[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker
Page 16
Rune-light illuminated Hakem’s face as he struck relentlessly with the Honakinn Hammer, the weapon that was his birthright and a formidable relic of the craft of elder days. As he swung, the merchant thane sang the battle-dirge of his ancestors, the Ever Blazing Beacon. He smote his foes gloriously, punctuating every stanza with a hammer strike.
A sudden surge of skaven pushed forward into him and his kinsdwarfs. Hakem used his shield to crush a ratman’s muzzle pitched another over the edge with a swift kick to the stomach. A third was smashed by the dwarf’s hammer, its neck snapping back with an audible crack of bone. Hakem raised his rune weapon to smite a fourth but found he was pinned. The ratmen came on like a resurgent tide, literally thrown at him. Two dwarf warriors fell to their deaths in the charge. The merchant thane staggered, boots scraping stone underfoot; he felt the drag on his shield arm as it was crushed to his side. In the maelstrom of fur, flesh and steel a ratman bared its filthy fangs to bite at him. Hakem head-butted it and the creature’s nose caved, before falling away into the mass. Bellowing, he freed his hammer.
“Feel the wrath of the Honakinn—”
There was the streak of tarnished steel in the gloom.
Pain seared up Hakem’s arm, a dense ball of it throbbing at his wrist. He could no longer feel the weight of his rune hammer. Fear, so thick and palpable it made him almost retch, seized the dwarf and he looked over. In that brief moment of uncertainty, he thought of the shame he would bring to his family and his clan if his grip had failed him and the Honakinn Hammer was lost.
When Hakem saw the bloody stump of his wrist from where his hand had been cleaved off, he screamed.
Dunrik shouldered his way through the rat-kin mob, hacking frenziedly as he went. Hakem’s agonised scream was still echoing in his ears as he ducked a blow aimed at his neck, the hooded skaven warrior killing one of its brethren behind the dwarf instead. With a grunt, Dunrik drove the spike atop his axe blade into the dumbfounded creature’s chin. He kicked away the corpse and sketched a ragged figure eight with the blade, carving up a cluster of skaven who had sprung at him. Another launched itself over the melee, howling insanely, muzzle foaming and with daggers poised. Dunrik took it in flight on his shield — legs braced against the sudden impact — and using its momentum, propelled the snarling creature off the plateau and into the waiting darkness. He reached Hakem, intercepting a halberd blow aimed for the dwarf merchant’s head. Dunrik trapped the weapon against the ground with his axe then stamped on the haft, shattering it. An uppercut with the edge of his shield ripped off the skaven’s jaw and it fell in a mangled heap.
Hakem was clutching the bleeding stump of his wrist, his shield hanging limply on his arm by the leather straps as he scrabbled across the ground in search of his dismembered hand and hammer.
“Get to your feet, fool!” snarled Dunrik, fending off another hooded skaven — mercifully, it seemed they had exhausted their supply of poisoned globes.
“I must retrieve it,” the merchant thane wailed, crawling on his knees, heedless of the deadly battle around him.
Hakem’s eyes widened suddenly Dunrik followed his gaze and saw a dwarf hand, bedecked with jewelled rings and still gripping a rune hammer.
A tremor rippled through the plateau, felt even above the thudding resonance of shuffling feet. Deep rumbling, like thunder, came next and a cacophony of splitting stone swallowed up the battle din as if it were nothing but a morsel of sound. Terrified screams of dwarf and rat filled the air as the short stair collapsed, overburdened by the weight of armoured bodies and shaken loose by the exertions of combat.
The impromptu temblor shook Hakem’s disembodied hand. It and the hammer pitched over the edge and plunged into the void. The merchant thane’s anguished cries merged with the fading death screams of those on the short stair, and he raced forward about to go over the side after the ancient weapon.
