Honourkeeper

by Nick Kyme

  Nagrim nodded at the old pathfinder, watching him sniff the cold mountain air, his nose wrinkling as he detected the scent of greenskins.

  ‘Their foul stink is heaviest here,’ added Brondrik, spitting onto the ground as if the stench had left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  ‘How many?’ asked Nagrim, peering through the fitful drifts of snow funnelled down the ravine by the wind.

  ‘Nineteen, I think,’ Brondrik replied, before moving on. ‘Very near, now.’

  Brondrik wore his ranger’s garb, a green-grey tunic with a small cloak of hruk wool. The hruk were a hardy breed of mountain goat that the dwarfs reared on overground farms and mining settlements. The beasts produced hard-wearing wool, perfect for ranging over the crags of the mountains. Brondrik wore scars too, across his cheek and right ear. His beard was tan with flecks of grey, left to grow as it will. When the venerable pathfinder had smelled the goblin musk, he’d snarled, showing three missing teeth.

  Nagrim grinned broadly as he thought of the quarry just ahead.

  He would beat his father’s tally this day.

  The dwarf prince, in contrast to the pathfinder, was dressed in a deep blue tunic. Its hue indicated his heritage and the legacy he carried as a member of the royal household of Karak Ungor. Thick bronze vambraces were clapped around Nagrim’s wrists, whilst copper torques banded his muscled arms, and gold ingot pins secured his plaited dark brown beard. Over his shoulders sat bronze pauldrons, the mantle of his ranger’s cloak clasped to them. He was armed for the hunt, his crossbow slung over his broad back, and a hand axe cinctured at his waist by a strip of leather.

  The hunting party reached the end of the rocky gorge, filing out onto a barren plateau of rock. Out of the narrow defile they could see the mountains again. There in the open, the wind whipping about them, it was as if the dwarfs stood at the zenith of the world.

  ‘Magnificent…’ breathed Brondrik, misting the air as a tear ran down his face.

  The lofty crags of the Worlds Edge Mountains were wreathed in white, and encroached upon the horizon like broad, rocky fingers. Snow peeled off the distant peaks like a phantom veil, shawling the thick clusters of lowland pine below. Melt waters shimmered like frozen glass as they fed into valleys and basin lakes; thin trails of silver-grey veining the mountainside. Clouds gathered overhead in a steel sky pregnant with the threat of a heavy snowfall. The trail behind the dwarfs was dusted with the drifts, several booted footprints disappearing slowly as the errant snow filled them.

  A slighter-built dwarf, armed only with a small hand axe and dressed in a silken coat and velveteen breeches, tramped after the prince.

  Nagrim had approached the edge of the plateau, and gazed down the long, winding road that led into a forested valley scattered with rocks.

  ‘Our quarry is close, eh, Tringrom?’ said the prince as the smaller dwarf reached him. Wisps of snow caught on Nagrim’s beard as he smiled warmly at his kinsdwarf.

  ‘We’d best hope so, Prince Nagrim. We cannot be late for the feast. Your father would shear a foot from my beard if I allowed that,’ Tringrom replied. The royal aide wore a permanent scowl, ill-suited to ranging outside the hold. He’d been ungainly as he’d trekked through the chasm, his once fine clothes ripped and scuffed by the rocks and brush. Even now, standing beside the prince, he worried at the gold trim of his coat that had snagged on a clawed branch, the stitching partly torn.

  ‘Finding it hard going?’ said Nagrim, watching the royal aide with amusement as he huffed and puffed at the ragged trim of his coat.

  ‘How much longer are we staying out here?’ he grumbled. ‘King Bagrik expects us back before nightfall to meet the elves. It would not–’

  ‘Aye, and we’ll bring back a host of grobi trophies to impress the pointy ears, eh, ufdi?’ bellowed a red-faced dwarf appearing beside Tringrom. From the slur in his voice he was obviously drunk and stomped about the trail with all the subtlety of an ogre. He was clad in worn clothes, and his fingers were covered in tarnished rings that might once have been beautiful. His tattered attire and drunken disposition conspired to give the dwarf a decidedly unkempt appearance.

  ‘My name is Tringrom,’ said the royal aide through gritted teeth, ‘of the Copperback Clan, and my family have been attendants to the royal line of Ungor for over a thousand years, Rugnir Goldfallow.’

  The red-faced dwarf, Rugnir, stiffened with anger at the insult, but the reaction was fleeting. His ire seemed to vanish with the breeze and he was quickly his bawdy self again.

