Honourkeeper

by Nick Kyme

  Ithalred was waiting on one side of the cleft with his glittering host when the dwarfs had arrived, an army of silver knights on horse, light cavalry, chariots and vast ranks of spears and archers. His captains were alongside him, the raven-haired Lethralmir now wearing full armour forged from the elven star metal, ithilmar, a long bejewelled sword sheathed on his back; Korhvale, the White Lion, dressed in his hunter’s garb and familiar scale with its golden cuirass. Malbeth, too, was with them, amongst a few other hitherto un-introduced elf warriors, the ambassador unarmed and wearing only robes.

  At seeing this meeting of the two races across the cleft in Broken Anvil Hill, the casual onlooker might have supposed it to be a parlay before the onset of hostilities, rather than a greeting between allies. The mood had been tense, the diplomats of both races failing to thaw the ice. Bagrik and Ithalred had exchanged brief pleasantries of sorts, before retiring to their respective sides of the great hill and setting up separate camps.

  It was nearing nightfall on the fourth day since the dwarfs had left Karak Ungor by the time the encampment was finished. The elves held the north side of the hill, their white silken pavilions and grand marquees in sharp contrast to the squat, angular dwellings of the dwarfs on the southern side of the cleft. Trails of smoke issued from the dwarf tents through carefully engineered vents in the roofs. They were made from coarse weave and dried animal hide, and lit by the glow of flaming coals heaped in iron braziers and cauldrons. The elves used their arcane lanterns to light the area around their own domiciles, strung between their campaign tents on silver thread.

  Such was the lingering enmity between the two races that they seldom mixed. A few of the more curious occasionally ventured to the other side of the cleft but, when met with hard stares or muttered derision, were quick to return. Dwarfs kept to dwarfs and elves to elves, talking in huddled groups around fires, sharpening blades, stringing bows or simply lost in deep thought. Some, the balladeers, sang solemn tunes or dour lamentations; others prayed at small shrines. The lucky few, the oldest and wisest, slept. Tomorrow would be a hard day – there would be little, if any, time for rest once metal resounded against metal and the blood began to flow.

  ‘Barely more than beasts,’ growled Morek, the voice of the hearth guard captain coming from behind Haggar.

  The banner bearer was sitting on a stool in front of a wooden bench, a series of tools unravelled from a leather belt on top of it. He had been alone prior to Morek’s arrival, isolated upon the rocky promontory of Broken Anvil Hill that faced east.

  ‘You mean the northmen,’ Haggar replied, as he gripped his rune hand and twisted. Creaking metal split the air with his efforts, making him wince, before he had managed to unscrew the gromril hand and laid it next to the tool belt.

  ‘Aye, lad,’ breathed Morek, the scent of pipe smoke in the air as he spoke. ‘You fought these dogs with the elgi, what were they like?’ he asked.

  Haggar’s gaze shifted from his works, sweeping across the sloping plain, through swaying grasses and clusters of tightly bunched rock, until after a mile or so it settled upon the distant horizon and the waiting Norscans.

  ‘Like you said, captain, they are beasts. They throw themselves into battle for the sake of bloodletting… ’tis a sobering sight.’

  Something had changed in Haggar the day that he’d returned from Tor Eorfith. He’d only spoken once of the Norscan hordes he fought there alongside the elves, and only when the king had asked him expressly. After that, he’d kept his own counsel. This taciturn dwarf, so troubled and moribund, was as different again to the hopeful youth that had spoken to Morek outside the Elders Chamber several months ago.

  Slipping into remembrance, Haggar watched the violet campfires of the Norscans burning into azure as they billowed high into the night, issuing spark-filled smoke. Shadows, mere silhouettes of imagined monsters and evil men who made their pacts with heathen gods, cavorted in the flickering light. Emerald lightning crackled sporadically as the sound of depraved pleasures and infernal tortures drifted on the breeze, redolent with the stench of cooking flesh.

  ‘Even the wind is against us,’ Morek grumbled, wrinkling his nose against the wretched smell as he came to stand alongside Haggar.

  ‘It will be a hard fight tomorrow,’ said the banner bearer, oiling the metal fingers of his rune hand fastidiously. ‘I wish Nagrim were with us.’

