[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  “Have you been eating frongol, engineer?” Uthor asked, staring at the giant bronze head.

  “Stand aside,” Rorek growled, muttering beneath his breath as he tramped past the thane. Once he’d reached the platform’s edge, he unslung his crossbow.

  “You’d best not be pointing that thing anywhere near me,” Uthor warned him.

  Rorek ignored the baiting and hunted around on his voluminous tool belt. Finding what he was looking for he attached it to the crossbow by means of its ingenious racking mechanism. After ratcheting the ammunition back, the engineer braced himself and took careful aim, flicking up the sighting ring with his thumb. He pumped the trigger and the crossbow loosed, sending a large, harpoon-like bolt into the roof with a rippling length of rope chasing after it. The thick, metal quarrel stuck fast with a shudder of stone, and three spiked prongs flicked out of a concealed compartment inside the shaft to latch onto the rock like a pincer. The rope was attached to the other end of the quarrel by means of a small pulley.

  “Grapnel bolt,” Rorek explained with no small amount of boastful pride, gathering up the slack in his hands until the rope was taut. “Here, take this,” he added, passing Uthor a section of rope before rushing over to tether the opposite end to the statue head.

  “And what am I to do with this, engineer?”

  “Pull,” came the laconic response.

  Uthor did as he was told, Emelda joining in when she realised what Rorek intended. The engineer added his own brawn to the task and as they heaved the rope running through the pulley the statue head was slowly lifted upright and then off the ground.

  “Keep going,” Rorek snarled through clenched teeth; the bronze head was monstrously heavy. As it rose higher, the weight of the statue swung itself out over the lagoon.

  Satisfied with its elevation, Rorek shouted, “Stop!” adding “hold it there,” as he let go of the rope before taking the trailing end piling behind Uthor and Emelda. He then tied it around the upper remains of the statue that still sat on the platform, until the rope was taut.

  “Now,” Rorek said, “release it, slowly.”

  Uthor and Emelda did as they were asked. With a savage creak of metal as it tightened further at its anchor point, the statue head lurched down a few feet before it came to a halt. Rorek wiped a swathe of sweat from his forehead, and not from his earlier exertions.

  “It holds,” he announced.

  “I can see that, engineer,” said Uthor, “what would you have us do now?”

  “Now,” Rorek said, turning to face them both, “we get wet.”

  Uthor tied off a makeshift belt of inflated beer skins around his waist and chest as he prepared to walk down the grand stairway and into the wretched water.

  “There is no honour in this garb,” he moaned. “If I am slain and found like this by my ancestors there will be a reckoning against you and your clan, engineer.”

  “Without them you will sink like a stone in your armour,” Rorek replied. “And then where would your honour be?”

  Uthor grumbled beneath his breath and started down the steps. Emelda awaited the outcome pensively behind him.

  Ice blades stabbed into his legs as the thane of Kadrin waded into the water. Now up to his waist, the stagnant film sheathing the lagoon parted before him like clinging gossamer. At last he found the courage to plunge out into the open depths. Uthor felt the pull of his armour dragging him downward into the murk and for a moment he panicked, seeking the edge of the platform in an effort to heave himself up and out.

  “Don’t flap,” Rorek snapped at him, “you will sink and drown.”

  “Easy to say stood on dry land,” said Uthor, spluttering water. “I have already had my dunkin’ — dawi are not meant for water.” Taking a breath, spitting the turgid fluid from his mouth, Uthor managed to calm down and spread his arms wide as Rorek had instructed him. Pushing away slightly from the edge, incredibly he found he was afloat.

  “By the beard of Grimnir, I can’t believe that worked,” Uthor said, relieved and still spluttering — the beer skins only just putting his head and shoulders above the waterline.

  “Neither can I,” Rorek muttered beneath his breath.

  “Speak up,” growled Uthor, bobbing up and down slightly like a cork in soup, using his arms like oars to slowly position himself beneath the hollow statue head hanging above.

  “I said, now milady can try.”

  Uthor grumbled some more and fell silent as he waited for Emelda, similarly laden with inflated beer skins, to join him in the water.