“No!” Dunrik bellowed, battering a skaven aside as he reached out and grabbed Hakem’s belt. “Stand fast,” he cried, but Hakem was already on his way and the dwarfs momentum pulled Dunrik with him. The Everpeak dwarf slipped and Hakem was half over the lip on the plateau, staring down the throat of the abyss, when at last he arrested the merchant’s flight and dragged him back.
“Idiot,” said Dunrik, leaning down to help Hakem up. “No relic is worth an honourless death—” the dwarf stopped when he felt the first spear tip pierce his back. Snarling in rage, Dunrik was about to turn when a second split the links of his armour and drove into his side. He twisted to face his attackers; the snapped hafts of the spears still embedded in him were like ice blades of pain. Dunrik raised his axe, too slowly, as a third spear impaled his exposed chest. His shield arm went limp, a blow from a mace shattering his shoulder guard and bruising bone. The snarling visages of four skaven warriors, since divested of their hoods, regarded him.
Dunrik tried to bellow his defiance and ready his axe for one final swing, when one of the vermin lunged forward and sank a rusty dagger into his neck.
“Emelda…” the dwarf gurgled, and breathed his last.
Hakem watched in horror as Dunrik died, snapped spear hafts still jutting from his body. The merchant thane was dazed and weak from blood loss. He still clutched his wrist feebly as the fully armoured Everpeak dwarf fell on top of him, smashing him into the ground. Hakem’s head struck stone and he blacked out.
“Here!” a voice cried. “Quickly, he is alive.”
Drimbold heaved at the body of Dunrik crushing the merchant thane. Azgar arrived to help and the two of them lifted the dead Everpeak dwarf off Hakem.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Ralkan, waiting close by.
Azgar raised Hakem’s arm carefully. “He’s lost a lot more than that,” he said, showing them the stump.
“Take this,” Halgar offered, the dwarfs all clustering around the wounded merchant. The longbeard held a flaming torch.
Azgar took it and smothered the flame into the stone, allowing the embers to burn with radiated heat.
“Brace yourself,” he told a bleary-eyed Hakem, still only partially conscious.
The merchant thane bellowed in agony as the slayer rammed the glowing torch into his wound, searing it shut. He tried to thrash about but Halgar held him down.
“Easy lad, easy,” he said, waiting for the nervous fits of pain to pass before he let Hakem go.
Ralkan came forward with several strips of cloth and started to bind the bloodied stump.
“Can you walk?” Azgar asked when the lorekeeper was finished.
Hakem staggered to his feet and, meeting the slayer’s gaze, nodded slowly. He looked around him, his bearings returning, along with his memories. There was a gaping hole, some forty feet across, from the first plateau to the one on which he now stood with the rest of his kinsdwarfs. He could only assume that was why any of the slayers were left at all — unable to pursue their foes across such a chasm.
Bodies littered the broad expanse of stone; there were scarcely fifty dwarfs left from the hundred or so that must have got through the tunnel. Some of those that remained were throwing rat-kin corpses into the gaping drop on either side.
Hakem noticed the ashen-faced corpse of Dunrik last of all. He was laid on his back. An attempt had been made to wipe some of the blood from his armour and face. Someone had arranged his hands over his chest, as if in quiet repose — the spear heads still lodged in his body helped shatter the illusion. The other dwarf dead were laid down too, but with their cloaks covering their faces, hands made to clasp their hammers and axes, shields rested at their sides. There seemed so few, given those that had survived, but Hakem suspected many of the dawi had fallen into the darkness along with the skaven.
“We won,” said Azgar, bitterly when the merchant thane met his gimlet gaze.
Hakem thought of Dunrik, growing cold on the slab on stone, of the dawi falling to their deaths and of the Honakinn Hammer that shared their fate in the abyss.
“Did we?” he said.
They had forgotten it. Thought it perished all these long years. But something had changed — it could feel it. The mountain had… moved. Through its slowly resolving vision it noticed the tiny bodies of lesser beings, fallen into its domain. It approached the shattered corpses and once it reached them it began to feed.
