The Great Betrayal

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Aye,’ nodded Morgrim, and drew his hammer.

  They had gone only a few feet when Snorri asked, ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘About magic? Chuffed if I know.’

  ‘No, about my destiny. It being great and “lifting the doom of our race” and “he who will slay the drakk”? Those words were meant for me, I am sure.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Morgrim, ‘but you’re the son of the High King of Karaz-a-Karak, of course your destiny will be great.’ Morgrim led the way, following veins of gemstones and ore in the tunnel walls.

  Snorri snorted, his disdain obvious.

  Morgrim barely noticed. ‘Feels like we’re going up… Does it feel like we’re going up?’ He stopped, trying to get his bearings even though there was supposedly only one way for them to go.

  ‘A great doom…’ said Snorri. ‘Are we headed for war, do you think?’

  ‘Why do you sound as if you want a war? And against whom will you fight, eh, cousin? The urk and grobi tribes are diminished, dying out, thanks to your father. Ruin left the land long ago. Will you fight the rats, the vermin beneath our halls? Our enemies are dead. Don’t be so quick to find others to take their place. Peace is what I want, and a mine hold of my own.’

  ‘Fighting is what I am good at, cousin.’ Snorri peered down the haft of his axe, all the way to the spike at the top. ‘I can kill a grobi at a thousand yards with a crossbow, or at a hundred with a thrown axe. None are better than I with a hammer when used to crush skulls. In that, in the art of killing our enemies, my father and I are very alike.’ He lowered the weapon and his eyes were heavy with grief when he met Morgrim’s gaze. ‘But he has already defeated them all and left no glory for me. I stand at his shoulder, nothing more than a caretaker who will sit upon a throne and rule a kingdom of dust.

  ‘So when you ask why I want war, it is because of that. As a warrior I am great but as a prince of Karaz-a-Karak, I am nothing. At least before my father.’

  Morgrim was stern, and a deep frown had settled upon his face. A small measure of respect for his cousin was lost.

  ‘You are wrong about that. Very wrong, and I hope you learn the error of it, cousin.’

  Grunting, unwilling to see Morgrim’s pity or think about his father’s shame, Snorri walked on.

  ‘Ranuld Silverthumb is the most vaunted runelord of the Worlds Edge. If he says a doom is coming then we must prepare for it.’ He thumped his chest, stuck out his pugnacious chin. ‘Dragon slayer, I was so named. King because of it. That is a legacy I wish to inherit, not one of cowing to the elgi and the whims of other vassal lords.’

  Morgrim fell silent, but followed. The old zaki had said many things during his casting.

  One word stood out above the others.

  Elgidum.

  It meant elfdoom.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Shadows on the Dwarf Roads

  Murder was always better conducted under moonlight. This night the moon was shaped like a sickle, curved and sharp like Sevekai’s blade as he pulled it silently from the baldric around his waist. Unlike the moon, its silver gleam was dulled by magwort and edged with a verdant sheen of mandrake.

  Fatal poisons, at least those that killed instantly, were a misuse of the assassin’s art in Sevekai’s opinion. Debilitate, agonise, petrify; these were his preferred tortures. Slaying a victim with such disregard was profligate, not when death inflicted upon others was something to be savoured.

  Crouched with his shadowy companions behind a cluster of fallen rocks that had sheared from the looming mountainside, Sevekai considered something else which the moon was good for.

  Stalking prey…

  It was a bulky cart, high-sided and with a stout wooden roof to protect whatever was being ferried. Two stocky ponies pulled the wagon, its wheels broad and metal-banded to withstand the worst the dwarf roads had to offer.

  In truth, the roads were well made. An army could march across them and have no blisters, no sprains or injuries to speak of at the end of many miles. Dwarfs were builders, they made things to last.

  Some things though, Sevekai knew, would not endure.

  As the trundling wagon closed, four guards came into view. Like the driver, they were dwarfs with copper-banded beards and silver rings on their fingers. Fastened to a hook next to the driver hung a shuttered lantern that spilled just enough light to illuminate the road ahead. The dwarf had kept it low so as not to attract predators. Unfortunately, no manner of precaution could have prevented this particular predator crossing his path.

