by David Guymer
‘I had not expected to see you here.’
The voice gave Handrik a start, but centuries of training wouldn’t let him show it.
A tanned and weather-worn dwarf in black robes emerged from the shadowed wings of the shrine. The priest of Grimnir scratched his unkempt beard and eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Handrik,’ the priest welcomed with a wide grin. ‘What could one so proud have done to warrant a journey down Grimnir’s path?’
Handrik scowled. Gunngeir was a notorious gossip. ‘None of your business.’
‘I suppose not,’ Gunngeir sighed.
Handrik felt little sympathy for the homeless wanderer and his lonely service to the lord of death. His heart was already bled dry.
‘There is only one reason that dwarfs attend the shrine of Grimnir.’ Gunngeir said, his manner taking on a deadly seriousness. ‘You are here to swear the oath of the Slayer?’
‘I am.’
‘To forswear your home, your family, your name?’
Handrik glanced back at the silent Slayer. He had paused in his work and watched the exchange with interest. Handrik looked away with a scowl. He didn’t care to do this for an audience. ‘Aye.’
‘Do you know the oath?’
‘Of course,’ Handrik grumbled. ‘Everybody does.’
‘Then recite it.’
‘I am a dwarf,’ Handrik snarled, dropping stiffly to his knees before the statue of Grimnir. ‘My honour is my life and without it I am nothing. I shall become a Slayer.’ His voice caught over the rest, as if his throat refused to admit the words. He looked deep within himself for the strength to proceed, realising even as he did so that on some level he wanted this, had always wanted this. For his fallen nephew Hallar, for his old friend Logan, for Kazrik’s shame, for supping ale in the Underdeep while savages ransacked his home, for kneeling here nursing his own disgrace while youngsters like Thordun and Lothgrim bled at his behest.
‘And the rest,’ Gunngeir whispered softly.
‘I’ll do it in my own good time,’ Handrik snapped back. He took a deep breath and went on. ‘I shall seek redemption in the eyes of my ancestors. I shall become as death to my enemies. Until I face him that takes my life. And my shame.’
Handrik’s fingers felt for the golden beads braided into his beard. All four hundred and one of them. The first had been a gift from his grandfather on the passing of his first year and he had received sixty-seven more before the old dwarf had journeyed to the Ancestors’ Hall. His father had taken that same road just the year before, an urk bludgeon to the shoulder striking a loose link of his own mail into his heart. He recalled the face of the armourer’s apprentice who had sewn the shirt. As if it were yesterday. The boy had been no older than Thordun, same golden hair, same smooth skin, that selfsame intent to do right without the earned wisdom to know how. The lad had shorn his head and pledged the Slayer Oath right there. With a surprising stab of regret he realised he had no idea what had become of that dwarf. Couldn’t even remember his name. He sincerely hoped he had found a worthy doom. He would seek him out when he joined him in the Ancestors’ Hall. Share a pint or three and reminisce on the mightiness of their ends.
He removed the clasps one by one, placing them reverently into a glittering pile at Grimnir’s feet. He felt an overwhelming giddiness, his honour gone, his wealth gone, all his years reduced to this pile of gold. There was nothing left but his axe and a bitter scrap of pride. It was as if he floated, such was the sudden easing of his burden. It was not an altogether ill feeling. Gunngeir bade him remove his shirt and he did so. The priest gasped at the lurid wound above his heart. Some warpstone foulness kept it from closing, partially clotted blood oozing unceasingly from the ruptured flesh, the surrounding tissue crusted and black like that of an ancient corpse. Handrik spread his beard to obscure it, pointedly inviting no inquiry.
Gunngeir’s face dropped in disappointment and, grumbling, he disappeared into the darkened recesses of the shrine, reappearing with a cracked leather case and a bucket of orange lime. Handrik noticed the priest had donned an apron and an orange-stained leather gauntlet in which he held a grobi-bone comb, the teeth gummed together by thick lime. Handrik’s face twisted into a grimace, nose hairs shrivelling before the overpowering citrus reek.
‘Is there anyone I should pass these to?’ Gunngeir asked, indicating the jumbled heap of gold.
‘I’ve no family, the urk saw to that.’
‘A friend then?’
‘I’m old, priest. I’ve outlasted most of those I called friend. After today, I’ll have fewer still.’
