Masters of Stone and Steel - Gav Thorpe & Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  Azgar was the only one of the Grim Brotherhood still up. He was sitting at the perimeter of the camp, axe in hand as he stared at the outer darkness. The tattoos on his body seemed to glow in the light cast by the ring of brightstones nearby, giving the slayer an unreal quality. Drimbold recognised some as wards of Grimnir, he’d also heard the slayer mention that he bore one for each and every monster he had ever slain. The Grey dwarf suppressed a shudder – Azgar was nearly covered head to foot. Drimbold looked away, in case the slayer caught his eye.

  Reverberant snoring emanated from the prone form of Gromrund through his mighty warhelm that the hammerer – for reasons unknown to the rest of the throng – still wore, his head propped up on a rock. He was divested of his other armour, which sat next to him in careful and meticulous order.

  Hakem was close by – it seemed the two had reached some kind of understanding – laid with his hands across his chest, one clamped over his gold purse. The ufdi wore beard-irons clasped over his finely preened braids and softened his sleep with a small velvet pillow. Rather unnervingly, the merchant-thane had one eye open and was looking directly at Drimbold! The Grey dwarf quickly averted his gaze again.

  Deciding he was finished observing, he began to settle down for what was left of the night. His eyelids felt heavy and were sloping shut when a shallow cry snapped him awake. He reached for his hand axe instinctively, but relaxed when he realised it was Dunrik, waking from some night terror. Borri was quickly at his cousin’s side, a few other dwarfs who had been disturbed by the sudden commotion grumbling as they got back to their own business.

  The beardling was whispering something to Dunrik, so low and soothing that Drimbold could barely hear it. His interest was piqued when he caught something about a ‘lady’ and ‘a secret’.

  Was Borri marrying into money and he didn’t want the others to know? Drimbold then wondered if the dwarf had joined the mission to Karak Varn to secure part of his bride’s dowry. The thought made his blood run cold. It meant that Borri was a salvager, just like him!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘The Great Hall should be just ahead,’ Ralkan announced.

  The two hundred-strong throng had reached as far down as the third deep, eschewing the use of scouts as the lorekeeper was the only one who knew where they were going and he couldn’t be risked sent ahead with only a small bodyguard. Should they be slain or the rest of the army cut off from them they would surely meet with calamity. Strength in numbers: that was the dwarf way. The dwarfs need not have worried, for they had got this far without encountering any resistance. That very fact unnerved Halgar, who peered anxiously into every shadow, stopping and raising his axe in readiness at any incongruous sound or tenuous sign of danger.

  ‘Can’t you feel it?’ he hissed to Uthor, as the throng marched though what must once have been a mighty feast hall, its hospitality long since eroded.

  ‘Feel what, venerable one?’ Uthor asked, genuinely curious.

  ‘Eyes watching us…’ uttered the longbeard, squinting at the darkness clinging to the edges of the hall, ‘…in the blackness.’

  Uthor followed Halgar’s gaze but could feel or see nothing.

  ‘If they are,’ he said assuredly, ‘then we will put them out, one by one.’ Uthor gave a bullish smile at the thought, but the longbeard seemed not to notice and continued his paranoid vigil.

  The throng left the feast hall and proceeded down a short but broad passageway. As they rounded a corner, Ralkan leading them, the lorekeeper said, ‘Just beyond this bend and across the gallery of kings, there lies the Great Hall…’

  Peering through a wide arch as he joined a dumbstruck Ralkan at the threshold to the room, Uthor saw a massive, open plaza stretch away from them. Immense stone statues of the kings of Karak Varn lined both flanking walls, though some were diminished by time and bore evidence of dilapidation. Magnificent though the statues were, it was the gaping chasm rent into the cracked and crumbling flagstones that got his attention. Like a vast and jagged maw torn in the very earth, it filled the entire width of the room, exuding thick trails of smoke, and blocked the dwarfs’ progress.

  ‘It’s deep,’ muttered Halgar, ‘all the way down to the mountain’s core. Likely a wound made when Karak Varn was wracked by earthquakes and the Black Water first flooded its halls, so the legends hold to be true.’

  Uthor and Rorek stood beside the longbeard and peered over the edge of the chasm. Darkness reigned below; only a hazy, indistinct glowing line in the blackness dispelled the myth that the tear in the earth had no end and yawned into eternity.

