The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight, Nick Kyme, Darius Hinks

  At that, Anna-Louisa suddenly leapt up from the bolsters. Her hair flew wildly, and settled in straggling lumps about her face.

  ‘That’s it!’ she cried. ‘I remember now!’

  She giggled maniacally.

  ‘There was something I had to tell you when you got here,’ she said, in a girlish whisper, looking inordinately pleased with herself. ‘That man said that you would come up the tower. Then I had to say that he is still on the second level, hiding. When you’re all up here, he will come out. And there are special fireworks all over the second level. They were made by that clever man Rathmor. And he’s going to set them off! We are all going to burn! Isn’t that very funny? We’re all going to burn!’

  Scharnhorst looked at her intently, a sudden sharp concern in his eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he snapped.

  Before Anna-Louisa could reply, there was a commotion behind them. Hildebrandt turned round to see Lukas pushing his way through the crowded antechamber and into the room. The lad was dishevelled and panting heavily. He must have shoved and jostled his way up through the whole company of men lining the spiral stairs.

  ‘Sir!’ he cried, his voice desperate. ‘You must withdraw! It’s a trap! There are explosives lining the citadel! We’ve been drawn up here!’

  For a second, panic rippled across Scharnhorst’s features. He turned back to Anna-Louisa, then to Lukas again. He didn’t know what to do. Despite the general’s rank, Lukas looked exasperated. He was at the end of his strength, and a dreadful certainty was in his expression.

  ‘Sir, we have to withdraw!’ he cried again. ‘There are enemy troops hidden on the second level. They will detonate the charges!’

  Still Scharnhorst hesitated. The men looked to him desperately. Some began to shuffle back towards the stairway nervously.

  ‘I–’ he began, but he was cut off.

  Deep below, a familiar booming had started. There was a distant crack of blackpowder. The green windows were tinged with the red of fire. Screams filtered up from the lower levels. Rathmor’s final trap had been sprung. Down in the courtyards and armouries, the corridors and mess halls, the storerooms and cellars, the bombs were going off.

  Magnus sank back against the hard stone walls. His heart was still racing. His head was hammering from the impact of his fall. He felt as if his stitches had opened again. There was a sharp pain in his side, and a hot, sticky feeling of blood against his ribs.

  Thorgad blew softly on his brand, and fed it some powdery substance. The flame flared up, throwing long shadows up the rock walls. The dwarf placed the torch against the wall, where it continued to burn.

  The two of them were standing in a wide, tall cavern. Behind Magnus, the tunnel led back to the forge level. On the far side of the chamber, more tunnels led off into the endless night beyond. They were roughly hewn from the bare rock, and showed signs of recent wear and tear. The stone floor was littered with rubbish. Old leather gourds, discarded rags, animal bones and broken tools cluttered the dark recesses of the cavern.

  Thorgad looked at Rathmor’s corpse dispassionately. Magnus felt his equanimity gradually returning. His heartbeat slowed to nearly normal.

  ‘So, what are you doing down here?’ he said at last, looking at Thorgad with a mixture of relief, fatigue and confusion.

  Thorgad turned from Rathmor, and rested his gnarled hands on Glamrist. In the half-light, he looked like a graven image of one of the dwarf lords of old. He could have been made of stone himself.

  ‘I might ask you the same thing, umgi,’ he said. There was a resentful edge in his voice. ‘Your people don’t belong here. These are our delvings. The fortress above is a mockery of what was once here.’

  Magnus leaned back against the rock, weighing the dwarf’s words carefully. He had a feeling some truths were about to be revealed.

  ‘You intimated as much when we met,’ he said. ‘So you wanted to revisit the place. I can understand that. A dangerous way to go sightseeing, though.’

  Thorgad scowled. He looked in no mood to humour Magnus.

  ‘Don’t mock me,’ he said, and his voice had a low, warning tone. ‘These mines are older than your Empire. Older than your race itself, maybe. Do you think I would come here lightly? It has been many hundreds of years since the dawi dwelt here. Only in song do we remember this place. And many have forgotten even that. Shame on them.’

  Magnus looked at Thorgad afresh. The dwarf spoke with a voice of reverence. The engineer said nothing in reply, but sat and listened.

