by Warhammer
‘We’re here to help folks coming from the north get to Ekrund,’ said Glorri. ‘Not to be hunting orcs. And there’s no orcs worth hunting, just a few cunning greenies that spotted the refugees coming. While we go traipsing about on the edges of the marshes there could be folks following the road getting eaten by who knows what.’
Haldora could see that she would not win the argument and kept her tongue. When the group set off once more she found herself beside Nakka.
‘Don’t fret none,’ he said. ‘Gunnarumm’s been working the wildlands for sixty years now, and before that he was in the patrols during the war. And Glorri is no newcomer, neither. If they say that there’s no problem with the orcs, who are we going to believe? Them as almost lives out here or some frightened folk all the way from Karak Varn?’
‘I know,’ said Haldora. ‘It just don’t sit too easy with me, that’s all. Them folk from Karak Varn, they probably learnt about orcs a lot more than we have, in real quick time too when they was breaking in the gates and smashing open the stores. Frightened they might be, but stupid they ain’t.’
‘Never said they was stupid, and neither are you for asking, but there’s a time when you have to stand up for something and a time when it’s best to just go with what the elders say.’
Haldora did not like this conclusion one bit, but despite that decided not to cause any more fuss. Evidently her expression and bearing betrayed her, despite keeping her lips firmly shut.
‘Remember that I had to vouch for you to get Glorri and Gunnarumm to let you on this expedition. And your father won’t be best pleased when he finds out. If you cause a fuss, what’s going to get back to your pa? That you’ve been a troublemaker. He’ll make sure you never set foot outside the hold until his dying day if he thinks you’re bringing the name of the Angboks into disrepute.’
‘I know,’ Haldora said with a long sigh. ‘I’m grateful you persuaded Gunnarumm to bring me along.’
‘So enjoy it, if you can. I’m not keen on wide open space myself, but I can see the attraction. Seeing the stars, feeling the sun, good earth underfoot. There’s worse things to be miserable about.’
His words cheered Haldora and she turned her mind to appreciating the new experience of being out in the wildlands. She paid attention to the wild flowers growing alongside the road, and the different bushes and scrub that broke the grasslands. It was a shame there was no birdsong.
As the afternoon wore on the stone road became a camber of packed dirt, and before they were ready to make camp that following evening even that had dwindled to nothing more than a track through the swaying grass. Gunnarumm called for them to halt in the cover of a massive boulder that jutted from the sea of grass like an island. Haldora had no idea how such a stone could have got there. Glorri found her staring up at the large rock while the rest of the expedition were unpacking bedrolls and cutting fire pits.
‘Impressive, ain’t it?’ said the ranger.
The boulder had runes carved into it around the base, up to where a dwarf might reach if on tiptoe. Most of it was graffiti – names and dates and boasts about lengths of beard and physical toughness – but there were some runes that she did not recognise.
‘What are those symbols for?’
‘Ranger marks. Have a look at this.’ Glorri led her around the boulder. The other side was ruddy in the setting sun and she could see shadows where small hand and foot holds had been diligently carved, rising up like a ladder. Glorri started to climb and, with a glance back at Nakka to see that he was busy working a pick in the middle of a fire pit, Haldora followed.
It was not an easy climb, even with the cut ladder, for dwarfs have short arms and legs and barrel bodies. Her fingers were numb and her arms trembling with the effort of hauling herself up the rock, which was seven or eight times her height. On reaching the top she was rewarded with an impressive view across the flat plains. The added elevation was not great, but it was enough for her to be able to see the encroaching shadow of twilight moving from the east, and to the west where the golden grasslands became the purple of the Dragonbacks. To the south-east she saw the sun catching the waters of a broad river, which wound away southwards.
‘The Blind River,’ said Glorri.
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I know my maps.’
The top of the boulder had been levelled into two tiers, with a few steps leading from the bottom to the top. On the upper level, which was about chest high, were several recesses cut into the boulder itself.
