by Nick Kyme
Even as the druchii closed her down, seized her flailing fist and plunged the dagger deep.
Time slowed, the smoke and flame so thick Liandra could hardly breathe any more, the figures a few feet in front of her reduced to hazed silhouettes.
One crumpled and fell. It brought a word half-formed to her lips that she was unable to speak.
Mother.
The druchii turned. Something dark and vital shimmered on the edge of his blade. It dripped to the ground, as the last ounces of Liandra’s innocence bled away with it.
Horns were braying.
Lothern had answered, but their call came too late for her mother.
Heedless of the danger, the druchii advanced on her. He got three steps before an arrow punctured his chest. Another pierced his throat and he gargled his last words through a fountain of blood.
Then he fell, and Liandra was alone.
The archer hadn’t seen her. No one came.
She stayed there in the ruins of Cothique, surrounded by smoke at her mother’s side, until the fire died and all that remained was ash.
Liandra awoke with a sudden start, awash with feverish sweat.
She breathed deep, trying to abate her trembling, soothing Vranesh who was similarly distressed. The high mountain air was crisp and cold. It chilled her, but she relished it, found it calming.
‘Mother…’ The word escaped her lips without her realising, and terror was subdued by a hard ball of iron that nestled in her heart.
Eight years she had been hunting. As soon as she learned of the druchii’s presence in the Old World, and she felt the resonance of the Wind of Dhar in the gorge to confirm her, she had not rested. Kor Vanaeth was left to one of her father’s seneschals. He was a good man, a dependable warrior, but not one in whom Liandra could confide.
Not like Imladrik.
Every since the day they parted ways, she had ached for his return. Not once had she gone back to Kor Vanaeth, preferring the cold solitude of hunting dark elves. She cared not for the imminent war. It didn’t matter to her who had killed the dwarfs. None of that mattered now. She just wanted revenge.
And her prey was close.
She breathed deep of the mountain air again… and smelled smoke, heard the crackle of fire.
A tremor jerked her heart and she gasped, reliving the dream all over again. Then fire turned to ice in her veins.
She wasn’t dreaming. The fire was real. Smoke carried on the swift mountain breeze.
Kor Vanaeth was burning.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A Hurled Spear
By the time the armies of Barak Varr and Zhufbar had reached the fortress at Black Fire Pass, it took thirteen days for Snorri Halfhand’s throng to meet the elves in pitched battle.
It took less than three hours to defeat them and send the survivors fleeing back to their city.
Now, Kor Vanaeth was surrounded by almost forty thousand dwarfs. Like an ingot of iron clenched in the tongs, they would hammer the elves against the anvil until they broke.
On a dark heath strewn with battered shields and snapped spear hafts, a conclave of dwarf lords had gathered to decide upon their siege tactics. Frost crisped the ground underfoot, showing up spilt blood that glistened like rubies in the light snowfall. It made the earth hard and the grass crunch like shattered bone.
‘We could just wait them out,’ suggested King Valarik of Karak Hirn. ‘Set up our pickets and let the elgi starve.’ Two great eagle wings sprouted from his war helm and a suit of fine ringmail clad his slight frame. A short cape of ermine flapped in the wind, revealing the haft of his mattock slung beneath it on his back.
A susurrus of disproval emanated from the gathered lords. Valarik was youthful, his hold barely founded. It was only natural the older, venerable kings would take exception to his idea.
‘They already look beaten.’ There was a glint in King Hrekki Ironhandson’s eye. It sparkled like the tips of his bolt throwers in the low winter sun.
A gust of cold air ghosted from Snorri’s mouth as he exhaled.
‘Because they are.’ Like many dwarf kings, a vein of greed as thick and beguiling as any motherlode ran through Ironhandson. He licked his lips as he imagined the plunder inside the elf city that would swell his coffers.
Snorri didn’t feel it. He only wanted to show his father he was wrong and that the elves were a threat in need of ousting from their lands.
Thagdor certainly thought so.
He regarded the lines of battered but defiant spearmen, the rows of dishevelled elven archers upon the wall with disdain.