  ‘Perhaps you know something of grudges,’ continued Thorgad, leaning heavily on his axe. ‘They are debts of our race, to be paid in respect of some great wrong. They can stretch back for a thousand years, longer even than the long lives of my people. They are recorded with care, set down on tablets of stone and in the ironbound books of the karak archives. Though years may pass before they may be returned to, they are never forgotten. Such is the way of my race. We cannot let the debt go. Though the whole world may fall into fire and the karaks sink into shadow forever, while there is still a single dwarf alive the list of grudges shall be in his mind, driving him to rectify the wrongs done to us through all the long bitter years.’

  Magnus could feel his side spasm with pain. He stayed stock still and kept his mouth shut. Thorgad was eager to talk. That was rare for a dwarf. The opportunity might never come again.

  ‘You asked me why I wished to join you,’ Thorgad said. ‘This is why. To fulfil a grudge held against my clan. In the past, long before the towers of Altdorf had been thought of or the foundries of Nuln first lit, one of my ancestors lost a thing of great value. A book. It is old beyond measure, and even my folk do not remember its origins. In the long years of war and strife, it was almost forgotten. But not quite. The record of grudges sets down that it was one of my blood who let the book slip through his fingers. Its whereabouts remained unknown, but it was enough that the deed had been done by one of my own kin. The shame has hung around my neck since I was a beardling.’

  Magnus watched the dwarf intently as he spoke. Thorgad’s eyes were not fixed on anything in particular. They seemed locked on something far away.

  ‘Then, against all hope, there came word of an uprising in Hochland. A rebellion from the mountains. And it came to my ears that the traitors were using weapons of great quality. So good, in fact, that they surpassed the best that men could create. They were so good, I was told, that they even rivalled the guns of the dwarfs. And then a thought entered my mind, and it began to wear at me. These men were holed up in Morgramgar. I knew that the place had long ago been one of the halls of my people. It was called Karak Grimaz then, and its mines were famous. The name you give it is a corruption of its other title. The Morgrammgariven. The Halls of Silent Stone. Though the citadel above us was built by men, there were always the workings underneath, quiet and undisturbed. Umgi have never penetrated far into the deep places. Not unless driven there by some great need. But what if the book had been discovered there? I asked myself. And what if one of you man-creatures had the wit to use it? That fear wore at me, and I had no rest from that day onwards.’

  ‘This book,’ said Magnus. ‘It had some secret techniques in it, then? It was a manual of some kind?’

  Thorgad didn’t reply, but unstrapped a large object from his back. It was nearly as big as he was. Carefully, his hands working with surprising gentleness, he unwrapped layers of sacking and soft fabric. Soon, in the gently burning light of the torch, a thick tome lay. The leather covers were black and cracked with age, and the spine and corners were studded with a tarnished bronze-like metal. A single rune had been engraved into the cover. The pages were bound closed with many straps, but the buckles on them had been broken.

  ‘The Book of Khazgred,’ said Thorgad, solemnly. ‘In here are secrets no man has the wit to understand, even were he to spend a lifetime studying it. There are marvel
s inside beyond any of your short-lived kind. This Rathmor had barely scratched the surface of it. But what he learned was enough to make the long guns we found, as well as the cannons. He was clever. It was his cleverness that gave him away. How long had he had this thing? I do not know, but it must have taken him years to decipher the few passages which he did. He only gleaned a little, but even that was sufficient to make a leap into the unknown. The forges you see here, the machines, they are all but copies of the designs of Khazgred. In the days of our glory, we would have laughed at such follies. Even now, the great anvils of Karaz-a-Karak make them look like the work of children.’

  Magnus leaned forward, ignoring the pain in his flank. His fingers crept gingerly towards the book, almost unbidden. So that was how Rathmor had managed to create such monsters. One of the fabled dwarfen manuals of arcane science. Just to peer inside for a moment would be the dream of a lifetime. He looked up at Thorgad, and an eager hope lit in his eyes.

  Thorgad smiled grimly, and replaced the coverings over the book.

  ‘This is not knowledge for you,’ he said. ‘Rathmor has paid for his insolence. I would not have Glamrist employed to keep your mouth shut as well.’