  Sevekai took the driver for a merchant – his rings were gold and his armour ornamental. It consisted of little more than a breastplate and vambraces. Each of the guards wore helmets, one with a faceplate slid shut. This was the leader.

  He would die first.

  Heavy plate clad their bodies, with rounded pauldrons and a mail skirt to protect the thighs and knees. No gorget or coif. Sevekai assumed they’d removed them earlier in the journey. Perhaps it was the heat of the day, a desire for cool air on their necks instead of stinging sweat. So close to home, they had thought it a minor act of laxity.

  Sevekai smiled, a cold and hollow thing, and silently told his warriors, Aim for the neck.

  The hand gesture was swift, and heeded by all.

  Most of the dwarfs carried axes. One, the leader, had a hammer that gave off a faint aura of enchantment. Sevekai was not a sorcerer, but he had some small affinity with magic. Some had remarked, his enemies in fact, that he was lucky. Not just average good fortune, but phenomenal, odds-defying luck. It had kept him alive, steered him from danger and heightened his senses. For a murderer, a hired blade whose trade was killing other people, it was an extremely useful trait to possess.

  Other than the hand weapons, a crossbow with a satchel full of stubby quarrels sat within the merchant’s easy reach. It was leant against the wooden back of the driver’s seat with the lethal end pointing up. That was another error, and would increase the merchant’s reaction time by precious seconds once the ambush was sprung.

  Six dwarfs, three of them.

  The odds were stacked high against the stunted little pigs.

  Cloud crawling overhead like ink in dirty water obscured the moon and for a few seconds the road turned black as tar.

  Sevekai rose, as silent as a whisper in a gale, his shrouded body dark against darkness. The sickle blade spun, fast and grey like a bat arrowing through fog, and lodged in the guard leader’s eye-slit as the wagon hit a rock and jumped.

  With a low grunt, the dead dwarf lost his grip on the side rail and pitched off the wagon. To the other guards, in what few breaths remained to them, it would have looked as if their fellow had fallen off.

  ‘Ho!’ Sevekai heard the merchant call, oblivious to the fact there was a black-clad killer arisen in his midst and but a few feet away. Hauling on the reins, the dwarf drew the wagon to a halt with a snort of protest from the mules.

  That was another mistake.

  In the time it took for the merchant to turn and ask one of the other guards what had happened, one of Sevekai’s warriors had crossed the road. Like a funeral veil rippling beneath the wind, the warrior crept along the opposite side of the wagon and rammed his dagger up to the hilt in a guard’s neck. Sevekai couldn’t see the kill, his view was obstructed by the bulky wagon, but he knew how it would have played out.

  Kaitar was a late addition to his band, but a deadly one.

  Two guards remained. One had dismounted to see to his leader; the other looked straight through Sevekai as he searched for signs of ambush.

  You have missed… all of them, swine.

  Sevekai drew back his hood for this dwarf, let him see the red and bloody murder flaring brightly in his dagger-slit eyes.

  The dwarf gasped, swore in his native tongue and drew his axe. One-handed because of the rail, he should have go
ne for his shield. It would have extended his life expectancy by three more seconds. That was the time it would have taken Sevekai to close the gap, draw his falchion and dispatch the dwarf with a low thrust to his heart.

  Instead he threw his second blade, already clutched in a claw-like grip.

  Bubbling froth erupted from the dwarf’s gullet, staining his lips and beard a satisfying incarnadine red. He gurgled, dropped his axe and fell face first into the dirt.

  The colour spewing from the dwarf’s neck reminded Sevekai of a particularly fine wine he had once drunk in a lordling’s manse in Clar Karond. Generous of the noble to share such a vintage, but then he was in no position to object given that his innards had become his out-ards. Hard to take umbrage when you’re fighting to keep your entrails from spilling all over the floor.

  The last guard fell to a quarrel in the neck. It sank into the dwarf’s leathery flesh and fed a cocktail of nerve-shredding poison into his heart. Death was instantaneous but then Verigoth was an efficient if predictable killer.

  That left the merchant who, in the brief seconds that had been afforded to him, had indeed reached and gripped the crossbow in his meaty fist.

