Masters of Stone and Steel - Gav Thorpe & Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  Kaggi was about to nod but was interrupted.

  ‘Kaggi should remain with his kin,’ said a voice from outside the circle.

  Uthor’s temper was rising; it was quashed in an instant when Emelda moved into the light cast by the statue of Grungni, her armour resplendent before it. She had removed the face mask from her helmet and in her hand she held Dunrik’s axe. ‘We shall take Halgar’s place.’

  Uthor did not have the will to protest. In truth, he welcomed Emelda’s presence. Whenever she were near he felt the burden of his past, of his duty to his clan that he now knew he would fail, lift slightly. Her prowess, too, was unquestionable.

  ‘Then please sit, milady, for this last part is crucial,’ Uthor said and Emelda took her place amongst the circle, those dwarfs sitting next to her reddening about the cheeks and swiftly smoothing their beards.

  Once order was restored, Uthor went on.

  ‘None amongst the first two skorongs must release any flood waters until they hear Azgar’s warhorn.’ Uthor’s jaw tightened only slightly at the mention of the name. ‘Only then will we know the rat-kin are committed to the attack. After that, and by closing off tunnels, wells and door dams throughout the lower deeps as we go, the Black Water will be unleashed and channelled into the foundry.’

  Uthor allowed a silence to descend as he regarded each and every dwarf in the circle in turn.

  ‘Make your oaths,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘In an hour we go to meet our destinies.’

  The throng mustered together for one last time. Each and every clan dwarf was decked in their armour and brandished hammers and axes proudly.

  At the foundry gate, Uthor and Gromrund, with their retinues, made ready to leave. Their paths would converge for a time, until they reached the triple forked road and then one would head eastward to the mines and the shaft that led to the underdeep, whilst the other would go westward, relying on Ralkan’s prior instruction, to the Barduraz Varn.

  ‘If memory serves, the route to both the gate and overflow should be fairly clear of obstruction, fifty years of rat-kin occupation not withstanding, of course.’ Ralkan had said as the council were breaking up.

  ‘Of course,’ Uthor had replied with a wry glance at Gromrund, the thane noticing that other dwarfs in earshot made similar exchanges.

  ‘You are certain its note will carry to the lower deeps?’ Halgar asked as he watched the dwarfs slowly depart through the gate.

  ‘The wyvern-horn will make itself heard, you can mark that – its note will carry,’ Azgar answered deeply, with a furtive glance at Uthor. The thane of Kadrin was having a final private word with Drimbold. When he was done speaking into his ear, the Grey dwarf nodded and headed back to be amongst the other warriors.

  ‘You fight with honour, slayer,’ said the longbeard, watching him. ‘But we all go to our deaths now. Perhaps there might be some accord between you and your brother in this moment?’

  A slight, near-imperceptible, tremor of shock registered in the slayer’s eyes as he looked back at Halgar.

  ‘I have known it from the first time I set eyes upon you,’ the longbeard said. ‘He even fights like you.’

  Azgar considered Halgar’s words before he spoke.

  ‘I am sorry, venerable one. You are wise, but there can be no accord between us. I have seen to that.’

  The slayer bowed deeply and took his leave.

  ‘Aye,’ Halgar said regretfully when he was gone, off to rejoin his Grim Brotherhood and make ready for the coming battle. Uthor, too, had now vanished into the dark, the foundry gate thundering shut in his wake. ‘You’re probably right.’

  Drimbold heard the foundry gate slamming to and the thick bolts scraping across its metal surface as he headed for the weapon racks. The mattock he carried was chipped and battered, and he was unaccustomed to its weight. A stout hand axe, that was what he needed; even Halgar would condone him borrowing one.

  Reaching the racks, he looked over to the longbeard, who was wheezing badly and rubbing at the old wound in his chest. He only did it when no one else was watching, but Drimbold was skilled at secret observation and had seen him struggle often. The Grey dwarf remembered Uthor’s words to him as he had left.

  ‘I won’t let you down,’ he said to himself. Really, he had no choice. If this was to be the end, then honouring his pledge to Uthor was his last chance at redemption.

