. He hit the ground with bone jarring force and the slayer barely had time to get his bearings when a rust-brown blur came at him. Azgar reacted instinctively, holding onto the beast’s jaws, one in each hand, a hair’s breadth from biting off his face.
He shook with effort, every muscle straining as he fought to keep the rat ogre back. Saliva flicked his face and neck as the rat ogre’s rotten meat breath washed over him. Digging deep, he summoned all the reserves of his strength and roared as he snapped the creature’s jaws back, twisting metal and breaking bone. A howl of pain tore from the rat ogre’s broken mouth. Azgar crawled out from under it, as the beast thrashed in fits of agony, gathering up the chain that was attached to his wrist and reaching for his axe.
“Chew on this,” he said and buried the blade in its tiny cranium.
Most of the Firehands were dead, either suffocated or impaled by rat-kin spears, though the gas was all but dissipated. Dunrik risked a breath as he briefly surveyed the carnage.
The skaven assault had split the dwarfs still holed up in the bottle-neck into two. The ironbreakers were all dead. Of the advanced part of the force on Dunrik’s side of the door only him, Hakem and a handful of clan warriors remained. If they could rejoin with the other forces further back down the Wide Western Way, they might be able to fight their way free.
Dunrik, his left eye blood-shot from ingesting some of the skaven gas, took an involuntary step back as two rat ogres lumbered into view, filling up the passageway. They demolished the feeble shield wall easily, one of the beasts biting off the head of a Firehand dwarf as he fled from it. All thoughts of escape disappeared from Dunrik’s mind. He felt the stone door at his back, the closeness of the walls at either side, Hakem’s tension as he raised his shield. There would be no escape.
Halgar gasped for breath through clenched teeth, making the most of a brief respite in the furious melee unfolding in the bottle-neck around him. He’d watched as the stone door was sealed, effectively trapping them with their enemies and was glad of it. At least he would go down fighting. The longbeard’s arms and shoulders burned; the weight of his axe like a fallen tree in his gnarled hands. Blood — both rat-kin and dawi — splattered clothes, armour and skin. Halgar’s vision blurred sporadically in time with a persistent throbbing in his skull; he put it down to when a skaven warrior had struck a lucky blow against his helmet — he would have to work out the dent later.
The longbeard tramped slowly through the carnage, past his battling kinsdwarfs as he tried to reach Drimbold. Having been near the back of the group, the Grey dwarf would never have reached the Great Hall, even if he’d tried. Instead, he had fought. Drimbold was a vague outline at times when Halgar’s eyesight worsened, but he knew it was him — he could smell him. Ralkan was behind the Grey dwarf, clutching a borrowed hammer like his life depended on it. It did.
Out of the gloom, a hooded skaven came hurtling at the longbeard. Halgar sidestepped its attack, upending it with a smack of his axe haft against its ankles and then hacking the blade into the ratman’s back to finish it. He shouldered a second rat-kin in the gut, using his armoured plate-mail like a battering ram and was rewarded with the crunch of bone. An elbow smash broke the skaven’s skull wide open, blood and matter spilling freely. He felled a third with a hefty kick to the shins and then decapitated it with the edge of his shield to reach Drimbold’s side.
“Stand firm!” he bellowed, cutting a savage diagonal blow against an onrushing skaven. More ratmen were pressing; their numbers seemingly endless. Even Azgar and his slayers were being slowly herded towards them.
“Fight until you’ve no breath—”
A massive ball of green and incandescent flame lit up the passageway, burning shadows into the walls and illuminating the conflict like some gruesome animation. Dwarfs fell screaming to the terrible conflagration — cloth, metal and hair melting before it.
“There!” cried Drimbold, fending off a rusty dagger with his hand axe. He pointed to a pair of hooded skaven lugging some kind of infernal weapon between them. One carried a bulbous cannon rigged with coiling pipes and a pull chain affixed to the fat copper nozzle. The other bore a large wooden barrel with bolted on plates that fed the cannon, bent-backed against the weight of whatever liquid was stored within.
A small band of dwarfs from the Stonebreaker clan charged toward the deadly arcane device, bellowing war cries.
