“Ten!” shouted Naragrim. “Nine! Eight! Seven…”
Dagskar cracked his whip over the heads of his goblins as the last of his horde tried to shove in to the tunnel after their comrades, who filled it from wall to wall.
“Push harder!” he cried. “Drive ’em back! Cut their beards off! Eat their livers!”
His scrawny chest swelled with pride as he stepped into the shadow of the tunnel at the back of the pack, Kizaz waving the Crooked Moon banner over his head. He had done it! He was walking into the stunties’ hole! He was gonna be a big boss! There was no way Skarsnik could tell him no now!
A deep-throated “crump” interrupted his thoughts. The ground jumped beneath his feet as if it had been hit by the hammer of a god. Before he could do more than mouth a confused “Wha—?” a boiling wall of flame, smoke, rocks and bits of goblin exploded out of the tunnel and blasted him back, heels over head, to crack his skull against one of the stone posts of the stunties’ chain fence, while dead and dismembered goblins landed all around him like a green and red avalanche.
The last thing Dagskar was conscious of before all went black was a deep shuddering rumble, like muffled thunder.
Godri picked himself up from the floor at the centre of the great hall, coughing in the thick cloud of smoke and granite dust that filled it. The other dwarfs were doing the same. Even at such a distance, the force of the explosion had knocked them on their backs. Many of them were wiggling their fingers in their ears, trying to pop them.
The few goblins that had chased them into the hall when they had fallen back were sitting up too, looking dazed. Some were staggering in circles, clutching their heads. Godri squinted past them through the veil of settling dust, looking toward the entry corridor, from which the rumble and crash of falling rock still echoed. The dark doorway was filled to the top with a mix of rubble and crushed goblins that spilled out into the chamber like meat from a sausage casing.
His plan had worked, perhaps too well. It would take them ages to dig out the corridor, and if what Naragrim had said about the crack in its ceiling was true; it might not be repairable at all. He sighed. That speculation was for the future. There was more immediate work to be done.
“Come,” he said, picking up his axe. “Let’s finish them.”
Rodrin and Naragrim and the others fell in beside him and started towards the disoriented goblins.
“Now this will be a slaughter,” said Rodrin, grinning savagely.
“This will be vengeance,” said Godri.
The others murmured their agreement and raised their weapons.
A loud scraping from above them stopped them in their tracks. They looked up. Dust and pebbles rained down from the roof, pattering around the dizzy goblins.
Godri blinked through the grit. A fan of hairline cracks was climbing up the dome roof of the great hall from the collapsed arch of the entry corridor, spreading as it went, and the screeching of stone sliding against stone shivered the room.
“Grungni,” breathed Rodrin. “What now?”
With a deafening crash, a chunk of granite as big as a troll broke away from the roof and plummeted to the floor, squashing a stupefied goblin flat. A shower of lesser chunks followed it as more cracks spread.
“No,” said Naragrim, stepping forward. “No! The fault!” A boulder slammed down next to him. He didn’t seem to notice. “It was worse than I thought.”
Another huge block tore out of the ceiling and the cracks widened and multiplied as they arced over the top of the dome. More blocks followed the first. A dwarf sprung away from one, only to be crushed by a second.
Godri pointed to a small corridor at the far side of the chamber. “Back!” he shouted over the thunder. “To the living quarters! Hurry!”
The dwarfs turned and ran as fast as they could across the wide hall. Those that could only limp were helped by the rest. Godri put his good shoulder under Rodrin’s arm and they ran side by side, supporting each other as a torrent of granite boulders chased them, pounding the floor to splinters and raising an almost impenetrable cloud of dust.
A rock the size of an orc’s head glanced off Godri’s broken shoulder and his knees buckled as pain overwhelmed him, but Rodrin hauled him up and they hurried on. Goblins ran with them, shrieking, all thoughts of slaughter lost to blind panic. Another boulder bounced along the floor like a huge ball, crushing dwarf and goblin alike.
At last the dark arch of the corridor that led to the living quarters appeared out of the dust before them and the dwarfs ran for it. Godri and Rodrin paused just outside it and urged the others on, sometimes hauling in those too weak or hurt to continue, or kicking back a goblin that dared seek shelter in the narrow corridor.