‘A more distant relative perhaps?’
Handrik thought on that as the priest knelt before him, comb burrowing for his chin. His head yanked up and down as Gunngeir dragged the comb through his beard, the proud grey reduced streak by streak to a vivid orange. He grunted stoically at the needling pain. It was nothing. ‘See them given to Thordun Locksplitter.’
‘Thordun?’ the priest asked, surprised. ‘I hadn’t realised the two of you were close.’
‘Nor had I.’
‘I hear the boy is recently departed for the Black Crag.’
‘Gossip travels swiftly, I see.’
The priest produced a thin smile. Finishing with Handrik’s beard, he rose and circled to take up position at his back. Handrik felt the sticky teeth bite into his scalp as the comb tugged his thick mane of granite-grey hair.
‘You aren’t the first of the dishonoured I’ve tended today. I’ve not seen so many of one clan so close in succession since the year Snorri Stoutgirth lost the last brewery on the old Silverspear Road.’ The priest looked wistful, as though reminiscing over lost love. ‘The Hammerhands bear their share of Thane Hrathgar’s disgrace. They were already set on journeying together to Karak Eight Peaks and apparently Thordun offered an alternative that appealed to their new calling.’
Handrik snorted. ‘So much for secrecy. The boy worries too much.’
Gunngeir chuckled knowingly. ‘Regardless, perhaps you’d be advised to choose another heir for your wealth.’
‘No. Thordun will do just fine. I’ll just have to ensure he makes it back.’
‘So you’ll be accompanying the youngling on his errand?’ Handrik felt the priest nod approvingly. ‘There’ll be danger enough to share, I daresay.’
‘My thanks.’
‘We were heading that way ourselves,’ Gunngeir added conversationally, indicating the silent Slayer with a tilt of his head. ‘You need no special gift to see the dark wind blowing so many to their doom.’
‘We go to our ends. You’ll find few in need of your services in Karak Drazh.’
‘Perhaps, but where he goes I go.’
Handrik’s eyes swivelled in their sockets to take in the massive Slayer, his attention now riveted once again to sharpening his axe. ‘Who is he?’
‘Just a dwarf,’ Gunngeir shrugged. ‘I’ve followed him for many years now, since a chance encounter in the ruins of Karak Azgal–’
‘Karak Izril.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Her founders named her Izril, for the gold that shone like stars from her rocks. A few grobi can’t dim the brilliance of her stones, and a true dawi shouldn’t let the memory fade.’
‘Karak Izril then,’ Gunngeir smiled. He looked across at the anonymous Slayer. The dwarf did not look back. ‘I still don’t know his name, but his deeds are worthy of remembrance. Perhaps I can record your doom as well, Handrik, if I should be fortunate enough to survive it?’
‘Don’t get your hopes too high. Fortune’s in short supply of late.’ His eyes rolled up to follow the priest’s progress. ‘Could you work any slower? I’ve places to be, thaggoraki in need of my axe.’
‘A dwarf becomes a Slayer the moment he chooses to be,’ Gunngeir said with the faintest whisper of a smile. ‘If you were in such a damned rush, why come to me at all?’
‘There’s a right way and a wrong way for everything, priest,’ Handrik muttered. ‘Particularly now
.’
Gunngeir chuckled, patting Handrik’s shoulder to indicate that he might rise.
Handrik’s beard was a vibrant orange, the lime paste crusting it into jagged points as though some sorcerer had employed a shard of crystal to capture a flame. His head was similarly dyed but unfinished, the lurid colouring broken by shocks of grey. His arms and bare chest were swollen hard with old muscle. Gunngeir regarded him, well satisfied. He bent to lay down the comb and opened the leather case that he had set upon the ground, withdrawing a long slender-bladed knife. The dagger’s hilt was shaped into a semblance of bones, the blade etched with black runes like the engravings on a tomb. The priest raised the weapon. Blue ink dripped from its razor tip.
‘Are you ready?’
Handrik nodded solemnly. ‘Aye.’
Sharpwit’s ears twitched to a half-heard sound. He stopped to listen. It was coming from the northbound tunnel to Black Crag on the far side of the shanty, a distant and growing growl. For a split second of irrational horror he feared a dragon had returned to its lair, but the rumble soon distinguished itself into something more mundane: the pounding of many pairs of paws, the panicked chittering of hundreds of fleeing skaven. The relief he felt was short-lived.
