Drimbold staggered up, two clan dwarfs helping him.
“Stay on your feet,” Halgar snarled, taking a moment to rub his eyes.
The Grey dwarf nodded dazedly. When he went to rejoin the fight he saw the skaven had gathered together and were backing off. The dwarf line, having weathered the first attack, did not press and a gap soon formed between the bitter foes.
“Nice of them to give us a breather, eh lad?” remarked the longbeard, wiping the blood slick from his axe and readjusting his shield.
“Why don’t they come?” hissed Drimbold through gritted teeth. The tense lull was almost more than the Grey dwarf could take. Only when the lumbering shapes came slowly from the skaven ranks, bustling their smaller kin aside violently to reach the killing, did Drimbold understand why.
Huge rat ogres, ten-strong, bristling with muscle and raw, terrifying brawn bellowed challenges and beat their chests with slab-like claws. Confronted by these horrifying, freakish creations the dwarf line took an involuntary half step back.
Azgar, who had rejoined the line, saw it.
“Khazukan Kazakit-ha!” bellowed the slayer, invoking the ancient war cry of the dawi, and stepped forward a pace.
“Khazuk!” came the unified response from the throng who matched him.
“Khazuk!” they cried again and took a second pace.
“Khazuk!” came the final cry as the dwarfs stepped into the killing zone of the rat-kin ogres.
With just their noses above the waterline, Uthor, Rorek and Emelda stalked across the shallow reservoir towards the guards lingering at the rock plateau. As they drew closer the three dwarfs fanned out at some unseen command.
Uthor’s gaze was fixed upon three clanrats, leant on spears and bickering with one another at the base of one of the ramshackle observation platforms. Only a few feet away, the thane of Kadrin arose slowly and quietly from the water, his beard and tunic drenched. One of the clanrats turned just as Uthor raised his axe and balked when confronted by the thane’s cold eyes.
That expression remained on the creature’s cooling corpse after Uthor buried his rune axe into its forehead. Ripping the glittering blade free, he beheaded another and downed the third with a savage blow to the back after it turned to flee.
He looked over to his companions. Three more rat-kin corpses lay at Emelda’s feet in various states of mutilation. Rorek, too, had dealt with his guards. Two skaven pin cushioned with quarrels floated in the shallow water, exuding blood. With this outer ring of sentries dispatched, the trio of dwarfs grimly moved on.
Crouched low as they sneaked across the rock plateau, the dwarfs converged and reached the threshold of the skaven engine. Up close, the infernal machine gave off an almighty clamour that masked their booted footfalls and shook their armour. As they approached, one of the hooded Clan Skryre agents turned and squeaked a warning. Rorek stitched a line of crossbow bolts across its neck and torso as it went to raise its staff.
Alerted by the sound the black-furred skaven turned, together with their smaller clanrat brethren, and began herding the slaves towards the dwarfs. The rancid, emaciated creatures dropped barrows and sodden sacking filled with earth, and took up spades and picks, the fear of their masters overwhelming their terror of facing the well-armed dwarfs.
Flikrit watched as Gnawquell twitched and fell, a host of feathered shafts jutting from his body like spines. The Clan Skryre warlock grinned with glee at his fellow acolyte’s demise. “Favour finds the survivor”, that was his motto. You cannot be elevated in the eyes of the Thirteen if you’re dead. When he noticed the three battle-hardened dwarf-things stalking towards him, ripping through his slaves like they were nothing, he readily squirted the musk of fear.
Mastering the terror that was threatening to loosen his bowels, Flikrit backed away. Delving into his robes he found a chunk of glowing warpstone and ate it up hungrily. The tainted rock tingled on his tongue: bitter, acrid, empowering. Fear ebbed away to faint, gnawing doubt as visions were visited upon the warlock. He raised his staff, full of warpstone-fuelled confidence and incanted quickly. A nimbus of raw energy played briefly around Flikrit’s outstretched paw before he channelled it into his staff and unleashed an arcing bolt of lightning.
Green-black energy arrowed into the air, charging it with power and the redolence of sulphur, and split a slave before it earthed harmlessly away.
Flikrit snarled his displeasure and screeched again, thrusting his staff towards the marauding dwarf-things carving up his slaves; slaves paid for with his tokens! Lightning flashed and one of the dwarf-things was struck as the eldritch bolt exploded into the earth nearby, spewing razor chips of rock.
