Some of the dwarfs began smoothing down their blood and dirt-caked tunics, faces flushed a deep crimson as they went on to quickly preen their beards.
“I have not been entirely truthful,” said Borri with royal timbre, straightening up defiantly.
“I am Emelda Skorrisdottir…” She parted the chain-mail of her armour, revealing a golden cincture so wondrously crafted and timelessly beautiful that some of the Sootbeard miners wept. Runes of protection were etched upon the magnificent belt around Emelda’s waist, but one in particular caught Uthor’s eye — the rune of High King Skorri Morgrimson. “Clan daughter of the royal house of Karaz-a-Karak.”
“Rinn Tromm,” uttered Gromrund, bowing deeply on one knee. Still gaping, Uthor followed suit, the others then taking his lead.
“Arise!” Rorek cried, hurrying towards them with Thalgrim close behind him.
Uthor turned sharply towards the engineer, incensed at the interruption. The thane’s anger drained away when he realised his knee was wet. When he saw the torrent of water flooding through the wall in the distance, he did as Rorek asked.
The gallery wall broke away as they were getting up.
“Run for it!” Uthor bellowed, herding the dwarfs down the long gallery.
The last of his throng were barrelling through as the foaming wave slammed into them, smashing the lagging dwarfs like dolls against the opposite wall. Those that weren’t crushed to death were drowned soon after.
Uthor was blasted by a stinging spray, replete with grit and stone shards. He recoiled against the blow and ran, flashing a quick glance behind him as he fled, hell-bent on a large metal door at the end of the gallery.
As the massive wave crashed into the far gallery wall it demolished columns and archways in its fury. For a few seconds it swelled in the tight space, churning like the innards of some primordial beast, until it found a way through and raced after the dwarfs with gathering momentum.
“The way is long, indeed,” said Azgar, stood on a lower plateau, leaning on his axe as he looked down the wending stairway.
“The Endless Road,” offered Ralkan, enjoying one of his more lucid moments, “with many winding turns that lead into the lower deeps. It was so named by the stonemaster who built it, Thogri Granitefist. May he be remembered.”
Azgar bowed his head in a brief moment of solemn remembrance.
Those who had escaped the tunnel battles with their lives had made an encampment a few plateaux down from the battle site, too tired and grief-stricken to move on immediately. After disposing of the skaven corpses they had left their slain brothers in quiet repose, unable to convey all the bodies. Only Dunrik went with them, carried on a makeshift hammock between Drimbold and Halgar. The longbeard wrinkled his nose constantly, complaining about the stink of the skaven rotting above them beyond the shattered stairway, the only bodies they couldn’t reach to toss into the abyss. It seemed he had put his grievances towards the Grey dwarf aside for the time being, and was satisfied to let Drimbold lead them as they bore Dunrik to his final rest. As the Everpeak dwarf was of royal blood, it was only right and proper that he should be afforded a funeral and interred back into the earth so he might sit alongside his kin in the Halls of the Ancestors. For now, Dunrik was set down on the ground, all of his trappings strapped tightly to his body, so that when the funeral rites were enacted he would have them in the afterlife.
A sombre silence descended and Ralkan retreated away from the plateau’s edge to sit alone.
Azgar was left in solitary contemplation as he regarded the abyssal gloom before him. Discernible by the ambient light cast from the Diamond Shaft, and filtered through the dust-heavy air, gargantuan dwarf faces glowered at him. They were the lords of the elder days of Karak Varn, hewn into the very rock face and made immortal in stone. As they looked upon the slayer, he found his mind wandering to the past and could no longer meet their stem gaze…
Azgar’s head thundered like the great hammers of the lower forges. Each footstep was a physical blow, as if his skull were the metal pounded beneath the anvil.
It had been a mighty feast, though his recollection of it was dim. He recalled besting Hrunkar, the hold’s brewmaster, at the ox-lifting and then of a drinking boast that the broad-girthed dwarf had accepted gleefully. To challenge a brewmaster to a quaffing contest, in retrospect, had been foolish.
Azgar had no time to ponder his misplaced confidence any further, the Cragbound Gate lay ahead and its current warden awaited him.