‘We can keep watch here sometimes, sleeping in them dig-ins, packs as a fence against the wind. The marks you saw, they’re a record of who’s been here and what they saw. Animal migrations, orcs and goblins, wolves and even bigger creatures. I once saw a lizard-thing crossing the river one night, as long as a galley it was.’
‘A wyrm?’
‘Or something like one. About ten years ago it were. Don’t know where it went after that, lost it in the starlight. I was on me own. Nobody believed me, but I made the cuts in the rock all the same.’
‘And the orcs, you’re sure about them?’
Glorri sat down halfway up the stairs to the higher level. He patted the step next to him but Haldora declined with a shake of her head.
‘Suit yourself. If there was orcs, they’d be all over us by now. This time of the year, between Blind River and Blood River, that’s where you’ll find them. They’ll all be up north I expect, waiting for more refugees or maybe heading into the old mountains if they’ve heard of what’s been happening. Looking to join the fun.’
‘They won’t be coming for Ekrund?’
‘Gunnarumm has it right. Even at their worst, orcs live in tribes no more than a hundred, maybe two hundred, and they make a mighty stench and racket, you can’t miss them. If there was a big group of orcs marauding on the road we’d see signs of it.’
‘But there are lots of tribes. There’s still quite a lot of orcs in the wildlands, isn’t there? And goblins from the mountains and the marshes?’
‘But they fight each other all the time,’ Glorri explained, showing no impatience with Haldora’s insistence. He spat and wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘If a great bunch of orcs was to come south from Karak Varn first thing they’d start fighting would be all the other orcs and things that live along Blood River. They’d be as likely to kill each other off as they are to come after us – and they don’t even figure on us being here. They might follow the river, but that’s Barak Varr’s problem.’
‘I’m sure they said the same at Karak Ungor and Karak Varn.’
‘That was just bad luck. The earthquakes. Orcs are scavengers, not proper hunters. They snuffed easier pickings and as long as there was enough for everybody they got along together just enough to drive out them poor folks. Mark my words, maybe next year the High King will decide to lead an army back to Karak Varn or Karak Ungor and we’ll retake them holds from the few greenies that are left.’
Hearing her name being called, Haldora walked to the edge of the boulder and looked down. Nakka looked up with hands on hips and shouted.
‘When you’re done with your sightseeing, we’ve got some mutton needs butchering!’
‘You think just because I don’t have a beard I should be doing the kitchenwork?’ she called back.
‘Not at all,’ Nakka told her. He held up a piece of parchment. ‘It’s just that your name is on the rota.’
‘Kruk,’ she muttered. ‘All right, I’ll be right down.’
‘I could get your name taken off the rota, if you like,’ Glorri said with a suggestive wink.
‘No thanks,’ said Haldora, moving back to the rock ladder. ‘I think I’d rather be pulling the guts out of some dead sheep than getting better acquainted with you.’
‘Suit yourself,’ the ranger said with good humour. He clawed his fingers through his tangled beard in the absence of a comb. ‘I can wait.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Before they could start clearing out the lairs and gobl
in tunnels, they needed somewhere safe to stay, so the king ordered that the first mingols be built in the foothills, to keep watch over the camps. It was too dangerous to quarry in the Dragonbacks so stone had to be brought all the way from the old mountains, at great expense and effort. To assist this, the road came westwards, bringing with it more clans looking for a fresh start. These were the third wave of dwarfs to come from Karak Eight Peaks, which continued to be the jewel in the crown of the southern holds, but was getting awfully full of folk.
With quarried stone coming west and the best beer in the south going east, and engineers and masons following both, there were soon half a dozen stone mingols manned by armed garrisons all along the frontier with the goblin-ground. The other folk stayed further east and north, while the king, now Ordorin’s son Grimbalki, led the Urbarvornfolk throng in a purge of the goblins.’
They pushed eastwards for another two days, the rangers setting a brisk pace along the remnants of the old road. There had been a time when the route from Ekrund to Karak Eight Peaks had been paved all the way, stretching across the wildlands further than a twenty-day march could cover. The war with the elves had seen the end to that – almost five centuries of conflict had left Ekrund without the people or the will to maintain their link to the old mountain realms.