  Thratch wiped the flat of his blade on a skaven slave. The wretched creature was so emaciated that it nearly bent double with the warlord’s heavy paw pressed on its back. Satisfied that his weapon was clean of goblin blood, despite the pathetic tufts of fur poking between the slave’s patches of scar tissue, the warlord kicked the whimpering creature to the floor and stalked away to talk to his chieftain returning from the upper deeps.

  ‘Most of the green-things are dead-dead, my lord,’ Liskrit said, cowering slightly before his master, despite his well-armoured bulk.

  ‘And the rest?’ snarled Thratch, sheathing his sword as he paced over to the nearby door through which the dwarfs had made their escape.

  The warlord had returned to the Great Hall with Kill-Klaw and the majority of his warriors once they had defeated the greenskins. Despite the victory, Thratch had lost many clanrats and almost all of his slaves. The few that did survive were shovelling dwarf and goblin corpses into crudely-made barrows to be taken below to the warrens to feed the birthing mothers.

  When the nerve of the goblins finally broke – and Thratch knew it would – he’d sent a small cohort of elite stormvermin and slaves to harry them as far as the upper deeps. No creature, be it dwarf-thing or green-thing, would usurp his domain – this was Thratch’s territory now.

  ‘They ran, quick-quick, yes.’

  ‘Good,’ said the warlord then screamed suddenly, ‘No, no,’ smacking the back of a warrior’s head into the door as he probed at it with his spear.

  ‘We don’t go that way,’ Thratch roared, noticing the thin trickles of water eking through the cracks with a slight prickling of fear. The skaven warrior’s muzzle had been crushed into its brain with the impact and it did not answer. Suddenly aware of the fact, Thratch about turned and stalked back to his chieftain.

  ‘You stay-stay, make sure the green-things do not return,’ he commanded. ‘I must check on Clan Skryre, yes,’ he added, stalking off again. The progress on the pumping engine was going much slower than Thratch liked and he was debating which one of the Skryre acolytes to kill next when his chieftain spoke.

  ‘Noble Lord Thratch,’ said Liskrit, obsequiously.

  ‘Yes-yes, what it is now?’ Thratch whirled around, deciding whether or not to have Kill-Klaw gut the impudent chieftain now or wait until later while it slept.

  ‘The dwarf-things… should we follow them?’

  A vicious snarl crept across the warlord’s snout, revealing glistening fangs, still slick with goblin blood.

  ‘Dead-dead they are, yet they do not know it. Any that are left I will kill-kill or chase down into the dark for the fire-worm to eat.’ The snarl twisted into a malicious grin and Thratch walked away, the creeping shadow of Kill-Klaw following silently behind him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Skartooth was displeased. His cunning attack against the skaven had been thwarted – largely by Fangrak’s incompetence, he was sure – the dwarfs had escaped his wrath and his army, together with all his grand designs, was in tatters.

  ‘Idiot!’ the goblin warlord shrieked, pacing up and down the flat plateau of rock to which the remnants of the greenskins had fled. The path they had taken led them high into the mountains and three sides of the plateau fell away into a craggy gorge.

  Several of the surviving orc tribes had already left, retreating silently into the mountains as Skartooth had led the flight to the lofty promontory. Only he, Fangrak and a meagre horde of other orcs and goblins remained. That and Ungul, of course. The pet troll was sat on its bony backside and paid little heed to the argument brewing between his master and
Fangrak, too obsessed was it with watching the viscous drool dripping languidly from its maw and pooling on the ground in front of it.

  ‘It was your plan to ambush the ratties and them stunties at the same time,’ growled Fangrak, stood stock still as his warlord paced in front of him.

  ‘There was nuthin’ wrong with my plan,’ squeaked Skartooth. ‘You just didn’t listen to my ordas, did ya?’ he added, pointing his diminutive blade in the orc chieftain’s direction.

  ‘What ordas? “Get ‘em”?’ said Fangrak, building up to a roar. ‘Is them your zoggin’ ordas, eh?’

  ‘I knew you were useless, you and your ole stinkin’ lot,’ snarled Skartooth. ‘And now you’ve ruined everything… Everything!’ he cried, apoplectic with rage, the veins in his forehead popping to the surface.

  ‘I’ve ’ad enough of this,’ Fangrak grumbled, turning away from the goblin warlord. ‘I’m off.’

  ‘Don’t turn your back on me!’ Skartooth shrieked, so high-pitched that Ungul waggled a finger in his ear to stop it ringing.