  ‘Calm down, lad,’ said Rugnir. ‘You’ll always be an ufdi to me.’ The dwarf gave a wide grin that showed off his teeth. ‘Pretty as a winter’s bloom with your pressed silks and perfumed beard, a preening red-feathered crag sparrow,’ he said. ‘If I didn’t know better…’ he added, closing one eye as he appraised the dwarf mockingly, ‘…I’d say you were a rinn!’ Rugnir laughed uproariously, clapping Tringrom hard on the back. The royal aide was inspecting the damage done to his coat and ripped off the gold trim completely when his drunken kinsdwarf smacked him.

  ‘Quiet down!’ snarled Brondrik from part way down the valley path, whirling around to fix them both with a fierce stare. ‘The wind is shifting, and our voices will soon carry into the lowlands,’ he warned, adding, ‘And the grobkul will last until we find the grobi and burn their nest.’ The pathfinder patted a bulging leather satchel, slung over his shoulder, at this last remark, before moving on.

  Tringrom’s straw-coloured beard bristled as he flushed with embarrassment at Brondrik’s admonishment. Rugnir on the other hand, his own beard rust-red like his drunk-blushed cheeks and ringed eyes, merely chuckled and held up a hand to show his compliance with the pathfinder’s wishes. For his part, Nagrim grinned over at the ebullient Rugnir. The two were constant companions and drinking fellows.

  There was none better than Rugnir during a feast or celebration. The prince liked his boisterous demeanour and easy company. It was welcome relief from the intensity of his father, the king, and the royal flunkies he insisted on having accompany Nagrim whenever he left the hold. It was only by the prince’s request that Rugnir had joined the hunting party. Many in the hold who knew him did not like him, claiming he was destitute and a wazlik, an honourless dwarf that borrowed gold from another and did not pay it back.

  Wealth, for a dwarf, was a measure of success and therefore prestige. With that came respect. Rugnir’s clan, once Goldmaster, but now referred to in whispers as Goldfallow, were once vaunted members of the Miner’s Guild and renowned as the greatest lore finders and tunnel-hewers in all of the northern holds. Their fame had even stretched as far as Karak Eight Peaks, the Vala-Azrilungol, one of the southernmost kingdoms of the Worlds Edge Mountains. Fate, though, had been cruel to the Goldmaster clan, and the great fortune amassed by Kraggin and Buldrin Goldmaster, Rugnir’s father and grandfather, was eroded over the years. Tunnel collapses, flooding and a series of bad investments had all but left them destitute, and their holdings worthless. Rugnir, the last of the Goldmasters of Karak Ungor, after his father was slain by trolls, had frittered what funds remained on beer and gambling. The Goldmaster coffers had dried up.

  Now Rugnir satisfied himself with Nagrim’s patronage, which paid for his debts and wagers and kept him fed, much to the distaste of the other dwarfs of the hold. The shadow of his ignominy was long indeed, and some feared it would touch the prince before long. Nagrim would not hear of it, however, and so Rugnir had accompanied the hunters into the mountains.

  ‘Tringrom,’ said Nagrim, venturing after Brondrik once he’d seen that the rest of their party, two of the pathfinder’s rangers, Harig and Thom, had caught up. They followed in Rugnir’s wake, taking great pains to cover the rowdy dwarf’s tracks, lest they attract attention. There were deadlier things than goblins lurking in the mountains and it was wise to be cautious, or sooner or later the hunter would become the hunted. Though the dwarfs held sway beneath the earth, they did not have such dominance over the mountain cra
gs that they could tread with impunity.

  The royal aide had tucked the gold trim of his silken coat in his pocket and was somewhat disconsolate as he followed the prince.

  ‘What is my father’s tally?’ Nagrim asked.

  Tringrom took a heavy-looking, leather-bound book from a satchel slung over his shoulder. Using his body and cloak to shield it from the worst of the wind and snow, he started to leaf through its pages. Finding what he was looking for, he stopped and read aloud.

  ‘Lo did Bagrik Boarbrow, of only seventy winters, reach a tally of five hundreds and three score plus one grobi.’

  ‘And what is my tally?’

  ‘Your tally, Prince Nagrim, is only five short of that,’ said Tringrom.

  ‘Six grobi,’ Nagrim thought aloud, grinning broadly. ‘Do you think I can beat my father’s count, Brondrik? Is there enough quarry for that?’ the prince called out to the pathfinder who was crouched by a fork in the valley road, inspecting tracks invisible to the others.

