by Guy Haley
Ska scooped up the fallen prize, and together they fled the stony mound.
‘Notrigar! Notrigar!’ howled Belegar.
‘Oh dear,’ said Queek to Ska as they scurried away. ‘Look like long-fur beard-thing lose another littermate.’
The dwarfs cheered as the skaven fell back, hurling insults after Queek. Some of the skaven army retreated in good order – Queek’s guard and his other stormvermin units held firm – but most did not and scrambled for the exits. Ogres ran them down without mercy, knocking handfuls of them flying with each swing of their massive clubs and swords. Green trails in the air marked out where jezzail teams aimed for the mercenaries, but the toxic bullets seemed not to affect them much, and it took several rounds to bring even a single ogre down.
The battle-dirges of the dwarfs changed. Victory songs erupted along the line at the flight of the skaven.
At the centre, the Iron Brotherhood found themselves unengaged. They yelled insults and banged their hammer hafts on the rock and on their shields.
Brok Gandsson sought out his lord, who stood at the brink of the cliff, looking down upon the scattering of bodies and blood-washed rock.
‘A great victory, my king!’ said Brok, his eyes bright, the shame of his murder of Douric forgotten for the moment.
Belegar looked with hollow eyes at the headless body of his cousin.
‘My lord?’ said Brok. He gestured for another to take up the fallen standard.
‘It is not a victory, not yet. If we prevail, and I say “if” carefully, Brok Gandsson, a dozen of our finest lie dead around us. Grungni alone knows how many others have fallen.’
‘Shall we pursue them? We stand a chance of catching the Headtaker,’ said Brok keenly. ‘Many are the grudges that can be stricken from the Book by his death.’
‘Pursuing Queek is futile,’ said Belegar. ‘We will be drawn into the mass of troops waiting for us and killed piecemeal. We have other foes of direr nature, and closer to hand.’ He pointed his hammer at the second abomination. The first was dead, but in their fury at the losses of their kin, the dwarfs of the Stoneplaits clan continued to hack at it. The second was dragging its vile bulk through the army, mindlessly unaffected by the general rout of the skaven. A bold unit of miners stood their ground in front of its heaving bulk. They buried their mattocks in its sickly white hide, only for them to be torn out of their hands by the convulsions of its flesh. A cannonball smacked into it, as effectual as a child’s marble impacting dough. ‘There is yet one more task for our hammers.’
‘My king!’ Brok bowed. He ordered the Iron Brotherhood to come about face. The king marched with them, his wound concealed by his shield. He gritted his teeth against the pain and told no one of it.
The abomination reared over them, stinking of decayed meat and warpstone-laden chemicals. The weapons of half a dozen clans were embedded in its flabby sides, its underside slick and red with the blood of those it had crushed under its enormous weight.
Upon seeing their king and his guard arrive, the remaining miners fighting the creature took heart and shouted their war cries anew. Those without weapons took up whatever they could find to assail the creature.
‘The heads! Destroy the heads,’ ordered Belegar.
‘They’re high up for a killing stroke,’ said Brok.
‘Then let’s get its attention,’ said Belegar, ‘and make it bring them nearer our hammers.’
He strode forwards. Shouldering his shield, he swung the Ironhammer two-handed, smacking the thing hard on the rump. Waves rippled away from the impact. A second blow shattered a leg, a third a wheel grafted to its rear.
Finally recognising what it felt for pain, the abomination howled and reared up, dragging a pair of dwarf miners off their feet. They hung on to their picks for grim death as it lumbered around to face this new irritation.
‘Khazuk! Khazuk! Khazuk-ha!’ shouted Brok.
