The End Times | The Rise of the Horned Rat

by Guy Haley

  Kranskritt, still abased on the floor, felt the air stir the fur on his neck as Soothgnawer bent low. ‘And do you really think,’ the verminlord said, his hot breath washing over the seer, ‘that we can trust a mad-thing like Queek to accomplish that? No.’ Soothgnawer often answered his own questions. ‘Without you, he will fail. And without you, he might survive.’ Soothgnawer’s fleshless smile grew wider on his skull. ‘And we can’t have that, can we, little seer?’

  SIX

  The Breaking of the Mountains

  Morrslieb loomed, bigger than it had ever been, peering over Karag Nar like a glutton eyeing a honey cake. Sickly light shed from its mournful face reflected from the snow, painting the world a disturbing green.

  ‘As you see,’ said Drakki Throngton, loremaster of Vala-Azrilungol, ‘the Chaos moon waxes huge, my lord.’

  ‘What does this all mean?’ whispered Belegar. ‘Other than it’s got bigger,’ he said sharply, remembering Drakki’s endless lectures on precise speech during his youth.

  ‘I do not know,’ admitted Drakki sorrowfully. His breath misted his half-moon spectacles in the cold night air. ‘All I can do is check the measurements of our ancestors against our own observations.’

  ‘And?’ said Belegar.

  ‘Technically, my lord?’

  ‘Aye! Technically. I’m no beardling.’

  ‘I apologise, my lord,’ said Drakki. ‘Well, see here.’ He flopped open a book over his forearm. The moonlight, cursed though it was, was ample illumination for a dwarf to read by. ‘The Chaos moon waxes and wanes according to its own whim. Sometimes there is a pattern, often there is not. It has grown larger and smaller in the past.’ He licked an ink-stained finger and flicked back a couple of hundred pages, two centuries’ worth of measurements. The handwriting was the same as in the recent pages. Drakki was old. ‘Such as here. That was when it was at its largest.’

  Belegar glanced up from the page. ‘The years of the Great War Against Chaos.’

  ‘Indeed, my king.’

  ‘And the numbers?’

  ‘Well, my liege. There we have the most troubling news. These indicate that this is the largest it has ever been. Diameter, illumination, frequency of transit…’ His voice trailed away. ‘All higher numbers even than during the Great War.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Belegar. He leaned against the parapet. In the city in the Great Vale, greenskin campfires burned insolently. ‘And what if I were to request the non-technical version?’

  Drakki shut the book with finality. ‘Then I would say we were in a great deal of trouble, my liege. And not just us. Everybody.’

  ‘Now that’s putting it mildly,’ said Belegar. He drummed his fingers on the stone. ‘I’ve had requests, from the other holds, asking for their warriors back. Even, would you credit it, from High King Thorgrim.’

  ‘Yes, my liege.’

  ‘What kind of world is it, where even a dwarf can’t keep his word any more? A few weeks ago I was up here with Notrigar, winding him up.’

  ‘Oh, he is a little on the sparse-chinned side when it comes to recognising a good joshing, sire,’ said Drakki, his aged face crinkling with mirth.

  ‘That he is,’ said Belegar, no humour in his voice at all. ‘But I don’t feel it now. I look out at this place, Drakki, and all I can see is my dream slipping through my fingers.’

  ‘We will prevail, sire.’

  ‘That’s what I told Notrigar.’ Belegar huffed. The breath strained through his frosty beard to break free in clouds. ‘We do what we can. We’re as fortified as we can be. All we can do is wait for them, because as sure as gold is in the ground and khazukan crave it, they are coming. The only question is when.’

  They looked out over the vale for a while, until a rumbling from the earth had them both casting their eyes downwards. Fragments of stone jumped like frogs from shelf to shelf on the outside of the citadel, click-clacking all the way down. A louder grumble took up with the first, then another and another, all eight mountains ringing the city protesting the failures of the world, sorrowful as longbeards deep in their ale. The ground convulsed, once, then again. The grating of stone on stone from the city told of ruins collapsing.

  Belegar and Drakki swayed, their flat dwarfish feet keeping them upright. Alarms went off up and down the citadel, horns and clanging triangles.

  ‘Earthquake! Earthquake!’ dwarfs shouted.

