The Great Betrayal

by Nick Kyme

  It did not mean the dwarfs were without magic of their own, however.

  ‘There is one more weapon in my arsenal,’ said Hrekki Ironhandson whom Gotrek had joined on the hillside not far from the war machines.

  ‘Summon it and its keeper,’ said the High King. His eyes never left the battlefield, for somewhere in the chaos was his only son.

  Snorri fought at the east gate under a mantle of iron. The stout shaft of a battering ram swung between his cohort of warriors, smacking fat splinters from the wood.

  ‘We’ll make a dirty mess of their door,’ he promised, shouting to be heard, ‘and then we’ll make a mess of them. Khazuk!’

  ‘Khazuk!’ chimed the warriors together, heaving the ram back for another blow. The end was fashioned into the simulacrum of an ancestor head, Grimnir, his beard wrought into spikes. It gored deep, tearing at the gate.

  Boiling oil, alchemical fire, swathes of arrows all fell upon Snorri’s warriors but they didn’t even flinch. These were hearthguard, king’s men, and they would not shirk from the deadliest of battles. Either the gate would fall or they would.

  A prickling sensation in Snorri’s beard made him look up. The view was narrow, and the prince caught snatches through the slits between the tiles in the roof.

  ‘Spellcrafter,’ he growled.

  Above, an elven mage was conjuring. She wore a pale robe, emblazoned with stars, and a moon-shaped circlet sat upon her brow. But it was the crackling staff to which Snorri’s eye was drawn, and the tempest waxing around it.

  ‘Spellcrafter!’ he roared this time, inciting a dour chorus as the dwarfs invoked earth, stone and metal to retard the harmful magicks.

  A hundred dwarfs clamouring at the east gate chanted in unison. It began slowly but grew into an almost palpable wall of defiance. A hundred became two hundred, then three hundred until all the warriors assaulting the east gate were united in purpose.

  But elven sorcery came from the Old Ones, it was High magic and could not so easily be undone. Eldritch winds were already clawing at the heathguard, tugging at their limbs, buffeting them into their fellow dwarfs. The chant faltered. Rain lashed down, sharp as knives, impelled by the gale. The slashing deluge turned the ground beneath the dwarfs’ feet to sludge. Several warriors were fouled in it, some even to their necks. Easy prey for the archers whose arrows flew with storm force, piercing armour like it was parchment.

  Despite his best efforts, Snorri could feel his body sinking into the mire. Hail stung his face, opening a cut on his cheek. He reached out, letting his hand axe hang by the thong on his wrist, hauling a hearthguard to his feet.

  ‘Up, brother,’ he growled. ‘Stone and steel.’

  ‘Stone and steel, my prince,’ the breathless hearthguard replied.

  Snorri turned, and roared to the others, ‘Heads down and heave!’

  One warrior was blown free of the ram’s protective mantle. The elven archers seized upon him, pinioning the dwarf with a dozen arrows before he could so much as raise his shield. Another, sunk almost to the waist, was left behind and fought defiantly until a shaft took him in the neck and he spat his last.

  ‘Thagging bast–’ Snorri began, but the tempest had them now.

  Rivets fixing the mantle to the ram frame were loosening. A flap of metal swung up briefly before clamping down again. In those few seconds, four hearthguard warriors lay dead with arrows jutting from their bodies.

  Wrenching his boots free of the mud, Snorri stepped up to take the place of one. Clutching the iron handle of the ram, he pulled it back.

  The hefty wooden log lurched, swinging wildly in the gale. Its violent backswing almost pushed the prince out from the mantle. The wind was rising, building into a fist of elemental force that would punch the roof of the battering ram clean off.

  Drowned in mud or condemned to death by elven arrows, neither was a favourable ending worthy of song. The gate was weakening, Snorri could hear it even above the storm in the protestations of the wood. A few more solid hits and it would buckle. But only if there was time before the battering ram was torn apart.

  Behind them to the south, distant thunder was booming.

  Snorri groaned under his breath, ‘What now?’ before he realised it had come from the dwarf ranks.

  Lightning sheared through the storm dark a moment later. It struck the elven battlements, a second arcing bolt spearing the elven mage. Her death scream echoed loudly before her scorched body crumpled and the tempest lifted.