The hammerers advanced. Their numbers had been whittled down by a quarter in their earlier fight, and they had been battling for a good part of the morning without rest or refreshment. Lesser creatures would have been weary, and suffered for it. But these were dawi, many highborn, all warriors of the finest mettle. In their endurance they were indomitable, and they swung their hammers as if taking them up for the first time that day. Like triphammers in the forges of Zhufbar, the hammers of the Iron Brotherhood fell in a wave, pounding upon the skin of the horror, snapping bone and mashing flesh. The creature roared, swiping with one of its many arms. The first rank of hammerers were knocked down like pins in a game of skittles, but thanks to their armour few were hurt. The second rank stepped up to deliver another rippled blow. A grasping hand was shattered, a bloated paw burst. Brok Gandsson bellowed a challenge and ran at the side of the creature, pushing himself up the shattered machinery crudely grafted to its limbs. His feet bounced on its rubbery hide, but he kept his footing, ran to the top and cracked it hard over one of its nine heads. The neck attaching it to the sack of its body cracked, and the head sagged, dead. The abomination flung its upper portion to and fro, sending Gandsson flying.
Shouting mightily, the hammerers followed their champion, surrounding the creature and smashing at it furiously. The abomination thrashed, howling horribly. It killed but a few of the dwarfs, and its lower portion was soon so pulverised that its unnatural vitality could not heal all the tears in its flanks. Crying, it sank low, biting at its tormenters, allowing the hammerers access to its heads by doing so. These the dwarfs smashed to pulp one after another as soon as the snapping jaws came near.
Finally, the last head was split. With a tremendous shudder and a pitiful moan, the abomination breathed its last through pulverised lips and broken jaws.
The hammerers gave a ragged cheer.
‘Well done, Brok Gandsson,’ said Belegar, as the Iron Brotherhood helped their bruised but otherwise unhurt champion to his feet with many a clap on the back. ‘A deed worthy of the ancestors.’
Brok bowed his head. ‘My thanks, my king.’
‘Now blow the Golden Horn once more. It’s time we left this battlefield and retreated to the next defence.’ Belegar looked around sadly. To do so meant leaving the deeps completely in the hands of his enemies. From now on, they would be fighting for the citadel’s roots alone.
The war for the underhalls was lost, probably forever.
The horn blower lifted the sacred relic to his lips, but did not blow.
‘What…?’ said Belegar. All dawi eyes looked to the ground.
Through the ground came a rumbling sensation that built steadily until the floor itself vibrated. No dwarf could mistake it for an earthquake. The sensation was too regular, too localised for natural perturbation of the rock.
‘Tunnelling machines,’ gasped Brok.
‘Reform!’ bellowed Belegar. ‘Reform… ahh.’ He gasped, and clutched at his side. Red blood dripped upon the floor. His head swam. A strange, unholy heat radiated from his wound.
‘My lord,’ said Brok in dismay. ‘You are wounded!’
Belegar shouted back, annoyed at himself for betraying his injury. ‘It is nothing – a scratch. I gave the Headtaker more to remember me by than this, believe me. I commanded the army to reform. Look to them, not me. Be about it quickly, or all is lost!’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Brok relayed the order, and his orders were passed on by others. Dwarfs were efficient in all things, and very shortly horns sounded as the dwarfs called back their warriors from the pursuit.
A sound came from behind the Iron Brotherhood’s new square.
‘My king!’ shouted Brok.
Brok pointed at the abomination. Its skin shuddered. Three of its mouths worked. Bones cracked as jaws reset. Eyes grew bright. Flesh knitted together. It vomited freely from all of these mouths, and with a pained squeal, it jerked fully back into life and hauled itself up once more.
FIFTEEN
Enter Skarsnik
Queek’s scampering slowed. He looked to the ground and giggled. ‘Halt-stop!’ he called, holding up his hand-paw.
The Red Guard tittered, recognising the rumbling for what it was – the anticipated arrival of their reinforcements from the third clawpack. They formed up. Other units were slowing, their flight turning. For a moment they stood in a state of stilled disorganisation, before flowing back together, units consolidating almost magically from the chaotic mass of the rout. From the gateways into the hall more skaven issued. This was the remainder of the first clawpack, ordered to join battle by Queek only when the tunnelling machines made their presence known.
‘Hehehehe,’ snickered Queek. ‘Now we see who is the best, Belegar-king. See, loyal Ska, how the dwarf-things have broken their line in their foolishness. Too quickly they are to believe Queek would run-run! They have fallen for mighty Queek’s trap! They will all die-die, no matter how fast they stump-run to find their clawpacks again!’