  Sevekai was upon him before the dwarf had drawn back the string.

  ‘Should’ve kept it loaded,’ he told the snarling pig in a barbed language the dwarf wouldn’t understand. The message Sevekai conveyed through his eyes and posture was easy to translate, however.

  You shall suffer.

  He cut the dwarf beneath the armpit, a slender and insignificant wound to the naked eye.

  After a few brief seconds during which the merchant’s grubby little hands had constricted into useless claws and a veritable train of earthy expletives had spat from his mouth, the dwarf began to convulse.

  Sudden paralysis in his legs ruined the dwarf’s balance and he collapsed. Eyes bulging, veins thick like ropes in his cheeks and forehead, the dwarf gaped to shout.

  Sevekai leapt on the dwarf like a cat pounces upon a stricken mouse it has nearly tired of playing with. Before a single syllable could escape the lips, he cut off the beard and shoved it down the dwarf’s throat. Then he stepped back to watch.

  The dwarf bleated, of course he did, but they were small and pitiful sounds that would scarcely rouse a nearby elk, let alone bring aid of any value or concern. From somewhere in the low forest a raven shrieked, emulating a death scream the dwarf could not make.

  ‘Even for a race like ours, you are cruel, Sevekai.’

  ‘It’s not cruelty, Kaitar,’ Sevekai replied without averting his gaze from the convulsing dwarf merchant. ‘It’s simply death and the art of crafting it.’

  Teeth clenched, upper body locked in rigor, choking on his own beard, the dwarf’s organs would be liquefying about now. With a final shudder, a lurch of defiant limbs still protesting the inevitable, the dwarf slumped still.

  Sevekai knew he had no soul, save for something cold and rimed with frost that inhabited his chest, and he regarded the dwarf pitilessly. Despite the artistic flourishes, this was simply a task he had been charged to perform. The theatrics were for the benefit of the others to remind them of his prowess as an artful killer.

  Satisfied with the deed, he addressed the night: ‘Leave no sign,’ and the two assassins on the road stepped back as a slew of arrows thudded into the dwarf corpses.

  Pine-shafted, flights woven from swan feather, the arrows were not typical of Naggaroth. Not at all.

  When it was done, four more warriors dressed in similar black attire stepped into view.

  Sevekai was stooping to retrieve his sickle blades, replacing them with elven arrow shafts, when Kaitar asked, ‘And this will fool the dwarfs?’

  ‘Of course, they won’t bother to look for subterfuge. They want a fight, Kaitar,’ Sevekai explained.

  ‘What of the poisons?’

  ‘Gone before the bodies are found.’ Sevekai looked up as he punched the last arrow through the dwarf leader’s eye. ‘If you hear hooves, what do you think of?’

  ‘Horses,’ said the deep-voiced Verigoth, a smirk on his grey lips. Like the others, he’d descended from the ridge to appreciate the carnage.

  Sevekai smiled, colder than a winter storm. ‘And when you think of arrows?’

  Now it was Kaitar’s turn to smile. ‘Asur.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  What Lies Above…

  ‘It’s as mysterious to me as it is to you, cousin.’ Morgrim looked behind them, but saw only darkness. ‘How far have we walked?’ Taking off a leather gauntlet, he ran his hand along the wall of the tunnel and then licked his fingers. ‘Tastes familiar.’

  ‘Zaki,’ said Snorri, using the Khazalid word for ‘mad wandering dwarf’. During the long walk in the dark, his mood had improved and the dour silence between them ebbed until all was well again. Destiny, his to be specific, was still on the dwarf prince’s mind, however. ‘You are probably right, cousin. The old fool was likely senile.’ He tilted his head, thinking. ‘Then again, the words of a runelord are not easily ignored. Are we still lost?’

  Pain flared in Snorri’s jaw. He grimaced, staggered by a sudden blow. Glaring at his cousin, he asked, ‘What was that for?’

  Morgrim was big, even for a dwarf. His father was bulky too, from a lifetime spent in the mines. Broad of shoulder, stout of chest and back, he had a chin like an anvil and a head like a mattock. Snorri was leaner, though still muscled, and surrendered half a foot in height to his cousin. Bare-knuckled, strength for strength he would not prevail against him.

