The Great Betrayal

by Nick Kyme

  Snorri snapped at him, ‘Do not call me that, Drogor. How many times must I tell you?’

  Drogor bowed. ‘Apologies, Snorri. I am your thane, you are my prince, one day to be High King. It feels dishonourable to address you any other way.’

  Snorri returned to the letter.

  ‘Rangers have been attacked on the road and a band of reckoners put to flight.’ His eyes widened in shock, quickly narrowing to anger. ‘Priestesses of Valaya were amongst their number.’

  ‘What?’ asked Morgrim. ‘What were priestesses doing this far from the hold? It makes no sense.’

  Snorri glared at his cousin. ‘Eight years ago they came forth from their temple, did they not?’

  ‘Elmendrin was not amongst them?’ Morgrim betrayed more than mere concern.

  Snorri gave him a wary glance before reading on.

  ‘No, she is back at Everpeak, but they would undoubtedly be her maidens.’

  Morgrim frowned, unconvinced. ‘Valayan priestesses abroad on the road? It makes no sense. Let me see that letter.’

  Snorri handed it over but it broke apart in his metal fist, fragmenting like ash.

  ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen parchment do that before.’ He looked at it for a moment then cast it over the wall, where it was caught by the wind and borne away.

  Morgrim turned to Drogor, who was waiting patiently for the prince’s orders.

  ‘Where is this runner now? I would speak with him.’

  Drogor grew solemn, though his eyes remained cold and lifeless. ‘He is dead, shot with elgi arrows.’

  Morgrim sneered. ‘I see.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Nothing that cannot be rectified.’

  ‘It matters not,’ said Snorri. ‘Slaying rinns and priestesses, it cannot go unanswered any longer.’ He was stern, and he spoke through a portcullis of clenched teeth. ‘Gather the clans. All of them. And send word to Brynnoth and Thagdor. This time I won’t be dissuaded. We march on Kor Vanaeth.’

  ‘What about your father? He sues for peace, and any warmaking that we do here could–’

  ‘Let him!’ Snorri roared. ‘He’s knows it’s over, as well as I. Peace is dead, has been for eight years.’

  ‘And while peace fails, what will we do?’

  Snorri’s face was pitiless as knapped flint, and just as unyielding.

  ‘What we should have done years ago. Kill elgi.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Sea Gate

  Towering cliffs, thronged with shrieking gulls and carved with the likenesses of the ancestors, loomed over Forek Grimbok and the hearthguard.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked the armoured warrior standing next to him at the ship’s prow.

  ‘Aye,’ murmured Gilias, tightening his grip on his axe haft instinctively. ‘The Merman Gate, entryway into Barak Varr, the Sea Hold and realm of King Brynnoth.’

  The pair of cyclopean statues were fashioned seamlessly into the rock face, depicted wearing fishscale armour and fin-crested war helms. One was female and carried a trident in her left hand; the other, male, bore an axe that he held across his chest.

  ‘Magnificent,’ breathed Forek.

  Insisting they make all haste to Barak Varr, the High King had petitioned the King of the Sea Gate to both receive them and send a vessel to bear his emissary to the hold. Though dwarfs were not fond of water-borne travel, preferring solid rock as opposed to a leaky deck beneath their boots, Forek and his retinue had adjusted quickly.

  Over the last eight years relations had soured between the two holds. Brynnoth did not believe in peace, but he also did not believe in denying his king and so had acceded to Gotrek’s request.

  The most direct route from Everpeak to Barak Varr was Skull River, one of several large tributaries that joined the Black Gulf. The river widened as it met two shoulders of jagged rock that formed the monolithic cliffs that had glowered down on them several miles out. The sweeping crags arched over an immense gate of bronze, green with verdigris and clinging seaweed. A dwarf face, with a sea serpent coiling from its open mouth and an ocean wyrm perched atop its helmet, was emblazoned across it that split in two as the gate opened.

  Either side of the gate was a tower, a garrison of dwarf quarrellers within each and a journeyman engineer to pump the crank that worked the mechanism which opened it. The reek of salt and the open sea hit them in a wave as soon as the bronze gate was breached.

  Like his retinue of hearthguard, Forek looked up as they passed under the archway but saw the faces that regarded them were far from friendly.