Here and there still stood one of the old waymarkers. These monoliths towered four or five times the height of Haldora, the gold inlay of the runes long since stripped away, the ruins of the way stations and trading posts that sometimes grew up alongside the road now reduced to rocky mounds overgrown with grass and bushes. These were the road keeps closest to Ekrund, the last to be abandoned. Those further into the wildlands were almost completely impossible to find unless one knew where to look.
As evening fell on the fifth day since leaving Ekrund, Gunnarumm declared after supper that come morning they would head back to the hold.
‘We’ll find nothing out here,’ he told the expedition. ‘We could wander for days in the great wildlands and not see another dwarf. If they come this far and stick to the road they’ll find their way to us.’
‘And if they don’t get this far?’ asked Zoffik, a cousin to Haldora on her mother’s side. He looked to Haldora and received a reassuring nod. ‘Who’s to see them on the right path? We’ve seen nothing of nobody these last two days.’
‘I thought there was at least another thousand, maybe two thousand folk fleeing Karak Varn?’ said Haldora. ‘You reckon you can’t miss fifty orcs. I reckon a few hundred Varnfolk is pretty hard to miss too.’
‘There’s others that went along the north road,’ said Gunnarumm. ‘They probably had more luck. Seems to me most of the Varnfolk would have followed the river to Barak Varr and then come down the coast and stayed to the west. The only ones from this way would have come straight from the mountains. As long as they keep dawn to their backs and dusk to their faces they can find the Dragonbacks.’
‘Ain’t nobody coming through here,’ said Glorri. He gave Haldora a sour look. His good humour at his rebuffed advances had declined in the last two days, due to the increasing vehemence of her rejections. ‘Perhaps you can afford to go wandering all moon-faced across the wildlands looking for strangers, I got other commissions what will be paying me better than the king.’
There were mumbles of agreement from some of the others.
‘It’s another five days back home,’ said one. ‘Ten days is more than enough time away from my mill.’
‘I left my youngest running the forges,’ said another. ‘Grungni alone knows how much trouble he’s got his self into already.’
‘Have it your way,’ declared Haldora. She headed off away from the fires to where her bedroll was waiting. Nakka followed.
‘Hey now,’ he said softly, joining her out of the glare of the flames. The campfire lit him from behind, catching his fine hair and beard in silhouette. The flickering shadows and the starry night made everything seem more alive – not just to Haldora, but the ground beneath her, the dancing flames.
‘Hey you,’ she said, sitting down on her blanket. He sat next to her, hands on his knees.
‘I seen the way Glorri’s been trying his luck,’ said Nakka. ‘You want I should have a word with him?’
‘I want that you should bash his head in to see if there’s coal in there,’ snapped Haldora. Nakka’s laugh did not ease her temper. ‘I’m serious. And the rest of them. I’ve never known such a thick-headed bunch of nod-beards. They only came out to get a shiny gold piece from the king. Not a word of them poor, desperate folk from Karak Varn. You should give him a thrashing and set him straight on my affections too!’
‘He’s not worth it,’ said Nakka. ‘I’d happily put blood in his beard if he gets too much but it’s five days back and grim company won’t make the journey quicker.’
‘You lads is all the same,’ huffed Haldora. ‘When another of you makes a remark about me, when do you defend my honour?’
‘Oh no, you can’t get me there,’ said Nakka, shaking his head. ‘You’ve made it clear you’re strong enough to defend your honour yourself. Besides, we all got to work close together down the mine and such. Bad blood and black eyes is no good down there when you’re looking for a fellow to shore the props keeping the roof up, or checking for tunnel-fumes coming off-shift before you.’
‘You’re all as bad as each other, taking me for granted,’ said Haldora, turning so that she presented her broad back to him.
Nakka stood up and patted her on the shoulder. She pulled away from his touch, too upset by the thought of the homeless Varnfolk to be comforted so easily.