  Snorri tried not to be relieved. There was no time for it. A minor reprieve, nothing more. The real fight lurked behind the gate, and he planned to smash it wide open.

  ‘Khazuk!’

  Twenty hearthguard heaved and the ram swung back.

  Grimnir snarled and the angry god swung forwards, baring his teeth.

  But the east gate held.

  Fundrinn Stormhand called the lightning back. He was standing on an Anvil of Doom, feet braced apart. Great runes of power crackled and flashed across the anvil’s pellucid silver surface, and the storm lived briefly in the runesmith’s eyes, in the rivulets of magic coursing through his jagged red beard before earthing harmlessly.

  But as soon as the storm lightning had faded, Fundrinn was calling fresh elemental power into being. It began as a mote of flame in his outstretched palm but as he spoke the rune rites the fire grew until the runesmith could no longer hold it and was forced to set the conflagration loose. What began as a flaming wind swelled into a tidal wave of burning vengeance, a score of spectral dwarf faces snarling and biting at its fiery crest.

  Fundrinn cried out, ‘Zharrum!’, coaxing and shaping the raging inferno with sweeping arcs of his runestaff. ‘Zharrum un uzkul a elgi!’

  Across the battlefield, a second voice bellowed. It spoke unto the deep earth, making oaths of the great ancestors. One of the anvils of Zhufbar rolled forwards, impelled by the will of its keeper Gorik Stonebeard, and joined the magical convocation. He had no staff, but carried a rune hammer. As he smacked the hammer head down upon the anvil, the deep earth answered and a rippling tremor shuddered from beneath him.

  ‘Duraz um uzkul a elgi!’

  The tremor rolled outwards at the invocation, building in ferocity, splitting the ground underfoot.

  The lords of Karak Varn and Zhufbar crafted in perfect magical concert, unleashing hellfire and earthquakes against the elven host.

  Gotrek felt their power through his beard, in his fingertips, along his teeth, and grinned.

  ‘Burn them, bring them down!’

  Liandra was barely in the saddle when the quake hit. Dust and grit spilled from the vaulted ceiling of the Dragon Tower, shaking its walls violently.

  ‘Vranesh!’ she urged and the beast tore up into the vaults, head down, smashing through the roof. There was no time to guide the dragon through the narrow aperture of the tower. The small minaret that served as Vranesh’s rookery was collapsing. Mere appendage to the grand tower itself, it would still have buried dragon and rider.

  Exploding from the shattered tower, Vranesh exulted and Liandra with him as he tore into the sky. Empathic joy rippled through the elf’s body, and she embraced a thrill of violent intent as she beheld the dwarfs below.

  ‘Higher, higher…’ she coaxed, guiding Vranesh into the ice cold skies, daggering through cloud until they were lost from sight. There they roamed, Vranesh trailing tendrils of smoke from his maw in hungry anticipation.

  In the solitude high above Tor Alessi, Liandra’s thoughts returned to Imladrik. She remembered their last conversation in the gorge, the widening gulf she felt growing between them, and wondered where he was now and if he had thought of her since then. For a moment, the iron grip she had on her lance loosened and she considered that vengeance would not be an adequate substitute for her grief. Then she thought of Kor Vanaeth and her people, dying at the hands of the cruel
dwarfs, and her resolve became a thing of unyielding ice.

  Liandra leaned over in her saddle, roving the enemy army with her eyes for a target.

  ‘There,’ she hissed. ‘Dive, Vranesh!’

  Silver lightning breached the cold winter cloud as a beast of old myth fell upon the war machines.

  Gotrek had barely ordered his bearers forwards before the dragon had torn up three engines and devoured their crew. Snapping wood, torn metal and shouting dwarfs merged into one discordant sound. Screwing up his courage, a thane of the Varn rushed at the beast with his rune axe trailing fire, but was dispatched by a lance strike through the heart before he’d done much more than heft the blade.

  An elf maid, armoured in dragon scale. She gutted three more dwarfs before her eyes met with the High King’s. Bolt throwers further down the line of war engines were already turning as the elf’s beast started in on the quarrellers. It led with its forelegs, gouging a deep, ruddy furrow in the dwarfs’ ranks, their hand axes and crossbow bolts unable to penetrate its dragonscale.

