by Guy Haley
As suddenly as it appeared, the blackness was gone. The war council was alone again.
‘What do you bid-command, O great and exalted leader Thanquol?’ intoned Warlord Throttlespine, bowing low. The rest of the skaven followed suit, although they did subconsciously shuffle away from those who had befouled themselves.
Thanquol had already surmised that Throttlespine was the smart one, yet it was gratifying to be proven correct. Nodding his head slightly in acceptance, Thanquol began again. ‘As I was squeal-saying, my plan…’
TWENTY-FOUR
The King’s Head
The world had changed.
No longer could the dawi count the mountains as their own. They teetered on the brink of extinction.
Thorgrim Grudgebearer ground his teeth together. The Dammaz Kron lay under his hand. It had glutted itself on woes, growing thicker faster than at any other time in the High King’s remarkable reign.
He stared at the Granite Gate two hundred feet away. Massive twin doors of stone, imposing despite being only half – and it was exactly, precisely half – the height of the tall, vaulted corridor they barred. The gates shuddered under an impact from the far side: a quiver in the stone so small that only a dwarf, stone born and stone master, could see. Bands of runes carved into the gates glowed intensely with inner blue light, their magic striving to keep the gates whole and closed.
The skaven were coming. As sure as Thorgim’s chin wore a beard, they would get through. The ratkin had burst every defence, arcane and otherwise, that the dawi of Karaz-a-Karak had thrown up.
Thorgrim thought on the horrors that afflicted his people.
Karak Azul overthrown.
Karak Eight Peaks lost a second time.
Zhufbar swarmed by an endless tide of vermin.
Barak Varr pouring smoke from its great dock gates, the pride of the dwarf fleet broken in the sea before it.
The holds of the Grey Mountains overcome and lost in three horrific nights of bloodshed.
Karak Kadrin poisoned.
Karaz-a-Karak besieged for years now, cut off on all sides above and below. The streams of refugees pouring into the dwarf capital from other kingdoms had given Thorgrim much anguish. At a time when he thought his dream might be fulfilled, that the lost realms of the Karaz Ankor would be reclaimed, it had all come to nothing. The fleeing dwarfs brought with them tales of proud strongholds cast down, and not only in dwarf lands. Many dwarfs of the diaspora had fled back to their ancestral homeland from human cities – their habits and speech strange; some of them even trimmed their beards! – telling of similar woes beyond the mountains. But what was more horrifying than the incoming flood and the dire tidings they brought was that it had stopped. No dwarf had come into Everpeak for months.
Tilea, Estalia and Bretonnia ashes. The Empire devastated. The moon cracked in the sky, invasion from the north, and ratmen swarming from everywhere.
‘We stand alone,’ he said into his beard, his unblinking stare locked upon the door. It shuddered again.
‘The runes will not last, my liege,’ muttered Hrosta Copperling. A runesmith, but a mere beardling compared to the likes of Kragg the Grimm and Thorek Ironbrow. Their kind would never come again into this world. Hrosta was loyal and dedicated to his task, but his store of knowledge was paltry.
Thorgrim did not grace Hrosta’s obvious statement with a reply, but continued to stare at the Granite Gate.
Forty feet wide, fifty tall, the gate was a lesser portal of Everpeak. Leading onto a once-safe and well-travelled section of the Ungdrin Ankor, it had become, like all the other many gates into the mountain, yet another way for the skaven to attack them.
‘Thaggoraki,’ Thorgrim growled. He thought of what he had seen from the Rikund, the King’s Porch at the summit of Karaz-a-Karak. The endless seas of enemies, whose bodies stained the roads leading to his kingdom brown. There were so many of them, more than there had ever been before.
‘My king, I implore you to return to the Hall of Kings,’ said Gavun Tork, the most venerable of his living ancestors.
‘You leave, my friend, we have lost too many heads full of wisdom. Go back and be safe. My duty is here. The time for counsel and talk is done. The Axe of Grimnir will speak for me.’
‘Thorgrim, please!’
Thorgrim jerked his head at the living ancestor. Two of his hammerers broke from the ranks of the Everguard. ‘Escort Loremaster Tork back to the eighteenth deep. Keep him safe.’
