The Great Betrayal

by Nick Kyme

  Snorri Whitebeard unleashed a bolt of lightning through the haft of his hammer. It sparked and cracked with all the fury of the ancestors, luminous and burning. A tide of hell-spawn that had come crawling over the lip of the flat rock where he made his stand was sent reeling. Blackened and smouldering, the creatures pitched over the edge and did not return. Sulphur-stink tainted the air as they were banished, the unreality of this place the only thing keeping them from dissipating immediately.

  It had been a verdant valley once, the rich volcanic soil of the mountain giving life to acres of forest. All that had changed with the coming of Chaos. A blasted landscape, scorched black and seized in the grip of a half-frozen waste, was all that remained.

  A mire of corpses piled up around the foot of the rock, putrefying with the taint of Ruin. From the steaming carcasses that were dried to husks and broken open by the baleful sun further abominations arose. Dewy eyelids blinked and nictitated in the light. Tentacles, claws and fleshy protuberances burst from skin-taut bodies eager for transformation. Carapace, chitin and malformed bone swaddled beasts already overrun with corruption that advanced against the elves and dwarfs.

  These were the spawns of Chaos, hell-ravaged abominations birthed by fell sorcery of the darkest kind.

  Uttering a cry to Khaine, the elven war god, Malekith speared a basilisk through its gullet. Viscous ichor spewed arterially from the wound. Mercury-swift, the elf prince leapt forwards and decapitated the beast without pause with his blade, Avanuir. Its dead, collapsing mass crushed several lesser beasts and swept many others to their doom as it fell.

  Hundreds more of the wretched creatures now littered the rock where the lords of the dwarfs and elves made their stand. Daemons of every malformed persuasion and aspect had fallen beneath their weapons.

  With a grunt, Snorri kicked a corpse over the edge. If they allowed the bodies to accumulate both elf and dwarf would soon be slipping on tainted entrails. Malekith’s dragon had not borne them here just to die ignominiously for no purpose.

  ‘’Tis thirsty work,’ remarked the dwarf in a moment of rare respite. Snorri licked his lips, smiling at the elf prince who hurled his spear into the belly of a bloated troll. Fire ignited along the haft, immolating the beast.

  ‘We’ll toast our victory later,’ Malekith replied, pointing to the southern edge of the rock where a horde of glaive-wielding beasts had just appeared. It was like an ever-lapping tide, with Snorri and Malekith acting as breakwaters. Horned and cloven-hooved, heat bled off the daemons’ muscled bodies in a gory steam. Malign intelligence flickered in their pit-black pupils. It warred with a terrible, consumptive rage.

  Attracted by the scent of power emanating from the dwarf and elf, the daemons came on in droves. Eight became sixteen then over twenty as more and more of the daemons wanted to taste the flesh of true heroes. Like sharks drawn to blood, an insatiable hunger motivated them.

  ‘We are the devourers…’ they said as one in a horrible collision of voices patched together from a thousand different shouts of anger and wrath.

  Grinning wickedly they began to circle the lords, beckoning them towards death and damnation with the tips of their hell-blades. Loping between the bloody daemons were brass-collared hounds, bigger and more brutish than any normal canine and with a vaguely reptilian aspect.

  In seconds, the edges of the flat rock were festooned with daemons and the lords were surrounded.

  Snorri backed up, snarling with wrath palpable enough to make the abominations pause.

  ‘We shall feast upon your mortal soul…’ promised the daemons. A hound leapt at the dwarf with an echoing roar.

  But it would take more than a daemonic dog to fell the High King. ‘Then chew on this,’ he said. Silver fire flared, too fast to truly see, and the hell-beast was cut in half.

  ‘Tasty?’ asked Snorri, brandishing the head of his gore-stained axe at the other monsters.

  Three more hounds sprang after the first, but were swiftly struck by a flight of pearlescent arrows. Every shaft was a heart shot.

  Snorri only half turned, giving Malekith a sidelong glance.

  The elf nodded to the dwarf, lowering his bow and stowing it to draw Avanuir.

  ‘That’s a debt I’ll have to repay now,’ said the High King. Snorri grinned at the elf, showing two rows of crag-like teeth within the forest of his long beard. ‘We stand before the world’s ending, elfling.’

  Malekith gave the dwarf a wry glance, but his attention was partly on the daemons advancing across the Fist of Gron. He lost count after fifty, and was acutely aware he had retreated several paces. Elf and dwarf were almost back to back.

