Masters of Stone and Steel - Gav Thorpe & Nick Kyme
Page 122
She thrust her rune hammer into the air and the throng roared in affirmation.
The sound was deafening. It shook the walls and made the earth tremble. The dwarfs were defiant; their anger and their bitterness gave them strength and solidarity. But dark days were coming, and they were closer than anyone could have known…
Tor Eorfith was like a skeleton of shattered rock and broken spires. The former glory of the elven city had been smashed utterly from the face of the world. The miners and sappers led by Rugnir had set about their task with extreme prejudice.
Within the shadows of the bowels of a ruined tower, Lothvar awoke and found he was trussed to a slab of fallen stone. He remembered only snatches of how he came to be here. Like his mother had told him in the Temple of Valaya, he had found the battlesite by following the trail of his kinsdwarfs and fought with his father against the elves. His heart had sung, unshackled for the first time, exultation filling the dwarf prince as his kin had cheered. It did not matter that they shouted his brother’s name; all that mattered was that he was there and had rallied the army. Lothvar had never been happier in all his miserable, mistreated life.
A presence in the hollowed-out tower got his attention and wrenched his thoughts back to his predicament. Once the battle was over, Lothvar had slipped away. He had wanted desperately to stay, but his mother had forbid it. Lothvar didn’t really understand her reasons as she had explained them, but he did not wish to bring shame to his father by exposing the lie of his existence, so he had disappeared.
It had not been difficult; all eyes had been upon his father when he had retreated back over the wall. Once on the other side, he had hiked away from the battlefield. Both armies were spent, and none had the strength or inclination to follow him. Once out of sight, Lothvar had removed his ancestral armour, and placed it carefully out of the way where he knew it would eventually be found. Moving quickly, a hand before his eyes to ward off the painful light of the rising sun, Lothvar had tracked his way through the crags using scent and sound to guide him. There within a shallow gulley, beneath the shadow of a rocky promontory, he found the knapsack he had secreted before the siege began. There was a hooded cloak, which he had donned at once drawing the cowl to fend off the bright sun, food and weapons. He slung the crossbow over his back and cinched the hand axe to his belt. Then he began to make his way into the mountains.
Recollection became hazy after that. Lothvar had kept off the path, using seldom trodden ways and keeping to the shadows. It was within a copse of scattered pine, in the lee of an overhanging rock that he heard the crunch of stone. Something had moved in the gloom around him. He had reached for his hand axe, sensing danger, but all too quickly the shadows became warriors and the warriors subdued him. He had woken here, alone in the cold and merciless ruins of Tor Eorfith.
Once past the dwarf piquets, Arthelas had found her followers quickly. In the confusion of the coming siege, she had slipped away from the citadel and beyond the city’s walls. Using sorcery, she had adopted the form of Craggen the dwarf hermit, the guise with which she had duped Rugnir so easily. Unleashing him at precisely the right moment to bring about discord and war amongst the elves and dwarfs had been easy too.
The cave where she had held, and ministered, to him was found and secured by her followers already at large in the Old World. Magically transporting herself from Tor Eorfith to the cave for Craggen’s appearances had been taxing, but not impossible, and vital to her lie.
Foolish Ithalred – he had no concept of her true ability. Now, it no longer mattered.
Swathed in purple robes, Arthelas stood at the apex of a triangle of three. Her two acolytes were standing silently at the opposite points. Between them, at the nexus of the triangle, was the dwarf sacrifice.
‘With this blade, I invoke Hekarti,’ she said in the sibilant tongue of dark magic. ‘By the Cytharai, by Ereth Khial and all the fell gods of the Underworld, I beseech her power. Let blood seal the pact.’
Arthelas cried out, throwing her head back. Her face was twisted into a howl of pure malice. In her outstretched hand she clasped a jagged dagger. It was not so dissimilar from the one used to stab Bagrik and poison the dwarf king.