  ‘Aye, it will,’ Morek offered with casual pragmatism. ‘And so do I, lad,’ he added wistfully. A moment of mournful silence persisted before Morek spoke again to dispel it. ‘I’d sooner have the walls of the hold at my back than fight in that cauldron,’ he said, indicating the open battlefield, fringed by the mountains on either side.

  The Norscans had already set about clearing it, hewing trees in order to erect crude gibbets for their blood sacrifices. Bodies – goblins, beasts and other barbarian men – were splayed in cruciform, and could just be made out hanging limply from the grim scaffolds.

  ‘They defile the very earth,’ said Haggar, watching them darkly. ‘What manner of beast are we facing, Morek?’ he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  ‘A hellish one it would seem, make no mistake of that,’ replied the hearth guard captain.

  ‘To bear the banner of Ungor is a great honour, Morek, but to me it feels like a tremendous burden,’ Haggar confessed. ‘What if I am found lacking?’

  ‘Our great and noble banner is a symbol, Haggar. It is a symbol of our honour, of our resolve and our brotherhood. A symbol is a powerful thing. It can turn the tide when the odds seem impossible, turn defeat into victory…’ Morek told him, pausing to put his hand on the banner bearer’s shoulder. ‘Don’t fear failure, Haggar,’ he said. ‘I know your thoughts are of Thagri. Your destiny is not his; you are not him. You’ll reclaim your honour come the morrow, lad. Grungni wills it.’ Morek gripped the banner bearer’s shoulder hard and then let him go.

  Haggar turned, about to respond, but the hearth guard captain was already walking away to the camp and his tent. Instead Haggar returned to his labours, gratefully lost in the ritual taught to him by Agrin when he had first gifted him the hand. So consumed was he by his work, the meticulous cleaning and polishing, that Haggar failed to hear another figure approach until it was almost upon him. At first he thought it was Morek, come back because he’d forgotten something, but when he turned around Haggar saw that it was the elf seeress, Arthelas. He fumbled with his tools in sudden shock and made to stand before she raised her hand, stopping him.

  ‘Please,’ she said musically, sending the dwarf’s heart thumping in his chest. Haggar was about to grip his chest, for fear that Arthelas would hear, when he stopped himself.

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt…’ she said, pausing to regard the disembodied rune hand and the scattered tools, ‘…whatever it is you are doing.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Haggar replied with gruff embarrassment, covering up the rune hand with the leather belt and shoving the stump of his wrist in his tunic.

  ‘You’ve no need to hide,’ Arthelas told him gently, seeming to glide alongside him. ‘Let me see it.’

  Haggar felt his face redden; he hadn’t been this hot since he’d worked in Agrin’s forge by way of gratitude for the runelord making his hand. Abashedly, he pulled his arm out from his tunic and showed Arthelas the wrist stump where a metal cap had been fused, a threaded hole bored into it in the centre.

  The seeress took it gently in her hands – her lightest touch sent tiny tremors running through Haggar’s body. Her face saddened as she looked back at the dwarf, eyes sparkling like captured stars.

  ‘I…’ Haggar began, feeling a strange compulsion to tell Arthelas its tale, but at a sudden loss for words. ‘It was lost long ago,’ he managed after gathering himself together, ‘fighting grobi in the tunnels beneath my hold. King Bagrik appointed me his banner bearer that day when venerable Skardrin fell, and had Agrin, our venerable runelord, forge a new hand for me.’

  ‘It is a grievous wound,
’ she said, letting Haggar go. ‘And old…’ Her eyes narrowed, as if she was seeing into his very soul, ‘…like another scar you bear, but one that runs much deeper and is still very raw.’

  Haggar had kept the shame of his past to himself for nigh on a hundred years. But he could not resist. He was enraptured by this fey creature, and spoke in spite of his shame.

