The Great Betrayal (18 page)

‘Bollocks, laddie!’ A raucous bellow broke through the fog. King Grundin of Karak Kadrin was on his feet and swearing readily. ‘We should be more concerned about the return of the urk and grobi. Ach, there are fekking hundreds of the wee little bastards roaming beneath my halls. What’s to be done aboot them, might I ask?’

Grundin’s loyalty to Karaz-a-Karak was beyond doubt, but a little needle still persisted between him and Gotrek on account of the High King’s son’s refusal of his daughter Helda.

‘Perhaps you should look to your own ironbreakers to clear your underhalls of the vermin, as we all have,’ countered Aflegard.

‘Ye dirty little scutter!’ Four of the High King’s hearthguard had to hold Grundin back from crossing the hall and lamping one on Aflegard’s bulbous nose.

‘Enough!’

One word, not shouted, but with raised voice, silenced the room.

A grumbling hubbub persisted, but it was impossible to stop a dwarf king from muttering his displeasure.

Gotrek looked down on his vassals and scowled.

‘You are kings of the Karaz Ankor, not bickering grobi chieftains. I invite you into my halls, let you eat my meat, drink my beer to discuss important matters of state, not settle old scores.’

Grundin shrugged off the guards with a curse or two then bowed a quick apology. Chuntering, he sat back down.

An impressive feast had been arrayed for the kings, who sat in a semi-circle before their liege-lord, a host of retainers behind them. Adjacent to the Great Hall, through two low archways chiselled with runes and gems, were a pair of large feast halls. Racks of stout wooden tables with short-legged stools and benches sat within. Soon they would be brimming with food and ale.

The vassal lords had been fed already – some still carried their tankards – but the second course was being readied. Roast boar, elk, thick slabs of beef and even fowl were being prepared and cooked for the edification of the High King’s guests. The look on Gotrek’s face at that moment suggested he wanted to spit on their food and throw them out of his house.

‘But what of the elgi problem, my liege-lord?’ asked another voice, one that was more cultured and refined than the rest. He had seated himself away from the crowds, at the edge of the semi-circle, so that Gotrek had to crane his neck to speak to him or risk looking as if he was showing disrespect.

Sinking two heavily ringed thumbs into his gilded belt, King Varnuf of Karak Eight Peaks asked, ‘Well, my High King?’

Regarding the ostentatiously attired dwarf with his gems and his indecently large crown, Gotrek answered through clenched teeth.

‘There are elgi who are guests of this hold, I’d remind you,’ he said. ‘Not a thousand paces from this very hall in fact. And once the rinkkaz is done with, I’m expecting you all to eat with them too.’ He glared at Varnuf before he could interrupt. ‘I’ll tell you why we tolerate the elgi, why they are allowed to roam in our lands and trade with our merchants. It’s very simple. Peace.

‘For thousands of years we dawi have fought. We’ve dug our holds, we’ve honoured our ancestors, killed urk and grobi and drakk by the score. But now we have peace. For once, our hearths are safe and our wars a distant memory. I could no more expel the elgi than I could oust you all from your own halls.’

That spurred a sudden bout of vociferous complaint, amidst threat of grudgement and invocation of the reckoners.

‘Don’t be soft in the head,’ Gotrek snapped, silencing the ire of some of the more belligerent kings. ‘I mean the elgi are staying. They are our allies, and they’ve given me no reason to believe otherwise.’

‘Their ways are not our ways,’ Thagdor protested. ‘I want ’em off my hills and out of my chuffing sight.’

‘You’re welcome to move them yourself, Thagdor,’ said Gotrek, ‘but know that I won’t raise a finger to help you and I’ll make damn sure none of your fellow kings do either. I won’t jeopardise peace.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t.’

Further grumblings greeted this remark but the High King would not be swayed.

His gaze alighted on Varnuf who said nothing, but merely sank back into his seat. His face was lost in smoke and shadow until the tip of his pipe flared and threw a glow upon a stern and envious countenance.

Ever had the Vala-Azrilungol, the ‘Queen of the Silver Depths’, been a rival to the majesty and splendour of Karaz-a-Karak. Its halls were vast and impressive, its wealth immense. Varnuf considered Eight Peaks as a rival to Karaz-a-Karak, and himself a worthy replacement for the current High King. He would not do so through dishonourable means, for this was not the dwarf way, but he would also not shirk from the Dragon Crown should it be offered to him.

Gotrek had neither the will nor the strength to continue the argument. It was draining, and he slumped back in his throne.

‘The elgi stay. This is my final word.’ He surveyed the room with his gimlet gaze, ‘And any who gainsay it had best take up their axe and be ready to fight their king.’

