by Warhammer
Skalf opened one eye and realised he was alive. He was lying on his side, his head wet but not from blood. Water dropped from a stalactite overhead, drumming onto his skull with the insistence of a thudding mace.
Rolling over, he patted his empty weapons belt. His rune hammer was gone, lost somewhere in the fathomless dark. A gloom surrounded him but it lessened farther up the narrow tunnel he was lying in. There were grooves in the ceiling where the rock had been worn away over time. Several of the stalactites were broken nubs of stone, ground almost flat by the passage of something large and unyielding.
Groaning with the pain in his back and arm, Skalf got to his feet and headed for the source of the light.
Within thirty paces of the refulgent glow at the end of the tunnel he smelled it. Like an intoxicating liquor on his tongue, like the scent of hops and fermenting yeast, like the comforting odour of soot and iron. It was better than all of these and sent a fire raging through the runesmith despite the danger he knew he was in.
‘Gorl…’ The word barely escaped his lips, groggy with half-drunken gold lust. This shining metal had been the undoing of many a dwarf. They had many names for it: bryn, that which shines lustrously; galaz, decorative or ornamental gold; ril, gold ore or that which has been recently mined. Each incarnation was as intoxicating as the last. It had driven prospectors mad with fever, causing them to kill their own kin in the worst cases, and here it was; an entire cavern of gleaming, shimmering gold.
‘Gorl…’ he said again and could not keep the glee from his voice.
Crowns piled atop ingots that rose atop sovereigns that surmounted doubloons. Gems of every facet, every hue, some the size of Skalf’s brawny fist, littered the massive cave in abundance. Mounds of coins, minted in ages long dead, stretched almost to the vaulted ceiling and spread in vast swathes across the floor.
It took all of Skalf’s willpower not to sink down into the glittering morass and bask. The urge to rub it all over his body, to drink in its heady scent was strong. He wanted to gather up as much as he could, fill his tunic, his knapsack, even his helm.
It would be folly, and yet…
In the end, it was the presence of something mired in the gilded sea before him that brought Skalf around.
It was not merely a treasure vault, this place; it was also a tomb.
At first he noticed an armoured hand, jutting from a tor of scattered coins, aureate bracelets, torques and gilded diadems. Two of the gauntleted fingers had rusted away revealing the skeletal wearer beneath.
Elsewhere, like a drowning man reaching for his final breath, a warrior’s head peeked just above a lagoon of treasure. His corpse was not alone. There were several others, all dead, some with armour of the Empire; others wearing the heraldry and trappings of the haughty Bretonnians. They were knights, would-be dragon slayers, and they had all been found wanting.
Delving further, unable to shake the nagging sense of being watched, Skalf came across the bodies of dwarfs too. He recognised Slayers, and the brotherhood of ironbreakers and hammerers. In their hollowed-out eye sockets, their grinning rictus skulls, he saw the death of his comrades and his eventual fate should he linger in this place.
But he had sworn an oath. Not only to his king but to his master, albeit in death.
‘Kill the beast…’ he whispered, and began to search for a weapon.
Skalf was prising an axe – its edge glittered coldly in the lustrous glow of the chamber – from the dead fingers of a warrior-thane when he felt the coins beneath him begin to tremble. It was a trickle at first, a few crowns scattering like the disturbed scree from a golden mountainside. It swiftly became a landslide.
Abandoning the blade for easier pickings, Skalf half-ran, half-fell down the mound of coins. He was picking himself up when he caught the stink of sulphur, carried on a subterranean breeze wafting down from the upper world. It mingled with the reek of flesh, the foul odour of putrefaction. Soot and embers clouded above him like a pyroclastic thunderhead vented from some unseen caldera.
The eruption announced the arrival of a monster, a thing whose mere presence shook the very earth and made it quake.
Skalf had no shield, no weapon of any kind that could slay a magical creature as the dragon crested the largest of the gilded mounds. It was magnificent and terrifying, fear and wonder warring in the runesmith’s mind as he beheld the ancient creature. Wings enfolded, it scaled the cliffs of treasure with its talons and sat upon the summit in resplendent glory, slightly awkward despite its size and obvious majesty.
Scales of incarnadine red encased its muscular torso. The ribbed belly was softer and paler, like curdled milk, but still leathern and the match of any common blade or lance. A serpentine neck was punctuated by arching spines twice the length of an elven spear and twice as thick again. Its snout was long, ringed by jagged fangs and drooled smoke and sulphurous ichor.
But even as it unfurled its mighty wings, the membrane spanning the pinions as thick as mail and many times more resilient, it was the eyes that Skalf fixated on. They were jade green slivers of coldest ice, pitiless and malignant. As it emitted a reverberant bellow of challenge, Skalf realised it wanted to feed and he would be its morsel.
Skalf regarded the small forging hammer still tucked in his belt. Its head was blackened from his efforts in the forge. Such petty concerns seemed like a lifetime ago.
Fighting would be unwise. To stand was to die, so Skalf ran.
Presaged by the sharp intake of bestial breath, a plume of flame roared in front of the runesmith and he turned. Spuming fire cut him off again and he came up short. Molten metal surrounded him like a gilded lagoon in which he was the only island. Tendrils of flame flickered in the gleaming magma-gold, licking at the toecaps of his boots.