Ska frowned. To his simple mind, it had looked like they were about to lose. Ska wasn’t particularly quick, but he was smart enough to know saying so would not be wise. ‘Yes, mighty Queek,’ he said instead.
The vibrations grew stronger, a bone-shaking grinding joining them. The entire hall rumbled. Just when it seemed they couldn’t possibly get any louder, the tone of the noise changed and piles of splintered rock mounded up in various places in the hall.
Queek leapt onto a boulder and brandished his weapons. ‘Be ready!’ shouted Queek, his voice barely carrying over the noise of the tunnelling machines. ‘Third clawpack arrives! Today, mighty Queek take long-fur’s head!’
‘Queek! Queek! Queek!’ squeaked his army.
The snout of a drilling machine appeared from one of the oversized molehills to the north, fifty yards short of the rapidly reforming dwarf army. The drill poked a few feet overground, then withdrew. With nothing to support it, the centre of the hillock collapsed, leaving a gaping hole in the ground.
Queek waited gleefully, his tongue searching out fresh scraps of dwarf flesh and blood in his fur.
Green light issued from the hole. Smoke poured after it. Other machines were poking up out of the floor and walls, and retracting, leaving fresh tunnel mouths behind them. One by one they fell silent and the tremors dwindled.
‘Not long now, loyal Ska. Truly is Queek the most cunning of generals.’
‘The most cunning of the cunningest,’ agreed Ska.
Something emerged from the hole. It was a long way to see for Queek’s weak skaven eyesight. He squinted hard and made out a bouncing, round shape headed for the dwarf lines.
‘That not third clawpack…’ said Ska in dismay.
‘Queek can see that!’ squeaked Queek loudly. ‘Queek know!’
The hole burst outwards as dozens more of the creatures came boinging out, their powerful hindlegs propelling them at great speed into the air. They slapped into the ground, rolling and bouncing, shoving themselves off with their legs to repeat the process. The mushroom stink of green-things blew from the holes.
‘Skarsnik!’ chittered Queek, stamping from foot to foot. ‘Skarsnik! What is this? How does he know? How does he still live?’
As if invoked by the name of their king, the green-things poured in great multitudes from the holes in the ground. Regiments of night goblin archers came first, firing as they ran, the new tunnel mouths wide enough to let them come out four abreast. The skaven, expecting allies to come from the ground, were taken by surprise, and some among the newly rallied army were seized again by panic. Black-fletched arrows fell among them, bringing forth many death-squeaks. The massed skaven retreated from the holes, allowing legions of goblins to flood the hall.
There were many tribes, and many kinds of green-thing. Queek narrowed his eyes and hissed. ‘Imp-thing been busy!’
The greenskins wasted no time in attacking both armies. From a hole opened right before the Gate of Skalfdon, ranks of tittering spearmen, drunk on fungus beer, marched out. They jogged into position on the far side of the dwarfs. Staggering fanatics carrying massive iron balls were pushed from their regiments. They blinked and stared around themselves, laughing and drooling. And then they began to spin.
Faster and faster they went, round and round, the drugs coursing through their veins allowing them to drag the huge weapons they carried up and get them airborne. In a blur of metal and spinning pointed hoods, they connected with dwarfs turning to face the goblins behind them.
The fanatics moved quite slowly, but such was their momentum that they smashed the dwarf shield wall apart, caving in the best armour and pulping bodies. If their initial impact was bloody, their lives after were short. Some spun through into the skaven on the far side; others wavered unsteadily along the dwarf line or turned back upon their frantically shrieking comrades. Ultimately, they came variously to throttle themselves on their chains, collapse exhausted or crash into the pillars and rubble piles that made the hall so hazardous for them.
It did not matter, the damage was done. The goblins followed their fanatics quickly, charging the disordered dwarf lines.
Squigs were running amok through the dwarf army, gobbling down a dwarf with every bound. Queek’s quick mind followed his quick eyes and nose as he judged the situation. ‘Now would be a good time to fall back, lad,’ said Krug, from his perch.
‘Oh, good time for you to talk now, dead-thing,’ muttered Queek. Still, he was of half a mind to follow the dwarf king’s advice, retreating while the beard-things were occupied with a new enemy. Let them wipe each other out. Queek would come back for whoever was left later.
