by Nick Kyme
Nadri grit his teeth, barely fighting, merely marching against the attack. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck spike, tasted copper in his mouth and smelled the reek of brimstone in his scorched nostrils. The dwarfs resisted, calling upon their natural resilience to harmful magic, channelled it back to the earth, back to rock where it would be safe and dormant.
The king’s banner was aloft; he saw it above the throng, flapping defiantly. It was an order to charge, to run at the gates and bring them down while the elves were in retreat, but the arrow storm was unrelentingly heavy. A pity Werigg had no words of encouragement, but Nadri felt the old solider at his back, his hand on his shoulder if not gripping quite so tight now the battle pressure had lessened.
They got another foot before a second horn was sounded, followed by the beat of drums. The banner dipped, away from the gates. A signal to retreat.
Nadri couldn’t decide if he felt indignant or relieved. They had bled so much to reach this far and gain so little. The bellowed command from one of the thanes further down the line confirmed it.
‘Retreat!’
Nadri was confused. He had always believed there was no word for ‘back’, ‘give up’, in Khazalid. Seemed he was wrong, they all were.
‘That’s it,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Werigg, we lived, we–’
The old soldier’s glassy eyes staring back unblinking supplanted Nadri’s relief with grief. Werigg’s hand was still upon his back, seized with enough rigor to keep it there, his body pressed into the throng unable to fall. A dark patch blotted his armour, running stickily over the mail. A spear tip was lodged in the middle of it, broken off at the end. Nadri remembered the one in his chest, the second one he’d deflected, unknowingly, into Werigg’s gut. A mortal wound. As the dwarfs peeled away and the throng parted, Werigg fell and Nadri wasn’t able to catch him or carry him. Borne away by the urgency of the crowd, he couldn’t stop and the old soldier was lost from his sight.
Snorri cursed, he cursed in as many foul ways as he knew, spitting and raging as the retreat was sounded. He turned briefly, looking over his shoulder to see the throng from Zhufbar heading back to the encampment at the edge of the battlefield. He also saw Morgrim, arms folded after issuing the command.
Cursing again, Snorri flung his hand axe in a final defiant gesture and it stuck in the thick wood of the elven gate like a promise.
We’ll be back, it said, the killing isn’t done, we are not done. Battle has only just begun.
He seethed, marking the face of each and every elf that looked down on him with haughty disdain from the city walls.
‘Khazuk,’ he screamed in promise. ‘Khazuk!’
But the elves didn’t understand, nor did they care.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Preparing to Lay Siege
Once the withdrawal from outside the city began the hail of arrows ceased, the elven reapers returned behind their mantlets and the mages to their towers. It was not a benevolent act towards a respected foe; it was a pragmatic one. The elves were not so foolish as to believe they had won. They knew enough of dwarfs to realise they would come again. Arrows were finite, so too the strength of a wizard. Both needed conserving if they were to hold the city.
From inside his tent looking out onto the field, Snorri glowered. He chewed his beard and muttered, trying to excise his feeling of impotence with the clenching and unclenching of his fists.
A young priestess was tending the wound in his shoulder, packing it with warm healing clay, but he ignored her. Since the retreat, he had spoken to no one.
Morgrim approached, invading the prince’s solitude. Over an hour had passed since Snorri had glared at him upon the army’s disappointing return, and as the injured were patched up and armour mended by the forges he decided it was time to confront his cousin.
The foulness of his mood was etched across the prince’s face. ‘Don’t you understand what “do not disturb” means?’ he grumbled.
‘Aye, and I understand what would have happened had you fought on,’ Morgrim replied curtly, surprising Snorri with his choler. ‘Eight hundred and sixty-three dead, the reckoners are still tallying the injured. What were you going to do if you had reached the walls, climb them with your axe or hack open the gate?’
‘If needs be, by Grungni. I’ll make those elgi pay.’
‘What price do you think they owe you, cousin? Was the rhunki lord a friend of yours, was he known to you or even of your hold? We all mourn for Agrin Fireheart but this goes beyond that.’
