by Warhammer
Towering over everything else in the outpost was the ziggurat: a huge structure masterfully crafted from immense blocks of basalt, adorned with runes cast in gold, its summit capped in spiked turrets of steel. For many minutes, Wulfrik watched the ziggurat, studying the squads of dwarf warriors marching from its bronze doors.
There was a great deal of activity in the stronghold, activity that boded ill for the Norscan’s quest. He turned his head and again considered the main gates of Dronangkul. Here the activity was even more distinct. Mobs of wolf riders were leaving the outpost, prowling back across the desert. Near the gates, he could see several dwarfs crucifying an especially large hobgoblin. As they finished their grisly labour, they lifted the pole to which the greenskin had been nailed and set it upright in a hole to one side of the road. A gang of hobgoblins pointed at the crucified prisoner and laughed at his fate. One of them ripped the leather cap from his head and threw it into the prisoner’s face. Then, with a flourish, he put on an extravagant iron helmet adorned with horns to replace the discarded cap.
‘So much for them not saying anything about us,’ Sigvatr observed, scowling at Zarnath.
‘Looks like one of them decided ratting out his chief was a good way to advance his own position,’ Broendulf said, gesturing at the scene playing out at the gates. He looked over at Wulfrik. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We go in,’ Wulfrik answered, eyes never leaving the dwarf citadel.
Sigvatr blinked in disbelief. ‘There’s no glory in suicide,’ he told Wulfrik. ‘They’re on the alert, waiting for us!’
Wulfrik shook his head. ‘I did not come this far to turn back,’ he warned his friend. ‘I’m going in there. I’m going to find this Khorakk and I’m going to take the torc from his corpse.’
‘They’re waiting for us!’ Sigvatr insisted.
‘No,’ Wulfrik corrected him. ‘They’re looking for us.’ He pointed at the large company of wolf riders loping off into the desert. ‘That lot is riding back to where we fought their friends. They’ll try to pick up our trail there. That gives us a day at least before they get there and then follow us back. While the wolf riders are gone so is the better part of their garrison.’
Stefnir frowned at the champion’s reasoning. ‘The dwarfs won’t fall as easily as their hobgoblins. I’ve seen them. They’re tough, nasty bastards who don’t run from a fight.’
Wulfrik grinned at the Aesling. ‘Then we’ll give them something else to fight.’ He turned and faced Broendulf. ‘You always said you were the best climber in Ormskaro,’ he told the huscarl. ‘Now you’ll have the chance to prove it. Take Jokull and a few others who think they can make the climb. There’s a crevice at the lip of the pit right over the slave pens.’
‘You want us to climb down and free the slaves?’ Broendulf asked. The Sarl looked doubtful of the idea. ‘What makes you think they’d help us? You can’t trust an orc.’
‘You can,’ Wulfrik told the fair-faced warrior. ‘You can trust an orc to charge right at his enemy and try to kill it.’
Sigvatr disapproved of the idea. ‘They’ll never make it past those watchtowers. And if they did, the dwarfs could just cut the bridges.’
Wulfrik patted his old friend’s shoulder. ‘Exactly!’ he boomed. ‘The dwarfs will have to cut the bridges! They’ve sent most of their hobgoblins off to look for us, so they’ll have to deal with the slaves themselves. Every dwarf that goes down to stop the orcs is one less standing in my way.’
‘Even if your plan works, we’d need to find Khorakk in a hurry,’ Sigvatr pointed out. ‘We have no idea where he is.’
‘But we do,’ Wulfrik assured Sigvatr. ‘He’ll be holed up in his citadel. I’ve been watching the dwarfs. The ziggurat is where they are all going to get their orders. If Khorakk’s the one running things here, then that’s where he is.’
‘Okay,’ persisted Sigvatr, ‘but how do you know he won’t head down into the mines when we free the slaves?’
‘What glory is there in killing slaves?’ Wulfrik asked. ‘Dwarfs are not so different from men in that regard. They thrive upon glory in battle. Khorakk will leave putting down the slaves to his underlings.’ He looked at Stefnir. ‘Does that sound right to you?’ The Aesling nodded his head in agreement.