Lothvar’s eyes snapped wide open when the blade went in, when it pierced his pale naked skin and entered flesh. A warm cascade flowed across his body at first, before it cooled and chilling numbness took hold. As he slipped away, his life blood pooling below the slab, Lothvar hoped he would see his father and brother in the Halls…
Her face was dashed with blood. Arthelas left it that way, staring wild eyed at the slain dwarf beneath her. She felt empowered, her mind awash with visions of war. Malekith would be pleased. She and her small coven had sown dissension between Karak Ungor and the elves of Ulthuan. Though in truth, Ithalred had been an easy dupe. His arrogance and desperation had led him down the path; Arthelas had only to show him the way. Lethralmir was an easy pawn in that regard. Love-sick and amorous, the blade-master had bent all too effortlessly to her will. Atharti, underworld goddess of pleasure, was well sated by their lustful desires.
It was all just the beginning of a much larger plan. Arthelas was wise enough to realise the small significance of her part in it. For she knew that all across the Old World her dark kin were making ready to ensure any lasting peace between elves and dwarfs would be fleeting. Malekith had willed it.
CITY OF DEAD JEWELS
Nick Kyme
Prince Darin was dead. He lay on his back upon a bier of shields, cold and clammy to the touch. In the prince’s absence, Hegendour, his former hearthguard and protector, had taken the lead. The words from his cut lips were as bleak and dark as the tunnel the dwarfs lingered in.
‘The beast is hunting us now,’ he said. ‘Its spoor litters the way ahead but was left deliberately.’ Hegendour’s voice was as cold as his demeanour. He turned to the others, showing them a muscled, barrel chest, riddled with self-inflicted wounds. ‘It wants us to follow.’
‘Only a fool would willingly chase a monster into its lair,’ declared one of the dwarfs. He was a lode warden and carried the hunting party’s lantern. There was no flame within the fetters; its light came from rune magic wrought into the metal. A pair of boots was slung over one shoulder, a sigil engraved in the dark leather.
‘Only a fool or an honourless Slayer,’ muttered another, as he eyed Hegendour’s shorn beard and naked torso with disdain. This one was lightly armoured in the manner of a hill dwarf, but festooned with weapons, mainly throwing axes and a crossbow that was also rune-inscribed.
‘Afraid of a troll are you, Cravenhelm?’ asked a third thane.
The hill dwarf answered belligerently. ‘It is no troll, this thing,’ he snapped at the armoured mountain of a warrior alongside him. He was shorter than the gatekeeper, and his iron pot helmet only came up to the other dwarf’s chest. ‘And my clan name is Ravenhelm.’
‘Cravenhelm suits you better, elf-friend.’
‘At least I am no kinslayer, Magnin, son of Thord!’ Raglan Ravenhelm pulled out a bearded axe that glowed dully in the half-light in empathy with its bearer’s anger.
Magnin, the gatekeeper, hefted a two-handed mattock with a hammerhead twice as big as the hill dwarf’s skull.
‘And so the moment of grudgement has finally arrived, eh grumbaki?’ Despite his outward belligerence, the gatekeeper couldn’t hide the shame in his eyes. He glanced at the bier of shields where Prince Darin laid in repose.
‘Leave it!’ hissed Vorgil. The miner was shining the lantern up ahead, coaxing more light from its confines with soothing imprecations to the runes. ‘Enough have died to foolishness already,’ he added bleakly, whispering, ‘I see something…’
Vorgil had better eyes than any dwarf of Karak Azgal. As a lode warden, he had spent most of his life in the darkest, light-forgotten hollows of the earth. Even without brazier or lantern, his dark-sight was almost faultless. ‘Here,’ he said, pouring on a little more light with a muttered invocation so t
he others could see it too. Dour ancestor faces glowered down on the dwarfs, stern and disapproving. They were hewn from the rock, massive, magnificent but denuded of the gemstones that once adorned their beards, torques and circlets. Only hollows remained, empty and forlorn. The gargantuan statues had been picked clean. The entire hold was now little more than a hoard of scattered, lost treasures fought over like carrion.
A shadow loomed in the tunnel ahead of the dwarfs, reminding them all of the creatures that coveted their gold and jewels.
Here in the undervaults, the darkest catacombs of the Ungdrin Ankor, shadows were everywhere. They often chittered or snarled; some growled or shuffled, trying to be silent on padded feet or paws. This one was massive and it exuded almost palpable menace.