CHAPTER NINE
“I can run no further,” said Gromrund, puffing his cheeks and weighed down by his massive warhelm.
For almost an hour, Uthor’s throng had fled through darkened-tunnels, down stairways and shafts, with no knowledge of their destination, desperately trying to put as much distance between them and their foes. They gathered now in some nondescript gallery, not nearly as grandiose as some of their previous accommodations, or as large. Gromrund, for one, was glad of it — it meant less places for their enemies to hide and ambush them.
Uthor turned to regard the hammerer, noting that several other dwarfs were bent over with hands on knees, breathing hard.
“Very well,” he said at last. “We rest for a moment, but then we must move on. It’s possible that the others survived. If we can find a way through to reach them, we might—”
“We are defeated, Uthor son of Algrim,” Gromrund snapped. “Barely fifty remain out of the two hundred with which we entered. The rat-kin number in the thousands — you know this — and there are the grobi to consider as well.”
“They may have worn each other down. If we were to take advantage of that…” Uthor didn’t sound convincing.
“Your vainglory will kill us all!” Gromrund raged, squaring up to the thane, making his intentions clear.
“And your courage deserts you, Karak Hirn dwarf. Why is it that you never remove that warhelm of yours? Is it to hide your shame?” Uthor snarled.
A deathly hush filled the small gallery as the other dwarfs waited in the charged atmosphere, as the fight they all knew was coming slowly unfolded.
Gromrund bristled at the remark, Uthor near spitting the words at him. The hammerer clenched his fists.
“Never, in all the generations of Tallhelms has this helmet ever been removed,” he began levelly. “Only upon my death shall it be prized from my cold skull and given to the next in my line,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “It is tradition, and to go against it would disrespect the memory of my father, Kromrund Tallhelm, and besmirch the honour of my clan,” he concluded, beard bristling.
Uthor fell silent in an impotent rage.
“Our fallen brothers,” Gromrund continued darkly, now he had the thane of Karak Kadrin’s attention, “the needless death in pursuit of false honour… It ends now,” he promised. “It is over, Uthor. You have brought enough shame to your clan.”
Uthor roared and right hooked the hammerer across the jaw. Gromrund staggered back, but like a prizefighter, rolled on his booted heels and threw a punishing uppercut into Uthor’s chin. The thane was knocked off his feet, but got up quickly and drew his axe.
Gromrund hefted his great hammer, leather gauntlets cracking as he tested his grip.
“I will show you the courage of Karak Hirn,” he promised, with violent intent.
“Come forward then,” Uthor replied, beckoning him. “And I will knock that warhelm off your foolish head.”
“Enough!” A high-pitched voice rang out, shattering the violent mood. “Stop this, now.”
Borri, the Everpeak beardling, rushed to stand between the two dwarfs. As he spoke, Gromrund was struck by the authority in the young dwarf’s tone and despite his anger, lowered his hammer.
Similarly moved, Uthor did the same, staring nonplussed at a dwarf he thought was slain in the Great Hall.
“There has been enough death… enough.” Borri sagged, full with sorrow as his indignant fury was spent.
Uthor was incredulous.
“I saw you fall,” he ventured, stowing his axe. “You could not have survived,” he added, appraising the near-pristine condition of the Everpeak noble’s armour.
All eyes went to Borri at once.
The beardling opened his mouth to speak but Uthor was relentless.
“You barely have a scratch on you.” The thane regarded Borri suspiciously — his own armour was bent and broken in numerous places; even one of the wings on his helmet had several feathers torn out.
“I…” Borri began, taking a step back, suddenly aware of the attention fixed on him.
“It is not possible,” Uthor breathed and noticed the gilded cincture around the beardling’s waist. He recognised one of the runes on it — he had seen it before… “Let me see that belt,” he demanded, closing in on the young dwarf.