‘That still leaves getting into the ziggurat,’ Arngeirr said. The reaver gestured with his false leg at the thick bronze doors guarding the outpost’s main gate. ‘We’d need a battering ram the size of the Seafang to break those down.’
‘I have something better than a battering ram,’ Wulfrik told him. He waved his hand in the direction of Zarnath.
The shaman had been sitting in silence since the discovery that his prediction about the hobgoblins had been wrong. Now he gave a sudden start as he felt all eyes fix upon him. His hands tightened about his staff as he rose to his feet. An azure glow burned in his widened eyes.
‘Time to make amends for your mistake, sorcerer,’ Wulfrik said.
Zarnath backed away, holding his staff in front of him as though to ward off a blow. Wulfrik laughed at his fright.
‘I need you to bring down yon gates,’ the champion told him, nodding at Dronangkul.
A look of horror swept over the shaman’s face. For an instant, his body trembled. After a moment, however, he composed himself. ‘You want me to use my magic to throw open the gates?’
‘If it is strong enough,’ Wulfrik growled. The shaman’s display of fear had diminished his confidence in Zarnath’s powers.
The Kurgan’s head bobbed excitedly. ‘Oh, yes! Yes!’ he assured Wulfrik. ‘I can bring down the gates! I can turn them into vapour and scatter them to the winds! I can melt them into the earth! I can–’
‘Just open them,’ Wulfrik said, turning away to explain the rest of his plan to his warriors.
He didn’t notice the smile that flickered across Zarnath’s face as he walked away.
Broendulf looked down on the slave pens from the edge of the pit and decided he’d never brag about his climbing skills again. The walls of the pit were jagged enough to offer plenty in the way of handholds, but they were weak and prone to crumbling as soon as any weight was put upon them. The pit hadn’t been eroded by any natural process but had been excavated by generations of slaves. The walls still bore the marks of their picks and were pock-marked with deep craters. Some sections had tiny holes drilled into them, scars left from where the dwarfs had been ready to blast instead of dig.
The fissure Wulfrik had selected from the hill proved to be an excellent choice. For much of its length it was curled in upon itself, hollowed out like a rotten log. If the bottom was as thin as the upper reaches of the tube, Broendulf thought they would be able to easily smash their way through the side once they reached the ground. The most important thing was the concealment the fissure offered. One of the watchtowers was uncomfortably close to where the men needed to go.
They had waited for night before sneaking to the pit, though Broendulf wasn’t certain how much help the dark was to them. The wolves would be able to smell them if they got far enough away from the chemical reek of the sump, and the hobgoblins seemed more than capable of seeing in the dark. The dwarfs might have been a bit less used to the darkness though, although the evidence of this made Broendulf’s skin crawl. From the towers guarding the causeway and the main gates of the stronghold, thick rays of light emanated, bursting from huge eyes of frosted glass. He could see the dwarfs working the weird devices. The eyes were fastened to steel posts which the dwarfs would pivot to bring the glaring beam of light swinging around. Whatever the rays struck was illuminated as though caught beneath the sun. Throughout the long march across the desert, Stefnir had regaled them with stories about the devilish machines the dwarfs built. Now Broendulf was prepared to believe the Aesling’s tales.
‘Jokull, the rope,’ Broendulf whispered to the hunter. They’d managed to avoid the few hobgoblins they’d seen patrolling the edge of the pit, but there was no reason to think there weren’t mor
e they hadn’t spotted. The huscarl took the rope from Jokull and began tying it fast about his own waist. Grimly he checked the tightness of his knots, then tossed the end of the rope back to Jokull. ‘Loop it about yourselves,’ he told the other warriors. ‘Measure out five feet of slack. As we climb down, each man goes one at a time and only as far as the slack allows. If one man loses his grip, the others will be able to stop his fall.’
Arngeirr quietly pounded a steel stake into the ground, winding the tail of the rope about it and making it fast with a complicated seaman’s knot. The one-legged reaver hobbled over to the edge of the pit. ‘A fair way down,’ he said, spitting over the side.