  Magnus looked over at Rathmor’s corpse, and shuddered. His spirits sank. Thorgad had spoken, and there was no point in arguing over it. The blade of the axe was too sharp, and he was too exhausted. He sighed. So he had just been a tool in Thorgad’s long plan of vengeance.

  ‘So you needed us to get you inside,’ said Magnus, a little resentment creeping into his voice. ‘That was your only purpose here.’

  Thorgad nodded, and swung the tome onto his back once more.

  ‘I never lied to you, Ironblood,’ he said. ‘Your war was your own business. It was merely my opportunity. You have my thanks, and that is not lightly given. But do not forget your debt to me, too. You’d have found it hard to scale these walls while the cannons were still blazing.’

  Magnus hung his head. After all the anguish, all the labour, it seemed a bitter ending. An obscure book of the dwarfs. A human engineer with dreams of worldly domination. Both lost. Poor reasons to go to war.

  ‘What’ll you do now?’ he said, his eyes still lowered.

  Thorgad pulled his cloak about him, and hefted Glamrist in one hand.

  ‘Go back to the east,’ he said. ‘The book will be returned to its rightful place in the archives. The grudge will be scored from the record. The honour of my clan will be restored.’

  Magnus nodded resignedly.

  ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Then there’s nothing more to do here.’

  He felt battered, bruised and weary of the world. Slowly, awkwardly, he hauled himself to his feet.

  ‘It must be night by now,’ he said, wincing against the pain. ‘As a last favour, can you help me find the way back up to the forge level? Your eyes are better down here than mine. I need to find Hildebrandt. The fighting in the citadel should be over by now. He’ll want to know what happened to Rathmor. He knew him too, once.’

  Thorgad gave him a strange look then, and his eyes glittered brightly.

  ‘Don’t be so sure the fighting is over, Ironblood,’ he said cryptically. ‘But I’ll come with you, at least to the forges. Then you’ll need to make your own way. Before we move, however, there’s one last thing.’

  He shuffled over to a small pile of rocks in the corner of the chamber. He filled both hands with small nuggets, and walked back to Magnus.

  ‘These mines were the source of this von Kleister’s wealth,’ he said, disdainfully. ‘It was with the promise of gold that she drew her mercenaries here. But that story had always seemed hollow to me. If there was still gold in these tunnels, there would still be dawi here. I’ve been exploring a little. This is what the woman has been building her army with.’

  He emptied a pile of nuggets onto the floor at Magnus’s feet. The last handful he gave to the engineer. Magnus took them. In the gloom, they glinted and twinkled. He frowned.

  ‘Gold,’ he said.

  Thorgad snorted with disdain.

  ‘Grungni’s axe!’ he spluttered. ‘Even now, you amaze me. Do you know nothing at all? This is kruckgol. Fool’s gold, man. If this is what she’s planning to pay her men with, they’re in for a shock.’

  The dwarf stood back, and let Glamrist swing in a gentle arc towards the ground. As it hit the pile of nuggets, they shattered, skittering off into the shadows. The ingots were as brittle as rusted iron. Magnus stared at the ones he held in his hand. They were worthless. Rocks, just like any other. The rebellion was built on sand. The final irony.

  ‘We should go,’ said Thorgad, sharply. ‘This torch won’t last forever, and even my eyes can’t guide us quickly with nothing to see by. Come. But bring some of those nuggets with you. As much as you can carry. They may come in useful.’

  Magnus did as he was asked. Then he and Thorgad set off, as quickly as the poor light would allow. Behind them, the cavern sank back into darkness once more. The shadows over Rathmor’s body lengthened, then deepened, then closed over him for good.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘This is at the heart of all we do. The power of fire. Consider the irony of it. We rely on it for the most mundane tasks of the hearth and the kitchen. Without it, we could neither survive the winter nor feed ourselves in the summer. And yet, in the hands of a skilled craftsman, it turns into the direst of all our many weapons. Let that be the legacy of the engineer, if you wish to find one. That he turns the means by which we sustain ourselves into the great destroyer of men.’