‘It is no troll,’ Raglan asserted again in a breathy whisper. He’d sheathed his axe in favour of a crossbow, whose bolt tips shone like pellucid silver despite the gloom.
He and Magnin had been charged with dragging the bier of shields, but dropped the tethers wound around their fists in favour of facing the monster in their midst. Prince Darin seemed not to mind.
‘I say we return to the hold gate and get more warriors,’ said Raglan, backing off a step.
‘There are none to get,’ snapped Vorgil, ‘save for those bloody barbarians. Unberogen or not, I trust dwarfs over men and would see the treasures of Izril go to its heirs. Not umgi, not grobi.’
‘Nor elgi,’ muttered Magnin with a scowl.
It had been over two thousand years since the Great War between the dwarfs and the elves, but memories amongst the sons of Grungni were long: clan heritage and ancestral debt made it that way. The War of Vengeance, when it was declared by High King Gotrek Starbreaker, was not universal amongst the clans. Some, those who had forged friendships with the elves, between whom trade flourished with the eldritch race, sought a peaceful outcome and had no desire to fight. The hill dwarfs, those that lived over ground instead of under the mountains, were the staunchest of those objectors.
Raglan ignored Magnin and gestured to the dilapidated hall crumbling around them.
‘Look around you. This is the City of Jewels no longer.’ He used his arm to take in the broken statuary and tumbledown pillars. ‘It is the lair of beasts and monsters, the dark denizens of the deep earth…’ He trailed off as if expecting these creatures to claw their way from the darkness at any moment, drooling saliva and baying for dwarf-flesh to sate their bestial appetites.
Once, when Karak Azgal was known as Karak Izril, the passageway where the dwarfs waited would have been lined with gemstones and chased gold. It treasures had long since been stolen by rat-kin, greenskins and even fouler beasts.
‘We will all die in this place,’ said Vorgil, though he showed no sign of wishing to flee. ‘All of us, doomed.’
Raglan glanced at the lode warden; between him and Hegendour the mood was becoming increasingly fatalistic. His upper hold on Krag Tor was still prosperous. He had only agreed to this venture because of the excessive gold in prospect, that and fealty to a king of a sundered realm he had once called hold. ‘We should go back,’ he said, ‘gather more warriors from the northern holds. Perhaps we can find dwarfs from the Vaults or Black Mountains. I have heard clans are settling there.’
Magnin sneered. The gatekeeper was cut from much older cloth. He could trace his clan legacy all the way back to the Blackbeards. ‘Rinns and ufdis. Barely a proper dawi amongst the lot of them.’
Raglan insisted, ‘We need more axes.’
‘Aye,’ scoffed Magnin, ‘and cannon too, and mules to pull them, but we four are thanes enough to kill this beast.’ He looked down his nose at Raglan. ‘Well, at least three of us are. I expect a clan of turncoats like the Cravenhelms to choose cowardice over honour.’
Raglan ground his teeth but resisted the urge to bite. Despite his anger, the gatekeeper was his better in a fight.
‘What about Prince Darin?’ asked Vorgil, glancing at the corpse.
The smirk on Magnin’s face vanished at mention of the prince’s name.
‘We should leave him behind,’ said Raglan.
‘He is the king’s son!’ hissed Vorgil.
‘Not in the open, kruti,’ Raglan snapped behind his hand. He was watching Hegendour. The hearthguard looked as if he was about to do something rash. ‘We leave him in one of the old tombs. Least he’ll be with his ancestors that way. Once we’re done with the beast, we come back and get him.’
‘Quiet, you fools!’ Magnin was gesturing down the tunnel with his hammer. ‘Smell that?’ he asked, once the other two were silent.
The waft of something deeply unpleasant pricked the dwarfs’ nostrils. It carried the reek of sulphur.
‘Trollish bile-acid,’ said Hegendour, scowling. He had two axes, one in each hand, and bared his teeth in a challenge.
‘What say you, lad?’ asked Magnin, suddenly uncertain of his own convictions but unwilling to trust an elf-friend or a grief-mad hearthguard. He glanced over his spiked shoulder plate at the dwarf behind him.