  Uthor imagined a great reservoir of lava at the nadir of the gaping pit: bubbling and spitting, venting great geysers of steam, chunks of molten rock dissolving in its heat and carried by a thick syrupy current. Briefly his mind wandered to what else might lurk in that abyss, kept warm beside the cauldron of liquid fire. He dismissed the thought quickly, unwilling to countenance such a thing.

  ‘We have to find a way across this,’ he said instead. ‘Is that strong enough to bear our weight?’

  Uthor pointed towards a wide but ramshackle, bridge spanning the mighty gorge. It was crudely made, seemingly bolted together without design or care. Such slipshod construction was anathema to the dwarfs, especially an engineer.

  ‘Umgak,’ Rorek muttered. The engineer was crouched down next to the bridge, which was little more than a roped affair with narrow struts of weather-beaten wood. He turned to Uthor. ‘Not of dawi manufacture,’ he added, much louder. ‘Likely it was made by grobi or rat-kin.’ The engineer curled his lip in distaste.

  ‘We should find another way,’ Gromrund stated grimly, having joined the dwarfs at the precipice of the chasm. ‘I do not trust the craft of neither greenskin nor skaven, and I have no wish to fall, honourless, to my doom.’

  Uthor chewed it over. Crossing the bridge was not without risk.

  ‘We cannot go back,’ he said after a momentary silence. ‘And I doubt the lorekeeper could even recommend an alternative route, let alone lead us to it.’ He gestured to Ralkan, who was stood off to one side of the throng with Borri and Dunrik, muttering incessantly.

  ‘I don’t understand…’ he garbled. ‘I don’t remember this being here.’ The words spewed from his mouth repeatedly like a mantra, his gaze lost and faraway.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Borri said, trying to soothe the addled dwarf but without success.

  ‘I will not trust my fate to a grobi bridge,’ Gromrund asserted, planting the pommel of his great hammer into the ground as if that was an end to the discussion. ‘This is folly,’ he added, ‘and I am not the only one who thinks it so.’

  Uthor moved his glowering gaze from the hammerer and swept it over the throng waiting behind him.

  The warriors mustered close together, banners resplendent with their ancestral badges touching. Dour-faced clan leaders stood at the forefront; ironbreakers, their grim faced masks unreadable, were alongside. Slightly removed from them were the slayers – wild-eyed and bellicose of demeanour. There were dissenting voices – Uthor heard them grumbling to each other.

  ‘We have come this far,’ he said, addressing the throng, ‘and endured much. The names etched in the book of remembering are testament to that,’ he added, pointing to Ralkan, who wore the tome on his back. ‘I would not be thwarted by a lowly bridge and have those names besmirched; the honour of their deeds – Nay! Their sacrifice, be for nought.’

  Silence descended at Uthor’s impassioned rhetoric. Several shamefaced dwarfs looked back at him; others couldn’t meet his fiery gaze and looked down at their boots instead.

  Uthor stood there for a moment, basking in this victory and then turned to scowl at Gromrund, the hammerer almost livid.

  ‘We take the bridge,’ Uthor stated.

  Rorek was getting to his feet, fairly oblivious to the tension and the speech. The engineer took a good, long look at the bridge and sucked his teeth.

  ‘I’ll need to test it.’

  Ror
ek yanked on one of the guide ropes, attached to a broad metal stake rammed into the rock and earth, and the entire bridge shuddered. But it held.

  He was aware of the charged silence around him as he took his first faltering step onto the bridge itself. The engineer felt for the rope around his waist to make sure it was still there. He daren’t look back to see if Thundin and Uthor were still holding onto it. The rope was his. At least he knew that would hold.

  After what seemed like an hour, Rorek had reached the middle of the bridge. It creaked menacingly with every step and swayed slightly with the warm air currents emanating from below. As far down as it was, the dwarf could still feel the heat from the subterranean lava stream; smell its sulphur stink faintly in his nostrils. Some of the wooden struts were placed far apart, or were simply missing, and the engineer needed to concentrate hard on his feet to prevent any mishap. He stared downward and swallowed as the abyss stared back.

  Having got this far and with a hand on each guide rope, Rorek was growing more confident and progressed steadily. Relieved, he reached the other side at last and waved the others on.