  Gotrek snarled at the nearest ballista crew, knowing he wouldn’t reach the elf dragon rider in time to save the quarrellers from being devoured by her mount. ‘Shoot that elgi bitch!’

  Its strong pinions flexing, the dragon took flight with its rider as the first of the iron shafts flew, cutting air. She dodged a second volley too, the beast snapping one in mid-flight before it turned to spew fire.

  Heat ten times more potent than a forge furnace washed over Gotrek and his charges, but the magic of the Throne of Power kept them safe. Singed but alive, he glowered through a wall of flickering haze at the fleeing beast and its rider.

  ‘Crozzled my bloody beard,’ he growled. ‘Drakk,’ he said as the fire died, now just a a blackened ring on the hillside. ‘I hate drakk.’ He rapped on the arm of his throne with a ringed fist. ‘Forward. We make for the east gate. Furgil and the others best be ready. Thurbad,’ said Gotrek, looking down to his captain of the hearthguard and the seven iron-bearded warriors that accompanied him. ‘Gather fifty warriors, including the steelbeards. You’re with me. Leave the rest.’

  ‘But you’ll be open to attack, my king.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, eyeing the dragon as it dived down to spew more fire, ‘and if we’re lucky, she’ll take the bait.’

  On the north wall the fighting had grown fiercer. Elf and dwarf lay dead and dying upon the battlements, gutted and staved in, broken and cleaved. Two great civilisations were destroying one another, yet no one cared to notice.

  Morgrim’s hammer felt heavy as he bludgeoned but not from the heft of the weapon, he could wield it all day and night if needed. It was the blood upon it, the slaughter that weighed the dwarf down.

  A screech that resonated across the sky, tearing it open, shook Morgrim from his reverie. An upper tower had collapsed and something leathern and terrible had shot out from it like a battering ram.

  ‘Drakk!’

  His warriors cried out and balked when they saw the dragon smash through the tower roof. Pieces of stone, shattered chips of tile cascaded onto them but were a paltry shower compared to the deluge that slammed down into the elves amassing in the courtyard. Fixed on the beast, the dwarfs barely paid any heed. One abandoned all thoughts of defence altogether and found a spear in his gut for his trouble. Another jumped off the battlements, mind crushed by fear. Dwarfs were a hardy race, and their history with dragons was long and bloody, but such primordial beasts were terrifying even for the sons of Grungni.

  Morgrim marshalled his courage, still fighting hard with an eye on the sky as the beast wheeled above. ‘Hold fast!’ he yelled at the clanners. ‘Stone and steel!’

  Gritting their teeth, the rest of the dwarfs gripped their axe hafts and fought on.

  Through maddened slashes of the battle, Morgrim saw the dragon savage the war engines before turning its wrath onto the High King. His heart quickened for a moment when his liege-lord was engulfed by flame but then returned to normal when he saw the High King was unscathed.

  Soaring skywards, the beast pulled out of bow range before coming down hard on the tunnellers. Dragon fire stitched across their ranks, igniting the pots of zonzharr and pushing a ferocious inferno down Grik’s gullet. Morgrim was forced away before he could see more, but the image of burning dwarfs staggering from the tunnel mouth was etched into his mind.

  With the wrenching of stone Grik collapsed, releasing a pall of dust and trapping the survivors inside with the fire.

  Below the western gatehouse, Nadri toiled at the face of Ari. Strong elven foundations were making the last few feet hard, but it meant they were close. Hacking with their picks and shovels, the miners had carved out a subterranean cavern that was wide enough to admit a small army. With over four hundred ironbreakers waiting silently in the wings, it needed to be.

  They were led by one of the Everpeak thanes, a foreign-looking dwarf whom Nadri had seen with the prince on several occasions and so assumed was part of his inner circle. Unlike the ironbreakers, his armour was light and of a strange design, depicting effigies of creatures Nadri wasn’t familiar with. The thane seemed to be waiting for something, as though he knew they were about to breach.