Their horse guard were all dead, the silver-helmed riders smashed against a bulwark of dwarf shields. The King of Zhufbar had revelled in this, for they were his shields.
‘Aye, as bloody weak and feeble as I thought. We should’ve done this years ago.’
Why then, thought Snorri, do I not feel it?
He expected satisfaction, a sense of righteous vengeance, but all that filled him was a terrible emptiness, which he could fill with neither gold or violence.
He had gathered the kings together, standing behind the serried shield walls of almost forty thousand dwarfs, to plan the assault. It only occurred to him now that the battle required little in way of strategy. The dwarfs possessed an overwhelming advantage in terms of their numbers. They could simply march on Kor Vanaeth and not stop until it was rubble under their stomping boots.
The left flank contained the bulk of Karak Varn’s war engines. Ironhandson was particularly proud of them, a battery of fifty stone throwers and half that again in ballistae. Untouched in the pitched battle, his engineers and journeymen made ready to unleash them now.
Brynnoth said nothing. He had come to the council as requested, but cared not for tactics. Like most of the clans of Barak Varr, he just wanted revenge. Dwarfs are patient creatures, but eight years had begun to seem a long time coming for Agrin Fireheart’s retribution.
Snorri recognised the merchant Nadri Copperfist amongst the king’s retinue. Doubtless, his place there was because he had found the runelord and desired vengeance of his own. A merchant no longer, he had left the name Gildtongue behind and become a warrior. Before it was over, Snorri suspected many more would have to do the same. Rope makers, lantern-bearers, barrel-wrights, muleskinners, gold-shapers, rock-cutters, brew-hands, all the dwarfs of the clans would set down the tools of their various trades and take up their axes in this cause.
His father had seen that. After eight years, Snorri was only just beginning to see.
‘We should let the elgi surrender,’ said Morgrim. His mail hauberk was chipped in places, some of the rings split and dented from elven lances. A worn shield hung over his back and a hammer, stained dark crimson, was looped in his belt. Pleading eyes regarded Snorri from beneath the mantle of his horned helmet as his cousin sought to end the fight.
Snorri held his gaze for a moment before casting it over the city. Every one of the elves had retreated behind its walls. His rangers had estimated somewhere in the region of eight thousand warriors still lived and were able to fight. Mainly spearmen and archers; the cavalry were either dead or would be no use during a siege. There were bound to be sorcerers too, but the prince was unconcerned. Both Brynnoth and Thagdor had brought their runesmiths.
‘They won’t surrender, cousin,’ said Snorri. His burnished breastplate shone dully in the sun as if lacking some of its former lustre. It came with a winged helm that the prince kept in the crook of his arm, and had a shirt of mail beneath it. His axe was unsullied and sat upon his back in its sheath. His iron gauntlet flexed. ‘And nor would we let them. We must send a message. Elgi are not wanted in these lands. They are trespassers and interlopers, and won’t be tolerated any more.’
Morgrim lowered his voice. ‘You think it will end here? You’ve made your point, cousin. Let them go.’
He half glanced at Drogor who was standing stock still beside his cousin, eyes front.
Snorri shook his head.
‘Can’t do that, Morg. The elgi have enjoyed our mercy long enough. Agrin Fireheart lies eight years dead and that must be accounted for. There are entire chapters of grudges devoted to the acts of murder and sabotage perpetrated by these thagging pointy-ears. Have you forgotten Zakbar Varf?’
‘That was a trading settlement, this is a city!’ Morgrim bit his tongue, struggling to rein in his exasperation. He urged, ‘Please don’t do this.’
Snorri paused, betraying the slightest chink in his resolve.
Drogor’s grip tightened on his axe haft, and the prince hardened again.
‘It’s already done,’ he said, thinking about the elven corpses littering the battlefield behind them. He signalled to King Ironhandson. ‘Bring it down,’ he told him. ‘By Grimnir, bring it all down.’
Greed lighting his eyes like a bonfire, the King of Karak Varn raised his fist.
Horns blared, drums beat, warriors clattered their shields.
‘Khazuk!’
Hurled stones and flung bolts thickened the air, whistling in a murderous clamour.
The inevitable war had finally begun.