  Ludovik von Rassingen

  Professor of Engineering,

  Imperial College, Nuln

  Morgramgar was aflame. The level behind the outer walls was a sea of fire. As the contagion spread, more blackpowder kegs ignited, blasting stone and tearing down walls. Some of the more slender towers collapsed entirely, falling in on themselves with an agonising slowness and showering the men beneath with charred masonry.

  The roars of triumph and vengeance were replaced with screams of agony. Caught between the stone and the fire, Scharnhorst’s army panicked. Men pushed past one another, trampling the weaker ones underfoot, pushing the slowest against the walls, desperate to find a way out. The flames leapt high into the night sky, bathing the mountainside beyond with a sheen of blood-red.

  Scharnhorst finally reacted. Anna-Louisa was laughing uncontrollably, hugging her skinny sides and rocking back and forth on the bed. The general looked at her with disgust, then turned to Kruger.

  ‘Rally the men at the courtyard below. Bombs or no, we’ll have to cut our way down.’

  The knight captain nodded curtly, and replaced his helmet on his head. His company began to head down the stairway. From below, the noise of men shouting and running could be heard.

  Scharnhorst looked at Lukas darkly.

  ‘How did you find out?’ he asked.

  Lukas was still out of breath.

  ‘I found a cache,’ he said. ‘They’ve been well placed, and well hidden.’

  Scharnhorst walked over to the nearest window, and gazed down on the levels below. The red glow of the fires mixed with the green sheen of the panes to create a strange muddy mixture of the two. The bedchamber looked more unnatural than ever.

  ‘There are unharmed areas,’ he muttered, looking over a trio of dark columns to the west of the central tower. ‘They’ll be there. Waiting for us to lose our nerve.’

  He spun round on his heel, and his cloak swirled around him.

  ‘Come,’ he snapped, looking at Hildebrandt. ‘This isn’t over yet. The men must be rallied.’

  Hildebrandt bowed, and the three of them went back through the antechamber and down the stairs. From behind them, Anna-Louisa’s fey laughter degenerated into a series of sobs. Then she was forgotten. Scharnhorst’s mind was working quickly. The situation was dangerous. But he still had t
he bulk of his army intact. The enemy commander had not been found, but even if he’d managed to hide some of his forces from the assault, they would still be outnumbered. It was all about holding the core of the army together. Once panic set in, the advantage would be gone.

  Scharnhorst emerged from the tower at the summit of the wide leading stairway. Before him, a scene of devastation lay. The courtyard was high up on the southern face of the citadel, and it looked down over the valley and all the levels below. From beyond its wide parapet, huge flames danced like snakes. Smoke rose into the night air, blotting out the stars and polluting the light of the moon. Below, the rest of the fortress burned.

  Lit by the firelight, his men milled around without direction across the wide expanse. For a moment, Scharnhorst couldn’t see why they lingered. If they’d had any sense, they would have begun to descend into the lower levels and tried to find a way out. But the exits were blocked. From hidden passageways, Anna-Louisa’s guards had at last emerged in numbers. They were all around the edge of the courtyard, and pinned Scharnhorst’s men in and back towards the foot of the tower. There were many of them. They had gunners. The snap of blackpowder fire rang out in the night air. In their wake, Anna-Louisa’s footsoldiers charged into the fray, bearing the look of men who had nothing to lose. To the east and west of the courtyard, where lesser towers reared their curved, spiked roofs into the air, arrows began to whine down. Scharnhorst’s army was trapped, hemmed in on all sides. Any reinforcements must have been trapped further down. Scharnhorst shuddered. He didn’t want to contemplate their fate.

  ‘Men of Hochland!’ he roared, swinging his sword around his head. He was heedless of the threat from the archers. The army needed leadership, or all would be lost. ‘To me, men of Hochland!’

  At his side, one of the Knights of the Iron Sceptre unfurled Ludenhof’s standard. It rippled out in the fire-flecked wind, dark against the black of the stone behind it. A trumpet sounded. Slowly, with much confusion and labour, his men began to respond. Kruger strode down into the fray, barking orders and pushing troopers into position. Defensive lines began to form. The stream of arrows from above was met by a return volley from below. There were few archers in Scharnhorst’s army, but at least it was a start.