Snorri leaned forwards, fighting back the pain as he felt his injuries anew and scowling at the priestess who scowled back.
‘It was an affront to all dawi, what they did. Slaying a rhunki of such venerability…’ He shook his head, rueful. ‘My father should have declared war there and then.’
‘And now we come to the root of it,’ said Morgrim, folding his arms.
‘Meaning?’ asked Snorri, sitting back before the priestess clubbed him.
‘Your father, the High King.’
Snorri’s expression darkened and he dismissed the dwarf maiden trying to tend to him with a curt word. She glared but relented. ‘What is it with these Valayan rinns?’ he griped.
Morgrim went on. ‘Ever since you heard that prophecy in the ruins of Karak Krum, you have railed even harder against him. You made this cause your own, this war, to slight the High King, declare grudgement if I am wrong.’
Snorri seethed, fists balled, and looked like he might spring from his throne and knock his cousin onto his back. Anyone else but Morgrim and he would have raised fists, but after a minute he climbed down from his anger.
‘He who will slay the drakk, he who will be king, those were his words. Am I still to believe them, cousin?’
Like heat from the cooling forge, Morgrim’s ire dispersed in the face of Snorri’s humility. ‘You are prince of Karaz-a-Karak, heir to the Throne of Power and the Karaz Ankor. Your destiny is great as are you, cousin. Don’t let this feud with your father get in the way of that. Embrace him again. Show him you are the High King’s regent he needs you to be.’
Holding Morgrim’s gaze, Snorri slowly nodded and then looked across to the killing field where a host of broken shields, shattered helms and axe hafts remained. Both sides had allowed the other clemency to remove their dead but the earth was soaked with blood that would not be so easy to excise. And amidst all of this carnage, Tor Alessi still stood like a defiant rock in the storm.
‘They are harder than they look,’ Snorri conceded.
‘Aye,’ Morgrim agreed, following the prince’s eye.
‘Gather the other kings,’ said Snorri. ‘We need a different strategy.’
‘Such as?’
‘What we should have done when we first got here. Lay siege.’
The prince’s decision was met with unanimous approval. Even King Brynnoth, whose eagerness to kill elves hadn’t lessened much since Kor Vanaeth, was in agreement. The dwarfs would do what they did best; they would wait.
For the rest of the day, whilst blacksmiths repaired armour and weapons, healers tended and the victuallers and brewmasters kept the army fed, bands of rangers ventured into the nearby forests. They returned with cartloads of wood and at once the dwarf engineers and craftsmen began to fashion battering rams and siege towers. Raw iron had been brought from the holds for just such a purpose and once they were done with arming the clans, the blacksmiths began labouring to reinforce the wooden siege engines. Stout ladders were made too, along with broad, metal-banded pavises and mantlets for the quarrellers.
Every dwarf in the throng had a trade and every dwarf was put to the task. Unlike most armies who possessed dedicated labour gangs to achieve such a feat, barring the warrior brotherhoods dwarfs could call upon their entire host and so the engines went up quickly. From their tents and around the flickering glow of cook fires
came the sound of deathsong, sombre on the breeze. For their enemies or themselves, the sons of Grungni accepted either.
It put Nadri in a grimmer mood than in the aftermath of the battle. He hadn’t seen Werigg amongst the dead, and barely knew the old warrior anyway. Yet it burdened him, especially the callousness of his death. Seeking to stymie his grief, Nadri had looked to other tasks to occupy his mind. His father, Lodri, was a miner and lodewarden. He knew rock and metal, and had passed some of that knowledge on to his sons. The ex-merchant, a trade to which he doubted he would ever return, was hammering the roof of a battering ram when a voice intruded on his thoughts.
‘Stout work.’
Nadri kept labouring, carefully beating the plates with a mallet and then using a hammer to drive in the iron nails that secured to its frame.
‘I said stout work.’
Looking up, Nadri reddened at once when he saw it was Prince Snorri Lunngrin addressing him, his retainers and bodyguards close by.
‘It’ll need to be to turn those elgi arrows, but thank you, my liege.’