They were fleeing right towards him.
Sharpwit vented the musk of fear and cast about for something solid to hide behind but could see nothing sturdier than the hide wall of the nearest shack. Beggars not being choosers, he ducked behind it, his lone eye tightly closed, a murmured prayer that the Horned Rat spare his humble minion on his lips.
It seemed the Great Schemer heeded the prayers of cripples this day.
The cavern shook to the force of an explosion, a geyser of grey ash blasting from the tunnel mouth and scorching across the desolate town like a marauding dragon. Sharpwit buried his muzzle in his paws and whimpered as hot ash pummelled his pathetic shelter. The scrap of hide rippled under the onslaught, burning dust howling through the deserted streets to either side like looters, kicking open door-flaps, and claiming everything unrestrained.
As suddenly as it had erupted into life, the blast settled. The latent scent of dust tickled the back of his throat. He coughed sharply, struggling to suppress the fit that came snapping on its tail like a starving rat after a mouse, sleeve pressed tight to his snout. He scuttled from hiding on all fours. The explosion’s aftermath left a ringing silence. He strained until his ears throbbed with imagined perils, but there was nothing to hear but the groaning movement of rock and the occasional patter of loose rubble. The skaven had been cut off or killed. Sharpwit wheezed a sigh of relief. He pulled away his sleeve and sniffed at the air. The sulphurous bite of gunpowder was a lingering trace, as familiar as the bitterness of his own musk. His heart skipped a beat, racing into a frantic pace as though compensating for the lost effort. The strain on the aging muscle made him feel faint.
Divide and destroy. Classic dwarfish tactics when assaulting a more numerous foe. That could mean only one thing. The dwarfs were coming.
No. Worse. The dwarfs were here.
His gaze snapped towards one of the southbound tunnels, the one that had borne Queek’s army to Karak Azul. Vibrations passed through the rock in solid and unbroken rhythm, its tremors exciting his already skittish paws, urging them to flight only to find his limbs frozen. He sank back, deeper into his hiding place, his flushed glands straining in vain to emit fresh musk.
As he watched, the first Ironbreaker emerged from the darkness of the tunnel. Others followed, immensely armoured bodies in ranks of four that manoeuvred smoothly to become ranks of eight, broad shields locking remorselessly into an unbroken wall of gromril, hand-axes glinting in the glimstone torches some of the dwarfs carried affixed to their helms. Rather than move to avoid the ramshackle skaven dwellings as they came upon them, the lead dwarf simply put his gromril boot through the sidewall of a rotten shed-like building. The twice-scavenged plywood construct collapsed like a house of feathers without causing the dwarf to slow. He barged through the debris as though he felt nothing. And perhaps he did not. His face was sealed beneath a fearsome helm, even his beard sheathed in starmetal scales.
Sharpwit jerked into life as the ranks of dwarfs followed their leader, the far end of the cavern suddenly erupting in an explosion of wood splinters and cave rot spores. Even if they didn’t spot him, their blundering feet would surely crush him.
He spun away, overcome by a sudden longing to be in Deadclaw, surrounded by a host of his beloved brother skaven.
Thordun closed his eyes and kissed his hammer’s glowing blue rune. The act had become habit, and he persisted even though the hammer was not his. The Locksplitter heirloom would remain safe in Karak Azul, even if he could not.
He shrugged off the maudlin ritual, trying instead to concentrate on the map being unfurled against the wall by a fiercely crested Slayer. Somewhere beneath the bright orange mohawk and freshly scabrous tattoos, he recognised the craggy face of Thane Hrathgar’s icon bearer, Rorrick Hammerhand. Thordun studied the parchment until his vision blurred. It made no sense whatsoever, lines bisecting one another seemingly at random, triangles forming from nowhere, and the whole thing scattered with illegible runes. He would’ve happily cursed Handrik to eternity if not for the happy chance that Rorrick and his brethren were familiar with its coded markings. He glanced over his shoulder to where two more Slayers stood sullenly among his men. They had barely spoken to him before their disgrace, and they seemed to like him still less now.