  ‘No more than four at a time,’ he called back to the throng, ‘and watch your step, the way is perilous.’

  Thundin’s expression darkened as he turned to Uthor, who was gathering up the rope.

  ‘This is going to take a while.’

  Uthor had posted lookouts at the entrance to the gallery of kings, and at the edge of the chasm to watch the exit to the vast plaza. Whilst they crossed the bridge the dwarfs would be vulnerable. He did not want to be caught unawares by skaven saboteurs lying in wait for them on the other side, or ready to spring out and cut the ramshackle structure from under them as they were crossing en masse.

  Steadily, in groups of four, the throng made its way across the bridge. The dwarfs crossed without incident and soon there were many more warriors on the far side than the near. Uthor instructed the guards at the edge of the chasm to cross. It left him, Halgar and two miners from the Sootbeard clan, Furgil and Norri, who’d been stationed at the gallery entrance. As he called them over Uthor noticed a straggler, hunting around the statues on their side of the chasm.

  ‘You too, Grey dwarf.’

  Drimbold looked up from his rummaging, having detached himself from the main throng long ago to explore the vast room, and started to wander over.

  Uthor turned to face Halgar.

  ‘I will guard the way,’ he said.

  The longbeard grumbled and went to step onto the bridge, but missed the guide rope, clawing air as he fought to snatch it. The bridge swayed violently with his displaced weight.

  ‘Venerable one!’ Uthor cried, reaching out for Halgar’s arm. The longbeard found the guide rope at last and smacked Uthor’s hand away.

  ‘I can cross well enough unaided,’ he snarled and started to tramp gingerly away, feeling for the rope with his hands, rather than looking for it with his eyes.

  Uthor turned back to Drimbold, who was getting ready to set foot on the bridge, the Sootbeards waiting behind him.

  ‘I will follow the great beard,’ he whispered, with a glance at Halgar who had already reached the halfway point. ‘Wait until he is safely across before you proceed.’

  Uthor hurried on after the longbeard, but in his haste misjudged his footing and trapped his boot between two struts. He swore out loud and by the time he’d freed it, Halgar was on the other side, rudely refusing any offers of help and bustling past the clan dwarfs in his way.

  Nearly two-thirds of the way across and with his boot now loose, Uthor made to move on, aware that the rope bridge was creaking ominously. He glanced back. Drimbold was at about the halfway point, his massive pack thumping up and down on his back with every step. Furgil and Norri were a short way behind him.

  There came a sudden, tearing sound and Uthor’s eyes widened as he saw the rope tied to the nearside stake begin to fray. It coiled apart seemingly in slow motion, the thin strands unravelling inexorably as he watched. Already, the bridge was beginning to sag to one side as the shredding rope yielded to the tension put upon it.

  ‘Move,’ he cried, waving the dwarfs on urgently even as a violent shudder passed through the bridge. ‘It will not hold!’

  Uthor heaved the Grey dwarf past him, nigh-on pushing him. He looked back to the Sootbeards, urging them on. They moved quickly, determination in their eyes.

  The rope snapped.

  The sudden feeling of the world giving way beneath him filled Uthor’s senses. His vision blurred as the crumbling bridge below and the vaulted ceiling of the gallery merged as one. Smoke-drenched darkness came rushing towards him. His breath pounded in his chest and he thought of his hold, the lofty, cloud-wreathed peaks he would never see again; of his quest unfulfilled and the shame it would bring to his clan; of his father lying on his deathbed, as he faded away bereft of glory and unavenged; of Lokki, slain with a skaven knife in his back. Uthor wanted to cry out, to shout his anger at the ancestors, to defy them, but he did not. Instead, he felt the coarse brush of twined hemp against his fingers and grabbed it tightly.

  A bizarre sensation of weightlessness passed quickly and Uthor was slammed into the side of the chasm, his shield and weapons – mercifully well-secured – clanking as they struck rock. The dwarf’s shoulder blades were nearly yanked from their sockets as the weight of his armour pulled at him. White heat blazed up his arms and a dizzying fog obscured his vision. For but a moment, he lost purchase and the rope burned through his grasp, tendrils of smoke spiralling from his leather gauntlet. Uthor roared, biting back the pain as he gripped the rope hard to arrest his descent, one-handed, the other arm flailing about as he spun and thrashed. At last it was over and a hot line of pain gnawed at his arm, back and head. Through the dense aural fug of resonating metal in his ears from his helmet, the dwarf heard shouting.