Graug bellowed again, a high-pitched sound that might have been mirth. Its shadow loomed, eclipsing the dwarf utterly. The dragon had him trapped.
Skalf turned to face it, defiance not fear written on his face.
‘Grimnir!’ he raged at the beast, which reciprocated with a roar of its own that swamped the air and thickened it with the stink of sulphur.
Rearing back a serpentine head, Graug snapped its jaws once in threat and then lathed the air with a long, leathery tongue.
Then it dived.
Despite being surrounded by a river of burning, molten gold, Skalf fled. The runes on the zharr-klod blazed bright as he ran, muttered oaths from the runesmith to Grungni and Valaya punctuating ever miraculous step.
Graug was unprepared. It thought its prey pinned by the mire it had fashioned. Too late it tried to pull out of its attack, but the dragon’s massive momentum drove it into the patch of gold where the dwarf had been standing. It wings and much of its scaled body were suddenly awash with molten gold. It thrashed as searing, gilt liquid rose up around it, embracing, burning. A bleat of panic escaped its lips, deep and ululating… and rage, rage that it had been duped.
It was hurt, and as he found a place to hide, Skalf smiled.
‘A little sting to remember me by,’ he said, crouching down on his haunches.
At the edge of the cavern, the gloom swallowed him. Skalf had run as far as he dared to put some distance between himself and the dragon. Self-preservation, the desire to make the beast hunt for its prey, burned within him. Though he couldn’t see it, he heard the dragon’s belligerent mewling. Tiny shrieks of pain were interleaved with longer, deeper roars of promise. It would rend him, this beast of the ancient world; it would prove its dominance over his weakling flesh.
Once the dragon had escaped, clawed its way to solid ground scarred and enraged, Skalf would be dead. It had played with him at first; now it knew the folly of that. Graug would not err again. Surrounded by the dead in this cavern of lost treasures, the runesmith would become just another failed hero amongst those interred within.
‘Just as Daled Stormbreaker was…’ he uttered mournfully then stopped.
In the dragon’s rampage, pillars of coins and gemston
es had been toppled, dense banks of gold had levelled out; the landscape had changed. Things long buried in the gilded depths had re-emerged like bodies bloated with putrescence or old bones arisen to the surface in a sudden swell.
Skalf caught sight of an axe handle. Discerning the icon upon its pommel, he crawled over to it on his belly. Graug had freed itself of the molten mire and was stalking him, trying to heave in the dwarf’s scent through its flaring nostrils. A glimpse through the collapsed hoard just as he reached the weapon revealed the beast was partially blinded, one jade sliver turned milky white and ringed by burned, swollen dragon flesh.
It was drawing closer.
Gripping the axe haft, Skalf pulled. The broken lightning bolt icon on the pommel quivered but did not yield. A few more coins trickled away, tinkling as they rolled and settled.
They revealed a blade of purest gromril seized in a fist of black, glittering stone.
It had been almost a thousand years since Daled Stormbreaker had ventured into the mountains. Some say he met his end in Graug’s lair. Skalf now knew that to be true. He also knew the nature of the thing that held the fabled dwarf hero’s weapon fast.
‘Karadurak…’ Skalf’s heart sank.
Brushing away more of the coins, heedless of the clamour they created, Skalf realised what he must do.
A skeletal face loomed out of the spilled gold. It wore a helm with a chainmail coif around the head and neck. Upon its ruined chest was a talisman with a broken fork of lightning as its sigil.
Graug’s heavy tread sent tremors through the treasure mounds, scattering coins like rain. Its rasping breath was near enough to taste. The blow, if failed, would bring the dragon to him. There would be no more escapes after that.
Skalf met the empty, hollow gaze of Daled Stormbreaker.
‘I beseech you…’ he whispered.
Unhitching the forge hammer from his belt, he raised the weapon above his shoulder and spoke the words of invocation his master had taught him.
‘Let me strike truly.’
A thunderclap announced the blow and a sudden, raucous crack of stone split the air moments later as the fabled rune axe came loose. Skalf wrenched it aloft in triumph, releasing a jagged fork of lightning from the blade.
The beast was almost upon him. A resonant screech escaped its lips, a death-promise for the dwarf-thing that had scalded and half-blinded it.
Skalf couldn’t see it yet, but was about to show himself when he felt something brush against his open hand. A shield clad in a patina of dust but fortified by potent runes of protection sat within his grasp. This was Daled’s shield. His icon was described upon the boss. Skalf hadn’t seen it before but when he looked to the fallen hero, he hadn’t moved; there was no response in his dead eyes.
‘Thank you, brother,’ he whispered, taking up the shield, hefting the axe and stepping out into the light.
‘Beast!’ he hollered, and saw the dragon. It was near, Skalf almost felt the malice shimmering off its scaled hide, but had to turn its massive frame to bring its baleful gaze upon him.
‘Graug the Terrible,’ Skalf declared. Swiftness and resolve were everything now. As the dragon came at him, Skalf knew he would be afforded just one chance. He turned his shoulder, shield to the front, the axe brandished behind him like a crackling talisman.