  ‘Why do I feel a chill in this wind all of a sudden?’ he asked, determined not to flinch against intimidation.

  ‘They are Gatekeepers,’ explained Gilias, ‘and not prone to warm welcomes. Barak Varr and Karaz-a-Karak are not on the best of terms at the moment.’

  ‘King Brynnoth knows who his allies are,’ Forek assured the hearthguard. ‘He would not have aided us if he felt otherwise. Grudgement for Agrin Fireheart will be done, but not until the truth is known. A war would eclipse all hope of that. It would be petty and unworthy of the runelord. Brynnoth knows this.’

  ‘You seem very sure,’ said Gilias.

  Mist wreathed the passage of the grubark in a white, impenetrable fog but the hearthguard rowed unerringly, one of the warriors working the tiller to keep the rudder straight and their small ship from falling foul of the banks.

  ‘I will make certain of it upon making the shore,’ said Forek. He tried not to breathe too deep of the briny air, already feeling a little nauseous with the gentle rocking of the boat.

  ‘Here.’ Gilias uncorked a flask of tarry liquid and offered it to the reckoner. ‘This’ll calm your stomach.’

  Forek took a grateful swig, gulping back the fiery liquid and trying not to cough. He was used to ‘gentler’ brews, not the harsh muck enjoyed by the king’s protectors.

  ‘Tromm,’ he said, nodding thanks, ‘that feels better al–’

  Forek stopped mid-sentence, his mouth suddenly agape. The mist had thinned and parted, revealing the majesty of the Sea Gate.

  Massive columns surged upwards from dark water, decorated with immense statuary and brazier pans of burning coals as broad as a hundred shields laid edge to edge. The columns supported a vast ceiling of rock, a natural cave that served as Barak Varr’s dock. The rune of bar – that which means ‘gate’, and is a potent symbol of protection – was emblazoned upon slabs of rock, towers and minarets, portcullises and keeps built into the cave wall. Tips of spear-sized quarrels could be seen poking out through arrow slits and stone throwers mounted on rotating platforms were angled towards them in a blatant threat.

  Barak Varr was a hold that took its defence very seriously, and even a vessel that had encroached this far into its borders was not guaranteed continued safe passage.

  Somewhere a bell was tolling, its sound solemn and echoing. A hold was still in mourning for its venerable dead, and it only made the cavernous chamber more desolate. Ordinarily it would be bristling with vessels from across the Old World: strange barques of dark-skinned merchants, the skiffs of Southland traders and even elven catamarans had all been seen at the Sea Gate before. Not so any more. Impending war had seen much of the trade dry up and now only a few dwarf vessels occupied the yawning expanse of black water.

  ‘It’s like a graveyard,’ remarked one of the hearthguard, until Gilias silenced him with a look.

  Forek agreed, the doleful bell ringing in the distance to announce them. His reckoning days had never brought him to Barak Varr before. Perhaps it was on account of the strong bond between it and Everpeak that this was the case. But whatever he had expected, this was not it.

  As they were ushered towards a jetty, several warriors wearing scaled mail and carrying axes and crossbows met them. Their helmets were almost conical, fas
hioned into the simulacra of a sea dragon’s snout, and had a pair of jagged fins protruding from either temple. Shields strapped to their backs were scalloped at the edges and their axe blades were flanged like a trident’s teeth.

  ‘Quite a show of force,’ murmured Gilias, careful to keep his voice low.

  Forek muttered, ‘Once King Brynnoth has received us, all will be well. They are just wary of dawi not of their hold.’

  As soon as they set foot on dry land, Forek whispered an oath of gratitude to Valaya for her deliverance and then one to Grungni for creating the earth.

  Two figures not part of the throng of warriors awaited them on the flagstoned shore. As soon as Forek saw one of them he realised why there were so many warriors.

  ‘That is High Thane Onkmarr.’

  ‘You sound surprised,’ said Gilias as they walked along the jetty to the creak of wood bending beneath the weight of so many armoured warriors.

  ‘I am.’

  The other dwarf Forek didn’t know. He was dressed in black leather armour over a scruffy-looking tunic. The eyepatch he wore, together with the mattock head he had instead of a foot, marked him out as a ship’s captain but the reckoner thought he looked more like a pirate.