Flikrit cackled with glee, leaping up and down but scowled when he realised the dwarf-thing was alive and getting to its feet with the help of one of its kin. This new foe broke through the stormvermin ranks that were now bearing the full brunt of the dwarf-thing’s fury with the slaves dead or running. It was beardless with long golden fur hanging from beneath its helmet. Determined anger was etched on the beardless-thing’s face and Flikrit squirted the musk of fear again as the effects of the warpstone chunk wore off. The warlock hunted around quickly for another hunk of the tainted substance and plopped it nervously into his mouth with quaking fingers. The dwarf-thing was almost upon him as he unleashed another lightning bolt.
Flikrit squeaked with relief and joy as his assailant was engulfed by a furious storm of warp energy. He closed his eyes against the flare of light, expecting to see a charred ruin when he opened them again.
Armour smoking, the dwarf-thing was alive! A faint glow emanated from a gilded belt around its waist. Having been brought to its knees, it got up in an even fouler rage than before, axe swinging meaningfully. Flikrit backed away, looking right and left for aid. Most of the stormvermin were dead. All of the Clan Rictus warriors were slain. He was alone.
Desperate for survival, the warlock dug his filthy paw deep into his robes and pulled out the last of his warpstone. Three massive chunks went into his mouth. Flikrit swallowed loudly. Dark energy rushed into his body, setting his nerves on edge, like he was on fire. About to unleash a final bolt of terrifying power, Flikrit realised he was on fire. He tried to pat out the greenish flames in his smouldering fur but to no avail. Opening his mouth to scream, the warp-blaze ravaged him utterly, stripping fur and flesh, and rendering bones to ash.
Emelda shielded her eyes from the skaven torch before her, lightning arcing wildly from its body and striking the roof of the chamber. The wretched sorcerer crumpled into a blackened heap of nothing as the deadly magic it had tried to unleash consumed it. The clan daughter’s armour was still hot from the lightning blast and she smelled scorched hair before muttering an oath to Valaya. As the skaven magic dissipated, the runes at her cincture dulled and became dormant once more.
Slightly dazed she looked around at the carnage.
Rorek shot down a group of fleeing clanrats with his rapid-firing crossbow before rushing forward to finish a rat-kin slave crawling across the ground with the weapon’s weighted butt.
Uthor dispatched the last of the burly black skaven, Ulfgan’s axe flashing fiercely as it shredded armour and bone with ease.
They were victorious. The skaven were all dead. Only those trapped within the thunderously turning wheels remained, utterly oblivious to the battle and locked in a hellish, spinning nightmare.
But the destruction was not at an end. Even as Emelda stowed Dunrik’s axe, slabs of rock broke away from the ceiling where the lightning had damaged it, plummeting into the pool of water surrounding the pumping engine. A massive chunk, one of the dilapidated archways of the vast chamber, crashed down onto one of the wheels that drove the pistons crushing it and the creatures within utterly.
“We must destroy that abomination,” bellowed Uthor as he fought the din of the engine, his steely gaze softening as it went from the skaven construction to Emelda.
“Are you…?”
“Valaya protects me,” she
replied.
“We need only to open the Barduraz Varn,” said Rorek, the sporadic lightning generated by the two remaining wheels casting his face in ephemeral flashes. “The flood waters will bring what is left down.”
“How are we to reach the gate?” asked Emelda.
“That stairway will take us to the opening mechanism,” Rorek answered pointing to a set of narrow, stone steps — partially obscured by the extremities of the pumping engine — leading to the huge bar of gold, copper and bronze that prevented the Barduraz Varn from opening.
Uthor at the lead, the three dwarfs rushed the steps quickly, taking them two at a time.
“Mind the wheel!” shouted Rorek above the incredible noise of the engine.
Part of the stairway brought the dwarfs perilously close to one of the whirring generator wheels. Uthor had to press his back against the stone to make sure he wasn’t dragged off the steps and into it. Edging by slowly, he felt the whip and pull of the air as it was smashed against his face, thick with the stink of burning flesh. Through the blurring effect of the rapidly spinning wheel he caught snatches of the slaves labouring madly within. Their blood-shot eyes bulged with intense effort, panting for breath through froth-covered mouths, fur pressed down under a thick lather of sweat. The thane saw other shapes in the kaleidoscopic vista, too, the remains of the wretched creatures that couldn’t maintain the pace or that fell, their broken bodies bouncing up and down with the wheel’s momentum and slowly being smashed to pulp.