“Tromm,” said Torbad Magrikson, resting his axe over his shoulder and tapping out his pipe.
“Tromm,” Azgar managed, shuffling into position beside the gate as Torbad slowly walked away into the brazier-lit gloom.
An hour passed and Azgar felt the thrumming of hammers as engineers and metal smiths worked diligently at the forge, the resonance of their labours carrying through the very rock of the mountain. It was a soothing refrain rippling through his body as he leaned at the warden’s post. Azgar’s eyelids grew heavy and within moments he was asleep…
Desperate cries woke Azgar from slumber, that and the rush of booted feet. “Thaggi!” shouted a dwarf voice.
Azgar opened his eyes blearily, suddenly aware that he was slumped in a heap against the wall. He was shaken roughly.
“Awake,” said Igrik angrily, standing before him. “Thaggi, Lord Algrim has been poisoned!” he cried.
Azgar snapped to at that, heart thumping more loudly than any raging hangover ever could.
“Father?” he asked of the aging attendant, Igrik.
“Yes, your father,” he said, bitterly.
Then Azgar noticed something else: the wet footprints through the Cragbound Gate, its locks and bolts slipped silently. They were not made by dwarfen boots. They were long and thin with extended toes; they were the paw prints of skaven.
“Oh no…” breathed Azgar. “What have I done?”
The scene shifted then in the slayer’s mind’s eye, resolving itself into the lustrous glory of the King’s Court.
“Remove his armour,” ordered the king, his dour voice carrying despite the immensity of the mighty hall, “and divest him of all trappings, save his axe.”
A four-strong throng of hammerers, their faces masked, moved in and solemnly took Azgar’s armour, belts and clothes until he was stood naked before King Kazagrad of Karak Kadrin, his son Baragor looking on sternly at the right hand of his enthroned lord.
“Let him be shorn and his shame known,” Kazagrad decreed.
Four priests of Grimnir came forward from the surrounding gloom. They each bore two buckets, carried via a brace of wutroth across their backs, and bore shears. Setting the buckets down they began cutting off Azgar’s hair until all that remained was a rough shock of it down the centre and his beard, the only thing preserving his dignity.
“You have undertaken the slayer oath to atone for deeds that are to remain unnamed,” intoned the king.
The priests brought forth broad buckets filled with thick, orange dye and began combing it through Azgar’s hair.
“You are to seek your doom that you might die a glorious death…”
From another bucket the priests took handfuls of pig grease and congealed animal fat. With gnarled fingers, they worked it into Azgar’s streak of hair until it was hard like a crest.
“Take up your axe and leave this place, and let your disgrace be remembered by all.”
The priests shrank back into the darkness. Without word, Azgar turned and, head bowed, began the long walk out of the hold. He had no desire to stay. His brother had been espied by the watchtowers returning to the karak. It was best that Azgar was not there when he discovered their father’s fate.
The inundation rammed dully against the ironclad door with slow and thudding insistence.
Uthor’s fleeing throng had made it through the gallery just in time, slamming the door in their wake when the last of them had got through. Those caught up in the waters were left for dead. It left a bitte
r canker in the survivors.
“It holds, for now,” said Rorek, noting that the door was at least watertight.
Exhausted, alongside the engineer, Uthor just nodded.
A great foundry stretched out before his sodden throng, who were huddled around the entrance to the chamber, having been battered and blasted throughout their desperate flight to the iron sanctuary.
Down a short set of steps the foundry opened into a vast plaza of stone, engraved with fifty-foot runes of forging and the furnace. Brightly burning braziers adorned the walls, doubtlessly lit by the hold’s previous occupants, and punctuated the runic knots carved into them with perfect regularity.
Deep troughs of glowing coals smouldered and the light of the flickering embers illuminated racks of tools. Fuliginous chimneys were built at the ends of the troughs and rose up into the vaulted ceiling. Each of the stout, broad-based funnels was designed to lock the emanating forge heat and channel it into the roof space and the upper levels in order to keep them warm and dry. A raised stone walkway delineated the entire room and led to a wide, flat plinth with an archway wrought into the face of an ancient runelord overshadowing it. Through the venerable ancestor’s mouth there was a mighty forgemaster’s anvil, bathed in the fire-orange glow of brazier pans.