  ‘You sound almost pleased.’

  ‘Aye, think of the saga it will make. Immortality awaits!’

  Malekith didn’t sound convinced, ‘Not if there is no one left alive to write it, and all existence has come to an end.’

  ‘Good point,’ the dwarf conceded. ‘Let us hope not then.’

  Snorri eyed the daemons as he would dung upon his hobnailed boot, swallowing back a bitter taste in his throat at their stench. A cage of iron-hard, blood-red monsters surrounded them and its bars were tightening.

  ‘We need room to fight,’ he muttered, then hefted both his rune weapons and beckoned to the daemons. ‘Come on then!’

  In one gnarled fist the dwarf had a gromril axe, its face etched with three angular runes. In the other he had a hammer, a lightning bolt embossed upon the head in gold. Thick links of gilded mail swathed his broad, muscular body. His arms, dark from the forge and the earth, were bonded with torcs and vambraces. A red, fur-trimmed cloak fell from slab-like shoulders armoured with pauldrons fashioned into the faces of ancestor gods. He wore no helm, for he wanted his enemies to see his fury, but carried a crown upon his brow instead. Runes inscribing every inch of his armour shimmered. Flawless rubies, verdant emeralds and pellucid sapphires studded every ring and bracelet.

  I am the High King, they said. I am Lord of the Dwarfs and my vengeance is terrible. Behold! For your doom has come.

  Snorri beat his chest with a clenched fist.

  ‘Khazuk!’

  It was not meant as a challenge, but a death sentence.

  The daemons heard neither but attacked as one, hounds and masters both. They were a crimson tide, of rage, hate and a desire to end all things.

  Snorri cried out to Malekith as the daemons rushed them, ‘Hold on, elfling!’ and brought his rune hammer crashing down on the rock with all the potency of a lightning bolt.

  Tremors rippled from the point where the dwarf had struck, cracks jagging outwards in an ever-expanding crater of sundered earth. Stone split, sending teeth of razor-edged rock into the daemons, scything into hellish flesh and spilling their tainted ichor.

  Malekith was fast as quicksilver, darting between the spears of rock thundering out of the ground, running ahead of the quake. He weaved around the lazy blow of one daemon, severed the head from another. A third he impaled, before swinging the twitching corpse around to bludgeon three more. Destruction from the dwarf’s hammer rained around him, but did not touch the elf. Not one scratch.

  Avanuir took a heavy toll, almost acting as an extension of the elf’s will and fury. Not to be outdone, the dwarf king weighed in with his axe, smashing into anything that had survived his first titanic blow.

  Howling, bleating, furious, the daemons were slaughtered.

  A heavy pall of dust engulfed the survivors, their balefire eyes the only thing visible at first. The storm presaged a seismic crescendo, an aftershock of power that cast the rest of the bloody daemons back over the edge of the rock. They fell screaming, raging before being dashed to paste or impaled on the upraised blades of the monsters below.

  Malekith was crouched down, his head bowed. He held on to his spear haft, using it to anchor him to the rock until the storm had passed. With the tremors fading, he
rose to his full height again.

  The elf prince was as impressive as the dwarf.

  A long coat of ithilmar mail draped his lithe but honed body. Nearly twice as tall as the High King, his face was thin and pale but noble. There was wisdom in his eyes, born of the esteemed bloodline of the greatest asur, but coldness too that the dwarf did not fully understand. At times, it bordered on cruelty. Angular, almost almond-shaped, the elf prince’s eyes were concealed behind a tall, conical helm that left only his mouth visible. A mane of griffon hair cascaded from the peak and ran the length of Malekith’s back.

  Snorri was tired. Breathing hard, the dwarf leant his forehead against his hammer’s pommel and bent one knee to rest. It was almost genuflection. The oath on his lips had been spoken to Grungni, so it was as if he were praying at the altar of his own rune-crafted hammer.

  The hand on his shoulder lifted him, and brought strength back to his weary limbs.

  The dust was receding, spiralling away on the hot breeze. But through the slow dispersion of the cloud, claws could be seen and heard reaching for the summit of the rock.

  ‘Relentless bastards, aren’t they?’ the dwarf remarked, raising his chin.

  Malekith pulled his gore-streaked spear from the ground. In his other hand was Avanuir. Although it had reaped many monstrous heads during the battle, the silver sword’s blade remained untarnished. Just a part of its magic – along with its brutal killing edge.