  The citadel’s masonry ground block on block, sending showers of ancient mortar down on the dwarf king, but the dwarfs were wise to the ways of the earth and built accordingly. The citadel did not fall. Hammerers ran to his side, pitched across the wavering battlements like sailors on a stone ship. ‘Protect the king! Protect the king!’ their leader, Brok Gandsson, bellowed. Shield rims clacked into one another as the dwarfs formed a barrier of gromril and steel to shelter their lord, half of them angling their shields upwards over his head. Fragments of masonry bounced off them.

  ‘Get back! I’m no beardling frightened by a little shiver,’ Belegar shouted, shoving at his protectors. They stood solid as the stones themselves.

  ‘Not until this is over, my king,’ said Brok.

  The earthquake went on for long minutes, dying only gradually. Belegar waited under the shield roof while the earth gave one more heave. No more aftershocks came, and he shoved his men aside. Drakki followed him from the knot of hammerers.

  A wind, unnaturally hot, stirred their beards, the runes on their weapons pulsing with blue light as it ran over them. Out in the ruins came the clamour of panicking orcs and goblins.

  ‘My lord, look!’ Drakki was pointing south. The winter skies were stained orange by distant fire. ‘Karag Haraz is erupting most fiercely.’

  A distant boom rolled over the mountains, reflected from every rock face, until it seemed they clamoured in despair. Far to the north, more flamelight tainted the sky, colouring the high vaults of night.

  ‘And Karag Dronn,’ said Belegar.

  ‘They have been spouting fire for long months now, but these latest eruptions must be immense, if we can see them from here,’ said Drakki, unconsciously reaching for a notepad to mark the phenomenon down. ‘Karag Dronn is over one hundred leagues away.’

  ‘If they both speak, then doubtless Karag Orrud and the Karag Dum do.’

  ‘And east,’ said Drakki quietly. A gentle aftershock shook the ground, causing the hammerers to tense again. Drakki nodded to the eastern night sky. A haze of red coloured it as far as they could see from north to south.

  ‘Grungni’s beard,’ Belegar said. ‘All of them?’ The others remained silent. Such troubles from deep in the earth had brought the Karaz Ankor to its knees in the distant past and heralded the beginning of the dwarfs’ long decline. Nobody needed reminding of that.

  ‘Is it over, loremaster?’ asked Brok.

  ‘There will be further small earthquakes, but I expect the strongest have passed, for now.’ He looked to the Chaos moon, crowding its once larger brother from the sky. ‘There must be some connection. And if it continues to grow, there may be worse to come.’

  Belegar nodded curtly. ‘Messengers!’ he called. Several lightly armoured dwarfs appeared from inside. ‘Get yourselves down into the first deep. I want to know of every stone out of place, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, my liege,’ they all said.

  ‘It would be our bloody luck if that lot brought down some of our defences. If there are any casualties, Valaya forfend, you let me know.’

  The messengers ran off, heavy boots clumping down the winding stairs leading down from the parapet into the citadel.

  ‘Something’s coming, very soon. If this doesn’t–’

  A sky-shattering explosion tore through the night. The face of Karag Nar leapt outwards with surreal slowness, long cloudy trails of rock dust puffing up like flour from a burst sack. The ruined fortress upon its shoul
der tumbled down like a town made of model bricks pushed over by a child, the finely cut dwarf masonry becoming one with the tumble of broken rock racing down the mountain’s flanks. Belegar watched open-mouthed as debris arced towards him.

  Belegar was unceremoniously shoved to the flagstones of the wall-walk by his guards. This time he did not order them back. Pebbles rattled off gromril armour, the heavier stones that came tumbling soon after eliciting grunts from the hammerers covering the king. More explosions boomed, these muffled by depth.

  A rain of boulders slammed down into the city, levelling whole districts. Avalanches of rock poured off the flanks of the mountains, burying further sections.

  Silence was a long time coming.

  Belegar’s hammerers jumped up, hauling the dazed king to his feet. They attempted to hustle him back inside, calling for more of his bodyguard. Belegar was filled with rage and shoved their hands away. He went to the edge of the parapet to see what had been done to his kingdom, ignoring their cries for him to be careful, to get inside.

  A choking mist of pulverised rock hung over the Great Vale, biting the throats of everyone who breathed of it. Caught by the wind, it drifted away like rain, to reveal a scene of utter devastation presided over by the grinning moon.

  Three of the eight mountains bore wounds in their sides. Karag Nar’s eastern face had slumped inwards, while Karag Rhyn had collapsed into a broad fan of rubble, its height reduced by a half.