Fighting outside the gate to Kor Vanaeth was fierce.
Nadri hacked his blade into the elven wood, finding it much more unyielding than he would have first believed.
In their eagerness to kill elves, and their greed, the dwarf army had not bothered to hew down the trees for battering rams. Instead they would use their axes to cut the city gate down, for surely an elven gate would be easy to breach?
The last hour had proven the falsehood of that, but even as the arrow storm raining down on them from above claimed yet more of Grungni’s sons, the gate was slowly beginning to buckle.
Wrenching his axe loose, Nadri saw and heard a crack split its length all the way to the keystone above.
‘It yields!’ roared King Brynnoth, shielded by his doughty hearthguard.
Within a few paces of his liege-lord, Nadri struck again, urging his clan to greater efforts. He had killed many elves in the earlier pitched battle, and saw their faces with every blow against the gate. Bloodied grimaces, terror-etched or dead-eyed, they rattled him to the core. Then he remembered Krondi, gutted like a fish, and his grip hardened to chiselled stone.
Hammer-armed dwarfs from the Sootbrow clan thumped the cracks, widening the breach with each successive blow. Miners by trade, the Sootbrows worked with steady momentum like they were at the rock face hewing ore.
‘Ho, hai, ho, hai…’
Their labouring song was mesmeric. Even when one of their number was felled by an arrow and gargled his last, they did not pause or falter.
The war machines were silent. King Ironhandson had ordered an end to the barrage as soon as Prince Snorri had blown the signal to march. Nadri had been glad of it, muttering an oath to Krondi as they advanced on the city. How far away his life as a merchant seemed now. He spared a brief thought for Heg before the arrows started flying, hoping his brother was still safe in the Sea Hold.
With a sickening splintering of wood, the gate broke apart. A forest of spears glittered on the other side. Behind them, a host of angry and defiant elven faces.
Shields up, the dwarfs barged forwards. Some spears found a way through, skewering mail or splitting plate. With their shields facing elven aggression in front of them, the dwarfs were vulnerable to arrows from above. Even when over a hundred dead littered the gateway, the sons of Grungni did not relent.
Unable to hold back such a determined tide, the elf spear line buckled and the dwarfs poured in.
An elven lordling wearing shining silver scale, a feather of amethyst purple poking from the tip of his helmet, and riding a white horse, raised his sword to urge the garrison of Kor Vanaeth on. Archers mounted on the steps loosed the last of their remaining shafts into the courtyard that was clogging quickly with elven dead.
Nadri took an arrow in his shoulder before he raised his shield to block three others. Head down, seeing mainly booted feet and the skirts of elven scale mail, he swung like a blind man in a bar fight. The hard thwack of his axe blade hitting flesh then bone was the only sign he was still in the fight. A spear tip glanced off his helmet, setting a ringing in his ears and a dense throb in his skull. Blood pulsing, heart thundering, he lashed out and was rewarded with a half-strangled scream.
Sweat filled his nostrils, some his own, some his warrior brothers’. He heard their grunting, the muttered curses.
‘Thagging elgi!’
‘Dreng elgi!’
‘Uzkul, uzkul!’
No way out of the melee, surrounded by the din of battle and dying, Nadri roared his own war cry.
‘Krondi! Dammaz a Krondi!’
A brief cessation to the killing allowed him to look up. The elves were retreating further into the city, but their numbers and formation were scattered. Most of the archers had emptied their quivers so abandoned their bows in favour of knives.
Nadri saw a spearman brought to his knees by one of the hearthguard. Another smacked the elf around the face, his neck snapping wildly to the left before he slumped down and was still.
A second clutched the air, his spear wrenched from his grip before the hammers were upon him, silencing his screams.
Spurring his mount the lordling rode at King Brynnoth, who had demanded to lead the attack personally, uttering a battle cry to his elven gods.
The king of the Sea Hold shoulder barged the steed, thudding his armoured bulk into the beast’s chest and stealing away its breath. With a shriek, its ribcage cracked; heart failing, the horse collapsed and bore its rider with it.
Brynnoth showed no mercy as he cut off the lordling’s screaming head.