Traversing the deadly stretch of stairway, Uthor finally reached the locking mechanism of the gate, the way opening out into a simple stone platform with a large wheel crank in the centre, riveted to the floor via a broad, flat iron plate. The others were not far behind when the thane of Kadrin took up a position at the wheel crank. He pushed hard but it wouldn’t yield, not even a fraction.
“It’s tough,” he yelled, “lend your strength to it.”
“It can’t be opened that way,” Rorek told him, arriving on the platform just after Emelda. “We must first release the lock,” he added, pointing at the magnificent gold, copper and bronze bar that spanned the entire width of the gate.
“Here,” cried Emelda, stood before a shallow alcove in the wall.
Upon closer inspection, Uthor noticed there was a round metal recess in it with four square stubs of iron sticking out.
“What now?” asked the thane of Kadrin, turning to his engineer.
“It is rhun-sealed,” Rorek replied, scrutinizing the indentation in the rock before he looked directly at Uthor. “We cannot open it without a key.”
Standing atop the great anvil, chained axe dripping blood, Azgar surveyed the swell of the battle below. Teeming rat-kin hordes thrashed against the thinning dwarfen shield wall that had been pressed all the way back to the forgemaster’s platform. Death frenzy was seemingly upon the foul creatures, muzzles frothing as they squealed madly to get at the dawi through the great arch. An endless, undulating sea of furred bodies stretched beyond it as yet more ratmen piled into the foundry.
Azgar kept his hand on the wyvern-horn hunting through the thronging skaven with narrowed eyes. The dwarfs were but half the number they were at the start of the battle. They would not last much longer. Yet the slayer resisted the urge to blow the note that was to signal all of their deaths. He was waiting; waiting for something to show itself…
Halgar was tiring. He would not admit it to himself but his aching limbs, the fire in his back and shoulder, the thundering breaths in his chest told him so. He slashed open a rat-kin’s throat, before breaking the snout of another with a savage punch. Three more of the vermin came on at him — the skaven seemed to surround them now — and he was forced back, defending a flurry of blows. For a moment his vision blurred and he misjudged a parry. The errant blow struck his thigh and the longbeard cried out.
Drimbold stepped in and hacked the cackling ratman down before it could take advantage.
Halgar nodded to the Grey dwarf, heaving more air into his lungs.
“Stay by me,” he barked, mustering what breath he could.
“You do not need to watch me,” Drimbold replied, slicing the ear off a slave fodder. “I will stay in the fight.”
“No, lad, not because of that,” Halgar replied, his axe held uncertainly in his hand, “because I’m going blind.”
“I will,” said Drimbold determinedly, taking up a position at the longbeards back and fending off a reckless rat-kin spear lunge.
Halgar had gone past pain, surpassed exhaustion now. Raw hatred for his foes kept him going, made his axe blade swing and take more lives. The killing became almost ritualistic in the dense fug of battle and everything else; every sense, every feeling was swallowed by it. When the longbeard felt the rock at his back slip away, all of that changed. He looked over his shoulder to see Drimbold slumped on one knee, clutching his chest.
“To your feet!” he cried, cutting through the shoulder of a rat-kin slave. Drimbold wasn’t listening or, at least, he couldn’t hear the longbeard. The Grey dwarf cried out when a curved blade ran him through, punching out of his back, shearing his light armour easily. Halgar whirled, blinking back his blurring vision, or tears — he couldn’t tell which — and cut Drimbold’s attacker down.
“To me!” the longbeard cried, gathering the Grey dwarf up in his arms as he fell back, a cohort of clan warriors surrounding them both in a shield wall. Halgar dragged the Grey dwarf back bodily, a geyser of blood spitting from his chest, into the rear ranks and set him down.
“Uthor… told… me…” Drimbold gasped through blood-flecked lips — every word was a struggle. “He said… I was to protect you.”
Halgar patted the Grey dwarf’s shoulder, unable to speak as he regarded the dwarf’s wounded body.
