Masters of Stone and Steel - Gav Thorpe & Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  ‘Where are Furgil and Norri?’ Uthor asked of Rorek, looking around once Azgar was out of eyeshot.

  The engineer’s face darkened, as did the faces of those dwarfs stood around him.

  Drimbold was amongst them, sat clutching his pack. The Grey dwarf’s expression was distraught.

  ‘They fell,’ he breathed.

  ‘They fell,’ echoed Halgar, stalking through the throng, dwarfs barrelling quickly out of the grizzled longbeard’s way. ‘They died without honour,’ he snarled at Drimbold. Halgar’s ire was palpable as he eyed the bulging pack the Grey dwarf clung to.

  ‘The bridge, it was–’ Drimbold began.

  ‘Overburdened,’ said the longbeard.

  ‘I thought it would–’

  ‘You do not get to speak,’ Halgar raged. ‘The bodies of our kin were smashed on rock, immolated in the river of fire. Forever they will wander the catacombs of the Halls of the Ancestors, bodiless and with deeds unreckoned. Your greed has condemned them to that fate. You should throw yourself off into the underdeep…’ the longbeard growled. ‘Half-dwarf, I name thee!’ he bellowed for all the throng to hear.

  Shocked silence followed the declamation.

  Halgar stormed off, grumbling heatedly as he went.

  Several amongst the throng muttered in the wake of the insult he had levelled against Drimbold. To be so besmirched… especially by a venerable longbeard, it was a heavy burden indeed. A host of accusatory faces gazed down at the Grey dwarf. Drimbold did not meet their gaze but, instead, held onto his pack tightly like it was a shield.

  Uthor watched the Grey dwarf thoughtfully, his head still thundering from his fall. He saw the borrowed helmet, the tarnished armour, the blunted hand axe: these were not the trappings of a warrior.

  ‘You were not summoned to the war council, were you, Drimbold?’ said Uthor.

  ‘No.’ Drimbold’s voice was barely a whisper, shoulders slumped and mournful.

  ‘You know this place too well.’ Uthor’s eyes narrowed. ‘All the times you have guided our guide, you knew which way to go, didn’t you? When we thought you lost to the rat-kin as we fled for our lives, you escaped another way.’

  Drimbold’s face fell further still as the weight of his leader’s discovery struck him like a physical blow. The Grey dwarf exhaled deeply, his shame could be no greater, and then spoke.

  ‘When Gromrund and Hakem found me, I had been looting from the hold for months,’ he admitted. ‘There is a cave – I have hidden it well – not far from the karak, where the treasure lies. I knew there were dangers, of the grobi and the rat-kin, and I took steps to avoid them.’ Drimbold’s voice grew more impassioned. ‘Karak Varn was lost and its treasures laid bare for any greenskin to steal or defile. My clan and hold are poor–’ he explained fervently, ‘far better that the lost riches be in the hands of the dawi, so I sought to reclaim them.’ The look in Drimbold’s eyes was one of defiance. It faded quickly, replaced by remorse.

  ‘You knew of Kadrin’s death and the fall of the hold, yet you said nothing?’ Uthor said, clearly exasperated.

  ‘And likely he is a Sournose Grum and not a Sourtooth as he alleged,’ snarled Gromrund, the hammerer having bustled his way forward upon hearing his name mentioned.

  Uthor fixed him with a reproachful glance.

  Gromrund scowled back and stood his ground.

  ‘My clan knew of the prosperity being enjoyed by Lord Kadrin,’ Drimbold continued, ‘so I ventured to the hold in the hope of panning some of the ore from the edges of Black Water. I did not think the Karak Varn dwarfs would miss it.’

  Uthor’s expression darkened at that admission, but Drimbold went on, regardless.

  ‘I discovered the skeletons by the Old Dwarf Road, just as you did,’ he said shamefully. ‘And yes, I am one of the Sournose Grums.’

  He could not meet the thane of Karak Kadrin’s gimlet gaze any longer, nor the fierce anger of the hammerer, and lowered his eyes.

  With the throng looking on, Uthor regarded the Grey dwarf in stony silence.

  ‘Yours is a heavy burden,’ he uttered prophetically. ‘Furgil Sootbeard and Norri Sootbeard,’ he added, ‘may they be remembered…

  ‘We’ve lingered here long enough,’ Uthor said after a moment, addressing the throng. ‘Make ready, we muster out for the Great Hall at once.’