The foundry was divided into a central chamber and two wings, broken up by broad, square columns. On the left wing there was a vast array of armour suits, weapons and war machines; on the right wing, a long runway extended that ended in an octagonal platform.
A dais in the centre of it supported a statue of monumental proportions carved into the image of Grungni himself. The ancestor god’s plaited beard went all the way to the base and in his hands he held forge tongs and a smithy’s hammer. Beneath him there sat another brazier, raging with an eldritch blue-red flame that cast pooling shadows into the stone-worked face. Beyond this temple there was a sheer drop into a pit of fire, which burned so fiercely the coals within it were but a vague shadow in the emanating heat haze.
Great heavy pails were set above the vast pit by thick iron chains, ready to plunge into the fires and bring forth the precious rock to feed the forges.
“Magnificent,” said Thalgrim, tears in his eyes. Other than this laudation, the throng was stunned into silence.
They were arrested from their wonderment by the dull retort of “thunking” metal against the iron door as the armoured dwarfs slain in the flood were butted against it by the swell of the water.
“We should move away from the door,” Uthor said darkly.
Uthor’s throng sat around the burning coal troughs of the foundry plaza, rubbing their hands and wringing out their beards in silent, grim contemplation. The heat warmed clothes, hair and hearts quickly but Uthor found no solace in their fiery depths as he drew deep of his pipe, lost in his thoughts.
“So is this how it is to end, then?”
Gromrund stood before the thane of Kadrin. The hammerer’s armour was battered and broken in places. It was the first time Uthor had even noticed it since the fighting and their flight from the inundation.
“I need time to think,” the thane of Kadrin muttered, peering back into the flames.
Gromrund leaned in towards him, forcing the thane to look at him.
“You were so eager for your reckless glory but a few hours ago. Yet now you sit and do nothing,” he hissed, “while all around your throng stagnates and festers like an old wound.”
Uthor maintained his silence.
“You have much to atone for already son of Algrim, do not add to the reckoner’s tally further.” With that, the hammerer stalked away out of Uthor’s sight.
After a moment, the thane of Kadrin looked up from the blazing coals and regarded his warriors as if for the first time since their defeat in the Great Hall. The wounded were many; some had lost limbs and eyes, a burden they would carry into the Halls of the Ancestors. Others wore bandages over deep wounds or displayed broad cuts openly, but not as the heroic ritual scars of combat; they wore them with the deep shame of the broken and beaten. The dwarfs sat together in their clans. Uthor noticed the large gaps in them, brave warriors all who would not know the feeling of their holds beneath their feet and above their heads ever again. He had condemned them to that fate. Unable to look further, Uthor averted his gaze.
“May I sit with you?” a voice asked. Emelda’s eyes flashed in the firelight as she sat down, more perfect and beauteous than any jewel in Uthor’s reckoning, her long plaits like streaks of gold.
“I am honoured,” said the thane, with a shallow nod. Her stealth was impressive; Uthor had not heard her coming.
The clan daughter’s noble bearing was apparent in the way she held herself, proud and defiant. The other dwarfs would not sit with her, not because of any slight or ill feeling; rather that they were ashamed of their unkempt appearance and bashful in her presence as a lady and a royal consort. Since none would join Uthor, either, it meant that they were largely alone.
“You risked much to follow us here,” he said after a moment’s silence, grateful of the distraction she provided.
“I believed in your quest,” Emelda replied. “Too swiftly are the desolated holds left uncontested, for all the fell denizens of dark places to inhabit and despoil. There was honour in your plight and talk of such deeds that could not go unreckoned. Besides that, I have my reasons,” she added darkly.
“It was glory,” Uthor admitted after a moment, reminded of Gromrund’s words as he stared into the fire.
“I do not understand.”
The thane gazed up into Emelda’s eyes, his expression rueful.