  ‘Old friend,’ said the elf, ‘I think it is almost time for us to depart.’ With the spear’s tip, he pointed to the battlefield below where their armies warred against the Chaos hosts. Judging by the fury of the unfolding melee, the clash had reached a tipping point.

  ‘Aye, lad, you may be right,’ Snorri admitted, deciding to slake his lust for grudgement on the beasts below. Weary, he got to his feet.

  Malekith laughed. It was a hollow sound, but had genuine mirth.

  ‘Lad, am I? You ever manage to amuse me.’

  ‘Old, am I?’ Snorri replied, his grin as broad and wide as an axe blade.

  Though he was far the younger of the two, an age of living beneath the earth, of sweating in the forges and furnaces of the underdeep, had left the dwarf with skin like baked leather. Unlike the elf, he was not immortal, although relatively long-lived.

  ‘See there?’ The elf hastened to the edge of the flat rock, thrusting again with his spear. He kicked at a daemon that had come close to the lip, giving it little thought as it plummeted hundreds of feet to its doom.

  Snorri joined him, hacking into the face of another beast that had reached the edge of the Fist. The dwarf followed the elf’s pointing spear tip. Crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deepened as he squinted into the fading sun.

  ‘A breach in their lines.’

  Through the mad swell, the pitch and yaw of the battle, it was difficult to see at first, but the ranks of the Chaos host had thinned. Where before a seemingly impenetrable tide of monsters had barred the way for the elves and dwarfs to reach the feathered sorcerer and the bloated lord, now there was a gap. A slim gap. A slim hope, but hope it still was.

  The dwarf’s plan was straightforward. Use them both as bait.

  His thane-kings and the other lordlings of the elves too had argued against it but Snorri would not be swayed, nor Malekith who saw its virtues at once. The elf’s dragon had brought them high above the battlefield to the Fist of Gron where all the foul daemons of Ruin could see and taste them. Eager to kill the elf prince and the dwarf king, the horde would flock to them, but in their eagerness would leave their daemonic masters less well protected.

  ‘Your ruse has worked, old friend.’

  ‘Of course it worked, I am a dawi!’

  Malekith laughed again, but this time it was deep and hearty.

  ‘Fighting at your side, I do not think I have ever been more at peace,’ he said, flashing the dwarf a warm smile.

  Snorri frowned at him.

  ‘You find your solace in the oddest of places,’ he shrugged, ‘but then you are an elgi and as strange to me as the sky.’

  Snorri grew stern. Despite this relative victory, the plan would only succeed if their armies held and could maintain the breach until he and Malekith arrived to lead them. The High King gazed out from the Fist of Gron, trying to gauge how the dwarfs were faring. They were fighting hard, thane-kings leading their warriors from the slopes of the distant mountain into the heart of the daemonic hosts and their beasts. On the vast left flank, lightning speared from runic anvils in their dozens and turned the monsters into ash. Immense pillars of flame rolled out from other runic war engines. Daemons and beasts caught up in the conflagration were swiftly rendered to charred hunks of tainted meat. Earth trembled as runesmiths in their hundreds called forth powerful quakes that opened up great chasms in the ground, swallowing scores of monsters before closing ominously.

  Behind the stout phalanxes of dwarf warriors leading the attack, Snorri saw giants. Creations of stone and metal, these ancient golems were slow to rise and quick to slumber. Only the most powerful runelords could rouse them. Like the anvils, they were magical machineries fashioned by the supreme artifice of rune masters. The craft to forge them anew was lost, but the gronti-duraz lived still. It meant ‘enduring giant’ in the dwarf tongue.

  On this great day when elf and dwarf stood together united in purpose, they had woken in their hundreds. The sight brought a tear to the old dwarf king’s eye. It was to be their final battle, for the magic to animate them was getting harder and harder to craft, seeping away like a draught through a slowly widening crack.

  From the craggy flanks of Karag Vlak a horn blast resounded, seizing the High King’s attention. Ballistae gathered in serried ranks turned the air dark with flights of bolts the size of lances. Farther up the mountainside, mangonels and onagers hurled stones. Chunks of rock etched with runes of banishment and daemon-killing crashed and rolled amongst the horde. Beasts and daemons alike were crushed and skewered by the deadly rain pouring from the ranks of war machines.