‘Aye, my king,’ said his warriors.
Tork gave the king a helpless look, his rheumy blue eyes brimmed with concern that threatened to spill into the deep lines on his face. ‘If I were but two hundred years younger…’
‘You have swung many axes for the glory of Karaz Ankor, my friend,’ said Thorgrim. ‘Let those younger take your place. Yours is a different burden.’
‘I…’
‘Go!’ said the king.
The living ancestor shook off the hands of the hammerers. ‘Very well. But stay safe! This is foolishness. You should not risk yourself.’
‘You are wrong, loremaster,’ said Thorgrim, his flinty eyes returning to regard the door. ‘It is exactly what I should do.’
The clink of the Everguard’s armour receded. Silence regained its hold over the throng. One hundred ironbreakers, irondrakes in support, and three score of his Everguard.
It should be enough, thought Thorgrim.
The doors’ runes flickered and went out. The rock at their centre glowed bright orange, a pinprick at first that spread out in a perfect circle. The stone of the Granite Gate had been chosen well; there was not a flaw in it.
‘Close secondary portcullises!’ bellowed the gatewarden of the Granite Gate.
Three sets of heavy iron portcullises descended simultaneously from slots in the roof, their machinery noiseless. Only when they met the ground, and their heavy-toothed bottoms slid into matching holes in the floor, did they make the faintest clink.
The glow in the doors spread to engulf their middle, top to bottom. The light of it glowed redly from the ceiling and polished floor, catching in the eyes of ancestor statues, whose faces, changed by shadowplay, took on horrified expressions. A dribble of molten rock ran from the gate’s centre, creating a hole that grew as the rock collapsed outwards, a hole that guttered a plume of fire.
‘Irondrakes!’ called the gatewarden. ‘Airshaft doors ready!’
Fifty runic handcannons were levelled at the door.
The Granite Gate sagged all at once, its perfection lost in a pool of cooling slag.
‘Fire!’ bellowed the gatewarden. Tongues of flame burst from the irondrakes’ guns, aimed at the centre of the hole. Whatever was on the other side exploded noisily before it could withdraw. Green-tinged fire rolled out, licking at the irondrakes’ enchanted armour without effect. Squeals of dismay came from the other side of the doors. The stink of skaven fear and burning rock washed over the throng, and the air became stuffy and difficult to breathe.
The stone skinned over and cooled to a dull, ugly grey. A thick vapour obscured whatever lay on the far side of the broken gate.
Next came a hissing noise, as a green mist issued from the breach.
‘Gas! Gas! Gas!’ shouted the gatewarden. ‘Airshafts open!’
The noxious fog rolled towards the dwarfs, sinking low to the floor. The clink of rolling glass and its shattering followed. Lesser plumes of poison sprouted as short-lived mushroom clouds around the front of the dwarf line.
The gatewarden’s orders were quickly obeyed. Dwarfs cranked open large steel flaps, revealing shafts that stretched far up the mountain. Steam engines churned on levels above, creating a ferocious wind that blew downwards, exiting from angled horns to blow the gas back towards the door. More squeaking came.
Thorgrim smiled to hear them panic. The dwarfs were slow to
embrace the new, but when they did, you could be sure it would be perfect.
The gas dissipated, misting the air. It was in danger of choking the dwarfs, and so the doorwarden ordered the steam engines disengaged. The pumped wind ceased, and the natural pressure difference between the low halls and the high mountain sucked the gas away, venting it harmlessly high above the tree line many thousands of feet above their heads.
Only then did the skaven come. As usual, the frantic squealing of slaves being driven at the dwarfs preceded the main assault. These were shot down without mercy, the blasts of the irondrakes’ handcannons immolating them by the handful.
‘No matter what they do, they are not coming through this tunnel,’ said Thorgrim.
In that, the High King was wrong.
What should have come next was more slaves, thousands of them, sent to die solely for the wasting of the dwarfs’ ammunition.
Through the reek of battle came no slaves. Instead the smoke curled around a great shape, horned and tall as a giant. Light warped around it, as if recoiling from the unnatural beast, shrouding it in a flickering darkness.