‘Come forth and be reckoned!’
A burst of flame surged from the dragon’s mouth and Skalf raised the shield, sinking behind it and praying that the engraved runes were still potent. Incredible heat crashed over him in a vast wave. He felt the edges of his beard smouldering with it, his skin prickling, but he endured.
When the firestorm abated, Skalf lowered the shield and saw that Graug was bearing down on him. It was immense, almost paralysing in its ferocity. Jaws extended, still drooling the fiery aftermath of its breath, the dragon meant to chew the runesmith in half.
Trusting Daled’s blade, in the teachings of his master and the legacy of those brave dwarfs he had seen slain in this place, Skalf swung. As the axe’s runic edge cleaved through inviolable scale, chewed into skin and then flesh, he roared. A great fissure opened up in Graug’s neck and bathed him in its jettisoning blood. He cut again as the beast stumbled, a panicked bleat escaping from its lolling maw.
‘Grimnir!’ Skalf dug a rent into its shoulder. The return stroke hacked a wedge into the jugular. Anointed by ancient lifeblood, the gold turned wet and crimson. A final blow split open the monster’s belly, releasing shining ropes of intestine.
Graug’s final death cry was a shriek that reverberated around the vast cavern, shaking it to its core. As it rolled onto its flank, heaving a last tortured breath, Skalf sagged and nearly fell.
It was not the battle he had envisaged. It was not the glorious moment of dragon slaying he had thought it would be. It was brutal and messy; it was almost honourless in its savagery. But Graug was dead and he had reclaimed the trappings of Daled Stormbreaker into the bargain.
It would suffice.
Sagas would be written of this moment, of that he was certain. They would not recount all that had transpired, they would glorify and aggrandise because all great deeds need a great tale to go with them. Skalf just wanted to return to the surface, to be reunited with what was left of his clan. The way back was denied to him, but ahead there was a small oval of light leading to an upper chamber. Like any dwarf, he could find a way marker and reach the upper hold halls again.
But he still had one more duty to perform before he could leave.
Strapping the shield to his back, Skalf took the rune axe in a two-handed grip and eyed the cleft he’d made in the dragon’s neck.
‘Still a little flesh to hew,’ he muttered and lifted the blade.
The sound of steps echoing up the stairway to the upper hold hall had Belgrad reaching for his warhammer.
Behind him, his hammerer brethren rushed to a make a line of dwarf iron between the slumped King Durik and the gaping portal to the lower deeps.
‘Give your name!’ he challenged when the steps were so close that the stranger’s arrival was imminent.
The footsteps continued unabated but no answer was forthcoming.
‘Give your name or face reckoning,’ said Belgrad, casting an anxious glance back to the still king.
Revealed in the flickering brazier light at the edge of the portal, a diminutive shadow fell into the upper hold hall.
‘Grobi?’ asked Uthgar, the hammerer at Belgrad’s left shoulder. He would be his champion’s shield should the stranger be hostile and the dwarfs forced to fight.
‘Nay…’
‘Stay your weapons,’ uttered a weary voice from the darkness, his tread slowing as he reached the summit of the lonely stairwell.
Skalf stomped into the chamber. Upon his back was a glittering rune axe and shield. Clutched in his hands was a rope tied to a massive dragon head.
‘It is Graug,’ he said without pride. His eyebrows raised when he saw King Durik and then immediately formed a frown. ‘He is dead then.’
Belgrad had lowered his arms, as did his brethren, and was looking at the severed head before him.
‘Aye,’ he muttered, meeting the runesmith’s gaze at last. ‘He did not last long beyond you venturing into the depths. Your companions?’
‘Are feasting in Grungni’s halls as they have earned.’
‘And Prince Darin?’
‘Him too.’
‘When did he fall?’ Belgrad had gone back to surveying the dragon’s head, glass-eyed and with its tongue unfurled between its broken fangs.
Skalf bowed his head and muttered an oath to Valaya for the dead king. ‘Not long beyond us venturing into the depths.’
Belgrad nodded, as he’d already guessed as much.
When he looked up again, a fierce intensity blazed in his eyes as bright and fervent as any brynduraz.
‘Graug is dead, so too our liege.’ He kneeled, laying his hammer in front of him. The other hammerers followed their champion
and soon all of the king’s retainers were bowing.
‘Long live Skalf Dragonslayer,’ said Belgrad, his strident tones echoed. ‘Long live the King of Karak Azgal.’
Skalf nodded. The clans were few but they were proud. They needed leadership, and deeds forged leaders.
‘Rise,’ he said, his thoughts with his master and all the lessons he had imparted. ‘Rise, and find again the courage of Azgal.’
Hoard Hold was lost. It could never be recovered, but like a forge flame, the spirit of the dwarfs still burned.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas including the bestselling Raven’s Flight. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including the Space Marine Conquests novel Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah, Rise of the Ynnari: Ghost Warrior, Jain Zar: The Storm of Silence and Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan. He also wrote the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and much more besides. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.
Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Red-marked and Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Warhammer Chronicles novel The Great Betrayal and the Age of Sigmar story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.