  ‘My four-times grandsire, Thagri Skengdrang, once served Norkragg, one of the first kings of Karak Ungor. He was Norkragg’s banner bearer, an esteemed and privileged position. When Karak Ungor went to war, Thagri went too, his task to protect the banner and keep it aloft.’ Haggar’s face darkened and he looked at his feet. ‘Thagri failed in his oath,’ he said. When he managed to raise his head again, his gaze was far away, lost to memory. ‘During a battle against the greenskin tribes of the east, he allowed the grand banner to slip from his grasp and be sullied on the field. Desperate, he tried to retrieve it, but the enemy, foul urk swine,’ he said, scowling, ‘swarmed over it. With the banner lost, panic shuddered down the dawi ranks and many were slain. An entire chapter is devoted to them in the dammaz kron, our book of grudges. Thagri was amongst them, beheaded by an urk cleaver as he stooped for the banner. The day was won in the end. King Norkragg rallied the throng, whipping them up into a hateful fervour, but the stain of Thagri’s shameful death could not be so easily undone,’ said Haggar, blinking as he returned to the present. ‘He wanders even now, headless, an unquiet spirit cursed to dwell forever in limbo. This shame has followed the Skengdrangs for over a thousand years. When Thagri failed in his oath, the honour of banner bearer passed to another clan. I am the first of my clan in four generations to reclaim it, and it falls to me to atone for Thagri’s mistake by never allowing the banner to fall while I still live.’

  Silence fell between them when Haggar had finished.

  Arthelas, her expression shadowed with sadness, smiled, and the warmth of her countenance spread to the dwarf, nurturing the coldness within him back to life.

  ‘I cannot pretend to understand your ways and customs, but I sense bravery in you, dwarf. I do not think you will fail in your promise,’ Arthelas told him, then bent down and kissed the banner bearer on the cheek.

  Haggar was emboldened at once, and seemed to stand straighter.

  ‘There is a word, in my language...’ he said, ‘dawongi. It means ‘dwarf-friend.’

  Haggar went down on one knee. ‘Tromm, dawongi,’ he breathed, nodding slowly with the deepest of respect.

  Arthelas smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied, returning the gesture as she took her leave.

  Haggar watched her go, determined more than ever not to be found wanting, especially beneath her gaze. Come the morning, the banner of Karak Ungor would soar aloft and never fall until the battle was won or the blood in Haggar’s veins had run cold.

  Arthelas was tired as she walked back to her pavilion. She moved swiftly through the camp, passing the tents of warriors and knights engrossed in their pre-battle rituals. Those that did see her lowered their eyes respectfully and bowed until she had passed. Approaching her pavilion, Arthelas met the gaze of Korhvale, who was lingering nearby.

  All too eager to follow my brother’s every whim, she thought spitefully, but smiling benignly at the White Lion.

  Korhvale frowned at Arthelas’s appearance, her drawn features and weary posture suggesting fatigue. She didn’t give him a chance to voice his concern, assuming he would have the confidence to speak it, moving on quickly and reaching her tent.

  Upon entering through the narrow flap, Arthelas dismissed her servants and slumped down onto her bed. Stretching over to a small wooden chest, she took out a glass bottle filled with a silvery potion and drank the contents. It was a revitalising tonic, designed to take the edge off her recent exertions.

  ‘You should have let me tour the encampment with you,’ said a silky voice from the shadows. ‘It isn’t safe with all these… lesser creatures about.’

  ‘I wanted to be alone,’ Arthelas responded curtly.

  ‘Yes, with the bearded swine. I saw that.’

  ‘Are you following me?’ The seeress’s tone was accusing.

  ‘Yes,’ Lethralmir replied brazenly, a look of amusement on his face as he emerged into the lantern light.

  Arthelas’s annoyance was only feigned and she returned Lethralmir’s smile with one of her own.

  ‘You look powerful in your armour,’ she said as he approached. When he was standing in front of her, she traced her fingers delicately over his breastplate and arm greaves.

  ‘I am more powerful without it,’ Lethralmir breathed lasciviously, leaning in to the seeress.

  Arthelas pushed him back and stood up, the effects of the potion invigorating her. ‘I cannot believe you were jealous of the dwarf,’ she laughed.

  Lethralmir sniffed his indifference and went to pour himself a goblet of wine from a silver carafe at Arthelas’s bedside.

  ‘I do believe that stunted brute has taken a shine to you,’ he said, filling the goblet to the rim.

  ‘He is repellent,’ she declared, a wicked smile spreading across her lips. ‘Perhaps, a change of attire would make us better suited though…’

  A sudden flash of light filled the pavilion, not bright enough to attract attention but enough to make Lethralmir avert his gaze. When the raven-haired blade-master looked back Arthelas was gone, an actinic stench drenching the air. Before him stood a comely female dwarf, long plaited hair trailing over her ample bosom.

  ‘Your brother would not approve of you using your magic so flippantly,’ said Lethralmir, setting himself down on a plush velvet couch opposite the bed.