CHAPTER TEN

The Hammer of Old

After leaving Snorri
to the tender ministrations of a certain priestess, Morgrim didn’t return to his clan holdings as he originally intended. To reach the southern halls of Karaz-a-Karak, even via the mining routes, would take too long and he had no desire to face his father. Not yet.

His mind was occupied by other thoughts.

Morgrim believed in fate, he believed in a reason for everything and everything for a reason. So when Ranuld Silverthumb pronounced a great destiny for his cousin, he was certain of its fulfilment. This in turn troubled him. His concern was twofold: first at what lengths Snorri would go to in order to ensure he attained his prophesied greatness as quickly as possible and second, what that meant for him.

If he was lucky, a dwarf would live a long life; but children were rare and in order for his name to live on, his legacy to endure, it was by his deeds that he would often be remembered. Morgrim had no wife, and no aspirations to find one. He did not wish to be a general or even a king, though his position as the prince’s cousin could afford him such a title. Like his father and his father before him, he was a miner. It was a life and profession that suited him, that suited many dwarfs, but one thing about it bothered him.

How would he make his mark?

Such aspirations had never worried him before, but some of Snorri’s rampant ambition had rubbed off he supposed. Death had been close in the dilapidated halls of Karak Krum. He’d felt it like a cold breath on the back of his neck. Yes, he and Snorri had laughed about it, but Morgrim saw the look in his cousin’s eyes that mirrored his own.

Both of them could have been killed in that lonely place, left to be gnawed upon by rats. Morgrim did not want that as his epitaph. Like any dwarf, he wanted to be remembered.

Perhaps then that was why he now found himself in the Hall of Kings, standing before one of the greatest liege-lords Karaz-a-Karak had ever known.

Every previous incumbent of the Throne of Power was honoured in this echoing gallery of jewel and stone. Thorik Snorrison, slayer of the
ngardruk
; Gorim Ironhammer, he who discovered the mines of Gunbad and Silverspear; and Gurni Hammerfist, he who was father of Gotrek and defeated the orc warchief, Huzkalukk with only one hand. Legends all, but it was the alcove-chamber of Snorri Whitebeard that was the largest and most venerated.

An immense statue of the High King of the Karaz Ankor, rendered in his full panoply of war and hewn from flawless marble, stared out into the darkness of the deeper hall.

The Hall of Kings was a place of veneration, of quiet imprecation to the spirits of the great ancestors. Some came to beseech wisdom, others fortune and better times. Occasionally, dwarfs would speak their grudges before these effigies of stone or swear oaths of vengeance or fealty.

Morgrim did none of these things, for he did not come to the Hall of Kings on his behalf but rather he came to plead for another.

‘Tromm, High King Whitebeard,’ he uttered, bowing his head sombrely to remove his helm before taking a knee in the shadow of the cyclopean liege-lord of Karaz-a-Karak. ‘I come to you on behalf of another. Though he carries your namesake, and proudly, he does not have your temperance.’ Breathing deeply, he said. ‘Let him heed the wisdom of his ancestors. By Grimnir, he has courage but let him be brave enough to not let pride ruin a father’s love and respect. Let him find inner counsel against reckless abandon. Let him live to see his destiny realised. For this I make my oaths to the gods, to hearth and hold.’

Morgrim raised his eyes, returning the great horned war helm to his head.

Hard marble stared back at him.

The ancient king had not stirred. No magic had animated his stern countenance, which was as unyielding as winter earth. His jaw was still fixed. His fists were still clenched.

But Morgrim hoped his words were heeded anyway. Oaths made, he began to appreciate the rest of what lay inside the alcove-chamber.

Though his weapons and armour were locked away in the treasure vaults of the lower deeps, protected by rune seals and stern-faced ancestor guards, there were other artefacts of Snorri Whitebeard’s reign. Banners describing his conquests and deeds swathed each of the chamber’s three walls. Trophies of the terrible monsters he had slain were hung up on spikes of iron between them.

Some of the scaled flesh of Gnaugrak was missing, supposedly cleaved off to fashion a wondrous cloak given as a gift to one of Snorri’s vassal lords. It was said it had taken the king and over fifty of his ironbreakers to impale the dragon’s heart. On the opposite wall, the spiked head of a massive orc chieftain. Preserved in oils and unguents, the greenskin still leered, though the gums around its shattered tusks were slowly succumbing to rot. It neighboured a crushed giant’s skull and beside that was a flayed troll carcass, doused in fire-salt to prevent regeneration. Morgrim doubted that even without the salt, the beast would ever be able to re-knit its skin and bones, or grow its organs anew. Stranger things had happened though.