  ‘It was either that or I hit you with the hammer,’ said Morgrim.

  ‘I’m just glad you didn’t butt me with that bloody helmet of yours.’ Snorri rubbed at his chin, wincing at the slowly swelling bruise. ‘Take my bleeding eye out with one of those horns. Big buggers. What was it, a stag?’

  ‘Beastman. Much larger than a stag, cousin.’ Morgrim smacked his fist into his palm. ‘Are you done talking about destiny, or do you need some more sense knocking into you?’

  Snorri held up his half-hand; the bandage was dark crimson but the wound had clotted. He slowly nodded.

  ‘Me one-handed, weakened from blood loss and being almost buried alive... Reckon you’d have a decent chance of beating me.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Morgrim, unconvinced it would be any sort of contest, and slapped his hand against the wall. ‘See this?’

  Snorri did.

  ‘I know what stone is, cousin.’

  Morgrim glowered at him. ‘Use your eyes, wattock. I know this place. We are no longer lost.’

  Snorri frowned, and regarded their surroundings.

  ‘How can that be? We’ve not long been…’ His voice tailed off, claimed by the darkness which was lessening by the second. Ahead, the crackle of brazier fire resolved on a breeze redolent of shallow earth and the upper world.

  A dwarf’s nose can discern much in the subterranean depths. He can tell the difference between the deep earth where he makes his hold, that which harbours veins of gold or precious minerals, and shallow earth, the loamy soil best for crops and farming. Unless he is one of the skarrenawi, those who ‘live under sky’, a dwarf has no interest in such things, but he knows earth and can tell it apart.

  Other smells, carried by the breeze, drifted into being. There was grass, leaf, stone dried by the sun, the scent of animals and warm water.

  Morgrim nodded as he saw the recognition in his cousin’s expression. ‘It’s the Rorganzbar.’

  ‘Cannot be,’ said Snorri. No matter how hard he stared at the way they had come, he couldn’t find the doorway through which they had entered the tunnel. ‘We were far from the northern gate.’

  ‘During the fight, we could have got turned around?’

  Snorri raised an eyebrow, dubiously. ‘And ended up over fifty miles in the wrong direction? Are you sure that helmet of yours didn’t
take a heavier hit when the cave collapsed? Perhaps you hurt your fist on my jaw and the pain of it has addled your mind?’

  ‘How else would you explain it?’

  Taking a last glance at the darkness behind them and the firelit shadows now glowing ahead, Snorri said, ‘I cannot.’

  The Rorganzbar was the name of the northern gates that fed into the upper world from the Ungdrin Ankor. Such passageways were falling out of use, for dwarfs had little need for what lived above ground, but they were fashioned anyway during times when trading with other races was more common. Elves thronged the Old World now, returned after a war, some matter of kinstrife the dwarfs did not really understand. So too did the skarrenawi, the dwarfs of the hills who had chosen to eschew solid earth and stone for the promise of sky and the warmth of the sun. Elgongi some mountain dwarfs called them, ‘elf-friends’.

  It was meant as an insult.

  As they reached a vast stone gateway, the truth of where they were could not be denied. Runic script along the tall, square pillars of the northern gate confirmed Morgrim’s suspicions.

  ‘Rorganzbar,’ read Snorri, hands against his hips. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’

  Numenos hailed them with a shout. Gifted with tongues, the black-clad warrior made it sound like the screech of a crow.

  Sevekai found the scout at the summit of the ridge, crouched low in his chosen rookery. He was gesturing for them to climb up and meet him.

  A quick glance around at the ambush site revealed that all was in readiness. Blades and quarrels had been gathered, corpses left with asur arrows in their bellies instead. Stowing his own weapons, Sevekai ran up the craggy ridge in long, loping strides. The others followed silently in his wake.

  As he crested the rise, he went low and hunkered down behind a cluster of fallen rocks. Numenos was waiting for him, the slit of his mouth curved upwards like a dagger.

  ‘Fresh meat,’ he hissed, and pointed higher up the mountainside, through a gap in a patch of sparse forest, where a second pathway wended above the one where they had laid their ambush.