‘I saw you at Kor Vanaeth, didn’t I?’
‘You have a sharp eye, my liege. Yes, I fought at the gate.’
Snorri seemed to appraise him. ‘You’re not a warrior, though.’
‘No, my liege. I am a merchant but took up az and klad to fight the elgi for my king.’
‘And you shall be remembered for it. What’s your name, dawi?’
‘Nadri Lodrison, my liege. Of the Copperfist clan.’
‘Tell me, Nadri, do you have any kin, a rinn or beardlings back at the Sea Hold?’
‘A brother only, my liege. Heglan. My father died during the urk purges of your father, Gotrek Starbreaker the High King.’
At mention of the name, the prince visibly stiffened.
‘He does not fight, your brother?’
‘He’s an engineer, my liege, fashioning war machines for the army of Barak Varr.’
That was a lie as far as Nadri knew but he saw no reason to reveal that Heg was trying to build a flying ship. Unless the master of engineers had discovered his workshop and then he might be toiling in the mines instead. A sudden pang of regret tightened Nadri’s stomach at the thought of his brother, but he was glad too, glad Heg didn’t have to endure all of this. At least not yet. ‘And I would dearly like to see him again,’ he added in a murmur.
Snorri nodded, genuinely moved by such fraternity. ‘You will, Nadri. The elgi will break against our siegecraft and the war will be over. Grungni wills it, Grimnir demands it and Valaya will protect us throughout.’
‘Tromm, my liege.’ Nadri bowed his head, whilst the prince echoed him and continued on his tour of the siege works.
‘I just hope I am alive to see it,’ he whispered when the prince was gone, and returned to his hammering.
‘It was a good idea to tour the ranks,’ Morgrim muttered in Snorri’s ear.
‘Aye, there’s not only pride that needs salving after a beating like that.’
The dwarfs were passing through a throng of blacksmiths’ tents, and the air was pleasingly redolent of ash and smoke. The ring of metal against anvil was soothing and brought with it a small measure of home.
Only Drogor seemed unmoved. ‘Were we beaten, though?’ he asked. ‘I see dead elgi littering the outskirts of the city, not just dawi.’
Morgrim grew belligerent. ‘We were bloodied, kinsman. Badly.’
The three were accompanied by one of the hearthguard, a flame-haired brute called Khazagrim, who bristled as he remembered the battle. Otherwise, he was silent and only present to protect the prince against elven assassins, should any try to kill him.
‘It didn’t look like defeat to me,’ said Drogor.
‘I didn’t say we were defeated. I–’
‘Enough bickering,’ Snorri sighed. ‘The elgi city stands, and we must find a way to bring it down. Simple as.’
They left the forging tents and came upon the edge of the camp where the war machines were covered under tarp and chained down. It was an impressive battery of machineries. Heavy stones lay piled in stout buckets, thick bolts were lashed together with rope and racked in spear-tipped bunches. Runes and oaths of vengeance were engraved upon every one. They were grudge throwers now, carven with dwarfen vitriol. Enough to bring down a city, or so they all hoped. A small group of warriors guarded the engines and bowed low to the prince and his entourage as they passed by.
‘Three towers, high walls, a keep and a well equipped garrison, it’s not exactly an urk hut is it now,’ Morgrim chafed, once they were out of earshot. ‘We need to pummel it, soften the elgi until they’re ready to break, then assault. Tunnellers too. I’d suggest three.’
‘Thom, Grik and Ari,’ said Snorri, naming the three tunnels. ‘Clan miners are already setting to the task, the Sootbacks, Blackbrows, Stonefingers and Copperfists.’
‘How soon until they’re fully excavated?’ asked Morgrim.
‘Several days.’
‘Our siege works will be ready for a first assault within the hour,’ said Drogor. ‘We could have the walls down by nightfall if we push hard. Tunnels would finish them off.’
The glint in Snorri’s eye as he ran a hand over the carriage of one of Ironhandson’s stone throwers suggested he liked that idea, but Morgrim was quick to dispel it.
‘We should rest and attack at the dawn, wait until the tunnels are more advanced,’ he said.
