Masters of Stone and Steel - Gav Thorpe & Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  Four priests of Grimnir came forward from the surrounding gloom. They each bore two buckets, carried via a brace of wutroth across their backs, and bore shears. Setting the buckets down they began cutting off Azgar’s hair until all that remained was a rough shock of it down the centre and his beard, the only thing preserving his dignity.

  ‘You have undertaken the slayer oath to atone for deeds that are to remain unnamed,’ intoned the king.

  The priests brought forth broad buckets filled with thick, orange dye and began combing it through Azgar’s hair.

  ‘You are to seek your doom that you might die a glorious death…’

  From another bucket the priests took handfuls of pig grease and congealed animal fat. With gnarled fingers, they worked it into Azgar’s streak of hair until it was hard like a crest.

  ‘Take up your axe and leave this place, and let your disgrace be remembered by all.’

  The priests shrank back into the darkness. Without word, Azgar turned and, head bowed, began the long walk out of the hold. He had no desire to stay. His brother had been espied by the watchtowers returning to the karak. It was best that Azgar was not there when he discovered their father’s fate.

  The inundation rammed dully against the ironclad door with slow and thudding insistence.

  Uthor’s fleeing throng had made it through the gallery just in time, slamming the door in their wake when the last of them had got through. Those caught up in the waters were left for dead. It left a bitter canker in the survivors.

  ‘It holds, for now,’ said Rorek, noting that the door was at least watertight.

  Exhausted, alongside the engineer, Uthor just nodded.

  A great foundry stretched out before his sodden throng, who were huddled around the entrance to the chamber, having been battered and blasted throughout their desperate flight to the iron sanctuary.

  Down a short set of steps the foundry opened into a vast plaza of stone, engraved with fifty-foot runes of forging and the furnace. Brightly burning braziers adorned the walls, doubtlessly lit by the hold’s previous occupants, and punctuated the runic knots carved into them with perfect regularity.

  Deep troughs of glowing coals smouldered and the light of the flickering embers illuminated racks of tools. Fuliginous chimneys were built at the ends of the troughs and rose up into the vaulted ceiling. Each of the stout, broad-based funnels was designed to lock the emanating forge heat and channel it into the roof space and the upper levels in order to keep them warm and dry. A raised stone walkway delineated the entire room and led to a wide, flat plinth with an archway wrought into the face of an ancient runelord overshadowing it. Through the venerable ancestor’s mouth there was a mighty forgemaster’s anvil, bathed in the fire-orange glow of brazier pans.

  The foundry was divided into a central chamber and two wings, broken up by broad, square columns. On the left wing there was a vast array of armour suits, weapons and war machines; on the right wing, a long runway extended that ended in an octagonal platform.

  A dais in the centre of it supported a statue of monumental proportions carved into the image of Grungni himself. The ancestor god’s plaited beard went all the way to the base and in his hands he held forge tongs and a smithy’s hammer. Beneath him there sat another brazier, raging with an eldritch blue-red flame that cast pooling shadows into the stone-worked face. Beyond this temple there was a sheer drop into a pit of fire, which burned so fiercely the coals within it were but a vague shadow in the emanating heat haze.

  Great heavy pails were set above the vast pit by thick iron chains, ready to plunge into the fires and bring forth the precious rock to feed the forges.

  ‘Magnificent,’ said Thalgrim, tears in his eyes. Other than this laudation, the throng was stunned into silence.

  They were arrested from their wonderment by the dull retort of thunking metal against the iron door as the armoured dwarfs slain in the flood were butted against it by the swell of the water.

  ‘We should move away from the door,’ Uthor said darkly.

  Uthor’s throng sat around the burning coal troughs of the foundry plaza, rubbing their hands and wringing out their beards in silent, grim contemplation. The heat warmed clothes, hair and hearts quickly but Uthor found no solace in their fiery depths as he drew deep of his pipe, lost in his thoughts.

  ‘So is this how it is to end, then?’

  Gromrund stood before the thane of Kadrin. The hammerer’s armour was battered and broken in places. It was the first time Uthor had even noticed it since the fighting and their flight from the inundation.

  ‘I need time to think,’ the thane of Kadrin muttered, peering back into the flames.