  ‘If Onkmarr is here then that can mean but one thing.’

  ‘Which is?’ hissed Gilias as they neared the edge of the jetty.

  Forek replied in the same guarded tone, ‘That King Brynnoth is not.’

  Heglan awoke to a hammering against his chamber door.

  He was face down in a scrap of parchment, ink smears on his cheeks from where he had fallen asleep pressed against his still-wet scribblings, exhaustion forcing him to eschew his bed in favour of the first available place to collapse.

  At first he was disorientated. This last session in the workshop had been the longest, several weeks in isolation with only stonebread and strong beer to sustain him. Dawi had survived on less, he had told himself at the outset of his labours. His avian menagerie startled him and he gasped aloud at the talons of a crag eagle bearing down from on high. Belatedly, he came to his senses, still slightly fuddled by strong drink but at least now able to make out someone calling his name.

  ‘Heg? Open the door, brother. Heg?’

  Tripping on a stuffed griffon vulture that had fallen from its perch, he stumbled to his feet and hurried over to a crank that would seal off the hidden vault where he kept his secret labours. Setting the mechanism going, he quickly gathered up the scraps of parchment he had been sleeping on, rolled them up and stuffed them in a drawer.

  By the time he reached the door and opened it, the vault was shut and Nadri Gildtongue looked less than impressed.

  ‘What are you doing, Heg?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘I was sleeping, brother. What’s your excuse for being here?’

  Nadri barged his way in and began to look around.

  ‘I haven’t seen you in months. I’ve spoken to your guildmaster,’ he said, rifling through tools and sketches, drawers of cogs and nails and bolts. ‘Your absence has been noted.’

  ‘If you tell me what you’re looking for perhaps I can help you find it.’

  ‘You are doing it again, aren’t you?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Building the airship. I am no wazzock, Heg, do not treat me as one.’ Nadri rapped his knuckles against the room’s back wall. ‘What is behind here?’

  Heglan feigned confusion, but inwardly stifled a pang of anxiety. Nadri was certainly no fool. ‘It is a wall, brother. Solid rock is behind it.’

  ‘Every other surface in this workshop is covered in designs and formulae and notes. You have papered it in parchment scribblings, Heg. Yet this wall is barren.’ Nadri shook his head, his face clouded by anger. ‘Don’t lie to me. Show me what you’re hiding.’

  Heglan closed his mouth – protesting his innocence would be pointless now – and opened up the vault.

  The skylight beamed weak winter sun onto the hull of a magnificent ship. It was lacquered black, fully restored and even larger and more impressive than before. Gone were the rotary sails and the sweeps, but there was more rigging and a sack that looked like a stitched animal bladder draped the deck.

  ‘It’s unfinished but an inaugural flight is close, I think.’ Heglan’s eyes widened, his hangover all but forgotten in his excitement. Like an artist with his latest masterwork, he relished the opportunity to show it off.

  Nadri was less enthused but couldn’t hide his awe.

  ‘It is incredible, Heg. But you will be expelled from the guild for this. Strombak will see to it that you are given the Trouser Legs Ritual and kicked out.’

  ‘When he sees what I have crafted, when he witnesses its first flight he will–’

  ‘He doesn’t care, Heg! He will expel you and further shame will be heaped on the Copperfists. First Grandfather Dammin and now you… Our father, Lodri, will never be allowed at Grungni’s table. He will wander forever at Gazul’s Gate.’ Nadri tugged on his beard, fighting back the tears in his eyes. He rasped, his voice choking, ‘Dreng tromm, brother.’

  ‘The skryzan-harbark will fly, Nadri. I know it. And when it does our family’s shame will be expunged, our seat in the Hall of Ancestors assured. Please don’t tell Strombak what I am doing, not yet. I must–’ He stopped, as if seeing his brother for the first time since he’d entered his workshop. ‘Wait… why are you wearing your armour?’

  Nadri was clad in ringmail. A helmet was tethered to his belt by its strap and there was a small round shield on his back, an axe looped by his waist.

  ‘It’s why I came to find you, brother,’ he said with a hint of melancholy. ‘King Brynnoth is going to war. Our kalan marches with him.’