  Belegar stared out in disbelief. Behind him, his hammerers formed up, but none dared approach the king.

  When he turned to face them, a tear tracked down one dusty cheek.

  ‘The mountains. They have killed the mountains.’

  ‘That was no earthquake,’ said Drakki, blood from a cut on his forehead making red tracks in his dust-whitened face.

  Horns sounded again, this time from inside the citadel, answering others blown in the first deep. Belegar clenched his fist.

  ‘Thaggoraki,’ he said. ‘It is starting.’

  ‘Another war,’ said Drakki.

  ‘No,’ said Belegar, pitching his voice low enough that only Drakki and Brok could hear. ‘The beginning of the end.’

  SEVEN

  The Hall of Reckoning

  Horns sang all over the dwarf-held part of Karak Eight Peaks, echoing down corridors and up forgotten shafts, so that it was impossible to tell where they were coming from.

  ‘That’s the signal! Here they come, lads!’ cried Borrik Norrgrimsson. His ironbreakers, Norrgrimlings all, held their shields up and locked them together, awaiting the arrival of the ratmen.

  ‘It’s about time the thaggoraki got here,’ growled Hafnir Hafnirsson, Borrik’s second cousin. ‘I’m eager to split a few heads.’

  ‘We’ve been standing in this hall for two months waiting for this lot. I’m sure we can hang on for a few more minutes,’ said the Norrgrimlings’ notoriously miserable Ironbeard, Gromley. ‘Now shut up, or you’ll put the thane off. He’s on to something.’

  Borrik kept a careful eye on all three entrances to the Hall of Reckoning. Two dwarf-made stairwells leading down into the enemy-infested second deep, and a massive pit, gnawed by some unspeakable thing, gaped in the middle of the floor. Not goblin work, or Borrik was an umgi. Other places gave him cause for concern. He had a keen eye for tunnelling, Borrik, and had spent a goodly amount of time tapping at the walls with variously sized hammers. There were more tunnels behind the walls, some of them worryingly new. And if there was one thing ‘new’ meant to dwarfs, it was trouble.

  When Belegar assigned him to the hall, he had examined every inch thoroughly. Four hundred and one half-dwarf paces long, part of a broad thoroughfare that once ran east-west through the first deep to join with the Ungdrin Ankor. Blocked at both ends by rock falls, it would have been of little concern, save one thing. The fall at Borrik’s end was pierced by a narrow gap, shored up by a failed expedition many centuries ago. At the other end, in a chamber hacked out of the loose rubble, was a steel-bound door that led into another passageway. This in turn led to the lower parts of the citadel. The door of Bar-Undak was its name, a messenger’s access way to the Ungdrin in happier days. Now, in Borrik’s seasoned opinion, a bloody liability. Belegar had been determined to keep the hall open, it being one of the more easily defensible ways into the deeps. So it stayed open, as did thirty-nine other ways, thought Borrik grimly. Thirty-nine. Sometimes the king was a real wazzok.

  In this tunnel, the Axes of Norr were arranged, two dozen in all, their front rank of ten flush with the low entrance. Seven irondrakes – the Forgefuries – were ranged in front of them.

  ‘If Belegar has one fault, it’s optimism,’ he grumbled to his banner bearer, Grunnir Stonemaster.

  ‘Aye,’ said Grunnir, his eyes fixed like Borrik’s on the arched stairwells leading into the hall. ‘Like you, my lord, I find anything other than healthy cynicism in a dwarf entirely unnatural. But I’ll say this, what other trait would lead a dwarf to try to retake Karak Eight Peaks? There’s a lot to be said for bloody-mindedness. I thought you of all people could respect that.’

  ‘If it had been down to me, I would have blocked off this tunnel long since. As I’ve said to the king a dozen times…’

  Grunnir rolled his eyes. He’d heard this opinion a lot recently. Borrik wasn’t one to let a point lie.

  ‘…ever since Skarsnik’s grobi got pushed out of the upper levels two years gone–’

  ‘It’s been obvious the thaggoraki are planning something,’ said Grunnir, finishing his thane’s words for him, so often had he heard them before. ‘You’re not the king, Borrik. And you and me and all the rest of us followed him here, didn’t we, you grumbaki?’

  ‘So? I’ve every right to grumble.’