  Gromrund leaned in towards him, forcing the thane to look at him.

  ‘You were so eager for your reckless glory but a few hours ago. Yet now you sit and do nothing,’ he hissed, ‘while all around your throng stagnates and festers like an old wound.’

  Uthor maintained his silence.

  ‘You have much to atone for already, son of Algrim, do not add to the reckoner’s tally further.’ With that, the hammerer stalked away out of Uthor’s sight.

  After a moment, the thane of Kadrin looked up from the blazing coals and regarded his warriors as if for the first time since their defeat in the Great Hall. The wounded were many; some had lost limbs and eyes, a burden they would carry into the Halls of the Ancestors. Others wore bandages over deep wounds or displayed broad cuts openly, but not as the heroic ritual scars of combat; they wore them with the deep shame of the broken and beaten. The dwarfs sat together in their clans. Uthor noticed the large gaps in them, brave warriors all who would not know the feeling of their holds beneath their feet and above their heads ever again. He had condemned them to that fate. Unable to look further, Uthor averted his gaze.

  ‘May I sit with you?’ a voice asked. Emelda’s eyes flashed in the firelight as she sat down, more perfect and beauteous than any jewel in Uthor’s reckoning, her long plaits like streaks of gold.

  ‘I am honoured,’ said the thane, with a shallow nod. Her stealth was impressive; Uthor had not heard her coming.

  The clan daughter’s noble bearing was apparent in the way she held herself, proud and defiant. The other dwarfs would not sit with her, not because of any slight or ill feeling; rather that they were ashamed of their unkempt appearance and bashful in her presence as a lady and a royal consort. Since none would join Uthor either, it meant that they were largely alone.

  ‘You risked much to follow us here,’ he said after a moment’s silence, grateful of the distraction she provided.

  ‘I believed in your quest,’ Emelda replied. ‘Too swiftly are the desolated holds left uncontested, for all the fell denizens of dark places to inhabit and despoil. There was honour in your plight and talk of such deeds that could not go unreckoned. Besides that, I have my reasons,’ she added darkly.

  ‘It was glory,’ Uthor admitted after a moment, reminded of Gromrund’s words as he stared into the fire.

  ‘I do not understand.’

  The thane gazed up into Emelda’s eyes, his expression rueful.

  ‘The promise of glory brought me to this place, not vengeance, and this folly has delivered us all to our doom. Cowering in the dark. Hunted like… like rats.’ He curled his lip at that last remark and dipped his head again. It was a bitter irony; rats preyed upon by rats.

  Emelda stayed silent. She had no words that would make right what had befallen them. The mood was grim; it chilled the bone despite the cloying heat in the air. Failure and dishonour hung like a palpable fug, and was felt by all.

  ‘And what of Dunrik? Is he even your cousin?’ Uthor asked.

  Emelda felt her chest tighten at the mention of his name. She made a silent oath to Valaya that he had made it out of the tunnel alive, somehow.

  ‘No,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘He was my guardian, sworn to protect me. Dunrik smuggled us into the escort from Everpeak,’ she confessed.

  ‘So you both defied
the will of the High King, as I did.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emelda, shamefaced.

  Uthor laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘Milady,’ uttered Gromrund, clearing his throat as he appeared suddenly beside them, ‘I am Gromrund, son of Kromrund, of the Tallhelm clan and hammerer to King Kurgaz of Karak Hirn.’ The hammerer bowed deeply, ignoring Uthor. ‘It would be my humble honour to serve as your protector and vouch safe passage for you back to Everpeak.’

  Emelda smiled benignly, full of royal presence.

  Gromrund, meeting her gaze as he genuflected, reddened.

  ‘You are noble, Gromrund, son of Kromrund, but I already have a bodyguard and we will be reunited soon,’ she explained, unable to mask an edge of uncertainty in her tone. ‘For now, Uthor son of Algrim will see to my safekeeping,’ she said, gesturing in the thane of Kadrin’s direction, ‘but I will make certain to mention of your pledge to the High King.’

  ‘As you wish, milady,’ Gromrund said, a side glance at Uthor to make his displeasure known before he backed away in respectful silence.