The last of the hunting party was no thane, nor was he even a warrior, at least to Magnin’s mind. He was brown-bearded with youthful grey eyes, a beardling. He wore a helm like the others: it had a studded nose guard and iron-banded crown. He also wore robes but interwoven with mail and a pair of runic vambraces.
His trappings were that of a runesmith, though the lad did not feel worthy of the mantle foisted upon him.
‘My dead master’s body carried the same stench,’ Skalf said quietly, and held aloft a runic talisman that hung around his neck on a chain. It gave off a pale, green aura that coloured the darkness around it.
‘Well, smith,’ demanded the gatekeeper after an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, ‘What say you?’
Vorgil muttered behind his black, soot-thickened beard to Raglan.
‘We should not have brought a beardling to this place. I don’t care who his master was.’
The hill dwarf glanced at the runesmith too, and nodded in agreement with the lode warden.
Skalf ignored them. He was watching the light around the talisman as it changed from green to visceral red.
‘Very close.’
Hegendour was at the edge of the lantern’s light, just within its penumbra.
‘It is the beast,’ he decided, and ploughed into the tunnel. ‘Sing my lament to Grimnir and all the Ancestor Gods. Tell them Hegendour, son of Hegengrim, approaches their hold halls in the underdeep. My doom awaits… Uzkul!’ he cried, forging into a run as the darkness claimed him.
‘Hegendour, wait!’ the runesmith’s warning came too late. As soon as the hearthguard stepped beyond the glow of the lantern, there was the sudden shriek of displaced air, followed by the crunch of bone.
Vorgil was next in line, and got spattered with blood. His face and beard were crimson with it, and he swore aloud, unsheathing a shimmering pickaxe.
A host of rune weapons glowed between them. They were weapons of the great age, before the war with the elves, but they seemed like daggers against whatever was in that tunnel.
A tense moment of silence fell before something flew out of the darkness at them.
Raglan threw a hand axe, unwilling to waste a silver-bolt until he knew it was worth loosing.
Half of Hegendour’s body, a hand axe embedded in its chest, landed in front of them. Steam billowed off the bloody, chewed end of his torso. From the waist down there was nothing. The grimacing hearthguard still clung tenaciously to his axes. They weren’t even notched or bloodied.
‘I think he was already dead, brother,’ said Vorgil.
Magnin chuckled despite the hideousness of Hegendour’s remains.
A low, reverberating growl that shook grit and dust- motes from the broken ceiling of the tunnel prevented an immediate riposte from the hill dwarf.
‘That was big,’ he uttered when it was over.
The sulphurous air grew thicker by the second. It scalded the dwarfs’ leathern skin.
A vast tremor shook the ground beneath them, sending statues toppling. Cracks split the carven faces of the ancestors, souring their stony demeanour further still. Sundered rock rained from the subterranean ceiling of the tunnel, bringing cascades of dirt with it.
Magnin raised his great shield to ward off the worst of it.
‘We stand and fight.’
None amongst the small throng gainsaid him.
‘Doom…’ Vorgil muttered. He was barely a step away from taking the Slayer Oath himself.
The shadow of the beast grew closer, snorting and growling.
‘It is no troll,’ whispered Raglan as a massive crack jagged along the ceiling and the tunnel collapsed in on the dwarfs, bringing darkness and death.
‘It is a troll, nothing more.’
The king’s declaration echoed loudly around the abandoned gate hall. In times gone by, the liege-lord of Karak Izril would have held forth in a richly appointed throne room, a king’s chamber worthy of the name. Fabled brynduraz would have lit the scene and made the clusters of gemstones sparkle like stars refulgent. Such days were confined to dust and memory. Azgal, the Hoard Peak as it was now known, was a ruin.
Instead, the lord of Azgal sat upon a wooden throne with a handful of his armoured retainers, his hammerers, arrayed behind him in silent, grim-faced ranks. That King Durik had managed to give audience in one of its upper hold halls was remarkable, but the old dwarf was a cantankerous and stubborn bastard.
Skalf knew the king, he was his liege-lord, and he knew the strain that leaving his ancestral hold to grobi and rat-kin had cost him. Once, Durik had been strong and vital; now he was grey and wraith-like with skin too thin and a patchwork beard. Still, the lord was proud.