The skaven gunner squeaked gleefully as he tugged at the pull chain, opening the nozzle. The Stonebreakers were immolated in a blazing inferno, their charred remains still smoking long after the flame had abated.
Halgar blinked back the after-image of the fiery destruction wrought by the skaven cannon.
“We must destroy it,” he snarled, as the nozzle swung in their direction.
The longbeard flung a throwing axe towards the weapon but missed, the blade “thunking” harmlessly against the wall, before clattering to the ground. He stared down the gaping maw of the cannon, an indistinct circle of fathomless black, and closed his eyes.
The searing heat, the wash of flame didn’t come. Skaven screaming filled his ears and Halgar opened his eyes to witness the bent-backed fuel carrier flapping at the barrel he carried. A hand axe was buried in its side and a volatile chemical mixture sprayed out eagerly. Patches of the ratman’s fur burned and smoked where the fluid touched it — the stink of cooking skaven flesh was redolent on the breeze.
The gunner seemed oblivious to the screeching protestations of its partner and yanked backed on the firing chain with reckless abandon.
Halgar, Drimbold and all those dwarfs in the vicinity of the cannon were thrown back as an explosion wracked the tunnel, leaving a blackened scar on the ground fraught with tangled skaven corpses.
Dunrik was smashed to the ground by a sudden, powerful shock wave. Dazed, he got to his feet, helping up Hakem and the few Firehand dwarfs that still lived.
Body parts littered the tunnel in steaming, fire-scorched chunks. The rat ogres were dead, engulfed in the fearsome explosion. Moreover, the way was clear to Halgar and the others. They’d have to run for it and close the short distance up the tunnel quickly. The skaven were already gathering their wits and regrouping to attack again.
“Come together!” Uthor cried in the Great Hall, his throng forming up in disciplined ranks around him, making a square shape with shields locked.
The skaven masses came from the shadows, spilling from their hiding places and concealed tunnels in a foetid, flea-infested swarm. They were on the dwarfs quickly, several warriors torn down before they had shields readied.
Uthor fended off a hail of missiles, before hacking down an emaciated ratman with his rune axe. More came at them in their droves, almost throwing themselves suicidally onto the dwarfs’ blades and hammer heads. Blinking back a swath of foul-smelling skaven blood as it splashed against his face and helmet, Uthor saw these diminutive rats were nought but fodder, cast into the melee and urged on by the cruel whips of their masters. The skaven sought to tire them, wear them down until exhaustion took them and then death.
Uthor raged against it and redoubled his efforts.
“Give no quarter,” he bellowed, turning left and right to bolster his warriors with his stirring rhetoric. “Have no fear, for we are the sons of Grungni!” Uthor caught the eye of Borri, who fought furiously beside his kinsdwarfs, anger lending him vigour. Another hail of sharp stones and wicked throwing knives filled the air, flung from behind the skaven slave fodder. Uthor raised his shield to repel the missiles. When he looked back, he couldn’t see Borri anymore.
Dunrik and Hakem stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Halgar and the others in the bottle-neck. Azgar and what remained of the Grim Brotherhood backed up to join them, having aborted their attempts to break through the innumerable rat-kin hordes, and the trapped dwarf forces were finally reunited but being pressed into an ever diminishing circle.
Ralkan was at the centre of it, several stoutly armoured dwarf bodies between him and a vicious death at the claws of the skaven. The lorekeeper had abandoned his borrowed hammer — Drimbold wielded it now, in lieu of the weapon he’d thrown to destroy the rat-kin’s fire cannon — and was frantically feeling the rock wall at the dwarfs’ backs with his hands, muttering feverishly.
Dunrik watched the lorekeeper incredulously and caught Halgar’s eye.
“His mind has finally given in to despair and terror,” said the longbeard, hacking down a skaven with his axe, before breaking the nose of another with his fist.
No matter how many the dwarfs killed, the numbers of the rat-kin did not dwindle and their vigour showed no sign of lessening.
“No way out,” growled Azgar cutting a ratman in half, “and an endless horde to slay,” he added with no small amount of relish. “It is a worthy death.”