That was an almost an end to it.
Seeing their commander slain was enough to break the elves. Those who could, ran; those who couldn’t, surrendered. Several of the pleading elves died before Prince Snorri entered the fray to call a stop to it.
Nadri stood in the middle of the carnage, breathing hard, an ache in his back and shoulder where the arrow remained.
‘Get the healers to look at that,’ said a voice behind him. He half turned and saw the Prince of Karaz-a-Karak. He was about to kneel when the prince stopped him.
‘You’ve fought and bled, by Grimnir,’ he said.
For Agrin Fireheart, the dwarfs of Barak Varr had been given the honour of breaking the gate, and it didn’t take forty thousand to sack a city of eight. Some of the walls had collapsed, weakened by stone throwers, brought down by grapnels, but the incursions of the other dwarfs had been mild compared to the effort of the Sea Hold clans.
Prince Snorri met Nadri’s gaze. There was steel there, and stone.
‘No son of Grungni who has fought this day kneels to me. Go find a healer, lad. The deed here is done.’
He walked on, several of his thanes in tow.
Nadri had expected to feel satisfaction, a sense of closure, even relief. He felt none of these things. Looking around at the corpses, the greedy looting that followed, he found he felt nothing at all.
A warrior of the hearthguard hurried over, his heavy armour clanking. He’d run a good distance, heaving and gasping in his suit of plate and mail, lifting his visored helm to speak.
‘My prince.’
Snorri took the proffered spyglass, nodding thanks, before aiming the device at the sky. The lens was grimy, smeared by dirt and smoke. Snorri had to rub it with his thumb to clear it, and tried not to rush.
‘What do you see?’ asked Drogor, sidling up beside him.
The pair of them were beyond the borders of the city, which was still burning. Once the brief siege was over, Snorri had returned to the heath where he could plot his next move. He’d had a map in his ha
nd, his eye on the road to Tor Alessi, when the hearthguard had interrupted.
‘It’s large, moving quickly and against the wind,’ he told Drogor. He peered for longer, squinting for a sharper look. Then he put down the spyglass and yelled to one of the Karak Varn engineers. ‘Bolt throwers!’
The dwarfs followed the prince’s pointing finger, the master surveying the sky with a spyglass of his own. ‘Drakk!’ he bellowed to his kinsmen, prompting frantic scurrying as spear-tipped shafts were loaded into cradles, windlass cranks turned and sighters levelled.
‘Did he say “drakk”?’ asked Morgrim, joining them. Behind him, the dwarfs of Karak Varn had begun loading carts and wagons to ferry their plunder back to the hold. King Ironhandson’s booming laughter overwhelmed the crackle of the inferno gutting the city as he saw his treasure hoard swelling.
Brynnoth and his warriors had come together, apart from the rest of the army. Heads bowed, listening to the sonorous tones of their king, they were holding a vigil for Agrin Fireheart.
‘None other,’ uttered Snorri, his voice full of loathing. ‘I hate drakkal.’
Morgrim squinted but couldn’t make out the beast or its rider clearly enough. It was a dark shape, sweeping between clouds of smoke.
‘It could be Prince Imladrik.’
Snorri turned on him. ‘Your pet elgi?’
‘He is a friend to the dawi, and to me.’
‘All elgi became enemies as soon as we crushed that army.’ Drogor thumbed over his shoulder where the shattered horse guard still lay bleeding and broken. Most were probably dead by now. ‘Do you think he’ll still clasp your hand in a warrior’s grip when he sees this?’
Morgrim ignored him, looking to his cousin.
‘We cannot loose.’
Snorri clenched his teeth, considering Morgrim’s request, but in the end had to shake his head.
‘Can’t risk it. That drakk will burn our camp to cinders, cousin.’
‘We are at war now,’ Drogor reminded them. ‘Our stone was cast and more will be needed.’
Morgrim bit his tongue. He hoped it wasn’t Imladrik. Not since the brodunk had he seen the elf prince, and despite the discord between their peoples, he still regarded him as a friend. He warranted that friendship would be tested if Imladrik saw what had transpired at Kor Vanaeth.