  ‘Aye, my prince, they’ll be enough grobi for that,’ he answered gruffly, and stood up. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘And no more talk. The grobi stink is very strong, my eyes water with it.’

  ‘Are you sure your nose isn’t too close to your arse, pathfinder?’ Rugnir asked, and roared with laughter.

  Brondrik turned on his heel and unslung his crossbow. His eyes were like granite, his mouth a thin, hard line of anger.

  ‘Have your travelling companion be quiet or I will shoot him myself,’ he said to Nagrim.

  ‘Easy, Brondrik,’ said the prince, showing his palms, a look over his shoulder at Rugnir warning the ex-miner to keep his mouth shut from here on in. The colour drained from the drunken dwarf’s face when he saw the loaded crossbow pointed at him and the apoplexy on Brondrik’s face.

  ‘Can we move on?’ asked Nagrim. ‘There are grobi to kill and precious little light left to do it in.’

  The low winter sun was setting behind him, filling the valley path with shadows. They had but an hour, maybe less.

  Brondrik saw it, too, and nodded, stowing his crossbow and leading the dwarfs onward to their prey.

  ‘Brondrik,’ Nagrim whispered, settling down into a comfortable position amongst the rocks. His kinsdwarfs were close by, hidden well in the crags.

  The fork at the long valley path had led them to a high, boulder-strewn ridge. Snow fell readily from the sky now and draped the craggy rise. The goblin camp was below them, down a shallow slope, at the base of a wide canyon. The vermin had made their nest in a small cave, their crude daubings marking it from the outside. There were no guards. Only dung and the gnawed bones of lesser creatures – rats, birds and elk calves – lay outside the greenskins’ lair.

  Closing one eye, Nagrim sighted down the shaft of his crossbow and took aim on the cave mouth. ‘Hurl the zharrum, now,’ he said.

  The venerable pathfinder did as asked, reaching into the satchel he carried and taking out a small round keg with a length of fuse poking through the lid. Lighting the fuse quickly with flint and steel, Brondrik launched the fire bomb into the air. The lit fuse fizzled dangerously as the bomb’s parabola took it just outside the cave, only for it to clank against the ground and then roll in.

  Nagrim and his fellow hunters winced as the fire bomb exploded. Jagged silhouettes were revealed in the ephemeral blast of light that followed. A chorus of high-pitched screams came from inside the cave, together with a plume of issuing smoke. Moments later, the first goblin came scurrying out, patting his head frantically to try and put out the flames in his topknot.

  Nagrim put the creature down with a bolt through its neck.

  ‘Tally-marker,’ he shouted to Tringrom, who cradled the leather-bound tome in his arm, a quill at the ready, ‘scratch one up for Nagrim Boarbrowson!’

  Three more goblins emerged from the cave with scorched faces, coughing up phlegm.

  ‘He’s mine!’ roared Rugnir, nearly slipping over in his enthusiasm to peg a greenskin drooling black snot from its bulbous nose. The dwarf had been going for the head but his aim was off and he only succeeded in pitching the creature’s furred helmet off. Confused, the goblin first patted its skull to find out why it felt suddenly cold then, realising he’d lost something, turned in a circle to try and find it.

  Nagrim stood, eschewing the cover of the rocks for a better target, and put a bolt through the hapless creature’s eye. The impact spun it around and it fell face-forward into the dirt.

  ‘Ha!’ he cheered loudly. ‘Are we shooting grobi or just playing with them, Rugnir?’

  The ex-miner muttered drunkenly beneath his breath.

  As the flames within took hold in earnest, burning straw, leather and whatever else the greenskins kept in their foul abodes, a stream of goblins came staggering from the cave. Some, the paltry few with their wits about them, loosed arrows from crude short bows at the dwarfs, but most fell pitifully short of the target or broke against the rocks.

  With the fleeing goblins in disarray, Nagrim and the rangers came out of their hiding places, loosing quarrels with deadly accuracy at the yelping greenskins. The dwarfs made their way steadily down the ridge, disturbed scree tumbling ahead of them as they closed on the nadir of the canyon, and the goblins’ lair. Only Rugnir slipped, and tumbled headfirst down the slope. He laughed as he landed on his rump in front of the others. He quickly flung a throwing axe at a screeching goblin that had tried to skewer the dwarf on its spear. The greenskin took the axe blade in the face, blood spurting from the wound, and lay still.