Bones of other creatures, griffons and shaggoths, great tuskors and iron-hided manticores, fimir and wyverns described a bloody legacy that stretched into centuries. But it was to the broken hammer, incongruous amongst the grisly trophies, that the dwarf’s eye was drawn.

‘What must it have been like to live in such days?’ he wondered aloud, reaching out for the weapon.

Its power had been drained long ago, during one of the last great battles of the age. A jagged cleft raked down the head and split the haft, evidence of where a daemon’s evil had broken it. Tentatively, Morgrim went to trace his finger down the hammer’s mortal wound, imagining it reforged before he took his hand away.

‘A different time…’

Morgrim turned sharply at the voice in his ear. What he saw standing in the entrance of the alcove-chamber, almost fifty paces away, was a friend.

A look of incredulity crumpled Morgrim’s face as he recognised the warrior before him.

‘Drogor?’

The dwarf was dressed in furs and lizard hide, a bronze pauldron over one shoulder and a helmet with a flanged crest in the crook of his right arm. On his left side was a mace, also bronze, with a heavy gem affixed to the pommel. He looked weather-beaten, his skin sun-kissed and a peaty brown, but he wasn’t old. White, wiry hair ran a ring around his balding pate and his long moustaches drooped like the exhausted tentacles of some leviathan cloud. His beard was bound in a bronze ringlet, etched with the snarling visage of a serpent. A cloak of exotic feathers cascaded down his back.

Drogor was staring intently at the statue and the hammer above it in what Morgrim took to be reverence. At mention of his name, the dwarf smiled and nodded.

‘By the ancestors, I thought you were dead!’ Rushing over, Morgrim clapped his errant friend in a firm embrace, slapping his back and shoulder.

‘I went south with my clan, Morg,’ said Drogor, coughing as Morgrim crushed the air out of him. ‘I didn’t venture north to the Wastes.’

‘Of course… I just didn’t expect to see you again.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘There’s been no word from Karak Zorn in many years, and last we heard…’

At this remark, Drogor nodded grimly.

‘Aye, there are worse things than sun and jiggers the size of your fist in the endless jungle. Ziggurats that claw at the sky, and beasts…’ He shook his head, as his gaze was drawn far away as if back beneath the sweltering canopy. ‘Like you have never before seen. Creatures of tooth and scale, of leather pinion and tusk, chitinous bone plates that repel crossbow bolts like paper darts.’

Drogor’s hand was shaking, and Morgrim clutched the fingers to steady it.

‘It’s all right, old friend,’ he said, his voice soothing, ‘you are returned to Karaz-a-Karak, but I am surprised you are back at all. How long did you travel from the Southlands to get here? How many long years has it been?’

Clans Bargrum and Zarrdum had been staunch allies for many decades, across two generations without bloodshed or a grudge made. Miners and fortune hunters, the Zarrdums had left Karaz-a-Karak over twenty years ago and gone south to be reunited with their cousins in the sunny climes of Karak Zorn.

Finding his composure again, Drogor said, ‘We were many months travelling on perilous roads. Fifty of us ventured out, our pack mules brimming with saurian gold. Of that expedition, I alone remain.’

‘What happened?’

Drogor’s expression darkened further. ‘Having survived the jungle with just under half of my father’s warriors, we reached the borders of Karak Azul.’ His eyes narrowed, remembering ‘Foolishly, we thought we would be safe in the shadow of the mountain but we were wrong. An ambush, old friend. Archers, hidden in the crags and raining steel-fanged death upon me and my fellow dawi. It was a slaughter.’

Morgrim’s jaw clenched at such perfidy. ‘Cowards…’ he breathed, an undercurrent of anger affecting his voice. ‘How did you survive?’

At this Drogor hung his head. ‘To my shame, I ran and hid.’

‘Dreng tromm… Mercy of Valaya that you lived. There is no shame in retreating from certain death.’

‘Then why is it that I wish I had died with my kin?’

Morgrim gripped the shoulder of his old friend, and exhaled a deep, rueful breath.

‘Come with me,’ he said, after some thought. ‘I must meet my cousin outside the Great Hall but then we can find an alehouse and drink to the honour of your slain clansmen.’

Nodding solemnly, Drogor said, ‘I don’t think I have ever met your cousin, the great prince of the Karaz Ankor. I much look forward to it.’

‘I warn you,’ said Morgrim as he left the alcove-chamber, ‘he takes a little getting used to.’

Drogor smiled. ‘We have time, old friend.’