“Please, it is nothing…” Borri blathered, holding up his hands as if to ward off any further inquisition.
“And your voice,” Uthor said, eyes narrowing. “It sounds different.”
Borri stepped back again, but quickly found he had nowhere to go.
“Show us what’s on the belt, lad,” said Gromrund, directly behind Borri as he put his hand on the beardling’s shoulder.
Borri sighed in resignation.
“There is something you should know, first,” he said, placing his hands against the sides of his helmet and lifting it slowly off his head.
Rorek chipped away at the chunk of rock with a small pick. The gallery wall at which he crouched, several feet away from where the rest of Uthor’s throng congregated, felt cold to the touch and damp, so he worked carefully and with painstaking precision.
The engineer had noticed the runic rubric when the dwarfs had finally stopped, partly in the belief they were not followed by rat-kin or greenskins; partly from sheer exhaustion. Rorek was oblivious to the rest of his kinsdwarfs, and when his curiosity wasn’t sated by merely examining the runes, partly obscured by calcified streaks of sediment, he had begun delicately excavating it. There was a message beneath, of that he was certain — perhaps it would provide some clue as to their location, or offer a way out. It was whilst digging out a particularly recalcitrant piece of rock, scrutinizing the markings he could discern beneath with the light of a candle, that the engineer became aware of a shadow looming over him.
“What are you doing, brother?” asked Thalgrim. The lodefinder was clearly as inquisitive as the engineer.
“There are rhuns beneath,” said Rorek gruffly, turning his attention back onto his work. “They may indicate where we are.”
Thalgrim watched as Rorek chipped in vain at the hunk of rock obscuring the runic script beneath.
“Stand aside,” said the lodefinder, hefting his mattock and twisting it around in his hands to brandish the pick end.
Rorek paused in his endeavours, annoyed at the interruption. Looking back, he flung himself aside just in time as Thalgrim’s pick smacked hard into the wall, the calcified rock crumbling under the impact.
Rorek was mortified at first, flat on his arse as he regarded the impetuous lodefinder; when he saw the broken rock and the intact symbol that it once concealed, he grinned.
“Well struck,” the engineer added, getting to his feet and clapping a hand on Thalgrim’s back.
“Indeed,” said the lodefinder proudly, “I mean no disrespect,” he went on, “but though the engineers of Zhufbar fashion true marvels of ingenuity, it is the miners of the karak that know the vagaries of rock and stone best.”
Rorek nodded solemnly at that — there had ever been a strong accord between the guild of engineers and miners.
Full of pride, Thalgrim went to remove the pick from where it had embedded in the wall, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Seems to be stuck,” he muttered beneath his breath, gi
ving the haft of the mattock a tug. “Release it,” said the lodefinder — Rorek couldn’t be sure if he was talking to him or the rock wall — trying again. Still it didn’t yield.
The engineer went to help and after testing their grip, the two of them heaved. There was the crunch of stone as the pick end of Thalgrim’s weapon came loose, sending the two dwarfs sprawling to the ground. Another sound came swiftly afterwards, the wrenching retort of splitting stone as a large crack ran jaggedly up the wall and a thin trickle of murky water exuded from the hole made by the lodefinder’s mattock.
“Grungni’s girth…” Rorek muttered as the thin trickle became a steady stream.
“May it be ever broad and full,” Thalgrim added, watching the pool growing at their feet.
“Get up,” said Rorek as a thick chunk of stone fell away and water gushed out in its wake.
Long, golden plaits cascaded down as Borri removed his helmet and a pair of piercing azure eyes regarded Uthor, from either side of a round, stubby nose.
Gasps and rumbles of amazement greeted the dwarf stood before them.
Uthor was aghast.
“Rinn!” hissed one of the Sootbeard dwarfs and promptly passed out.
Gromrund’s hand fell from Borri’s shoulder to hang limp at his side.
“By the Bearded Lady!” he heard another dwarf gasp.