  Rorek came last of all, the engineer seeming as if he almost enjoyed the swim. All three positioned themselves beneath the shadow of the hanging statue head, staring up into its vast hollows. The engineer ferreted around in the water, reaching for something on his belt and eventually pulled out a throwing axe.

  “Give that to me,” Uthor barked, “you would as likely hit one of us.”

  Flushed with embarrassment, Rorek passed the weapon to Uthor.

  “You had best be right about this, engineer,” Uthor warned, holding the axe in one hand. “Now you will see the killing stroke,” he boasted, winking at Emelda.

  With a grunt, Uthor let fly. The throwing axe span through the air and sheared the tethered rope in two, sending the hollow statue head plummeting earthward. In the instant before the massive thing plunged into the water, the three dwarfs huddled together instinctively. Uthor noticed Rorek had his eyes closed and his fingers firmly crossed. “Grungni’s balls…” he muttered as the statue head crashed down.

  “Wait, I hear something,” Hakem hissed, edging up to the end of the tunnel before peering surreptitiously around the curved corner.

  At the end of a short, wide corridor was the overflow grate. Two mighty hammerers fashioned from the very rock of the mountain stood sentinel before the massive gate that dominated the entire back wall of the tunnel. Their hammers were part of the actual mechanism that allowed the water through. At this moment they were clasped together — the Barduraz Varn was obviously still closed.

  Huge cogs of iron with broad, fat teeth were bolted to the left facing wall and a bewildering array of interlinking chains and conjoined pistons fed from them to the inner-workings of the grate itself.

  Dwarfed by the immense structure was a small cohort of rat-kin, obviously sent to guard the grate from interference — a dozen clanrats and a pair of Clan Skryre engineers bearing another fire-spewing contrivance, similar to that which had caused such havoc in the Wide Western Way.

  Hakem rolled back around the curve to where the others were waiting.

  “Twelve guards,” the Barak Varr dwarf reported, his demeanour increasingly taciturn and pugnacious since losing the Honakinn Hammer.

  Gromrund cracked his knuckles and readied his great hammer, sloshing determinedly through the floodwater. “There is little time for it,” he said matter-of-factly, “but needs must.”

  Hakem stopped him.

  “They also have sorcerous machinery of some sort.”

  “Pah,” snorted Gromrund, marching past the merchant thane. “Skaven engineering is cheap and unreliable. Doubtless, it will misfire before it can do any damage.”

  Hakem blocked him again.

  “Step aside, ufdi,” Gromrund snapped irritably, “you will not soil your beard in this fight,” he added, though after the mining shaft the entire skorong was so lathered in soot it would be hard to notice either way.

  “I have seen its effects with my own eyes,” Hakem warned, his gaze unwavering. “And it is deadly. Armour, for one, is no proof against it. Burned to ash by the sorcerous fire of the skaven is not an honourable death.”

  Gromrund backed down, planting his hammer head into the ground so he could lean on the haft.

  “So then, ufdi, what are we to do? Wait here until the rat-kin die of boredom.”

  “Lure them and thin their numbers.” Thalgrim’s voice broke up the building tension.

  Hakem and Gromrund turned to look at
the lodefinder, who was grinning ferally. He lifted up his helmet and at once the dwarfs were assailed by a pungent, if not entirely unpleasant aroma.

  “Lucky chuf,” Thalgrim explained, holding out the piece of moulding cheese in his hand.

  Ralkan’s eyes widened when he saw it, acutely aware of his groaning stomach.

  “The skaven have a taste for it,” Thalgrim added, darkly, deciding not to mention his suspicions about the ambush. Plopping the remains of the chunk into his mouth, Thalgrim chewed for a moment then swallowed, savouring the taste.

  Ralkan’s shoulders sagged, his loudly rumbling belly seemingly inconsolable.

  Gromrund was agog. “Are you mad, lodefinder, you have just eaten our bait?”

  “I did not want to waste it,” Thalgrim replied, licking his gums and teeth for any lingering traces of the ancient cheese. “Besides, it is not wasted,” he added, breathing hard into the hammerer’s face who gagged at once.

  “Very well,” said Gromrund, putting up his hand to ward off any further emissions. “Go and do what you must. You stay back, lorekeeper,” he said to Ralkan who was happy to oblige.