‘Too late to turn back now,’ Broendulf chastised him. He’d argued with Arngeirr to stay with Wulfrik’s men, but the reaver had insisted climbing down a cliff wouldn’t be half as hard as shimmying up a mainmast in a storm. Moreover, he objected to Broendulf’s insistence that his sword accompany the huscarl into the pit unless he went with it. Arngeirr’s kraken-tooth blade was the keenest among the crew, capable of shearing through solid rock. Broendulf wanted that blade with him in case the hobgoblins weren’t obliging enough to give him the keys to the slave chains.
Broendulf tugged at the rope again, testing how securely the stake held. Nodding in approval, he turned to lead the descent into the fissure.
A sudden crimson flash filled the sky, freezing Broendulf where he was. For a terrible moment, he thought Zarnath had set his magic against the gates too soon. Looking in the direction of the dwarf settlement, however, he discovered his mistake. Cold dread drained all of the colour from his face.
Above the ziggurat, blazing in the night sky, a monstrous flaming head hung suspended. Broendulf could pick out gigantic horns and a long beard and eyes that burned like dragonfire. A terrible voice boomed across the sky, its words crashing like thunder against their ears. He couldn’t understand what the voice said, but he didn’t need to to know fear.
‘Hashut,’ Jokull whispered, recalling the name Stefnir had given for the god of the dawi zharr.
The hunter’s terror firmed Broendulf’s resolve. He glared back at the fiery head. ‘Our gods are stronger,’ he said, curling his fingers into the sign of Tchar the Trickster. As he did, the giant, ghostly head vanished, disappearing as suddenly as it had sprung into existence.
Below, the pit echoed with the terrified wails of goblins and orcs. The clamour boded ill for the success of their mission. They might free the slaves only to find them too frightened to fight their masters. Broendulf shook his head in disgust. Such was a problem he could worry about later. For now, the wailing provided a perfect cover for any noise they might make in their descent.
The climb down into the pit was a tense struggle to maintain both stealth and speed. Throughout the first part of the climb, Broendulf kept expecting the weird light-casters on the towers to shift in their direction, catching them helpless in the open. If that happened, there would be no place to hide. They would be left with the grisly choice of trying to climb back and no doubt being shot down by the arrows of the hobgoblins, or dropping into the pit and breaking their necks.
Broendulf gave thanks to his ancestors that the eerie beams of light never shifted in their direction. The dwarfs were more interested in illuminating the slave pens and the mine itself than searching the walls of the pit. The huscarl was struck by the idea that the dwarfs were so used to the idea of slaves trying to break out of the stronghold that the concept of someone trying to break in was alien to them. He wondered if perhaps the thought had occurred to Wulfrik and if the hero hadn’t based his entire strategy upon it. He knew the sudden, impulsive way the champion’s mind worked, but there was usually a foundation of strategy involved in his decisions.
The northmen felt marginally safer once they had descended to that part of the fissure protected by the outward-curving side of the wall. At least the threat of being caught by one of the beams was removed. In its place, however, they found the increased danger posed by the walls themselves. The rock here was even worse than that above, flaking and crumbling at the slightest touch. Several times one of the Norscans lost his hold as the wall disintegrated beneath his fingers, only the rope binding him to his fellows preventing a headlong plummet to the floor of the pit.
Each time they knocked loose a few stones and sent them clattering down into the pit, the northmen froze. Almost timidly they waited to hear the whispery voices of hobgoblins raised in alarm. No cries answered the cascade of rocks, however. Either the wailing of the slaves was enough to drown out the noise or the walls were in such bad shape that loose stones rattling down into the pit were a common enough occurrence that the hobgoblins took no interest.
It was with a sense of relief that Broendulf reached the bottom and untied himself from the line. Soon the rest of the warriors joined him at the base of the fissure, cramping the narrow cavity. There was a small opening at the base of the hollow tube, just big enough that the Norscans could crawl through. Jokull took the lead, worming his way under the lip of rock and out into the pit. A long moment passed before the hunter tugged on the rope, giving his comrades the all-clear.