  ‘Zog off,’ said Fangrak, already walking away.

  Skartooth roared, the goblin’s anger getting the better of him as he launched himself at Fangrak, ready to plunge his sword beneath the orc’s shoulder blades. But before he could strike the blow, Fangrak whirled around and grabbed Skartooth’s scrawny arm in one meaty fist then quickly clamped his other hand around the goblin’s neck. With a twist he snapped Skartooth’s wrist and the sword tumbled from the goblin’s nerveless grasp, clanging loudly as it hit the ground.

  Fangrak drew Skartooth close as he started to squeeze his hand around the goblin’s neck, slowly choking the life out of him.

  Skartooth glanced over towards Ungul, fear in his eyes, but the beast was quite far away and digging deep into its nostril at something that didn’t want to be dislodged.

  When he looked back at Fangrak, he realised that this had been the orc’s plan all along. As that knowledge passed over his face, Fangrak smiled.

  ‘What are you gonna do now?’ he murmured sadistically, squeezing just a little tighter and taking great amusement in watching the blood vessels pop in Skartooth’s ever widening eyes.

  The goblin warlord soiled himself, a long streak of foul smelling dung streaming from his robes to spatter on the ground and Fangrak’s leg.

  ‘You filthy–’ the orc chieftain began, slightly loosening his grip as he stooped to inspect the mess trickling down onto his boot.

  It was all the distraction Skartooth needed. The goblin wrenched himself free enough to bite down hard against Fangrak’s hand. The orc chieftain howled in pain and threw Skartooth to the ground as if he’d gripped the wrong end of a branding iron. The goblin warlord scuttled backwards on all fours to the safety of Ungul’s presence, the troll having suddenly blinked awake, as if for the first time.

  ‘Kill ’im!’ Skartooth squealed, his diminutive voice croaky after nearly being strangled by Fangrak.

  Ungul didn’t respond. It merely looked dully at Skartooth as if trying to remember something.

  ‘What are you waitin’ for? Kill ’im!’ the goblin squealed again, smacking Ungul on the nose with his good hand.

  The troll snarled at Skartooth, and the goblin warlord saw all the years of pain and mistreatment at his hands felt by Ungul anew.

  ‘Oh no,’ he breathed, reaching up to his neck.

  The collar was gone.

  Fangrak had removed it.

  ‘Ee ’ates you almost as much as I do,’ said the orc chief, three of his warriors alongside him, awaiting the gruesome show.

  Skartooth shuffled backwards as the troll stood up, its immense shadow engulfing him like an eclipse.

  Ungul roared, beating its chest.

  Skartooth back-pedalled as fast as he could but suddenly there was nothing beneath his feet and he fell off the promontory, screaming into the jagged gorge below.

  Ungul bellowed in rage, watching the goblin disappear. The subject of its ire gone, it lumbered around and turned all of its anger on Fangrak.

  ‘Aw zog,’ said the orc chieftain, hunting around with his eyes to locate the collar. When Skartooth had bitten him he’d dropped it. His last memory of the artefact was of it rolling away across the plateau but now it was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Get it,’ he snarled at his warriors, switching to his makeshift back-up plan. The orcs looked bemused at first, but when they realised Fangrak was serious they charged, roaring, at the troll.

  Ungul roared back and vomited a searing spray of corrosive stomach acid all over the warriors, who screamed as the toxic liquid ate them up greedily.

  Fangrak – seeing his minions turned to bubbling pools of greenish flesh and viscera – ran but Ungul reached out with its gangly limbs and seized him. The orc chieftain squealed as the troll pulled off both his arms and then went for the legs. As the troll sat down to feast, its anger sated for now, the rest of what was left of the horde fled, deep into the mountains.

  The flickering torch flame illuminated the fearsome, scar-ravaged visage of Azgar as he led the warriors down the cramped passage.

  ‘These are not dwarf-made tunnels,’ growled Halgar, two paces behind the slayer.

  The longbeard ran his hand lightly along the walls, smearing away a thin veneer of slime and crusted filth. A trail of effluvia trickled languidly down the middle of the tunnel along the ground in a shallow and foul-smelling rut. Elsewhere, the skaven underway was littered with excreta and other detritus, and the dwarfs needed to traverse it with care lest they slip on clustered droppings or the rank remnants of a discarded rat-kin feast.