‘A night attack would terrify the elgi,’ Drogor countered.
‘Having seen their discipline, I doubt that. In any case, our forces are spent and would do well to rest.’ Morgrim tried to keep the argument from his tone.
‘We’ll bombard them instead,’ Snorri declared, slapping the stone thrower’s frame with the flat of his hand. He turned to Drogor. ‘Have the king of the Varn bring his war machines up and assail the walls. No sleep for the elgi this night,’ he grinned.
Drogor bowed and went immediately to find Ironhandson. Like many of the kings he had retired to his royal quarters until needed.
‘Hrekki won’t be pleased at being disturbed,’ muttered Morgrim. ‘He’ll be on his fifth or sixth firkin by now.’
Snorri was dismissive. ‘Let him moan,’ he said. ‘Not all dawi of royal blood have gone to their beds for the night.’
The cousins had reached the edge of the camp and Snorri mounted a rocky hillock so he could gesture to the distant, brooding figure of Brynnoth.
The king of the Sea Hold was crouched down, a plume of pipeweed smoke escaping from his lips that trailed a vaporous purple bruise across the twilit sky. The silhouette of his ocean drake helm sat beside him, a predatory companion. Though he had borne the brunt of the fighting, he had yet to remove his armour or accept healing of any kind.
‘He is marred by this,’ Snorri observed, striking up his own pipe.
‘Do you think any of us will not be by the time this is over, cousin?’
Snorri had no answer, contemplating as he smoked.
‘How’s the hand?’ Morgrim asked after a short-lived silence.
‘Hurts like a bastard.’ What Sorri’s reply lacked in eloquence, it more than made up in its directness.
‘I watched you fight. Never seen you better, cousin.’
‘Even with a gammy hand – ha!’
Snorri looked askance at his cousin, but Morgrim was in no mood for jests.
‘You want to kill the elgi, don’t you? It’s like you hate them, Snorri, and don’t care what you have to do to vent the anger that comes with it.’
Again, Snorri fell to silence.
‘Keep at it and it’ll kill you, cousin. That’s why I pulled the throng back. It was the only way to get you to stop.’
The alarum bell pealing out across the camp interrupted them. All three dwarfs drew their weapons. Even Brynnoth was up.
‘Elgi?’ the king of the Sea Hold called.
‘Could be an attack?’ suggested Morgrim, put in mind of an elven sortie from the gates.
Snorri shook his head at them both. ‘Our look-outs would have seen it before it got this close, that’s the camp alarum.’
They ran down off the hillock and back through the entrenched war machines. From deeper in the camp there came the sound of further commotion. A horn was braying and there was the beat of distant drums tattooing a marching song.
‘Not elgi,’ breathed Snorri, his face thunderous.
Morgrim espied banners, waving to and fro above the throngs. They bore the red and blue of the royal house of Everpeak.
‘The High King,’ he said.
Snorri was already scowling. ‘My father is here.’
The war machines from Karak Varn had been brought forwards and were loosing their deadly cargo by the time the High King’s royal tent was up and Gotrek seated upon his Throne of Power. A single dwarf was granted audience with him, but the meeting was far from cordial.
In the half-light of the tent, Snorri returned the fierce glare of his father with one of equal reproach.
‘I did what I did for the Karaz Ankor, and would do it again,’ he pledged.
Supping on his pipe, Gotrek merely glowered.
The High King’s tent was festooned with banners and statues of the ancestor gods. All three were represented in chiselled stone, each a shrine of worship for when Gotrek wanted to make his oaths. They were shrouded, smoke clouding the room in a dense fug, drowning out the light from hanging braziers and lanterns. A thick carpet of rough crimson material, trimmed with gold, led up to the High King’s seat. Even though he wasn’t yet clad in his battle armour and instead wore a travelling cloak of tanned elk hide over tunic and hose, he still cut an imposing figure. A simple mitre with a ruby at its centre sufficed in place of his crown, but Gotrek’s rune axe was nearby, sitting in its iron cradle, shimmering dully in the gloom.