  The throng was forming up into organised ranks, gathering at the exit and waiting for Uthor as he strode purposefully to the front to meet Ralkan.

  Rorek followed in his stead.

  ‘With no bridge to speak of,’ said the engineer, ‘how are we to go back?’

  When Uthor turned to him he was smiling darkly.

  ‘There will be no turning back.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hoisted up on Ungul’s back in a crudely woven basket, Skartooth looked over the goblin runners hurrying ahead of the greenskin horde as they tramped through the narrow tunnel. The roof was low and, on more than one occasion, the warlord had thumped the troll hard with the pommel of his sword after his head had struck a jutting rock.

  Fangrak trudged alongside, the chieftain’s thick hobnailed boots crunching gravel underfoot. A great mob of orcs followed close behind him, shoulders hunched in the tight confines of the tunnel. Behind that there came yet more goblins. Wreathed in their black, hooded cloaks, they were little more than scurrying shadows in the gloom.

  Skartooth had almost gathered the entire tribe for his ‘cunnin’ plan’.

  ‘You is sure this is the way?’ moaned Fangrak, again, snarling at an orc bumping into him.

  ‘’Ow many times ave you gotta be told?’ whined Skartooth. ‘These is gobbo tunnels and I knows ’em like the back of my ’and.’ Sneering, the goblin warlord showed Fangrak his puny claw for emphasis. A look of surprise briefly crossed his face as he saw something there as if for the first time, before he continued. ‘All that snotling rutting must ’ave addled your brain,’ Skartooth said with a malicious grin.

  ‘Hur, hur, ruttin’,’ droned Ungul.

  Skartooth started laughing uncontrollably in the basket, spittle flicking from his tiny, wicked mouth. The hilarity stopped abruptly when he almost fell out, for which he struck Ungul viciously across the back of the neck. The troll turned to snarl at him, but when it met Skartooth’s gaze, fell quiet and acquiesced.

  ‘You leave the thinkin’ to me,’ warned Skartooth, his attention back on Fangrak.

  Fangrak clenched his fists. No one spoke to him like that. When Skartooth looked away again, bawling at the goblin runners, he rested one meaty claw on the hilt of a broad dagger at his waist. Ungul glared at him as he did it, regarding the chieftain hungrily. Fangrak let it go – if it weren’t for that beast… He was averting his gaze when he saw an ephemeral glow emanating from some symbols etched onto the spiked collar Skartooth wore around his neck. They looked like shamanic glyphs…

  After crossing the chasm, the throng had been forced to take yet another detour. The main gate leading into the Great Hall was blocked by rubble; so massive was the ruination that even with the clan of miners they had, it still would have taken several days to get through. Another gallery had brought them to this point, the Wide Western Way. The tunnel was aptly named. Such was its girth that the throng could have marched fifty dwarfs across in four long lines, gazing up at its thick, vaulted arches in the light of the smouldering brazier-pans chained above. They did not. The long tunnel’s state of dilapidation prevented it, with its broken pillars and sunken floors. Instead they strode in a column no more than four shields wide and in deep ranks, ever watchful of the pooling shadows that stretched from walls they could not fully see.

  Naturally Uthor took the advance party, though even he was forced to concede the head of the column – that went to the Sootbeards. Though expansive, the Wide Western Way was fraught with pit falls and rock-strewn in places. It would be easy to slip in the gloom and never be seen again. The miners were ensuring the passage was clear and safe. There’d already been
too many lost needlessly to the creeping dark.

  Thalgrim was amongst them, overseeing their endeavours. It was painstaking work. Uthor had instructed that the throng stay together and in formation, lest anything be lurking in the darkened recesses of the tunnel. It meant excavating the scattered rock falls that impeded the dwarfs’ path, and quickly. He paused a moment, his miner’s mattock over one shoulder and lifted his pot helmet a little to wipe away a swathe of sweat.

  ‘Mercy of Valaya, may her cups be ever lustrous, what is that stench?’ said Rorek, wrinkling his nose. He looked back to Uthor for support, but the thane seemed lost in another of his dark moods.

  The engineer was in the advance party, too, his structural expertise invaluable as they made progress down the Wide Western Way.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Thalgrim, sitting his helmet back down on his head quickly.

  The pungent aroma still clung to the air and Rorek gagged.