‘When we’re back in Ekrund you’ll feel different,’ Nakka assured her.
She sat for some time, glaring out into the darkness. Behind her the fires dimmed and the other dwarfs turned to their bedrolls, quiet falling over the camp. Now and then she heard the clink of armour as one of the sentries shifted position or was relieved by the next dwarf on watch. Upwind from the smoke in the fires, Haldora took a deep breath of night air, trying to ease her thoughts.
Clouds had gathered during the day, the wind turning easterly, coming down from the old mountains. There was a hint of rain on the air – not the crisp fall of a welcome spring shower but the deluge of a proper summer storm. Haldora wondered if that was the real reason Gunnarumm and Glorri were so keen to head back to Ekrund.
She sniffed again, realising there was something else on the wind. Something dirty.
Feeling threatened, she stood up and almost at the same moment saw something in the muted moonlight. It was one of the sentries, moving away from his post, heading across Haldora’s line of vision. He had his axe in one hand, shield slung across his back, spare hand fiddling with the warning horn at his belt.
Haldora was convinced she could smell something rank now. The same wind also carried a padding noise, of footfalls on hard dirt. She bent down and tugged her axe from her pack. When she straightened again she had lost sight of the sentry.
She glanced over her shoulder to the camp, thinking she should go back and rouse somebody. Another thought told her they would only mock her for raising a false alarm. She could imagine the taunts now, although perhaps worse would be nothing spoken at all, just the occasional glance of pity or condemnation. The thought of being the object of such patronising concern turned her away from her slumbering companions and forced her out into the night to investigate.
The sentry had been smoking a pipe; she remembered the glow of it in the dark. The tobacco was still rich on the wind and she headed towards it, thinking perhaps the other dwarf had gone over a lip or sat down behind a rock for a crafty ale and a nap.
There were large stones and some boulders bigger than her dotted around this area. Twice she stumbled, having stubbed her toe on some half-buried hindrance. There were thickets of bushes and trees a little taller than her to provide further obstruction.
Catching her foot on something hidden by a particularly thick patch of grass, she fell
forward, throwing out her left arm to break her fall. She landed heavily, jarring her wrist. She sat up, nursing her arm for a moment, wriggling fingers that now throbbed with pain.
‘Stupid, stupid Haldi,’ she muttered to herself. Pushing herself up with her axe-hand, her other arm cradled to her belly, she turned towards the fire.
Stood in front of her was an immense wolf, eyes yellow in the starlight. Its shoulders were as tall as hers, grey fur silvery in the darkness, a rope of drool dripping from bared fangs.
On its back hunched a goblin, shorter than Haldora, and far skinnier. It was swathed in furs despite the warmth of the summer night, a shapeless blob of a hat crammed onto its head, causing its pointed ears to poke out horizontally. It held a spear tipped with a jagged piece of cut metal and a long oval shield of wood, reeds and hide. The goblin was looking towards the fire but the wolf was staring right at Haldora.
She backstepped quickly, raising her axe, but stumbled over whatever had tripped her before. As she bounced back up, biting back a cry as pain shot up from her damaged left wrist, she noticed it was a booted foot that had upended her both times.
The wolf’s chesty growl broke the still.
The goblin turned and saw Haldora for the first time. Its beady eyes widened in surprise, two little pinpricks of red in the firelight. Thin lips curled back in an amused sneer and the point of the spear swung over the wolf’s head in her direction.
‘Shove off!’ she shouted, jumping forward with axe raised.
The wolf started back in shock, almost throwing the goblin from its shoulders. Haldora kept her calm despite the surge of panic threatening to engulf her. She took another step forward, remembering the lessons taught to her by her father. Though she had no shield in her left hand she held it up all the same and swung her right straight at the wolf’s head.
The wolf dodged the attack, slinking to the left, while the goblin haphazardly thrust its spear towards Haldora’s midriff. It was a clumsy attack, easily batted away by her axe.