‘Verminlord,’ called out Thorgrim. ‘This one is mine!’
The rat-daemon strode forwards. Jabbering in some unholy tongue, it swept its glaive in a wide arc, allowing its hand to slip far towards the counterweight at the bottom, and extending its reach to well over fifteen feet. Trailing green fire, the weapon impacted the first portcullis with a thunderous clash. The steel was sundered, deadly shrapnel from its destruction slicing into the ranks of irondrakes. ‘Fire!’ called the gatewarden. Handgun fire from embrasures in the walls joined the shorter-ranged bursts of the irondrakes. All were stopped by the cloak of shadow that wreathed the daemon. The second portcullis was broken. Thorgrim ordered his thronebearers forward. They obeyed instantly, bearing the great weight of the High King’s throne without complaint. The ironbreakers parted ranks to allow their king passage.
‘Shield wall!’ roared the gatewarden. A line of overlapped steel formed to the front of the ironbreakers. The irondrakes withdrew, leaving the ironbreakers facing the monster before them. The third portcullis was thrown down, its refuse clattering off the ironbreakers’ shields. The verminlord threw back its head and squealed.
Then the skaven attack began in earnest, a rush of clanrat warriors pouring through the ruined gateway. As they reached the heels of their demigod, the daemon broke into a run, glaive thrumming around its head.
Thorgrim raised up his axe, and roared out a challenge. The creature came right at him. It brought its weapon down in an overhead sweep that would have slain a rhinox. But the mystic energies of the Throne of Kings responded and a flaring shield of magic stopped the blow three feet above Thorgrim’s head. He shouted his war cries, voicing the unyielding defiance of the dwarfs, and struck back. The Axe of Grimnir clove through the shadow protecting the creature and into its evil flesh. Blackness like ink spilled in water escaped from the wound, bringing with it the scent of rot. Thorgrim’s beard prickled at his proximity to the thing. He bellowed again, and swung again, and the creature blocked, spinning its glaive around the axe, nearly tearing it from Thorgrim’s grasp.
The skaven were upon his warriors. Driven to a great fervour of war by the presence of their god’s avatar, they slashed with their weapons with strength beyond their feeble bodies, and bit so hard they broke their teeth. But they did not care. Thorgrim’s bearers hewed about them, keeping the creatures from their lord while he duelled with the daemon.
The verminlord struck again, thrusting with the point of its glaive, spear fashion. The rune of eternity blazed again, but the warpmetal – greenish black and as unearthly as its owner – slid through the protective magic. The great strength of the verminlord punched it through the Armour of Skaldour, ripping open Thorgrim’s side. The poisonous pain of warp contamination burned in his blood, but his roar was one of anger for the damage done to his panoply, for the skills to repair it had long been lost. The verminlord regarded him with amusement glittering in its red eyes. It assumed a guard posture, ready to strike again.
A fey feeling came upon the dwarf king. The settling of some great power about him. He felt it first as one feels the breath of another upon the cheek, perhaps unexpected, often welcome. His beard crackled with energy. This was magic, or he was umgdawi, but it was a clean sort, heavy with age, and if dwarfs respected anything at all, age was foremost. His doughty mind rebelled against it, yet against his will his heart welcomed it, and it came into him without resistance.
The world glowed golden. The metal of his throne gleamed in a way he thought impossible. The gold took on a most amazing lustre, a warmth pooled about his wounded side, and he felt the metal move there.
Infused with this glamour, Thorgrim lurched to his feet, his bearers expertly accommodating the movement of the king in combat as they fought themselves. He ran to the prow of his throne, and it felt as if the stuff of his wargear helped him – the metals that made it lending power and purpose to him above and beyond the already mighty measures he had of both. He came up level with the beast’s head. Before the power upon the king, the dark magic that pinned the rat-daemon to the fabric of the earth unravelled, the glow going from its glaive blade, the shadow wafting back as surely as the gas attack had been dispersed by the ingenuity of the dwarfs. The verminlord understood what was coming at it and recoiled. The thing was slowed somehow, and the king brought the axe down hard, splitting the skull of the creature before it could move out of reach. It died with a shriek that had warriors of both sides clutching their ears in agony. A jet of noxious black spewed from its shattered head as it fell backwards. The glaive dropped and vanished, while the body collapsed into its own shadows, boiling away to nothing before it could crush the ratmen scurrying at its feet.