Halgar nodded, battering a hooded skaven with his axe pommel.
“There is my seat made ready,” said the longbeard, his voice rising above the battle din so it might be heard by all of his kinsdwarfs. “At the table of my ancestors it doth await me. Upon the rock are my deeds arrayed.”
“Lo do I see the line of kings,” Dunrik said, joining in the sombre deathsong.
“Lo do I see Grungni and Valaya,” added Hakem, the words taught to him when he was but a beardling.
“Tremble o mountain.” Azgar’s distinctive timbre gave weight to the recitation.
“Rage o heart,” said Drimbold, last of all. At least he would die with his kin, a hammer in his hand.
“For hearth and hold, for oath and honour, for wrath and ruin — give fire to my voice and steel to my arm that I might be remembered!” Halgar’s voice was dominant as the entire dwarf throng rejoiced as one.
Only Ralkan did not sing. Instead, his fingers found the subtle permutations in the rock wall he’d been searching for. As he manipulated them carefully, a thin line ran rapidly up the length of the wall, across the roof and back down again spitting out dust as it went. A vein of light eked through it, shining faintly — a secret door, made in the elder ages, and Ralkan had found it.
Gromrund crushed another skaven skull with his great hammer, but he was tiring. A boot to the groin and a pommel smash to its head as it doubled over put paid to another rat-kin, but the furred abominations seethed in the Great Hall. He had been one of the last to get through, not counting those unfortunates that had been poisoned to death by the gas or stabbed in the back by the rat cowards.
Bitterness filled the hammerer’s heart as he fought. Uthor’s plan had failed, and failed catastrophically. How the skaven had tracked them to this place in a domain as vast as Karak Varn, he didn’t know. His only consolation was that he’d at least die with honour.
Through the curtailed view of his warhelm, Gromrund saw a savage blow come at him. Using his weapon defensively, he caught the attack against the haft of his great hammer. A huge skaven warrior confronted him, clad in thick, cured leather, studded with spikes. The creature’s fur was the colour of coal. It wielded a brutal looking glaive, the blade dark and wet.
The ratman pressed, scraping the weapon against the wooden haft of Gromrund’s hammer as a second blade thrust at him. Locked with the first skaven warrior, the hammerer was unable to defend himself. He did all he could, and twisted sharply, the second blade grazing against his armour, ripping out mail links and scattering them like silver coins. Gromrund staggered; managed to heave the first skaven back. He saw a blur of grey to the corner of his eye and felt an almighty blow against his head, the metal warhelm deafening him as it clanged loudly in his ears. Vision swimming Gromrund went down on one knee, almost dropping his great hammer. He could smell blood. Through bleary eyes he saw the huge skaven cackle as it raised its glaive for the deathblow.
“I’m sorry, father,” he whispered and put up his hammer feebly.
The skaven fell; several black-shafted arrows pin-cushioned its swarthy body. The other turned, screeching maliciously towards some unseen threat.
Gromrund got to his feet and saw that a great many of the ratman had whirled around towards the source of the attack. He looked at the skaven corpse again— a momentary lull in the fighting, as the rules of engagement were seemingly re-established — it had been felled by grobi arrows.
Bestial war cries rent the air and Gromrund watched, open mouthed as hordes of greenskins streamed from unseen tunnels and unknown passageways. Black-garbed goblins, hooded and bearing short bows, loosed arrows into the packed rat-kin ranks; massive, brutish orcs smashed a thin line of slave fodder aside beneath hob-nailed boot and cleaver, whilst trolls were unleashed into the furred mass to gorge and crush and maim.
Where the skaven rushed to meet the greenskin horde their numbers thinned, and an avenue of escape presented itself. Across the melee in which dwarf, skaven and greenskin fought, Gromrund caught the attention of Uthor. The thane had seen the route too — it led to an oaken gate, stout enough to hold an army back if properly braced, but not so massive that it could not be opened and defended quickly.
“To the gate!” Gromrund heard Uthor cry, hoping that their embattled enemies would be too distracted to impede them.