  ‘Ithalred has no concept of my true power,’ the dwarf replied, caustically. The tone was at odds with the appearance, though the timbre and language were authentic. Its body shimmered with an inner glow that exuded through the flesh, growing steadily brighter with each passing moment until it was utterly consumed by light. When the sorcerous aura died, Arthelas had returned to her true form.

  ‘Let these hairy backed creatures rut with their own kind,’ she said, eschewing the bed to recline on a chaise-long next to the velvet couch. ‘I can scarcely imagine how such a race would procreate,’ she added, taking Lethralmir’s wine and drinking it as if to wash the foul taste from her mouth.

  ‘You have beguiled him, though,’ said Lethralmir, getting up and pouring himself another drink. ‘And he is not the only one.’

  ‘Korhvale,’ said Arthelas with a sneer. ‘He watches me like a hawk. I think my brother suspects something.’

  That piqued Lethralmir’s interest. ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t come here, for a while,’ she told him.

  Lethralmir drew close to her, his voice husky. ‘But you have beguiled me, as well…’

  ‘I know,’ Arthelas replied teasingly, ‘But now is not the time,’ she hissed, pushing him hard back onto the couch.

  Lethralmir frowned, wounded by the abrupt rejection.

  ‘You are about to be summoned,’ she said, by way of explanation.

  He didn’t catch on immediately and stared nonplussed.

  ‘Get out,’ Arthelas snapped, her ire lending Lethralmir purpose.

  The blade-master got to his feet, swilling down the last of his wine and left with a lustful smile. Lethralmir was met outside by one of Ithalred’s aides. The council of war with the dwarfs was in session and his presence was required.

  Arthelas smiled to herself when they were gone.

  ‘No,’ she hissed, ‘now is not the time.’

  Bagrik’s war tent was the largest of all the dwarfs’. It had several chambers, in which the king could sleep, count his gold or eat. The greatest was given over to the war council, a sizeable wooden table dominating the centre and strewn with ragged parchment maps scribed by Bagrik’s cartographers.

  Flickering firelight from standing iron braziers revealed a crowded scene; dwarfs surrounded the war table, poring over the details of the co
ming battle, elves stooped next to them, bent-backed with the low ceiling. The aroma of roast pig filled the air, which was thick with pipe smoke, emanating from a spit in the corner of the room set over hot coals. Dripping fat hissed as it caught in the flame.

  Bagrik crouched over the table, sat upon his throne in robes and furs. The boar pelt was slung over the back of it, dead eyes scrutinizing all. Morek, Haggar and a few other dwarf captains were standing nearby, smoking, chewing their beards or staring, furrow-browed and with fists on hips, at the maps. Of the elves, Ithalred and Lethralmir had a place beside the table. The other captains stood behind the dwarfs, peering easily over their shoulders.

  ‘The northmen are here, to the east of our camp,’ Morek addressed the allied captains, pointing to a place on the map that showed widely spread contours and downward sloping, flat plains almost bereft of any geographical features. The tacticians of the elves, given their recent sorties, had postulated that the Norscan’s main camp was to the east, between Karak Ungor and Tor Eorfith. The movements of the Norscan army, and its appearance to the east of Broken Anvil Hill seemed to bear this out.

  ‘Our rangers report a horde of some two-hundred thousand men, together with beasts and… other creatures.’ Morek didn’t elaborate. It wasn’t needed. All gathered in Bagrik’s tent knew what he meant. There were daemons, fell beings summoned from the Realm of Chaos, in the Norscan ranks.

  ‘I suggest a strategy based on us holding this high ground,’ Morek continued, setting a small gold marker stamped with a dwarf face on a raised slope indicated by the map. He added several more gold and bronze markers, shaped like coins, to the one he’d just positioned, that represented the other units in the dwarf army. ‘We lure the Norscans with ranged attacks and wait for them to come to us. As they draw close, we pound them with our artillery,’ he added, pushing forward a line of gold markers. ‘When… If,’ he corrected, ‘they come through the barrage they’ll hit a shield wall of hearth guard and elgi spear,’ he said, placing a silver coin with an eagle wing on it in the line. ‘The hammer and the anvil,’ he announced proudly, leaning back and taking a long pull on his pipe, eminently satisfied. ‘We won’t even need our reserves.’