  Heglan was shaking his head, fear for his beloved brother lighting his eyes. ‘No. You are a merchant, not a warrior.’

  ‘We are all warriors when the horn blows calling us to war. The elgi are to be held to account for Agrin Fireheart’s death at last.’ Nadri’s face darkened, his mouth becoming a hard line. ‘And I shall seek vengeance for Krondi.’

  ‘But war? When did this happen?’ asked Heglan.

  ‘It is happening now, brother. The king has already left Barak Varr and another two thousand dawi of the kalans follow in his wake.’

  ‘But what of trade, who will bring gold into the Sea Gate if you are at war?’

  ‘There is no trade! It ended years ago and has been drying up ever since. The only currency now is that of axes and shields, war engines to break open the elgi cities. It’s why Strombak has not been to find you. He is in the forges, as you should be, fashioning weapons for our king.’

  Like a hammer blow had struck him on the forehead, filling his skull with a sudden realisation, Heglan went from being stupefied to urgently casting about his workshop.

  Nadri frowned. ‘What are you doing now?’

  Heglan was ferreting around in drawers and racks, sweeping aside tools and materials. ‘Looking for my axe,’ he said. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Nadri went over and held him by the shoulders to keep him still.

  ‘No, brother. You are staying here. Finish your airship. Strombak will definitely cast you out of the guild if you tell what you’ve been up to now. Realise grandfather’s dream. It might be your last chance.’

  Worry lines creased Heglan’s brow. ‘Why are you talking like this? A moment ago you were chastising me.’

  ‘I changed my mind. You were right. Nothing will be the same after this,’ he said, sombrely.

  Heglan grew fearful as he saw the fatalism in his brother’s eyes.

  ‘You are coming back, aren’t you?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You have to come back. Father is dead, mother too. You are my only family, Nadri.’

  ‘And you mine, Heg.’

  They embraced awkwardly, Nadr
i’s armour unfamiliar on his body and getting in the way.

  ‘Keep it secret, Heg,’ he said.

  Heglan was weeping. ‘Dreng tromm, Nadri…’

  Nadri held him behind the neck, pressed his forehead to his brother’s.

  ‘Karinunkarak,’ he murmured.

  ‘Karinunkarak,’ Heglan replied in a choked whisper.

  It meant ‘protect and endure’, but words were not shields or armour.

  Detaching himself from his brother’s embrace, Nadri met Heglan’s gaze one last time and then left the workshop.

  The door slamming after him arrested Heglan from his reverie. He turned to regard the airship, a masterwork waiting for its artisan to finish it.

  Seizing a hammer that he’d spilled onto the floor, he locked the door to his chamber and went to work.

  Onkmarr had wasted no time in getting Forek and his retinue on their way. They didn’t leave the dock and certainly had not been granted admittance to the Sea Hold itself. Instead, as the high thane and regent left them, the Everpeak dwarfs were guided by the rough-looking captain to where his ship was berthed.

  It was a massive vessel, engraved with runes along its hull and festooned with rows of sweeps along either flank. A vast paddle sat at the stern that could pivot back and forth like a rudder, but there were no masts, no sails to speak of. It was armoured in plates of metal, the heavy wood of its structure thick and well lacquered. Three bolt throwers, one at the prow where Valaya’s effigy looked stern in her warrior aspect and two more to port and starboard, provided obvious protection but in addition to them were racks of crossbows and harpoons that Forek could see jutting up above the bulwarks from below. A crew of leather-skinned, weather-beaten dwarfs hoisted barrels and other provisions up a ramp onto the deck. They too were armed.

  ‘A mission o’ peace never looked so tooled up, eh?’ the captain remarked over his shoulder as he led his passengers up another ramp. The swarthy-looking dwarf grinned, revealing several gold teeth, as he noticed Forek looking at his missing foot. ‘Ah, don’t let that bother ye, lad,’ he said in a gravel-thick voice. ‘I needs hands to steer a ship, not feet. And as you can see, I have both of those.’ He patted a broad black belt, a rune axe looped on one side, spyglass on the other. The dwarf sea captain gave a shallow bow. ‘Nugdrinn Hammerfoot. I’ll be the zaki taking you across the Great Ocean.’