Rorrick traced a fat finger along one of the lines. ‘Here’s the passage to Black Crag. It cuts down, joins in with others here.’ He tapped at an intersection. ‘Then it runs true all the way north.’ He picked out a number of cross symbols along the way. ‘These are where the Engineers’ Guild set traps after the last attack. They keep the blasted urk in their place, but we should get by no bother.’ The finger started moving again. ‘Then we climb steadily up, right to the Third Deep, out by the Throne Hall. Or what’s left of it. We’ll need to cross the Mordrekk Bridge. Could be tricky, that. I’d have it guarded, if I were a sensible orc.’
‘You think it will be?’
‘You ever met a sensible orc?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Well there you are then. We’ll either walk it or have to fight for it. No way to know until we get there really, is there?’
‘How can you be certain this is where Kazador’s kinsdwarfs will be?’
‘Can’t be totally sure. But Gorfang would want his prisoners near his own wretched throne, and it’s where old Yorri Borkodin was convinced they’d be.’
‘Who?’
‘For shame, beardling.’ Rorrick shook his head disappointedly. ‘He was a dwarf of the Eight Peaks and a friend. He claimed descent from the Karak Drazh Borkodins, and had many maps of the hold’s interior thought long lost. He was the last honoured soul to make the journey from Black Crag to the Ancestors’ Hall. I’d pay more heed to my own history, were I in your place.’
Thordun bit his tongue and said instead, ‘Tell me about this bridge.’
‘Karak Drazh is split by the same fault that runs under Karak Azul. The Mordrekk is its Third Deep crossing. Very defensible, as I say, but a beautiful piece of stone-craft.’ A mournful look crossed the dwarf’s fearsome visage. ‘It’d be an honour to go to my doom on it.’ He smiled in grim anticipation and dragged his finger back across the chart, settling it over a black square. ‘And this is where the squatter king entered Karak Azul last time.’
‘Right here?’ Thordun asked.
Rorrick pulled down the map, folded it messily, and shoved it under his belt as they all looked at the unpropitious stretch of grey wall.
‘Right here.’
Thordun stepped forward, hands held palm open over the stones, almost fearful, as if to touch them would be to somehow share in the horrors they’d been party to.
‘To think your folk forgot this door was here,’ Rorrick snorted.
Thordun made no ans
wer, though he felt sure the fallen glory of Karak Eight Peaks was by now a mad adder’s nest of forgotten ways and half-dug tunnels.
‘I hope someone took the Slayer Oath over this,’ Rorrick went on, grouchily ignorant that he was being ignored.
‘I’m sure they did,’ Thordun snapped, feeling a growing dislike for the judgemental Slayer, so like his late kinsdwarf. ‘And I believe it none of your business either way.’
Rorrick cleared his throat and looked down his beard, chastened.
From behind him, Bernard’s gruff chuckle came to further grate his nerves.
‘Told him, eh?’
‘You shut up too,’ he growled. The man looked drawn and swayed as though still drunk. Thordun felt nothing but contempt for him. He didn’t know why he had pressed Handrik for leniency when the longbeard had barged into their quarters ready to tear the man limb from limb. The old dwarf’s very graphic threats had done the trick though, and it would take just one word from Thordun to see those threats carried out. He glanced over at Rorrick and the other Slayers. He doubted that any of those three would be so accepting of the thagi in their midst. Suppressing the temptation, he looked up at the ceiling and pressed the hammer to his chest, hoping to draw from its strength.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be returning that?’ Bernard drawled, not taking the hint, without even the decency to sound ashamed of himself.
Thordun studied again the weapon he held, the hammer of Hrathgar Hammerhand. He had salvaged it from the thane’s body after the battle, having witnessed its potency from afar. It had seemed a shame to let it just lie there. ‘I will, as soon as we’re done.’
‘You can try Splitter, but you’ll never change. Once a thief, always a thief.’
‘I said I’ll return it,’ Thordun barked. ‘We’re just taking the long way around.’
‘Sure we are. As if you, me or that bloody hammer will see sunshine again.’
‘Come on, umgelski,’ Rorrick growled. Thordun hardened his face to the taunt. Man-lover. The Slayer glared at them, impatiently turning the spike atop his hammer to scratch the scabs from his cheek. ‘We have to beat the scourge of the Eight Peaks to his prize, am I right?’ The other Slayers nodded agreement. Even some of Thordun’s own seemed eager to be off, somehow touched by the dwarfs’ mania.