  Though monsters of every stripe had been unleashed against the armies of Snorri and Malekith, it was a plague-ridden tide that faced the dwarfs. Even high above the battlefield, Snorri could see hundreds of horned and hunchbacked daemons. Tallymen, he had heard them named. One-eyed, bloated bellied, the stench of their decaying flesh assailed his nostrils all the way up on the Fist of Gron.

  Lesser, maggot-ridden beasts loped alongside them in their thousands. Some had once been men. Slug-like beasts with gaping maws like cages of acidic slime slithered behind them. Daemonic tallymen rode on the backs of the beasts, rusted bells ringing at their shrivelled necks. Diminutive, wide-mouthed daemons, covered in boils and pustules, swarmed like a rancid sea. They gathered at the edges of the horde, giggling like manic children.

  ‘Such horror…’ breathed the High King of the dwarfs, knowing even this was not the worst of it. Snorri followed the diseased ranks of the enemy until he saw the bloated lord.

  Behind its pestilent legions there loomed a malevolent creature, cankerous and rotten as its vassals. Clad in rags and strips of flesh, a cloud of flies buzzed around it like a miasma. Tattered wings hung from its emaciated arms and a flock of rotting crows perched on its hulking shoulders, cawing malevolently.

  Alkhor, it had named itself. Defiler, it boasted. Tide of Pestilence and Harbinger of Nurgle, it claimed. None of which were its true names, for daemons would never relinquish those.

  Disgusted, Snorri saw a throng of warriors attack the beast and his heart swelled with pride. The banner of Thurgin Ironheart fluttered on the breeze. Snorri clenched a fist as a flash of fire tore down the daemon prince’s flank. For a moment it burned, and the dwarf dared to hope… But then the rent flesh began to re-knit, hideous slime filling the wound and resealing it.

  Alkhor’s foul laughter gurgled on the breeze. Its crow host cawed and chatte
red as a stream of utter foulness retched from the daemon’s ugly mouth.

  Thurgin and his clansmen were overwhelmed, drowned in a stinking mire of vomit. Dwarf skeletons, half clad in rotting plate and scraps of burned leather, bobbed to the surface of the miasma. Hundreds died in seconds, their gromril armour no defence against Alkhor’s disgusting gifts.

  ‘That creature needs sending back to the abyss, as do all its debased kind,’ said Malekith.

  Deep as an abyssal trench, a roar split the heavens. It brought an answering cry from the elf prince before he declared to the dwarf, ‘The war hinges on the next few moments.’

  Snorri’s jaw clenched. The elf was right.

  On the other side of the vast plain, the elves fought a very different foe. Lurid, gibbering creatures cavorted in unruly mobs. Bizarre, floating daemons dressed in skirts of transmuting flesh spat streamers of incandescent fire from their limbs. Feathered beasts, bull-headed monstrosities and hell-spawn wracked with continuous physical change roved next to the daemons.

  ‘They were all once men,’ said Snorri, ‘the barbarian tribes of the north.’

  Malekith looked grim. ‘Now they are monsters.’

  Overhead, the sun was eclipsed as a massive shadow smothered the light.

  Lifting his gaze, the prince of the elves saw a massive host of dragons coursing through the red skies. He longed to join them, his fist clenched as he watched the princes of Caledor and their mounts clash with flights of lesser daemonic creatures.

  Amidst the swathe of dragonscale, he saw the smaller forms of eagles circling with the dragons. They picked apart the hellish flocks so the larger beasts could bring their fury to bear on the Chaos infantry. No less proud, the belligerent cries of the eagle riders carried through the battle din to the glittering elven warriors below.

  He recognised one of them, noble Prince Aestar. He was keen-eyed and raised a quick salute to his lord, which Malekith returned before turning his gaze on the elven warriors below.

  A large phalanx of knights, riding hard alongside scores of chariots, hit a thick wedge of pink, gnarled daemons that blurred and split apart as they were killed. Malekith gaped in disbelief as smaller blue imp-like abominations sprang from the ashes of their larger dead hosts and swarmed over the mounted elves. Victory looked far from certain for the knights, who were on the verge of slowing down and being overwhelmed when a conclave of Sapherian mages riding pillars of storm-cloud rained enchanted death down on the daemons. The creatures squealed in pain and delight, before the knights ended them and the mages flew off to confront a coven of sorcerers riding screaming discs of flame.