Godri looked back once more as the last warrior ran through, just to be sure. The thick-set silhouette of a dwarf stood in the centre of the room, turning in circles and looking up at the roof as rocks and rubble rained down all around him.
“Naragrim!” Godri roared. “Hurry!”
But the architect did not heed him, only raised his arms and face as if in supplication.
“Leave him,” said Rodrin, putting a hand on Godri’s shoulder. “We must go.”
Godri let his brother pull him into the safety of the corridor, but could not help but look back.
The top of the dome gave way all at once and Naragrim was gone. Godri blinked as the dust cloud from the impact billowed up and spread across the chamber, then poured into the corridor and engulfed him and the last of the brave sons of Karak Grom in a fog of grit.
He wiped his eyes. They were tearing up.
Because of the dust.
TEN
On the morning of the next day a team of engineers cut through the iron grate that capped one of the narrow shafts that brought air deep into the bowels of the hold and pushed it open. A pair of hammerers climbed out, then helped their thane, Godri Thunderbrand, and his brother Rodrin step out onto a narrow ledge on the flinty mountainside that rose above Skull Pass.
The two brothers stepped to the edge of the outcropping as more of their followers crawled from the shaft behind them. Together they looked silently down at the ruins of the settlement they had built there.
The brewery was a blackened hulk. The forge and the mill had been razed to the ground. The houses were wrecked. Not a single building had escaped damage. Their herd was dead or dispersed, the forest where they hunted game and gathered fire wood had been burned to sticks, and their crops had been trampled and looted.
And it was worse inside the mountain. Once the cave-ins and tremors had at last stopped, Godri, Rodrin and the surviving engineers had surveyed the damage to the hold. The front passage was of course completely blocked, and the ceiling of the great hall collapsed, but that was only the beginning. Smashed by the falling ceiling the floor of the great hall had caved in, burying the guild halls under it. Worse, the passage to the grain vaults had also collapsed. It would be months before they would be able to dig it out and reach the grain. This and the loss of the herd meant that, with winter coming on, he had neither meat nor bread nor beer with which to feed his people. There was a real danger that they would starve.
And these depredations did not count the cost in lives. His son was dead. Indeed, more than half of Godri’s warriors were dead, and many that lived were badly wounded. There were but a few more than a score fit to defend the hold, should the goblins strike again.
Rodrin sighed. “I told you the place was cursed. We won’t be able to survive the winter. We’ll have to go to Karak Azul and ask them to take us in.”
Godri shook his head. “No, brother. This is Karak Grom—Enduring Defiance. We will find a way. We will survive. We will rebuild. By Grungni and Grimnir and my ancestors, I swear it.”
His followers gathered around him, staring down into Skull Pass and nodding gravely. “Aye, thane,” they said. “We will survive. We will rebuild. We are Karak Grom.”
In the stolen dwarf hall deep under Karak Eight Peaks, Dagska
r Earscrapper stood once again before Warboss Skarsnik’s throne, waiting while Skarsnik gnawed the last strips of meat off a tasty-looking human leg.
“Ya failed,” the warboss said at last, tossing the bone aside. “Y’didn’t pass da test.”
“I did!” protested Dagskar. “Dem stunties is helpless. Dey got no defences. I could finish ’em like dat.”
Skarsnik raised an eyebrow. “Is dey still in their hole?”
Dagskar shuffled his feet. “Well, yeah, but…”
Skarsnik whistled. There was a grunt from behind his throne and an enormous shape bounded out and landed with a thud in front of Dagskar, goggling at him and drooling from its cavernous mouth.
“No, boss!” cried Dagskar, backing away. “Not Gobbla! I can beat ’em! I swears I—”
With a bouncing lunge, the massive squig snapped up Dagskar whole and began to chew noisily. The goblin didn’t even have time to scream.
Skarsnik crooned at Gobbla affectionately, then looked up at his assembled boys and grinned. “Right,” he said. “Who else wants a go?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nathan Long was a struggling screenwriter for fifteen years, during which time he had three movies made and a handful of live-action and animated TV episodes produced. Now he is a novelist, and is enjoying it much more. For Black Library he has written three Warhammer novels featuring the Blackhearts, and has taken over the Gotrek and Felix series, starting with the eighth installment, Orcslayer. He lives in Hollywood.
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