  ‘As has every dwarf with a beard as long as yours, cousin. My point is that we all share Belegar’s fault – if it is a fault – in being here at all. So it’s not really his fault, is it?’

  Borrik sniffed. There was no arguing with that. He was quiet a moment. ‘I’d still have sealed this tunnel off, mind.’

  ‘Oh, give it a rest, would you?’ said Grunnir. Borrik raised his eyebrows. ‘Thane,’ added Grunnir.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Borrik.

  There was so much history around them. Ancestor faces at the top of the stairways told of Vala-Azrilungol’s glory days. The rock falls recalled its weakening and downfall, the marks of the mason who had chiselled out the tunnel they now defended harked back to one of the many doomed attempts to reclaim it, while the gaping, tooth-gnawed pit before them told them all who Karak Eight Peaks’s real masters were now.

  A hideous chittering echoed up out of the dark.

  ‘Right, that’s it, here they come,’ said Borrik. ‘Ready, lads!’

  A musty draught blew up from the tunnels.

  ‘By Grimnir’s axe, there must be a lot of them,’ said Grunnir, flapping his hand in front of his face. ‘I can smell them from here!’

  Hafnir grinned. ‘There’s always a lot of them, but it doesn’t matter how many, because we’re here. One hundred or a million of them, they’ll not get past!’

  ‘Aye!’ shouted the lads.

  Stone-deadened explosions sounded down the stairs, sending a brief, fiercer breeze washing over the dwarfs that smelt of gun smoke, sundered rock and blood.

  ‘That’ll be the traps, then,’ said Hafnir. Grim chuckles echoed from gromril helms.

  More explosions sounded, closer now. Any other attacking army might have been discouraged, but the skaven were numberless and were never put off. Borrik hoped they’d killed a lot anyway.

  The first skaven spilled into the room, eyes wild with fear. They were scrawny, badly armed if at all, mouths foaming. They saw the dwarfs in their corner. The front rank hesitated but were pushed on, those attempting to go against the tide falling under the paws of their fello
ws.

  ‘Typical,’ said Borrik, indicating the rusted manacles and trailing chains of the lead skaven with a nod of his head. ‘Slave rats. They’re going to try and wear us down.’

  ‘Don’t they always?’ said Grunnir.

  ‘Just once, it’d be nice to go straight to the main course,’ moaned Gromley.

  ‘In your own time, lads,’ said Borrik, nodding at Tordrek Firespite, the Norrgrimlings’ Ironwarden leader. The Forgefuries levelled their weapons. The skaven scurried forwards, forced on by the mass of ratkin boiling up out of the depths. The far side of the chamber was a mass of mangy fur, crazed eyes, twitching noses and yellow chisel teeth.

  ‘Fire!’ said Tordrek.

  Thick blasts of searing energy shot out of the Forgefuries’ guns, punching through skaven and sending them sprawling back into the mob. The fallen disappeared under their scurrying colleagues. Many fell into the hole in the centre, forced over the edge by the surging press; others stumbled and were crushed underfoot.

  ‘Fire!’ cried Tordrek again. Once more the irondrakes spoke, misting the air with gunsmoke.

  ‘Fire!’ he said one more time. The entire front rank of the skaven horde had been smashed, but thousands more came on behind them.

  ‘That’s close enough. Part ranks!’ shouted Borrik. The dwarf ironbreaker’s formation opened up like a clockwork automaton, allowing the Forgefuries to slip through to the back. They went unhurriedly into the small chamber around the door of Bar-Undak, as if there weren’t a numberless pack of crazed thaggoraki snapping at their heels.

  ‘Close ranks!’ bellowed Borrik. The gromril-clad dwarfs slid back together, presenting their shields as the first skaven hit home.

  The skavenslaves were slight creatures, no bigger than grobi and less heavily built. The wave of them crashed feebly upon the shield wall. Rusty blades and rotten spears broke on impenetrable gromril. More and more skaven piled in from behind, pinning the arms of the foremost, crushing the air out of their lungs. The dwarfs stolidly pushed back, unmoved by the immense pressure. The skaven trapped at the front snapped at the dwarfs, shattering their teeth on armour. The dwarfs responded by swinging their axes, chopping the foe down with every swing. They could not miss. Behind the shield wall it was surprisingly peaceful, as if the dwarfs waited out a storm battering the windows of a comfortable tavern.