“Go, now!” Gromrund added his voice to the thane’s order.
Staying together, the dwarfs moved as quickly as they dared to the oaken gate. The way was diminishing all the time, as rat-kin began filling the gaps, struggling to fight them and the greenskins at once.
Building momentum, the throng adopted a spear-tip formation and drove a thick wedge into the skaven ranks, scattering them as they charged headlong through pressing bodies and the intermittent hail of arrows.
“They are the grobi from the ravine,” Gromrund shouted above the din to Uthor — the two dwarfs were shoulder-to-shoulder in the rush.
“I recognise the urk chieftain,” he added, catching glimpses through the frantic fighting.
“Lokki fought him at the edge of the Black Water,” Uthor offered, cutting down a skaven warrior who stood in his path, before battering another away with his shield.
“We were followed here,” the hammerer growled, shattering a ratman’s spine and pummelling the hip of another with a wicked side swipe.
Anything further would have to wait. The gateway loomed.
The throng gathered into a semi-circle, arrayed around the gate at their back. Though fighting two foes at once, the rat-kin still came at them but the line was holding and the skaven were repelled by shield, hammer and axe.
As the battle became ever more furious, goblins and orcs found their way to the dwarfs’ protective cordon. They too were repulsed with equal violent fervour.
Rorek worked desperately at the gate lock, wiping a wash of nervous sweat from his forehead. A shallow sounding click rewarded his efforts and, with help, he pulled the gate open. The depleted throng piled through quickly, barely half of those who’d made it into the Great Hall, but in good order. A thin line of shield bearers fought a desperate rearguard, allowing the majority of the dwarfs to pass through unhindered.
“Down!” Rorek cried and the rearguard squatted to the floor, shields upraised, as a h
ost of quarrellers loosed a storm of crossbow bolts into the skaven harassing their kinsdwarfs. Rorek added his own rapid-firing fusillade and a score of ratmen were cut down. The short respite was enough time for the shield bearers to hurry through the doorway and those warriors positioned either side of it to slam the gate shut.
Thalgrim and two of the Sootbeards dragged a hefty bar across it before the dull hammering from the other side began as the skaven attempted to batter their way through. After that, Thalgrim took several thick, metal door spikes from a pouch on his belt and smacked them against the base of the door to wedge it shut. Rorek did the same and satisfied the way back was secure, at least for a time, the dwarfs fled.
“Help me push!” the lorekeeper said, grunting as he threw himself against the wall. A few of the dwarfs turned and seeing the rectangle of light leant their own weight.
The secret door opened and Ralkan hurried through, eyes wide when he saw the plateau of stone basked in the white radiance coming from above. Through a long, natural funnel in the mountain the light of the upper world shone down, resolving itself in a hazy aura when it struck stone.
“The Diamond Shaft,” the lorekeeper breathed, in awestruck wonderment.
The plateau led to a set of descending steps and beyond that another plateau. From there a massively long stairwell dropped down into darkness and was lost from sight completely. On either side of the magnificent edifice of stone was a sheer drop into the underdeep, so cavernous and black that it might have been bottomless.
Overcoming his awe, Ralkan surged across the first plateau and was heading down the steps and onto the second, much larger, expanse of stone when the skaven came teeming through the secret door.
Most of the dwarf throng had followed the lorekeeper; the slayers and a few of the clan warriors mounting a fierce rearguard. The throbbing wave of rat-kin smashed against the rock of dwarf warriors and several of the foul creatures were pitched over the edge of the short stairway and fell screaming to their doom in the void below. But as the skaven numbers grew, the dwarfs were pushed back and slowly overrun. The fight came to a stalemate at the second plateau; the ratmen, despite their masses, unable to break the sons of Grungni, and the dwarfs refusing to give any more ground. Bodies, both skaven and dwarf, fell like fat rain into the hungry abyss surrounding them, the stone plateau, as mighty as it was, insufficient to hold them all. Rat-kin thronged on the stairs, bunched so close together that those in the middle were crushed and suffocated, while those on the edges were pushed off the edge into oblivion.
[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker Page 15