  ‘A pocket of gas, perhaps – nothing to worry about,’ the lodefinder assured him.

  Rorek mouthed the word ‘gas’ to Uthor, who looked askance at the lodefinder with some concern.

  ‘Shouldn’t we make certain?’ he ventured.

  ‘No, no. It’s probably just some cave spores we’ve disturbed. Foul smelling, perhaps but certainly harmless, my brother.’ Thalgrim was about to busy himself with something, thus avoiding further questioning, when he saw that the passageway narrowed ahead. The two walls on either side arced in dramatically in a cordon of around six shield widths. Bereft of brazier-pans, it was also miserably dark.

  ‘Call a halt,’ he bellowed, as the Sootbeards started to gather in the sudden bottleneck .

  ‘Do you think this route will finally lead us to the Great Hall?’ Hakem asked.

  Dunrik shrugged, seemingly distracted as he kept one eye on his cousin walking just ahead of him.

  The Everpeak noble had offered little by way of conversation, despite the hour that they had been traversing the Wide Western Way, which Ralkan claimed would get them to their destination.

  The lorekeeper travelled with them for now, in the middle of the column, staying out of the way of the miners’ excavations. The last thing the dwarfs needed was their guide crushed beneath a slab of fallen rock or lost to the underdeep, in spite of his occasional befuddlement.

  ‘I have my doubts,’ whispered the Barak Varr dwarf conspiratorially, careful not to raise his voice so that Ralkan could hear him.

  Still Dunrik gave him nothing.

  The column was slowing. The armour of the ironbreakers, who were a few ranks in front, clattered as they started to bunch up. Thundin raised his gauntleted hand in a gesture for the throng to stop.

  The message went down the line, a hand raised every ten ranks or so, until it reached Azgar and his slayers who were guarding the rear. Halgar had joined them, the longbeard preferring their silent, fatalistic company to that of the rest of his kin.

  Hakem tried to look ahead to see what the delay was, but all he got was a small sea of bobbing dwarf heads.

  ‘Perhaps it is another wrong turn?’ the merchant thane offered.

  It seemed Dunrik had no opinion on the matter.

  Hakem was a gregarious dwarf by his very nature. He liked to talk, to boast and regale people with tales, and was not prone to long bouts of brooding like some of his kin. As a trader, his livelihood and the prosperity of his clan depended on the bonds he could forge, but despite his best efforts Dunrik was proving tight-lipped.

  He was not the only one, either. Since the tragedy on the bridge, Drimbold had become like an outcast. He travelled in the column, much like the rest, but he kept his eyes down and his mouth shut. At least it meant Hakem didn’t need to keep such a hawk-like watch over his purse and belongings. It was small recompense for the grief he felt in his heart.

  The merchant thane brought his attention back to Dunrik. It was clear that he too had his own travails.

  ‘I heard your screams when we last made camp,’ said Hakem, his tone abruptly serious. ‘Your scars go deeper than the flesh, don’t they? I have seen their like before…’

  Dunrik didn’t bite.

  Hakem persisted, anyway.

  ‘…from the barbed whips of a grobi slave master.’

  Dunrik twisted sharply to face him, his expression fiery.

  Borri overheard and was turning around, about to intervene, when Dunrik’s fierce gaze stopped him.

  ‘I mean no disrespect,’ Hakem said calmly, noting that Borri had continued on his way, albeit slightly uncomfortably. Gromrund, who walked on the other side of Dunrik, shifted a little in his armour, too.

  ‘My great, great grandfather was captured by grobi for a short time, taken whilst driving a caravan to one of the old elgi settlements before the War of Vengeance,’ Hakem went on. ‘The greenskins ambushed them and slew many of our warriors. They turned the wagons into cages for our kin and were taking them, my three-times grandsire included, to their lair when a party of rangers found them.

  ‘Three days my kin had been on the road before they were rescued and in that time the grobi had visited much pain and suffering upon them.’

  Gromrund, having heard the entire recounted tale, turned to regard Hakem with newfound respect but stayed quiet.

  ‘His face and body were scarred much like yours,’ Hakem said to Dunrik, ‘he showed me just before he passed on into the Halls of the Ancestors.’

  Dunrik’s anger drained away and a look of resignation passed across his face.