  Gromrund stood alone at the anvil stripped of all his armour, barring his warhelm of course. With a forgemaster’s hammer in hand, he worked out the dents in his breastplate with careful and meticulous precision. He was glad of the solace that metalsmithing provided, especially after his recent rebuttal from the Lady Emelda. In truth, he was also working out the anger he felt towards Uthor, but was mindful not to let his ire spoil his re-crafting. The Tallhelms were all forgesmiths by trade, a source of much pride amongst the clan, despite their esteemed calling as royal bodyguards.

  Gromrund stopped a moment to check his labours, wiping the sweat from his face as he did so. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Uthor conversing with the Everpeak lady.

  As he watched them, he noticed Uthor’s face darken. Despite their grievances, and his earlier words, the hammerer took no pleasure in the thane’s distress – though he still believed, as a hammerer, it should be he that saw to Emelda’s wellbeing – an oath was an oath and each and every one of them had failed in that. As expedition leader though, the son of Algrim bore that shame most heavily.

  The lady, Emelda, seemed to try and soothe him but to no avail.

  A rinn! Gromrund thought as he looked at her. Posing as a beardling amongst the throng with not a dawi, save for her keeper, any the wiser – a truly shocking admission.

  When she caught the hammerer’s gaze, he averted his eyes to the anvil, bashful beneath her scrutiny.

  Shocking indeed, he thought, toiling at his armour again, but not entirely unwelcome.

  Thalgrim’s stomach growled loudly. He went for the piece of chuf beneath his helmet, but stopped himself short. Perhaps it was that which attracted the skaven to them; perhaps he was the cause of the ambush in the tunnel, of so many dawi deaths…

  ‘It was the Black Water,’ said Rorek, sat across from the lodefinder, eyes ablaze in the light of burning coals.

  The two of them were sitting with some of the Sootbeard dwarfs outside the great arch.

  Rorek was tinkering with some spherical object he had fashioned from the materials in the forge. It helped keep his mind occupied.

  Thalgrim returned a thoughtful expression, grateful of the distraction, as the engineer went on.

  ‘Five hundred years ago, during the Time of Woes, a deluge from the great lake flooded the hold and ruined it,’ said Rorek, carefully screwing a plate on the spiked ball of iron in his hands. ‘I think, even in the upper deeps, there are pockets of trapped water. We released one when we split the gallery wall. It at least means the grobi and the rat-kin cannot follow this way.’

  ‘It means we cannot escape the way we came, either,’ Thalgrim countered, engrossed with the engineer’s work. ‘This entire hold groans under the weight of the Black Water,’ he added. ‘I can feel it through the rock; the subtle vibrations caused by its movement are unmistakable.’

  ‘Then we had best not linger,’ muttered Rorek, looking up at the age-old cracks in the vaulted ceiling above them.

  Drimbold woke awash with sweat. A chill ran down his spine as the cries of Norri and Furgil, falling into the chasm as the rope bridge failed, echoed in his ears. Their faces were forever etched on his mind, contorted with sheer terror as they met their doom in the gorge, swallowed by fire. The Grey dwarf realised he was gripping his pack. The lustre of the treasure within had somehow dimmed. He released it quickly, as if stung. Some of the loot spilled out, clanking loudly against the stone plateau. The noise disturbed Halgar, who’d been rubbing his eyes. The longbeard scowled at Drimbold before returning to his dark thoughts.

  The Grey dwarf cast his eyes around the forlorn throng, led now, it seemed, by Azgar.

  Ralkan lay nearby him, twitching spasmodically, wracked by a fever dream about some unknown terror.

  Hakem was awake, nursing the stump of his right hand, an ugly dark red stain emerging through the makeshift bandage. He was muttering. Drimbold heard the Honakinn Hammer mentioned several times. The merchant’s boastful bluster was but a fading memory now. He looked pale and drawn, and not just from the amount of blood he had lost.

  ‘It’s time we made a move.’ It was Azgar, at the top of the next descending stairway, his face an unreadable mask.

  Without word, the dwarfs started to gather their belongings. When they finally left the plateau, only Drimbold’s treasure-laden pack remained.

  ‘I grow weary of staring into the fathomless dark,’ Hakem moaned, peering over the narrow ledge into a faintly rippling void below. It was the first time the dwarf had spoken since he’d lost his hammer and his hand.