“The promise of glory brought me to this place, not vengeance, and this folly has delivered us all to our doom. Cowering in the dark. Hunted like… like rats.” He curled his lip at that last remark and dipped his head again. It was a bitter irony; rats preyed upon by rats.
Emelda stayed silent. She had no words that would make right what had befallen them. The mood was grim; it chilled the bone despite the cloying heat in the air. Failure and dishonour hung like a palpable fug, and was felt by all.
“And what of Dunrik? Is he even your cousin?” Uthor asked.
Emelda felt her chest tighten at the mention of his name. She made a silent oath to Valaya that he had made it out of the tunnel alive, somehow.
“No,” she said, after a few moments. “He was my guardian, sworn to protect me. Dunrik smuggled us into the escort from Everpeak,” she confessed.
“So you both defied the will of the High King, as I did.”
“Yes,” said Emelda, shame-faced. Uthor laughed mirthlessly.
“Milady,” uttered Gromrund, clearing his throat as he appeared suddenly beside them, “I am Gromrund, son of Kromrund, of the Tallhelm clan and hammerer to King Kurgaz of Karak Hirn.” The hammerer bowed deeply, ignoring Uthor. “It would be my humble honour to serve as your protector and vouch safe-passage for you back to Everpeak.”
Emelda smiled benignly, full of royal presence.
Gromrund, meeting her gaze as he genuflected, reddened.
“You are noble, Gromrund, son of Kromrund, but I already have a bodyguard and we will be reunited soon,” she explained, unable to mask an edge of uncertainty in her tone. “For now, Uthor son of Algrim will see to my safekeeping,” she said, gesturing in the thane of Kadrin’s direction, “but I will make certain to mention of your pledge to the High King.”
“As you wish, milady,” Gromrund said, a side glance at Uthor to make his displeasure known before he backed away in respectful silence.
Gromrund stood alone at the anvil stripped of all his armour, barring his warhelm of course. With a forge-master’s hammer in hand, he worked out the dents in his breastplate with careful and meticulous precision. He was glad of the solace that metalsmithing provided, especially after his recent rebuttal from the Lady Emelda. In truth, he was also working out the anger he felt towards Uthor, but was mindful not to let his ire spoil his re-crafting. The Tallhelms were a
ll forgesmiths by trade, a source of much pride amongst the clan, despite their esteemed calling as royal bodyguards.
Gromrund stopped a moment to check his labours, wiping the sweat from his face as he did so. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Uthor conversing with the Everpeak lady.
As he watched them, he noticed Uthor’s face darken. Despite their grievances, and his earlier words, the hammerer took no pleasure in the thane’s distress — though he still believed, as a hammerer, it should be he that saw to Emelda’s well-being — an oath was an oath and each and every one of them had failed in that. As expedition leader though, the son of Algrim bore that shame most heavily.
The lady, Emelda, seemed to try and soothe him but to no avail.
A rinn! Gromrund thought as he looked at her. Posing as a beardling amongst the throng with not a dawi, save for her keeper, any the wiser — a truly shocking admission.
When she caught the hammerer’s gaze, he averted his eyes to the anvil, bashful beneath her scrutiny.
Shocking indeed, he thought, toiling at his armour again, but not entirely unwelcome.
Thalgrim’s stomach growled loudly. He went for the piece of chuf beneath his helmet, but stopped himself short. Perhaps it was that which attracted the skaven to them; perhaps he was the cause of the ambush in the tunnel, of so many dawi deaths…
“It was the Black Water,” said Rorek, sat across from the lodefinder, eyes ablaze in the light of burning coals.
The two of them were sitting with some of the Sootbeard dwarfs outside the great arch.
Rorek was tinkering with some spherical object he had fashioned from the materials in the forge. It helped keep his mind occupied.
Thalgrim returned a thoughtful expression, grateful of the distraction, as the engineer went on.
“Five hundred years ago, during the Time of Woes, a deluge from the great lake flooded the hold and ruined it,” said Rorek, carefully screwing a plate on the spiked ball of iron in his hands. “I think, even in the upper deeps, there are pockets of trapped water. We released one when we split the gallery wall. It at least means the grobi and the rat-kin cannot follow this way.”
[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker Page 17