Broendulf and the other warriors hurried to join Jokull, Arngeirr awkwardly bringing up the rear, his bone leg held out stiffly as he crawled. The men knew how long it had taken them to climb down the fissure. Wulfrik was depending on the cover of night to sneak up to the outpost’s walls and the distraction of the freed slaves to cover his own attack. Over an hour had already been spent making the descent, time the warriors could ill afford. Broendulf was almost thankful he couldn’t see the horizon from the bottom of the pit, fearful that even now the first glow of dawn might be rising in the east.
The men quickly took stock of their surroundings. The fissure was situated in a particularly dilapidated section of the pit, the ground strewn with rocks and boulders that had fallen from the walls, confirming Broendulf’s suspicion that falling rocks were no novelty to the denizens of the pit. Bleached bones protruding from beneath some of the bigger rocks told why slaves were no longer kept in this area.
Creeping among the rocks, the Norscans studied the slave pen. Broendulf couldn’t decide if the slaves numbered in the hundreds or the thousands, so tightly were they herded together. The area in which they were kept was so restricted the slaves didn’t have room to sit, but were forced to remain standing at all times, leaning upon each other when sleep overcame them. They were mostly orcs, huge ape-like greenskins with ugly, fanged faces and massive knots of muscle, though a not inconsiderable number of goblins were also scattered amongst the herd. These small monsters, similar to the hobgoblins but about half their size, tried their best to keep from being trampled by the big orcs.
Iron chains circled the left ankle of each slave. A hundred slaves might be shackled to a single chain, the long coffle doubling back upon itself so that the chain formed a long loop. Both ends of the chain were secured to a steel plate bolted to an enormous block of basalt. Looking at the black block of stone, Broendulf judged there must be a dozen such chains fastened to it.
Only a few hobgoblins monitored the slaves, keeping close to the block of basalt. Perched atop the rock, sprawled upon a high-backed chair, was the master of the slave pens. Broendulf had fought dwarfs before, but never had he seen one as ugly and vicious-looking as the villainous creature sitting in the chair. He was dusky-skinned, with his black beard pulled into long coils and festooned with the severed ears of goblins and orcs. His face was stamped with the marks of cruelty and avarice, his mouth distorted by the bestial tusks jutting from his lower jaw. He wore a suit of scale armour, a mesh of interlinked bronze that resembled the skin of a fish. Across the dwarf’s lap rested a murderous-looking device with a wide, bowl-like mouth attached to a slender wooden stock. Broendulf had seen the guns of other dwarfs and recognised the object as being some sort of kindred weapon.
‘If anyone has the keys, it’ll be Ear-taker there,’ Arngeirr said.
Broendulf nod
ded in agreement. ‘Then we’ll just have to make sure he’s the first to die.’ He looked over at Jokull, nodding at the hunter’s bow. ‘Think you can hit him from here?’
Jokull stared intently at the dwarf slave master, gauging the distance. ‘I think so,’ he decided.
Broendulf looked anxiously at the dark sky overhead. How much time did they have left, he wondered? Grimly he shook his head. He didn’t know. That meant he had to assume the worst.
‘Send him to his inbred ancestors,’ Broendulf growled.
Jokull lifted his bow, aimed and loosed in one smooth motion. The arrow sped straight and true, but even as it streaked for the dwarf’s head, the slave master was leaning forwards to bark an order to one of the hobgoblins. Instead of piercing the dwarf’s skull, the arrow glanced off the steel skullcap he wore.
Instantly the dwarf was dropping down from his seat, crashing to the ground beside the boulder. Frantically he glanced in every direction, trying to discover from where the attack had come. His eyes narrowed with fury when he saw the Norscans hiding among the rocks. Spitting some curse in his own guttural language, the dwarf raised his weapon, pointing the wide mouth at the men.
There was a loud crack followed by a thunderous roar and a brilliant flash of light. Broendulf winced in pain as he felt his arms and face torn by what felt like a fistful of gravel. He could see that Jokull and the others were likewise scratched by the blast. The huscarl snickered at the sorry results of the dwarf’s attack. He didn’t understand how the force of the shot had spread out over the distance or the havoc the blunderbuss could cause at close quarters.