  Thalgrim nodded, creeping stealthily to the end of the curved tunnel. Once he’d reached the end, he peered around once to see that the skaven guards were still there and then blew a breath, thickly redolent of chuf, towards them, hoping that the shallow breeze would carry it. He watched silently from the shadows, acutely aware of the other dwarfs behind him with weapons readied.

  At first there was nothing. The skaven just chittered quietly to each other in their ear-wrenching tongue. But then the snout of one of the clanrats twitched and it sniffed at the air. Then another did the same, and another. There was a bout of frenetic squeaking and several of the rat-kin abandoned their posts to follow the cloying stink wafting towards them.

  Thalgrim gave them another blast for good measure and then retreated around the corner.

  “They come,” he whispered, unslinging his pick-mattock.

  The dwarfs hugged the shadows, keeping to the very edge of the tunnel. The sound of padding, splashing feet carried on the cheese-tainted air towards them, getting closer with every second as their curious enemies approached.

  Thalgrim held his breath when he saw the first clan-rat emerge from around the corner. Incredibly the creature’s beady eyes were closed, using smell alone for guidance as it tracked the chuf’s scent. Four of its flea-infested brethren followed, wielding a mixture of spears, blades and heavier-looking glaives.

  Once they had all passed the threshold of the tunnel, the dwarfs attacked.

  Thalgrim smashed the neck of one of the rats from behind, crushing its spine inward as it collapsed with a mewling cry. A second fell to Hakem’s borrowed axe, the blade cutting a deep wound in the clanrat’s belly through which its innards spilled. The creature looked dumbfounded at the dwarf as it tried to gather up its organs. One of the Sootbeards buried his pick in its forehead to silence it. Gromrund killed another two; one he choked with the wutroth haft of his great hammer, a second he bludgeoned with the hammer head. The last was cut high and low by the remaining Sootbeard dwarfs, its spear falling from nerveless fingers before it could retaliate.

  “Tidy work,” muttered Gromrund, wiping a slick of expelled blood from his breastplate. “That leaves seven, plus the war engine.”

  “Let’s take them now,” Thalgrim hissed urgently. “They will only have time for one shot.”

  The rat-kin had caught the scent of blood on the breeze and were squeaking at each other agitatedly, pointing towards the tunnel with clawed fingers.

  “For Grimnir!” Gromrund bellowed, overwhelmed by battle-fever, and raced around the corner to meet his foes. The others followed — all except Ralkan, who awaited the outcome of the skirmish pensively — making their oaths as they went.

  Screeching skaven levelled spears and blades as the dwarfs charged, before parting to allow the fire cannon through. A mighty whoosh of flame swallowed the cackling retort of the Clan Skryre engineers as they unleashed their war engine gleefully and lit up the tunnel in a blinding flare of angry green light. Thalgrim threw himself aside, flooring Gromrund in the process, but two of the Sootbeards were engulfed in the deadly conflagration and died screaming.

  Rising from the floodwater, the hammerer parried a spear thrust with his hammer haft before stamping down on his assailant’s shin, breaking it. He finished the clanrat with an overhead blow to the skull. Red ooze flowed thickly from the rat-kin’s ruined head as it languished in the water.

  Up-close, Hakem launched his shield like a discus at the fire cannon. The spinning weapon severed the first engineer’s head and embedded in the chest of the second. So mauled, the pair fell back and splashed into the water in a rapidly spreading pool of their own fluids.

  There was a gurgled cry as the last Sootbeard was impaled by a spear to the neck. A burly skaven shrugged the dwarf’s corpse off the blade contemptuously before rounding on Thalgrim. The lodefinder ducked a savage swipe and came under the blow to ram the head of his mattock into the creature’s chin. Dazed, the rat-kin staggered back but, blowing out a billowing line of blood and snot, recovered its composure and came at Thalgrim again. A blur of steel arrested its charge, as the creature was smashed against the wall, a thrown axe “thunking” into its torso. The lodefinder turned to see Hakem snarl as the rat-kin slumped down and was still, and nodded his thanks. The merchant thane nodded back, grimly.