  The Endless Stair was above them now, its final plateau leading to a vast stone archway. From there, the dwarfs had found the narrow ledge. So narrow was it that Azgar’s throng walked slowly in single file. On one side there was a sheer rock face that seemed to go on for miles in both directions; on the other side yet another deep chasm presented itself.

  ‘This is the Ore Way, the threshold of the once great mines of Karak Varn,’ Ralkan said wistfully, walking a few places behind Azgar who led the group with what remained of his Grim Brotherhood.

  ‘I see nothing but darkness,’ Hakem muttered bitterly, ‘shifting below us like serpents.’

  ‘It is not serpents,’ Ralkan interjected, close to the merchant’s position in the file. ‘These are the flooded deeps.’

  The shimmering in the darkness was water, so thick and murk-ridden it was like black ichor. Columns, leaning over and split in twain, languished in it, the stagnant dregs of the Black Water pooling where they broke the water’s surface. The reek of wet stone clung to the damp air like a shroud.

  ‘Look there,’ he added, voice echoing as he pointed far out into the gloom-drenched cavern.

  Hakem followed the lorekeeper’s gesture to the wreckage of three lofty towers, wrought of wood and metal. Each tower had a massive pulley set at its apex, with the remnants of what once must have been a long chain. The links had been shattered long ago, but stout buckets clung tenaciously to one of the chain lengths. Hakem then realised the broken columns were supports for bridges that connected the towers to tracked lanes of stone that ran all the way across and down the empty gulf to the walkway they now traversed. One such lane still existed in part, its central support standing defiantly like an island in an ocean of tar.

  ‘All dwarf holds began as mines,’ Halgar remarked. ‘These are from the Golden Age of the Karaz Ankor.’ He and Drimbold took careful steps as they bore the body of Dunrik along the shallow pathway. The longbeard felt the wall with one hand as he went, making certain he was close to it at all times. One slip and all three would likely join the rest of their kin claimed by the abyss.

  ‘Rich were the veins of ril, gorl and gromril,’ the longbeard said wistfully. ‘Such great days…’ he added in a choked whisper.

  Apparent that Halgar’s reminiscences were at an end, some of the other dwarfs began talking amongst themselves as a sli
ghtly improved mood started to settle over the throng.

  The longbeard paid them no heed as he allowed the surface of the rock face to pass beneath his hand, taking solace in the roughness and solidity of it against his leather-like skin. Then he heard, or rather felt, something that he did not expect.

  Halgar stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘Stop,’ he bellowed, though some of the dwarfs in the file had already bunched up and were bumping into each other with the longbeard’s abrupt halt. Drimbold very nearly tripped and dropped Dunrik as he was pulled back.

  ‘What is it?’ Hakem called from behind Halgar.

  ‘Be silent!’ The longbeard said, admonishing him, before catching Drimbold’s gaze.

  ‘Set him down,’ Halgar bade him, and they did, reverently. The old dwarf then turned back towards the rock face, placing both hands against it and pressing his ear as close as he could. The stone felt damp and chill against his face. A faint plinking sound, dull and faraway, emanated through the rock.

  ‘I hear nothing,’ moaned Hakem.

  ‘Save for the sound of your own voice, no doubt. Be still!’ Halgar raged, ‘’Tis a pity it was not your tongue taken by the abyss,’ he snarled, plunging the merchant thane into mournful quietude before listening intently.

  The sound came again, muted but distinctly metallic.

  ‘A hammer,’ he snapped at a dwarf behind him, one of the Stonebreaker clan.

  The clan dwarf returned a bemused look as he brought out a small mattock.

  ‘Quickly now!’ Halgar snatched the weapon and with his attention back on the rock face started to tap back.

  Gromrund knew he must be a strange sight, wearing only his helmet and little else besides. It had grown so hot in the foundry that he had removed his outer garments as well as his armour and stood in nothing but boots and breeches as he toiled away at a vambrace. Slowly beating out a gouge from a skaven dagger, Gromrund paused in his hammering to wring the sweat from his beard.

  A dull thunk got his attention. At first he looked down to make sure he wasn’t still hammering, that the heat hadn’t addled his brain and he’d just thought he’d ceased.