He would have done so too, had Skarsnik himself not appeared.
Skarsnik rose from a hole in the ground in the very middle of the hall. Explosions and flashes of magic surrounded him, the indescribable noise of squigpipes played him in, making sure all saw his grand entrance. He walked cockily from the hole, his attendants carrying banners stuck with the heads of the leaders of the third clawpack. He walked to a pile of fallen rock, and climbed unhurriedly to the top, his rotund pet obediently following. Queek squealed in annoyance. The sheer arrogance of Skarsnik enraged him. He behaved like he was the best, when who was the best? Queek was!
‘Listen, youse lot!’ shouted the green-thing, his voice carried on the magic of the smelly lunatic who always accompanied him. Sure enough, he was there, blowing foul fumes from his pipe not far behind the king’s right shoulder. ‘I’s the king here, so why don’t all you furboys and stunties zog off. Give to Skarsnik what belongs to Skarsnik, and we’ll call it quits.’
With that inspired piece of oratory, Skarsnik held aloft his prodder and let a stream of violent green energy streak into the roof. Razor-sharp shards of rock blasted out from the impact, slicing into whoever was below. Which was mostly goblins, but Skarsnik, true to form, didn’t care about that.
This was altogether too much for Queek.
‘Skarsnik! Imp-thing! Kill-kill!’ he shrieked. He ran forward, leaving his guard behind. They milled about confused until Ska Bloodtail squeak-ordered, ‘After him! After the mighty Queek!’
Seeing their lord and his guard surge ahead, the skaven clan leaders, clawpack masters and other officers decided they had better advance. Their ragged charge became organised as more of them came to the same conclusion and followed.
The skaven were so intent on the goblins that they didn’t notice the ogres change sides.
‘Keep up the fire to the front there!’ shouted Durggan Stoutbelly.
The cannons boomed over the heads of the Axes of Norr, detailed to guard the battery. It was an honourable task, given to them in thanks for their heroic efforts at the door of Bar-Undak.
Borrik ducked as a bolt of green lightning blasted past his face. He snarled in the direction of Skarsnik. The goblin king was stood upon a pile of rock in the centre of
the battlefield, capering madly.
‘He looks pleased with himself,’ muttered Gromley.
‘Aye,’ said Grunnir, spitting on the floor. ‘Little green kruti.’
This is not looking good, not looking good at all, thought Borrik. The goblin ambush had surprised both armies, but the dwarfs suffered the most for it. Their flank, anchored by Durggan’s war machines, had become cut off from the bulk of the dwarf throng as a prong of the greenskin ambushers pushed its way through the army. Worse, although Belegar was sounding the orders for retreat, their way from the cavern was blocked by hundreds of grobi and no small number of urk emerging from at least two fresh tunnels.
And there were the ogres as well. This wasn’t a very good day.
‘Here they come again, honourless fat baruzdaki,’ said Borrik. ‘Norrgrimlings-ha!’ he shouted.
A regiment of swag-bellied Ironguts ran up the slope at the much-depleted battery. Only two cannons remained. The others were silent, destroyed by magic or their crew all slain. Dead goblins, skaven, dwarfs and ogres were intermingled around the battery, their corpses dangling from the earthworks and dry-stone walls erected before the battle.
‘Fire!’ shouted Durggan. With a deafening bang and gouts of smoke, the cannons unloaded two lots of grapeshot right into the teeth of the ogre charge. The last few Forgefuries added their hand-cannon shots to the fusillade. The front rank, four ogres wide, stumbled and fell.
Gromley cocked his eyebrow. ‘Now I don’t say it often, but that was impressive.’
‘Well I live and breathe, at least for a few moments longer,’ said Borrik, shouting over the ogres’ deafening war cry. ‘Gromley impressed by something! I reckon I can die happy, and maybe not a little surprised.’
Gromley’s sour response was lost to the clatter of ogre gutplates hitting gromril. The thin line of the remaining Axes of Norr, five all told now, bowed but did not break. ‘At ’em, lads!’ shouted Borrik, and hewed an ogre’s foot away with a single blow of his rune axe. The ogre hopped about, crashing down when Gromley took his other leg off at the knee.