  The skaven were all dead. Gromrund finished the last, crushing its skull with his boot as it tried to crawl away through the flood water. He spat on the corpse afterward and then turned to the others.

  “They were still good deaths,” he remarked, regarding the charred corpses of the two Sootbeards and the floating, impaled body of the other.

  “We must find a way to break the mechanism,” said Hakem coldly, straight back to business. “And I think I know of such a way,” he added.

  The other two dwarfs followed his gaze to the still twitching Clan Skryre engineers and the volatile fire cannon still strapped to their bodies.

  “Steady…” warned Thalgrim as he carefully lifted the broad barrel of the skaven cannon where its volatile mixture was held. “Easy does it.”

  “Filthy rat-kin, I doubt I will ever get the stink from my beard and clothes,” moaned Hakem, carrying one of the dead Clan Skryre engineers and having subsequently wrenched his shield free of its wretched corpse.

  “Consider yourself lucky, merchant,” Gromrund countered, lugging the other corpse as he tried to arch his neck away from the vile burden. “Mine has no head!”

  Between them, the three dwarfs heaved the bulky skaven war engine and its mouldering crew to the network of cogs and pistons that were the mechanism for the overflow. Ralkan — having been summoned once the fight was over — was with them, sat on a chunk of fallen rock as he held a burning brand aloft. The lorekeeper stayed back from the heavy lifting work, instead recording the names of the slain Sootbeards in the book of remembering that he rested on his lap.

  “You are certain this will work,” grumbled Gromrund, on the verge of wedging the entire foul assembly into the grinding and massive cog teeth.

  “Aye, I’m certain,” growled Thalgrim, a little put out by the hammerer’s obvious lack of confidence. “We Sootbeards have a close affinity with rock and stone, that much is true, but I also know something of engineering works, master hammerer,” the lodefinder added indignantly, before lumping the barrel and its various attached pipes and paraphernalia into the mechanism.

  “Quickly, now,” Thalgrim said, edging backwards urgently. The cogs stalled for a moment, an ugly screeching noise emanating from the mechanism as it tried to chew flesh, bone and wood. “It won’t hold long,” he added, reaching out for Ralkan’s torch as the other two dwarfs disappeared from beyond his eye-line. The lorekeeper had since packed away the book of remembering and he too was backing off.

  Thalgrim grasped the brand and flung it, end over end, into th
e wrecked skaven cannon, which was even now haemorrhaging flammable liquid. As he threw the torch, Thalgrim turned and ran before diving into the shallow water. The others rapidly followed suit. The flame caught, igniting the chemicals in the barrel immediately, devouring the crude artifice and its crew hungrily.

  Thunder cracked as the force of the massive explosion tore into the tunnel, amplified as it resonated off the stout walls, so powerful that it vibrated armour and teeth. Chunks of dislocated rock plummeted into the water in the aftermath, fire blossomed briefly and dust motes fell like a veil of shedding skin.

  Thalgrim was the first to poke his head above the water and check that it was over.

  “Clear,” he said, coughing back a cloud of dust and thick smoke.

  “It is fortunate we are not dead!” barked Gromrund, after spitting out several mouthfuls of rank flood water. “My ears still ring from the blast,” he added, waggling a finger in one.

  “At least it worked,” said Hakem, without joy. The merchant thane was on his feet and surveying the carnage wrought upon the overflow mechanism.

  “Dreng tromm,” Gromrund muttered, breathlessly as he went to stand beside him.

  The stout dwarfen mechanism, that which had been built in the reign of Hraddi Ironhand, that which had withstood the wrath of the ages and even endured the Time of Woes, was ruined. A blackened scar overlaid a twisted mess of metal and broken stone. It was all that remained of the once great artifice of the engineers of Karak Varn.

  Ralkan was beside himself and could not speak through tears of profound remorse. All of the dwarfs felt it; another small part of the Karaz Ankor meeting with ruination.

  Is this how it is all to end, thought Gromrund? We dawi forced to lay waste to our own domains?

  “It is sealed,” stated Hakem flatly, breaking the hammerer’s solemn pondering. “We had best move on,” he added, turning away from the gut-wrenching vista.

  “Cold is the wind that blows through your house,” uttered Gromrund as the merchant thane walked away.