  ‘I was held at Iron Rock,’ he said, voice low and full of bitterness, ‘taken whilst patrolling the Varag Kadrin.’ Dunrik breathed deep as if recalling a dark memory.

  ‘Of the twenty-three of my kin brought there in chains, only I escaped the urk fortress alive.’ Dunrik was silent for a beat as he revisited the stinking dungeon, heard again the tortured screams of his brethren, felt anew the savage beatings of his vindictive captors.

  ‘I did not do so unscathed,’ he added, not just referring to his lasting physical injuries.

  The Everpeak noble’s face was wretched with the greenskin’s ‘attentions’. A long, jagged line ran from forehead to chin; some of Dunrik’s beard was left patchy in its path. Weals of still-reddened flesh pockmarked the right side of his face, burns left by the brander’s iron, and he was missing three teeth.

  Gromrund, who had respectfully remained silent throughout the exchange, could not help but be moved by such tales of honourable forbearance and grievous loss, gripped the dwarf’s shoulder. As he did, he caught sight of where Dunrik’s left ear had been almost chewed off – a wound kept mostly hidden by his helmet.

  ‘Dreng tromm,’ the hammerer muttered.

  ‘Dreng tromm,’ echoed Hakem.

  Dunrik stayed silent.

  Hakem, suddenly aware they had fallen into solemn lamentation, and slightly regretful of his questioning, sought to quickly lighten the mood.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said to Dunrik, eyes brightening, ‘have you ever seen a more magnificent hammer than this?’

  ‘A fine weapon,’ Dunrik remarked.

  ‘Indeed, it garners that reaction often,’ Hakem replied, a little perturbed as he noted the smirk on Gromrund’s face just visible below his massive warhelm.

  ‘It is the Honakkin Hammer,’ he explained, aware of Gromrund’s sudden interest, ‘and I bear it proudly as an ancient symbol of my clan. As heir to the fortune of my father, merchant lord of Barak Varr, it is my great honour to carry it into battle. Make no mistake, this is a very serious undertaking,’ Hakem told them, indicating the thick leather strap that bound the weapon to his wrist. ‘This cord has never been cut, for if it ever was and the hammer was lost, the prosperity of my clan and my line would be lost along with it.’

  ‘A noble undertaking,’ said Dunrik solemnly.

  ‘Indeed,’ Gromrund muttered reluctantly.

  ‘Certainly, the fall of the Honaks would dull the lustre of the hold,’ Hakem went on. ‘Tell me, Everpeak dwarf, have you
ever seen the wonder that is the Sea Gate?’

  Gromrund grumbled loudly. ‘Whether you have or have not, you are about to be regaled of its splendour,’ he barked. ‘I have no stomach for it,’ he added gruffly and stormed off, shouldering his way further up the column to find out what was causing the delay.

  ‘Put your backs into it,’ Thalgrim chided, standing atop a flat stone so he could see his miners working at the door impeding their path.

  The stone barrier sat right at the end of the bottleneck ed section of the tunnel and Thalgrim assumed the Great Hall was beyond it, this lesser door a secondary way into the room. The lodefinder realised now that the Wide Western Way was narrowed by design, to make it easier to defend should it be invaded. A wise strategy and one he applauded, only not right now.

  Most of the throng were grouped together in the narrow defile, shoulders touching, with a wall at either flank. The stone door being pushed by the Sootbeards wasn’t particularly tall or broad, but it was obviously thick and heavy. Rorek, with Uthor at his shoulder, had already released a series of stone bolts by carefully manipulating the door’s ingenious locking mechanism. Much of its resistance came from the fact that it hadn’t been opened in many years, but eventually the door yielded to the miners’ exertions, and ground open noisily.

  ‘At last,’ breathed Uthor, finding the closeness of his kinsdwarfs around him and the enveloping darkness disconcerting. ‘This tunnel is the perfect place for an ambush.’

  Thundin saw a strange globe-like object fly overhead then heard the gurgled warning of his kinsdwarfs before he saw the billowing cloud of yellowish gas. Bordak, one of his fellow ironbreakers, fell back clutching his throat as bloody foam bubbled down his face and beard.

  They were wedged in the bottleneck of the Wide Western Way, many other dwarfs of the throng having already moved through the stone door and into the Great Hall beyond it. Thundin and his ironbreakers were trapped with the rest, shoulder-to-shoulder with their kinsdwarfs and strangely vulnerable.