  ‘That one counts,’ Rugnir hollered, as he struggled to his feet and set off after the other goblins.

  After Rugnir’s unceremonious arrival at the base of the canyon, Nagrim was next to level ground. Blinded by the flames, a burnt greenskin blundered past him, heedless of its surroundings. Nagrim unslung his axe and buried it in the creature’s skull, tearing the weapon out with a wet crunch of bone. Another was running back into the cave, despite the raging conflagration within, and Nagrim changed weapons again, lifting his crossbow and puncturing the creature’s back with his shot. It fell dead just before the cave mouth.

  Breathing heavily, the prince was aware of the other rangers alongside him, making their kills and calling them out to their tally-marker, Tringrom. The ufdi’s fine silken tunic and velvet breeches, already ruined from the trek through the gorge, were covered in dirt and grobi blood. A bulging knapsack at his waist held goblin ears, noses and teeth, and when the hunters threw their trophies to him he’d not been fast enough to stop the blood from marring his clothes.

  ‘Maiming doesn’t count,’ shouted Nagrim, beheading one of Rugnir’s ‘kills’ that still had some life in it.

  The drunken dwarf muttered something in reply that was lost in the scream of another goblin cut down by his axe.

  The slaughter lasted only minutes, just as well given the sun had all but faded in the sky. Goblin corpses lay everywhere, the dwarfs moving amongst them removing further trophies.

  ‘Eighteen, all told,’ announced Brondrik, sucking his teeth before he muttered, ‘Could’ve sworn by Grimnir there were more…’

  ‘How did we fare, Tringrom?’ Nagrim asked, wiping the blade of his axe on one of the steaming greenskin corpses.

  The royal aide paused in his shovelling of the trophies into his knapsack to refer to his leather tome.

  ‘A score of six for you, Prince Nagrim,’ he told him.

  Nagrim glowed inwardly. He had beaten his father’s tally.

  ‘Four for Brondrik,’ the royal aide continued, ‘and three each for Harig and Thom.’

  ‘And what of Rugnir,’ said the drunken ex-miner, ‘what of his tally, eh?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘Two,’ Tringrom replied, stony-faced.

  ‘Eh? Two? Two? I slew more than that!’ he raged, stomping towards Tringrom for a better look at his tally-marking.

  ‘Two!’ the royal aide confirmed, slamming the tome shut and locking the clasp.

  Rugnir was
incensed, balled fists on his hips as he glowered at Tringrom.

  ‘There is falsehood here,’ he growled, before turning away in disgust.

  ‘What was it?’ said Nagrim, ‘Fifty pieces of copper that you’d outshoot me?’

  Rugnir grumbled again, looking into the distance.

  ‘Wait, I see one!’ he declared suddenly, fumbling to get his crossbow to a shooting position. Brondrik had been right – there was a survivor. The last remaining goblin had somehow evaded the dwarfs and was scampering madly back up the valley road. When a furtive glance behind it revealed that the dwarfs had seen it, the goblin redoubled its efforts.

  ‘Double or nothing that I can peg this grobi swine,’ said Rugnir, boastfully.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Nagrim replied, gesturing for him to proceed.

  ‘One hundred copper pieces you’ll owe me, lad,’ he grinned, sighting down the crossbow.

  Rugnir missed by a yard.

  ‘A good effort,’ said Nagrim with false sincerity. He took up his own crossbow, the goblin a diminishing green smudge in his eye-line by now, and fired.

  ‘Yes!’ he cried, making a fist in triumph as the goblin was pitched off its feet by the shot and lay dead on the trail.

  ‘Mark that as seven kills, tally-marker,’ said Nagrim, before he turned to look at Rugnir.

  ‘Impossible…’ breathed the dwarf, the drunken ruddiness of his face paling suddenly.

  ‘A hundred copper, then…’ Nagrim goaded him.

  ‘Er… perhaps you’ll let me owe you it, prince?’ Rugnir asked, hopefully.

  Nagrim looked serious at first but then laughed out loud, slapping Rugnir hard on the back.

  ‘Don’t worry old friend, your copper is no good to me.’

  ‘What copper?’ Tringrom mumbled to himself, still scowling.

  ‘Which, er… reminds me,’ said the ex-miner, ignoring the remark. ‘I have certain outstanding… financial obligations to Godri Stonefinger and Ungrin Ungrinson…’