  ‘How long have we been down here?’ Drimbold piped up suddenly, trudging just behind Halgar.

  ‘Too long,’ the longbeard muttered. The twisting, turning route had led them deep into the earth. On several occasions the way had split, spiralling off into the silent gloom in myriad directions, some so obtuse that only one of the rat-kin could hope to travel them. Halgar knew that much of the skaven labyrinth intersected the paths of the Ungdrin road and even undermined and subsumed them in places. In his youth, he’d heard tales of huge, hairless mole rats that the skaven used to dig vast tracts into the rock and earth – whether or not such rumours held any truth the longbeard did not know. He had to suppress a shudder, though, when he wondered how long these tunnels had been here, unnoticed by Kadrin, Ulfgan and even their ancestors, balking at the thought of just how many were bored into the earth and exactly how deep they went.

  Azgar was paying little heed to the conversation and was intent on the way forward when Halgar bade him pause a moment as he sniffed at the air. Wrinkling his nose he said, ‘The wretched stench of the rat-kin is thickening,’ he said. ‘We are getting close.’

  The slayer nodded and the dwarfs continued into the dark.

  The dwarfs that remained in the foundry had waited for an hour before heading out. They too were destined for the triple forked road but preparations to meet and resist the skaven horde first had to be made. The delay would also allow Uthor and Gromrund, who had a much longer journey ahead of them, to get well under way. Azgar’s expedition did not dawdle too long, however – in luring the skaven to them, it also meant their brothers en route to the Barduraz Varn and the overflow grate would be less likely to encounter much resistance.

  The three dwarfs were not alone as they ventured toward the rat-kin warrens, three of the Grim Brotherhood and another dwarf by the name of Thorig, a warrior of Zhufbar who shouldered a heavy-looking satchel across his back, also accompanied them.

  Halgar rubbed at his eyes as the dwarfs stopped in a sloped section of the labyrinthine tunnel network, a two-legged fork in front of them. Azgar brandished the torch light in front of it. His lip curled into a feral sneer as he recognised the foul script of the skaven scratched into the wall above each road. He turned to the longbeard and saw him kneading his eye sockets with his knuckles.

  ‘Are you all right, old one?’ asked the slayer.

  ‘Yes,’ Ha
lgar snapped. ‘This infernal flame is ruining my sight,’ he complained, scratching at his chest wound again.

  ‘I am not fond of it either,’ Azgar agreed, ‘but ’tis necessary,’ he added, thumbing over his shoulder in the direction of Thorig, ‘for what the engineer has planned.’

  Halgar grumbled, his words indiscernible. He pointed to the left-hand opening of the fork, tasting the air as he did so. ‘The stink is heaviest there,’ he said more clearly, blinking several times before trudging onward. ‘Are you coming?’ he snarled back at the others.

  ‘We will need a rope,’ cried Uthor above the raging din of the waterfall.

  The dwarfs had been going steadily on a western course just as Ralkan had told them to. Already they had shut several door dams, which Rorek assured the thane of Kadrin would help channel the lower flood waters up to the foundry. They had also sealed a number of wellways, heaving large stones into their necks to act as stoppers. It was tough and time-consuming work but necessary. The road had led them downwards after that, the Barduraz Varn getting ever closer, to a sheer rock face and a sheet of shimmering, cascading water.

  ‘Can we go around?’ Emelda shouted, her voice dulled by the incredible noise of the thundering torrents.

  ‘It is the only way into the flooded deeps and the Barduraz Varn,’ Uthor replied, eyeing the rushing waterfall from the ledge where the dwarfs were standing. The ledge narrowed abruptly after that, where the waterfall began and had worn it down. Over the edge, the thunderous water fell away into a deep, dark chasm. Uthor imagined the vast expanse of the Black Water swelling far above them, its power evident even this far down, and felt humbled.

  Rorek unwound a rope from his tool belt, one of several, and brandished it in front of Uthor. ‘This will hold. Dawi twine is not so easily broken,’ he said, errant spray spitting at him and moistening his beard with jewels of water. He threw one end of the rope to Uthor, who caught it easily.

  ‘Tie it around your waist and make the knot tight,’ Rorek told him then turned to Emelda. ‘You should do the same, milady.’