Seeing their godling so decisively bested, the thaggoraki wavered, even though they were hundreds deep and outnumbered the dwarfs many times over. Their cowardice had ensured the dwarfs’ survival time and again.
‘Forward!’ shouted Thorgrim. ‘Retake the gate. Allow not one of them to set paw upon the sacred stones of the inner mountain!’
With a great shout the ironbreakers pushed forwards. Thorgrim’s Everguard led the charge, bludgeoning skaven with looks of murderous determination. The waver turned into panic, then into rout.
Almost as one, the skaven turned tail and fled, many dying on the axes and hammers of the vengeful dwarfs as they scurried to escape, and leaving their wounded to their fate.
‘Victory!’ shouted Thorgrim. ‘Victory!’
‘My king, of course the traps are primed,’ said Chief Engineer of the Cogwheel brethren, Bukki ‘Buk’ Ironside, ‘but we are…’
Buk was not an easily intimidated dwarf, not by a long measure of beard, but he wilted nonetheless under Thorgrim’s furious stare. Not the boldest dawi, nor the oldest, nor the wisest, could weather the king’s glare. His advisors stood in a semicircle before the Great Throne, all of them deeply interested in their beard ends.
‘There is no place for “but” in my kingdom!’ said the king. His eyes were red with unexpressed emotion and lack of sleep.
‘We stand ready at your command, my king,’ said Buk hurriedly, bowing several times as he shuffled from the king’s displeasure back into the safety offered by his engineering peers.
‘Good!’ snapped Thorgrim.
‘My king,’ began Gavun Tork. He stood at the head of a dozen other living ancestors, all grim and uncomfortable-looking in their gold-thick finery and elaborate beard plaits. ‘We have advised you several times on this matter. We counsel that we should weather this storm as we always have…’
‘As I have heard your counsel!’ said Thorgrim. He patted the Dammaz Kron. ‘So we sit and we sit and we wait, while our defences are weakened and our numbers dwindle.’
Nockkim Grumsbyn, a short but headstrong dwarf, tired of Tork’s moderate attit
ude and pushed his way forward. ‘Defence has guaranteed our continued existence for many millennia, what you propose is suicide.’
‘Hiding behind our walls has all but doomed us!’ roared Thorgrim, all deference to the ancestors’ age and wisdom burned away by his furious despair. ‘For the entirety of my reign I have desired to march out with the axe-hosts of the dawi kingdoms and exterminate the skaven. Time and again I argued that this alone would save our kind. But you counselled against it, you and your like, Nockkim. And so we find ourselves skulking like trapped badgers in our hole, while our enemy, allowed to grow unchecked to uncountable numbers, plots our final demise. No more!’ he roared again. He stood. ‘Get out! Get out, all of you! I am king of the dawi nations. Your advice is flawed. For too long have you filled my ears with the whispers of caution, keeping me from reclaiming the glory of our ancestors, dwelling instead upon their dwindling legacy. Well now it dwindles to the point of extinguishment. Get out, I say!’
The entire gaggle of king’s councillors stepped back in horror. Never had they seen Thorgrim fly so brashly in the face of traditional respect.
‘Sire, there is something amiss.’ Tork gestured at Thorgrim’s throne. ‘The throne, your words – there was an odd light upon you in the battle and although it may have gone…’
‘Out! Get out! All of you!’ Thorgrim slammed his fist down on the Dammaz Kron. ‘Out,’ he said, his voice subsiding. ‘Get out.’
Thorgrim’s Everguard stepped forward. ‘Clear the throne room! By order of the High King of the Karaz Ankor! Clear the throne room!’
The Everguard, all fifty of them on honour duty at that moment, formed a line in front of their king and marched out slowly, shepherding the king’s council out before them.
All around the mighty hall, whisperings and rustlings spoke of servants and other attendants withdrawing.
It took a full five minutes for the scandalised court, its servants and Thorgrim’s bodyguards to leave the room. The great doors swung to with a soft boom.