“I… failed,” Drimbold uttered with his dying breath, the light in his eyes fading to grey.
“No lad,” Halgar replied with tears in his eyes. “No you haven’t.”
The longbeard rested his gnarled hand over Drimbold’s dead, staring eyes. When he took it away again they were closed. He then leant down. The words were choked as he whispered in Drimbold’s ear.
“You are a half-dwarf no longer.”
Halgar wiped the back of his hand over his eyes and stood up, brandishing his axe.
“Guard him well,” he ordered three shield-bearing warriors sternly, who nodded sombrely before arraying themselves around the Grey dwarf.
With that the longbeard stalked away, back to the front and back to the killing.
At long last, Azgar found what he was looking for. Across the skaven ranks he espied their warlord, squeaking orders and forcing his way to the front.
It was an unusual trait for a rat-kin leader, the slayer thought to himself, to throw itself into the fight. There could be no mistaking it, though. Decked in thick armour of tarnished metal, wielding a weighty-looking glaive and ragged cloak dragging in its wake, this was the opponent Azgar had been waiting for.
Now he knew the skaven were committed to the attack.
Bellicose glee in his heart, the slayer raised the wyvern-horn to his lips and, with his mighty chest bulging, blew out a long and powerful note.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The wyvern-horn echoed throughout the hold, a reverberant and sonorous blast that carried through earth, stone and flood.
“There!” cried Gromrund, waiting inside Dibna’s Chamber.
“I hear it,” Thalgrim replied, poised before the statue of the engineer. As the lodefinder lifted his pick-mattock he looked over his shoulder at the hammerer. “Once this begins, there will be little time.”
Gromrund nodded his understanding. “Make your strike well.”
Thalgrim let fly and met the statue with precise force.
“It is done,” he said, turning on his heel as a shallow crack emerged in the rock, running rapidly up Dibna’s leg, across his torso, beyond his shoulder and up his outstretched arm until it finally reached the ceiling.
<
br /> Gromrund watched the fissure’s course slightly agog, small chips of rocks falling from its terminus at the ceiling.
“Flee, now!” Thalgrim urged, leaping into the shaft and disappearing from view.
Gromrund followed quickly, a final nervous glance behind him before he descended. Water was trickling through the ever-widening cracks and one of Dibna’s fingers fell away, shattering as it struck the floor. Darkness beckoned the hammerer as he approached the shaft and raced into it.
Gromrund half climbed, half slid down the shaft. Wisps of smoke spiralled from his armoured gauntlets with the intense friction of his descent. There was a nervous moment when he switched from the thick chain dangling from Dibna’s Drop to the lodefinder’s rope but he made it without falling to his doom. A growing sense of urgency had started to overwhelm him, exacerbated by the speck of flame from Thalgrim’s candles diminishing rapidly beneath him as the lodefinder made expedient progress.
“You’ll get yourself killed at that pace,” Gromrund called down to him.
“As might you if you don’t pick up yours,” came the distant, echoing response.
Gromrund intensified his efforts as much as he dared and, looking down again, swore he could make out a faint corona of washed-out light.
We will make it, thought the hammerer, as an almighty crash resonated above them, followed by a thunderous roar. Time was up.
Water fell like rain at first, droplets splashing harmlessly off Gromrund’s armour. Then it became a torrent, growing more violent with each passing second. The hammerer slid now, almost free falling, determined to arrest his descent when he neared the bottom of the shaft. That plan was reduced to tatters when the full fury of the deluge above smashed into him, and he was forced to grip the rope tightly to avoid being ripped away from it and cast like tinder into the darkness.
Gromrund roared his defiance and tried to edge down an inch. He did but had to grip hard again as the icy cascade battered the hammerer remorselessly. Gromrund had his head down and the pounding water thumped against his neck, so hard he thought it might snap. Thalgrim was below him, he was sure of it. He could just make out the hazy figure of the lodefinder through the downpour. The shaft shuddered against the elemental onslaught, chunks of loose rock sent spiralling earthward. One smacked against Gromrund’s warhelm, setting it askew. Another “thunked” his pauldron armour and the hammerer nearly lost his grip, crying out in anguish.
[Warhammer] - Oathbreaker Page 25