  ‘Uthor!’ the voices cried.

  ‘Uthor!’ they said again.

  Uthor looked up through a haze of dark specks, a spike of pain flaring in his neck and saw Rorek. The engineer had a rope around his waist and was peering over the edge of the chasm.

  ‘Here,’ Uthor said groggily. He didn’t recognise the sound of his own voice.

  ‘He lives!’ He heard Rorek say. The dwarf’s vision kept coming in and out of focus. When it returned, Uthor noticed Drimbold being hauled up the dangling bridge by Gromrund and Dunrik. The Grey dwarf clung to his pack, trinkets spilling out of it as his rescuers heaved. The lost treasure shimmered in the torch light – Uthor’s world was darkening – they looked like falling stars…

  ‘He is slipping,’ said Rorek urgently, turning to Thundin and Hakem who were holding the rope with feet braced. ‘Lower me down…’

  Rorek watched as Uthor drifted into unconsciousness… and let go of the rope. Before the engineer could cry out a half-naked dwarf barrelled past him out of the corner of his eye.

  Azgar was leaping through the air, a pledge to Grimnir on his lips as he swung his axe-chain rapidly in a wide circle. Over the edge of the chasm he went, through a faint wall of heat and plunged into the endless abyss. He turned his body in mid-flight, releasing the axe-chain and flinging it upwards in the direction he had just come. He watched for a moment to see the heavy blade arc over the lip of the gaping gorge and then wrapped both hands firmly around the chain. The links clattered and the chain pulled taut as the axe blade bit home above him.

  Azgar felt the tension jar violently through his shoulders and back, but, grunting back the discomfort, he held on. The chasm wall rushed to meet him, promising to shatter his bones in a single crunching impact. Azgar absorbed the slamming force with his feet, bending his knees as solid stone made its presence felt. As he did, the slayer ran sideways like a mountain goat herder: nimble, light and assured. He reached out and caught Uthor’s arm in one meaty fist. The slayer roared with the effort, thick cords of muscle standing out in his neck, arms and back. The chain lurched in his grasp for a moment and the two dwarfs fell a few feet. Azga
r looked up in alarm as he imagined the axe blade churning a furrow in the flagstones above.

  Uthor opened his eyes to see a wild-eyed slayer looking at him. Azgar’s face was red. Veins stuck out on his forehead that was beaded with sweat.

  ‘Hold on,’ he snarled through gritted teeth.

  Uthor looked down and saw the gaping blackness, a vague line of distant fire running through it. He gripped the slayer’s arm with one hand and held onto the chain with the other, bracing his feet against the chasm wall.

  At the chasm’s edge, Rorek breathed a sigh of relief. He stepped back, untying the rope from around his waist. He checked to make sure Thundin and Hakem still gripped it and then tossed the end of the rope into the gorge.

  ‘Coming down,’ he bellowed.

  Rorek took hold of the rope, wrapping it loosely around his wrist, just as it went taut. He felt the pull against his arms lessen as several more dwarfs joined him.

  ‘Take the strain…’ he cried. ‘Now, heave!’

  The dwarfs hauled as one, dragging the thick rope through their fingers, hand-over-hand in perfect unison.

  ‘Heave!’ Rorek bellowed, and they did again.

  The command repeated several more times until two dwarf hands – one wearing a shredded leather gauntlet, the other hairy-knuckled and tanned – reached up over the edge of the precipice clawing rock with their fingers.

  With Rorek and the others holding the rope firm, Gromrund and Dunrik reached down and hauled Uthor over the edge and onto solid earth once more. Two of the Grim Brotherhood grasped the thick wrist of Azgar and soon enough the slayer too was no longer imperilled.

  Gasping for breath, Uthor regarded him sternly and gave a near-imperceptible nod of gratitude. Azgar reciprocated, dour-faced, and yanked his axe blade from where it had carved its way into the rock. After he’d gathered up the attached chain, ignoring the muttered admiration of a few of the clan dwarfs, he walked away from the chasm edge to be amongst his kin.