  A lodewarden called the sappers back. The time for digging was over, fire would do the rest. Lighting the zonzharr, the miners at the end of the tunnel retreated and took shelter behind barriers of wutroth. With a grunt, three dwarfs from the Copperfist clan rolled the great clay urn of the zonzharr down the tunnel. When it smashed against the end it immolated the base of the gatehouse wall in a flare of angry crimson fire. A cheer went up as the foundation rock broke apart, dumping earth and flagstones into the gap the miners had hewn with their pickaxes.

  ‘Khazuk!’ The chant resonated through the ironbreakers’ closed helms as they rushed through the breach, led by the thane.

  Nadri and the other sappers stood aside to let the cavalcade of armoured bodies through.

  Jorgin Blackfinger, lodewarden of Barak Varr, climbed onto a boulder so he could be seen and heard by all the clans.

  ‘Ready for another tough chuffing slog, lads?’

  Nadri bellowed with his fellow clanners. ‘Ho-hai!’

  Nearly two hundred miners followed behind the ironbreakers, brandishing picks and shovels. The light streaming through the breach was hazy, thick with grey dust, but the clash of blades was clear enough.

  The elves had lost their gatehouse, a part of it at least, but their warriors were ready and willing to defend the breach. And above the carnage of the battle, a sound, deep and resonant… A primordial roar.

  Snorri heard the dragon rather than saw it. Enclosed beneath the mantle of the battering ram, it was hard to see much of anything other than the back of the dwarf in front and the shoulder of the one to your side.

  Words spoken what seemed like an age ago returned to the young prince, plucking at his pride.

  Dawi barazen ek dreng drakk, un riknu.

  A dragon slayer, one destined to become king.

  Snorri felt the pull of destiny. It was slipping through his grasp.

  He tried to turn, find the beast through the slit of vision afforded to him beneath the mantle, but it was impossible. The ram was moving under its own momentum, him with it. Apparently, fate was too. All he caught was snatches of sky, of armoured dwarfs embattled.

  The beast cried out again, a rush of flame spat from its maw easy to discern even above the din of the assault. Burning flesh resolved on the breeze.

  Trapped in the throng, battering at the east gate, Snorri railed.

  But there was nothing he could do.

  And then, like a magma flow breaching through the crust, the gate cracked apart and the dwarfs flooded forwards. Snorri went with them, hurled along by furious momentum. Behind him, he heard the shouts of other warriors joining the fray.

  The goad was obvious. Liand
ra saw it as clearly as the lance in her armoured grip. She imagined ramming it through the old dwarf king’s heart, the one who lorded over the others on his throne of dirty gold. She would make him suffer, but would have to do it soon. Fires caused by the mud-dwellers’ crude magic lit Tor Alessi like lanterns honouring some perverse celebration. For all that she burned, the dwarfs could visit it upon the elves threefold. She needed to redress the balance and was about to rein Vranesh into a sharp dive when the west gatehouse collapsed.

  Like armoured ants, dwarfs scurried from below and attacked her kinsmen. She watched an entire cohort of spearmen, injured and confused from the destruction, wiped out by the mud-dwellers in seconds. More were coming, spilling up from the earth like a contagion, a spouting geyser of filth running amok across Tor Alessi’s west quarter.

  Liandra hesitated, torn by indecision. She wanted the dwarf king, to gut him like a wild boar on her spear. But the defenders at the west gatehouse were failing. They needed time to restore order, something to regain some momentum.

  Spitting a curse, Liandra turned away from the king and went to the aid of her dying kin.

  After a welter of colourful swearing, Gotrek gave up on the dragon rider and ordered the host of Everpeak to march. Reacting to the gatehouse collapse, elven reserves stationed behind the city walls were swarming to the west quarter to try and staunch the dwarf incursion. Gotrek gave them just long enough to become entangled in the fight there before he nodded to his horn bearers to herald a second assault.

  The east gate was breached, but the throng there led by Snorri hadn’t penetrated far. That was about to change. As the deep, ululating clarion call boomed out dwarf forces hiding amongst the rocks came forth, led by Furgil. The pathfinder had done well to conceal an entire host. Combined with Snorri’s clans and the throng of the High King, it was an army large enough to overrun the entire eastern wall let alone its gate.